New project(s)! Hooray for homeownin'

We have decided that the kitchen countertops are due to be replaced. They're the only part of the main floor of our house that look really cheap. Think apartment countertops. Functional, but obviously installed with no thought for aesthetics or longevity. They're scratched and stained and really just ready to go. So last weekend we started painting the kids' bathroom. A logical first step in refinishing the kitchen.

See, the kitchen is a big part of the ground floor, and we want the counters to look great when complete. Steph had the great idea* that we should maybe try to learn tiling skillz on an area of the house that wasn't quite as visible, such as the kids' bathroom. In the garage was a stack of tiles that matched the ones installed in the master bathroom upstairs, so it seemed like an easy thing to throw those on the floor, learn some things, and move on to the kitchen in June when the kids are in Illinois w/ their dad for 10 days. But first, the color of the kids' bathroom needed work. The prior homeowners must have let the 4 year old girl pick the color, because it was a hideous pastel yellow. Since the floors were about to be redone, it was a great time to paint with no concern for the trim or the floor, both of which were being trashed anyway.

While picking the color, I measured the floor and realized we were 4 tiles short of having enough materials. 4 tiles short of a tile variety that has been discontinued by the manufacturer and is no longer carried by the tile place down the road where our predecessors purchased it. So we have now purchased all new tile for the bathroom and a nice coordinating paint color (kind of a light blueish-grey) which is now almost completely finished.

Tomorrow I get to go tool shopping to expand my collection quite a bit, Thursday my father-in-law is in town and will help me pull out the toilet, prep the floor, and figure out layout, and I should be tiling sometime this weekend or early next week. If all goes well we'll have new kitchen counters by July!


*not sarcasm

A lost pony, and the tragic demise of the Easter Bunny

There's a song by Afroman, "Tall Cans," which contains the following lyric:

Now I'm walkin down the street with some chicken and a forty
I'm yellin at these hoochies and I'm lookin for a party

This song is in the rotation on Steph's ipod, so it's popped up in her car a couple times when the kids are present. Anyway, yesterday Mr. K started to sing:

"Now I'm walkin down the street with some chicken and a phony
I'm yellin at these hoochies and I'm lookin for a pony"

And just like that the song is transformed. Instead of a no-good thug lookin' to get crazy, we have a poor guy wandering the streets enlisting the help of the neighborhood hoochies to help him find his lost pony. It's so heartfelt. I've named the pony Nibbles and we've decided the "Tall Cans" in the title of the song refer to the tall cans of oats you buy in the store. Nibbles just needs his dinner. Hopefully the hoochies saw which way he went.

Yesterday I had to fulfill my manly duties once again and discard a dead animal that was stinking up the garage.* Mr. K had mentioned the stench first, and Steph said when she got home that it smelled like something had died next to the wall of the garage. So I moved some stuff and sure enough, there was a teensy baby bunny lying next to the wall. It must have hopped in when the garage was open and then couldn't find it's way out. Poor guy. Being the man of the house I had to grab a shovel and remove the body. If you're keeping score at home (assuming anyone even reads this thing anymore) that's 1 dead mouse, 1 live vole, and 1 dead bunny that I've had to rid the house of in the 13 months we've lived here. Darn varmints.

*My nose officially sucks. There was a rotting maggot-ridden rabbit in the garage and I couldn't smell it.

Swiper in action!

A question pondered in a prior post, has been answered. The Bean has Dora on in the other room (the episode involves mermaids), and Dora and Boots just asked Swiper to swipe something for them from a whale. I'm not sure what it was, but I hope it wasn't the whale's personal property. Apparently Swiper's swiping skills are only appreciated when they are selfishly utilized by others.

More adventures in daddyhood

Yesterday at dinner The Bean was vexed by something (I don't remember what), but she looked right at me with a 4-year-old glint in her eye and said "Curse you Anthony!" I'm not sure where she got it, but it was a funny moment in my evening.

I'm home with The Bean today, due to explosive bathroom happenings this morning. The poor kid lost everything and ran for the bathroom again when we were headed to the car, so she ended up with a day off (as did I...though I really need to be at work at the moment. Family 1st though!) This afternoon we have a date with the dentist to get her chipped molar worked on. What fun!

