Posts from 01/2023

Monday, January 02, 2023

New Year's Day

Welcome to 2023! Enjoy the crazy 60 degree heat wave this week!

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day in history

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

Ian Year 1 Month 8 Battle Report

Ian is only 4 months away from turning 2. He owns strong opinions, a loud, raucous voice, and way too many cars and trucks. His favourite foods are Belvita crackers (blueberry not cranberry orange), YoBaby yogurt, and waffles. He's gotten in the habit of throwing food on the floor when he's done eating -- we're trying hard not to react to it.

He doesn't like it when I touch his hair so his haircuts proceed at one snip per day, usually while he's distracted by yogurt. I've only cut the front and sides, enough to keep the yogurt away.

His sense of pitch continues to be outstanding, and you can always tell what he's trying to sing. He's particularly partial to "Rumble Rumble Dinosaur" which he sings any time he sees a dinosaur on a bib or outfit. He knows many words and is good at mimicking your words if you ask him too. His names for the family are: Dada, Mama, MaiMai, Nana (for Nana or Grandma), and Baba (for Grandpa).

He still loves wheels and anything with wheels. He has decided that the gear icon representing "Settings" on my phone is a wheel. He likes spotting the moon at night too -- we have a traditional call and response litany that we go through each night:

Ian: Dar'!
BU: Is it dark outside?
Ian: Yeah!
BU: The sun went down.
Ian: Moon!
BU: Do you see the moon?
Ian: Yeah!

The last line is typically a lie as it's too cloudy outside.

The cutest thing he does at the moment is really getting into the nighttime routine. After getting pajamas on, he runs into the kitchen for dessert (" 'andy bucket!"). After brushing teeth, he runs into Maia's for stories ("Stoy time!"). He sleeps through the night (after a few brief hiccups in November and December) usually from 7 PM to 7:30 AM, with a 1.5 - 2.5 hour afternoon nap.

tagged as offspring, day-to-day | permalink | 1 comment
day in history

Friday, January 06, 2023

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

The Peripheral, Season One:
This sci-fi show is about a brother and sister in the near future, asked to beta-test a new VR headset and embroiled in a conspiracy spanning time and space. The exposition-to-action ratio is low (sometimes a little TOO low) and it's pretty easy to follow from start-to-finish if you don't think too hard. I enjoyed the show but the finale really made this whole season feel like a prequel to the real meaty story. I wish it had been a little faster paced. Still, it was much better than Westworld. On Amazon Video.

Final Grade: B

Breeders, Season One:
What starts out as a surface-level parenting comedy deepens in maturity and poignancy pretty quickly. Martin Freeman, as always, is great in his role and the supporting cast, especially the grandparents, are lots of fun. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B

The Producers (1967) (PG):
After finally getting Rebecca to watch Blazing Saddles last month, she wanted to see more Mel Brooks comedies. This one was a pleasant watch, blending the traditional rapid-fire dialogue of a show written for theater with the zaniness Mel Brooks is known for.

Final Grade: B-

Plus One (R):
A by-the-book rom-com buoyed by the performances of the leads and the one-off jokes about bad wedding speeches. I didn't mind watching this one, although the male lead, Jack Quaid, looks too much like Joel McHale which distracts from his acting.

Final Grade: B

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day in history

Monday, January 09, 2023

Maia Year 5 Month 6 Battle Report

Maia is now five and a half, and halfway through kindergarten.

She had a little growth spurt recently but is still deceptively small for her age. She is just big enough to pedal the Princess bike she got two Christmases ago (but can zoom around on her little yellow balance bike without fear). Whenever the weather is warm enough, we head out into the court with a bike or scooter (and a lawn mower for Ian) and wait for the other kids on the street to join us (7 just across the court and a few more more than 3 houses away).

Her memory is still excellent. We started reading Sherman's Lagoon together in the Sunday paper back during the pandemic and I got her a cartoon anthology book for Christmas. On her own, she recognized one of the very first Sunday comics from 2020 and said, "We saw this in the paper!" Reading mode has also clicked on in her brain -- she got a joke book from the Ahlbins at Christmastime and immediately started reading the jokes out loud, spelling out words that she didn't know. She also got a "touch the stylus" Learning Globe from the grandparents and likes to recite world facts to us throughout the day. She parrots the Globe's description back in their entirety, like the African volcano "in a constant state of eruption".

