Zeigen

BOOM.

Saturday afternoon, there’s an explosion up the street (although we didn’t hear it), and the power goes out. A transformer has blown out a block away from us.

No harm done, or so I thought (other than interrupting the Olympics I was watching; now I’ll never see that handball match between Sweden and Denmark). I took the kids up to the tot lot to play in the sand, and later Kimi picked us up to go out for sushi boats. A power cut is certainly one way to get me out of the house.

But Sunday, when I called home, the phone just kept on ringing. Turned out our home phone system (a Uniden three-handset system I had picked up several years ago at Costco) got fried when the power came back on Saturday evening, and was stuck in a permanent reboot loop.

This morning when I called Uniden for support, they walked me through a hard reset, but no luck. They had no alternatives for me — they don’t even have a repair facility at all. It was out of warranty, so toss it and buy a new one. What a waste.

Time to go back to Costco and buy a new one, right?

Well, hold on a second. The nationwide trend is towards ditching home phone service. The National Center for Health Statistics has a very interesting article and graph showing the wireless-only trend (totally random federal agency research for the win): Wireless-only households went up from 12.6% during the first six months of 2007 to 14.5% in the last six months. So, about one out of seven U.S. homes no longer have a landline.

Meanwhile, AT&T lost a million landline subscribers in their last quarter (per gigaom).

I was all set to cancel my home phone number today (despite my geeky attachment to the phone number, which ends in 8486 — spelling out TIVO as a mnemonic).

There are certainly some advantages to a home phone:

• Unlimited local minutes. Unless you’re paying a huge amount for an unlimited cell phone plan, chances are you’re paying attention to how many minutes you spend on your cell. Families with gabby teenagers need the cost convenience of a home phone with unlimited usage.
• 911 ease of mind. Despite improvements, 911 calls from a cell are not as reliable: You’re usually calling a very remote emergency center, which has more limited ability to learn your location. Additionally, cell phones can more easily run out of battery or otherwise be unavailable for use.
• Disaster/power loss ease of mind. Assuming you have a handset that doesn’t require being plugged in, when there’s a local disaster such as an earthquake, the landline is more likely to work than the cell phone.
• Archaic requirements. Some companies that you do business with really want you to have a home phone, and don’t know how to deal with you if you don’t have one. I’ve heard that one contributor to your credit score is how long you’ve had the same landline phone number.
• Inconvenience of updating all your friends and database entries: What a pain to tell everyone you know that you no longer have a home phone.
• “Home” sense: My cell phone number is only for me, and it’s usually in my pocket. My wife’s cell phone number is hers, and it’s usually in her purse. But my kids don’t have cells (too young), and what if someone wants to reach any of us but only if we happen to be at home? (Not that my kids are old enough to answer the phone yet.) But that’s what a home phone number “means”: Anyone who’s home. A cell phone doesn’t mean the same thing — it’s for a specific person, and even today a cell phone call seems more “urgent” than a call to a home phone number.

The downside of a home phone is primarily the cost (and the cost of ownership of those power-spike-vulnerable handsets): I was paying over $30 a month for unlimited local and a certain amount of included long distance.

We certainly didn’t miss having a home phone during the four months of the remodel where we weren’t home anyway. So, like I said, I was all set to ditch the home phone number. But when I can called to cancel, not surprisingly, AT&T was very willing to make me a deal to keep me as a customer. So, sucker that I am, as an experiment, before ditching our home phone service completely, I have decided to give the home phone number an extension (hah!). I’ve reduced the cost to $6 a month (plus tax) by removing call waiting, switched to a measured rate, and removed long distance.

We can still receive unlimited calls, and we pay $0.02 per outgoing call. My estimate is we make very few outgoing calls, so that it’s not worth paying $4 a month more for unlimited local calling. If I’m wrong, I can switch back to unlimited, and still save $20 a month from what we were paying.

