Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope your 2010 is off to a lovely start.

Satanski and I were watching videos online and I realized that I never posted this one. Jason Mraz + Sesame Street = Two great tastes that taste great together. My nephew was really confused as to why Jason Mraz was on Sesame Street, but thought it was cool to see Mraz singing with Elmo and Big Bird.

Wo the Foq

Satanski is practicing sounding out words, and likes to write things and have us try to read them. Last week it was, “I kiss Nina,” which made us all laugh a bit – then I had to tell him that he can’t just go around kissing people (Nina is his classmate).

Last night he wrote  “Wo the foq.” That one also cracked me up, although I made sure not to laugh in front of him. Between his dad and his brother, I guess I’m not surprised that he knows that phrase, but I was disappointed. Still, I was really proud of him for sounding it out himself and getting close enough that I knew what he was saying. My little evil genius is growing up!

Who would want this?

I asked Satanski what he wanted me to bring him back from the zoo, but he said he didn’t know. I suspect that he just wanted to get off the phone; I think I called during SuperWhy. Anyway, I tried a different tack, and asked him which animal he liked the best. Naturally, because he’s angry and scary, he said tigers. With that in mind, I searched the zoo’s gift shop until I found a really adorable pair of tiger slippers. The only problem was that they were not labeled with a size, so I had to guess about whether they’d fit him. (Question I was asked, “How do you know what size shoe he wears?” I was temped, but somehow resisted saying “Voodoo,” although the truth “I’ve bought his last few pairs of sneakers” wasn’t as interesting.)

Sadly enough, although I’d bought the only small-kid size they had, the slippers were still too small for my kiddo. I also got him a wallet when we went to SeaWorld, but I still really like the idea of tiger slippers, so I went online looking for them. I’ve just started, so I’m not exactly  discouraged, but I haven’t been able to find any Satanski-sized pairs yet. What I did find was this scary freakshow of a pair.

I have no idea why any adult would buy those slippers, or any child would want them (but here’s the link for all you nutjobs out there). I cannot imagine sticking my feet in those things without worrying that I would pull back stumps.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

I told Satanski that I’m a little grossed out by Spongebob Squarepants (due to that gross episode where he has the Suds), so of course he decided that all he wanted to do for the rest of the night was draw me various Spongebob-esque pictures. This only stopped when I told him that he couldn’t use any more sheets of paper until he’d used the backs of the sheets he’d already used. This is always the point at which he stops.

Here’s the gallery:

Happy Monday!

One of the pictures that I took when Satanski and I went to the American Museum of Natural History has been added to the New York Schmap Guide. How exciting!

Museum of Natural History

As I mentioned yesterday, on Monday I took my nephew to the American Museum of Natural History. I had no idea what to expect of a 3-year-old in a museum, and I really wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d wanted to leave after an hour. When we went to see Madagascar 2, he pretty much hated the experience after 10 minutes, and I kind of thought that I might be crazy to try to take him to the museum, but I hadn’t been in over a decade and thought it was time. Here are a couple of pictures, but I took a passel and they can be seen here on Flickr.

Well! Satanski had a great time, and we ended up staying for five hours. We made it there in time to join the storytime group that meets in the morning. From there, we went to the butterfly exhibit. Note to self: 3-year-olds don’t seem to like things that fly around and threaten to land on them, even when said flying things are gorgeous. One butterfly actually did land on the kid, but (mercifully) it was on his shoulder, and he didn’t notice. A kind girl of about 8 attempted to let him know, but I quietly asked her not to, and she complied. She did immediately request of her father and brother, though, that they let her know if any of the butterflies landed on her.

When we left, the guards ask Satanski if he’d had a good time, and he told them, “No, the butterflies are scary.” It was pretty cute. The rest of the day was spent on lunch, dinosaurs, various realistic-dead (or fake) animals, and more play, and then we called it a day and came home. The kid fell asleep on the bus, and if there’d been somebody to carry me, I would have joined him.

My knitblog is now located at http://aimlessknitter.com. I have nothing but fondness for Google and Blogger, but Dreamhost was having a sale that was too good to pass up. I got the domain, plus two years of hosting, for a grand total of $22. Can’t beat that.

I’m on vacation this week, and had actually considered going somewhere, before I realized that I just wanted to relax. Yeah, right. First, my nephew’s school was unexpectedly closed yesterday, and I was the only adult not working, so I got to hang out with him. We actually had a blast, and went to the American Museum of Natural history, but relaxing my day was not.

