August 2008 Archives

We've spent the last couple of days doing...stuff. I caught up on my sitting around, did some sewing, stuff on the computer, laundry. Domestic crap. The Things got caught up on their whining about being bored, I used the opportunity to lock them out of the house. They can be just as bored outside, where its less annoying to me. Eventually, they even noticed the various toy-like objects distributed throughout the yard. T-minus 8 days till school starts.

I've been listening to the democratic convention. Its kind of exciting, up there with the one where Bill Clinton was nominated the first time. Sadly, Hillary seems to be kind of a spoil sport. I'm not sure if its her exactly, or its just her hangers on. The local pbs/npr station I listen to, KPCC, has had some call-in shows on the subject. Man, there are some really screwy Hillary supporters. Well, apparently, McCain supporters now. That's taking irked a little far, but, whatever. Its your vote. (Thank dog you only get one.)

The thing none of the Hillary Lovin' Irate Obama Haters seemed to notice was that her campaign staff was plagued by internecine warfare; she barely had her own people under control—which may very well have made her campaign less effective generally. I'd prefer not to take that managerial style to the international stage, thank you. I think she's a fabulous Senator, however.

Another point that was made by some of the callers was that the primaries were tweaked just so by Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi to favor Obama. I suppose...but I don't think so. I expect different types of primaries were more or less receptive to all the candidates styles, it seems like it evens out overall.

The callers really seemed to think the cards were stacked against Hillary. The attitude that she was somehow "owed" this nomination really bothers me. How smug. I think she was treated pretty fairly as a contender. Certainly not any worse than some other presidential aspirants have been. If you want to be treated as an equal, you have to accept success or failure as an equal. Looking for prejudice in every nuance is a waste of time.

I sure hope she manages to turn her people on to Obama. It would be a shame for the country to miss out on this fellow.

Oh. I took the Things to Raging Waters water park today. It didn't suck!! It was almost as expensive as Disneyland, but with water. We spent the whole day running around barefoot in swimsuits with the hoi polloi. Nobody got sunburnt (I learn!). We had a blast.
No photos.

Well, they're over.

Now there's no excuse to watch tv. An encore, which I totally cadged from Angel's web site. Worth it though. I love a man with a sense of humor.

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This was going to be a very simple entry for SuperDad, to show how our bikes hang off the spiffy new rack on the back of the beluga. See, here they are, bare rack, rotated rack with two bikes. I lost interest before I got to the third bike. Please note the tiny silver bit on the back of the beluga. It will be important later.

Tuesday I took the Things and our bikes to the beach. Loading the bikes on the bike rack is not as simple as one would hope. Those little bikes? They’re kinda annoying. No holes big enough for the rack implements, or in a useful place. Here's a photo, I took lots of pictures before I removed the bikes when we got home, so I won't have to spend forever puzzling it out next time. Its hard to tell, but the fittings to hold individual bikes are kinda too big to fit through the holes on the little bikes. Especially the red one, which had to be on the farthest set because it wouldn't go any closer. My bike is the "720" waaay at the back. Perfectly simple to mount.

We went to the beach just South of the Santa Monica Pier. (I felt like teasing the Things with the prospect of an amusement park, but not going. Turns out, they didn’t want to, anyway.) We rode bikes up and down the strand, had lunch, checked out surf camp for next year (oh yeah, they’re going to that!). Then I loaded them down with stuff and sent them off to find us a spot in the sand. Oh, the kvetching. Sheesh. They really think I’m their sherpa. Soooo not. I was too busy hoisting their insanely heavy for the size bicycles back on the beluga. Augh.

By the time I arrived at the designated spot with (really the lion’s share of) our stuff, they were both already in the surf. Thing 1 is impossible about the ocean. Honestly. I spent most of the day eyeballing where his dinky point of a head was. When he finally came in, I lectured him on how if the only people he can see near him in the ocean are adults, he’s too far out. He’s a strong swimmer, but you can’t anticipate the occasional waring blender wave.

Meanwhile, Thing 2 was playing in the sand/sitting in the surf. We tried to make a sand castle, but he was too intent on wrecking mine before it got big enough to bother with. I moved on to moat building, then when he was totally ignoring me I moved on to knitting on the beach.

Thing 2 is really good at just hanging out on the sand. Notice the stylish spf hat we have implemented to protect his fair epidermis (and the spf rashguard, I LOVE those). Here he is making sand angels, the only kind we really can here.

I recently joined a gym. Its only a 10 minute bike ride from my house, which is fabulous. In my usual "how can I pile too many things together for maximum efficiency" way, I have decided its a good idea to ride my bike and then do the class I'm going to. I'll be all "warmed up"!

One of the weird things about living in greater LA is that you tend to run into people you know. Having lived in various parts of the country, with this area being far and away the most populous, you'd think I'd be used to that. But no. I lived in Champaign-Urbana, IL for 8 years, and never ran into anybody outside of where I normally saw them. Here, that happens all the time. Its weird. Nice, but weird. Do you think they saw me first and were just hiding in IL?

After about 6 different trips between the house and the garage to get ready to ride to the gym (one trip each for: water bottle, bike lock key, cell phone, id, other bike lock key because that was the wrong one, sunscreen, and lastly sunglasses because last time I got a wee annoying rock in my eye), I finally got on my way. I enjoy not being able to figure out what I need all at once. About halfway there, I ran into someone I hadn't seen since before vacation (see above). We chatted. Good thing I was "warmed up", because I totally missed the warmup!

