KBRA Christmas Special

So yesterday as we were opening presents, Abra noticed me writing down a list of who got what from whom. She came over, looked at the list of everyone's presents, and said "Who's winning?"

Santa Just Left!

Here's how it looks at our house, after Santa has left and before we leave it to the cats:



Merry Christmas, all!

Cheap, Cheap, Cheap!

OK, today we start a new recurring blog theme called "cheap cheap cheap!" As many of you are aware, I am one cheap bastard. I'll go out of my way to save $5 (as long as I dont have to spend $5 in gas to do it!). Perhaps the only person I know that's cheaper than me is my buddy Mark -- and it's close.

So whenever I score some particularly cheap savings, I'll crow about it here. Today's feat of cheapness, courtesy of Walgreen's, was a doozy.

Last Wednesday, I notice (courtesy of slickdeals.net) that the Walgreen's website has a "$5 off $20 in in-store purchases today-only" coupon. So I print it out, go to the local Walgreen's and load up on some on-sale knock-off meds (you think I'm gonna buy the brand-name stuff??).

When I get to the checkout counter, the clerk says "sorry, we dont take internet coupons."

Say what? It's from the Walgreen's website and can only be used in-store.

Naturally, I tell the kid to call the shift manager. The shift manager agrees, they don't take internet coupons.

OK, so I walk out (leaving everything behind -- I'm not buying things after that!) and go home. The wife comes home to find me drinking a 7&7 and typing out an email to Walgreen's corporate office. You can imagine the content: "false advertising", "bad customer service", "i'll continue shopping at CVS after this", all the usual.

Yesterday morning, I get an email from the head store manager apologizing, saying the clerk and shift-manager i dealt with were wrong, and that they *do* accept the coupons, and here's a $20 gift card for your trouble. OK, that works for me.

Then today, again courtesy slickdeals, I see that Walgreen's is offering an even-better "$10 off $30 today-only coupon". So off I go to Walgreen's to stock up on on-sale store-brand meds and vitamins. And here's the haul:

Equivalent price of name-brand meds :~$75

Pre-sale price of store-brand meds: $52

On-sale price: $43

After $10 coupon: $33

Final price, after $20 giftcard: $13

Oh yeah, that's sweet. And to think they could have had me at $5 off!

Cognitive Tips from KBRA

Abra, to Thalia this morning while unsuccessfully searching for a toy:

"Hang on, Thalia, I've gotta go potty. That will help me think better."

School Picture Time!

Yes, it's kindergarten school picture time! So before we get started with this little tale, let me take you back, oh, about 37 years ago to a small hamlet named "Annandale, Virginia" where a young, aspiring astronomer-to-be in kindergarten was going to be getting his school picture taken. So his father cut his hair. Yes, you read that right -- nothing like a Dad-haircut to get one ready for a school picture. I think he put a bowl over my head to do it. (God love you, Pop, but I honestly think you did.)

Anyway, you can imagine how that turned out. And I'm sure that one of my oh-so-helpful siblings will be happy to post the picture online for everyone to see. It's the kind of thing that ends up first in an FBI-file somewhere before eventually being burned into the social consciousness of a nation after an unfortunate event: Faculty member snaps, beats pre-med student senseless with salami after one too many requests for extra credit; tragedy traced back to psychologically damaging childhood picture. That sort of thing.

So when Abra came home clutching the order form for her upcoming class picture, I was very excited to see how it would turn out, of course. Being as cheap as I am, I naturally instructed doting mother to buy the minimum, and I'd just scan them. (No, I'm not going to pay an extra $4.95 for a sepia print with wild west borders, the $8.95 it would take to get the keychain fob, or the $15 for the mousepad. Yes, I'm a bad, cheap parent. Go fix me a turkey pot-pie!) So we sent her to school on the big day (no, I didn't cut her hair), prepared for full entertainment value in return.

We were not disappointed. When she brought her pictures home, Brenna immediately send me an email using the phrase "horribly awful" if I remember correctly. I was pleased as punch -- she looks like a kindergarten Clint Eastwood who had a few too many boxes of Juicy Juice and is now being made to sit still:




Priceless!

