July 2008 Archives

The Violin Olympics that is!! I have been eagerly anticipating what our Most Excellent Violin Instructress had in mind for a Violin Olympics, and I must say, I was not disappointed. Jeepers, that woman is imaginative!! Note the gold medals during the opening bow ceremony. Gold, silver and bronze stars were applied to these as earned throughout the proceedings.

Thing 2 was a participant in a multi-event extravaganza that ranged widely: Rhythm Relay (below), Synchronized Bowing, Intonation Archery, Bow Hold Gymnastics and even a Steeplechase. It was a rocking three days of adventure in ability!!

There were so many games, its hard to keep track, but here was one that the kids really enjoyed, making up their own rhythms. Naturally, Thing 2 has got to try to do things his own way. Augh!

Here's Thing 2 as an example of the Boxing Posture and Balance competition, where the player assumes "play position" and the judge makes three attempts to knock them out of position. Is his position stable enough? Well, almost.

Not only were the students/participants treated to interesting challenges, but Mr. Violin Instructor was the piano accompanist to the proceedings, and he's a very witty musician indeed! He was the fast and furious interjector of musical snippets ranging from Chariots of Fire, William Tell and the Star Trek theme—and naturally, the Olympic Theme at key moments. (Plus various ring tones if someone's phone happened to go off.) Those are just the bits I remember, or can name. These two are a dynamic duo!

The Violin Olympics have ended, sadly, for our fabulous Instructress will be part of a group that plays a pregame show for the Mets next week. She's a popular gal!!

I went to see Mamma Mia! for the second time today. I wouldn't be surprised if lots of women go to see it several times. Its not a fantastic movie in the strictest sense of compelling plot, killer acting, etc. Its fantastic because its just silly fun, the actors allow themselves the luxury of not being so damn serious, and the extras appear to be just plain locals. Yeah, that's a PLUS.

I read a review that remarked "the majority of the dancing was poorly performed by unskilled local extras". Um. That would be the plainly dressed or overweight Greek ladies that populated the background. The ones who look very similar to 80% of the audience. The very ladies who fork over the cash for their teenagers to see the endless stream of slasher/horror/asshat movies.

Bite our collective asses, reviewers. We're all dancing queens. Especially the fabulous woman who shrugs off her load of kindling to join the fun. Its a romp. Lets hear it for the middle aged girls who want to have fun.

After an hour or so of sweeping up the dead leaves and smog particles that had accumulated on the pool deck while we were away, (not to mention the baby possum that somehow found its way to the bottom. eew.) the Things and I had a lovely few hours in the water.

We played a little game, where I threw cherries at them, and they barked like seals to get them. It was delightful!!

Now bark!:

Here ya go!!

Bark some more!!:

Dive!!

Children. They're great science projects!!

We're back from the amazing and wonderful three weeks in Illinois with Cricket's family. As we pulled out of the driveway chez Cricket, Thing 1 said "Life is just not the same without Scooter by my side. He puts the glamour in life. He's the KAPOW!"

Little boys are so damn sweet. I feel the exact same way about Cricket, but Thing 1 is so much more eloquent than I am. I miss you tons, girl. I wish we could do all our home improvement projects together.
Sigh.

As this was our first day home, we took it easy. There was much Mario Galaxy played, so the Things could get their local game level up to the Illinois game level they left behind. Priorities, you know.

Later, we took a couple of hours to wash down the Beluga. Poor thing had been sitting outside at LAX for a week while we were gone, before SysGuy got there to rescue it. It was filthy, there's a lot of plane poop at LAX. Also, bee poop, I'm guessing, from all the pollen spots. One would think that bees and giant airports don't go together, but whatever.

She's looking mighty fine now, thanks to the fabulous work put in by my crack team of detailers. They work for snacks, and are willing to wash the roof.

I love my minivan. Which is good, since I'm likely to have it for at least 10 more years. There's a lot of folks in my area who just can't deal with the hit on their perceived coolness, and go for the honking big SUV instead. To them I say: use your imagination. For all it does, my beluga should damn well have flames on it.
boomp3.com
The Austin Lounge Lizards always make me feel better.

Love you Cricket.

So, I'm at Cricket's house. Right away that's trouble, on account of its NOT MY HOUSE. Therefore, I only sort of know "where things are". But I'm fairly resourceful, and I can limp along.

This evening, after a day of joint momming of the hordes, Cricket took a shower, leaving me in charge of the spiffy new Ice Cream Generating Device. Well, the freezy bowl that goes on the kitchen aid. My job, which I accepted with aplomb, was to merely add the damn oreos when the ice cream was mostly done. It actually worked out pretty well. And I thought it was simple.

Naturally, whilst (that was for Cricket) I waited for the confection to attain the perfect temperature of delectability, I thought I might just toast myself a couple of pop tarts. Also, simple. Pop tarts, you stick them in, push down the lever, wait. Out pops yet another fabulous treat! Two of them, even!! Except, at Cricket's house, only ONE of them pops up. Because the other one has horribly and irretrievably impaled itself on the tines of doom that are theoretically supposed to support the object to be toasted. Great.

Instead of enjoying my tasty pastry treat, I find myself ransacking the kitchen for an appropriately slim implement to remove the maimed tart. (Cricket: still in the shower). I know there's tongs, but they're in the dishwasher. As if I'm going to wash them for this. As if. Due to a long-standing and only mostly wrong family assessment that my personal foible is having a light and flakey brain, I have to remove the tart before Cricket gets out of the shower, or be the butt of jokes for eternity as the doofus that jammed the simplest appliance on the planet. I've only recently been able to forget the charcoal chicken incident of 1983. (Yes, Sysguy & Mom, I unplugged it. I do that when its an extreme toaster emergency. Not for the minor ones though.)

So I find something similar to tongs, and start attempting to extract said pastry. No luck. Stuck like crazy. Its a cherry one, so it even looks like its bleeding. Right about now is when the mixer starts doing the "Ice cream is done!" dance. I'm very focused on the task at hand, and really, I just can't be bothered. I get the broken oreos from the freezer, dump them in sort of slowish, but not really 'cause I'm irked. Let the thing go around again for a while while I finally extract at least parts of my frankly damned annoying pastry treat.

Mixer starts doing the "I'm really truly done now!!" hoochie coochie, so I direct my attention to shifting the nascent dairy confection from the mixing bowl to a storage bowl for the freezer. When I realize. There is no other bowl. Cricket is in the shower. She left me out here with no damn bowl. All the big appropriate ones are in the dishwasher (again with the as if). So I pull out the entire tupperware cabinet and find some smallish but at least there's two of them bowls and get the ice cream in and off to the freezer. Less one lid, because dog forbid both lids are in the same location, it is tupperware after all, that shit migrates. The spiffy iced bowl that creates ice cream from glop makes the residual glop rock hard if you don't keep it moving, so It's gotta get transferred pretty quickly. (Incidentally, hot pads? They work both ways!!)

Cricket is finally out of the shower and decentish, and wondering why I'm sighing and banging so much in the kitchen. So I go to tell her the ice cream is done, and then burst out laughing because the comedy of errors with the pop tarts, which was very slight but vexing, just overcame me. All I had to do was squeak out the words "pop-gasp-tart" and she immediately knew what had happened. And took a little too much pleasure telling me she had a work-around, I think.

Now, why wouldn't you at least warn a person?