The Year In Review

This'll probably be my last post of the year - I have next week off, and I don't really plan on going outside of my house (or at least further than the grocery store a block away) for the whole week. I just got an X-Box and about two dozen games (thanks, James) so I'll probably sit on the couch and play video football and one of the StarWars games until my eyes bleed. So here's a list of some of the things that happened to me over the last year.

• I'm thankful that my quick-thinking friend Keith had a bezoar on hand when I drank that poisoned Mountain Dew during our stop in E-burg. I still don't know if the Thai bastard that served it to me had it in for me, or just wanted to poison a random customer. But thanks, Keith, you're knowledge of medieval poison treatments really helped me out of a tight spot.
• I had a little accident at work, but Peter was on hand to give me a good kick in the chest to get my heart going again. I thought you were an immunologist, Pete. I never knew you were such an accomplished cardiologist. Your well placed boot saved my life.
• I couldn't remember where my house was, until Cindy shot me in the ass repeatedly with a BB gun. If it weren't for my lovely wife's well developed marksmanship skills, I'd still be lost in the parking lot at the IGA. Thanks for leading me home, babe! I like to think that those pellets were fired out of the gun by compressed love.
  
• I spent so much time on the internets during a slow day at work that I honest to God forgot how to breathe. It sure was a good thing that I was having a trans-polar e-mail conversation with my buddy Will at the time, and he reminded me how that works.
• I lost all of my money racking up massive gambling debts and couldn't afford food for the kids, but my mom helped me out by sending us some beans and lentils to get us through until spring. I'll never play the horses again, honest, ma.
• The car broke down, but a quick phone call to my dad had that all sorted out. He just reminded me that I needed to take the keys out of my pocket and put them into the ignition to get the engine to turn over. He didn't have to tell me to pull my head out of my ass, either, but he did, and it was pretty good advice.
• I had several great days, and if it weren't for the sudden shots to the pills that the boys are so swift at administering, I would have stayed perfectly content. Thanks for reminding me about what pain is, kids! The constant dull ache in my testes reminds me of my loving family!
  

Yup. And what a year it was. To state the painfully obvious, that was all in jest, I love you all (sorry to be all John Lennon-y).

Anybody up to anything excitin' for Christmas? I'll be playing the aforementioned X-Box, and I think my hunting buddy Jim is going to come by and help Cindy and I eat a huge lamb roast that we've got - if anyone else is in the area on Sunday, stop by, but bring a pie. You ain't got nuthin' on this mutton.

Happy Christmas, everybody.

Ya Know What A Man Is?

Cuz I'll tell ya...

That's a man.

There's only my Dad, my great uncle Vernon, and my Grandpa Lowell that I can really credit with teaching me what it takes to be a man. Sadly, Grandpa left us on Friday, ~9 of the clock, Sy-addle time. Here's some reflection:

• Know what it means to be a reasonable person, but not take any shit, without looking like a prat yourself? Yup: I had two generations of Sells power to help teach me about that.
• Know what it takes to live off the land? Syke - you probably don't - at least not in any useful way - unless you took woodsman courses from Lowell. He's the only guy that I know who shot more 3 points (before it was damn near manditory in WA - and I'm speakin' Western count when I say 3 point). The guys I hunt with that are older than me used to fear my Grandpa's legs in the woods - ever covered 10 miles in day? Uphill? Wiener... Mountain Goat slash human is a fair assesment, I would say. Hippy dippys - cattail roots and acorn mast won't cut it. A man needs meat to survive.
• Know how to build a camper/cargo trailer/who the hell cares from the ground up, with only the power of your mind to guide you? No? Lowell hacked that. Rumor had it, he used to put the challenge out, wallet on the table, to fellow Boeing engineers who had "great ideas" that weren't gonna work - because he could see it in his head. You got that sack? I didn't think so...
• Ever eat a raw potatoe sandwich? Try it...Lowell did...The Great Depression is something many of us learned about in school...but real men lived through.

Okay. May God's love smile on you Grandpa. I'll miss you. Living 3,000 miles away, I never got a real good chance to say goodbye. But I learned a lot from you. The other men I learned a lot from is my dad, who was pretty much Lowell's 1st Lieutenant of Manhood; and my Uncle Vern, who would be Colonel of tough - I won't explain.

Colonel of Tough. Period.

James says: You forgot to mention that time he shot that deer and had to slit it's throat with his buck-knife because he was out of bullets.
But most of all, he was proud of the men that we've become. We'll see you in the clearing at the end of the path Grampa...

Couldn't Resist

Anyone who has or spends much time around kids (and is male) probably has some idea of this pain...

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Yup. Things've been slow in my world, hence no posts.

Why dont'cha relax and grab some coffee or some Sanka.

That's nice.

There's cookies too, for those of you that want one.

Good, good. Just sit back and enjoy yourself.

We've recently been slammed with snow - the ride in this morning was slow and slippy. It's too cold outside to want to be outside much, so the snow sits and looks pretty, mostly. I need to get some snow-time outdoor equipment so I can get outside and enjoy it all once in a while. Maybe break ice in a kayak. The snow's too dry to have a snowball fight or build a sweet fort with the kids.

I came across this during my daily internets wanderings/watching cells fall into tubes the other day. Whenever I see things like this, I understand why the drawings I used to make in grade school looked the way they do. Generic muscle guys in camo pants with sunglasses on? Awesome. My kids are missing out on the videogame and comic book packaging of yesteryear. Too bad I don't get the joy out of art that I used too - I could still draw pictures of generic commandos, but I'd just disappoint myself with lack of anatomical accuracy. I'm a science type person, dammit! Which means I'm borderline OCD enough that I get little satisfaction out of creating even though I'm still driven to do it - I only see the flaws. Ramble, ramble.

Chrazy Christmas Achoutrement

I admit that, if it weren't for the kids, I'd probably give a big "Bah Humbug" to Christmas and just have a nice ham or turkey dinner on or around December 25th and call it a day. But since we do have kids, and having kids does make the holidays exciting even for grumpy adults like myself, the wife and I (mostly the wife - I just help with the tall guy things) have been a-decorating.

The "new" thing that we've picked up this year is LED Christmas lights. They're nice and bright and supposedly drain less power. But I wouldn't recommend hanging them outside if you live in a windy area. They do a weird flickering/pulsating/I don't know thing when they swing that's enough to make me nauseous. They do it if you move your head back and forth really quick, too. I figured that one out myself.


That's right. We don't have a fireplace, we a have a TV. And we don't have anything to set the TV on because we've moved around so much in the last 3 years. Now that we've been at one address for almost a year, it might be time to try and remedy that.

And of course our moderately sized fake tree.

Next year, if Connor's a bit more "hands off," I might be talked in to getting a larger, real tree.

In other holiday news, here's some links for my family members that want to know what to get the:
Both Boys.
Ethan.
Cindy. (And me?)
Crass commercialism...say "Yeah!"

And I think this would look great in our living room.

Remember this? Well, Cindy, who's braver than I, fixed it. Turned out that the circuit board that had been sent to us, in error, to fix a circuit board that wasn't broke but was believed to be faulty, was faulty. She plugged in the old board, we covered our eyes, and...It worked! Didn't even have to fiddle around re-calibrating the speed much, because I'd put motor and belts in like a champ. Yay Sells family!