Our little bee went to the mall to trick-or-treat tonight. We decided that Amanda’s best bang-for-the-proverbial-buck would be there rather than on our most likely nearly deserted streets and we were right - it was packed! Can you blame everyone? Nearly all the stores participated, making it a very easy score for a lot of candy, not to mention a great way to make sure your kids are doing something safe.

We did, however, have to drag Amanda away from the Hobby Bench store window where she became transfixed by the train that runs around and around there:

What is it about kids and trains?

Anyway, the odd trend was that the kid’s stores gave out the worst “treats.” After we got home, I divided her stash up into three distinct levels of quality. Check it out:

“Pure shit” level:

Oh, come on - could you try any less? A magnet from kid’s store Pumpkin Patch and a friggin’ coupon book from Dairy Queen. Kids love coupons! This level could also be known as “it’s Halloween? Oh, dig up some crap from the back and hand it out.”

“Not really trying” level:

This is very close to the lowest level, but slightly better only because they might at least interest kids. A couple of Disney cards (from the trading-card store,) a couple of stickers, and two balloons (of FIVE - the other three have already been blown up.) This level could also be known as “the kids aren’t going to shop here anyway so why bother . . . but maybe the parents will remember us, so we’ll put in a little effort.”

“Actual Halloween” level:

Now that’s what I’m talking about - candy! This is what everyone, not just kids, wants. Bow Wow Wow said it - “I Want Candy!” - and the majority of the mall listened. There is no other name for this level - this is the heart of Halloween: sugar, and lots of it.

I can’t acquit myself for how blurry this picture came out (kids and cameras seem to be magnetically attracted - point one at the other and they instantly end up on a collision course,) but Amanda is so cute that I’m going to include it anyway:

Well, it’s a good way into the day and so far I’ve only seen a couple representations of the Halloween staples for women: cats and pajamas. And, to be completely honest, I haven’t technically seen cats but the alternate animal, bunnies. Same thing, different ears and tail.

By 9 am I had eaten more candy than I think I have in an entire year, and I think I’m good until about Oct. 31, 2008, by the way I feel at the moment.

Idiot defined: whoever it is that invented the keyboard and didn’t immediately think to cover it in a sheath of plastic/rubber/silicone/whatever. I mean, come on, these things are just built to store dust and other disgusting things. Do you know what I did today? I lost a piece of turkey in my keyboard. A piece of turkey. Right between the Windows key and “arrow pointing at something that should elicit fond memories of menus” key. I tried using the tip of a pen to gently nudge it back out. What did I do? I split it in two and shoved it further down. It wound up completely under the keys. I had to pry the Windows key out just to get it out - there’s no way I was leaving turkey, even this little sliver, in my keyboard. And let me tell you, it was scary under there. That turkey would not have been alone. There’s a whole ecology that has sprung to life under my keys.

Amanda has become addicted to yet another one of Disney’s creations: Little Einsteins. I guess it’s not horrible - it could be some completely saccharine, meaningless tripe, but I really question the value of teaching children about art when the art in question is usually barely even mentioned - it’s usually used as a backdrop for their exploits. The music is a little better - being “classical” music, it’s at least something intelligent, not the typically inane crap that fills a lot of kids’ shows, although I do have a problem with them having to overlay stupid lyrics on top of the pieces, but whatever - it makes it more memorable to the kids. At least the Einstein people have stopped trying to claim their products (and this music) make your kids smarter.

I’ve also found it annoying that in one episode, during which three flying pigs get stuck flying, get this, adagio, moderato, and allegro. Okay - keep in mind that they’re introducing young children, ages 2-5 or so, to concepts like that, but something as commonplace as the thing that measures your speed is a little too complex, you know, the “speedy-meter,” as they call it, might go over their heads because when are those youngin’s ever going to hear the term “speedometer”? Man.

My favorite thing involving this show lately, however, has been this Halloween episode they’ve been playing. They’ve got a racially diverse cast, see, and that’s nice. There’s a little blonde girl, an asian girl, a caucasian boy, and an African-American boy. It’s balanced, and they seem to make an effort to have the kids be specialized in areas that are not cliched - June, the Asian girl, is a good dancer, and Quincy, the African-American boy, is good at music. Cool. Except in this episode, they make one colossal mistake - little African American Quincy (we could take issue with his name, possibly, if we really want to get nitpicky about stereotypes) shows off his Halloween costume . . . and it’s a bat. You might not be aware, but the term “bat” is an old, very racist term. I’m really very surprised Disney would let this slide through - surely someone would have caught this.

