Havock at the IRS

Just got off the phone with the IRS after about an hour. Due to a social security number error, they have inappropriately garnished my wages by 15%. The guy on the other end was very nice and apologetic. We did fix the problem, but since the federal government is what it is, one or two paychecks will likely be garnished before the correction kicks in and the amount is returned. (sigh) Although I'm pretty pissed, I can't fault the guy on the other end of the phone. It's certainly not his fault. I've been in the federal government long enough to know that. All I could think about was how many people call him each day and begin by screaming at him.

Avatar

J_ and I went to see James Cameron's Avatar a few weeks ago. I didn't write about it because, though the effects were great, I'm not sure I really had anything to say about it. I mean, the 3D effects were great, and I love the motion capture. Whatever Cameron did with the face-rig and "the Volume" worked because I did lose track of the computer generated characters v. the human actors. I can't wait to see what directors do with this in years to come. Spielberg is already using it for his new TinTin movie.

That being said, is all of that worthy of a blog post? No.

And yet...

who knew that the Na'vi would protest the division of the Palestinian territory? Or deforestation and loss of orangutan habitat?

Is this going to be a thing now? For the rest of our lives are there going to be people dressed as Na'vi at every environmental protest? I fear for this year's Earth Day. I can only imagine. What am I supposed to say when I_ or L_ comes to me years from now and says "Seriously? Blue skinned people at protests? Why did you saddle us with this one? Was  GWB not enough?"

A Merry Christmas Cricket?

So we are basically done for Christmas shopping. I have one more thing to pick up for S_ tomorrow and we are still thinking about something else to get J_. At least we have until he returns to the area after new Year's to exchange with him. Maybe I can pick him up something good in a post-Christmas sale! (half-off FTW!)

Went to I_'s second grade class the other day for her holiday party. Here's how the scam went. S_ is one of the room mothers and since the second graders are studying crickets in science, the teachers were all like "can you do a craft with crickets?"

O.o  wtf?

So S_ and the other room mothers freak out about it for a few weeks and finally they tell me about it. I had the misfortune of having a great idea immediately about using a clothespin and some pipecleaners to make a cricket. Flash forward a few weeks and now we have a few crickets on our tree.

Snowpocalypse

So we got about 2 feet of snow in the last two days. School and government are closed tomorrow. (yea).

Yesterday we watched the blizzard from the cozy warmth of the house. This morning we dug ourselves out and took the girls to see The Princess and the Frog. It was a great movie and the girls really liked it Facilier was really creepy with his spirit minions. Halfway through, S_ turned to me and said, "Look! A Dreamspeaker barabbi." So true.

We managed to finished most of our Christmas shopping before the blizzard hit, so we are still pretty OK. I'd like to get S_ one more thing for under the tree, but the girls are done. J_ is going home to his family in Atlanta. I know he would rather be here with us, but oh well, the rest of his family has to get him some time.

Santa Crickets?

Need to do a "Cricket" themed craft for I_'s class as they are studying crickets in Science this year. Now I am fiddling with clothespins, pipe cleaners and wire to figure out the best way to make something vaguely cricket-like.

I will have to lead 60 second graders in this craft on Friday, so I've got to find the least destructive way to construct these things.

OMG, If Florida loses...

...this house will not be worth living in.

Sorry BEDA buddies

Well, April is long over and I haven't blogged in a month. Every once in a while, I get so overwhelmed with everyone I'm supposed to be communicating with that I just unplug and go cold turkey. For nearly a month, I haven't blogged myself or read any of the blogs I usually follow on Google Reader.

I'm slowly finding my interest coming back, so I thought I'd write a quick word of apology here.

Bleah

I just spent the past 2 hours working with S_ on doing the accounting for an organization that our offspring belong to. S_ took over as their financial person last fall.

I think I may shoot myself now.

Oh, and I cannot publish this today as Blogger has flagged my blog as spam.

it just keeps getting better...

