Month: June 2011

Although a phone number ending in -0999 is fun to say when people ask, it turns out it makes it really hard to spell anything. I was poking around the internets tonight and found a little program that takes a phone number and tells you all of the words you can spell with it.

Yeah, so those are pretty awesome and easy to remember. And seriously, this program thinks “SC” and “SB” and “PB” are words? I suppose you could argue they’re state abbreviations and chemical symbols, respectively, but hardly useful for spelling a phone number.

About two years ago I registered a Google Voice number for Zing Studios that ends in -ZING. Too bad I don’t remember the first six digits.

Laralee is on her annual pilgrimage to Burley, Idaho to visit her mom for a week. The kids are with her, leaving me a lone man at home. So I’m taking care of the usual chores– I even did some laundry this evening!

Aside from the nightly adventure of putting the chickens (yes, the chickens) into their coop, I need to let the rats loose so they can get a bit of exercise. They’re pretty darn funny because after being locked in a cage all day, they’re really really excited to get out and run around our bedroom. I close the door so they’re at least somewhat contained, and they spend twenty minutes exploring all of the nooks and crannies* around the room.

Roxy is the funny one because she’s young, energetic, and– if I can be blunt– not very bright. The window is open to let in some cool night air, and there’s a box fan blowing. She loves sitting on the windowsill, so she keeps trying to get up there. It’s about a two-foot jump from the floor, and she’s attempted it a couple of times but can’t quite make it. So she whacks against the wall, recovers for a second, and then hops across the carpet looking for something new. Coconut, who is older and presumably wiser, knows better and chooses to climb my back instead, perching on my shoulder as I type this. Crazy rodents.

So for now it’s fun bachelor time, but in a day or two I’ll be missing everyone (the house is sure quiet!) and awaiting their return. It sounds like they’re having a good time up in Idaho, though, so all’s well.

* Does anyone ever talk about just a nook? Or just a cranny? It seems like it’s always “nooks and crannies”.

I don’t even know what this means, but it cracked me up.

Kyra bought me 8-packs of my favorite candy bars for Father’s Day. Awesome.

From an article by Eric Hammer-Lahav:

Man, that’s dead right. I login to Facebook about once a month, only to find a long list of weird one-sentence posts that don’t make much sense. I suppose they’d be more sensible if I was tuned in daily to the musings and random mutterings of these long-lost friends, but honestly it’s not that interesting to me.

Yesterday I took time off work (part of my “gradual retirement” plan) and spent some quality time with Kyra. We had lunch, ran some errands, and then decided to tie-dye some shirts.

It started out in the garage, soaking white t-shirts in water and soda ash (?) and then pouring dye on them.

After we finished, we bagged the dyed clothes and let them sit for about 16 hours. This afternoon we pulled out the bags to see what our creations turned out to be.

It was sort of like opening a Christmas gift– we had no idea whether the shirts would look like a mess of color or wicked cool. As it turned out, some were cool:

But some were kind of… uhh…

And the socks? Let’s not talk about the socks, except to say that tie-dyed socks aren’t nearly as cool as they might seem.

So now all of the goods are sitting on the trampoline drying in the sun. Then we have to wash them and hope the colors don’t bleed or fade too badly, and finally have some fun new shirts to wear.

I hate Drupal caching.

Today: the first– and last– photo of the Space Shuttle docking at the International Space Station.

Never before has such a photo been taken, and since the shuttle fleet is being retired this year, it won’t happen again. Kind of a shame. I’m not too broken up about the end of the shuttle legacy, but I feel like we’re at the dawn of the commercial space race and in the next few years we’re going to see some pretty cool stuff like this.

Tonight was the GRU summer ultimate league draft. As always it was a lot of fun picking players for my team this year. This is my twelfth year in GRU and it’s always an awesome part of my summer. I’ve been a team captain for many years, but decided last summer to take a break and let someone else run the show. As it turned out, I found that I missed it so this year I volunteered as a captain again.

Once again I asked the lovely and talented Brenda Gallagher to be my co-captain. I played with her my first year in GRU, back in 1999, and I’ve been on her team five times since then. That’s pretty rare considering the number of people in the league and the turnover every year as old-timers “retire” and new players join up. But I love playing with her, and this will be our third season captaining together.

Here’s a shot of Brenda last year as she writes our team cheer:

At the end of every game each team writes and performs a cheer for the other team. Win or lose, we sing a goofy song or write a poem or limerick or just come up with something witty and complimentary. Yeah, it sounds like something you’d see in the six-year-old tee-ball league, but it’s actually a lot of fun and completely embodies the spirit of GRU– and ultimate in general. We’re out there to have a good time with friends on a beautiful Colorado summer evening.

I can’t wait.