I'm awesome

Pea: Dad, there's a piece of Pooh missing.

Me: BAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (etc.)!

Pea: What are you laughing at?

Me: BAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (etc.)!

Wife: (under her breath) You're an idiot.

Eighteen, going on old

I'm a music fan.  I like a little bit of everything, from country to indie rock to hip hop to folk, and all points in between.  I rarely turn down an offer to listen to something new.

Like many people, I think, my musical taste varies depending on what I am doing.

If I'm getting pumped for a big hockey game, I'll throw on some Offspring or Rage Against the Machine.  If I'm quietly toiling away in the office, it's gotta be Ray Lamontagne, Basia Bulat or City and Colour.

If I'm in the car, it's hip hop... all the time.  A little Drake; a little Jay-Z and Kanye; a little Common.  It's the big bass... literally enveloping me in the confines of a car.  It puts me in a good mood.

Now,  I know listening to loud hip hop with lots of bass makes me a bit of a douche. Especially when I'm stopped at a light, and cars beside me can see the bass rippling through the air (ok, it's never really that loud... let's just say they know it's there).  I guess doucheyness is like an occupational hazard that comes with hip-hopping in the car, and I can deal with that hazard.

Ok, I could deal with that hazard.

As I learned recently while I was on my way to pick up Pea and my wife at dance class, the douche factor increases tenfold when there's a friggin CAR SEAT in the back seat of the car!  What a wake-up call I had when I turned around at a stop light, looked at the car seat, and realized that I'm not 18 anymore.

So, from here on out, the volume is coming down and it's talk radio 24-7.

Sigh.

I predict a riot

While cleaning up tonight, I found a single, solitary monkey from Pea's Barrel of Monkeys, sitting alone in her play area downstairs.

The actual barrel, as well as the rest of the monkeys, were upstairs in our bedroom, in the emergency toy stash we keep for those Saturday and Sunday mornings when Pea wakes up just a little too early (read every weekend).

On my way upstairs, I brought the lone monkey with me to put away in the barrel where he belongs.  As I tossed him in and closed the lid on the barrel, a vision ran through my mind... I pictured all of the monkeys rejoicing at the sight of their long-lost monkey cousin returning to the barrel from whence he came.  Tears of joy flowed down monkey cheeks.  Monkey prayers answered at last.  Perhaps, monkey lovers reunited?  

Then, and I must emphasize that I actually thought this, I wondered if perhaps one of the monkeys was angered by the sudden return of his plastic yellow counterpart.  A love triangle re-engaged?  A rivalry renewed?  

So then, naturally, my mind wandered to that aggressive reunion between former enemies... at best an uncomfortable greeting... at worst, little plastic monkeys hurling little plastic feces at one another in a show of dominance, with all kinds of other innocent monkeys running for cover from flying monkey plops.  Was I responsible for monkey armageddon within that barrel?  

Then, I thought, what the hell is wrong with me?  Inanimate plastic monkeys causing me undue stress and anxiety?

Stupid plastic monkeys.  

      

Horrible Boss

If Pea was an employee of mine, she'd be on a serious performance improvement plan relative to her dinner time insubordination.  Every day, she looks me in the eye, ignores my requests, fails to deliver on agreed upon deadlines, and whines whenever she doesn't like the nature of her work.

This weekend, she took the cake.  Yesterday, dinner at Ikea went about as well as dinner at Ikea can be expected to go.  She balked at her tilapia, spat it out on numerous occasions, and made us seem like 'those' parents who don't have any degree of control over their kid.  Rightly so.  Oh, the tears.  So many tears.  None of which flew from Pea's tear ducts.

Tonight, the shenanigans continued with a 75 minute dinnertime performance.  This event included everything from a series of pop song interpretations to complaints over a concerning lack of corn in the pasta.  It's a hard knock life, indeed. 

Sure, she's a good worker.  She's cute, extremely smart and incredibly creative.  So she gets to stay.  But we're keeping a watchful eye on her performance.  

Oh, and any suggestion that her poor performance is a direct result of bad management is nonsense.  It can't possibly have anything to do with me... I eat EXTREMELY well... too well in fact, especially if you ask the scale in my bathroom.

Viewfinding

I like to think of myself as a photographer-in-training.  I have a basic dSLR, a couple of decent lenses (until I broke one of them recently), and ambition.  What I lack is time, skill and the trained eye of a pro.

To help with the latter two, my wife bought me a few photography books for Christmas; namely, The Digital Photography Book series by Scott Kelby.  These are great books.  They're simple, funny, and easy to understand.  There are step-by-step instructions on how to capture great images and ideas on how to think differently when looking through the viewfinder.

I suppose as Pea gets older and more self-sufficient, I will be able to spare more time, cultivate some skill and train myself to capture better images... to see things differently, and to use my camera to its full potential.  Until then, I'll just keep on keepin' on.

Here are a few I managed to capture in The Distellery this Summer, long before I knew the difference between f/stop and aperture.  Most of you will easily spot the overexposures and poor composition.  But I like 'em.

 
Here's where I hope to get, over time - http://advanceafewstepsback.blogspot.com. A few of these are hanging in our house.