Danimals Crush Cups

The new Danimals Crush Cups commercials sort of make my stomach churn. To boot, the whole process looks sort of obscene. No. Not sort of. It's obscene.

http://www.danimals.com/crushcup/index.html

Arts and Crafts II

Today, after a short happy hour with the other managers that ended up in having most of a Stella Artois spilled on my shoes (not my own), I stopped by Michael's to find felt for my next art project with the elementary school kids. I have an idea about how to work with the Gauguin and one other Institute of Art item in order to discuss perspective and relief. While I was there I picked up glycerin soap and a tube of sharks so Eryn and I can have some fun making treasure soap for my nieces.

I thought it would be nice to post a picture or two of what we did for the rock gardens in a bowl that were meant to show a little bit about the T'ai-hu.

These are the bags full of rock garden materials. This was the light part. The 24 bowls with sand were the heavy lifting.

And this is a sample garden Eryn made. Her garden from class was much less busy. She took advantage of all the leftover materials I had at home. The school version was separated sticks that she and her partner claimed were for jumping from one to the next. Another pair of girls had a copse of trees. And a third set had a long rock in the middle that was a "log" to sit on. Eryn claims the real rocks in this one are a cave to sit in.

Sock Hop

Pooteewheet went to play poker tonight and Eryn and I went to the elementary sock hop. My wife was bemoaning the fact she was missing something so fun, but Eryn only wanted to stay for about 45 minutes and then she was all done. I don't think she related well to the children who were pretending to jam on the plastic guitars and saxaphones they bought, or the ones (e.g. almost every little girl there) who knew all the words to the Taylor Swift songs. Instead she wanted to get home and check out her new Mac Book Pro. Obviously we've brought her up wrong. I can only hope she grows up to be the big sister who shows, sister in tow, wearing white short shorts and enough makeup for half a dozen women.

But she did get excited about dressing up and wearing my wife's pearls. She's looking a little sleepy here before we even got started. As a point of interest, she did try to dance with a boy, but he kept running away and hiding.

They're not Weeds, They're Plants!

I taught two 25 minute classes in art appreciation at a local elementary school today. In order to teach the kids about the T'ai Hu room exhibit (officially, The Studio of Gratifying Discourse) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I brought a number of plastic bowls full of sand so the kids could make mini rock gardens with rocks, sticks, evergreens, and multi-colored sponge pieces. While talking about how the T'ai rocks inspired the contemplation of nature within where one lived by serving as reminders of natural shapes like animals or people, inanimate objects like mountains and caves, and more, I asked the kids, "Is there anything we do now that's sort of the same? Do we bring nature into our homes in any way?"

One kid replied, "We have plants in the house!"

I agreed and asked, "And does everyone like the same plants? Do you have the same plants in your house as your friends do?"

Kid one, "No, my Dad has lots of flowers in all different colors. Red. Orange. Yellow."

Kid two, "It could be a cactus. Some people like to have a cactus.

Kid three, "We have lots of plants of all kinds."

Kid four, "My Dad dries plants in the basement."

Probably for scrapbooking.

Centennial Gala

Pooteewheet and I went to the University of Minnesota School of Nursing Centennial Gala at the Minneapolis Convention Center tonight. A number of nurses were being honored as distinguished alumni, and my mother was among them for her work with at risk populations (in particular, the homeless). A big honor, and the whole family turned out (sans kids) to watch her get the award.

I was surprised how many of the nurses being recognized were names I remembered from my days as an Administrative Assistant for Third District Minnesota Nurses Association. Almost the first person we bumped into as we entered the convention center was a former president of Sigma Theta Tau for whom I used to write newsletters and who once told me what an excellent movie Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was. And when they mentioned Katharine Densford several times I leaned over to my mother and asked, "Is that the Katharine Densford who became Katharine Densford-Dreves?" I remember that fact, because it was something of a surprise to a number of the nurses that she had married so late. And if you look at her biography on line, "As Katharine stepped down as Director of the school in 1959, she surprised everyone by announcing she was getting married..." She died almost 20 years later, and it was still a surprise to some nurses, because they were discussing it around the 10 year old at the nurses' association offices.

