Feb
28
Feb
23
I’ m a bit of a bar-goer. In this process, I’ve visited my fair share of bathrooms in the various Twin Cities bars I tend to frequent (or infrequent). That’s what happens after a couple of beers, vodka lemonades, or shots of a varied mixture. While spending a few seconds emptying out my bladder in the various bars’ often dirty bathrooms, I find myself reading the advertisements on the wall.
They’re usually horribly laid out ads cased by a frame labeled with Brite Media Indoor. As it turns out, they advertise on their website “Special Minneapolis Venues”, which includes a package called “NightMoves Network”. The NightMoves Network encourages advertisers to “Hit the hard to reach active, on-the-go 21-34 year olds at their favorite clubs and nighttime hotspots”.
Do you know I don’t want to read about while I’m trying to concentrate on not falling off the toilet or forgetting to pull my pants back up after having a couple of drinks? It’s the advertising that the NightMoves Network manages to sell – abortions, being a foster parent, and volunteering for some non-profit organization.
I’m in constant awe of these Brite Media Indoor advertisements. Maybe that explains why I always want to steal them.
Feb
21
The Boy is not so much a fan of math. I’m not going to lie – when I was his age, I hated math, too. And I never regained any type of feelings towards it other than hate for the rest of my life. Just ask Mrs. Piatt, my math teacher for three years in high school. No, I didn’t fail. She just happened to teach all of the “college preparatory” classes that I needed to take.
The three of us had a talk the other night at dinner and decided that we need to work on math some more with him. I’ve taken it upon myself to work with him only the only math I fully understand – practical math. Figuring out tips, how much things cost, cooking measurements, that kind of thing – it’s all stuff he can do, because he’s so incredibly intelligent. (Like scary intelligent.) He just hates it and gets really stressed out when you throw a problem like that his way.
Yesterday afternoon, we had this email conversation:
Me: i need your help! can you go here and figure out how much it would cost for all of us to go see marley & me tonight? if you figure it out, we’ll go see the movie!! i just want to make sure i get enough money out of the ATM. (yes, this is a math problem!) love ya, buddy!
The Boy (14 minutes later): like $8 but i would get like $11 because of snacks.
Me: (1 minute later): we’ll go with $15 for extra snacks. thanks!! did the general help you? AND GOOD JOB!
The Boy (2 minutes later): there is a ATM at the theater so you don’t have to get the money now
The Boy (1 minute later): the general did not help me it was pretty easy
I’ve gotta get his math figured out now, because in three years, when he’s up in all that Algebra crap, I’m going to be in trouble. They have all these new fangled ways to do math that I don’t even understand!
*Um, a year ago, I never would have suspected I would have ever used that as a subject line. Never ever.
Feb
17
I was laying in bed this morning trying to get focused on the day and I caught myself watching the ceiling fan that’s just above it. It shakes like crazy. And it made me realize I have another completely irrational fear: a ceiling fan falling on me while I sleep.
I used to watch the one at my last apartment, but it seemed pretty steady. It just made some random clicking noises now and again that were enough to just make me question it’s stability a bit.
When I used to visit my grandma’s, my brother and I used to put cup holders on the top of the ceiling fan and turn it on. The crocheted cup holders went flying, sometimes hitting lamp shades and sometimes knocking down one of the five thousand picture frames scattered around my grandma’s living room. I’m not sure how we explained the cup holders in various places where they shouldn’t be, but we never really got in trouble for it. Her ceiling fan, however, shook like a banshee, too.
Sometimes, when we’d stay the night, one of us would have to sleep on the couch. The couch, I was pretty sure at the time, was just on the outside of the ceiling fan’s circumference, which clearly meant I was safe from dying a tragic ceiling fan death in the middle of the night.
Here at our new place? I think that very fan might just be the death of me.
Feb
16
Feb
16
Feb
15
I’m not going to lie and say I’ve been thinking about posting here, because the only time I do is when I’m pooping and don’t have anything else to do. I’m not kidding.
I want to write more, covering all of the above subject matters and quite a few more, but between moving, working, and freelancing, I haven’t even had a chance to sit down and watch an episode of CSI: Miami since we’ve moved.
Feb
10
Feb
8
Today, on the way back from picking up The Boy in southern Minnesota, we swapped the voice on TomTom out for a Spanish one. We did the switch before The Boy got in the car, thinking he might be able to apply what he’s learning Spanish to the directions back home. He, of course, didn’t find our game all that amusing and wanted us to switch the Ricardo voice back to the Richard one. (That’s seriously what they are.)
The three of us tried to figure out what TomTom was saying in Spanish based on the directions we knew to be correct, but the only one I kept recognizing was “800 yards”, and that’s only because I know that’s right around half a mile and I’ve known ocho since my Sesame Street days.
I know dónde está (translation: where is), which is great, except my nouns are limited to things like: bano (bathroom), senora (lady), gato (cat), niño (boy), and taco (um…). I’ve been tossing it around for a while, but now I think I’m at a point where I really want to learn to speak fluent Spanish.
I went through a stint last month where I was recruiting for bilingual customer service representatives and today it just really dawned on me that if I were bilingual, that’d really make me even more universally awesome in my job. So, that’s my goal. The General and The Boy are both down with learning it with me, so it should make for some fun family entertainment… and entertaining arguments, I’m sure.
The Boy was already correcting my verb usage and I’ve already taught him how to say whore. Totally on accident, I might add. We’re off to a good start.
Feb
4
