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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
greenexecutive's LiveJournal:
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| Friday, July 10th, 2009 | | 11:05 am |
Some videos
We got Kate some modelling clay, so we improvised some worm movies using the webcam on top of Josh's Macbook. Uploading to Youtube seems to have damaged the end, but that doesn't subtract from its cinematic genius. Bab5 swirls around in the background. Here's another one. I was having an argument with Adam about the nature of the creative process in video game design at the same time I was making this, so it's equally as random as the first. Finally, some entertainment, not by me, just a drive-by post: | | Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 | | 7:07 pm |
I watched "Porco Rosso" with Kate. It was soaring and beautiful, slow in a way that indicated it was taking its time, not that it was underwritten. Kate had had a long day (first day at summer camp), and we were watching the Pig In A Plane movie because she was too blitzed to do anything else. She curled up on my lap, and hid her eyes when it looked like Porco might be shot down. At the end she said she wanted me to get more Pork-O-Ross-O movies. I said, alas, that's all they made. Afterwards, I was annoyed. I was annoyed first that someone would have the audacity to pitch something so bizarre, then I was frustrated that someone funded it, and then I was really annoyed that everyone involved had the talent such that something so offbeat and strange should be so perfect. | | Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | | 11:41 pm |
1776
This morning, Kate came in crying. We were like, what, what, and she says, "I slept in too long! I slept in too long!" so we were like what time is it? and she kept saying "I slept in too long!" Then she said it was 1:30, I think, and I said, no, it's not, but we figured out it was 9:30, and that meant we had no time to bake red and blue M&M cookies to bring to the Greenmeadow parade, since we were due there at 10. This is the first time in, oh, 4 years or so Kate has slept past 9. It was going to be hard to explain to the band leader that we were late because our six-year-old hadn't set her alarm.  (Weirdly, this is a picture of Kate and friends at the same parade last year. She was playing with the other tuba players' wife and kids while he, Sara, and I marched.) ( Read more... ) | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 10:51 am |
Frolf
Adam provided me with a copy of Tiger Woods 2010, so I put my Wiimote in its ribbed marital-aid-like container and fired it up with Kate this morning. It's good. It's not mind-boggling, at least to me, since the controller is familiar and the game even more familiar. Tiger Woods isn't a dynamo of change, and on cheap hardware it's still the weird-lookin' thing it always has been. Annika Sorenstam looks like something out of some unfortunate 1987 film.Still, the frisbee golf thing is fun, and very, very intuitive. I'm...pleased. It's like, OK, that's fine, what's next? I hope Wii Resort has more punch. I've had enough with a game I can go outside and play right now in my back yard. I want my frisbee to leave smoke or flame or something and look AWESUM. Kate loved EA's non-licensed relaxing golf music. Win one for in-house musicians. | | Friday, June 12th, 2009 | | 12:48 pm |
It's the last day of school
Kate came home at noon today. I pulled her aside and had her watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeZxRYXZ154As we got to the chorus, she said, "Hey, that's like today!" We bopped around to the song and she sang along to the chorus herself by the end. Listening to this song was an annual ritual once I discovered it in middle school on Dr. Demento. I used to bring my cassette tape with me in my '86 Jetta so I could listen to it on the way home. I have never seen Alice Cooper before seeing this video today. The fact that Cooper, all goth'd up and sneering, is standing around with all these smiling colorful 70s teens---no stagecraft, no scary lighting, nothin'. It's just him, rockin' out with his oddball saber, with hip movement that could be found on a late 90s girl popstar. At the end? Cue the bubble machine. Nothing says angry goth like a bubble machine. | | Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | | 9:01 pm |
It's science
S. and Kate were out running around in the yard while I alternately did laundry and watched Unskippable at the Escapist. (Not their best work this week.) ( Read more... ) | | Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | | 9:50 pm |
| | Saturday, May 9th, 2009 | | 9:54 pm |
TLDR
