Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

Prompted by the fact that the truck's Utah plates expire in 14 hours, I have finally made the leap and gotten it registered in Texas. While I was at it, I got my Texas driver's license, too. A few days past the required 30, but that's all behind me now. Let me tell you, I was shocked - SHOCKED! - at how smoothly this whole process unfolded. The total time for this little adventure was 75 minutes. That includes filling out forms at not one, but two government agencies, thirty miles of driving, and a clandestine stop at a convenience store for a bottle of liquid stamina. The only real downside to this whole thing is that I had to give up my Utah license, which had a much better picture than I could ever take now. This is due to 20 lbs of stress baggage that, while no longer growing, isn't yet shrinking as it should. (Sigh) I also chose not to get the motorcycle endorsement on this license. It was an extra $15, and that's just more than I was willing to pay for somethi...

Near the end of "The Pink Panther" (the 1963 original), Inspector Clouseau is being cross examined in the trial of The Phantom. "How much does a police inspector get paid? Enough to buy your wife a $10,000 mink coat?" " No, of course not." Then " We know for a fact your wife spent at least $30,000 on clothes during the past year. " To which, in all sincerity Clouseau deludedly replies "Sir, my wife is very frugal. She saves out of the housekeeping money." This little exchange cracks me up every time I hear it. Unfortunately, it sounds an awful lot like my plan for the summer. Somehow I'm going to keep two little girls entertained all day while fulfilling my obligations to my employer, keeping up with a house in perpetual remodel, and maintaining an acre lot with a battery-powered push mower. All of this is in addition to sleeping a full eight hours every night, spending quality time with my wife, and taking a few hours each week, ju...

While running errands yesterday, I found myself at the grocery store. After buying the things we needed (and a few that we didn't), Alyssa and I made our way back to the car. I was extremely annoyed to discover that a minivan had taken the spot next to ours, and the driver (who will remain free of adjectives because I'm trying to watch my language) had parked at such an angle that their rear passenger tire was completely inside our spot, and there was no way I could have backed out straight without hitting them. I toyed with the idea of backing out straight anyway, but I had every reason to believe that our car would receive the greater damage. Deflating the tires was considered, but with my luck such a discourteous driver (oops, that's an adjective, isn't it) would probably also be inattentive, and they would get on the freeway, lose control, and roll the van into a school bus. So I opted for opening Alyssa's door hard. Really hard. Then, since it was difficult to ...

Today was early out day for the girls, so I took the afternoon off and we went to see Shrek the Third. I present now a review from not one but three points of view. (How deluded is that ?) The Computer Graphics Geek in me loved this movie. Technically, it was amazing. The quality of the graphics was stunning, and the characters were more life-like than ever before. I remember being this impressed with the first Shrek movie, and again with the second. The effort Dreamworks puts in to improving the technology behind each new film is obvious, and in this they succeed completely. This movie adventure also marked my first trip to a theater with digital projection, and the quality surpassed anything I have ever seen in my admittedly sheltered life. Now that I have experienced digital projection, I may never watch a movie on film again. The Aspiring Writer in me was less impressed. The first Shrek had a great story to go along with the technology and humor. I felt the story in Shrek II was ...

Today someone found my blog by doing a Google search on how to get onto webkinz world without a webkin. Shame on you!

Anna's home sick again today, so she had me go to the 50% off book fair at her school to buy some books that she wanted. She made a list. One of the books on the list was "Rambo Fairy." I finally figured out that this was her creative spelling for "Rainbow Fairy," but the mental image just would not go away.

I have come across a fantastic website called chordie . It is loaded up with chords and lyrics for what looks like thousands of songs. If you play a fretted instrument, you need to check this out. Not only does this site provide a large quantity of songs, but it shows chord diagrams for nine(!) flavors of guitar, banjo, mandolin, and ukulele. In addition, the chords are in a format that allows for automatic transposition, which is incredibly helpful for a fat-fingered beginner like me with a lower-than-average vocal range. Now instead of "Six Little Ducks" all the time, we can all sing Weird Al's Yoda . Stay tuned for details on my new CD, The Deluded Ukulele: A Collection of Non-standard 80's Standards . (Release date not set.) Update: Chordy.com has Tom Lehrer!

It has been a goal of mine all school year to get Alyssa to the bus on time. She gets a special bus on a dedicated route, and it comes right to the end of our driveway. At 6:45 am. This has not been easy. However, during the last week or so, I have finally managed to have her ready for school and out in the driveway when the bus arrives. Now that there are 11 days left in the school year, we have it figured out. Alyssa likes to run up and down our driveway, pick up the pill bugs and throw them into the grass. This is what she was doing this morning when I heard her bus coming, so I called to her to come. She came, with her hand on her crotch. "Tee-tee," she said. Now, the bus ride is 45 minutes long (I'm told she sleeps both ways) and so there was no way I could put her on with a bladder that needed to clear. So I explained our situation to the bus driver and packed her into the house like a sack of potatoes. We took care of the business at hand, but just as I was about t...

