16:37 - VGA 8
Category: Games

Hi, my name is Jonathan, and I'm a video game addict.

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10:29 - Socks
Current mood: amused
Category: Life

Rowan is three now.  It's just incredible that he's growing and learning so much, so fast.

Several nights ago, I slathered Vaseline on my dry hands right before bed, and then put a couple of old socks on them, to keep the bed from getting greasy.  Early the next morning, Rowan clambered onto our bed as he often does and snuggled in with us.  I rolled over and I saw him look thoughtfully at my besocked hands, processing, before asking why I was wearing them.  Well, I didn't want to embark on a long explanation at 6:30 a.m., so I just mumbled something about "keeping my hands covered." He accepted this and I thought no more of it.

Until nap time.  He went down with the normal amount of resistance, and Mommy and I did other things for a while and eventually he fell asleep.  A couple hours later his bedroom door opened and he came out into the living room looking for a snuggle... complete with socks on his hands instead of his feet.  I smiled as I pointed out his wardrobe change to him.  It was so cute to see him, just wanting to be like Daddy, without really knowing exactly why he was doing what he was doing.  All he wanted was to have socks on his hands the way Daddy had socks on his hands.  It makes me remember that our children are constantly observing us, even when we don't notice them doing it, and they learn so many things from that, more than we can possibly realize.

He still wears socks on his hands when he goes to bed.  Sometimes he asks for them and I give him a clean pair to wear; other times he just takes them off his feet.  But I never miss the amusement in seeing him emerge from his nap or in the morning wearing a pair of socks on his hands.

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08:43 - Freestyle Chef™ vol. II
Current mood: bouncy
Category: Food and Restaurants

Only one for today. With no further ado, we bring you:

Chicken Marinade I

Ingredients:

Currently reading : Sabine’s Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues By Nick Bantock Release date: 01 September, 1992

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12:28 - Props
Current mood: tired
Category: Life

You see stranded motorists pushing their cars from time to time.  It happens; they don't pay attention to their gas gauge, the car overheats, something else goes wrong, and they're stuck.  Hopefully they aren't too far from home or a service station, or at worst, a phone.

Because it's pretty stinky to be stranded 500 miles from home and 20 miles from the nearest garage (which is closed until morning, anyway).  Although, as it happens, within sight of a gas station. Especially when it's hot out and there are two hungry kids in the backseat and two hungry grown-ups in the front.

SO...

Props to the young woman and the young couple who stopped near the Philips 66 station outside Dix, Illinois on September 4 to help give us a push.  I didn't get your names, but thank you all the same, from me and my family.  It helped remind me that there are good people everywhere—God's people (whether they know it or not).

Currently reading : Feersum Endjinn By Iain M Banks Release date: 01 June, 1995

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13:55 - Our Furry Friends Vol. I
Current mood: irritated
Category: Pets and Animals

I happen to think that skunks are pretty darn cute.  They have such a bad rap, and it is SO undeserved.  Admittedly, I have never been sprayed by one.  But you know that stinky stuff?  That's called musk.  Yeah, they squirt that at you when they feel threatened, kinda like cats hiss and supermodels throw cellphones.  Skunks have quite good hygiene, for small mammals, and they really don't smell bad, at least not until you hit the at 80 mph, after which treatment even Naomi Campbell might smell quite putrid.  Having your insides forcibly rearranged and randomly distributed over several square meters can do that to ya.

No, they're smarter than dogs, almost as smart as raccoons, and they smell much nicer than your average dog.  Dogs reek.  So why the bad reputation?  Here it is in a nutshell: we squash them and then they stink.  We startle them, and then they make us stink.  Our pets act in a normal predatory fashion, and (surprise!) come home stinking.

Of course, they're wild animals, and deserve nothing so much as to be left alone to get on with being skunks.  So let's give them a break, eh?  And the next time you smell one on the freeway, remember that the skunk may make the musk, but the people make the stink.

Currently reading : The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) By Howard Phillips Lovecraft Release date: 01 October, 1999

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18:02 - Freestyle Chef™ with Squid
Category: Food and Restaurants

Disclaimer: Freestyle Chef makes no guarantees about any of his dishes.  He doesn't measure anything, so these are more like guidelines.  But they work for him.