Brenna of course insisted we send it back for a retake, which you can bet I was only willing to do after I scanned it. I mean, this thing is going into the long-term files so that I have it ready for the first time she has a boyfriend over.

Anyway, so we sent it back and had her do a retake and here's how the next one turned out.




Aww, very cute, this will be the one the grandparents get. But I'm never gonna give up the Clint Eastwood shot -- it's a classic. Plus, the FBI might need it at some point down the road....

Maybe I yell too much?

So yesterday Abra was drawing pictures and decided to draw a family portrait that involves, yes, me yelling at Thalia.

(be sure to click on the picture to see a bigger version!)

I can't help but think that Dad looks like a homicidal Fred Flintstone, while Mom is portrayed as a Cyclopian Stepford Wife with the Marilyn Quayle hairdo -- I shudder to contemplate what this says about Abra's view of her parents. Thalia clearly is not taking her scolding well, and I must say that Abra has captured little sister's expression quite well! Meanwhile, Wacko has left the house and is off running around in the yard -- maybe I'm yelling because Thalia let the dog out?

Anyway, just another typical day of peace and tranquility at our house.

I should point out that, unlike most of Abra's drawings where, upon completion, she proudly shows it around, I found this one sitting quietly on the dining room table after she and Thalia had left to play. Hmmm.....

Yet Another KBRA update

(left: Tom Waits. right: not Tom Waits)

So I'm listening to some Tom Waits ("...i got sixteen shells from a thirty ought six...") and Abra walks into the room and says "Why is Oscar singing?"

If you've ever heard Tom Waits sing, you know she is pretty much spot-on with that comment.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

So today I walked Abra and Thalia (and Wacko) to the bus stop, where we met Lily and her dad Richard. After Lily and Abra got on the bus, Richard and I walked back with Thalia, both of us holding her hands, as the stream of morning traffic passed by.

It occurred to me: two men, walking down the sidewalk with their dog and a child of chinese-extraction, we looked like the perfect example of the modern gay family.

So we started scratching our crotches and loudly talking football. (OK, not really. At least not the crotch-scratching part.)

She's Out of the Will -- Part II

In school last week, Abra was asked to draw pictures of food she liked and food she didn't like. Here is one of her pictures:


DOESN'T LIKE SUSHI????

Gawd.

Well, the sushi lovers still rule this house 5-4. It's a good thing I have the cats on my side.

(I will say, however, that she drew a pretty good likeness of herself whenever I cook.)

Calling Bob Vila

Anybody know how to fix this? It's on the upper story roof, which means it will be a pain to get to. Do I sawzall out that whole section of rafter and try and shape a new piece of wood to fasten into its place?

KBRA broadcast update

So we're in the rec center last night waiting for Thalia's ballet class to finish. Abra sees this rather well-sculpted gentleman working out on a weight machine and says (loudly):

Wow, look Daddy! He has big muscles! I'll bet he'd be good in a bar fight!

Cat Thoughts

Cat Thought #1: Nelson needs to go on a diet.

Before:

After:

Hmm, Iams weight control cat food is now being served!

Cat Thought #2: the other day I saw Tango and Healy sitting on the couch together.


Given that they hate each other with the white hot searing heat of a thousand suns*, the concept of them sitting peaceably on the couch together kind of made me think of this picture:


Oh, and Healy: you need to go on a diet, too...


(* the "white hot searing heat of a thousand suns" phrase has been shamelessly stolen from the inestimable Dr. Walter Harris.)

REDRUM!

So Thalia is working hard on her letters, but has this tendency to write mirror images. Perfect mirror images. Case in point, her writing this morning of "Mommy, Thalia, Abra":



It's exquisite, both the letters and the writing is perfectly backwards. Here it is mirrored:

What's going on in her eye/head/hand to do this? I dunno, but it fascinates me. And at age 4 (in a few days) this is not really a worry. Or so I thought, until I remembered Danny Torrance.





So if I wake up and see this on my door any time soon, I'll be quite worried....