Then, today, my brother needed me to go to his house and stay while the gas people installed a new boiler. Did I mention that I had to be there by 7:45? That’s earlier than I even awaken on those days that I am working. Un. Fair. Then, depending on who you believe, he may or may not have informed his girlfriend that I was going to wait for the repairdudes, so she was there and had intended to stay. So I probably didn’t even really need to be up and over there so early.

The best part of boiler installation is that it involves turning off all heat for two and a half hours. They did have space heaters there, but that place is like an obstacle course, and it wasn’t worth risking my life to locate, extricate, and plug in said heaters. The repair was over around 1, so I got lunch, went home, and promptly turned up my own heat to 74 (just for a little while).

I spent this afternoon warming up and taking all of my pictures off of Google’s server and bringing them over the to new domain. I refuse to pay Google for more storage, so I’ll do anything to save a few megs (of course, I could take smaller pictures, but I haven’t gotten that desperate yet). I’ve already created on extra gmail account to get more picture space, but now that I have MobileMe and a pro Flickr account, I don’t expect that I’ll be jumping through many more hoops regarding photo storage space. [Although it may seem counterintuitive to pay for Flickr and MobileMe, but not Google space, it’s just the principle of the thing. I have a gazillion unused gigs in my Gmail accounts, and Google still expects me to fork over cash to have a place to store my pictures? No way.] While in a photo-manipulating mood, I also uploaded several albums to Flickr and MobileMe. I must say, I have accomplished more this vacation than I have on some genuine work weeks.

Seems like somebody is listening

Happy New Year, folks! I just got back from a lovely, frigid, relaxing vacation in Vermont, ready to have 2009 sap my newly restored will to live. I just found out that my nephew’s school won’t be opening tomorrow and that he’ll be spending the day with me, so I’m guessing that the sapping will commence pretty much immediately (kidding! I missed my little man when I was gone and am really looking forward to spending some time with him tomorrow).

I was messing around with various programs on my computer, and discovered that 1) I’ve either had another happy accident with this alpha version of Opera, or 2) they’ve actually made it work with Multiclutch. It’s too soon to say for sure whether the problem is permanently fixed, and since I’m so tired and traveled 250+ miles today, I’ve decided not to press my luck by completely resetting Opera and starting from scratch. Still, since I’d previously posted on how unhappy the lack of compatibility made me, I’m going to take this perceived progress as a shout-out. I’ll test it tomorrow, I guess, but I’m stoked that it has worked this well. In addition, I’ll upload some of the pictures from my vacation soonish.

I also registered a new domain tonight and set up the corresponding web site (why? wouldn’t you like to know), and will be talking a bit more about that later.

I’m a miss Capucine!

Voilà deux vidéos de Capucine, une jolie petite fille francaise qui a gagné beaucoup d’adoration sur l’Internet par raconter une histoire originale tres amusante…wait! This is my English blog. So sorry. Anyway, here are two videos of Capucine, the adorable little French girl whose convoluted story of lions, mammoths, animal suicide and heaven rejection is currently tearing up the Internet. The first video is of said story, and the second is of her showing off her newly acquired English. Although her story is hilarious (and good for practicing my French), I actually prefer the second video, because her English version of Frère Jacques sounds like my nephew’s attempts at the French version: the first verse is more or less coherent, but the second is a mishmash of confused Franglais and is just hilarious. Then, just when you think that the song has slipped completely out of their grasp, they reel it back in with a triumphant “ding dang dong!” This video reminds me that I need to record Satanski’s attempt at this song, as all of my other blackmail material is getting old.

[vimeo 2113477]

[vimeo 1876895]

Lighten up, Francis.

My mom is understandably super happy about Obama’s win. It really shows her how far we as a nation have come. My mother grew up in segregated South Carolina. Only her youngest brother (last of my grandparents’ 10 surviving children), ever went to school with white children, and then I think only in the last few years of high school. So my mom doesn’t hate anybody, but still has comfort issues around white people. She doesn’t really hang out with any, and I think that, to her, my having so many white friends is a source of confusion, amusement, and perhaps a little bit of pride (she’s happy that I don’t have the same bad associations that she does).

So anyway, I received all of these really uplifting, corny, cheesy, vaguely messianic emails from her about Barack Obama going into the election, and the volume, corniness, cheesiness, and messianic undertones have all increased since his win. Just like everybody else on the Internet, I have seen Patrick Moberg‘s illustration pretty much everywhere since November 4.

And now you've seen it, too!

But by now we all know that too much saccharine sentiment in our diets can lead to an irony deficiency, so here are two covers that I prefer to a lot of things my mom has sent me (predictably, she hated them). They’re from the Chicago Reader. The Obama cover is the one they went with (for obvious reasons), but they had the McCain cover all ready just in case.