I don’t know what’s going on. The upgrade went well yesterday, or so it seemed, but now I’ve noticed some really weird things - like my whole blogroll over there (->) is a mess. And I don’t mean out of the order I normally have it in, which it is. I mean, there are links to pages that don’t even exist anymore! I’ve just updated a few that I had some time to handle right now, but I’ll need to go through those with the proverbial fine-tooth comb at some point. How that happened, I can’t imagine. Adding a new theme should not dredge up long-changed/deleted links.

Not only that, but twice now I’ve had to re-upload images and/or the theme’s stylesheet, both of which I made changes to in order to reflect the look you currently see. I’m more than a little concerned with this. What exactly is going on in the backend of this site to allow things that have been added to get written over with old content?

I know, I know, not exactly riveting reading, sorry. I’ll move on . . .

Sunday’s big adventure was a trip to Ikea, a giant blue building filled with funny furniture, which had Amanda practically shaking with excitement, I kid not. This was an event on the level of our trip to San Diego, somehow. So momentous was this that she couldn’t even fall asleep during her allotted afternoon nap. The entire ride down there . . . a very long ride since we live on the complete opposite side of the county from the place . . . was filled with “Mommy!” and some tidbit of information that she had just discovered or felt needed to be reiterated. This was exactly how the 5 hours of the drive to San Diego went, too.

Oh, and the reason for this trip? Looking for A) new storage for the flood of toys that Amanda has gotten, and B) a DVD rack of some kind for, obviously, our DVDs, which, at the moment, are stored, pathetically, on a large plastic storage shelf that belongs in a garage. They need a real, fitting home, not something that should be holding yard equipment and bug spray. The real problem here is that we have WAY more DVDs than either of us thought. I should say I because most of these are music-DVDs, not movies or TVs - but that contingent has been growing, too. But it feels better to spread the blame. Anyway, I guestimated that we have somewhere around 150, maybe more, which blows my mind considering we never really watch these things.

While checking out our DVD situation, I got realistic with a handful and threw them up on Amazon and Half.com. I came home and found that I’d sold 4 of 6 that I had to offer. Not bad - I didn’t lose much money on these, either. The way I look at is like this: there’s an opportunity cost, like going to see a movie in a theater. Figure even at its cheapest a movie is going to cost around $10 in its regular run, and that’s being extremely generous. So one viewing of a DVD is equivalent of seeing a movie one time in a theater, right? And if you watch it again, well, you can do the math - the value gets better and better. So selling something on Amazon for 2/3 what I bought it for is technically making money back, in a way, and, in the case of two of these, I sold them for 9/10 what I paid for them originally! I can’t complain.

But back to Ikea. Probably the best part of Ikea is their product names. I really get a kick out of being able to call something a “Flärke” in public without it sounding like I’m swearing at somebody. The second best part is their shopping cart, which has four turnable wheels. Should I call it a “Kärt”? I think I probably should. Anyway, since all four wheels turn, it makes for some interesting experiences trying to get it to go around corners. You point it the way you want it to go, but the wheels just keep going the way they had originally been going. So even an empty Kärt will require the same exertion to turn as a heavily burdened one. But we made the most of it, taking advantage of the unique four-wheel steering capabilities - making sure the parking lot aisle was clear, I would give the handle a good push to one side and let go, allowing Amanda to have an impromptu teacup-like spin in the Kärt.

This, of course, prompted many “Spin, daddy, spin!” calls from her, and I provided a few more safe spins on the way out of the store . . . empty-handed, empty-Kärted. We found nothing that suited our needs in particular. Not that Ikea doesn’t have tons of cool, clever, space-saving ideas. That’s the problem. They have too many. I’m not a good planner. I am not organized. I am not a decorator, either. And this store is designed for those types of people. People who can walk in and grab four Glüphas and two Kläknas and know that together they’ll make a great wall-mounted storage system that is both stylish and simple. I walk in there and I’m simply overwhelmed. Too many options. They’re everywhere. Boxes and shelves and bins and drawers and things to clips things together and then there’s all the funny names that sound like bodily functions, not to mention that they keep pushing the Swedish meatballs they sell in their little restaurant at every turn - the ones that I can’t help but hear in my head as “Svay-dush maytballs.” For someone like me, Ikea starts out promising, becomes overwhelming, and ultimately winds up simply unintentionally comic. Which, to be honest, is really not a bad way for things to turn out.

And then we went for pizza at the best pizza place pretty much ever, the one we only get to about every two years now that we live where we live and now that we have Amanda to consider - Vito’s Pizza. It was basically a decision that boiled down to this: “We’re already this far, why not go a bit farther?” And so we did - instead of south, we headed east, and got this simply awesome pizza.