I would love to include a video from Hollywood Shuffle, Robert Townsend’s hilarious take on the plight of black actors in Hollywood and, indeed, his people in general, but you know YouTube - hit and miss. What I wanted to include was a short sitcom parody involving an African-American male who lives with a family but is always dressed as a bat - it’s parodying several things at once, you see (bad TV shows in general, the terrible roles black actors often find themselves stuck with, and the crude racist term itself.) I couldn’t find that, but found something that is equally funny - and maybe you’ll want to buy the DVD after watching it:

My company has “gone green” this week. Prior to this, we’d been using styrofoam cups, flagrantly thumbing our noses at the environment as we sipped our coffee, soda, and water, then tossing the soiled remains into the trash. Now, however, we love our planet earth. Starting earlier this week, our break rooms have been stocked with a bevy of beverage containers of an environmentally-friendly nature, complete with an array of overzealous instructions on which to use where. That’s right - it’s not just one set of cups we’ve gotten. No, coffee and tea drinkers have gotten special cups for their brew, for which they now have to add a little sleeve to protect against the heat - a cup condom, if you will - while those partaking in cold drinks get clear plastic cups (no condom required.)

Using more eco-friendly materials is a really wonderful, earth-conscious effort. Who can’t get behind that? I do have to admit that I miss my styrofoam cups - they kept drinks from sweating all over the desk and kept drinks both hot and cold, whichever they were supposed to be, and without need for a condom. I know it’ll make a huge difference when I toss every cup into the recycling can trash can . . . oh, that’s right, we forgot one vital step in that “going green” equation: the recycling part.

1. I think mine is firm.
2. Maybe I like it extra firm.
3. I thought you like them big and soft?

From the category: “Things that sound unavoidably dirty in the pillow aisle at Target.”

Why do little kids like giraffes so much? And what kind of sound do they make?

I’ve mentioned our roundabouts before. I’ve also mentioned that I hate them. They are filters for stupidity and rude driving - not filtering out, but funneling it down to its purest, most concentrated form. No one knows how to drive in them, no one pays attention to the signs that inform them how to do so. The result is a mass of confusion around rush hour. Today was no different, and no day ever is.

To try and make some sense of this, let me tell you how they operate. The roundabouts themselves have two lanes in them - an inner and an outer lane. The inner lane is the one that goes fully around the roundabout, so, say you decide you want to turn around, you stay in the inner lane, make a nearly complete circle, and you’re heading the opposite direction. The outer lane takes you to the exit points. Simple enough. Now, when the roundabout heads back into the straight roadway, only the inner lane can keep going in the roundabout - seems logical, right? You would be surprised, then, if you were to see how many people could not grasp this concept: inner, around; outer: exits. I see it every day.

And when approaching the main roadway, which, in the picture above, goes left to right, both lanes feed into this. This is important. That logic thing I mentioned above plays into this - you know, how the outer lane exits and all. The inner lane can go straight on through, too. The brilliant designers of these roundabouts, however, cleverly added in some lane stripes making it okay for the outer lane to continue around even while the inner lane goes straight. You can imagine the confusion this causes. I see it every day.

Now, when approaching the portion of the roadway to the immediate left of the roundabout, the roadway goes from the two lanes that feed it from the roundabout down to one lane in a few hundred feet. Most people are surprisingly good about this, using the logic of a zipper, which is how merging lanes are supposed to work - one car goes, then one car merges, another car goes, another merges, and on and on. It’s slow, because there are hundreds and hundreds of cars passing through this area in a very short amount of time, but it does actually work. Inefficient, but passable, I guess.

When it doesn’t work is what happened today, when I began my merge from the former outer lane, and some old-ass bastard decided it wasn’t fair that I got to “cut” in front of him - because, you know, if I was behind him rather than in front, he’d get to whatever buffet he was going to 8/100 of a second faster and be able to score a better biscuit.

As the lanes merge, there’s railing at right and oncoming traffic at left, and very little room to do anything else. In other words, there is no option but to merge. This guy, however, felt otherwise, and rode up on the bumper of the car in front of me, not more than one foot from it, in fact, honking his horn at me all the while. What, exactly, am I to do here? If I slam on my brakes, I am that guy stuck on the side of the road that no one lets in. We’ve all seen ‘em, those guys that hesitate while merging onto a busy highway and wind up crawling along the shoulder hoping that, somehow, someone will slow down so they can hop in to the flow of traffic.

Eventually, he gave in and let me merge, as he should have in the first place, probably realizing that the time he loses behind me might cost him the best biscuit, but it lets the butter thaw out that much more. Just the same, I could not resist one immature, irresponsible response to his probably medication-fueled stupidity. I rolled my window down, extended my arm, and popped up my middle finger. Message sent, message assumed received. And now back to being a mature adult.

One of the more fun things this weekend was finding out that Amanda enjoys the music of James, one of my favorite bands. Listening to their “final” album a couple times this weekend, Pleased to Meet You (which is happily not final anymore since they’re back together) and its little brother, Millionaires, Amanda danced along in her car seat to several of the albums’ upbeat tracks. I’m always amazed at this because she seems to pick songs that, while catchy, may not always be what one would assume someone her age would like. Stranger still is how upset she gets about the Fray’s “How to Save a Life” - something she picked up from Alissa who is a fan of the band. When driving in her car, Amanda exclaims “piano drums!” and she means this song (because it is piano and drum-driven,) and once the song title has been mentioned, she says “I sabe a life!” And you really want to play that song for her - failure to do so results in a meltdown.

