A Few Good Memes » Old Family Blog

The Tribute Restaurant

jase — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:15:03 +0000

Alyssa and I were eating at a new restaurant in the strip mall by the video store. Alyssa says “Do you remember the newspaper ad we saw with an ad for ‘KIST’ that was like ‘KISS’?” She was referring to an ad in the Chicago Reader that I brought home from Anna and my 10th anniversary weekend in Chicago. I told her I remembered and she asked what kind of band they were. I said “They are a KISS tribute band”. She said, “This restaurant is like a Panera Bread tribute restaurant”. Pretty astute. It’s basically a Panera Bread knockoff with panini and wraps and smoothies and such. The decor is very similar to Panera Bread. She’s a smart, observant kid.

Look at It

jase — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:14:38 +0000

My iPod has been dead for a few months. So when I take Ian and Emma to daycare, we’re stuck with whatever is in the CD player or on the radio. I recently got a new iPod and when Ian noticed I had it hooked up on the way to daycare, he asked me to put on that song we always used to listen to on the way to daycare. I listen to a lot of music, whatever it was had gone out the back of my head by now. “What song are you talking about, Ian?”. “Look at It.” Scratch head. Hmm. I have a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of music and should, more or less, know what my kids know. Scratch head some more. Aha! Fire up The Beastie Boys “Check it Out”. Somewhere in there is a gem waiting to be explored about how kids acquire language.

The Human Porch

jase — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 12:46:40 +0000

A few months ago, they were handing out Fantastic 4 toys with McDonald’s happy meals (which I am normally loathe to buy, but I gave in in a moment of weakness). One of the characters is “The Human Torch” who lights himself on fire or something as his superpower. Ian decided instead that he was “The Human Porch,” which I think is a much better superhero. His power is to go around to houses that have no front porches or or little skinny things like ours has and transform them into great expanses of porch, complete with hammocks and rocking chairs. People then come out and converse and enjoy them with their iced teas and their lemonades. If that won’t save the world, I’m not sure what will.

Weekend fun

anna — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 16:12:19 +0000

Despite our bad news this past week that the cancer in my lung is growing again we had a really fun weekend. I thought I would share it with you.

On Friday we started the weekend with Alyssa’s second grade musical.
The second graders have been working on this musical all fall. Jason’s Dad drove down from Chicago to see the musical. It was far better than I expected. It was better than I expected and a lot better than some High School performances I have seen.

We had a fun weekend. Alyssa had two birthday parties. One of a roller skating party. She had a blast skating and wanted to go again on Sunday due to scheduling and the rink hours it possible.
We are glad she is interested. She also go to see the Narina movie at her next bday party. Lucky duck.

Yesterday, Alyssa, Ian and I were in the Christmas pagent at school.
Our minister wrote this play that is a revision of the scruge story that is really funny. Alyssa missed most of the rehearsal so we were not sure if she would be able to memorize her line and learn the songs that her trio needed to do. She was cast as a shopper. They play/pagent takes place in California. Jase and I were both really pleased with her ability to raise to the occasion. She did a great job. Ian was supposed to be an animal in a manger scene. He had decided he wanted to be a spider man. I left the spider man jammies which were to be his custom on the table for the rehearsal on Saturday. After a lot of crying he agreed to be a lion. Well, later on Saturday he rediscovered his power ranger halloween custom.
On Sunday Jase asked him if he was ready to be a lion in the Christmas pagent.
(His response was percious.) He said I am going to a power ranger animal.
In Jesus’s time there were power ranger animals. Knowing that we have a really flexible church and that the goal is for the kids to have a good time when went off to church with a power ranger animal.

Last night after discovering that first two options of what do for late afternoon and evening fun would not work we had a pizza party on the living room floor. Alyssa and Ian had fun with that.

What time is it outside?

jase — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 14:13:21 +0000

Dinner was just about over and Ian asks “what time is it?” I said, “time for bath and bed,” and he replies, “no, no, I mean what time is it outside?” I knew exactly what he meant and without a beat, I just replied “oh, about 7:40″

Ralph and The Polyphonic Spree

jase — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 01:53:31 +0000

We were listening to Ralph Covert tonight in the car and a beautiful song came on called “Liesl Echo.” Alyssa asked me if it was The Polyphonic Spree. It actually sounds remarkably like The Polyphonic Spree. She already has an amazing ear. She did the same thing a few weeks ago with a different Ralph Covert song that sounded like Phish.

Kiosk

jase — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:02:34 +0000

We were at the Charleston airport and the checkin process that Delta had must have been conceived by a toddler. A very developmentally delayed toddler. First, you had to go up to a kiosk and put in a credit card or something to identify you. Because there is an amorphous crowd about 8 people deep in front of the kiosks, you have to barge through to get to the kiosks. And, of course, there’s no indication that you should start with the kiosk. You think you may be standing in a line, but you’re not sure. Some Delta employee started going around gathering credit cards and kiosking people herself. Then, you’re supposed to wait until they call your name, at which time, you are supposed to barge back through the crowd (with all of your bags) and get them weighed and tagged. Then you’re supposed to barge back through the crowd to the back where you get in a long line to have your bags inspected for explosives. I think they should have just held up the swab in the air. It was very explosive.

So Alyssa looks at me between the time we were kiosked and weighed and she asks “What does k-i-o-s-k spell?” I said “kiosk”. She replied “Oh, I thought it spelled ‘chaos’, because this place is total chaos!”. Alyssa is so observant sometimes.

Yesterday

jase — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 22:03:41 +0000

Ian, just 3, has three timeframes: “yesterday” means “any time in the past”, “now” means “now” or maybe “today”, and “tomorrow” means any time in the future. I was just typing an email and described some code I wrote last year. As I re-read it (like I always do for emails longer than a line or two), I noticed I had typed “yesterday” instead of “last year”, unbeknownst to me when I had actually typed it. My son is influencing me - heh.

That’s Not a Miracle

jase — Sat, 30 Oct 2004 01:10:13 +0000

Ian was having breakfast and spilled a bunch of milk into his bib, unbenownst to me. He later dropped it on the floor and as I was passing by, I tried to pick it up with my foot. I got the bib, but the milk made an impressive spray all down the hall and on to the walls and bathroom door. My mom looked down the hall and said, in an astonished voice “That was a miracle!” Ian looks at the milk, looks at my mom and proclaims “That’s not a miracle, that’s a mess!”

Archimedes and Santa Claus

jase — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:03:46 +0000

Alyssa and I watched a program on Saturday night about Archimedes. It was fascinating. Talked about how he basically invented calculus, along with discovering water displacement and such. Talked about his text “The Method” and how it got written over in the middle ages by some monk re-using the papyrus for a prayer book. This was Nova. Finally it talked about how they are using modern technology to recover some of Archimedes’ text underneath the monk’s ink.

Alyssa told me she had a dream Saturday night that Santa Claus helped her by using his magic to check Archimedes’ book out from the library and to recover all the text cleanly. She couldn’t read it because it was in Greek, but it was clear.

I need to see if I can find a copy of that book somewhere so Alyssa can see it in person.