Congratulations, Mom!

Recent Caches

Eryn and I found this cache during a day that was rainy enough we went caching with umbrellas. After the local Halloween cacher quit because the Dakota County cops were giving him such a hard time, we thought we'd find one of the previous year's Halloween caches. This one was called Preying to the Aliens. We didn't get it. We poked the bunny to see if there was an alien in his chest, but no such luck. Just weird.

Probably a Lot Wrong with this Halloween Conversation...

Me: "See. We're getting teenagers now."

Pooteewheet: "We were getting teenagers before."

Me: "These were chesty teenagers. They're older."

Pooteewheet: "We were getting chesty teenagers before. They were Asian. But they were chesty for Asian teenagers."

On Australians and Mermaids

• Murray: You know, guys, in the old days the sailors used to fall for them. Yeah? They hadn't seen a woman for weeks and the Australians would lure them to the bottom of the sea and they'd DROWN.
• Bret: Oh..that's mermaids!
• Jermaine: That's mermaids you're thinking of.
• Murray: Is it?
• Bret: It's not Australians.
• Murray: Yeah...well, the Australian ones were the worst.
• -From 'Flight of the Conchords,' season 2, episode 5 "Unnatural Love"

Linux

I am horrible at Linux. I believe this makes me a n00b. I'm disturbed that I know enough to be proud I can self identify as a n00b. Today, I typed in some sudo thing that I wasn't 100% certain what it does, but it was the end of a chain that involved installing unixODBC, which required qt, which required an appropriate compiled (gcc-g++), which required yast, which then reported an error that required said sudo-ing. After trying a password (despite having root access) my VM told me, "******* is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported."

Ooooooooo....who are they going to report me to for fuddling with the SLES VM? Maybe they'll send a VP down to yell at me.

Addicting Substances

I had a headache today. I think I finally traced a bit of it back to not having any caffeine. I've been downgrading my consumption for over a week, mixing a little bit of caffeinated into a bunch of decaf in the morning. It's both good for my health and my pocketbook, as I prefer Caribou to the corporate coffee, although I'm still getting Caribou on Monday and Friday when it's between $0.55 and $1.

And I bought the most expensive bottle of Scotch I've ever purchased today. A $70 bottle of Lagavulin, recommended by Chris from work on Facebook when I mentioned Dan, also from work, had put me on to Laphroig. I had a very small drink of it, and it is delicious. Maybe if I give up my Caribou coffee habit I can afford a bottle now and then. In order to make it last, I've given myself a rule that it's a reward for every five hours on the bicycling trainer. Couple your bad habits to fulfilling your good ones, right?

Geeking Out

I think it says something about me that I'm excited this evening because I get to do the initial parts of a unixODBC install on a SUSE VM, and because the new Harvard Business Review that arrived in the mail has the title "The Drucker Centennial: What Would Peter Do?"

Parkour

Eryn watched a few parkour videos on YouTube. This is the result.

Popsicle

I was worried I had spelled Popsicle wrong on each of my photos. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. My Dad brought down the industrial, steel, popsicle maker that my parents used to make us popsicles when my brother and I were kids. I'm not sure how they ever managed to make this thing work effectively. We used some packaged fruit punch to make the popsicles, and I almost couldn't get the top off the popsicle maker. And my ability to control the depth of the sticks was circumspect at best. Nonetheless, Eryn was very excited.


Here's a better picture of my haphazard stick placement. And I filled it a bit full. You really need to make sure you don't overfill it, or the top sticks. Note the hairdryer. It worked well to blow it through the metal so the popsicles would loosen up. Still, we only managed to reclaim about 2/3 of the popsicles in their entirety. Another 1/3 turned into half popsicles. Eryn appreciated the remnants.


