Growing Up

Lately, Pete's evening conversation of choice is to talk about how he's a little boy, and I'm a man, and when he grows up, he'll be a dad and have kids.

I asked him what he would do with his kids, and he said he'd take them places in the car. Places like Nana's house... or the State Fair. Whatever his kids want to do.

The other day, he says:
"It takes a really really long time for me to grow up, and I think I'm bored.
I think I want to be a grown up now, because I want to have kids."

Heather's response to me later: "It must look like we're having a lot of fun."

Chart Nerd #1

I know I've had nerdy charts on the site before:

Scrabble
Ascent #1
Ascent #2

But this is a new high. I was browsing the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website the other day,

(note my complete abandonment of pride and coolness)

and I realized that they keep track of all sorts of good stuff. So, I did what every excel geek would do, I made a graph showing the historical price of lettuce compared to the price of regular self-serve gasoline.



I may be imagining it, but there looks to me like there's a negative correlation between lettuce prices and gas prices. When gas goes down in price, lettuce goes up. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens sometimes. Check out 2002 and 2004. Maybe this is an investment strategy. Don't steal my idea.

Nora's tribute

Did anyone see the Crocodile Hunter episode of 20/20 last night? It was okay. Who couldn't like that guy?

Anyway, here's Nora's small tribute:

If you are a dreamer, come in.

This morning, I woke to realize that I had been dreaming of a Shel Silverstein poem. I know it's Shel Silverstein because I can clearly picture the drawing that accompanied it, and it's that semi-creepy, lumpy, pen-and-ink style of "Where the sidewalk ends".

Anyway, the poem was entitled "Sandra Dactylee", and it was about a teenage girl that text messages all of the time, and whose thumbs have turned into the keys of a typewriter.

I can't remember the whole thing, but I know the rhyme.
The first line ends in Dactylee,
The second line ends in "back to me" (as in, "she always stood with her back to me")
and the last line ends with "typewriter keys".

It's very silverstein-like, don't you think? I seem to remember that most of those poems were about kids that misbehaved, and ended up having some kind of grotesque deformity as a result.

The problem is, there's no way that it could be a poem that exists. Shel's last book was 9 years ago, and text messaging barely existed then.

So, I must conclude that I made up a brand new Shel Silverstein poem in my sleep, and I can't remember how it goes.

You Tube Dance Party

Some of you may have seen this elsewhere, but Heather insists that we participate in the sharing:



And then there's this:

Milky, Milky Cocoa

The song "My Humps", by the Black Eyed Peas just came my itunes mix. For those of you not familiar, it's a touching lyrical exploration of the "junk inside that trunk" and "lovely lady lumps". Don't ask what it's doing on my computer. It just came on. I don't know anything about it.

Anyway, when it started, I walked over to the computer to switch songs, and Pete said, "NO! I like this song!"

2 doses

Dose 1: When Nora was a baby, the only way she tolerated being held was facing frontwards. Now, when I call her over for a hug, she'll totter over to me, stop two feet short, turn around and back in for the hug.

Dose 2: Pete likes to go fast in the car, and he'll ask us for it. Yesterday, he asked Heather to go fast, paused, and said, "Mom, I wish Police tickets were good."

Rapid City, SD

I'm on my 10th or 11th work trip so far this year. I can't remember. I think that I've watched "Mega Structures" on the Discovery Channel at least 5 times this year, all in hotel rooms.

At Ellsworth Air Force Base, there is a men's bathroom with a urinal that was installed a couple of inches higher than normal. Underneath the urinal, there sits a footstool with a piece of paper taped to the top. The paper reads,

One step for small man,
one cleaner bathroom for mankind.

We'll be listening to Lawrence Welk

Heather says that tomorrow night we're having old people dinner:

Tuna Noodle Casserole and Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Actually, my trendspotter recently reported that Pineapple Upside-Down Cake is getting hip again.

Uncovery #8

Incredibly Cute Video:

Link

Thanks to Becky