Liz and George the Chumby
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Kid Talk
iPod Touch, again
Last night, or was it the night before, we had a discussion about which kids I blog most about – undoubtedly Michelle takes the cake with Prince J running a distant second. At least that’s my feeling, though I don’t really keep track. I think I probably blog the least about Jenn. Did I recently blog about Liz and graphic novels? I think I mentioned it but the post I wanted to make just didn’t happen because life was busy. Anyway, this got me thinking about why I don’t often blog about RJ – I have no idea! There’s plenty of blog material coming from her every day. Like this little story…
Michelle was showing off her iPod touch to the little kids. Liz said “cool”. Prince J also said “cool”. Not a super amount of enthusiasm, though I believe if Prince J actually had been allowed to HOLD it, he’d have said more than “cool” since he’s the kid who most wants an iPhone (though probably the kid least likely to use it as a phone.)
RJ on the other hand covets the iPod touch. “I want one!” I said “uh nooooo I’m not made of money and Michelle really just got this one because her iRiver died a horrible death and I wanted my iRiver back.” The kid did not miss a beat and said “So all I have to do is borrow your iRiver and I can have an iPod!”
Err. Damn. I think I’m in trouble now, or will be if I leave my iRiver lying around where she can confiscate it. What’s worse is I almost handed it over to her so she could serenade her damn bird. Thankfully I realized that if I handed it over to her, I’d be buying another iPod Touch. The kid is smart. Too smart.
Also, regarding the iPod Touch. Michelle was disappointed that the calendar edit feature isn’t functional on the iPod Touch. Let’s hope this rumor is true. If it is – the device will be perfect.
Michelle uses the web surfing features more than I dreamed she would. She blogs from the thing! And, last night while she was at R’s for band practice, they used it by borrowing the neighbor’s wifi connection to surf guitar chords while learning a new song. Carrying a guitar and/or a sax around PLUS a laptop is a lot to carry – the iPod Touch in her pocket makes her life much easier.
She’s happy. I’m happy. RJ would like to be happy, heh.
I’d like to thank the academy – of one
Today, during the always entertaining taxi service that I provide to my family members, I received a great honor. Three great honors actually.
Funniest Parent: Denise!
Weirdest Parent: Denise!
Least Boring Parent: Denise!
Wow. Imagine that. Three awards from Prince J, who is a very tough judge – not to mention the fierce competition.
I’m thinking of adding these awards to my resume’.
I’d like to thank the academy – of one Read More »
iPod Touch
Michelle confiscated my iRiver months ago and I haven’t seen it since. OK I have seen it, every day, attached to her ear as I’m driving her to school or work. I sometimes reach over and pet it, and she snatches it away. It has somehow become hers. And I want it back.
So, I did the only thing I could do. I bought her a new music player. An iPod Touch, to be exact. And she has no idea. She knows I bought her a present and it was arriving today. She also knows I was thrilled that it was arriving today because she has school til 2:45 and then works from 3 til 11. This means I get to play with her present before she does.
And play with it I have. It is awesome. Not quite awesome enough to buy one instead of an iPhone but very close. Very close.
Awesome.
Wii Problems
We’ve discovered some problems related to owning a Wii. The problems started out small, but like in “Give a Mouse a Cookie” they have snowballed into, well…
Problem number one – constant cleaning of the living room (where the TV is). Animal hair makes my eyes itch so I spend very little time in the living room, where the animals spend a lot of their time. With the addition of the Wii, I’ve cleaned the living room three times – in 7 days. Cleaning means really cleaning – sweeping or vacuuming (or both) and dusting every inch of space where animal hair might land. I hate cleaning.
Problem number two – we have a lot of kids so we decided we needed four wii remotes. This in itself is not a huge problem. We ran over to Target and picked up a couple. Not a huge expense and one neither of us minded at all. But as we were leaving the store with our purchases we both began to wonder about the size of our living room and whether it could accommodate four people playing tennis at once (particularly the four we were envisioning). Frightening images danced through our heads and some of those images became reality on Monday. I will spare you the details and just say I will never play tennis with RJ again. Ever.
Problem number three – since the living room really can’t accommodate us and I will obviously play tennis with RJ and so will her sister, though I’m sure Liz has some misgivings about that, we really do need to solve the size problem. The best idea is to switch the living room and office around. The current office is wide, except there’s that whole fireplace issue but still the room would work much better as a Wii room. It will be a pain in the XXX to move all of the books but well worth it.
Problem number four – when considering moving the rooms around, this obviously leads us to want new living room furniture, and a new rug and of course new office furniture. All of which we’ve talked about for quite some time but have never seriously considered doing. Now we are seriously considering our furnishing needs and locating the money for those needs.
Problem number five – this leads us both to consider ditching work and driving 5 1/2 hours (one way) to the nearest IKEA (and daming IKEA Orlando for not opening until November – how dare they inconvenience us again?)
Problem number six – which of course leads us to the need to rent a van for the drive.
And at this point, I am done thinking about the Wii and the problems related to owning a Wii. If I think about it for much longer, I will pack it up and send it to my ex in laws or to the nearest retirement community where people who don’t have these types of problems can enjoy it.
