This was not easy for me:
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You Passed 8th Grade Math |
 Congratulations, you got 8/10 correct! |
Will, the next Pele?
Well, the Hawkeyes (and, in my opinion, the referees) pissed away a game against the most evil Michigan Wolverines, but at least Will’s soccer team won. Not that they keep statistics on 8 year-olds playing soccer, but that puts his team at 2-2, with one more game for the year.
Soccer has turned out to be a fun sport for Will to play and it is a lot more fun than basketball for Annette and I to watch. For one thing, Will is better at soccer than he is at basketball– actually, all the kids are better at soccer than they were at basketball. For another, I think the fellow parents and such are a lot more fun than was the case in basketball, quite a bit more pleasant, too.
A couple more pictures of the action:
Here’s Will taking an out of bounds kick.
And here’s Will coming off of defense– he’s kind of in the background there. Note that it is impossible to escape the presence of the U of Michigan football colors, even at a kiddie soccer game.
Beer Pong: Next Olympic sport?
I bought The New York Times this last Sunday, and believe it or not, right there on the front page (a story beneath the fold, but on the front page nonetheless) about a drinking game craze called “beer pong.”
Basically, you play in teams on either end of a long table. Each team has a group of beer glasses on their side of the table in a triangle formation kind of like bowling pins. The object of the game is one team tries to bounce a ping-pong ball into one of the cups of the on the other end of the table. If the ball ends up in the cup, a member of that team drinks and the cup is taken off the table. The team that has cups left on the table wins.
Now, I was never that much of a fan of drinking games to begin with, but as far as I can tell, this seems like a new version of quarters, and an improved version at that. Anyway, drinking games themselves seem to me to be pretty eternal. But the thing I found kind of amusing is there is apparently a minor industry involved in the “sport” of beer pong.
Witness, for example, the “Bing Bong” web site, which is for a company selling (swear to God) “lightweight tournament grade beverage drinking game tables.” There’s some video on the web site showing the tables at work, but I couldn’t get it to load on my Mac.
Now, I don’t want to be a grumpy old man here, but couldn’t the kids today play their drinking game on, I dunno, a table?!
Wow, these people really like staplers…
Check out VirtualStapler.com This site is a riot. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do right now, but if I had a little more freetime on this Friday afternoon, I’d probably crack open a beer, read all the stapler poetry, and then maybe try my hand at writing one of those haiku-styled stapler poems.
The “happy go lucky” version of “The Shining”
Via Johndan’s blog datacloud, I came across this preview for “Shining.” (It’s a .mov file, btw). Familiarity with the original movie helpful to get the comedy here….
Tiny Houses
See the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company for all of your tiny house needs.
Actually, I was channel-surfing this past weekend and I stumbled across a show on the Home and Garden network about “small spaces” that was featuring one of these houses and a couple who lived in one of them. I think the house they featured was the one described as “XS House.” Check out the descriptions of these houses to get an idea what I mean. “XS House” is 75 square feet, and it featured (at least on the HGTV show) a sleeping loft for two (which, with the low headroom, looked a hell of a lot like a coffin to me), a hot plate for a “kitchen,” and a “composting toilet” that was really a small metal garbage can with a lid you can open with a foot pedal– the kind of thing you might see in a doctor’s office. I’m sorry, but that’s a deal-breaker for me. I’m not going to squat and shit into a tiny garbage can in my tiny house.
Still, I could see some of the other designs as a cabin in the woods kind of vacation home or as a studio/office space in the backyard. As long there was a real toliet installed or at least nearby in the “big house.”
Getting at the anti-Harry Potter crowd
This one really goes out for my wife:
91 Ways to Agitate Someone Who Doesn’t Like Harry Potter from a site called MuggleNet. Some of my favorites include:
- Give them Harry Potter merchandise for their birthday and Christmas and demand that they keep it and treasure it forever.
- Make them play Quidditch with you.
- Use the titles You-Know-Who and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to refer to random people.
- If anyone tells you you’ll go to hell for reading Harry Potter, either: a) Jump and down and tell them that you can’t wait. b) Tell them you’ll meet them there. c) Sing “Weasley Is Our King” over and over again. Or d) Ask them to back up this claim with evidence, and laugh at them when they can’t.