Once I got to the gym, I park my bike and prepare to remove the front wheel, as I have done a jillion times before, to lock it to its frame and the bike rack. Wheel won't come off. wtf? Eventually, I decide if I can't get it off, nobody else will either. They'll be trying in front of the million or so treadmills facing the window, just like I am. Nobody wants my wheel that badly. Then I bend down to put my big U lock on between the back frame and bike rack. Um. the rack is bolted to the ground too close to the building for the lock to reach my frame and the rack at the same time. Who does this? So I bolt through the rack and just my back wheel and chain, and hope for the best. These things really irk me. Its nice you have a bike rack, but if you're going to install it so its unusable, why bother? They're not very decorative.

I get to my class, late (but warmed up!) and irked. I muddle through.

Stupid bike rack. And I almost killed myself because I forgot I had unhinged my front brake to not take the wheel off.

...imaginations at work.

This may look like a random assemblage of every single pool toy we have to the casual observer.

But NO!

It is actually not one, but TWO military bases under construction by the intrepid Things. A couple hours were spent getting this set-up exactly right, with many secret entrances and exits devised, and much haggling over ownership and usage rights.

I totally love how they can spend hours building on each other's wildly improbable ideas for aggression and defense (not to mention the junior version of political détente). They almost never get to the actual "war" part of the game, so I guess they have engineering in their future. Or diplomacy. (Whew!)

Thing 1 and I spent the better part of this afternoon installing a trailer hitch on the Beluga. I aspire to schlep multiple bicycles to places that don't require my very wobbly Thing 2 to interact with traffic. I found a nice bike carrier, but it wants a trailer hitch.

Why is it that guy stuff, trailer hitches and the like, are so damn heavy? There are only three parts to this thing, and together they weighed more than Thing 1. Ugh. I used the challenge to point out an interesting thing I've learned over the years. When doing typically "guy" stuff, a girl has to be smart, since she's missing the testosterone poisoning that makes guys strong. Leverage and imagination. The best, cheapest tools.

Between the two of us, we managed to get the two mounting brackets attached to the frame. I hoisted, he positioned the jack stand so I wouldn't have to hold the weight of the entire thing up in the most awkward position possible. (Lift? Who needs a lift? Weenies, that's who.) Thing 1 started the bolts for me, and we got to have a lovely discussion about righty tighty and lefty loosy, and what the threads were and how NOT to strip them. Slow and steady wins the race laddy. After that came some good times with various configurations of socket sets, with a long discussion about english vs. metric and why the hell Daddy can't store them in the same place...but I digress. We cobbled together a workable solution using english sockets on the metric bolts, which are GIGANTIC, by the way.

Thing 1 tightened them up, and then I explained about the torque wrench, which was lots of fun. Although, I think its the least successful part of the whole operation, since ours only goes up to foot inches, and the bolts were supposed to be tightened to foot pounds (Superdad?). Naturally, after we get the brackets all tightened up, that's when I realize, "oh. the reason they didn't want them tight before you put the hitch piece on is that its NOT. GOING. TO. FIT. unless you have them loose and HIT IT WITH A HAMMER LOTS OF TIMES FROM LOTS OF DIRECTIONS."

See, this is the sort of thing that is somehow just obvious to guys. Naturally, even though you've got tons of bolts and things holding this up, a little friction connection never hurt, and! you get to use a hammer! (Imagine dark thought cloud over my head here.) So, Thing 1 jauntily loosened the brackets up for me again, and then tried to abandon me because it was getting boring!! We didn't even know about the hammer part yet!!

The actual hitch, which is a steel beam with a square hole thing in it and plates with bolt holes at the end, is tooooooo heavy to just hold up, but it managed to fit just perfectly on top of the jack stands laid sideways. I put the packing foam on my legs and hoisted the sucker up and whacked at it, while Thing 1 stuffed the bolts through the second the two holes meshed. There was a fair amount of loudish fine-tuning, but we got'er done.

Thing 1 took a picture of my best side finishing up the probably not correct but good enough for today torque. Also, the beluga is not jacked up, the camera is crooked. Isn't that a lovely hitch? You want one now, don't you.

Its Magic!! The Construction Gods left us some new rolling stock yesterday! The Things were thrilled. Here they are, enjoying their new steamroller and frontloader. They're so lucky, California is really great—what budget crisis? I have no idea where in the garage we can put these things. I don't think we need to garage them right away, they look like they're used to being dirty.... Anyway, they're a VAST improvement over the Tonka's the Things use in the dirtpile! Yay!!

Here are some glamor shots.

The Things had the last day of their two-week refresher swim lesson with the "swim nazi" today. This woman is so great, her kids went to college on swim scholarships. I like that she gets great results quickly—she'll take a totally terrified kid and turn them into gleeful divers in two weeks—not cruelly, just no-nonsense. At the public pool program, it would take the entire summer to make the progress she achieves in two weeks. I think she's wonderful, but she does insist that the students follow direction and pay attention. Somehow, that really grates on a few parents, hence the nickname.

This year, the lads improved their diving skills, firmed up freestyle breathing, and various backstrokes. Thing 1 is a strong swimmer, who can go for hours. Thing 2 is very competent, but I think he's not quite strong enough to go very far yet. Kid needs some muscle!! We had to make him do the lessons without his spf shirt because it would bubble up around his head too much. He was spending too much effort fighting past the shirt. Fortunately, lessons were at 9am (good morning!!!) and its been gloomy in the am lately.

Here are the boys doing timed floating. Miss Carrie is telling Thing 2 to try to get his legs up. He's just a slip of a guy, so his body wants to sink at the slightest twitch. Its hard to stay still when you're 7.