interrobang (‽)

At the risk of sounding older than my tender 43 years: They don’t make ‘em like they used to. Consumer electronics, that is. Last month my TV finally packed up (and within a month of getting my surround-sound in place, FFS!). This is a Toshiba 50″ plasma flat screen, which I bought for the not inconsiderable sum of $2,000 three years ago (actually as a 10-year anniversary present for the wife - ever the romantic, eh?). About a year ago one of the HDMI ports stopped working, which was irritating but not the end of the world (it has a […]

When I first moved to the United States, it was to work as a consultant on a new SAP project. One of the other consultants was a Cuban called Gil (the name stuck with me…), and during my first week there, he gained his U.S. Citizenship. The team organized a big hoopla to celebrate, decorating his office with the Stars and Stripes, getting in a cake, and so on. During the festivities, the consultant’s supervisor described how Gil had originally come over on a boat without a cent to his name x years ago, and now here he was, “living the American […]

Last weekend Freya continued her path to Olympic Gold by competing in the Texas State Trampolining and Tumbling championships.  For reasons best known to the organizers, this was in Lubbock, which is on the far North edge of Texas, so not really a convenient location for anyone apart from people who live in Lubbock - although if they live in Lubbock they have my sympathy and deserve every break they can get. Anyway, owing to my general aversion to air travel (and a $250 per person flight cost because I didn’t get round to booking anything up until the week of […]

Just before Christmas my eldest managed to frag the hard drive on his laptop.  I’m not sure how he managed it (probably deliberately, to get out of doing his homework), but when you tried booting it up you’d just get an “Operating System not found” message.  Freya has an identical laptop (to avoid sibling rivalry) so I swapped her drive into Finn’s laptop and confirmed that everything else was fine - just a blank hard drive. It could have been that he’d just deleted everything, but that’s pretty hard to do by accident, so I’m guessing he dropped the laptop and crashed […]

I finally finished the desk I’ve been building all Summer.  I started it not long after the kids broke up for summer recess, and I promised myself I’d get it done in time for Finn starting the 4th grade.  As it turns out I over-ran by a couple of weeks, but a career in SAP has taught me that this is close enough to be called on-time.
I started on this uncharacteristically-ambitious project because Finn needed a new desk so he can knuckle down to some serious schoolwork (hey, a father can dream, can’t he??).  Most of the desks in the […]

I’m currently in Florida, on the second leg of a two-week family vacation.  We arranged this quite some time ago, and decided that we’d drive across as it would work out cheaper than flying.  Obviously I hadn’t counted for the rampant rise in gas prices, or the fact that the Explorer only gets around 17 miles to the gallon when I made this decision. But even so it was still cheaper to make the 2,000 mile round trip by car, especially as there were seven of us (the in-laws are also over). Plus, my loathing of air travel would see […]

…It’s the Three not-so-Little Pigs!
I’m on a bit of a fitness kick at the moment, owing to our renewed membership of the area swimming pool and a complete unwillingness to change my diet.  I’ve been out jogging a couple of times, and I’m trying to get back into cycling.  So when I needed to pick up a prescription from the pharmacy round the corner, I decided I’d cycle.  I took Finn with me, as I thought he’d benefit from some exercise, too.  It’s only a mile away, so to make it worthwhile we took a detour on the way back and […]

Last weekend my integration into polite society took another step forward, as I took Finn on his first Scout camp-out.  This, Louise reasoned, would be something fun for Finn, and would also give me the ‘opportunity’ to socialize with some of the other dads.  Louise normally takes Finn to the weekly scout meetings so why it is necessary for me to get involved too, I don’t know.  That said, I have met some of them before and some are actually alright (Mr. Tim), so I guess there are worse people to spend time with.  Plus, going with Finn on the […]

To give my eldest son the opportunity to make a few more friends, my wife signed him up with the local scout pack.  Little did I know that it would involve more work for me than him.  So far we’ve had to build a bird house and a toolbox (both of which my father-in-law thankfully helped him out with, not I), and there seems to be a constant list of ‘belt loops’ (the new version of ‘achievement patches’) that he’s going for, requiring me to teach him how to repair a puncture on his bike, or whittle a model out […]

So that was Christmas.  The officially-sanctioned extended eating/drinking session is over for another year.  I didn’t take a whole deal of time off work (absolutely nothing to do with the in-laws visiting) - only the actual public hoildays themselves, plus Boxing Day (which over here is officially called ‘The Day After Christmas’ - the Americans apparently didn’t know why it was called ‘Boxing Day’ either so just decided to drop the name entirely).  Still, it was nice to have a few days off to play with the kids’ new toys.
The best present by far was Guitar Hero III - Legends […]