Uno barco grande?

It sure was nice to hear that we had purchased something for fifteen thousand dollars in Spain earlier in the week.

"Que?" we said to our bank, who had called about the charge on our joint credit card. It's disheartening to know your identity is having a lovely vacation without you.

The bank was nice enough to forgive the charge and cancel our credit cards and give us new names. We are now Larry and Trish Flugenhocker.

Ryan's still Ryan. Bailey is now spelled Bailee. Griffin is a gopher.

Braggart

I'm biased, sure, but without exaggeration, my son is the most amazing child in the solar system.
Except for maybe Dakota Fanning.
I'm not sure when the transition occurred, but somewhere in the not-to-distant past, Ryan crawled into Calvin's transmogrification cardboard box a baby, said Zonk, and lean-walked out a little boy. I'm not saying he's going to cure cancer before writing his first symphony in kindergarten, but if you're reading him a story and there are a bunch of animals on the page and you ask him "Where's the cow?", that boy is pointing to a cow, dammit!
That's the other reversal: he used to point and we'd tell him what it is. Now, we say a word, and he points to it. Ball. Moon. Star. Grandpa. Teeth. Even "Uncle Dennis", this week, who he knew all of four days. In a room full of people, pets, balls, teeth, and grandpas, he knew an Uncle Dennis when he saw one.
He used to push open the door, and we'd say "open" and he'd shut it and we'd say "closed." Now, we can say "open", and he'll go and open a door.
When I'm changing him at night, I tell him "socks off" and he pulls off his own socks. "Where's Daddy's hat?" I ask, and he pulls off my hat.
The thing that blew Uncle Dennis away at dinner last night was his propensity for signing -- Ainsley has been teaching him how to sign several words, and Ryan is starting to use them on his own. He'll point to the feeder outside and make the sign for 'bird' (pressing his thumb and forefinger together slowly). He sort of does 'girl', has made the sign for "fish" and "duck", and last night correctly patted his thigh while looking at one of the Boivins' dogs.
And now...now...the verbal skills are starting to catch up. He stretches his mouth apart wide for a very slow and syncopated "Uh Oh", which everyone agrees is the cutest thing since sliced bread on a baby lamb sprinkled with flower petals. He said "Bye Bye" to some random yahoo at Safeway, my wife said. And I think we've heard "baby" and "bath" in the past 24 hours.
...really need to start him on that symphony here pretty soon.

Hermetical convenience

Dear Amazon.com,

From whence I gether many of my thoughtful Christmas gifts were purchased.

As you are well aware, people are dorks and gas is expensive and parking lot real estate is at a premium, which is why the smart consumer has turned to the ilks of you to the tune of $25 billion for on-line shopping with occasionally free shipping and less occasional problem-free holiday gift-giving: we don't want to go to stores and deal with the mashugana. Send our crap to the boys in blue (or brown, or yellow, or whatever those FedExers wear), and they will leave it on our doorstep, right under the door for us to step on in some cases, but hey they were tired last week and didn't need three more dogs barking at them.

So as I was slicing the packaging off of my movies and CDs this morning, it made me wonder: why the hell are you supergluing these Security Seals on anywhere from one to three sides of our products? We're not in a store. We're not walking by those metal pulonium 210 emitters standing like rooks on the corners of the chessboard that is your store, zapping everyone's private packages (so to speak) for contraband items, and we certainly don't have anything like that installed in our homes. We've given you the money ahead of time. What say you mail us these things wrapped in a loose thread we can cut, or tucked into a little paper sleeve, folded over once, just so? Why do we need these barcoded seals that mock us with their little arrow and "Pull" written in one corner, allowing us to dig our fingernails and rip only enough of the seal to rip off half of the word "Pull"? Why do you think it's funny to keep us from said digitized entertainment for another twenty minutes as we chip away at every other milimeter that unsticks itself under our bloody claws? That's like a car dealership selling you a car with an empty gas tank and a siphon kit, patting you on the back as you left, saying "Good luck! Happy Driving!"

Plus my wife would probably say all that plastic is bad for the environment or something noble, so go with that.

HUGS 'N SMOOCHES,

The American Consumer

A Few Good Montezumas

Had a chance with the Unk in town and a day off or several to go visit the new (as of Nov) National Museum of the Marine Corps, just 8 miles down the Interstate. The design
is meant to emulate the famous Iwo Jima Memorial Raising the Flag picture, and inside they have the actual flag from off Mount Suribachi.


Plus aircraft, tanks, swords, boxer shorts, a vial of Jack Nicholson's flop sweat, and a stuffed dog.


It's eclectic.

Better to Give than to ReHeave

We invited one of my father's three brothers out from California for the holidays so he could meet Ryan and spend Christmas with family instead of Californians.

So, naturally, since he was in our house for more than 8.2 minutes, he came down with the flu.

Fortunately, it was after he and my Dad went to the Kennedy Center to see Handel's "Messiah" and had spent the night at his place, so he was able to just crash there and sleep the illness away without feeling like he had to get up and hang around with us. Or avoid giving it right back to us.

The cats barf enough on their own without our help.