Birthday Boy
Will turned 8 today, and a fun filled birthday it has been. Actually, his birthday celebration started just over a week ago with the trip to Cedar Point, and it will (more or less) conclude tomorrow with a Daddy/Will golf outting where he will try out his new golf clubs, one of his gifties.
Will started the day with a telephone conversation with Grandpa Dan and Grandma Jan. Then we took in cupcakes for his classmates at school, a big hit of course. After school, Will and I (okay, mostly me) baked the birthday cake you see before him (okay, from a mix). Then Grandpa Bill and Grandma Irmgard called and sang a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” And then we all went out to dinner at Will’s pick, California Pizza Kitchen, always a hit.
As I sit here and type this now, I think back to the night Will was born 8 years ago. I don’t have enough time to write up all of the details of it (and I’m not sure it would be all that interesting here anyway), but it’s funny because I remember it all quite vividly, even though– fast-forward to today– Will’s third grade teacher told me this morning, while I was holding a flimsy box of cupcakes, that we have raised a good little boy.
Will’s Birthday Trip to Cedar Point
Will turns 8 on September 1, and both Annette and I (okay, mostly me) completely endorse the idea of at least a of week or two on either side of the actual birthday date as the “birthday month.” As part of that celebration, we took Will and a friend of his to the Cedar Point theme park (instead of a birthday party, and now instead of next week, because school starts for him.)
I am not much of a fan of such places for a variety of different reasons, not the least of which is that this particular theme park is known for its many roller coasters. Everywhere at the park, I was constantly reminded that Cedar Point is known as “The roller coast,” because it’s right there on Lake Erie. Get it? And it’s a pretty accurate slogan. For example, they have one called “drag racer” something. It hits a 120 MPH in about 100 yards, goes straight up about 20 stories high, and then comes straight down again. They have about about a half-dozen or more coasters that go close to that fast and/or that require you to stand up and/or that twist and turn and turn you over a half-dozen times. And then they also have a fair number of rides which just drop you from some bizarre height. Ick.
I have never enjoyed such rides. For years, people have tried to convince me that I should enjoy such things, but I never have. To me, riding a roller coaster at a theme park is like compressing and magnifying all the worst things about flying, and then, just to add to the insult, you have to pay a lot of money and wait in line a long time. “How do you know you wouldn’t like it if you don’t try?” people used to ask me. So I tried riding roller coasters and it turns out I was right. Then I would go to other theme parks with other roller coasters and people would try to talk me into riding again. “Oh, ride this roller coaster,” people would say, “this one is different.” I tried it, and it was not. So now I simply refuse. I think you reach a certain age– I’ve decided that that age for me was 35– at which point you no longer have to try things if you don’t want to. Therefore, no more roller coasters– or at least big ones– for me.
Fortunately, Will and his friend are both too young to go on the crazy coasters and Will, taking after his father I suppose, was paricularly keen on not going on anything too scary. This made for some tensions with his slightly more adventurous friend, but all was well because we convinced Will to take at least a chance on a few of the less than baby rides.
Highlights for me? Well, I liked the bumper cars and the ferris wheel okay, but most of my fun was watching Will and his friend. Will and friend rode just about everything in their age group at the place: kiddie bumper cars, those cars you drive around yourself on a track, various swing things that go around, etc. I rode with Will and his friend on the “Gemini Junior,” which is a kiddie roller coaster about my speed.
We all went on a log flume ride that was pretty fun, but then I decided to “opt out” of the “Thunder Canyon” water rapids ride. This is one of those things where you sit in a boat that goes through a “rapids” that is pretty tame but that tends to get you kind of wet. At Cedar Point, their version gets you REALLY wet, which we figured out as we saw patrons exiting the ride looking like they had taken a shower fully dressed. I decided I didn’t want to be soaking wet, so I took the bags and headed toward the observation area. I managed to get this picture:
You’ll notice that Annette doesn’t really see what’s coming, but Will and friend do. Right after this, the boats pass under waterfalls that soak riders to the bone. So, at the end of the ride, I was able to get this picture:
I’m not sure you can tell with this shot, but they were all dang wet, and all of them pretty much stayed wet until we got home and they got changed about 5 hours later. I have never been happier to miss out on an experience.
Anyway, a good time for one and all, and probably easier and more fun than having an actual birthday party. If you want to see all of the decent digital pictures from the day, check out my Cedar Point set on Flickr.