Susie's Meanderings

Trogdor the Burninator

Clearly I'm spending too much time in the company of 11 year old boys, but this is my nephew's (not the incipient felon, but his older brother) favorite website, and it's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Since many of you don't have the advantage of an 11 year old guide - here's what I recommend at www.homestarrunner.com :
Strongbad emails (though the link will say sb emails) - my favorite is dragon
This leads us to a trailer for Peasant Quest a game featuring in 16 brilliant colors and excellent retro lo-res graphics, Trogdor, the afore-mentioned dragon.
And should you be inspired to actually PLAY Peasant Quest (or any of the other exciting lo-res games available on Homestar) here's the games page.
Clearly it's time for me to return to the ship.....

Felonious Entropy

Yesterday morning began with a visit from the police, wanting to know why we had dialled 911. Keep in mind, I can count on less than one finger the number of times the police have taken it upon themselves to visit my house in the 30 some years we've lived here. We eventually rooted out the cause as being my 5 year old nephew, who, it seems , was showing off his pre-school skills to his 3 year old cousin. We delivered him up to the policeman (who was exceedingly nice) and later when questioned he was very non-commital as to why he'd felt he needed to call 911, but he immediately went to his cousin and said "Lydia, I told them "no" and "nothing"". He improved upon his day, getting yelled at by the pool lifeguards, dancing on the antique Navajo drum, but nothing out of the general range of 5 year old boys.
Today, however, he disappeared (once again with his impressionable young cousin), committing the great sin of crossing the street and leaving the neighborhood with her. A great panicked search ensued, and he returned jauntily around the corner, some 10 minutes later, trailing behind him his young admirer and an angry neighbor who had observed him removing mail from the local mailboxes. The mail was duly returned, and when we reminded Jamie, that among other things, he had broken the rule about crossing the street alone, said "but there was no traffic, so it was okay." We were all just thankful that our friendly policeman from yesterday was not the one to find him.

Brownian Weekend

Oops, apparently I have been a little remiss with my postings. I plead a surfeit of boredom (ie, nothing to tell) and a certain frustration with my computer. I'm having an ongoing debate with hotmail as to whether they are indeed dropping my emails ( I know for a fact that they've lost three this summer, and delayed one by 12 hours) or whether (as they believe) I'm just too stupid to check my junk mail filters. I've gotten the most bizarre range of responses from their tech support from "We're aware of the problem and trying to fix it and we profoundly apologize" to "The contacts you mentioned aren't in your safe list" - which they most certainly are, and have been for upwards of 5 years. So anyway, if any of you have emailed me recently, and not received a reply, it's nothing personal.
Anyway, the assorted family children are all here at my parents' house for the weekend, so a rollicking good time is on hand for everyone. At the moment I'm having a glorious time telling my nieces they have to be quiet and go to sleep.

Mountains of Laundry

It's funny how the busier I am, the less I actually have to write about. I've spent my weekend doing mountains of laundry (it's amazing what a pile of clothes three children go through), piles of dishes , and I seem to be caught in a never ending hell of train track (I pick it up, it reappears, I pick it up again, it reappears again) scattered across the basement floor.
Having said that, my niece and I found time this afternoon to do girly manicures (she was more delighted with the homemade sugar scrub I concoted than anything else, she kept announcing to everyone who walked in the room "I put sugar on my arms!") and now she's sporting very striking blood red sparkle nails. At any rate, I'm not bored here.

Brownian Motion

Take 50 kids under age 10, strap blades to their feet, and roll them out onto freshly zambonied ice, add a couple pre-teen semi-professional ice skaters practicing their triple lutzes, and you have a rough idea of my afternoon ice skating with my niece. Keeping in mind, I haven't done this in a few years. Still, it was fun, followed by a collapse on the couch with her two younger sisters, where the one tried to count all the different positions in which she could fall asleep on me. This is the same girl, who, when asked what she did in kindergarten, said with a world weary sigh ... "Work, all we do is work".

2 most surreal comments of the evening:
From the 5 year old as she dug through her miso soup "Where's the seaweed, that's the best part"
and from her older sister "What happened to the fish eggs I ordered? I didn't get any."
Being home, though cold and rainy, definitely has its moments.

Tea and Crumpets

I actually spent time away from the computer today (well, after burning a cd for my sister, creating a little cover art for it, transferring some music to my mp3 player, and making a few more tweaks to the website - but really, that was only in the morning). Saw my niece and nephews, who must have been fair starving for the sight of me, because they rushed me at the door and all started talking at once. My arms are a little stretched from the tug of war, but it's always nice to feel loved. Nonetheless, my sister and I made our escape, and met some other Moms for a MONSTER tea tower (little sandwiches, cake, scones, crumpets, 5 different kinds of cookies) and tea - we closed the place down and left buzzing from sugar and caffiene. On to a movie - "Bend it Like Beckham" which I highly recommend. It was one of those movies where I sat through the credits kind of hoping it wasn't really over. My sister says she found the accents hard to understand, and I have to say, the "Irish" guy sounded suspiciously like he was from Liverpool, but still a great soccer movie.