Airborne Toxic Event

more funny pictures

In other news, the ninjas are so scared by the crackdown on pirates that they're reduced to robbing dry cleaners. How the mighty have fallen.

In more other news, I saw Airborne Toxic Event at the Ogden a week ago and they were really really good. Go listen if you haven't heard them.

"Manufactured in a facility that processes tree nut products."

Well we're back from Easter Weekend at the in-laws. We left Friday afternoon, getting Mr. K out of school early to beat the impending storms over Wolf Creek Pass. The first, craziest event of the weekend took place Friday evening. We'd had dinner and Grandma Kathy broke out dessert- Dreyer's Fudge Tracks ice cream. Bowls were served all around and Mr. K, being the always-conscious severe-peanut-allergy-having kid that he is, asked if it was safe for him. I went straight the allergy warning and read "This ingredient is manufactured in a facility that processes tree nut products." Now he does have a severe allergy, but he has to be a kid as well, so if Steph and I are there with an Epi-pen we don't stop him from those kinds of 2nd-hand-possibly-maybe-tainted things.

So Mr. K ate a couple bites of ice cream. He said it didn't taste right and thought he tasted peanuts, so Steph double-checked the label. She read the same thing I did, re-assured him, and he ate a few more bites. Then he stopped, set down his ice cream, and within 5 minutes was having gut-wrenching stomach pains. 45-60 min later he bolted for the bathroom and lost everything in his stomach in spectacular fashion.

Steph, thinking something seemed off by this point, quadruple checked the label and notices, in little 10-pt font on the side of the carton, a notation that the ice cream contains "Real Chunks of Peanut Butter Cups!" Um, shit? Peanut Butter Cups are also listed under the ingredients section, but the allergy warning is pretty vague. (Feel free to judge my parenting skillz here. I have many times in the last 4 days) So, since Mr. K has about the most severe peanut allergy you'll ever see, we packed up and went to the ER for a visit. By the time we got there (really by the time we left the house) it was over. According to the ER doc, Mr. K's GI tract experienced the allergic reaction in place of the rest of the body and saved him. He had some tummy troubles the next couple days, but for the most part his body knew just what to do with peanuts.

So we learned some things...
1st, 3 adults can look at a container and completely miss peanuts. That's scary.
2nd, allergy warnings can be useful, but aren't always as specific as they could be and don't substitute for reading every ingredient.
3rd, Mr. K's body will be completely and totally trusted when it tells him to stop eating something, and if he says it doesn't taste right we're all going to listen.
4th, puking can serve a life-saving purpose. If Mr. K's body can do that every time he ingests a peanut product it will probably save his life multiple times.

Billy Corgan has not "sold out"

I've been struggling with this thing for a few weeks now, since "Today" popped up in a Visa ad. It's a lot more than just a backing song for a random commercial..."Today" was the song that launched the Pumpkins to superstardom, as well as the song that Billy credits with saving his life. All the way back in 2004, there was an interview in Newsweek in which Billy discussed why he had repeatedly refused to license Today and Tonight,Tonight. Here are his words:

(Billy) The song I wrote, "Today," which ended up being a pretty big song--that song literally saved my life. I was completely suicidal, and I wrote that song in a cold bedroom on a day where it was like, "I'm either going to kill myself today, or I'm going to live because I'm sick of thinking about this." When I played it, it was an intense, extreme feeling. Last year, I was offered heavy, heavy money to license that song. I actually turned down two huge, huge, seven-figure-plus deals last year for two songs.

(Newsweek) For "Today" and for which other song?

(Billy) "Tonight, Tonight." That's a fundamentally difficult position to be in. At this point, it's just free money. Song's already been played. It's been exploited. The record company's literally begging me: go ahead and take these commercials. At this point in my life, I don't feel comfortable. Those songs are the reason I'm alive. If your music is not sacred to the point where it's a really, really, really heavy decision about whether or not you would allow somebody else to exploit it, then what's not for sale?