The Holiday Reddi-Whip Oral Injection

So for the kids in our family, one of the traditions at holiday meals is the ever-popular shot of reddi-whip straight to the mouth from Papou. (To the non-Greeks out there, "Papou" means grandfather in Greek....) The grandkids would line up for the shot, and then run to the back of the line to see if they could double-up on the dose. The tradition waned in recent years as the grandkids got a more.... discerning palate(?), but now Papou has new grandkids to indoctrinate. So sure enough, this Thanksgiving Abra and Thalia lined up, and the results were rather unique.

First up was Thalia, who was a bit unsure about the whole process, but was game at first....


But then, she wasn't sure about what to do with a mouthful of reddi-whip.


And so it got spat out. Infidel!

Then Abra got in to the act. Having witnessed the operation on Thalia, she was a bit readier for what was coming.

But even she gave the reddi-whip rather mixed reviews, while Thalia looked on, still in rather stunned disbelief.


Rather odd reactions, if you ask me. Ah well -- we will simply have to keep trying until they succumb to the power of Reddi-Whip.

See See C.C.?

So Abra comes home from school with "sight words" -- words that she has to use to make stories or draw pictures, etc (don't ask me the details, I don't understand half of the homework assignments she comes home with....). Anyway, her latest sight word was "see," so what does she come up with?


SEE SEE SABTHEA! aka C.C. Sabathia, the Cleveland Indian's Cy Young award winning pitcher:



Heh, her mom and I both laughed out loud at that one. I will admit there is a good bit of sports on the TV around our house, and Abra and Thalia are soaking it up like little sponges....

Buckeye's is good spelers!

Yes, it's Ohio State - Michigan week again. Time for the battle for the Rose Bowl, played in lovely Pasadena. Or, if you are the Ohio State Buckeyes, I guess it's played in "Pasedena", at least according to this article in the local paper. Is that Pasedena, North Dakota, maybe?

This reminds me of the episode of Cheers where Norm and Cliff go out for dinner at the Hungry Heifer:

Norm: Yeah, Cliffy had himself the "Ton O' T-Bone". For less than four bucks you get 24 ounces of USDA Choice "bef".

Cliff: Bef? No, you mean beef.

Norm: Beef? Don't be ridiculous, Cliffy. That stuff is "bef". You see it's a Hungry Heifer trademark for a processed, synthetic – what – meat-like substance.

Cliff: Ah, no.

Norm: What do you expect for four bucks? You see me complainin' about the "loobster"?

Maybe that's what's gonna happen to the Buckeyes. They'll go to the Rows Bowl in Pasedena, while Michigan will get to go to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

And how much do you want to bet that Doug Lesmerises has an English degree from Ohio State?

I had no idea....

So I found this picture from a while back. This was taken on Nov 16, 2002, the day of the Michigan-Wisconsin football game. Brenna (and Abra) had come to Mark's for the game, as had I. This was the first I had ever met little Abra, she was quite the cutie.


I had no idea at the time that I was holding my daughter-to-be. Wow.


As it turned out, Brenna was very sick that day, so it was just me, Mark, and Matt that went to the game. Michigan won, of course, 21-14. Anthony Davis had a good game rushing for Wisconsin, with 154 yards, but Chris Perry eclipsed him, rushing for 177 yards for Michigan...

Mouse in Da House!

So I used to get mice in the house pretty frequently, but since Nelson and Healy showed up, there have been no mice sightings, at least not in the living area (a few mice have been seen in the basement...).

And now with Pearl and Tango around, we now have four cats. Add in the fact that Wacko is part terrier and we now have five mousers in the house. So you'd think the mice would stay far, far away.

Well, now that the weather is turning cold again, guess who tried to move into the house today? Here is the first sign that we had a small visitor:


So looking under the radiator, there was a little mouse squished up against the wall, trying to avoid Pearl's terrifying wrath.



It must be admitted that, from the mouse's perspective, Pearl can be a particularly worrisome sight:



And then the other cats decided to come over and help out:



(You will notice that Tango is not there. Tango seems very pleased that all the other cats are in the dining room so she has the living room to herself, thank you very much.)

So here we sit; the cats are camped out by the radiator, and the mouse is trying to make itself as small as possible. I imagine this little stand-off will last... as long as it takes.

Stay tuned...

