I Have No One To Blame But Myself

Well. As I lay in bed this morning, Connor let me know that he has now learned app. 6 words. The first five words were - Mama, Dada, E-ten or E-tee ("Ethan"), Cah (Car), and Cop-Car or Cop-Car-Sih ("Cooper" or "Cooper Sit"). The sixth word?

"Ha-Hah."

As in:
"I just broke something intentionally now I'll look at my dad knowingly and say "Ha-Hah." Dammit! Too much of The Simpsons in this house...

Okay, back to my sinus infection.

B-Wizzard In The Mother Humpin' Hay-owse

A few pics. But none from Christmas, really. If anyone wants to see the pictures from the holidays, just look at the Flickr, man. They're all there.

For the last two years, Skip's gotten me a Cabela's gift certificate for Christmas. My order came today...

Sweater, cap, headlamp - all for under $65. I'm a savvy, savvy bargain shopper. Yes, that's a wool sweater -my clutzy atse can't have a cotton or poly sweater for more than a day without snaggin' it. The giant nose zit and chapped cheeks were free, and arrived a few days ago.

If I was good with GIF stuff, I would have made one of those retarded moving things out of those two pictures, instead of having two pictures posted. Know what I'm sayin'?

While I was trying to take pictures of myself, I had a monkey tugging at the camera's "Oh S#!%!" chord:

Oh, he was all smiles, the little devil.

Here's the only holiday pictures I'll post, as they need the most explaining.


The best part of having lamb for Christmas dinner? The Greek(ish) leftovers you get to have for lunch. Lamb-wrap and coleslaw, yeah.

Later that week...

I know that it looks a lot like a giant caterpillar that's been laid on one side and roasted, but what it really is is a pork loin that I butterflied in a spiral sorta thing, then wrapped some stuffin' all up inside of, and it came out...Gloriously.

I Know

I've got tons of pictures yet to blog, most from Christmas. But work has been either too busy or not busy enough to put them up (Interesting dichotomy, no?), so I'll leave you with a verbal update instead.

After temperatures in the 50's at the end of last week, we have hit official bitter, ass freezing cold recently. The windows in the shop and the upstairs are covered with a thick layer of frost on the inside. Metal doorknobs on exterior doors are also covered. My hands are cracking and bleeding from the lack of moisture - not to mention that I got a good coating of capsaicin on them de-veining/seeding some peppers yesterday whilst making delicious tortilla soup. When I took the dog out this morning, I hated life, and the snow on the ground makes the gross Styrofoam sound/feel underfoot. But I actually kind of like the cold - it's a novelty to a Seattleite like me.

I've got a few short, silent movies of the kids that I can send out - e-mail me if you want them and I'll send them. Mostly Christmasy stuff, I think.

I bid you adieu.

Meme Thing

Keith tagged me for this - I posted with it once, but wasn't happy with what I came up with on the fly so I deleted it. Hopefully no one read it. Here's the new version. Forgive me if I stop short of five...

1. I speak fluent gibberish. Seriously. I should record myself in the car sometime - especially if there's someone driving like an @$$ nearby. I can do a great stream of consciousness swearing bit that sounds like I'm cursing in Italian or something. But you'll never get to hear it - I don't think it would work at all in front of anyone else.
2. For whatever reason, since I met Cindy, neither one of us has lived anywhere that doesn't constantly need a light bulb replaced (or the entire fixture). Our last college apartments, apartments in both the Seattle area and Saranac Lake, and now the house...Always replacing bulbs, some of them only last a week or two at a time. Must be the wiring? Or maybe the wife and I exude some resonant EM waves that damage things like that?
   
3. My only ambition in life is to get through it all as easily as possible. That's a pretty attainable sounding goal, right? And yet, most of the time, I feel like I'd have more luck if I were trying to become president or an astronaut or something. Not that I'm complaining...
4. The number one thing that pisses me off the most are people who are rude, insensitive, or mean for no reason. I can actually laugh at the rest of it - and I'm talking about some things other people get really offended by (no examples, this is a family blog), most of the time. But people who are selfish and pigheaded to others with no good reason to behave that way can go stab themselves.

That's all I've got. Hope it helped...Anyone else that I know that blogs is now tagged to share five random facts about themselves with the world - since there's only two or three of you besides Keith, you should know who you are.

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!

My Neck Of The Woods

So, I got up nice and early this morning and went out in pursuit of the extraordinarily elusive ungulate. While I was sitting there, freezing in the snow, at about 10:30 or so, a shot rings out right up above me. It sounded like a .22 or some other small caliber. Nothing unusual. Except that, after he shoots, the guy proceeds to travel around hooting and hollering for the next 2+ hours! I can't figure out what he was doing, he just walked around shouting "Hup-Hup-Ho-Hooey-Ho-Hup" and occasionally howling. He covered some ground two. He started out heading north from where I was (I never did see him, although I'd guess he was no more than about 100 feet from me when he shot), it sounded like he got quite a ways away...But then later, after I had headed south a ways down into a creek bed, I could still hear him carrying on, but now he was quite a ways south of where I was. I'd guess he walked at least two miles hollering like that. The only thing that I could think of is that he had winged a coyote. I had seen a whole bunch of tracks in the vicinity of his shot earlier.

