[Food Day Friday ... where I show you what I've been tinkering with
in the kitchen. Mr. Dude gets a lot of air time on here about some of
the projects he's working on or the things he's reading or thinking
about. But rest assured, my entire life does not revolve around Mr.
Dude's nerdiness - so here's to the foodies!]
Can I please do some lamenting right now?
Food is really important at Casa de Larsen. Or at least to me. We tend to
have a busy schedule, but we somehow usually find time to make and eat great
meals as a family and with friends.
Tomorrow, Ladies and Gentlemen, we
have an event of truly epic proportions
that we can NOT attend and we can NOT do anything about, no matter how hard we
try.
And it makes my little foodie heart so very sad.
Double Pi Day.
Ask any nerd, he'll say 3/14 is Pi Day, and pi day
means pie. Ask any nerd who wants seconds, he'll just say multiply by 2.
6/28 is Double Pie Day. Double the pi, double the pie.
On June
28, come out to our place for some pie. Hors d'oeuvres will be provided,
and don't worry about coming late—we'll have a fire out on the deck for some s'more pies.
Also—don't trust your pie buying or baking, abilities? Come with a
bottle of wine, and we'll hook you up just the same. We'd rather have
two buck chuck than a five dollar pie anyway.
Party starts at 6:30pm, pie judging at 8pm. Blood sugar testing available upon request.
Sigh … doesn’t that just sound heavenly?
I mean, nerdy implications aside, a get-together with
friends that just features PIE?!?!?!
My mouth started salivating just from typing that.
And then my long time friend who majored in math reminded me that Tau is the proper term for 2π.
[Near Gear Mondays. Where I tell you all about the random gear that Mr. Dude - or I - may or may not own. Or gear that we may or may not plan to own. Or gear that we may or may not find interesting. You're welcome.]
Once upon a time, a long time ago, baby gear was all about what baby actually needed.
And then along came things like dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, vacuum cleaners and electronic baby swings ... suddenly, people had time on their hands for more than the bare minimum. So they started coming up with things that would be cool for baby to have, which usually coincides with "things baby definitely doesn't need to have".
[As a long time babysitter and nanny, I've seen my fair share of the ridiculous things that people could swear they "need" for their kid. Wipe warmers, anyone? But I digress.]
There are some baby items which - admittedly - baby does not need.
BUT! Mom and Dad find them cool.
Bonus points if Dad finds them cool, because supposedly that makes Dad more interested in hanging out with baby ... or at least feeling like he has a say in some of the gear that you buy. [Let's be honest. Most dads don't care about decorating the nursery or picking out a diaper bag.]
Bonus Points: It's even made of maple. How very ... um ... Canadian of them, eh?
Whenever Little Guy gets a Little Gal or a Littler Guy to teach about all things nerdy, I can almost guarantee you that we'll buy one as a teaching prop for him to use. You gotta equip the next generation, you know.
Can you hear the conversation now?
Little Guy: Here, baby. This button helps you jump and this one makes you go faster. This one helps you get the extra star ... No, no, no! You don't eat it! That will make Mario fall down and die! Future Little Sibling:[blank stare, blink blink, continues chewing]
[Sigh. This is the part where I resign myself to my fate of always living in a house of nerds ... in case you hadn't caught on to that yet ...]
In the computer world, "bug" is a bad, bad word. [This is where all the coders start shuddering.]
Within the confines of my house, "bug" means "pest that's only alive because the cat isn't doing her job or Mr. Dude hasn't killed it yet even though I asked a whole 2 seconds ago".
For my garden, "bug" means "that thing that's trying to eat all the plants!"
As far as my to do list is concerned, "bug" refers to the verb, as in - "I haven't done Item A [or Item B, or Item C, or Item D, or Item E ...] yet, and it's starting to bug me".
For the purposes of this blog, "bug" explains the content of this post, and I'm going to refer to all of the above.
Let's go in reverse order, shall we?
To Do List: Let's just say that mine has been rather long, without much progress and without enough coffee. [For the record, there's never enough coffee. You'll be my best friend if you bring me some good coffee. Promise.] We've had lots going on with Mr. Dude's work schedule, Little Guy's sleep schedule, and my manage-our-home-behind-the-scenes schedule. Thus, the blog fell off the "highest priority, must get something posted today" radar. Hard to blog about life when you're too busy living it, right? Don't worry - it gnawed at me. So we're back.
Garden: The bugs in the garden have been watching us pull up undergrowth, kill off the moss that was eating our lawns [oh, the joys of living in the PNW] and set up all kinds of accessories. Our backyard is now sporting some awesome garage sale finds and hand-me-downs: patio table and chairs, solar LED umbrella [oooh! blinky lights!], fire pit, and gas bbq grill. [Can you say "neighborhood cookout"?!]
If you thought Mr. Dude's only hobbies were building and modifying computers or finding random videos on YouTube featuring reviews of the Goat Simulator game given by a gal who just ate a habanero pepper stuffed with ghost chili pepper sauce, then you were mistaken.
He ALSO loves sprucing up a much-loved grill to make it shine like new and filling up the gargantuan yard waste can with vines and dandelions and blackberry bush clippings. Not the stereotypical nerd who never sees daylight, I tell you. [Although, did I tell you about how he worked in the basement at our university's IT Help Desk, and they had pictures of windows overlooking sunny landscapes on their computer desktops in lieu of actual windows? Apparently the nerds thought their virtual UV rays were sufficient ...]