After several months, I’ll evaluate the bills and the usage. If we no longer need the home number, I’ll join those one out of seven households that have cut the cord.

In the meantime, I have three perfectly functioning Uniden handsets, but no base station and no answering machine. If I can find a cheap replacement for the busted base station, I may replace it. If not, well, now you know why our home phone number just rings and rings when we’re not home.

Today I attended Jack and Andy’s fifth birthday party at Hoover park, and watched Bob get pelted by water balloons and shaving-cream-filled sponges by ten ecstatic kids. (How I escaped that fate, given I’m a co-godparent? Dunno! But I am oh so grateful.) Aunt Beth made two cakes, one a race car, and the other a chocolate volcano with lava made from melted orange lifesavers. Amazingly beautiful cakes.

* * *

While I was feting twins, Kimi took Sammy and Sophie to the Hiller Airplane Museum, which never gets old for Sammy.

Me: Sammy, what did you see at the airplane museum today?
Sammy: Airplanes.
Me: What kind of airplanes?
Sammy: Old airplanes. With wings!

* * *

Yesterday was Sophie’s eight month birthday. She babbles incessantly now, has the tiniest of teeth buds coming in, gives a smile to everyone, likes to wave somewhat erratically at people, and can roll over, but seems to show no interest in crawling. We’ve started the ferberizing to break her of her 3 a.m. feedings, and so far so good; she slept through the night for the last two nights.

* * *

Yesterday was also photo day at Sammy and Sophie’s school, and in addition, teachers’ lunch out for Sophie’s class. This semi-annual event asks the parents to donate their time and a little money for the teachers to get an escape, while parents come in during the lunch hour to watch the kids. There are eight kids in Sophie’s class, ranging from four months to almost a year old. For the noon to 1 shift where I helped out, we had five parents. When we first started our shift, the teachers had left us well-fed, happy, clean-diapered kids. Within about, oh, ten minutes, half of the kids were bawling, and most had dirty diapers. We parents just looked at each other and laughed. What a profoundly difficult job. The two teachers handle four infants each, with aplomb. We parents were having difficulty with less than two each. Things soon settled down though, and the hour ended up flying by.

* * *

While the photographers set up outside the school and we lined the kids up to have their individual and class photos taken, smoke and haze filled the sky from the nearby Santa Cruz mountains fire. Yesterday morning over 3,400 acres had burned, dozens of homes were destroyed, and the fire was less than 1% contained. Even though we were fifty miles away, kids rubbed their eyes and coughed; and the strange air reminded me of a smell from my childhood, in London: walking down the street in winter evenings, with seemingly every house having a fireplace with a blazing wood fire, smoke pouring out of chimneys, getting on your clothes.

Chim chimminee, chim chiminee, chim chim cheroo.

I was very glad to see the unexpected and unseasonable light rain today, giving the firefighters the break they needed to control the mountain blaze. The dull weather was not so much fun for five-year-olds attending a birthday party, but everything in life is a trade-off.

* * *

Earlier in the week, I caught Speed Racer and then snuck in to a showing of Prince Caspian. It took me about thirty minutes to catch on to Speed Racer’s vibe, but once I did, I loved it. I think this is a vastly underrated movie. The critical smackdown is somewhat intense; I guess most of the critics never watched the original cartoon, because I think the movie catches the goofy tone of the movie pretty much perfectly. And the visuals do not disappoint, exceeding even the hype.

Prince Caspian, on the other hand, is a dreadful bore, missing all spark of charm and whimsy of the first Narnia movie, laying the religious theme on over-thick, and really missing the point of the book (which I read probably twenty times before I was 12).

Speed Racer is over two hours but feels like 60 minutes. Prince Caspian is over two hours but feels like three or four.