My wife wants to know why I don't write about her more

So, in the spirit of including S_ more often, here are 5 things about my wife.

1. She was told as a child that her ears were her most beautiful feature. (Point of fact: Though beautiful, they are not what drew me to my wife.)

2. She has a book sickness. Her Amazon wish list currently runs 20+ pages.

3. Up until right now, she thought that Phalanges was spelled with an "F".

4. She hates cauliflower and so has prejudiced my offspring against a perfectly innocent cruciferous vegetable.

5. She is a devotee of Asphalta, goddess of parking spaces. She always gets the space up front. She says it is a matter of faith and that I, as an unbeliever, cannot hope to acquire the same level of parking mojo that she has.

All of this is true. She is hitting me as I write this...

BEDA is slipping away... Thank God for BEDA Buddies

AAAARGH... I've already missed a few days. I think I will have to do penalty blog posts into May.

I have received my BEDA Buddy group from Maureen. To whit -

Jennifer Cliff (ilessthanthreeyouu.blogspot.com)

Profession: Student/Accountant/DFTBA'er Interests: photography, tennis, being random, singing, music, road trips.. etc... I generally just blog about what's on my mind, or what happened in my day.

Jennifer - I am also really pretty random. I put your blog feed into Google Reader.

Carrie Nicole

If your buddy pairing would be helped by some key words, the things I love are: The Velveteen Rabbit, cupcakes, dress up time, the ballet, sushi with lots of wasabi, soy lattes, really fat cats, punctuality, Jeux d'enfants and any other whimsical French film. Things I DO NOT love are pigeons and meanness. :)

- Carrie Nicole, I left a comment on your most recent blog post. I've never been kidnapped by my friends, but, frankly, given their nerdy predilections, I'm probably glad.

me: "Aggh, What is this?!?!"

friend: "We are kidnapping you for nefarious activities! Prepare yourself!"

me: "Cool. So where are we going?"

friend: "Over to my basement. We are building a replica of Babylon 5 out of popsicle sticks."

me: O.o

friend: "The hot glue gun is already heating up. Let's roll."

me: "NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Amber (geckobird.livejournal.com) - Amber, I have added your blog to my blog feed on Google Reader. I have to say, your entry on trying to fix your car made me sweat. Even though my father was an engineer, I did not inherit the "put tool A into correct slot B" gene.

OK, I will try to check your blogs everyday for the rest of April. Good luck!

I will cuddle them and their names will all be George

I have signed up for a BEDA buddy at Maureen Johnson's ning. I am sitting here quivering, waiting for my new BEDA buddies to show up and shower me with online support and affection.

Hopefully, they will do so appropriately, with all boundaries intact.

right?

I Want a BEDA Buddy...

I am going to sign up for a BEDA Buddy as Maureen suggests here. Why am I so susceptible to her crazy influence? Perhaps she has perfected her mind control ray from Skull Island. She probably sent the sharks to attack the Somali pirates too. Not enough profit sharing most likely...

All I can say is...

... Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

I love everything about this

Ummm....

So... I went to friends' house to pick up their 2 kids to bring over for a play date with offspring #1 and #2. All is well. Then I see a note from my wife on the counter -

"I suck. Forgot I had to do a conference call with client. Sorry to leave you with 4 kids and a cake in the oven. I love you."

Home Again

Offspring #1 is home from the hospital. Hard couple of days, but it will be better now. I'm trying to get S_ to take a nap, but she is being characteristically stubborn. Thanks to all who sent prayers and good thoughts. We needed them and they worked.

BEDA Advice

Maureen Johnson notes her strategy for BEDA here. It seems to consist mostly of deception and blathering.

To whit.

1. This morning, it was raining and disgusting.

2. I answered enough e-mail at work today to choke a dead horse. And if I never hear the word "Uigher" again, it will be too soon.

