Mike, Jill, Lucy, & Wubie!

A few Lucy quotes from August:

“Someday I’ll be four!”
– the first words out of Lucy’s mouth one morning

“Poopy old man!”
– Lucy talking to Wubie

“I feel refreshed and ready for anything now!”
– Lucy after pretending to nap for a few seconds

“Let’s make one side of the floor rainbowy colors, because girls like rainbows!”
– Lucy throws out marketing ideas while creating a “store” with her blocks

August is done, finito, history, so last month. Here’s an end-of-the-month post/collage to commemorate its passing. Some stuff from the past month August, 2010:

• Lucy went to her Gma Vita’s Birthday celebration/family get-together
• New iMac and Macbook Pro (and we got iChat to work)
• Mike bought some beef
• Lucy’s mommy made her a swell dolly
• Lucy had a birthday party for her Gpa Peter and Auntie Laura
• Palo Alto Obon Festival
• Two firsts: Lucy’s first movie and first time in a swimming pool
• Movies seen: Paper Heart and Hot Tub Time Machine
• TV Shows: Rome: Season 1 (Jill) and True Blood: Season 1 (Mike)

“Tell me a story Daddy, but keep your eyes open so I can see them!”
- Lucy getting her sleepy dad to tell her a story

Here are some pics of the kid from the past week. Every time I look at pics like these it always hits me how fast the kid is growing up.

We had a nice get-together at my mom’s place last weekend. My mom has a neat backyard, with lots of trees and plants, squirrels and birds. The neighborhood cats love it. These pics show one cat in particular who’s always lazing around in the yard. Lucy and her cousins gave the cat rockstar treatment. The cat loved the attention.

Jill and I had never used this pool before. However, the kid had never been swimming, so we packed up our towels and flip-flops and made the trek. It was actually pretty fun (and very refreshing) so I think we’ll make regular use of the pool until the weather cools.

I’ve written before about how I like tooling around on weekend mornings while the girls are asleep. Last weekend I hit a few garage sales. My dad took me to lots of flea markets when I was a kid. I loved going, even enough to get up at 7am on a Saturday (that’s pretty early when you’re 8 or 9.) He’d look at old hi-fi equipment while I was on the prowl for comic books.

One of my fondest memories involves my dad getting me a big box of a beat-up comics for $2. I had enough to keep me reading for the whole summer! Talk about heaven.

I think that’s why, to this day I love hitting garage sales, flea markets, and thrift stores. Anyway, at one of the garage sales I hit, I saw a neglected little bicycle. I immediately shifted into flea market mode:

(look at everything except bike; before leaving, look at bike and ask out of curiosity…)

Me: “How much is the bike?”
Seller: “$10.”
Me: (pause) “Would you take $5?”
Seller: “I’d rather have $10.”
Me: “Well, good luck with that!” (interest gone, turn to leave)
Seller: “Howzabout $7?”
Me: “I’ve got my truck right here. I’ll give you $5 and take it off your hands right now. You won’t have to worry about it.”
Seller: “OK. $5.”

My dad would have been proud of me. So I got the bike home, scrubbed a couple of years of grime off, and voila!—the kid has a bike.

“They are having catfood soup, carrotcakes, ice cream tea, and cheesy muffins. And they’re having vanilla cookies because a girl is coming over, and a girl can’t eat catfood!”

“And now the animals have changed up the menu to a different style. Because now they are having marshmallows and vanilla ice cream and grape sandwiches. And honey cereal. They changed the menu now, Dad!”

— Lucy explaining her dolls’ and stuffed animals’ lunch menu

Macbook Pro from Mike C on Vimeo.

When August began, we didn’t have any plans to upgrade our two main computers. However, as the month closes, that’s exactly what’s happened.

Earlier this month, we purchased a new iMac to replace one we’d sold to my sister. Well, recently we learned that a nephew about to start college was in the market for an inexpensive Macbook. So, to make a long story short, he now has Jill’s old laptop and Jill has a pretty nifty early Christmas present: a Macbook Pro.

So, here’s the second Mac unboxing video of the month. Since it’s Jill’s computer, she and the kid nudged out Wubie a bit this time (though he does make an appearance at the end.) We should now be set computer-wise for a while (I think!)

Music Used:

• Neonland from Wermland by Detektivbyrån

Lucy: (yelling) “Aaaaaaaah, YOGURT!”
Mom: “You’re screaming at your yogurt cup?”
Lucy: (calmly) “Yes, it won’t open.”
— another conversation overheard at the dinner table

2010.08 Friday Night Movies from Mike C on Vimeo.

Last night we went to Los Altos for a movie night. It was pretty neat. The city shut down a section of Main Street, set up a screen, and propped up a movie projector. In addition to this, they also brought in a jumpy house, a couple of slides, balloons, etc.. Needless to say, Lucy gave all of this a very hearty approval.

The kid had a blast, running from slide to jumpy house to slide again. She also got a balloon (in the shape of a pink bunny of course) and some body art. I managed to shoot some video. Hopefully,  Jill will be posting some pics too.

“I have to go pee before I go to school because the other kids don’t want their lunchboxes wet.”
— Lucy’s bathroom break reasoning (she and her mom play “schooltime” in the morning)

Some weekend mornings I like bumming around before the girls get up. Today was just such a morning, a nice lazy Sunday (emphasis on the lazy) where I got to tool around with nothing especially pressing to do.