* * *

Rob and I have been playing a new card game, Race for the Galaxy (which Steve and Larry introduced me to when they visited a couple of months ago). We play whenever we get a chance. I love this game. It’s a bit fiddly to learn, and the fact that you’re not directly interacting with your opponents takes a few plays before you understand how you can actually have a huge effect on your opponents’ play — but it’s such a short and intense game, I find myself even dreaming about it. Get this game!

* * *

Kimi gave me the new Flight of the Conchords CD for my birthday (among a lot of other CDs, thanks sweetie!). Although I loved the first season of the HBO show, I had thought some of the songs were hit or miss. But I was able to really listen to the lyrics (thanks to the iPhone making it easier for me to carry around music), and now I love all the songs. Buy this CD. Please mister, you won’t regret it.

* * *

There’s a friends-and-family deal at TiVo right now for a TiVo HD. If you’re a friend or family and want a new HD DVR, drop me an e-mail.

* * *

While I do aim to generate content, rather than pass along content from elsewhere, here’s a link. I have to say I applaud these two for their convictions and avocation.
* * *

Kimi: “Your blog is so random. No one likes all the content. No one!”

Guilty — variegated miscellany is what this is. I do tend to be all over the place. Everything’s connected, somehow. Just think though — there are half of the categories listed on the right not even touched by this post. But comments are what I like best, so let me know what you’d like to see more of, and less of.

From now on: The window for saying “Happy new year” to someone closes on January 7th.

We’re officially old fuddy-duddies. Kimi (still not feeling well) went to bed at 11. I stayed up, working a bit, and only knew it was midnight because of the sudden clanging of pots and pans from the neighbors, plus the car horns and fireworks.

Wait, fireworks? Yeah, people were setting them off in the middle of the road. Pretty good show for a suburban side street. Too bad it’s so cold outside. Brr.

Fortunately Sammy and Sophie have managed to sleep through it all. The M80s are still going off even now. Which is why I’m still awake.

So. Resolutions? More frequent posts to this blog (my target is 6 posts a week). Hiking with the family every weekend when the weather gets nice, biking in the summer if we can get safe contraptions for the kids to ride in that don’t terrify them. Writing more short stories and setting up a blog for creative writing and criticism.

Sammy now likes to rhyme things as he says them. “Yes mess” and “nope pope” are favorites, along with “book look” and “nose hose.”

When I put him to bed at night and tell him “no more talking,” he responds with “no more walking.”

Let’s see, what else is going on? We’re currently taking it easy after pretty much everyone except me got sick for Christmas. Sammy’s nose is running like a faucet, and Kimi’s been run down and fighting a fever for over a week. Despite that, we managed to make it up to my parents’ place in Elk Grove on Christmas Day, and while it was a bit rough at night at the hotel (I apparently have started to snore really loudly) we made it through okay, and were able to celebrate my mom’s birthday on Boxing Day. The next morning, Sammy and I went with Phil, Erin and Sarah to the Train Museum in Sacramento, which was pretty much Sammy’s favorite thing ever, especially all the Thomas bits.

Sammy and Sophie both got some wonderful gifts from their aunts and uncles and other relatives and friends; our house is a bit of a shambles; pine needles everywhere — nearly time for the tree to go.

Well, I just left out the cookies and milk and Santa’s note, the stockings are out (poor Sophie doesn’t get one this year, too young…), and I’m about to head to bed. But before I do, wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, assuming you celebrate that sort of thing.
We had Tom, Jennifer and Miranda over for Kimi’s clam chowder and lasagna, followed by a gift exchange — and already Sammy’s rolling in the gift loot, earning a new Cars shirts and another toy airplane. (That’s on top of the airplane I got him from the Hiller Aviation museum which we visited this morning.)

Sophie gave us a wonderful present last night: I took her with me to drop John and Yvonne off at the airport at 10pm (their flight was delayed 3 hours, yeowtch), and she slept from then until around 7am. Nine hours is her longest stretch of sleep by a huge margin. She’s not quite ready to sleep through the night regularly (she just woke up a bit ago, for example, and needed a bottle). But man, I am very pleased she’s starting to be able to sleep for so long.

