Riddle me this...

Does anything scream "I'M 8 AND A HALF MONTHS PREGNANT!" more than eating olives and drinking hot apple cider at the same time?

I'm, um, not actually doing that with my feet up on the ottoman watching TiVo'd Desperate Housewives or anything, I'm just wondering.

(A big thanks to Boy Wonder who brought over some olives with his mom this evening.)

Boots & Squirrels

I bought Back Seat Girl snow boots on Monday from Land's End. I was excited to find a pair of decent boots in her size. I didn't know how they'd go over with her, but she loves them. In fact, she wore them to the mall with Driver and I last night, and when we had to take him to work this morning, she insisted on wearing them again. It worked out all right, because we ended up going to buy her a winter coat, too, so it made the matching thing much easier.

She also proved to have a lot of foresight, too, because when we left this morning it was sunny. When we came back from taking Driver to work and buying a new coat this is what the table (that is still out on our deck) looked like:
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How you know there are too many squirrels in your neighborhood: You look out the window as you're pulling down the shades in your daughter's room so she can take a nap, and see a squirrel eating a bag of peanuts in your backyard. This is almost as bad as the time this summer when we were all out in the backyard and a hotdog bun fell out of our oak tree.

Is shooting a BB gun illegal in the city?

Mitten?

It's cold here today. There are white flakes falling from the sky. Not that they are sticking or anything, but that just proves how cold it really is.

I had a Dr's appt this afternoon, and mercifully my pea coat still manages to button. I searched out Back Seat Girl's hat, and told her I would look for her mittens, too. I couldn't find them (she refused to wear them last year, so I really have no idea where they are now), but no worries, because BSG found one of my ankle socks on the steps and put it on. And called it a mitten. And wore it to my Dr's office. Only one, though, because when I told her I couldn't find her real mittens, she looked at the sock on her hand and announced,"This is the only mitten I have!". That made me feel like a good parent. My daughter has to wear a sock on her hand because we don't have mittens. And it can only be one sock because we don't even have a pair of socks for her.

Doctor update: The baby has dropped a bit, and I am a finger dilated. A few jokes about labor flashbacks were made, none of which I thought were the least bit funny. Still should be a few weeks, though, so no one get too excited. Although we are so finishing his room this weekend.

From the mouth of babes

Back Seat Girl has had a few good quotes lately. Here are the ones I remember:

We were driving home from her daycare yesterday. She looked up at the roof of the car and said :
"It sure is clean up there"
me: "yep, it is"
BSG: "Exactly"

We arrived at home, and BSG decided we had to take turns to walk to the door. So, she went to the path that leads from our driveway to the basement door and said,"Stay right here. It not your turn." I thought that meant I could follow her, so when she started walking I started after her. She quickly turned around. "No, no, no. You stay right here (pushing me back). It not your turn." So, after I got off the path and back onto the driveway, she started walking again. She kept turning around to make sure I was not following her. When she got to the door she turned around and said, "OK, it your turn now!".

I decided that I didn't want to carry all of my stuff up the stairs, so I told BSG we were going to walk up the hill and go to the front door. After a thoughtful pause, she replied,
"That sounds like a great idea!", and took off up the hill.

Also, her new word lately is 'cool'. As in ,"BSG, we're having fish and rice for supper tonight." BSG: "Oh, cool". She says it all the time, and in the correct context.

4 Years ago...

We looked at this house, and we saw this color in one of the downstairs bedrooms, and we thought to ourselves,"We must paint this room immediately after purchasing it".














So, four years and almost two kids later, we decided to do this:
















And we ended up with this:
I have to say that none of these pictures do the colors justice. The original color was a bright turquoise and much more hideous than it looks. Our color is way better than it looks. It really is a beautiful blue. I promise. And when you all see it, you will tell us so. 

Pumpkin Patch

This afternoon we went to Berry Hill Farm in
Anoka to get pumpkins and go on a wagon ride.
Gramma came along.






See--we have a Mommy, Daddy, Back Seat Girl, and Baby Brother pumpkins.