She loves school and does a pretty good job of getting to the 7 AM bus without drama. The gamification "Dojo points" seem to have slowed down now that the year is progressing, but she's still learning a lot of letters and numbers and watching way more TV in class than I ever did outside of 12th grade English. Her current favourite is a show called Numberblocks and she likes to tell us what all of the different numbers sound like on the show.

Most of her imagination games either involve cats or her real-world surroundings. Bunnies are less relevant these days and she actually went on our Christmas trip without Original Bunny (he stayed home to play with her Globe along with Hopsy the biggest bunny in the house). This weekend alone, she played Ornament Store, made a Smores fire out of pipe cleaners, played several rounds of The Great British Baking Show, and built a Minecraft world out of Duplo blocks.

Random favourites: pink and purple, the Learning Globe, her new stuffed cat, any kind of dessert, corned beef, black olives, Encanto, Mario Kart 8

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Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Video Day

Here is Maia's original retelling of the classic Halloween book, "Five Little Pumpkins", but with bunnies and a special cat guest star. This was recorded in October 2022.

tagged as offspring, media | permalink | 1 comment
day in history

Friday, January 13, 2023

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:00 AM: Showered and ready for the day.
6:11 AM: Bagel for breakfast.
6:56 AM: Working in my recently rearranged office.
8:04 AM: Good morning!
9:38 AM: Deaf Amber forgets where she is every 15 minutes, meows to leave my home office, then remembers that she'd rather be in here and meows even louder to come back in.
10:40 AM: Exercise break while watching 1899.
12:40 PM: Panera for lunch (Maia was home for the 3rd day in a row, recovering from some bug).
2:25 PM: Everyone is playing Sushi Go.
2:46 PM: Quiet time on the couch.
4:11 PM: Ian likes car-watching over the Toll Road.
4:45 PM: Riding the Silver Line to Ashburn and back. (Ian's first trip on a train). I love that the 2nd phase of the Silver Line includes unlocked bathrooms in the stations.
6:50 PM: Toothbrush time is gettin' weird.

tagged as 12 of 12 | permalink | 2 comments
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Monday, January 16, 2023

List Day: Currently...

  • Currently listening to... Friend Like You: Bliss n' ESO with the Brisbane Symphony Orchestra.

  • Currently reading... Gift of the Magi by Miles Cameron.

  • Currently playing... Overwatch 2.

  • Currently considering buying... nothing.

  • Currently creating... nothing.

  • Currently planning... to learn the Kotlin programming language by redoing older Advent of Code puzzles.

  • Currently watching... Neil Gaiman's The Sandman on Netflix.

  • Currently anticipating... the end of my mortgage this year.

  • Currently exercising... about two hours per week.

  • Currently weighing... 139 pounds.

This update was sponsored in part by LiveJournal.

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day in history

Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Aging Day

how BU has aged gracefully over 18 years, using January 12 of 12 data.

Alternate Caption: "Select all the boxes that don't contain an Asian".

tagged as 12 of 12 | permalink | 2 comments
day in history

Friday, January 20, 2023

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Fleishman is in Trouble:
This limited series covers the dissolution of a marriage and the immediate fallout that follows. It's slick and well-produced, but your enjoyment of it will be directly influenced by how long you can tolerate all of the unpleasant main characters. Jesse Eisenberg is as annoying as he is in every other role, which shows how great of an actor he is when playing annoying characters. Once the final credits rolled, the whole series felt like a prequel -- I would have enjoyed watching the characters develop and grow instead of just watching them all fall apart. On Hulu.

Final Grade: C+

Clerks III (R):
This is a super obligatory conclusion to the Clerks trilogy (which should have remained a single movie). The movie tries to have a serious ending, which is tonally awkward after 90 minutes of dick and weed jokes, and a "movie within a movie" segment goes on for way too long. Still, this was better than Jay and Silent Bob: Reboot by a wide margin.