Update: Pearl finally caught the mouse, and was running around with it in her mouth. She dropped it for a second, and I (to her extreme frustration) snatched her up and the mouse ran away. She's peeing in my shoes tonight for sure....

Dear Sparty

28-24 Michigan

Halloween postmortem

The latest from your favorite radio station and mine, KBRA, broadcasting day and night:

Abra: You know the best part about Halloween? You get all this candy and you don't have to pay for it.

Heh, daddy's girl!

Halloween 2007

Halloween is here!

So on Sunday we carved pumpkins. The girls eagerly clamored to help (we were not about to hand them carving knives, of course -- we would have had carved pumpkins, tables, chairs, binkies, cats, hands, you name it...). So they got the job of scooping the seeds out of the pumpkins. Abra reached in an exclaimed in delight "that's nasty!", and kept scooping out handfuls of pumpkin guts. Thalia, on the other hand, reached in, made a face, pulled out some orange glop, and announced "I'm done, Daddy. I don't want to do this any more."


So then Mom and Dad carved, and the girls watched closely. Thalia kept yelling out "DON'T CUT YOUR HAND, DAD!!" every three minutes -- the confidence that kid has in me is striking. Then we took the pumpkins out on the porch and the girls posed.

We left the pumpkins out on the porch, and Abra walked outside about an hour later and annouced "Something bad happened to the pumpkins." Turns out the squirrels got to them, to mine anyway, and ate some of the teeth and one of the eyes. So my scary pumpkin turned into an old blind woman pumpkin. Since that was about the same time that the Redskins managed to cut the Patriots' lead to 52-7, I was in a cranky mood anyway, so a mutilated pumpkin hardly bothered me. But we brought the pumpkins back inside to prevent further damage....

So tonight the girls got dressed up. Thalia was a giraffe (with black knee-high boots) and Abra was a purple unicorn. For those of you keeping score at home, yes, they wore these same costumes last year. Recycling is good! How many years can we get away with this?? Anyway, then their friend Lily came over, dressed as Glinda the Good Witch.




So off we go (in daylight, mind you, at 6:30pm. Trick or treating in daylight? Whose dumb idea was it to extend daylight savings time through Halloween?) First stop: next door to Jon and Molly's (who took their picture), then off to Ann's (who took their picture), etc, etc. Up and down the street, plastic pumpkin filling more and more. When they started complaining that their pumpkins were too heavy, it was time to head back home. Since it was finally dark, we could light the pumpkins.


Then I asked the girls to pose for a picture before eating candy, and this is their best OK-Dad-hurry-up-and-take-the-picture-so-we-can-eat-our-candy halloween smile:


And then we sat down to pass out candy to the trick or treaters who were still out and about.

(I'm not quite sure why Thalia looks like she's fielding a punt in that picture....)

Abra was very excited to hand out candy, and kept shouting "customers, we have customers!" She wanted to take the candy out to people on the street, and I had to explain to her that she was not to be a carhop. Which then of course meant I had to explain to her what a carhop was. So instead she went out in the yard, skipping around and yelling "CANDY! WE HAVE CANDY AVAILABLE!"

While Abra was dancing in the yard, the giraffe began to investigate the candy bowl


which brought the unicorn back to make sure there was no filching of candy going on. or at least to make sure she got in on the filching.


And then I took a picture of the ever-elusive Maoming black-booted dwarf giraffe.

(That picture makes me think of Wile E Coyote after an anvil has fallen on his head and he's all smashed down and walking around accordian-like...)

Thalia proved very good at dekeing out the kids who came up for candy, by holding out a fistful of about 5 pieces of candy to them, and then dropping only one in their bag...

OK, and finally, one last picture of the girls handing out candy.

So then we put the girls to bed and I proceeded to go through their pumpkins and pick out all the smarties for myself. Ahhh, smarties.

That's the report, Happy Halloween, all!


(postscript @ 10:45pm. Brenna and Wacko just got nailed by a skunk on their evening walk. sigh.... I guess we had to have a trick to go along with all our treats.)

Lawyers and Dogs

First of all, the good news: Brenna passed the Ohio bar exam. We're not surprised by this, of course, but we are very pleased. Now she can do all that lawyering stuff here in Ohio...