Back Seat Girl, stand still so we can take your picture!!








Since she obviously was not going to be standing still or posing for any pictures I took these while she was staring over the fence at the bunnies.

Free Food Is Not Always Good Food

While you might look at the above statement and say, “well, duh”. It’s a new way of thinking for me. I’m a free food whore. If you give me a free lunch, I’ll be there! In fact I just went to a useless meeting today because there would be a free lunch. Anyway my whole free food is good food philosophy was shattered this morning when I say these nasty little buggers in the break room at 9 A.M.

Green Tomatoes

Here are just a few pictures from this morning. We decided to pick all of the green tomatoes left on the plants and put them in the wagon and then drag the wagon around the yard. It was a good time. Afterwards we had to pretend the big maple tree in the front yard was our island. I still haven't figured out what we do at the island or why we're there. I'm just a pawn in Back Seat Girl's little game.
 

More Internet Goodies

A friend sent me this link and, it is, in a wordÂ… awesome. Check out yacht rock and see the dark side of smooth rock. You have to start at the first episode and work your way through. I've only seen 1-5 and I canÂ’t wait to see the other 5. Any concept that has Kenny Loggins as a trouble protagonist struggling with his identity and Hall and Oats as his nemesis canÂ’t be bad.

Check out this video of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader. It made me laugh out loud.




Shotgun has commented on the fact that my latest postings expose my nerdy tendencies. So far this post hasn't done anything to change that opinion. Although, in college I told her that I liked Star Trek the Next Generation and Star Wars. She should have known then what was to come. Back then she was probably just blinded by my rugged handsomeness and witty sense of humor. Who could blame her? In order to combat this geeky trend, here are a few pictures that only cool people will like.






In other cool guy news. Right now Minneapolis is a great place to be sports fan (just forget about the Vikes). Twins are ready to kick some AL/MLB butt in the playoffs, Wild are starting their season, and the T-Wolves season tickets have arrived.

Out of the blue

Back Seat Girl to Driver while playing in the basement last night:

"What are you doing buddy? Huh? Huh? You want a piece of me?"

Yea, I'm pretty sure she watched "Nemo" at the Wonder's house Saturday night. (It's a Dory quote) To clarify, she didn't actually say it TO Driver as much as she kind of said it while playing and talking to herself, though Driver said he was kind of invading her personal space.

Oh, and how can I not post something about this?

GO TWINS!!!
Can you believe it, Twins win the central division!! Plus, just to put the cherry on top, Joe Mauer gets the American League batting title. How awesome is that? Now hopefully our pitching can hold up in the postseason. Santana can't do it ALL himself.

A Movie Recommendation from us here at Station Wagon Tales

Last night our good friends Mama and Papa Wonder were kind enough to allow Back Seat Girl to spend the night at their house. Driver and I took advantage and did something we NEVER do together--we saw a movie. Specifically, "Little Miss Sunshine". It was a really good movie.

The basic plotline is this: A dysfunctional family, made up of an uncle, mom and dad, grandfather, and two kids drive from New Mexico to California in an aging VW bus so their daughter can be in a beauty pageant. The movie manages to be hilarious and very touching all at the same time. It doesn't completely rely on the same old tired gags that most road trip movies use, and when it does use them, they seem fresh and new somehow.

All of the characters are very well developed and all of them have their own issues to work out during the trip. You will fall in love with Olive, the little girl. She is the most normal of all of them, though she does have a penchant for wearing kind of strange clothing. (Red cowboy boots, pink shorts, and a red T-shirt is the outfit she's wearing in one great scene.) The teen-aged boy does a great job playing an angst-riddled 15 year old, and Steve Carell (yep-he's the boss on "The Office") is very impressive as the depressed uncle who can't be left alone because he may committ suicide. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette play the mother and father, and Alan Arkin (father of Adam Arkin who played the character of "Adam" on Northern Exposure), plays the crazy grandpa who teaches Olive her dance routine for the competition and also has a bad habit of snorting cocaine.

