Staining the Floors

Until the floors are finised, Ashley and I have made a bed on the family roon floor.  While I napped, Ashley stole a pic of my man-cleavage, too bad.

 

Pops brushed the stain on, and I wiped it off, it’s mans work.

Stripping Hardwood Floors With Pops

Because Ashley and I enjoy sleeping in the family room so much, we decided to take another week and re-finish our hardwod floors.

Originally we were to lazy to refinsh so we just painted.  We had to lock those pesky splinter down so they wouldn’t jab into our socks in the middle of the night.

Be careful Eddie.

 

The use of Goof Off was an intoxicating failure.  We got hot while the floors just turned to goop and were no easier to scrape up.

I got my Dad to help us.  At first he was displeased with the project, then after some Goof Off fumes, he couldn’t be happier.

Work Dad Work!!!!

 

Potato found himself a home in some paint tray liners,  he’s a handsome boy.  Today we finish srapping, and then sand the bo-shit out of the splintery floors.

During one of the many trips to Home Depot I saw the magical bag of ice melt that just drove me wild.

The Sofa isn’t going to be Super any more.

With the new arrival of our Maryland tax return, Ashley and I have gone on a quest to find a new couch.  Currently we have the silliest couch ever made, the Super Sofa.  It has a fold out tray, built in massage, heating, hidden hubbies everywhere, and now thanks to us, it has the familiar faint scent of cat pee.  I loved this couch.

While looking for our new fancy family room ride we visited Marlo, Ashley, and Wolf’s.  We eventually made our final purchase at Wolf’s Furniture, however the other two stores frantically stalked us as we shopped.  Ashley and I would try out a sofa while the salesperson joined us, “So do you like this one?” “How about this one?”  “This one is new!” “This one has microfiber!”  “Did you see one you liked?”  Occasionally we would manage to wiggle away from them only to see them floating around behind us conveniently organizing pillows.

So today we go to pick up our new adult-style sofa.  So long Super Sofa.

Want more exciting news about the Henley family room make-over?  Check out Ashley’s blog: http://theriperadish.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/family-room-additions/

High Quality Wife

I would like to take a moment to say that I have a cool wife.  The one I got is extremely good quality.  She’s actually interested in about 80% of the things that I’m interested in, and she does a great job pretending on the other 20%.  She’s apologizes about her stunted height frequently, and stands on the stairs to talk to me at a normal height. She loves all the animals in the world, which is clear from our 6 pets and her recent donations to the Humane Society and the ASPCA. She writes a mean column in the Frederick News Post, and she uses correct grammar ALL of the time.  She looks good when she’s all made up, and even when she has just gotten up.  I have no particular reason to write about her today, but her excellent quality needed to be discussed.

House

Ashley and I have been watching a lot of House lately.  Every few days Ashley or I will fetch the big red envelope from the mail box with our next four episodes.  While in this damaged economy, I haven’t had much freelance work so we have a little extra time on our hands.  The four measly episodes on each Netflix disc isn’t enough to satisfy us.  After spending a few minutes searching online, we found every episode of house in its entirety (minus the ending credits) on this Asian version of YouTube called YouKu.com.  People say we have difficulty delaying gratification, this is why.  We have legimate access to every TV show that’s currently on DVD, streaming to us at a normal, and steady and healthy pace, but when we are hindered by the speed of the US Mail, we find other ways to get what we want.

Check out this ridiculous picture of Cameron I found online, how come every female TV star has to take such cheesy, sexy pictures:

Also be sure to check out Ashley’s new killer Frederick News Post Column: Unintended Consequences.

Creepy Solo-Camping Trip

I would love to go into the woods Bear Grylls style and just hang out alone for a week. I’d cheat and bring my own food and water, but everything would be unplanned. I’d get to buy lots of cool camping stuff and I’d get to sleep outside and I wouldn’t have to brush my teeth, it would be awesome. If Ashley ever has to leave town for a week, it’ll be certain that I’ll move into the woods.

