Author: cosmo

On Tuesday, I took Alex and Zack to Lyons Pinball, which is a little hole-in-the-wall place in Lyons (about 10 miles west of Longmont).

They have maybe 40 pinball games and a few old arcade games as well. We each had five dollars’ worth of quarters and managed to get an hour of entertainment out of them. It was a lot of fun to play some old-school solid-state pinball games as well as newer ones that were electronic and had a lot of effects and “missions”.

Growing up, my good friend Aron had a pinball game in his basement and we had endless hours of fun playing it on poker nights. I always thought it would be cool to do the same thing.

Tonight, the boys and I went over to Roger’s house. He has three pinball games in his almost-renovated basement. The nice thing about them is they don’t require quarters, heh. So we played for about two hours and had a great time. Now Zack keeps asking when we’re going to get a pinball game of our own. He’s really quite good– some kind of knack for it. Alex doesn’t do quite as well so he gets a little frustrated, but I think he’ll catch the bug if we play a few more times.

Now I’m off to Craigslist to see what might be available…

I found another hilarious sad woman meme:

Yep, summer is definitely here.

Laralee bought some peppers and I thought the vibrant colors were pretty fun.

The rats all enjoyed Kyra’s bowl of Rice Krispies.

This cracked me up.

The new office is finally complete.

Yesterday the glass was frosted, and that finishes the series of contractors I’d hired to do various things. Now all of the office walls have a four-foot-high frosted strip, with regular glass the rest of the way up.

There’s been some joking about no-pants days, since you will no longer be able to see beneath everyone’s desks.

The break room has the fridge and some nice tile. We moved the foosball table in there because we needed room for the ping-pong table, and also because the acoustics are much better. When you slam a ball into the goal it echoes very nicely and sounds appropriately awesome.

And the conference table– all twelve feet of it– is pretty sweet. It doubles as a “duck and cover” fallout shelter in case of nuclear attack, because it’s the single heaviest thing in the office.

All in all, I’m really happy with the way things turned out. It was a tedious (and expensive) process but it’s a great work environment.

By now most of the internet has heard of the Orvillecopter. Some guy had a cat named Orville (named for the Wright Brother) and sadly Orville passed on to the Great Litterbox in the Sky. Some pet owners would bury their cat. Others might have him stuffed so they could always be reminded of their fond times together. But this guy turned Orville into a helicopter.

Working with a taxidermist, he inserted a bunch of model helicopter parts into Orville. His four paws are splayed wide, with a rotor on each one. Landing struts hang from his belly. And yes, he does fly.

Of course there are many people who are thoroughly upset about this, claiming that it’s disrespectful and exploitative. Whatever. I think it’s hilarious, and tons more fun that a plot in the back yard or a stationary stuffed cat to tuck in the corner and gather dust.

Roger invited me to join him at Lyons Pinball, a little dive in the nearby town of Lyons which– surprise!– specializes in pinball games. They have maybe forty or fifty pinball games, ranging from “classic” all-mechanical ones which probably have vacuum tubes behind the scenes to fancy new ones with lots of machinery and “missions” and LED displays. We made the rounds and had a great time. After an hour I had to head out to a meeting, but I’ll definitely be back. Zack heard about it and wants to head up there. And at the end of the night I’d spent less than five bucks in quarters: not bad for an evening’s entertainment.

We have three rats as pets, and tonight I decided we need to formally acknowledge our fourth rodent in the house. There’s a tiny brown mouse who’s been living in our basement for the past few months. I’m not sure where he hides, exactly, although on two occasions I’ve heard him scratching around inside the ceiling of my office.

A few nights a week, at about 9:30 Laralee and I will settle down in the family room to watch TV. Inevitably, during the show we’ll see the little guy pop out from under the basement door and zip across the floor to the laundry room. Then he’ll round the corner into the family room and go behind the TV. After a few minutes it’s over to the back door, then quickly under the couch. A few more minutes pass and he darts into the kitchen before heading back downstairs. It’s really quite funny because he always takes the same route. I imagine he’s just looking for a way out of the house. We’ve made a few attempts to catch him but he’s really fast– sometimes he’ll make a sharp turn on the hardwood and his little feet can’t get a good grip so he sort of slides a bit, frantically pumping his feet to get traction again.

I think I’m going to just go ahead and open the doors one of these evenings, and see if he takes the opportunity to escape.

Oh, and I decided to name him Franklin. No idea why– it just struck me.