I recommend seeing it at the theater or with a group of friends when it comes out on DVD, because you know how things are just funnier when everyone else is laughing out loud, too? That was the case last night. The whole theater was laughing. Driver almost embarrassed me with his rocking back and forth, knee-slapping, tears in eyes performance.

And that, my friends, is the first movie review from us here at "Station Wagon Tales". It may very well be the last, too, since before this the last movie Driver and I saw together at the theater was "The Bourne Identity". Back Seat Girl was born the next day.

A Quick Update On The Tat

I went on a business trip a few months ago and got a tattoo. As tats go, I must say its pretty bad ass. You can see the whole story here.

Because of all the bandages, timing and what not; none of my colleagues on the trip knew what the tat was. After a week of rumors I sent out an e-mail with a picture of it to everyone. The tattoo has the name of my wife on it but I used my wicked photoshop skills to change the name to the product line we all work on “ATTEST” (pronounced with a long A).
Dude, talk about dedication, “that guy got the product name tattooed on his arm!” One of my coworkers put the photoshopped image as her desktop. Sweet!
Bonus: It’s been there for 3 months.

I just occurred to me that some of you might be thinking, “man, your work makes me sad”. But I think what you really mean is, “man your work looks awesome!” ‘cause you’re just jealous.

Highlights From The Interlink

So I was listening to NPR this morning on the way into work. A shock, I know. They had a story on caffeine. Caffeine is a sweet friend of mine that keeps me going and then has the nerve to make me not want to fall asleep at night. In the story they mentioned there was a chart on their website detailing the amounts of caffeine in some foods. I actually took a look at it and some of my assumptions were a little off. Are you thinking to yourself, “Self, did I just read that Driver admitted to being wrong?” Hardly, I just had some gut feelings that were incorrect. These gut feelings are just a step below, facts that I could pull out of my butt to make a point. The gut feeling assumptions are not meant to be heard by people.

Anyway… check out how much caffeine is in drip coffee compared to espresso!

Also note the quality of the chart that was scanned in and posted on NPR’s web site. Man, they couldn’t even re type it?


On a completely unrelated note, the new season of Lost is coming up. Here is a really cool map of the island.
Warning, this map is huge and may take awhile to load.

Why I hate squirels version eleventy million and one

This morning I had a plan. Back Seat Girl and I were going to go to the grocery store. I even cleaned out the fridge yesterday. I pretty much have plans for the rest of the week, so it's very important to my anal mind that I do everything according to schedule so I get everything done by this weekend that I want to get done.

After several fits about not wanting to go to the grocery store at all, then about what to wear, and then about how many times she could make me read the Elephant Book, we were finally ready to go out the door. We even had our coats on. Then, suddenly, there was a loud boom, and the house grew eerily quiet. No electricity. A squirrel had decided to barbeque himself on a transformer in the alley. No big deal, I figured. We're going to the grocery store, and hopefully by the time or soon after we get home we'll have electricity. This was not the first time this had happened at our house.

So, Back Seat Girl and I made our way out to the garage. Not thinking, I punched in our code, and of course the garage door didn't go up. Duh, I thought to myself. I tried the regular door so I could get into the garage and unlock the big door and push it up manually. It was, of course, locked. I realized I didn't have a key, so I went inside and found our stash of "what the heck are these for?" keys. I found the one for the doorknob lock, but it turns out that Driver had locked the bolt lock, too. So, I found the one for the bolt lock, and it just turned uselessly without ever really engaging the lock. I said some expletives under my breath, then I called Driver. This was obviously his fault, since he's the one that's all paranoid about the garage getting broken into and we had never locked the bolt lock before, for reasons that were obvious to me now.

I looked over at Back Seat Girl. She was all ready to go. I had finally convinced her it was a good idea to go to the grocery store, and now my car was trapped in the garage. We couldn't just go back in the house, I knew she'd throw a fit about that. I decided we could walk to the park. We both had to walk, since our strollers are all in the garage. You can all imagine how long it took us to get there. It was actually OK, she was a good girl about holding my hand. She had a great time at the park, but when it came time to go home she announced she was too tired to run anymore, so I ended up carrying her most of the way home. When we got back the Excel truck was outside our house. The guy got out of the truck and said we should have power and asked me to go inside to check. Sure enough, power was restored. After confirming my squirel suspicions, he was on his way. However, it was too late for the grocery store. I had already told Back Seat Girl that we could go to the "bagel store" for lunch since I wouldn't have any way of heating up anything for us at home, and there is no going back on a promise like that.

