Author: m

Desperate Arrested Development

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From the “OK name your price” dept…

Now that Arrested Development has aired its final self-destructive last episodes, I thought it was a good time to get off my booty and do something about it. As instructed in one of the final shows, the Home Builders Association (HBO) will never go for it, but it’s show time anyway baby, it’s SHOWTIME, so I wrote ’em both a letter. Here’s the email I sent:

We are not subscribers yet, but if you pick up Arrested Development we will sign up quicker than you can say Cu-CAW! Cu-CAW! Plus we will love you forever and get all our friends to subscribe and all that sort of good stuff.
Thanks for listening,
Mike and Andrea Behrns-Miller

” And that’s why you don’t use a one-armed man to teach a lesson!”

Chris The Good Neighbor Electrician

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From the “good guy” dept…
Came home to a short – electrical not theatrical, suxx0rz – I poked around a very small amount, unplugging everything and retrying the breaker to no avail. I gave my neighbor Chris a call, as he had worked his way through college as an electrician, and his wife said he would call back after the kids were in bed, but he showed up at the door a minute later. He pulled the cover off the breaker box, swapped wires around to isolate the problem from the box, went inside and started checking outlet wiring, ran down to the crawlspace under the house and followed all the wires there to check for pinches or staples, under there he determined where the home run was upstairs, back upstairs he opened up the home run, which was the main light switch panel, determined which of the connections was to blame, connected all the good connections, turned on everything to see what wasn’t working, found the one light that wasn’t working (the light over the kitchen table), completely disassembled and inspected that, reassembled it when he didn’t find anything, went back to the main panel and concluded it was either in the wall or between the two adjacent wall panels, took off the adjacent panel, and located the place where a live wire was shorting against ground. And all that while I told him I didn’t want to take up his time and he was on a ten minute timer. That was the most productive ten minutes I’ve ever witnessed! Thanks Chris, I gotta think up a way to pay ya back for that one!

Play find-the-short…

Wrenny Turns Seven!

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Wrenny is seven! I can’t believe it. We don’t have any babies in the house any more, just adorable young ladies. For her birthday Wren said she wanted a sleepover. Ruthie, Savanah, Olivia and Chloe joined Wren and Reiley for a lot of fun and games, including mom’s mac and cheese and pigs in a blanket and ice cream and cake (all veganified and they all loved it all!), Dance Dance Revolution (sent by Gram), mom’s eraser clay craft (a hit!), a Nancy Drew treasure hunt mystery that Grammy and I cooked up and in which Reiley played the horse-theiving bad guy (including cowboy outfit and moustache!), and (of course) late-night movies and popcorn. All fun and no troubles at all! What a great bunch of kids!

9.5 Battlestar Galactica finally starts up again…

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If you have been following the torrents, BSG was really fun at first. Almost the whole first season was available before the show premiered in the US (it had been shown in the UK first). So we were pulling down huge gulps of it, and it was delicious. But it’s been a long time since we’ve had fresh juice. Until now. And it is good to have it back again.
In case you missed out, it’s macho military sci-fi that keeps it kicked into overdrive, without detaching from the cerebral cortex. It’s survival of the human race, hunted prey, where every moment brings decisions of compromise. It’s humanity’s greatest creation, made in our image, turned against us, as they search for the answers we couldn’t give them to the big question of who we really are. Oh, and hard-drinking women who can kick your a$$.  If you’re a sci-fi fan you should track this show down, I think you’ll find it worth it.

modo madness

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Mom and Grammy were out shopping. I was at home with the girls and started playing with modo. The girls thought it was the coolest thing ever. And it is, because they could sit right down and use it! I only gave them 10 minutes each, and here’s some of the silly stuff they made by deforming some of the canned objects…

reiley's racing chair Wrenny all of us

Lost Worlds

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OK, it’s kind of a private joke, but I can’t look at the list of games that Dan and I threw together without choking with laughter. Digging the old visions of long gone cyberworlds out of the back of my cranium is like getting hit on the head with a baseball bat. Nostalgia on steroids!!

8.5 Sexy Beast

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Ben Kinsgley rocks, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. I can never pass up a thick-cockney-slurred ganster flick (as in “Heafrow”). Unkle’s soundtrack does a great job of throbbing and rumbling underneath the movie, keeping the cords of tension tight as the main cast awaits Ben’s character’s ominous arrival. But underneath it, this one has a heart of gold, sweet as pie. Fun fun.

Party Like It’s…

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My friend Larry was courteous enough to be born on New Year’s Eve, as well as having cultured in himself the ability to be a most excellent host. These facts conspired to bring about a great New Year’s Eve party. He decided on a casino theme, and spent his birthday daylight building a craps table. There was craps, blackjack and texas hold’em for everyone (no real money changed hands, we promise!), as well as more than enough alcohol for three times the crowd (which was large!). The Merchant’s parents were there, and charming Tom attempted to drink the whole party under the table. He almost succeeded! And we’ve all almost recovered. ‘Til next year!