An example of one that turned out correct. Hey! There's Pooteewheet's cold medicine. She got sick right after I did last week and then turned the flu into viral pneumonia of both lungs. Lucky her. She wanted to know how we were going to get the popsicles out if we had to refreeze the popsicle maker each time. I pointed her at the ice cream bucket in the fridge full of individual treats. Sometimes I think she suspects I couldn't manage my way out of a box.

Each of these was made with nutritious, vitamin C fortified, juice. So I'm excited that popsicle time has turned into semi-healthy treat time. Next I'll make some out of Clamato.

Relaxed Readability

Apparently this is the proper way to read a Junie B. Jones (Essential Survival Guide to School) book. I don't think I'd be able to get up again if I read in this position for any length of time.

Halloween Costume

My sister once posted about the little dead boy who lives at her house. He perished eating a bad potato. I'm going to lift the story and my comment from her blog and post it below so that you have some context around my Halloween costume decision. Lissy Jo, let my nieces know I'll be knocking on the door looking for a treat!


...

As soon as the toddler woke up, she asked with some concern, "How did the easter bunny get into the house?" I didn't know how to answer. Then she told me how he woke her up in the night.

3 yr old, coloring: "He's a little boy and he is soooooo dead."
Me: "He's what?"
her: "He ate a potato and it made him so dead."
me: "um...what?"
her: "When you eat a potato it makes you dead."

Happy easter, you've been warned!

Scooter said...

The bottom article is the most important. If Ame' met a ghost of someone who had died by solanine poisoning, it would have to be a little boy, because he would have had to have ingested an oz of poisoned potato for every 6.25 pounds of body mass. Ask her how big the boy is, and you should have a pretty good idea of whether he could have died by potato by comparing the weight. At 4 or 5, a boy would weigh about 30 pounds, not taking into account historical changes in weight and stature - so about 5 oz. of potatoes would have been sufficent. A medium potato is around 173 grams, which is in the neighborhood of 6-7 ounces, perfect for someone in that age. So...ask Ame'...was the boy about your age/size? If she says a little older, you're still in the ballpark. Nice ghost.

------

Solanine is a glycoalkaloid poison found in species of the nightshade family, such as potatoes. It can occur naturally in any part of the plant, including the leaves, fruit, and tubers. It is very toxic even in small quantities. Solanine has both fungicidal and pesticidal properties, and it is one of the plant's natural defenses.

------

Seventy eight schoolboys became ill after eating potato at lunch on the second day of the autumn term. Seventeen of the boys required admission to hospital. The gastrointestinal, circulatory, neurological and dermatological findings and the results of laboratory investigations were in keeping with solanine poisoning.

------

While death from potato poisoning is rare, eight ounces of a green potato can contain high enough levels of solanine to affect a 50 pound person, and 16 ounces could impact a 100 pound person. Symptoms of glycoalkaloid poisoning include gastrointestinal upset, headache, fever, convulsions, drowsiness, rapid breathing, delirium, and coma. Three to six milligrams of solanine per kilogram of body mass can be fatal.

March 23, 2008 5:43 PM

A Quote for My Sister from Community

The Advanced Criminal Law episode:

Annie: You listen up, Pierce! I'm gonna tell you what my mother told me when I wanted to quit cheerleading. 'You're not very pretty, you have no boobs, and you can't do a basket toss to save your life.' But you made a commitment. So pick up your pompoms, Pierce, stuff your bra, and get ready for the team bus to forget you at a Taco Bell, because life is tough. But we soldier on, and that's just the way it goes.

A Bit More Dan Savage

A Bit of Dan Savage

Bert and Ernie

I strongly recommend Bert and Ernie at the Children's Theatre Company. Eryn thought it would be too young for her. And Pooteewheet and I thought it would be incredibly annoying. But it was very funny and Eryn laughed through the whole thing. A+

Observation

I suspect that when it looks like cops are pulling over cops, you're in a rough neighborhood.