So, squirel, I hope you're happy. While I'm happy you won't be digging up my lawn anymore looking for some stupid acorn you buried yesterday and now your tiny brain can't recall exactly where, I wish you could've just run underneath a car like so many of your departed brethren instead of screwing up my whole day by frying yourself on the electricity that it turns out I use for EVERYTHING.

Good Times

Despite starting to get sick there have been a few things that have made me happy in the last few days. Some are simple but all around they put me in a pretty good mood.

-Got an A on an accounting quiz that the 2 people next to me thought was real difficult
-Found a bag of Twizzlers Nibs orphaned at the bottom of a vending machine
-Parallel parked the beetle in the tiniest spot on campus on the first try
-Got picked by the boss to go on to a meeting. Even if it is just to go to Brookings, SD.
-Threw a big Oktoberfest Party and every one had a blast.
-My wife finally won at Fantasy Football.
-I found a new desk lamp for my cube with a 3M polarizing light filter (sadly at least one co-worker was a little envious)
-Last but not least, the Twins clinched a playoff spot.
-ESPN Mentioning a great Minneapolis Bar at the end of the article

This all may be because I took a time management class that allows me to have "Power, Freedom, and Peace of Mind". But, most likely it's because I'm a simple guy with simple needs.

Now here are some things that have pissed me off.
-That goose that stands in the parking lot at work and has no concept of his own mortality
-Grad school professors that don't know what the definition of "part time student" is
-Marketers that think numerous cell phone calls a day will speed up other people's approval of my documents
-I lost at fantasy football
-The sun is at just the right angle in the morning so it blinds me when I hit the cross-town commons. I've learned to focus and just "Use the Force"

Dreams Are Like Feelings, They Shouldn’t Be Bottled Up and Forgotten About

The other morning I had this crazy dream. Nothing really new for me, but this one had a twist at the end. I was an Indiana Jones type adventurer in the deepest darkest jungles of Peru. There I was at this temple examining some ruins when I was attacked by tribesmen. I found out that Shotgun was the one who had orchestrated the attack and had taken some of my stuff. I confronted her about it and then… shot her in the head. Yup, folks, that’s what happened IN MY DREAM!


That was some pretty crazy stuff. I assure you that I haven’t had any dreams like that about my lovely wife before. I woke up with that weird “holy crap, what did I just dream feeling” and being the stupid man I am, I explained the dream to Shotgun. She was with me until that last little detail. In retrospect it is clear that I should have kept this one to myself but the cat’s out of the bag. I’m not sure what’s worse, getting bad wife vibes for a dream I had or getting the bad wife vibes from a dream she had.

I don't want to know what happens by the river after dark

This past Saturday we decided to take advantage of what was probably going to be one of the last warm days of the year and take a little walk around St. Anthony Falls. For those of you who haven't been there lately, you should go. You can see a lot of the ruined flour mills, which are pretty cool, walk across the stone arch bridge, and take some rather steep stairs down to the river. This is where the most adventerous part of our day took place.

Driver was carrying Back Seat Girl in the "baby backpack". When we got to the river, we let her out to throw stones into the water and just generally check things out. Driver went to explore a trail he found so I watched Back Seat Girl, who decided to walk into the river just far enough to get the bottom of her sandals wet. Never-the-less, she announced she was "swimming". And before anyone freaks out (mam and grama), you should know this is in a bend in the river where there is very minimal current, it's very shallow, and there's a rocky bottom. When Driver got back he told me about some interesting graffiti I must see, so I went to look and he stayed to watch Back Seat Girl. I couldn't have been gone longer than a couple of minutes, but when I got back to my family, this is what I saw:

Back Seat Girl was standing on the bank with just her T-shirt, sandals, and diaper on, her soaking wet shorts were on the rocks nearby, and Driver was leaning as far as he could off a cement wall into the river to retrieve Puppy, who had fallen in and was headed out to the middle.