Once in a while it’s worth it to make a 120 mile round-trip drive to walk around a big blue building and spend absolutely nothing and then go eat pizza. I’m not sure why, but it just is.

Look! A brand new design for the site after more than two years with the old one. I grabbed a theme from N Design that I’ve been admiring over at Marc’s site, made some modifications to the visuals, created my own logo, and set it free just a bit ago. There may be other slight changes as I get settled with it, who knows?

This is all in preparation for a big challenge - you remember NaBloPoMo, right? You know, post every day in November? I guess I handled that with ease because I am finding it impossible to resist Blog365 - the name kind of says it all. A post every single day of the year beginning January 1. Am I up for it? I don’t know, but we’re going to find out. With that comes the realization, however, that I’m spreading myself too thin by running two sites. Many can do it, but not me - I’m not focused enough to do this if I’m to dedicate myself to something this ambitious. So as of January 1, or maybe even now, LookoutForHope is going on hiatus. What was posted there - talk about music, TV, movies, books, etc. - will be coming back here again. I’m going to need all the help I can get to keep up the pace, and trying to keep two sites busy is just too much for little ol’ me. If you hated my music posts, well, you’ll just have to deal. I’ll try and keep it interesting for everybody. Seriously.

As for here, well, everything will be pretty much as it has been - completely unfocused and otherwise a mess, which is pretty much a reflection of how I feel on a daily basis. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you. And me, I guess. I’m still out on that one.

While not entirely staying away from the computer, I have resisted the temptation to sit here and write obsessively long posts like I normally would given the freedom of all this time off. It’s harder than you think.

Christmas was, in a word, a blast. This was easily the most fun Christmas ever. Watching Amanda tear through her gifts was quite an experience - hilarious, actually. She really “got” Christmas this year. She would rip the wrapping paper to shreds to get at what’s inside, give it a look, then move on with “What’s next?” And she got to say that a lot because she got a lot of stuff.

There was, however, a sad moment that morning when she opened her stocking and found a tube of M&Ms that I got for her that had a small train toy on top. She thought this was the train that she had asked Santa for . . . and she was perfectly satisfied with that. It was humbling how simple our children’s desires are and how extravagant our visions of what we imagine those desires are.

Regardless, after all the gifts were opened, I disappeared and came back dressed in the same Santa suit that my dad had dressed in for years when I was a kid (and, truthfully, well into my adulthood, much to my chagrin.) The ecstatic, gleeful greeting I expected Santa, bringer of gifts, would receive from Amanda, the one who pointed him out everywhere with an exclamation for the past month, did not come. She instead stood with terror in her eyes, then threw herself on the floor and buried her face in her hands. When Alissa coaxed her to stand again, she quickly turned around and faced the opposite direction so she couldn’t see Santa.

A while back Alissa and I had decided that it was the time to make a clean break with Amanda’s beloved pacifier. And the doctor had said so, too - two years old is the time that pacifiers need to stop being used. How to do that when your child depends on them to sleep? For months we couldn’t think of an easy way to transition over to non-pacifier sleep . . . until Christmas. Santa and the promise of a special toy presented a perfect opportunity - Amanda could give Santa her pacifier and he would give her a special toy. And so every couple of nights we reminded Amanda of this, asking her what was going to happen at Christmastime, and she would reply with something along the lines of “I give Santa pacifier” and, when prodded, she would say that Santa was going to give her a train. And she was excited to see Santa.

When Santa arrived Christmas morning, Alissa had to beg Amanda to approach me (as him.) She had apparently not realized Santa would be here in our house with her. When she finally did approach, it was a run, and she sprinted to me, pacifier out, and threw it at Santa, and returned to her mommy 20 feet away just as quickly. Santa then went away and her daddy returned, who was “surprised” to hear that Santa had visited.

And with that, things returned to normal. Convinced that Santa was gone, she came out into the front room, where all her toys are now, and found a giant package.

Tearing it open, she uncovered the big train set that we had bought ages ago and that I spent the last few nights putting together. And, thankfully, she loves it - she’s spent the majority of her time around it playing with trains and cars and planes. Her other toys get plenty of attention, but this one truly is the center right now, as it should be.

Asked later what she thought of Santa, she said, “Santa is scary.” We’ll have to wait and see what she thinks about Santa visiting next year. When asked right now if she wants Santa to come back, her response is a resounding “No.”

And, believe it or not, she gave up the pacifier easily. We weren’t sure if she got that giving the thing to Santa was a permanent move or not - and really we believe she did not get that - but that evening, exhausted from a long day of playing and opening with no nap other than a short one on the way home that night, she simply asked about it a couple times, and we both told her that Santa had it and she had her new train set in exchange. She got it, laid down, and tried to go to sleep, babbling to herself quietly about the book she took to bed.