Kimi pointed out to me that Sammy had started a new game with her, his way of telling a joke: He’ll rhyme a word with another word when answering a question, and laugh uproariously. “Sammy, ready for bed?” “Yes mess!”

At bedtime, when we’re done with the stories and I turn out the light, I always tell him, “Time for sleeping. Head on the pillow. No more talking.” (That’s in addition to the gushy stuff about who loves him.) Tonight, it was “No more talking, no more walking” and he thought that was hilarious.

Okay, I’m rambling now. Night! Merry Christmas!

We had a brief one with Nancy, Kyrie, Jack, Andy, George, Nick, and Tommy tonight to do a gift exchange before Kyrie and her boys head off for Boston.

This morning Kimi went to Sophie’s upcoming classroom’s Christmas party. (Sophie will be joining the “Butterfly” room at the Children’s Preschool Center in Palo Alto starting mid January.)

Yesterday, Kimi went to Sammy’s CPSC classroom’s Christmas party (he’s in the “Hummingbird” room).

Last week Kimi and I went to TiVo’s Christmas party.

I think that’s it for parties until Christmas itself.

Kimi dressed Sophie for the occasion and I have to say, as biased as I am, I think she looks adorable. She’s starting to smile a lot more, although not reliably enough that I’ve been able to catch it well in a picture.

You can’t really tell in the picture, but Sophie has some infant skin conditions. There’s her “cradle cap,” which is a euphemism for all kinds of crusty gunk on her scalp. There are her “angel kisses,” which is a euphemism for blotchy red skin on her face. There’s her “stork bite” which is a euphemism for a bunch of red bruising around her left eye (birth trauma, a side effect of her rapid delivery). All of it should fade in a few months. She’s definitely filling out, much like Sammy did at the same age — she’s really pudgy! Almost 12 pounds now.

At 12 pounds, an infant can start possibly sleeping through the night. Sophie’s not to that point yet regularly, but she is starting to sleep in 5 hour blocks now. She’s had 1 or 2 nights where she slept for 8 hours. Not consistent yet, though. Sleep glorious sleep, how I miss you.

We had our friend Howard over on Sunday for a quick visit; he brought his son Ethan and his twins Brian and Katie with him. Sammy had a great time. Howard, who works for Pixar, was impressed by Sammy’s Cars paraphernalia: Sammy was wearing his Cars shirt, Cars shoes, and had his Cars jacket nearby, and was playing with his Cars speedway. (”Speed? I am speed!” “You’re one gutsy racer!” Repeat ad infinitum.)

Good thing we didn’t show Howard the Cars towel, Cars socks, and all the other Cars toys. But anyway, Howard was telling me about the first year after his twins were born, and how crushing the exhaustion and sleep deprivation was for that entire first year. I have to say as hard as it is having a 2 year old and a 2 month old, at least we’re not dealing with twins. I am in awe just thinking of it.

It’s International Talk Like a Pirate day.

At work, Michaela showed me a bug that had been filed today by Shannon N. (compare the menu titles to this):

I noticed this morning that TiVo Central does not conform to International TLAPD standards. I recommend this be fixed as soon as possible, but I do need guidance on appropriate naming.

TiVo Central Ahoy!
TiVo Rrrrrrecordings
Aaargh, Ye Guide
ON DEMAND, Matey
Find Me Some Programs
Recaaaarrrrrding Schedule
Settings & Parrot Controls

Is this suitable or do we need to revise the menu titles?

Got back in late last night, will update with photos and narrative in a bit. Short version: Had a great time.

In just a few hours, the shuttle comes to pick us up, and we’re off to the big island of Hawaii (Kona side). So no blog updates for a bit. See you all soon.