A quick plug for MediaMonkey is necessary here. I downloaded this the other day to help getting mp3s tagged with their cover art. Itunes will not do this correctly - something I am very upset about after some 35,000 songs - as it instead sticks the damned art in a folder that the files reference. The mp3 format allows for artwork to be embedded inside the file and dammit I want it done this way! MediaMonkey does this, but aside from that, it’s just a very cool Itunes alternative. So if you hate Itunes, and I know some do (I basically don’t, aside from this one minor problem,) and even if you don’t, this is a very cool program to check out.

An exhausting weekend, or nearly so, anyway. Up early yesterday, off to have my oil changed and my tires rotated in my Honda Ridgeline, which, at just under 47,000 miles, nears it’s two year birthday. Scary.

In the meantime, around the area doing a bunch of chores - we got Alissa’s car washed, which was Alissa’s first time seeing Amanda at a carwash, and that really is something to see because she gets very excited watching from the windows in the waiting room as the water and foam spray over the vehicles that make their way through the wash. “There’s a soap all over the car!”

Then to a new branch of our credit union to deposit a check. They were having a grand opening celebration this weekend. I’ve never quite understood the point of these things. To normal people, there’s little excitement in most businesses opening. To most businesses, there’s little excitement for the people who work there in opening a new location. So who exactly is the target of all the excitement and, in this case, bottled water (apparently the only item with which one could celebrate this momentous event)?

Alissa dropped her glasses off at Eyemasters/Lenscrafter/Eye-crafting Lensmasters for replacement lenses, which basically cost about the same amount as new glasses, which are perpetually on sale at these places. Sounds insane, but, really, when you’ve got some frame style that works, why mess with it? The stress and annoyance of finding new frames is hardly worth it for the few hours a day she actually wears them. Unlike me, she wears contacts - I’m still back in the dark ages of eye care, apparently. Hey, I prefer to think that some people just look right in glasses - which is why I bought a much-needed replacement pair this morning at Costco, going for a frameless set that had very thin wires for the arms. I may think I look okay in glasses, but that doesn’t mean I want it to look obvious that I’m wearing them.

Yesterday afternoon we were off to meet Alissa’s family for her sister’s birthday at Olive Garden. Since the Italian restaurant that we used to go to closed, we’ve had to settle for OG, and believe me, it’s settling. I must say, however, that before it closed, it had seriously taken a nosedive from the great family Italian it had been known for (it had been a “best of Phoenix” winner several times.) That was a very sad development, or devolvement, if there is such a term (Firefox’s spellcheck tells me “no, there isn’t.” There is now!)

Today has been weird. An extremely windy day - so windy that it woke us all up early, sometime around 4:30, and then Amanda got upset because her pacifier fell out, which Alissa got up to take care of. I tried, but never really fell back asleep. I’ve been off since then. As mentioned above, I got out this morning to hit Costco for glasses, plus took back some of the worst recordable CDs and DVDs that I’ve ever bought - Kodak “brand.” Come to find out, after a half-dozen bad burns, that Kodak doesn’t make CDRs and DVDRs anymore - they sold off that division years ago, so any discs using that name are suspect, at best. So back to Staples they went where I picked up a couple of spindles of Memorex that are working just fine.

Came back, went to work on some more of the train-track project for Amanda, and found that I’d made a stupendously dumb error last week when putting it together. Plywood sheet, four pieces of 1″ x .5″ wood for a frame, right? Sounds simple - just put one corner together, measure where the 2′ x 3′ plywood came to on the frame, and cut. Basically, I failed to compensate for the width of the other side of the frame when making my cuts and therefore only built it so that the wood fit width-wise but not length-wise (you have no idea how I’m having to resist typing “that’s what she said.”) Pissed, I was - such a dumb mistake. I’m no wood-working expert, but I’m certainly better than this! Back to Lowe’s for one stupid piece of wood, but while I was there I grabbed a quart of paint I would need next weekend. This simple project is taking far longer than it should have. This is par for the course for me - I either hastily throw things together, then regret it because I know it could have been better, or take my time to make sure I do a good job and make things painfully slow. Luckily, Amanda is too young to realize what’s going on, so there is little pressure. I’m putting enough of that on myself.

You have to admit this is pretty funny. As I mentioned the other day, with regard to the real-deal Hall’s cough drops vs. Walgreens-brand “COUGHDROPS,” we now have photographic evidence - well, scan-ographic, I guess, since I just threw these on my scanner. Someone in their design department had to have thought it was humorous to mimic the Hall’s wrapper like that.