When she called out a bit later, I went in and she said with a tearful voice, “Daddy, I really need my pacifier,” I had to level with her - Santa took it to a Lithuanian orphan named Frankie, a little baby who needed it, and she was a little girl now. I can’t call her a big girl - I did this the other day and she got upset: “I’m a little girl!” There are many distinctions in age when you’re a child that we forget about as adults, apparently.

Silence soon issued from her room, sleep coming for the first time without her pacifier for the majority of her life - what seemed like a Christmas miracle to us. And, with that, Christmas was over.

While eating lunch at Whataburger after a short day at work, I witnessed a little parade of five or six golf carts through the window across the restaurant. It was, in a word I don’t typically use, “cute.” The moment I saw them in their little procession, all five in a neat little train, spaced a cart-length or so apart and occupied by one person each, my brain cued up that marching band parade song I’m sure we all have hard-wired into our brain from countless appearances in TV shows. I’m sure someone in the restaurant wondered what I was smiling at. Little did they know I was suppressing a laugh.

Again I was reading David Sedaris at the shot lab today. I haven’t had much of a chance to read the past couple weeks, for whatever reason, so this was the first time since my last time a couple weeks ago - I had to skip out last week because of bad timing, unfortunately. This time turned out to be good timing, at least in terms of reading, as I got to Sedaris’ story “6 to 8 Black Men” (read or listen,) his piece about how Christmas Critmuh, and especially Santa, is experienced in the Netherlands. It’s hilarious, and reading it in public is not a good idea for even the most stoic of readers - of which I typically am. I had a hard time stifling my laughter at many points. Maybe it was my good mood today or something, I don’t know, but his take on their, frankly, bizarre version of good ol’ St. Nick is pretty hard not to laugh at.

Interesting side story regarding Sedaris. I had his Live at Carnegie Hall CD a few years ago. I lent it to a coworker who shared a similarly fond interest in him and promptly forgot about it. Months went by and it continued to be forgotten, and then he decided it was time to move on, quit, and moved out of state to live nearer his boyfriend. At some point after this, the CD was remembered/rediscovered, and he promised he would make it up to me. Come the next visit, he brings not the CD but a replica monkey skull as, I suppose, repayment for the disc. I lend out a CD and get a replica monkey skull in return. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cool monkey skull. I’m just saying, it’s an odd exchange rate.

Never doubt the ability for idiots to collide in even the lightest of work-day traffic, and to do so in the most spectacular manner. It should have been a quick drive to work, relatively speaking - many people have today off, either going out of town or just taking the day off for an extra long weekend. And, for the first 25 miles or so of my drive, that was plainly obvious. I drove at nearly the actual speed limit the entire time, an extreme rarity, but oh, those last 5 or so miles were painful. Basically, it took me as long to go that first 25 miles as it did that final 5 because a few someones weren’t paying any damned attention and drove into each other.

What has happened to cat litter? We’ve been using Tidy Cats pretty much since we got Bentley and Oscar - 8 years ago - and suddenly they changed it from little rocks to these round balls. Big deal, right? Well, they changed something else too because it no longer clumps at all, and has resulted in some of the biggest messes when I’ve cleaned out the litter box. We’ve tried a few different kinds but found that there was a lot of dust associated with them, so we went back to Tidy Cats hoping that maybe there was a problem with the early stuff. Nope, this stuff just sucks. And if you have any suggestions, please don’t suggest the “natural” kind. We tried some stuff made out of wheat that looked promising. That was nasty.

Christmas . . . I’m sorry, Critmuh begins today, basically. I don’t care that it’s in four days. It starts today in about 4 hours. I leave work after a short day and that’s it, I’m done. I’m off until January 2, people. Let me restate that for dramatic effect: I’m off until January 2. That’s 11 full days off, only four of which will actually be vacation days. I can’t argue with the math that equates to that bargain.

Will everyone be disappointed Critmuh morning when they find out I didn’t actually buy any presents but instead made rough representations of things they wanted out of things I found in parking lots?

In case anyone’s curious, I have three long lists of Christmas wants/needs up at the other place.

I found a couple of links in Wordpress’ dashboard about some new tools and themes and junk, stuff I really haven’t messed with, but I decided to investigate anyway because, well, why not? What I wound up reading was the written equivalent of the car dealer experience - “hey, you like this theme? How ’bout you put it on your site? You like this post? How ’bout we sit down and talk about a deal on an RSS feed?” It was rather gross - everything about these sites reeked of profiteering, everything aimed at driving new readers to the site so they could make more money from their advertisers. I’m not saying that’s wrong, necessarily . . . I just don’t understand it. I write because I like to write. I approach this like I see many of my favorite musicians approaching music - if you’re in this to make a fortune, you’d best quit while you’re still young and find something more easily and sensibly profitable.