It's a quarter past seven, and both girls are sound asleep in their beds. I'm not surprised by Alyssa. Taking a nap just in time for dinner has been one of her favorite tricks for quite a while now. But Anna, that's another story. She stayed home from school today with a low-grade fever and a general not-feeling-well sensation. Her nose is a little runny, and there's a little congestion in her chest, but not really much more than that. I've also had a bad case of the grumpies - the kind usually reserved for when I'm 2-3 hours short of sleep every night. But I've slept well the last few weeks, meaning I've gone to bed on time. I really don't feel sleepy. Just tired and run down and ambivalent and apathetic. Fortunately, Kara made plans to stay home this week when I thought I would be going to the southern hemisphere, and even though I'm not traveling she's decided to stay home most of the week, anyway. Which was a big help today with Anna. I...

From Anna's Words of Wisdom - "The thing about big kids is their shirts have more room to write things on."

It was field day for the Aledo ISD elementary schools. This is where all of the elementary school kids from the three schools in the district (two grades at a time) all gathered at the middle school field and played. Second and third graders came in the morning. I found my way over there to see Alyssa. She was having a great time with Mrs Yates, who helps her most of the day at school. I stayed to watch her play a quick round of Yard Golf. She golfs like her dad. "I'm going to hit this ball as many times as I can." The bigger kids took the field in the afternoon. Here's Anna with her teacher, Mrs Riley. I didn't just go to field day to take pictures of my kids, though. I went to help out. A note came home on Wednesday, begging for volunteers for the afternoon shift. I'd worked some long hours earlier in the week, so I decided I could take some time and help. I was assigned to the Seed Spitting game. I didn't tell Anna I was coming, and she was very surpris...

We got an email yesterday telling Anna that she was not cast in the Miracle Worker . It was a very kind rejection note with good, constructive feedback. Neither Anna nor I were surprised or upset by the news. It could have been a grueling schedule, especially if I actually end up traveling for work this summer. As it turns out, though, it was a good (inexpensive) learning experience in many, many ways.

I had been selected for a trip halfway around the world. I got an email telling me so. The email came from my boss's boss, so I knew it was legit. He's too busy running a large development team to send out spam. But something about this offer didn't quite seem right. I would be going to help out at a trade show in Australia and do some training in Taiwan. However, I'm an engineer who writes printer drivers, and there was no driver development work associated with this trip. Not that I have any problem with trainings or trade shows. I just didn't think they would want me to stop development work for a week and a half to do these other things. Turns out I was right. Now, a big trip like this comes as a very mixed blessing. It's hard to be away from home for a week or ten days, and the work that needs to be done doesn't go away. But it is nice to have a break and see new places and do new things. And the 31 hours of total flight time had a certain appeal, as f...

Here's the other half of Saturday. Alyssa had a birthday party for a girl in her class at school. After Anna's callback, we ran to Whole Foods because it was sort of almost kind of close by (closer than it is to our house, any way). After that, we went shopping for a birthday present at the storage unit. We got a few George Foreman Play-Doh Grills on closeout a couple of years ago, and Alyssa thought it would be perfect for this little girl. The party was at Jump-X-Treme, and both Anna and Alyssa had a great time. Here's Alyssa with her teacher. She didn't want ol' dad to help out - only teachers and friend's parents.

Contrary to popular belief, I have not decided to just rest on my laurels now that I have 100 posts in my blog. Quite the opposite, actually. This week has been among the busiest in a long time. The irony is that with so much to write about, there is so little time to write. One of the big things to happen this week was Anna's audition for a part in the Miracle Worker at the Artisan Center Theater . This is not the same theater where she had her class, and it is actually kind of far away - 30 miles or so. But I came across the announcement for the audition, and I thought Anna would really enjoy it. If nothing else, the process of auditioning would be very good for her. I gave her the audition notice to read, and I expected her to be very excited and jump all over the opportunity. Instead, she was very unenthusiastic, which I didn't really understand. I finally talked her in to auditioning. We went for the open auditions on Wednesday night, and nearly got washed away by a tremen...

Every eight hours, Anna can do a job in Webkinz World. She uses the Webkinz Money she earns to buy things for her Webkin, Cecilia . Virtual things, fortunately. This morning she didn't have time to do her Webkinz job, because I had her unload the dishwasher. Could I please do her Webkinz job, she asked? Sure. My job was to make hamburgers that matched the picture. I though I saw two pieces of lettuce. I kept trying to add two pieces of lettuce. My burger kept getting rejected. I got fired. Sorry, Anna.

