Canned Angst

New Toy for 2006

Surprisingly this is not on BoardGameGeek.com:

Jenga ... with its Farm Animal Expansion Set

Don't give up THAT easily

Katie got a Battleship game from her uncle. We played tonight.

Me: "J-1."

Katie: "Hit... B-2."

Me: "Miss... I-1."

Katie: "Really?"

My fault. I forgot to pronounce the dash.

And an almost prosperous 2006

Last week at school, the kids in Marissa's class made door hanger gifts for their parents. Marissa stickered this and the teacher lettered it.

Is she wishing me a joyous impending new year?
Or only a partially satisfying one?

Keep off the Snow

When our lawn service visits, they leave a little "keep off the grass" flag so kids don't roll around in the chemicals.

They visited today. In the picture below, does anything strike anyone as odd?

Ahead of the Game

With the last workday of the year behind me, I'm sitting on my Lay-Z-Boy in the family room right now reading blog postings.

Katie is sitting on the sofa next to me with a pencil and pad in her lap.

Me: "It's too late to write Santa, his sleigh is already packed."

Katie: "I'm writing him for next year!"

"Car"ma?

Studies have shown that if you have a good experience with a company you'll tell, on average, one person. But if you have a lousy experience you'll tell, again on average, six people.

Time to even those odds.

The front left tire of my car "found" a nail on an off ramp. Since the tire only had 8000 miles on it and had plenty of tread left on it (and tires for my car are kinda expensive), I took it to Discount Tire Co. for repair.

Even though I didn't buy the tire there (it came with the car), they patched the tire for free.

Bizarre.

Categorizing My Friends

My Newsweek came last night and read that whopping 31% of Americans are actually offended by the phrase "Happy Holidays." Color me amazed.

When it came to my annual year-end letter to family and friends, I did the writing of the letter (as if you couldn't tell), the signing and addressing of each one, and the cutting and stickering of the photograph. Chris added personal notes to the bottom of a few.

Chris went to Hallmark and picked out the cards to accompany each letter and photo. With 79 cards to send out, she ended up buying 4 boxes of 18 cards (we had a few cards left over from previous years). I had no say in which boxes she ended up buying. I also had no interest.

Because it would be illogical to assign the cards to recipients randomly, I felt compelled to sort the boxes by religiosity and assign them that way. There was the generic "Snowflake", the light-hearted "Reindeer Nose", the homey "Front Door", and the religous "Pine Forest." Most of my friends got cards from the reindeer pile.

I was discussing with my co-workers this morning the subtle meanings of the various phrases inside greeting cards. He's my take

Merry Christmas: Have pleasant Winter if you believe in Jesus Christ.
Happy Holidays: Have pleasant Winter regardless what you may be celebrating.
Season's Greetings: Have a Winter.

2005 Holiday Letter

The 2005 Holiday letter is up on my website.

In addition to the laser-printed letter, the real deal has a Hallmark card and photo with a laser-printed sticker on the back with the names and ages of the girls. The envelope is sealed with clear tape because the glue didn't stick when I licked the first few. There is a sticker for the return address and a sticker for the postage (a no-lick stamp).

I hand-addressed each letter we sent out. That's because using Chris's new label printer to print address label stickers would be just plain rude.

What a drag

I am putting the finishing touches on my family's Christmas letter. It will appear on this website sometime next week.

There are three phases to writing the annual letter:

(a) create a list of what the family did over the past year, then
(b) convert the list to witty letter with warm wishes, and finally
(c) remove the paragraphs where Chris indicates I've shared too much.

This takes me more effort than it should. I do put the time in because, unlike this blog, more than handful of people read it. I worked on portions of the Word document on my lunch hour and I dragged it between work and home on a tiny flash drive that I keep on my keychain.

In addition to writing the letter, I've been busy with work, holiday activities, and (a relatively recent development) fending calls from contracting firms. Yesterday I got a call from a woman who got my resume off my website and wanted it in Microsoft Word format. Recruiters and contracting firms want resumes in Word format so they can edit resumes before forwarding them onto potential clients. You can't do that with PDF files, which is why the resume on my website is a PDF file.

Anyway, against better judgement I said I'd e-mail my resume to her a mutable format. After all, its just a drag-and-drop from my keychain too. And this morning, after firing off the e-mail, I got a response...

"Hi Ken, Thank you for sending me your holiday letter! Sounds like you have a wonderful family. ... Would you be able to send me a copy of your resume in Word format?"

Moon Dance

My wife and I did the carpool tango at Marissa's piano lesson this week.

As usual I picked Claire up at the day care learning center after work, but this time I drove to Marissa's piano teacher. Chris was there with the minivan. Katie was doing her math homework by the interior dome light while Marissa was inside at her lesson. Chris wanted to meet me there so she could take off to her dentist before the lesson was finished.

While Katie, Claire and I waited for the lesson to be over, Claire announced that she had to go bathroom. As there are no facilities in my car, I grabbed Claire by the arm and knocked on the piano teacher's front door. She was kind enough to point out the bathroom adjacent to the kitchen at the back of the house before resuming the lesson with Marissa in the front living room.

After Claire did her business, I entered the bathroom, flushed the toilet, pulled up her pants up and helped her wash her hands. These three things, as yet, are not part of her regular bathroom routine.

After her hands were dried, Claire tore across the kitchen linoleum and darted up the center hall to the front living room. I chased her from behind. When I caught up with her 10 seconds later, she was two feet from the piano bench watching the piano teacher instructing Marissa.

With her underwear and pants at her ankles.