Speaking of my neck of the woods, here's an oddity from my town:

That's right. In TL, you can pull a bottle of Coke out of a dead NASCAR driver's groin.

T.G. Aught-Five. Jagga

Thanksgiving was good as always. I think that the thing I like best about massive turkey dinners is that between the preparation and stuff-yourself-to-the-gills feasting, one can really feel like they've accomplished something. Here's some pictures, but check out Cindy's blog for more.


There is a subtle difference between these two pictures. Can you spot it?

Picture A: Cindy pretends to carve, Ethan looks on...Think "Better Homes and Gardens" cover or something. Picture B: Scruffy Brandon does some actual carving.

I usually don't get to eat in peace. Of course, Cindy never does, and at least cute pictures get taken when I'm being disturbed.

Picture A: Ethan's school "I'm a pilgrim" thing. Picture B: Want a treat?

Love Those 80's

There should have been a movie made in the 80's about a kid who got picked on a lot. But he still kicked a lot of ass, did it with the prom queen, and just wanted to rock out.

And this could have played during the credits.

And he could have worn a decepticon t-shirt throughout most of the film.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm A Lumberjack, And I'm Not Okay.

Because I'll be here at work until freakin' ten. With a headache. And I'll miss "Prison Break" (I'm pretty pathetic...). But I did coin a new word today...

"Suckulation."

As in: The water in the special FACS chiller is no longer moving. The pump must have lost all suckulation.

Simon and I tend to make up new words and phrases with some regularity. Unfortunately, it's usually when someone with a less than perfect grasp of the English language is in the lab asking us questions. So we have little doubt that some poor, foreign post doc or visiting scientist has used "binning issues," or "digital signal differential biasing (my favorite - think about it - those combined words = nothing)" in a talk, or suggested that a FACS operator somewhere else try "tweaking a pot." For other imaginary words, e-mail the hell out of Keith. (Okay, probably, don't, but I don't want to sound like too much of a self inflating genius). Keith taught me such useful terms as "torquetion," "grabbity," and "gription."

Woad to your mother.

(Blogger just tried to replace "freakin'" with "foreskin.")

What Does It All Mean, Basil?

As I was puttering around in the yard a week or so ago, something unusual caught my eye. Laying underneath what used to be the day lilies was a pink plastic bubble, of the variety that falls out of the vending machines one finds at supermarkets. Inside of said bubble was the most wondrous piece of plastic I have ever layed eyes on.


Santos...It rolls off the tongue.

Who could this penitent man be? After exhaustive research, I discovered that his name is Santos. Repenting after a life of crime because he is the last of four brothers left alive in the hood.

What does this mean? Why did this small harbinger of greater things appear in my yard? Is it from an errant child, tossing his toys out of the car window in a petulant act whilst traveling past my house? Are the neighbor's trying to tell me something about what they think of my way of life by bombarding my house with cheap trinkets? Am I supposed to get down on my knees and pray, because the shit's about to hit the proverbial fan? I guess it will all be one of life's great mysteries, that will no doubt haunt me until the end of my days.

Sign me,
Fascinated in the ADK's

What In The Samhain?!

Halloween was fun this year. The boy wore the same costume as last - going to a new school has some perks. The little one was a kitty. Much candy was gathered (go to Cindy's blog for a picture of that), very little candy was given out (see Cindy's blog to hear how we got rid of the stuff we'd bought). (Just go to Cindy's blog. You'll only get pictures and crappy humor here). Woad.

Oh, and yes, I'm still alive, employed, not currently on vacation, and handsome (kinda).

The pictoriographical representations of our Halloween celebrations:

I have no freakin' idea where that last picture came from. I don't even remember Flickring it...

Maybe we had so few Trick-Or-Treaters because our front porch was so spooky, in a very Martha Stewartish way.

Cindy got many Halloween related objects that were methodically destroyed by the toddler:

I've got some silent film of this episode if anyone's interested.


We like video games in this house...


He was three things: A kitten, a devil, and an angel.

Connor's interest in candy goes only as far as being fascinated by the garish wrappers.

Not much else new in my world, but boy it sure seems like I've been busy - work's been hectic, I've been going at the attempted deer slaying every morning I have off, and there's always something involving kids, pets, or the house to do.

Tune in next time, same bat-place, same bat-channel.
(By the way, if you're a geek like me, check out Batman Begins. Probably the best bat-movie made yet. If you're a geek like me, you've probably already seen it.)