When I submitted my first blog posting 120 days ago, I had no idea just where this whole thing would go. I had simultaneous visions of awards, acclaim and thousands of readers, and the whole thing fizzling out after three posts. T he results have been somewhere in the middle, as they usually are. While I haven't posted every day, I think I've done a pretty good job at highlighting the important aspects of our lives as well as putting out some general thoughts and musing. This marks the 100th posting to the Fifteen Minutes of Delusion blog, and to celebrate I'm going to take a cue from self-important sitcoms and issue a retrospective. I've picked 10 posts that have some significance in the evolution of this blog, and present them for you now in the order in which they were written. 1. The Hazards of Being Fast . After reading this blog posting, Anna was extremely angry with me, meaning this is the first posting with any controversy. 2. Sometimes the Solution is Hard Liqu...

Anna came home with a landmark report card this Friday. All of her grades for the past six week period were 90 or above - that includes spelling! Anna's spelling grade has been just in the passing range. She is very creative, and her spelling reflects that creativity. She comes by it honestly, through her father and grandmother (at least.) I'm reminded of the words of Andrew Jackson, that great man made famous by the $20 bill. He said “It’s a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word!” Fortunately, I have technology to nudge me with little squiggly lines under non-conforming words, and a simple right click will give me all kinds of good suggestions. Fourth grade spelling tests don't allow for such luxuries, and so we've implemented a study and practice regimen that Anna has followed faithfully. She's worked hard and made me very proud.

The expected visitors to our house never materialized. The girl is in even worse shape than Kara at the moment, and was up sick all night and in no shape to drive the hour from Dallas. No matter, though. All of the work that we did was sorely needed. We even got the upper hand in the girls room, although it required a tremendous effort, and a significant number of tears were shed in the process. The girls had their fair share of play time, though. They had a lot of fun making a "bubble" out of a fitted sheet. Anna would flip the sheet into the air to fill it like a parachute, then set it down on the ground. The resulting bubble lasted for a full minute or more, and was good for quite a few laughs. Alyssa is actually under the bubble. Anna could also do it where both of them got underneath. With today being Cinco de Mayo, I thought we should have a nice Mexican menu for dinner. After all, we have a special dinner for St. Patrick's Day , and Kara is always asking us what we...

While it's clean, I thought I should take a quick picture of the bathroom. I really like the way this room turned out - especially the tile. This is the same tile we have in the girl's room - we had enough left over.

A month or two ago, I set up a schedule for myself. It starts at 5:30 am, when I get up to get the girls ready for school, and goes until 9:30 pm. From 9:30 to 10:30, I complain about how I'm supposed to be in bed already, but I don't need a schedule to tell me to do that.. My part of the day is scheduled for the hours between 7:30 am and 6:00 pm. At a minimum, eight of those hours are set aside for work, leaving me at most 150 minutes of discretionary time to do things like shower, eat, blog, run errands, keep the washer and dryer fed, pay attention to the yard, and clean the house. Now, naturally some of these tasks spill out into the after dinner time, but for the most part if I really want to get anything done, I need to do it during that so called discretionary time. Today, my discretionary is being eaten by the steamer. You see, I printed out the pictures of our house for Kara, because she wanted to show some people at the clinic who are in a situation similar to ours . A...

In honor of the fact that Kara took pictures of the kitchen last night, I thought I would post them, even though it is still a work in progress. It will continue to be a work in progress for a while, as most of the work still left to be done is cosmetic and therefore bumped in line behind some more essential tasks (like blogging). First, a look at the "before" kitchen. Really, not too bad, except for that hideous wallpaper. But the cabinets and counters are nice, and the pantry was functional. But for our needs, it had problems. The counter tops were laminate on pressboard, which doesn't work. The shelves in the pantry and trim were pine, to which Kara is very allergic. The oven was nice, but the stove top had open coils, which emit an odor when they run. And although we worked very hard to find a house with solid wood cabinets, and spent hour upon hour sealing them with a safe sealant, they just didn't work. So now they are in the garage . Bear in mind that the chang...

Anna's Tuesday started out the way it usually does - with a CD playing in her clock radio. For the last few days, it's been Elmo. I heard her moving around, and heard Elmo singing, and was concerned, because my alarm hadn't gone off yet, and I'm supposed to be up half an hour before the girls, so I can get breakfast and lunch ready.I checked my cell phone/alarm clock to see why that was. The clock said 12:14 am. By the time I got to the girl's room, Anna was halfway dressed, and had already been in the office to check her email. Alyssa was fortunately still asleep. A quick look at the clock showed that alarm 2 had gotten turned on, and was still set to the default 12:00 am. Why does the alarm always default to 12:00 am? Why not 6:00 am? That would make more sense. Anyway, I convinced Anna that it was NOT in fact time to get up, and she should go back to sleep. She informed me that the internet wasn't working, and could I please fix it. No. At least, not until a...