Final Grade: C

Barry, Season Two:
The second season of this hitman-turned-actor comedy has a few great moments, but is nowhere near as good as the first season. A specific episode in the middle involving a feral child feels more like an overlong SNL skit than a Barry episode.

Final Grade: B-

Gifts of the Magi: An Artifact Space Story by Miles Cameron:
This free novella (available as an e-book on the author's website) is a pleasant Christmas-themed return to the Artifact Space universe. It reveals no new main story information, but is a nice way to spend an hour. There are a distracting number of typos in the e-book, but hey, it's free!

Final Grade: B

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day in history

Monday, January 23, 2023

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago today, on January 23, 2003, the music theory basketball team at Florida State University faced off against the team from Lucy Ho's Chinese restaurant in the Tallahassee recreational league.

Unlike previous games, where we were awful and had people serious about trying to get better, only 6 people from our team showed up and none of them really cared about basketball. As a result, we were still awful but had a lot more fun than a typical game.

In spite of our latent ability to identify leading tones in four-note chords, we lost tragically to Lucy Ho's, 51-21 (2 of those 21 points came from me). By the time the season ended in February, we had a PERFECT record.

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day in history

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Anniversary Day

Happy 10th anniversary to Evil Mike and Taje!

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day in history

Friday, January 27, 2023

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

1899, Season One:
I really liked Dark but this follow-up show is a miss. It starts out intriguingly like a multi-language LOST but then sputters through endless reaction shots with few reveals. The plot is glacial, the puzzling nature of things is too cerebral, and every character is a cipher with no reason to care about them. I'm not surprised it was cancelled after this season. On Netflix.

Final Grade: C-

Best of Standup 2022:
Rebecca and I like to use these pu pu platters of comedy to find full-length specials to watch. Apparently the best of stand-up in 2022 was pretty awful. The only good jokes were from specials we'd already seen, like Ali Wong and Ronnie Chieng. All of the lesser-known comics fell flat. On Netflix.

Final Grade: D

Knives Out: Glass Onion:
The original Knives Out was a pleasant whodunit elevated with a great performance from Daniel Craig. This tangentially-related sequel is even better. The characters are fun and the build-up to the final reveals work well. I also appreciated that there was a "bigger purpose" at the end -- the point of the movie wasn't just to reveal the murderer. On Netflix.

Final Grade: A

Willow, Season One:
This series captures the cheesy, campy 80s style of the original movie very well but sometimes feels a little off. The middle parts drag (Episode 4 is awful and other episodes feel like they left out key bits of exposition that would make the plot make more sense) but the last few episodes are worthwhile. Treat it like a CW-inspired road trip through the Willow universe and you might be pleasantly surprised. Also, I could never get over the fact that one of the main characters looked and acted like a budget version of Lin Manuel Miranda.

Final Grade: B-

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Monday, January 30, 2023

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2023 album.

  • Events
    • Spent New Years Day with the Taylorstown side of the family (including Abby, up from Florida), on S 1/1.

    • Went to the optometrist on H 1/5 to confirm that my prescription had finally changed after 10 years of stability.

    • Family dinner at Miller's on S 1/7.

    • Rode the Silver Line out to Ashburn with Maia and Ian on H 1/12.

    • Family dinner at Fire Works Pizza on S 1/14.

    • The Edwardses visited from Richmond on S 1/15.

    • HOA Meeting on W 1/18.

    • Spent the afternoon with the Smiths on S 1/21.

    • Attended the memorial service for Chris Bailey on S 1/22.

    • Family dinner at Chuy's on F 1/27, where we bumped into Tammy and family.

    • Rebecca and kids went to an event at the Riverside Church on S 1/28.

    • Dinner with my parents on S 1/29.

  • Projects
    • Reactivated our Netflix account on M 1/2 after 5 months off for being too expensive without enough worth watching.

    • Started learning Kotlin in earnest.

    • Provided proofreading services for the final volume of The Wars of Light and Shadow by Janny Wurts.

  • Consumerism
    • Enjoyed watching The Sandman this month.

    • No amazing new music or books.

    • Still playing Overwatch 2.

January's Final Grade: B, Cold and damp with a few too many kid colds, but otherwise productive and pleasant

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