Guides and Princesses Graduation

Reiley finished her last YMCA Princesses’ Spring Outing with a bang – more specifically a splash. We cooked brats and soydogs over the grill, had the Friday night ice cream social, woke up to reveille, missed ALL of our scheduled activities, but did what we wanted on our own time, going for a joyboy boat ride in the light rain, bike riding, shark tooth searching, hiking, snake handling, tree house climbing, soccer, splashing each other with cold lake water until we were swimming, and on Sunday… finally… with only 5 minutes left on the activities clock, decided to take the zipline plunge.

Reiley had such fun that she cried when it was over – poor kid, it was her final trip, and Wrenny takes over next year.  But we’ll keep up the adventures.  There’s something really special about spending individual time with each of the girls – you get to really connect instead of always playing “break up the fighting”.  Another dad in Guides and Princesses takes each of his kids, one at a time, to breakfast every Saturday, giving them each a turn to pick their favorite place and hang out with dad.  He says it’s definitely one of those things in life he “did right”.  Awesome.

9.0 Crimes and Misdemeanors

We seem to watch a Woody Allen movie every other week or so, and almost always love them – OK, we recently fell asleep on a late late night of watching “Life and Death” but fortunately woke up in time to nearly vomit with laughter at the ending scene (no spoilers allowed, sorry). There is so much to enjoy in his stuff – outlandish slapstick physical comedy that would make Benny Hill and Mel Brooks proud, unmatched philosophical perspectives – no one else is even in the ballpark on that one, fantastic characters all over the place, and plenty of poignancy and irony.

He’s nearly always center-stage, so if you are intolerant of his philosophically-driven cynicism, hypochondria and paranoia, or outright goofiness, sure it might not be your thing. (Ed.: he married his daughter. Rebuttal: Celebrities are allowed a few eccentricities! Ed.: Let me repeat… his daughter! Rebuttal reprise: I just said to Andrea “there must be a word to describe old guys that like younger women” and got the irony-laden response: “yeah normal”) But personally he’s made my life just a little bit richer. Don’t miss this one in particular – it boasts a central story on the inevitability of justice, reaching Poe-like intensity before… well, like I said, no spoilers.

Desperate Arrested Development

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

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…

8.0 The Village

From the “red sleastacks” dept…

This was fun. We went in with low expectations – thrillers are definitely not our film genre of choice – and spent the first few minutes snickering. But we were pulled into the yarn of this creepy fairytale and had a good time with it. It is nicely shot, nicely acted, and has the signature Shyamalan twists that crescendo to the moment where all the pieces fall together, just as they are revealed (a little earlier if you pay attention).

Wrenny Turns Seven!

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…

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

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