Saturday night was another of Jennie’s amazing CNY parties. Every year we perform a little play (one of my few creative outlets), and this year the theme was a parody of American Idol. I procastinated a bit worse than usual this year, and despite an early start we were still making script changes the night before. Moses played the part of Why-Yen Seacrest, but had a wedding gig during the afternoon, so I got to be in that role during the afternoon kids performance (aka dress rehearsal), which was fun, although I overdid the excitement a bit and started losing my voice midway through. People kept coming up behind me to pass me glasses of water mid-scenes.

The evening performance went well. Our goal was to keep it at half an hour (Moses having felt strongly that we were too long the year before), but we came in over an hour anyway. I was proud of it overall, especially some of the parody commercials that we put in between scenes.
Jennie always does a great job with the food, and the site for our play, a genuine Chinese noodle factory, adds a genuine ambience that can’t be beat.

Last year I put the script in here but it was a bit too long for a blog post; if there is interested, I can post the script separately.

Sammy and Kimi came up for the afternoon performance (joined by John and Yvonne), so they got to see it in action. Afterwards, during the break between the two parties, we wandered through Oakland’s Chinatown and picked up some bakery items while taking in the eve of Chinese New Year ambience.

Greg said something which I feel to: During the preparation for the play, it’s a bit of a pain, and you wonder to yourself why you do it and resolve to make this your last year. But then performing really ignites your enthusiasm, and you end up energized and looking forward to next year.

We have four more animals left to do (Rat is next year), and after that I’ll take a step back and think about what we want to do next.

I think I’m going to be the kind of old man who always tells the same stories and jokes over and over again, not remembering who has heard them already, because I was all prepared to write about why Xs and Ox are used to represent hugs and kisses, but found that I’d already done that last year.

Today’s Kimi’s birthday, and we’re celebrating with dinner out and a movie if the schedule works out right. Bob’s watching Sammy for us tonight. Kimi just joined me for lunch at the always-tasty Andiamo’s Cafe in historic downtown Alviso. So many TiVo folks eat there, and having a choice between Italian and Mexican food is great. Anyway, happy birthday, sweetheart!

We had a small party today for Kimi’s 30th as well as celebrating St. Valentine’s Day. Only trouble was, Sammy had a rotten night, and I got very little sleep (and Kimi didn’t get much more). Not quite sure why Sammy had such a hard time, but he just wouldn’t sleep. (He’s normally so reliable these days. Even as I write this, he’s sleeping like a…well…baby.) We’d have been in a lot of trouble if not for Yvonne and John and Rob and Kelly coming over early to help prepare. John and Yvonne also helped clean up. Thanks so much, guys!

It was a fun party. Sammy crashed midway through and slept through some very loud playing from the other kids.

Later, while it was raining hard, we headed down to Valley Fair (I still can’t call it Westfield) for the kids’ play area there. Just to get out of the house a bit.

Happy birthday, sweetheart (although the real day is Wednesday).

It’s Heroes’ Day today in Mozambique.
Who’s your hero? My hero for today is anti-Nazi theologian Pastor Martin Niemöller, best known for writing the following:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

We opened the last presents (from John and Yvonne, and Kimi’s Uncle Tom and his wife Jennifer) and Sammy loved his last new toys. He really figured out how to unwrap a box by the end.

After the last presents, we put away the tree and the fiber optic Santa, and now Christmas is done.

My family used to have a 12th night party when we lived in Saratoga, with skits and lots of desserts. I always felt decorations should stay up for the twelve days after Christmas, so I guess we ended up putting them away a day early, but Kimi was ready to be done.

Christmas is hectic, and Kimi gets stressed out, but my parents always made Christmas so special growing up that I guess I still think of it as my favorite time of year.

Oops, there’s still a wreath on the front door. Guess I’ll leave it there for one more day. Happy Twelfth Night, everyone. (And on a side note, “Twelfth” is a very awkward word. But so is “awkward.”)