This is what happened according to Driver: Puppy was put on the cement wall by Back Seat Girl, who wanted to have her hands free. She walked into the river a little farther and decided to sit down. While Driver went to pick her up and take her wet shorts off, the wind kicked up and Puppy flew off the wall into the river and wasn't noticed until he was starting to drift off rather quickly.

Back Seat Girl didn't care one bit about not wearing any shorts, so we stayed a while longer since she was having so much fun throwing stones into the water. Then something caught Driver's eye. There, in the rocks, was a rhinestone G-string. He went over to it to point it out to me, and then, because it wasn't enough to just point to it and say 'hey look', he PICKED IT UP!! I immediately started shouting to put it down, because god knows where, or rather whom, it had been on. He defended himself by saying that he only picked it up by the side. This from a man who can barely visit me at work because he's afraid hepatitis may jump out and suddenly infect him.

I'm happy to report that we didn't find any other undergarments and no one else decided to go swimming for the rest of the afternoon. Also--Driver's hand hasn't turned black and fallen off...yet.

Turns out Back Seat Girl is much more ambitious than her parents

Tonight is Driver's first night back at class for this year, so it was just Back Seat Girl and I. While I was cleaning up after supper, she was sitting at the table "drawing". After she told me she drew Nemo, a kitty, mommy, daddy, and Alison (all of which looked remarkably similar), we had an entire discussion about how she is going to be president and a doctor when she grows up.

Before you all go thinking she is the smartest 2 year old in the world (though she may be close in my completely unbiased opinion), she has recently watched an episode of "Clifford" where all the kids talk about what they want to be when they grow up. Apparently she took to Jetta's idea about being president and a doctor since the job of being president only lasts 8 years at the most. Her other choices would have been an inner-galactic super hero, a karate instructor, a photographer, or a vetrinarian. As you can see, she chose the most ambitious careers mentioned in the show. I sure hope she gets good scholarships, because we're not paying for med school.

That Was Close

I mowed the lawn tonight. It’s something I do regularly and every time I do it I have the same problem. I get out to the garage and realize that I need to move the car in order to get the lawn mower out. A normal person goes in the house, gets the keys, and backs the car out. Well, not me, you see, I’m clever.

The beetle is stick so I just opened up the driver’s side door, released the brake and started to push it out. I had to think quick and shut the door before I got out of the garage because there wasn’t much clearence between the car and side of the garage. I did this while the car was rolling and ran over to the passenger side. Very quickly I found out that the passenger side door was locked. Crap!

I had to move swiftly, the car was gaining speed and almost to the neighbor’s garage door (see the illustration below). I ran around the back of the car and tried to stop it, anyone who’s ever tried this knows what a bad idea it is. Now, change to plan C. I ran back around to the driver’s side door, opened it up and yanked on the brake. Wow, crisis averted.

When the dust settled the rear bumper of the beetle was a mere two feet from the neighbor’s garage door. The moral of the story is this… drag your lazy ass into the house, get the dang keys and back the car up like a grown up.

Quick and cute

I had a Dr's appt this afternoon and Back Seat Girl came along. As the appt was winding down, Back Seat Girl reached over from her chair to touch the stethoscope and asked to hear puppy's heartbeat. The Dr. obliged, and checked puppy's heartbeat while she was sitting in Back Seat Girl's lap. After the Dr. left, I was packing up the daiper bag and Back Seat Girl slid off her chair and walked over to get a better view of the stethoscope. Then she asked to check puppy's baby's heartbeat. She told me that puppy had a baby in her back and we had to listen to his heartbeat. So, she put the stethoscope up to puppy's back, and declared puppy's baby to be OK. It was pretty cute. I don't know if she gets the fact that there really is a baby in my belly, even after hearing his heartbeat several times with me at the Dr's office, but at least I know she's absorbing something.