It looks like “the holiday” has begun. Traffic is lightening up on the roads, which is a tremendous relief after weeks of daily nightmares (I know, that’s an oxymoron.) Once Thanksgiving hits Arizona, the roads in the morning are filled with “winter visitors” that we somewhat affectionately call “snowbirds.” The problem is, there is nothing to do in Phoenix until at least 9 am and more like 10 am, so why these people insist on getting on the road at 6 am is beyond me. They get out on the freeways in their motorhomes and giant cars, then drive slowly looking at every road sign along the way, pointing at cacti and anything else “southwestern.” It can be maddening. I’m sure San Diego feels the same way about us in the summer.

I began putting Amanda’s train environment together last night, figuring (correctly) that saving it to put together on Christmas Eve might just be a bit overwhelming.

Child not included

I lugged out the giant box and dug in, marveling at the miracle of packaging that had been employed. There’s a lot of stuff in that box, but it’s a one time thing - open one of the inner boxes and that miracle is dashed. Now instead of one big box we’ve got a big box and a couple of smaller boxes filled with the little buildings that I put together and a bag of vehicles that came with the set . . . in a room filled with tons of empty “just in case” boxes that we’d saved for possible use in packing Christmas presents, which are now pretty much useless and need to be thrown away. What a mess.

Now I just have to put the rest together, which will likely be saved for Christmas Eve simply because we have no way to hide this behemoth table. The instructions look like every bookcase I’ve ever put together - tab A into slot B, utilize screw X. Pretty straight forward for this kind of thing.

(Handy tip: If you have kids that like Thomas the Tank Engine, don’t waste your money on that rip-off set that they offer like this. It’s way more expensive and doesn’t offer anywhere near as much as this one does. This is compatible with the Thomas trains, too.)

Read some of the reviews of the train on the Toys R Us site - they’re pretty funny and very indicative of what kind of society we live in. “My son fell and hurt his head on the table. It’s a horrible table!” Apparently the table should have been made out of gummy bears and dreams so her son wouldn’t fall on it. Other reviews indicate that the people didn’t pay attention to the instructions, which, while not exactly clear (no surprise there - are any instructions these days clear?) give a good enough indication of what to do, and show that they just put their tables together very badly.

Speaking of instructions . . . I figured out the s-video dilemma! Just before bed last night, I sat down with the TV’s remote (not the cable-box remote) and ran through the menus once again, stopping on something called “Channel.” I selected it just to see what was inside and what did I find? “Video input” and “S-Video.” Could they not have been a little more clear in the main menu what could be selected in here? Dumb. I ran to the TV, unplugged the component video cables, and was ecstatic to see the clearest, sharpest picture I’ve ever seen coming from our DVD player. Not only that, it was BRIGHT. I cued up an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica (my most recent obsession) and was stunned to see not the murky, near-black spacefield with spots that were the ships that I’d been watching but a bright, clear image clearing showing very visible spacecraft. I cannot believe we’ve been missing out on this for so long. Now I have to see if I can run both the DVD and our cable box in via this one s-video connection - and if the cable box’s s-video gives any benefit or if that signal is already squunched down to the point where it makes no difference. Now I’m anxious to watch just about anything on DVD, especially things I’ve already seen, just to see what I missed.

When I was a kid I practically worshipped Garfield. I had something like 15 of those books (there are 45 now?!) and read them religiously. And then I grew out of Garfield, but those books are still buried somewhere at my parents’ house and so are a bunch of Garfield-related toys from that weird boom that happened in the mid-80s where he got really popular. (Various little vinyl figures, a few stuffed animals, etc. And who doesn’t remember the Garfield suction toy for your car window?) For a while there, I loved Garfield the way only a kid can love something.

Whatever it is that happens, happens quick, and suddenly things like Garfield just don’t appeal anymore. It wasn’t peer judgment or anything like that. I don’t know what it was - perhaps I just didn’t find Garfield all that funny anymore. Really, it’s not all that funny of a cartoon. The early ones, the few that I’ve run across, are certainly more entertaining than the later ones, but did I recognize that at 12 years old?

At almost 35, I’ve found a new way to find Garfield entertaining, and it’s in the surreal form of a website that randomly pairs panes from the strip. Some guy created this years ago and then it got slapped with a cease-and-desist order from uComics, but someone else took the code and hosted it for slow people like me. Here’s the first thing the site came up with for me:

That actually is kind of funny.

Saved from among my files at work, updated for dramatical Flash presentation. I don’t know why I don’t do this kind of stuff more often. Maybe because I’m the only one entertained by it . . . ?