UPDATE 1/5: Jen came over to watch Sammy today and bought him a gift (a fun flap book and cute red outfit), so Christmas wasn’t quite as over as I thought.

HEALTH UPDATE: My cough is finally done, Kimi’s migraines and aches seem to be over, but Sammy has a runny nose and is clearly fighting something. And so the cycle begins anew.

There ought to be a law against getting sick on vacation. I was fine Friday (and we had a nice dinner with Kyrie, her boys, and her dad and brother Cailin). Saturday Kimi went to John and Yvonne’s party while I watched Sammy and took him to the Junior Museum in Palo Alto. Sunday we took things easy (I watched Sammy a bit in the afternoon while Kimi went to go see Dreamgirls. But Sunday morning I started not feeling well. And Kimi was not feeling well either, retiring early after Sammy went to bed. So she slept through midnight and the birth of 2007 while I was online with my friend John.

This morning, New Year’s Day, I watched Sammy for a bit while Kimi recovered, and then slept from 10 to 2. We were all lagging through the day. Kimi did some baking and then developed a migraine in the evning. I was coughing and have been feeling low energy all day.

I do have some resolutions. I will try blogging daily for a bit, even if all I post is something quick. I’ll keep up with the diet (still hovering at 170, need to start taking the exercise part seriously). Need to go to the dentist. Kimi resolved to only shop with a list, no impulse buying.

Did you make any resolutions? How you feeling?

For the first time in years, I didn’t spend Christmas day with my parents; instead, we were in Tacoma and spent the day at Foot and Louise’s house in Lakewood, south of Tacoma. (Foot and Louise are my sister-in-law Tomi’s husband John’s parents.) They also hosted us for dinner the night before, which in their tradition is a variation of Wigilia — we had breaded whitefish, cucumber salad, rice, mashed potatoes, bread, and lobster thermidor (the idea being all white or near-white foods). It was a wonderful evening and Christmas day, and Foot and Louise as well as Tomi and John lavished us with gifts (so much so that even with half-packed suitcases we had difficulty packing).

Tuesday morning, the day after Christmas (or “Boxing Day” as we used to call it in England), we got up at 6:45am, and thanks to Louise kindly giving us a ride, we headed to Seatac and our flight to Sacramento. There were no problems with Seatac but our flight was delayed half an hour, and it took forever at Hertz to get our minivan, so we were late getting to my parents’ place. Everyone was there — my sister Joanna and all three of my brothers (Phil, Rob and Harry), plus Phil’s wife Erin and daughter Sarah, and Rob’s wife Kelly.

Sammy was pretty good on the plane but needed his nap, but with all the people and excitement he couldn’t stay asleep. So he got to open a ton of presents — so many great presents. I took a picture of him surrounded by them yesterday, I’ll put that up at some point. I just want to say thank you to all his aunts and uncles who were so generous.

We had arranged a gift exchange between my brethren and sistren. I had bought Kelly a big world atlas, and Kimi got Rob some games and the DVD set for “Jack of All Trades” (Bruced Campbell’s short-lived historical TV series). Erin got me the complete Calvin and Hobbes collection plus a Serenity/Firefly game (awesome!), and Phil got Kimi and wonderful collection of scrapbooking and craft items.

Harry had to leave early for his flight to Canada (which made Sarah very sad because she loves playing with her Uncle Harry so much), so I didn’t get to see him (or Kelly, who drive him) very much. Joanna had to leave that evening because she was working the next day. But it was great to reconnect with my family. Phil, Rob, dad and I played a bunch of Ricochet Robots (which Rob had given to Phil along with some other games.

Mom was scheduled for a sleep-deprivation EKG test early on Wednesday morning, and was only allowed to sleep from 10pm to 2am. So Rob and Phil got her up and Rob stayed up all night talking with her to keep her awake, then Rob came with me as I drove mom to her appointment. It was an interesting process; hopefully the doctors can use the EKG to better fine-tune her medications and help prevent her from falling anymore.