But seriously, when he's not doing yardwork, he really is looking up Goat Simulator game reviews.
House: I've been doing my own geeking out over things like design, function and decorating. I may or may not have spent most of a sunny day outside, lounging in our new-to-us patio furniture and reading this:
Mr. Dude likes the "DIY" concept for building computers; I like it applied to cooking and decorating. Also, I appreciate bloggers with a sense of humor, so I follow them on Bloglovin'. [Note: You could follow The Almost Nerdy Wife on Bloglovin', too. Just sayin'. #shamelessselfpromotion #justkiddingIhateselfpromoting]
The only downside is that I can't actually do most of the project ideas in here: we're waiting on even basic things like paint and hanging pictures until our walls are demolished and rebuilt. No, we're not knocking our entire house down. Yes, we have to redo most of our electrical work.
[1916 House + Nerd with Excess of Electronic Devices = Supply and Demand Imbalance]
Actually, we needed to do the update anyways [hellooooooo, knob and tube!], and I'm too lazy to paint walls that are just going to be torn up in a few months. But it's so much more fun to point out Mr. Dude's wattage consumption. He won't mind, though. He willingly measures how many watts his machines pull out anyways.
This is actually pretty low, especially after we had legit outlets installed downstairs, in addition to the lightbulb-to-outlet conversions he had done. Otherwise, he had a ridiculous number of devices daisy-chained to a single extension cord running off one outlet in the mudroom/pantry just up the stairs from his man cave and it was consistently up in the 400s. We really need to get the electricity finished, folks!
Where were we?
Oh yeah. Decorating. Or not. At least not until Mr. Dude's machines can't cause a shortage throughout our entire house and blow every fuse in the box with one fell swoop of overclocking.
Excuse me. I'm off to go stock up on batteries for the flashlight in case of Wattage-gate.
Maybe I'll buy a can of paint while I'm at it.
[*Bonus Points for those of you who ever watched the Cartoon Network "June Bugs" specials where they ran a marathon of Warner Brothers' Bugs Bunny cartoons. Ah, such wonderful childhood memories.]
Little Guy turned one earlier this month, and my family made the trek all the way from sunny CA to celebrate with us.
They took the opportunity to give him some ... um ... appropriate gifts.
One sister, for example, created these:
It's what happens when you have access to the interwebs, a printer, and iron-on patches. So now my kid can go around proclaiming on his shirt what his general M.O. of life seems to be:
"But what about second breakfast?"
The other sister gave him what I call the "maniacal bumblebee" and what Mr. Dude has proclaimed one of the most awesome toys ever.
Want to see their ad for it? Watch the overly cheerful video. And then wonder if the video editor lost some hair while working on that project. Auntie's "Operation: Bug the Momma, Please the Nephew" is a complete success, y'all. Because Little Guy LOVES it.
[We have a dichotomy in our parenting philosophies, by the way. Mr. Dude thinks that loud, noisy toys make childhood more fun. I, on the other hand, am the one at home all day with Little Guy, so I hear that noisy toy a LOT. And I think a kid needs to learn to be entertained without all the flashing lights and sounds. But hey, he loves leafing through his board books and playing with blocks, so we'll call it good.]
I'm just worried about what's gonna happen when Mr. Dude gets around to building that DOS Pentium II off-line machine that our kids will get to use.
In this week's [or maybe just today's?] edition of "news Stephanie notices now only because she's married to a geek", I saw an article from TechCrunch about Microsoft's answer to Siri.
I know we all want some sort of personal assistant who knows what we need, when we need it, and can get it for us. Heck, if I had someone who could bring me coffee and do my paperwork and clean my house while I just played with Little Guy all day, that would be fantastic. And I know how hard it is to find a good assistant - I've actually worked as an admin assistant on several occasions, once for an executive director. [Do you know how hard it is to stay one step ahead of a boss who we all joked had more energy than the Energizer Bunny?!]
For some of us unfortunate souls, the closest we get to having a personal assistant is being good friends with apps like Remember the Milk, Evernote and Google Calender. [God bless those developers!]
Apparently, there are some people want a pseudo-friend who will organize their lives and talk to them, too, even if it's their OS wearing those shoes [wasn't there a movie nominated for an Oscar this year about that?].
Video gamers, say goodbye to Siri. Your new best friend [as long as you like Windows Mobile] is now Cortona.
Oh wait, she already was, wasn't she? For all those years you played Halo? [Or still play Halo?]
Yeah, she's that creepy AI that helps you with the crazy amount of information you have to store whilst you're beating the bad guys.
Um, methinks I already have enough video games in my life without having my phone talk to me like a character from a giant gaming franchise that I'm pretty sure Mr. Dude could play through while blindfolded.
Thanks anyways, Microsoft. I'm sure it's the thought that counts.
In last week's edition of "news the family only pays attention to because they have a geek for a son", Mr. Dude's dad dropped off a photocopied article from the Smithsonian magazine. [Yes, he can be old-school like that. Photocopiers do still exist, people!]
The Scrabble rule in Mr. Dude's family is that if you can use it in a sentence, it's a legit word.
So now, thanks to someone who wanted to "demake" Halo by cramming it all into just 4KB of memory on an Atari 2600, I have a new word to use and hopefully score triple word points on. If only I could get Mr. Dude to play a game of Scrabble without taking 10 minutes for each turn ...
There. Now don't you feel so much more informed about the important events of the day?
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