Gene Defect

That Ryan is one good looking kid.

Though it's a little bizarre how he takes after a punk-ass kid from New Mexico, circa 1972.

Under the rooftop, sick sick sick

This has been a crapulent week in every sense of the NON-madeup word. Everyone in the house and maybe even some of the pets and visiting squirrels have come down with the flu, a cold, or both. After taking care of the fam Tuesday and Wednesday, I went to work for a few hours but then started to feel like mini-death myself, with a full-body ache and zero appetite. I went to bed at 7 pm, a full two hours before a one-year old. Thursday I felt a little better, but by Friday my stomach was tied up in knots, calling a saltine cracker all kinds of interesting names, and rendering me little able to get to a stack of presents to wrap or decorations to hang. I followed Ainsley around the house like a ghost, taping, hanging, pointing, mouthing unknown vowels in an attempt to be helpful.
Over the weekend, neither of us had a stomach to be proud of, but since Ainsley's parents were in town, we put on a brave face and let my father-in-law buy us dinner at a steakhouse in the opposite direction from all the malls. Ryan enjoyed his spinach and artichoke dip, but boy, that just went right through him, and with breakfast eggs the next morning, we were close to having some members of the International Atomic Energy sub-committee on hazardous waste investigating our diaper pail. If you get me.
His biggest issue now is a cold, which we think is the major factor preventing him from sleeping through the night lately. Hopefully when the sinuses clear, so will his 4.a.m social calendar.

Ryan's Bravehart Weekend

It really is a wonder he's still alive.

You tend to rarely see mommies throw their children up in the air, balance them on one palm above their heads in a Superman pose, or do the rudimentary day-to-day gravity-defying roughhousing that daddies are supposed to do. It's a federal law.
I learned early on (even back when my nephew was a tot) that putting little kids on your shoulders does wonders for their outlook on life. With Ryan, we have come up with a Nadia Comi Nadia Comanescz
we have come up with a Mary Lou Retton-esque dismount whereby he leans over to one side, and I swing his head down, bending over slightly as I swoop him into my arms in a cradle, going "woo hoo hoo." Kind of like the guys from "Cinderella" did with their guitars.
Yes, that cool.
Anyhoo, I know that Ainsley has seen me do it, time and time again, but instinct took over on Sunday, and she reached out for her "falling" boy, scratching him under the nose with her fingernail.
Later, while holding Ryan and wearing her festive, "snowflake"/Ninja Star earrings, Ryan flailed his head about excitedly, scratching his left nostril on one of the now-retired baubles.
Monday, we moved to internal thrashing, as Ainsley found him awake from his nap with a new friend we'll just call "Pile o' Puke". He was off all day, getting ripped internally and losing his appetite for the first time in thirteen and a half months.
The good news is that the bug only seemed to last 24 hours, but the bad news is that through reverse boob osmosis (clinical term), he gave it to Ainsley, who has eaten a grand total of two-thirds of a piece of toast in the past 23 hours, as she hasn't been able to keep anything else down. I came home from work two hours early yesterday and was able to take care of Ryan until bed time (when he still needs Mommylove), and I'm playing hooky today.
My son is crying out from the next room.
Sounds like "Freeeedoooom!"

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, My Ass

Kwalled

I passed my eval yesterday afternoon with crawling colors.
I was not pleased with how I did, but the three officers in my unit who made up the board were very cool about my rough patches and helped me along and used it more as a training opportunity than a chance to highlight all the things I don't know yet. Still, whereas it took the guy in the morning 1:40 minutes to complete, we were in there for nearly three hours. May have just been the luck of the draw. But my reward for passing is the opportunity to go to Votkinsk, Russia for six weeks in the dead of winter. Had I not passed, the punishment would have been to go to Votkinsk, Russia, for six weeks in the dead of winter. So that should be a crispy hoot and a half. But at least I get along with my workmates. My boss for that six weeks was one of my evaluators, and he tried to buck up my spirits afterwards, saying I did fine, it's a hard test, and we work as a team out on site and watch each other's backs.
I finally got to use one of my favorite lines:

There is no "I" in "team."

But there are two in "idiot."

Longest Sentence Ever

I'm meeting my Qualification Board today, having gone through Phase I and Phase II training and my orientation tour out in the field of dreamskis. It's a two-hour oral exam with three members of the unit, some short-answer, some longer-answer, some situational exercises, all involving our checklists, job knowledge, acronyms, and of course, The Treaty. Referencing it, knowing it, not laughing at entries like:

On the above basis, the Parties agree that the existence of the first stage of an SS-25 ICBM that is incorporated into a space launch vehicle, designated by the Russian Federation as the "Start" space launch vehicle, in a configuration in which the first and second stages of an SS-25 ICBM, together with a new stage, are contained in one section of the launch canister of such a space launch vehicle, and the third stage of an SS-25 ICBM, together with another new stage, is contained in another section of the launch canister of such a space launch vehicle, and its exit as part of the "Start" space launch vehicle from the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant after March 1, 1995, do not result in SS-25 ICBMs thereafter being considered, for the purposes of the Treaty, to be ICBMs that are maintained, stored, and transported in stages, provided that the sections of the launch canister of the "Start" space launch vehicle are maintained, stored, and transported together, solely in this configuration, until the "Start" space launch vehicle is prepared at a space launch facility or test range for launch.