Though I actually needed to run one semi-important errand (get cat food!), my prime directive was mainly to just bum around. Here’s where I went:

• The Sports Basement – my favorite sporting goods store, great place to kill time
• Fry’s – went in looking for an xlr to 3.5mm adapter cable; they didn’t have it
• Lee’s Comics – more time killing; flipped through a few books
• Pet Club – a bag of litter and 24 cans of food for a certain spoiled siamese cat
• Costco – they’re next door to Pet Club
• Keeble & Shuchat Photography – hallelujah, they had the xlr to 3.5mm adapter cable
• Cho’s – lunch: potstickers
• Palo Alto Farmers’ Market – same street as K&S and Cho’s; grabbed some lard for cooking (nice change of pace from coconut oil); mental note: bring the girls here

Here are a few pics of the aforementioned stuff, along with a couple of pics of the “kids” (Lucy and Wubie) enjoying their own lazy Sunday.

“Sometimes fyashyights get yost. They fall awound stuff.”
— Lucy explaining how household flashlights go missing
(“Sometimes flashlights get lost. They fall around stuff”)

What do ya know, another memory post. Please contain your excitement.

Once I was sure our new iMac was a keeper, I quickly ordered an extra 4GB of RAM. I took some pics while installing the additional RAM and decided to post ‘em here, along with notes on the installation process.

“There’s something brown in the town.”
— Lucy spots Wubie in the kitchen

We got a new iMac a couple of weeks ago. It’s pretty spiffy. The deal I made with myself on the actual purchase was:

You want a new computer? Fine—but only if you can pay for it with money made from selling stuff you already have. And make sure to sell the old computer while you’re at it!

Though I’d sold a few things to help pay for it, I hadn’t sold enough to cover the entire purchase—until this morning. Now, it’s been covered (and then some).

I had a pricey gadget that had been sitting in my closet for a while. I decided to post it on a few sites to gauge interest. One of the places I tried was Facebook Marketplace. Talk about a waste of time! Within a few hours of posting the item on Facebook, I received four messages. “Wow, that’s cool!” I thought as I opened the messages. All four messages were from different users with variations on the same scam:

“My (friend/cousin/sibling/etc.) would be very interested in this item. However, they are in (Nigeria/Africa). Can I pay you now? Would you take the following (goofy circuitous route) of payment?”

“Wow, that’s completely lame!” I thought as I deleted the messages.

Luckily, Craigslist came through for me. The prospective buyer and I exchanged emails during the week. Once I determined he was on the up and up, I arranged to meet him in an open public space (a mall). Rules I have on selling stuff:

• never let a prospective buyer inside your house
• cash only

If it’s an inexpensive/bulky item, I might meet them outside my garage. However, for higher priced items, I always meet them in a public space.

You never know who’s going to show up, so you’ve got to use your head and play it safe.  Anyway, the transaction went off without a hitch. Once it was completed, I had a bunch of cash and felt like a rapper for a second. However, I quickly reminded myself that this was money already spent.

Yep, the pragmatic polka singer in me usually wins out.

“You look fancy!”
— Lucy commenting on my attire as I leave for work (I’d decided to wear a sport coat)

iChat with Gma from Mike C on Vimeo.

Over the weekend we set up my mom’s Mac Mini with a camera so she could start doing video chats. We have family throughout California, Oregon, Hawaii, etc., so it’d be great if we could include regular video chats as an additional way to stay in touch with each other.

Setting up the chat was pretty simple. Mom just needs to get a little more familiar with the iChat application itself.

Note: on the video above you can only hear Gma’s side of the conversation and not ours. I think this is because I was using Skype on our iMac to walk Gma through this first video chat. Future video chats will have both sids of the conversation.

Music:

• Rymden I En Låda from Wermland by Detektivbyrån

“I’m a princess who doesn’t need a crown.”
— Lucy, after much deliberation (and misplacing her tiara) adds a new princess rule

We visited my mom (Lucy’s Gma) last weekend. In addition to getting caught up (and getting our fill of soup and adobo) we got a big bag of frozen lumpia to take home with us. Score!

Lucy and I decided to take a few pics of the batch we cooked up today. I like to wrap my lumpia in lettuce before I chow down, something I picked up from eating eggrolls at vietnamese restaurants. The lettuce adds a nice clean, cool crunch to go along with the fried, warm crispiness of the lumpia.

Of course, you can’t have lumpia (or just about any of my favorite filipino foods) without vinegar. I made sure to snap a pic of the condiment squirt bottle I use for my vinegar. The squirt bottle is great because you can get as much vinegar as you want as you chow down w/o having to double-dip your lumpia in a shared sauce dish. (Once bitten into, a lumpia’s structural integrity goes downhill fast; double-dipping would leave lumpia chud in the sauce dish.)

I usually stick the following in my sauce:

• vinegar
• garlic
• soy sauce
• pepper
• chili peppers

Hungry? Some miscellaneous links:

• Burnt Lumpia (Filipino Food Blog)
• My video of my mom making making lumpia (with help from a baby Lucy)
• The kid chowing down

“I’m going to put stickers on it so they know that Bundle, the greatest helper in the world, likes to put stickers on things!”
— Lucy, explaining the thinking behind plastering something with kitty cat decals

I got my own cheap point and shoot camera off Woot so that I don’t have to pilfer Jill’s all the time. I thought I’d test it out by taking a few pics.

The guitar in these pics looks really cool but doesn’t play that well. It’s just a few years old, a cheapie Fender Telecaster, probably made in Malaysia or something.

It’s been relic’d to look like an old tele that’s been around the block a few times. When I was younger I thought telecasters were totally lame, thought they were ugly. Through the years they started growing on me. Today, I think they’re really quite the lookers. I love that stripped down, minimalist look. Like strats, the older and more beat up they get, the better they look.

These two pics are of the keyboard that came with our new computer. Computers are the total opposites of guitars. The worse they look, the worse they are. I usually try to get rid of my computers (especially desktops) after a set numbers of years.

Godzilla. ‘Nuff said.