Doubt

I saw Doubt last night. The movie was thought provoking and extremely complex. I was familiar with it’s concept going in, but I was weary about how the movie would end. A religious movie entitled “Doubt” will either end in favor of doubting religion, or embrace the faith. (Spoiler!) Philip Seymour Hoffman is a priest who acts sketchy with a vulnerable young black boy. It doesn’t look too good, but there isn’t any real evidence. One nun believes he’s guilty, one nun needs evidence (very faith vs. science). Faith wins and the potentially sketchy priest is bullied out of the Catholic school. The accusing nun draws the parallel between the acting upon the unseen in this issue and her faith in god. The movie ends with her in doubt of god. Really, really good movie.

I showed Ashley the moon last night through my new telescope. In between celestial objects we peeked in on the second floor window across the road and saw a girl pee (I saw her butt, it was cool).

Christmas Morning

This is typical.  It’s 9:00AM on Christmas morning at my Mom’s house, and I’m the only one awake.  I stayed in bed attempting sleep for as long as I could, but I’m ready for some presents.  I busied myself with showering, shaving and brusing my teeth with my Hannah Montana Rock Star Tooth Tunes brush. 

Yesterday I got a Celestron 114GT telescope.  I just can’t wait to get it home and break it out of the box.  Ashley says I’m not a real astronomer until I get it set up. 

Check out the puppies enjoying some Christmas Eve dinner at Ashley’s parents house:

I hear my Mom and Charlie jamming out to some Christmas songs downstairs, I’m going down!

The First 5000 Days of the Intenet

This Merry Christmas Eve I laid awake in bed thinking first about the WifeBo sleeping on my chest, then thinking about this video I watched online last night talking about the first 5000 days of the Internet.  When stated like that, 5000 doesn’t sound like very long (it comes out to 13.69 years old).  The Internet has definitely existed longer then that, but that age reflects the time that the public has access to it, (a la: Al Gore).

It’s exciting to think about the Internet as one unified machine that once it was started, it has never once gone offline for even a second.  Even if you personally lose your connection, the overall stability is awe inspiriting.  It used to be that only standard computers could talk to each other, now it’s your phone, it’s you TV, it’s you Blu-ray Player, it’s your car, your DVR, your gaming console.

It will be wild to see how this collective consciousness develops as time goes on.  Merry Christmas Eve.

Spore: The Best Game Ever

Ever since Ashley and I jumped the gun on Christmas, I have been compulsively playing Spore. Typicality, I don’t play many video game. When I do play, I rarely finish. Spore isn’t your typical role playing game, instead of leveling up your warrior with nerdy new features, in Spore, your creature evolves. You start by controlling a cell, evolving into a creature. That creature teams up with other creatures and makes a tribe. That tribe becomes powerful and turns into a civilization. Once your civilization is supreme, you move on to conquer outer space.

The game is very fun. Entertainment value aside, the game does a great job providing an accessible vantage point at how life really works. It’s exaggerated of course, but it offers a fun explanation of the theory of evolution. Once in the civilization stage, religion does make an appearance, however it’s only portrayed as another form of technology, on par with military technology.

It’s an extremely ambitious undertaking, to offer an entertaining and playable version of evolution all the way from cell, to galactic adventurer. The game doesn’t take too long to beat. I’ve been playing for just a few days and I’m already at the space stage. A few days play might be too short for many people, but I don’t have time to dedicate to really long term games.

Anti-Spore is as you would expect, anti-it. This mom is afraid of the damage of allowing children play an evolution game. In one entry she talks about how the game actually proves creation in how the player “creates” their creature, but still, it’s too dangerous to dabble in.

Last night, Ashley and I took a trip tp the the Yaglenski Family Holiday Light Show. It’s a free Christmas light show that the family puts on every year. You pull up and every 20 minutes the computer controlled light display puts on a show to a privately controlled radio frequency. It’s cool.