Kate's birthday, tomorrow. She turns 6 around noon, give or take, a bright red lobster that cried like a lamb those many years ago. But, this is not maudlin reminisce. This is about Kate's party, which was this afternoon. ( Read more... )So, Kate had a ball and so did her friends, and that's what matters, and my stomach is unclenching from worry. I will post a few pictures when I get my head together. I assume it's a straight road from here to being that hopeless father enabler on "My Sweet 16" on MTV for me. Now I have a hundred bugs to fix. | | Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | | 10:37 pm |
Oh, man
 Purple Exec gets cooked by a couple of firebots. | | 2:39 pm |
Oh, and
...the hallway is a zoo, and the lava has spread to the entire house. And there is more than one prepared purse for, uh, lava/zoo exploration. And if the parents see the kids, the kids have to go in jail, which is Kate's room. Man, this is confusing. | | 2:32 pm |
Play at every level
Kate: "We're almost done setting up the hot lava monster." A., her friend, from the 'lava room': "I have a purse ready!" | | Friday, April 17th, 2009 | | 9:03 pm |
This is what T-shirts get you
So, I'm wearing my 2009 T-shirt. I'm getting gas down at the off-brand Quickie Mart. It's a cultural mixture at the gas station, where wealthy folk with BMWs, the construction workers with trucks, and the poorest new immigrants from Guatemala with run-down Civics all hustle to get gas, as it's $0.02 cheaper than the Shell station on El Camino. (Plus the Shell station has TV ads---oo, I hate that.) ( Read more... )A very strange conversation. | | Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | | 11:42 am |
I lose.
 I'm the dead red guy in the middle at the top. | | Monday, April 13th, 2009 | | 1:34 pm |
Camp
Kate was already wearing her leotard when I got up. Sara went to work while I dizzily staggered about (too much coding from 1am to 3am) getting ready to leave. It was time for gymnastics camp, one of three days of Kate entertainment during her second spring break. (She gets two. Man, out here in California they have it soft.)
We got to the gym too early and had to wait for the doors to unlock. At first Kate was bouncy and eager, curious to see the teachers getting things ready. Then, as the other kids arrived, she drew close to me, getting quiet and observant, watching the interaction between parents and teachers, siblings and other siblings, and the whiny refusals from the youngest kids to wear their nametag stickers. Kate was smiling, but cautious. It was the same careful smile I used to see on her at 1.5, barely verbal, watching the bigger kids at the park, trying to learn how they worked.
I was overwhelmed, suddenly, with sadness. (When I don't sleep enough, I get mood swingy, I know.) I've been that kid, the talkative energetic one who doesn't know anyone, but desperately wants to. I remembered my parents reluctantly leaving 15-year-old me in my run-down dorm room at Northwestern on the first day of a 5 week engineering camp. They later said that leaving me there was one of the hardest things they had done with me---the dorm had the ambiance of a prison cell and I knew no one and didn't know what was coming. (I had a wonderful time, made friends I still know today, etc. But how do you know?)
I used to be amazed at how my paternal grandfather could talk to anyone. He could do this tone that was equalizing and honest, never awkward or plaintive. He ran conversations like he drove, effortlessly and skillfully. I realize now that he had the natural gregariousness that comes with my gene pool along with 70 years of meeting new people---there was nothing unexpected left for him with newcomers.
But for Kate, this first day of camp is...first. She's not particularly shy and seems to set up shop with other little girls in her classes pretty well. I watched her go down to the bouncy gymnastics floor and crab walk back and forth, easily outpacing the younger kids. There was a tall, willowy girl about her age, also without friends, and I suspected Kate would be OK, but...oh, it was hard leaving her.
I'm getting her in an hour. I suspect she'll be fine. I hope she is---shes's going back Wednesday and Thursday. | | Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | | 1:35 pm |
| | Saturday, April 4th, 2009 | | 6:52 pm |
| | Friday, April 3rd, 2009 | | 2:43 pm |
| | Saturday, March 28th, 2009 | | 9:36 pm |
I'm so far behind on culture
Dear Season 1 of Battlestar Galactica:  1. Stop having interesting lighting so I pause to practice my sketching. 2. Stop the previews after the opening credits. I don't want previews of the episode. I have the DVD; I'll stick around after the commercial break. 3. Stop it with the cliffhangers. I keep getting dragged into the next episode. What are you trying to do, here? It's lots o' fun. | | Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 | | 5:13 pm |
| | Friday, March 13th, 2009 | | 12:08 pm |
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