Rob and I napped at home afterwards, and after a brief lunch, we drove Rob home and finally returned home ourselves. Unpacking all the luggage was exhausting, but now we’re done and it feels great to be back. Our two cats left a few “presents” for us, so the spirit of Christmas was living on.

If you celebrate that kind of thing!

Wednesday night after finishing up my budget and trying to clear my inbox, I headed over to Kyrie’s place and drove her and the twins down to Los Gatos for the Fantasy of Lights. I told Kyrie I’d be there by 7pm, but didn’t arrive until 7:15pm. The drive took about 20 minutes, and on the way down, the boys were cautiously excited. But then Andy (who was a bit sick) fell asleep while we were waiting in line to get in, all of three minutes before entering. He was dead asleep and no amount of prodding could rouse him. So he missed out, due to me being late. Sorry, Andy.

Fortunately, Jack loved it, especially the animated cannonballs and the new section in the middle featuring Christmas dinosaurs. Kyrie thought the dinosaurs were off-theme, but hey, the dinosaurs celebrated Christmas too, didn’t they? Didn’t they? Oh, they didn’t? Well, they looked cool anyway. All Elves and Santa gets a bit boring, you definitely need a T-Rex to liven things up.

The last few years we’ve had Thanksgiving at my parents’ place up in Elk Grove. This year, Kelly and Rob hosted. This was great for two reasons: First, it’s a lot closer, and second, they did almost all of the cooking, so we could relax a lot more. The only downside is that I didn’t get to see my brother Phil and his wife Erin and daughter Sarah, since they went to Erin’s parents instead.

Kimi made a pair of sweet potato cheesecakes topped with maple cream. In addition to the traditional menu (mostly cooked by Kelly and Rob’s friend Keith), Rob also cooked some crab, which tasted really great although I have to say it felt out of place. A memorable addition, to be sure.

Kelly’s step-mom, dad, sister Tara, and brother-in-law-to-be Geoff were also there, so it was a big group. After dinner, a few folks watched football and the rest of us played some Outburst (one of my favorite party boardgames). Sammy was well-behaved the whole day and managed to take a nap at 3 in the office. Kimi ended up taking him home around 7, and Harry and I followed a bit later (we had invited him to spend the night).

It felt good to see my parents again, and I appreciated Joanna driving them down and back. If we had more room in our house I think we would have invited them to stay as well as Harry.

At home, Kimi went to bed early so Harry and I played some Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, completing the series we had started the week before. In this two-player board game that shares some similarities with Stratego, the black side (Sauron’s minions — the orcs, cave troll, warg, and other bad guys) are definitely stronger than the white side (the Fellowship and assorted other good characters). Harry’s very good at this game, and gets a lot of practice since they apparently play a lot at his work. With Harry playing the more difficult white side, he beat me 2-1 in the first series, but I managed to win the second series 2-1. The new deluxe edition has some variant characters, and when we played with those, he beat me 3-0 alternating sides. I don’t like the variant characters nearly as much, but I do recommend the game overall — a really interesting game for two players that somehow manages to capture the feel of the books better than any other Lord of the Rings-inspired game I’ve played.

Thursday night we watched BloodRayne, a truly awful inspired-by-a-videogame-neither-of-us-have-ever-played movie, and Friday we basically vegged out and watched Heroes all a bit during the day and finishing up after Sammy went to bed. We had a mini-marathon and succeeded in watching the first nine episodes. I enjoyed Heroes quite a bit, and it’s clear the writers actually know where the first few episodes are going. I was a bit surprised at how much gore there was; it’s not for kids at all. The series plays around with comic books as a theme but ultimately I think the series has more to do with a cross between The 4400, X-Files and Lost than with any particular comic book.

As I write this, Kimi and I are doing a movie-trade. She’s seeing the 7:10 showing of Casino Royale and I’ll see the 10:30 showing.
I’ll add my impressions later.