3. I am not watching it, but my wife is watching the last episode of ER. Evidently, John Stamos has cute dimples.

Blog Every Day April (BEDA)

Inspired by Maureen Johnson's verve and determination to BEDA, as well as disgust at my complete inability to write, I have decided I am going to go for it as well. I'm not saying I won't resort to the "5 things make a blog posting" rule on occaision, but here it goes.

Today, I have dealt with the following issues:

1. I almost killed an employee I sent on travel. Traveling is part of his job and I was making a point as he had not traveled in over a year, but the man had an anxiety attack at the TDY location and ended up in the hospital. (sigh)

2. The AC has been broken on my floor for the second day in a row. At 1:00 in the afternoon, it has finally kicked in. I will scoop up all my melted parts and try to reconstitute myself before my 2:00 meeting.

3. People are freaking out since our security office has ruled that no cell phones can be brought onto our floor. There is no place outside our floor to put the cell phones either. The proposed solution? "Leave them at home." When asked what the plan would be if there were another 9-11 mega-emergency, the reply was "Well that won't happen, so don't worry about it." Niiiiice......

4. Offspring A was to have surgery on Monday for a long-standing problem. Serious but unavoidable. We were all set to go and it was postponed at the last minute for a week. Now S_, my wife, is on edge for another week, barely sleeping...

In addition,

I find the Peekaroo to be creepy.

That's Pretty Squiddy Music

We have a running joke in our family about giant squids, so I suppose it was inevitable that a search on YouTube for squid videos brought us this.

ugh.

I don't think my daughters know enough about biology to be icked out by this, but I can't even watch it anymore.

This one, showing the catch of a Humbolt squid is better.

Some Late Thoughts on 2008

Been awhile since I posted, so I will just do some bullets on the biggest, most interesting or notable events of the last few months.

* Isabella saw a Magic 8 Ball for the first time. Once she understood she had to ask it a question, she asked (completely unprompted), "Magic 8 Ball, is true love real?" Sitting in the other room, I thought "Man, am I f***ed..."

* In November, I went to New Zealand to visit gtchaos. He has been keeping track of his year abroad in his blog, Grabbing Life by the Kiwis, including his extremely popular post on the culinary merits of brains in parsley sauce. Highlights of my trip included sea kayaking, hokey pokey ice cream, and learning that the call of the morepork is best described as plaintive. S_ stayed home to be the single parent in return for her own trip to the "En Zed" which is where she is right now.

* In December, I published my first article! I wrote a business case study for Associations Now, the magazine for the American Society of Association Executives. The article, called "More than Muffins", is about how you handle the really nice employee who is terrible at her job.

* For Christmas, we went to Disney World with the girls and my mother-in-law, the gracious underwriter of the trip. The trip was great, but a study in near-miss disasters, including waiting an hour in the wrong airline's line, a lost and then found blankie blankie, and missing the flight on the way back. The weather was good and the girls had a great time, even with all the near misses. As crowded as it was, Disney does make the vacation process nearly brainless.

* Oh yea, and when 2008 was almost out of sight, I got in a fender bender with two other cars. Did I mention that one woman was a teacher at my daughter's elementary school, the other woman didn't speak English, and I left my cell phone at home that day?

Looking forward to a new year in 2009.

"AAAGH! You've Infected Me with Your Work Drama!!!"

That was L_ when I met her at the Metro yesterday. And, it's true, work drama is an insidious, contagious disease. (It would make a great t-shirt.)

Basically, I got into it with our group's secretary this week over supply hoarding and ended up staging a raid on the locked supply room. I mean, my people didn't have pens and paper! They were not asking for fuchsia Post-Its. And the secretary could not get off her ass enough to walk across the hall to unlock the supply room. I went ballistic, staged a raid, and sent her an e-mail complaining about her attitude and performance. Then we had to go talk about it. Then she had to take two days off because she was so traumatized by the xp. (sigh)

Why? Just... why?