Cheese Potato Mashup

Ingredients:

Currently reading : Stardust By Neil Gaiman Release date: 29 July, 2003

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22:42 - VGA 7
Current mood: frustrated
Category: Life

Hi, my name is Jonathan, and I'm a video game addict.

It's been 7 weeks, 6 days since my last frag.

I hate Diablo 2.  It won't leave.  It's always there, waiting to cram ideas into my consciousness.  I just want some peace.

Currently reading : The Last Continent By Terry Pratchett Release date: 26 October, 2004

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19:51 - Reading Harry Potter: NOT A SPOILER.
Current mood: relaxed

At last I have finished the final installment of the meteoric Harry Potter septilogy.  It took me an obscene six days to finish it.  Now some people like to take their time over a "good" book, savor the language, relish the interplay of verbage, yada yada.  Cram it through, that's my school of thought.  Read it start to finish, and savor it once it's all there to process at once.

Normally.

Under the circumstances, however, what with a long weekend at work, I was forced to consume Deathly Hallows at an inconceivable 10-minutes-to-bolt-my-food-and-read-as-much-as-I-can pace, interspersed with seemingly endless hours of dreary Work in between.  It was agonizing, except that for a change I got to process a book as I went.  Anticipating.  Speculating.  It gave me time to really analyse potentialities, which is not something I usually take the time to do.

I hated it.

Not the book; that was fantastic.  But the slow pace was excruciating.  That was the main reason I wanted to wait until I had a couple of solid, free days available to read it cover-to-cover before actually starting it, but then Lori got a copy, and mine came in at the library, and, well, one thing led to another.

But now I'm finished, and I'm not upset anymore, because in the same six days, I also got to pick blackberries, play outside with my son, have company for dinner, and even sleep.

Sleep, and Finishing A Good Book, I find, are normally two mutually exclusive activities.  But sleep is just so darn awesome.  And even a good book can sometimes wait till morning.

Currently reading : Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) By J. K. Rowling Release date: 21 July, 2007

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13:22 - More thoughts on time travel
Current mood: cheerful
Category: Life

I'm a hopeless nostalgic.  No, really, I am.  Don't get me wrong, I have no delusions about the past being glorious and perfect and all that rot.  But the bits I reminisce about, those bits are pretty swell.  This afternoon I was talking with Lori (well, we were discussing our children having boyfriends and girlfriends... yes, our 2-year old and infant boys and as yet unconceived girls) about my first girlfriend, way back in eighth grade.  It was so innocent, and, I don't know... cute.  We would hug, sometimes, and I think we even held hands once in a while.  Oh, and we sat together at lunch.  Yep, yep.

And it's not like I'm longing for those days to return.  I'm happy.  I love my family, I hate don't care for my job a whole lot but that's life.  I wouldn't change anything.

I just have fond memories.  I like having them.  I like remembering them.  That's what I think of as nostalgia.

Currently reading : Next By Michael Crichton Release date: 28 November, 2006

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19:36 - Olfactory Transport System
Current mood: curious
Category: Life

So I was at work last night, just doing my trivial mundania.  Suddenly an aroma wafted over me—only for an instant, mind you—which I can't describe, though it was not unpleasant... just complex (and strong, somehow overcoming the plastic-and-acetone stench pervading my work zone).  In that instant, I was completely removed from where I was standing and thrust back sixteen years into my sixth-grade classroom.  I'm not talking about deja vu, and the word "memory" seems obscenely inadequate and much too... conscious.  Just for that heartbeat, I was right back in that classroom, exactly how it was over a decade ago... and then I was back at work and remembering being in that classroom.  But that first moment was utterly freakish, because it was so sudden, so unexpected, and so overwhelming, not too mention instantaneous and absolutely unconscious.

I don't know what that scent was or where it came from; it may have been someone's perfume or lotion or probably some combination of smells.  Whatever it was, it had the ability to violently override my conscious thoughts and shove open the gates to this area of... memory—and then vanish.

This is not the first time that sort of thing has happened to me, though it was definitely one of the most vivid.  To be honest, I think it's frikkin awesome.

Have you ever been smacked with OTS?  Let me know!

Currently listening : The Roar of Love: A Musical Journey Into the Wonder of C.S. Lewis' Narnia By 2nd Chapter of Acts Release date: 01 June, 1991

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