White Lightning Axiom: Redux

I got up awfully early yesterday to go to my Death Meeting 2000 and thus, the Sleepy yet still Awesome Mrs MDMHVONPA got up early and got the Terrible Adorable Twins of DOOOM to daycare detention at around 0700. Due to this early departure, she was able to come home at an unusually early hour as well. So, with her as a backup, I could let the kids play a bit while it was still light out. Maximum return on the investment we put into the towers, you know. When we were springing the two from their institutional detention, the Wife had a few moments to talk to the Day-Care Professional. Apparently our kids (read: Jacob) are not eating well at home because they are stealing the other kids food during the day. Food like donuts, cookies and other assorted sweets. Things we don't give them on a regular basis. I would prefer that they consider fatty/sweet foods like that as a special occasion indulgence instead of a regular staple of their diet. The whole purpose of the vegetable garden/agricultural sector was to indoctrinate them into the 'healthy foods' mentality.

Soooo, we let the kids play outside with the dogs and such while it is still light outside. After they calm down a bit and get into throwing sand at each-other, I slink away to go chop some fire-wood over by the wood-pile. As I am hacking away at various smaller pieces of wood, I hear the Mrs call out to get my attention. Apparently, my exertion has become a matter of interest to a few spectators. The twins and the Mrs are sitting at the bottom of the North Tower Slide, watching very intently as I lift the maul and bring it down with deadly force. I suppose they have never seen me do 'work' before. They just enjoyed the end results. I'm relieved that it is fascinating to them, I can only pray that they don't find this abstract concept of manual labor something to discuss over coffee and tea-cakes when they get older. No soft palm, middle-class proletariat in this empire. Everyone works. Daddy does the dangerous and gross stuff, Mommy does the detailed/precision/exacting task-ettes. Everything else trickles down to the remainder of the labor pool. Washing the dogs, folding the clothes, cleaning up toys. It will all have a monetary value. Earn your wages kids, because nothing is free. I completely understand that I will fold when the time comes to make the 'you're so mean.' stage comes, but we shall see.

Jacob has adopted a rather curious behavior of late, and Alexis is starting to mirror it. What he has done is to gather up all the little pillows, blankets and such and put them into the toy box that we got from the Mrs's cousin. He will then climb into the box and pull the lid down to close it. You peek in where there is a hole to put your hand in to lift the lid and you will find him looking back out at you with an ear-to-ear grin on his face, like he finally got the goods on you. He will burrow down into the pillows and blankets and just hang out in there. Seeing this, Alexis will proclaim and chant that it is her turn and Jacob needs to come out now. My little vampires in their resting chamber. Forget about trying to put them in together, both just howl and wail for the animosity they hold for the other trespasser. And that's why we have 2 of everything.

Last night, I was slumming it in the blogs and came across a link to some movie shorts. The laptop that I use in the Kitchen is a cast-off. So in any event, I followed a link trail to a site that had a stock-pile of movie shorts of people doing stupid things. I watched a few and even invited the Mrs over to watch a few. She noticed that there was no sound and I let her know that it never did work and it was not something that I really cared to much about. She proceeded to direct me down the path of redemption by having me load the correct dll for the midi/sound devices. Low and behold, there was sound. This led to a temptation for me to fire up Civ III and see if the sound was truly working. Ohhh, the rich music of little uncompensated workers digging irrigation ditches and building road. The sound of arrows flying through the air and warriors smashing clubs into each other's skulls. The damn game is so addictive and without a moderator, I tend to loose track of time. When I realized that everyone had abandoned me to my growing Chinese empire, it was way beyond my drop-dead bed time. So I snuck up the stairs and slithered into bed at some time past 0130. I KNEW I was going to pay for this slip-up in a pretty gruesome way. The alarm went off and I didn't even realize that I had shut it off when 0630 rolled around. Ugh, late. I could hear the children muttering about their plans to overthrow us since we failed to get them out of bed at 0600 when we are contractually obligated to. In spite of my time-management failures, I did manage to sidle into work at 0800.

Work was static. Not much going on other than the order file we finally got from Skymall. A total of 5 items in the file, but it wasn't easy. The file was named differently than expected so there had to be no less than 3 changes in production to get the damn thing to work. Whatever. In the end, the one interesting factoid is that Patrick Sajak is apparently a big enough fan of that Yellow Cubic Freak that he spent 180$ on a charm bracelet. Charming.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 8:35 AM