So now everything is for sale. Is that selling out? In a sense, absolutely. But looking at it as a progression of the Pumpkins it's a natural step in where the band has been headed. I've been a huge fan for years the last 16 years, but looking back there's a definite break between Adore and Machina, and things haven't been the same since. Gish, Siamese Dream, MCIS, and Adore were the work of a band (and a frontman) that wanted to express things that could only be expressed through music. From teen angst through the shock of realizing that you're an adult now, those will always be magical CDs.

Machina I and II were different. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the music, but the meaning just isn't there. It's a CD about grappling with the fact that you're a huge rock star. We can all relate to that, right? Then the breakup, Zwan, Billy Corgan's solo CD, SP reformation with 2/4 of the original members, and Zeitgeist, which is a CD about America. Again, good music, just not on the same emotional level as the first albums.

So for the last 9 years the music hasn't been emotional. Musically it's still great, but it hasn't been the kind of music that teenagers will listen to late at night and thank the stars that somebody out there understands what it is to be lost and confused in the big, big world.

With the licensing of Today, Billy has told us all that he realizes that his music doesn't mean what it used to anymore. It's a sad position to be in, but it's somewhat honest as well. Add to that the departure of Jimmy Chamberlin from the Pumpkins, coupled with the announcement that Billy will be going into the studio, alone, to record as The Smashing Pumpkins, as we have a clear picture of Billy's view of the world:
He is the Pumpkins, and music will continue to be made. The music will continue to rawk and be spectacularly constructed, but if you're looking for music that will save your soul the new CD probably won't be it.

Stewart vs. Cramer

I finally saw The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from 3/12/09. If you doubt the brilliance of Jon Stewart, go watch. I don't watch The Daily Show as much as I'd like to these days, but it remains brilliant. I wonder how it will be viewed 50 years from now. It's one of those cultural touchstones that pops up every so often and you know it's going to be on "I Love the 2000's" on VH1 in a few years, and enshrined in the Smithsonian for posterity.


In other news, life continues in wonderful fashion, hence the dearth of posts. Of course this year I only have 1 blog to update, so my post count here is fairly consistent :-P It also strikes me that as I grow up there are lots of things I can't say on a blog. With the nature of my work, frustrations with sponsors and such are largely confidential. Steph's job lately has been...interesting to say the least. And frustrations with the father of my children will rarely be posted here, because I don't want this to be off limits to the kids in the future.

So things I can talk about...I've been doing well ramping up my running lately and getting some consistency. Currently I can go about 3.5 miles at the dog park without stopping. Pacing is good, as is music to run by (for some reason "Everlong" is great at sunset looking up at the foothills). There's a 5k Saturday being organized as a benefit for a parent of a kid at Kade's school who has cancer, and Steph & I want to go run it. I think I'll do well.

Jennifer and Paul are coming out in a week and a half to see me, which is exciting. The last time I saw them was a few weeks after Sarah and I broke up. I drove to OK for the weekend and spent the whole time venting about how much my life had quietly sucked for a long time. They admitted to me on that trip how little they had liked Sarah, but had put up with her to hang out with me. It'll be a nice change to have them come out and see how great my world is now and meet my new family. They'll love Steph :-) Also I want to go running with Paul. I know he can go a lot farther than me, but then we'll be on my home turf about 5,000 miles higher than he's used to, so I'd bet I can keep up. He was always a runner and I was jealous of that ability. I think I can not embarrass myself now, under these conditions at least.

Lookie there, we're in the paper!

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_11915651

This was the front page article on the Denver & the West section of today's (Sunday) paper. Our picture was the big above-the-fold image. We're famous!

A little too quiet...

That doesn't refer to my blog, but rather to the release of the new ipod shuffle. I live on MSNBC for my news updates, and I completely missed this happening today. 4 GB with no buttons? It's like the flea, but REAL. I actually paused for a sec to think about how close April Fool's Day is. But no, apparently this is real and I kind of want one. (But only kind of...1st I'd like a real ipod. My Mini has served me well, but at almost 3 years old it doesn't function when not connected to a power source, and it's only 6 GB.)

I used to mock the original shuffle. My sister had one and I thought it was dumb. I've stolen Steph's now though. I've taken up running and it's perfect for that. 1 GB will hold plenty of music for a good assortment when running or skiing. It works well for the purpose it was made for. Weird how that works.