Vampires, Zac Efron and Liz
Because it seems as if all I’m blogging about are books and wii, I’ll toss in a kid story along with the “book talk”. How’s that? Soon I’ll blog about something else. I swear.
You know Bookburger right? I noticed a post there about the making of Twilight into a movie. There was much discussion about whether Zac Efron would make a good “vampire Edward”. I thought it was an “ok” choice, not terrible but not great and I said so on the Bookburger blog. Well errr I didn’t notice it but that post was a contest and because of my comment I won an audio version of Eclipse. How cool is that? It’s really cool because on someone’s blog – sassymonkey’s or Kit Cat’s – I said I was going to try and get the audio version because we might enjoy it more than reading the print version (the reviews are hit or miss for this one and we loved the other two.)
So anyway, the day I realized I won this audio book I picked up Liz from school. We were talking about her homework and from there we somehow started talking about her crafting. She mentioned that she really wanted to get busy knitting because she wants to knit a Zac Efron doll for A’s birthday – and to knit some clothes for him. (Heh. This is pretty amusing. How do you knit a Zac Efron doll? I guess we will ask Lorena and crew this weekend…)
I thought it was a weird coincidence that I had just found out I won a book based on a comment about Efron and here she was talking about him. So I told her about winning the contest and we discussed whether Efron would make a good vampire Edward. She doesn’t know the character but she thinks Efron would be a weird vampire. But, her biggest concern is something else…
She wants to know why characters who are named Edward are never bad. It just makes sense to her that all characters named Edward SHOULD be bad – the alliteration of Evil Edward or Edward the Evillllllll is just so excellent, writers should work on that. Quit making Edwards and Eddies and Eds the good guys. They’re evil – they have to be. Liz has deemed it so.
Vampires, Zac Efron and Liz Read More »
Wii are having fun
The Wii finally left Louisville (where it sat for a week) and made it to our house yesterday afternoon. I cleaned the living room, set it up and we started to play. Or try to play. The learning curve is steep. Seriously. Just as we were trying to figure out how to play Sonic, Michelle called for a ride home from her “Burrito Brothers take over Dragonfly” night so I left TW home alone – with my Wii.
I came home to find she had figured out how to get to the Sonic “tutorial” and had figured out many things in the 20 minutes I was gone. I also discovered she was the recipient of our first Wii injury. Luckily, it wasn’t a serious injury. I can see her going to work with a black eye and trying to explain to the faculty that she hit herself in the eye with the Wii… heh. Actually that would be funny…
Anyway, we came home and Michelle took over the Wiimote and would not give it back! HMPH. My Wii and I wasn’t even getting to play with it. Finally she gave up and I got to play for awhile but by that time it was late and I was tired so 20 minutes was about all I could handle. Today, the darn kid is back on the Wii and has gone all of the way through the tutorial and is moving through the “chapters”.
It’s my Wii! I should get to play it the most – shouldn’t I????
Wii are having fun Read More »
I’m a lame date. And also, old
Prince J and I had a date last night. As TW says, it was our dream date. Which isn’t quite accurate but close or maybe not so close if you ask the Prince. He was a little annoyed with me and will probably choose another date in the future – one who has more stamina than I do. Particularly when it comes to Star Wars.
The evening started well. The little kids were gone, gone I sayyyyyy hahahahhaha, errrr, yea they were gone and we were happy. Michelle was invited to join our date but she graciously declined and instead stayed in her room pacing the floor for 3 1/2 hours waiting for TW to come home. Perfect atmosphere – no little kids and Michelle quietly stewing upstairs.
We had the perfect meal. Grilled cheese and salt n vinegar chips and Dr Pepper (which has become Prince J’s favorite soda – he’s channeling Chris now that Chris has moved out?). After dinner, without little kids interrupting our fascinating conversation or TW asking ridiculous questions and expecting an actual answer, we moved to the living room. I unplugged the turtle’s filter because it is LOUD and then put The Empire Strikes Back into the DVD player.
This might actually be the perfect movie for our date night. “I am your father!” “Come to the dark side!” – two often quoted phrases in this house. Prince J and I both prefer the “bad guys” over the good guys in this movie. The Princess is an idiot and Lando Calrissian, well I can’t say what I think in mixed company but it has to do with male anatomy and a large dull knife… Luke is just a wuss and I have no idea why anyone would give that boy any power much less “The Force!” So yea, Prince J and I made fun of various characters, questioned the plot line and the cinematography.
And then it was over. And a great success. But here’s the bad part, the part that makes me old and lame. Prince J was all set to watch Return of the Jedi. I got queasy and a little pale and then turned green at the idea of trying to sit through another 2 hours of Star Wars. Errr sorry dude, I am old and we can’t stay up all night. My goal is to actually WATCH these, not sleep through them as I’ve done off and on for 20 years.
Prince J hmphed, grumbled about my age and how long it was going to take us to make it through four more Star Wars movies and shuffled upstairs to his room where I’m sure he opened some secret blog and ranted about me for hours to a bunch of 13 year olds. Or maybe he didn’t since I redeemed myself a bit by offering him a Krispy Kreme to make up for it.
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