Wacko, meanwhile, has decided on a new place to sleep at night:


Abra crashes so hard that she never knows he's there. I saw him and Pearl on Abra's bed last night, fighting for a spot, and Wacko was walking back and forth across the bed, stepping over Abra, and she stayed zonked out through the whole battle. She's a good sleeper!

When staring in the face of adversity...

...she manages to find a way:

Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:05:23 -0400
From: Brenna
To: Chris
Subject: Re: All is not lost

At neither Target nor Giant Eagle could I find any ice cube trays. So I'm just freezing a flat bowl of water to chop up into chunks with an icepick for Happy Hour drinks, I guess.

(yeah, the icemaker is busted. that's #128,256 on the list of things that need fixing around our house....)

She's Out of the Will

This morning at breakfast:

Me: Hey, girls! We're going to a football game today!

Abra: No!

sigh...

Dear Administrative Pinhead

Please do not send me an email saying "Can you provide me this information by next Friday?" and then, the Thursday before, send me another email COPIED TO MY DEPT CHAIR AND MY DEAN saying "Since you haven't provided me the information yet, I remind you that I need this information by tomorrow."

Bite me. You asked for it by tomorrow and I was planning on getting the info to you this afternoon. If your deadline suddenly moved up, don't try and blame your problems on me by copying the higher-ups on a note that suggests I am being unresponsive.

Fortunately both my chair and my dean know from repeated past experiences that this person is an incompetent tool.

I Love That Cat, But He Now Owes Me Money

So Sunday afternoon, Healy came downstairs, jumped in Brenna's lap, and sat there trembling. Shaking, really. And then proceeded to spend the rest of the day on the couch, barely moving, and -- more bizarrely -- barely purring. Those of you who have had the honor of meeting Healy know that he is a purring machine, so if he's not purring, something is wrong. And from time to time, the tremors came back.

(Note: this is a stock photo of Healy from a while back. It is not currently snowing in Cleveland....)

So at bedtime, I took him upstairs and put him on the bed (where he usually sleeps), and he promptly jumped off the bed, crawled under it, and stayed there. All night.

So at this point, we're worried enough that we (Brenna and Thalia, actually) took him to the vet. The vet gave him the once over, drew blood, took his temperature, etc. She didn't find anything obviously wrong with him, but the test results take a day to come back. And of course there is vet bill #1:



So Healy comes home, and spends the day on the couch, very lethargic. That night my cousin Marguerite comes into town for the evening -- very timely, since she actually has a degree in veterinary medicine. She looked him over and wondered if he had a wound of some kind that wasn't obvious, since he proved very tender in his hind quarters. That night Healy was very unhappy, growling at me if I tried to move him, walking very slowly and painfully (if at all), and again sleeping under the bed.

Not good.



So in the morning, the blood work comes back: no problems. But he is clearly not better, wont come out from under the couch, doesn't show any interest in the big dish of tuna fish I put in front of him -- and when a cat turns down tuna fish, that's a bad, bad sign.

Back we go to the vet, for x-rays this time, to check if there is any intestinal/urinary blockage. (On the way to the vet, Healy peed in the cat carrier, so at this point I'm thinking urinary blockage is not the issue....) The X-rays prove negative: no problems. On the one hand that's good, but on the other hand, I'm baffled as to what's going on. The vet agrees with Marguerite's assessment, maybe a wound of some sort that isn't obvious. Did he fall off a counter, or get stuck somewhere, or in some other way injure himself?

So the vet shoots him up with a painkiller and suddenly he's a much happier cat. He comes home, is wandering around the house, even purring at Brenna and I. Yes, his purr is back! The wonder of kittydrugs. The vet gives us painkiller for a few more days, and hopefully he will be better by then.

The amusing thing is the syringes they give us with the painkiller come with a very well-remembered brand name:



(Monoject is, of course, the company that dear old Dad worked for for many years...)

Of course, along with all this comes vet bill #2:



So hopefully that cat -- the greatest tabby cat in the whole wide world -- will be better after all this. We'll see. Right now he's curled up asleep on the couch again. Keep your fingers crossed and send him all the kitty wishes you can. And in the mean time, that darned cat owes me $322.74 in vet bills.

*sigh*