Pusuant my dear, I doth give a damn.

Airport Geometry

Well, First Class isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm sure it's something special on a transoceanic flight with fold-down seats and eight course meals and geisha girls picking the sock lint out from between your toes, but the hour and forty minutes between Albuquerque and Los Angeles was nothing to write a blog about. A plastic cup filled with free chardonnay does not make up for the fact that I was headed in the opposite direction of home.

I had a three and a half layover at LAX, and wandered around aimfully, trying to find a decent place to eat, though the cool sports bar didn't show itself (did anyone ever think of putting up SIGNS maybe? A little fork and knife next to the arrow by "Terminals 68-82") until after I'd already had a lame sandwich in some diner for $14.
With epochs of time to kill, I plugged my computer into the nearest out-of-the-way outlet I could find, down some stairs and around the loop from my departure gate (no free wireless here, no thank you, just some doingo boingo crap you can buy for $7.95 for the day). We were supposed to board around 10, but I heard an announcement shortly before that stating the plane in from Dulles was late, and then they'd have to do some routine maintenance, so those traveling on the flight back to Dulles wouldn't be boarding until around 10:45 at the earliest. So I kept Richarding around on my laptop until around 10:40, zipped everything up, and headed to Gate 69A at the end of the terminal in a little cul de sac.
Only 69A was nowhere to be found.
There was the ticket counter, right between 68 A & B and 69B, and a line of people to the right heading out gate 68B for Chicago, and on the other side just the 68s. Just then I heard a "final boarding call announcement" that requested my presence along with a few other names. !? I hurriedly looked back and forth, then finally asked someone in a United shirt helping out some pilots where the hell Gate 69A was. He barely looked at me, waved over his shoulder, and said, "Down at the end."
I looked in that general direction, then returned to him with what I thought was pretty good logic:

"We're in a CIRCLE. The end of WHAT.?"

"The end! The end! Down there!" Waving, shooing, being a dick.

I finally got on my tiptoes and looked over the Chicago-bounders and saw the tip of a gate down a ramp, then quickly darted down there with shorter guy behind me, obviously taking advantage of my height, standing on the shoulders of giants, the old saying goes. "You going to Dulles?" the ticket-ripper (how do you get that job? Graduate School?) asked.
You think?
We walked down the gangplank, and another Uniteder looked at us and said, dramatically, "Oh." before turning back to the plane, the door of which was already closed. She tapped at the little window and put up two fingers. The door hissed back open, and I got to my seat.
Which was occupied by someone who thought I'd missed the flight.
Thanks to LAX's PA system sucking rocks (I deduced the one announcement I did hear was for a later Dulles flight), outlet plugs being too spread out, and magical hidden gates in a circle with ends, I very nearly did.

I tried to sleep. I really did. Had there been a better movie on, I would have just watched it and stayed up. But I'd never heard of "Neverwas" starring Ian MacKellan as a fruit loop who thinks he's a king in a children's story, so I tried my Dan-dest to get as horizontally sideways as I could. Bright movie lights, soda carts being pushed, overhead compartment noise, and an aching back conspired against me. The taxi pulled into my driveway around 7:30am local, when I'd been up for 23 hours Mountain Daylight Time. Dogs greeted me with squeeks, wife greeted me with soft hug up a step, and I pulled off my clothes and fell into bed, though I was so painfully tired, sleep didn't come for another hour and a half. I slept until noon in order to try to retain some semblance of a normal day, though there's nothing ordinary about putting up Christmas Lights for the first time in two years.

First of Firsts on the First

Greetings from the Alburquerque International Sunport, which also has flights to other parts of the Earth. This is the first time I've ever used my computer inside an airport. Dayton had console/booths with internet, but here I've got my very own comfy Compaq with wireless access and the world passing me by.
And with my mood people better keep passing.
It seems that weather only sticks to United airplanes, as the bad weather in the midwest has affected only MY plane. My flight from Denver to DC is on time, every other airline out of ABQ is flying on time, but the one I needed to get me to Denver? 2 hours late, then ultimately canceled. Any other flight that could have gotten me to the greater districtial metropolitan area left five minutes after I was trying to check in, so barring a flight to Philadelphia ("would that help?" '.....'), they have put me on a flight to Los Angeles, where they will suspend me in midair and wait for the earth to rotate underneath me until Dulles airport is underneath, when they will gently drop me into the B terminal with a complimentary bag of mixed nuts.

Which may as well be what they do, since I'm actually on the red-eye that is supposed to get in at 6:30 in the morning on Saturday. But since this is a United airplane, it might have a cold and not get in until Pearl Harbor day.

At the very least, they put me in First Class for the shorter leg to LAX, and I've never sat in First Class before. But I'm going to be one tired guacho come December 2nd, and Ryan just won't understand that at all when I come stumbling into the house around 8 am.