Sleep deprived ramblings for fun and blog post material

"I find it hard to believe -" my wife stated lazily from the chair, tandem-nursing the twins at around 2 in the morning, "- that they can eat an entire firetruck."

The relativity of root vegetables

Go buy yourself a 25lb bag of potatoes. Pick it up. Carry it around. Not all the time, just various points throughout the day - feel free to drop them off at a sitter during the week, but the weekends are for you and the tubers. Strap the bag into your car and go for a drive. Give it a piggy-back. Put a silly hat on it and then lift it up above your head so it can see itself in a mirror. Now do it again (because it demands it). Occasionally add and remove potatoes to keep it within the 25-31 pound range. Do this for a year. Your muscles will adapt nicely until the weight isn't a big deal.

Now leave your potatoes with your parents and pick up two bags of carrots, weighing 5 and 6 pounds each. Carry them for four days.

Go pick up your potatoes. Your potatoes are going to feel like they've doubled in mass and seem at least twice as old.

Twins!

On Tuesday Lara's doctor decided her blood pressure was spiking and decided to send her in to be induced. There's a waiting list at the hospital and so by 5pm the doctor's office called to say that the hospital would be calling in the morning. Was there a chance they'd call that evening? No, 100% in the morning.

Immediately, my mind composed the to-do list for the evening:

1. Put a load of laundry in
2. Mow the lawn
3. tidy the front entrance
4. Install a plug cover in Kiernan's room
5. Organize the Tupperware
6. Paint the bathroom

As I walked up from the laundry room not two minutes later, the phone rang. "Eat something then come on in!" Fabulous.

And so, at 7:38am on Wednesday the 13th (Kiernan was also born on a Wednesday the 13th) a baby boy weighing in at 6 lbs 9 oz came into the world after three minutes of pushing. Six minutes later, out came baby sister at 5 lbs 10 oz.

Kiernan welcomes his baby brother Quinn Dante, and his baby sister Juliette Lorelai!

BBS - Blacklisted BS? :)

The day after my TATTLENET post, I was in fact at the top of the list of searches for TATTLENET or TATTLEAWARD... apparently bragging about such a feat in the title of the blog post causes some sort of anti-spam filter which removed the search completely from the list... I suppose this is to prevent cornering the search market on queries for "albino cows" in order to sell their own brand of cow paint.

I wonder if a name change of the post would in fact reinstate me. Or if that post has been permanently banned... luckily my blog itself still turns up on the following important google searches (according to my analytics)...


Apparently that's someone's full name, as searches have occurred multiple times with both in the past few weeks.


Replace CULLEN with any of the IKEA products listed in this post and you get at least half of the search terms used. What do you people need reviews for? This is IKEA? Are there bad IKEA reviews?


Note to self: Compose followup post on the ongoing adventures with chunky. Include diagrams.


Little did M.A. Horn realize his publication would reach the masses in this way, and hopefully these searchers did not follow his instructions.


Okay then.


Wow. Please leave my blog and take your produce with you.


You're definitely looking in the wrong place.

Eyes

Shouting from upstairs soon after Kiernan had gone to bed caused me to trudge back up to see what the matter was.

"I need water."
"Your water is on the table next to your bed - " I said as I reached for the cup.
"NO! I CAN GET IT!" and so he did.
"You could have done that instead of yelling for me to come upstairs."
He paused in his sipping. "You wanted to come upstairs."
"No, as a matter of fact I wanted to stay downstairs."
"What's your name?"
"My name is Eric. What's your name?"
"I'm Kiernan." He went briefly back to his cup. "What colour are your eyes?"
"They're brown. What colour are your eyes?"
"They're brown too. I have dog eyes."
"You have dark eyes?"
"NO! DOG eyes!"
"Okay, dog eyes. Are you done drinking? Okay, good night."

This morning when asked who says he has dog eyes, Kiernan replied it was Daddy - We assume the use of the "puppy-dog eyes" term has been misinterpreted.

The TATTLENET TATTLEAWARD goes to..

Back around 15 years ago, pre-internet, there were these things called Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSs. A person would set up a BBS on their computer and other people would dial in to exchange messages, share files, or play games. Picture it like Facebook, only for people in your local area, and only if one person could log in at a time. Technology was amazing!

Some BBSs were connected together in a network - when no one was logged into the BBS, that BBS would call up another BBS, they'd transfer the messages between each other, and you could get a response to your message from a completely different BBS in like two or three days! Amazing!

Anyhow, the reason for this post is to talk about the sad sad fate of one of my most prized possessions. You see, there was a network of BBSs called TATTLENET, run by Bonehead and Vanity Flair of Land of the Lone Butthead BBS. TATTLENET was fun - they had restaurant meetups which the dubbed Bonehead's Secret Tea Parties and meets in the park called Vanity's Vicious Volleyball Tourneys (VVVTs). I own both TATTLENET T-shirts, and the alias I used (Rigor Mortis, how fancy and dark) at the time is listed on both.

One year at a Secret Tea Party, the inaugural TATTLEAWARDS were given out. I won TATTLENET'S BIGGEST FLAG-WAVER (Bonehead had posted a message one day asking for people to advertise TATTLENET in the most exuberant manner possible - the first three people doing so would receive a bottle of Pepsi. As he had not explicitly specified to do so elsewhere, I responded immediately within the same message forum. Because I'm hilarious that way. Not to be one-upped, a few weeks later a confused looking Fed Ex deliveryman dropped off a box from "Land of The Lone Butthead" containing a bottle of Pepsi) The awards given out each consisted of a labeled styrofoam cup with three plastic forks and a ball of aluminum foil forming a T on top.

The night after winning this award, I posted a message describing how I'd been approached on the bus by a group of girls asking what it was that I was holding. They were less than impressed with my explanation, and walked away. I felt so suave.

The following year the awards were held again. We got to the end and I had no award. Then out of nowhere an announcement was made - there was one more award to give out. There was some sort of speech about great contributions, blah blah blah, then out of a large bag came a TATTLEAWARD. It looked just like any other TATTLEAWARD, cup, forks, and foil. Only it had sequins.



Oh, and also:



Everyone whooped and called out "Speech! Speech!" I stood up, waited for the noise to die down and said "Ladies, gentlemen, (oh, and Bonehead), thank you very much for this award. I'd like to say one thing, and that is this: Today is a very special day, because today... I drove here."

And now I say goodbye to this dust collector, as it travels to its final resting place in the garbage. Or blue box. I don't know, are sequins recyclable?

Not thrown out:

The Death of Flaming BBS award:


And for some reason I just can't let go of this:

Drive-through association

With a couple of blog posts queued up awaiting related photographs, along comes a quick anecdote that doesn't require any...

Kiernan and I were sent on a mission for breakfast. Since Lara has started her soy-free milk-free diet to prepare the twins' digestive systems, that gives us one option: McDonald's.

So while Lara reclines back at the house, Kiernan and I headed off to the drive-through.

Pulling up to the speaker I begin: "I'd like two #5 BLT Bagel combos --"
From the back seat: "and Timbits!"
"-- one with coffee and two sugars --"
"AND Timbits!"
"-- the other with a milk"
"AND! TIMBITS!"
"Kiernan, that's a different restaurant."
"Oh okay."
"And hotcakes, please."
You could tell the guy on the speaker was stifling laughter. "Will that be everything, sir?"
"AND! TIMBITS!"