Fuzzy Friends

Those lucky enough to have visited Monkey-Girl and my home have noticed our extensive collection of stuffed animals. Believe it our not there are many more stuffed animals on display in our home than any other toy. (I counted.)

It turns out that having this display along the back of our couch has been a big help. Monkey-Girl will often grab a friend to help as a prop for her increasingly beleaguered body. Poor thing.

The king of our collection must be this little guy. He currently reigns over our living room from atop his cheesehead throne. My favorite thing about the whole setup is that Monkey-Girl created the whole thing. The cheeseheads were placed there to deter our eternally naughty cat from jumping onto our television. The monkey just seemed to make sense to Monkey-Girl at the time. Since we spend hours gazing in his direction, I keep envisioning us paying respect to the monkey. Better still, we've had guests over to assume the same position.

Excellent.

New Things

I thought I'd try a new look for the website. Monkey-Girl thinks it's cute. I suppose I do too. I'm toying with making it my homepage. That way I'll be reminded to post more often. We'll see if it actually works.

Sometime last week Monkey-Girl suggested we have stuffed peppers for dinner soon. Stuffed peppers are not a dish I grew up with and so it wasn't until adulthood that I experienced them. My first outing was significantly marred by the presence of my mortal enemy, the tomato. (The FDA has put out warnings about these evil berries. It's about time.)

Always up for a culinary challenge, I dove in. The result, shown above, was delightful. I think I will seek out more ways to cook food inside of other foods. It'll be fun.

Cross Stitch Update: I'm about to run out of the dark-brown embroidery floss I'm using. The local Wal-Mart no longer carries embroidery floss. This throws a wrench into my dreams of actually finishing a cross stitch project before my baby is born.

Edit: I just remembered! I did a little project for my in-laws some years back when I was first dating Monkey-Girl. So I guess I have finished a cross stitch project at some point in my life.

Wow. That kind of makes the hustle I've been putting on seem ridiculous. What am I saying? How could anything about about a Transformers cross stitch project be ridiculous?

Confessions of a Goof-Off

Forty-eight days since an update? What kind of a blogger am I? I would argue that I'm not a blogger at all. A blogger, by definition, blogs. Maybe I'm something else then. A goof-off perhaps. You see, the "drive" to blog is in fact more of a way of not doing something I aught to be. With my teaching duties done, I now have much less to put off. Therefore, the desire to blog has been lessened.

We are about two week from baby's due date. There is very little left for us to do. Most of our days have been spent waiting and watching terrible movies on basic cable. (Even Mr. and Mrs. Smith loses something after the forth time in a fortnight.) Monkey-Girl is not sleeping very well which is causing me to not sleep well. As a result, our new bedtime has shifted to 3:00 am.

When the situation calls for it (like Unforgiven coming on . . . again) I turn to one of my distractions du jour. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the (likely) unholy pairing of Transformers cross stitch and Dungeons & Dragons, 4th edition.

I've been working on this cross stitch project for just about a year now. Mostly it's sat in a bag while I've occasionally thought about maybe working on it. Something gave me the crazy idea of trying to finish it before baby got here. You know, I just might.

D&D, 4E, as the cool kids are calling it, is quite the upgrade. I'm plodding my way through the Player's Handbook currently. The plodding is entirely on me. The book is very readable and well laid out. The regular players of D&D I know all like what they see in this new edition. The occasional players have been mostly negative. I am in the former category and am no exception. I won't bore you with details. It's just very fun.

That's all for tonight. I'll try to update again soon. We'll see what baby has to say about that. Who knows maybe I can call myself a blogger again someday.

You ARRRR Invited, Matey!

Monkey-Girl's birthday is today. It's a milestone. (I will not get more specific than that.) It's also the last one she'll have before she's a mother. I decided to make it a big deal.

Hence, the pirate party. We had foam swords, pirate ring toss, eye patches, plastic coins, a pirate ship shaped cake, and more. The weather was great, the company was better. I only wish I took more pictures. Most importantly, Monkey-Girl had a wonderful time.

Monkey-Girl recieves a monkey from Gordon.

Pirate ship ring toss, anyone?

Gordon and Hannah duel for the crowd's pleasure.

A chainmaille clad Victor looms large.

The birthday girl checks out her cake.

And so can you.

The aftermath.

May the Fourth Be With You

It's been ridiculously long since I've posted. Sorry for that.

If you say this post's title out loud you'll get why this date is the unofficial Star Wars Day. This year I'm celebrating by letting you know how to be an even bigger Star Wars nerd.

Above is an example of ASCII art. The image is composed entirely of keystrokes. Well a crazy dutchman, has gone and made well over 10,000 images, strung them together, and made them available for your viewing pleasure. It's Star Wars animated!

1. In your start menu select run.


2. When prompted to run; type, "cmd". This opens a command window.


3. Now type, "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl"


4. Enjoy!

The dutchman hasn't finished the whole thing, but there's quite a bit there.

Marvel at his dedication! It certainly dwarfs mine.