Packages and Dinner

I got home from work late yesterday. Momoko and Kit Kat needed to shop for Little Kat's birthday. That left me and Little Kat to figure out our own dinner. Momoko said we could eat her leftover BBQ wings and cheesy bread. I decided we could go out to eat instead.

Little Kat was concerned about a package I received in the mail. He thought it might be a cell phone cover that I had purchased online for him. I let Little Kat tear open the package. He was right. It was his phone cover. The thing is some sort of evil skeleton. Little Kat says this is the only manly cover for his phone. The rest are too girly.

I turned Little Kat's attention back to dinner. He wanted to go to the Silver Diner. They have some awesome kicking crab soup. Later Little Kat changed his mind and we drove to Qdoba. Little Kat topped his burrito with a lot of green tabasco sauce. He reassured me that this mild jalapeno sauce was not too hot at all. I had enough heat from the hot salsa, so I skipped the tabasco on mine.

Empty Cupboards

I admit I stayed up a little too late last night. It was not my fault. I discovered a new anime on Netflix on demand. So I left work as soon as I could this afternoon. I came home, did my chores, and went to sleep. In a dream I thought I heard Kit Kat come home from school. Then I heard a knock at my bedroom doom. Kit Kat said Momoko wanted me downstairs to help figure out what to do for dinner.

That's right. Momoko did not go grocery shopping this weekend. She was too busy grading and entering grades for school progress reports. So we did not have much to prepare for dinner. Momoko asked if I had the energy to go out to dinner tonight. I was actually feeling a little bit sick. Everybody else was ready to go. So I agreed.

We headed out to the Outback Steak House. Kit Kat drove us in Momoko's car. She parked at the back of the parking lot where there were not many cars. This was unfortunate since it was raining. We got seated at this huge table. But nobody came to wait on us. I had to go talk to the hostess station guy to get some service. Once we did get a waitress, the food was nice. I tried a wedge salad as an appetizer. Almsot all of us ordered some sauteed mushrooms. We were all full by the time we left.

Kit Kat drove us to the gas station where Little Kat tried to clean the windshield. He had an inefficient technique. The water kept coming back down over the place where he wiped on the windshield. Once home, Momoko made Kit Kat back the car into the driveway. It was raining and late at night. It took a few tries. But Kit Kat got the car lined up in the driveway.

Back to normal again

Everything is back to normal work, cooking ect. My days of being treated like a Queen are over. Which is how it was when I was at my Mom's she also gave me a beautiful ring. The ring was one she had made about 10 years and has some of the gems she had acquired though the years, very pretty!! I will treasure it.

I should be cleaning the kitchen but thought I would write a bit before going into the icky kitchen. (ploy for prolonging the event) This has been a lazy weekend. Yesterday we watched TV most of the day, trying to get caught up on some of our shows, some new some old.

Today is the football game, cleaning of course and cooking dinner for the young ones. Today I am making it simple with SOS, rice and a vegi.

I have a pleco that has been fanning eggs for 3 days, don't know if they will hatch and if they do don't know if they will survive. They are in the big tank under a glass rock, so I can see them.

My Panda cory cats had eggs yesterday but today they were all eaten, hopefully they had some in the grass but I think it will be better luck next time.

Well the kitchen is calling.................clean me...........darn, do I gotta. I guess I do, ick.

Grassy Situation

Some time ago I visited a surplus store. It was a bit creepy. The aisles were way too small. There were a lot of people there. The staff did not seem to know where stuff was located. The inventory was a mix of weird stuff. I ended up getting a bag of grass seed.

Now I will say the grass seed cost about half the amount I normally pay at the store. However grass is only worthwhile if it grows. I dropped the seed on top of some topsoil atop a hill I sort of built up. Previously the area was eroding making it hard to walk on. So I built up a flat piece of land which had no grass.

After I planted the grass, I kind of forgot about it. Today I was outside picking up the paper. Then I went to the back yard to check up on some plants I planted a long time ago. That's when I saw the field of grass. This cheap grass had actually grown. There were some bare spots. But most of the area was a deep green. If this grass actually stays through the cold season, I will be a big winner. Too bad the surplus place won't have this grass seed any more. They just sell whatever odd lots they have and that is the end of it. Maybe I should drive back and see whether there is any grass seed left right now.

Back to School Night

Tonight was back to school night. That is when parents are invited to come to their children's schools. Momoko had to be at school to host back to school night for her students. I decided to go see Little Kat's teachers. My plan was to go to dinner early with Little Kat. Then we would head over to his school.

Unfortunately Little Kat did not come home from school very promptly. Then Momoko had some trouble getting her dinner prepared. That meant Little Kat and I had to pick up dinner for Momoko. This left no time for Little Kat and I to eat at a restaurant. We settled for some fast food.

When I got to back to school night, it was disturbing that Little Kat does not have a permanent home room teacher yet. They are still using a substitute. The actual teacher has been hired, but is still relocating to the area. I was disturbed that one of Little Kat's friends was running wild all night. The friend refused to stay with their parent through the night. Kids running wild I tell ya. Luckily there was no way Little Kat was going to pull any such nonsense with me. We both went to each of his teachers' classrooms. I met them all (except the one who has not started yet).

Foiled by Utaware

Kit Kat came downstairs for a drink of water. Then she said good night. After she went upstairs, I realized that our family did not exercise tonight. I try to ensure we exercise each and every night. Now I might be a bit off because I stayed up too late yesterday. But I think the real problem is "Utawarerumono".

Let me explain. Momoko noticed that Little Kat seemed a bit down today. So she instructed him to go through our anime DVD library. He wanted to watch one series that Kit Kat owns. However she was a bit reluctant to let Little Kat have her DVDs. Instead Momoko hooked Little Kat up with the anime Utawarerumono. I have seen that one twice before. Now Little Kat and I have started watching it.

In the series, we met a dude recovering from a serious injury. He can't remember his past or his name. He is being nursed by a family of animal-like people with furry long ears and tails. There is a goddess-tiger out in the wild eating the villagers. The main character faces the beast and almost dies again. However he identifies that the beast's armor like fur gets weak when exposed to water. He rallies the villagers to trap the beast, get it all wet, and run it through. I am excited about starting this series over again. Little Kat and I are in for a big treat.

Family Meeting Night

Some time ago, Momoko instituted family meeting night. This is some time we set aside each week for each cat to bring up family issues they want to address. At first Little Kat said these meetings were no fun. We were bringing up problems all the time.

Tonight I was happy to see that Momoko let Kit Kat run the meeting. Normally Momoko calls the meeting to order and runs the thing. The other nice thing about tonight was that Little Kat was able to vocalize some ways the family was changing that he did not like. Most of his issues were addressed. And some actions were assigned to family members. That's how business is done.

We are getting better at boxing in the time spent at family meeting night. Normally Little Kat is the time keeper. He sets a physical timer that rings when the time runs out. This helps us make sure we don't spend all night in a family meeting. It seems family meeting night is turning out almost as good as family game night. Maybe I will share some fun from those nights in a future post.

Trip to Wally World

The family has stepped up to help with yard work. So I am taking over some of the shopping work. More precisely, Little Kat and I are responsible for things purchased at Target and Walmart.

You know. We buy the things that are too expensive at the grocery store. This includes toilet paper, laundry detergent, and soft drinks. Momoko recommends that we go to Target. I choose Walmart because it is cheaper.

The local Walmart recently became a Super Walmart. I made Little Kat drive the cart around the store. That was tough because it was a crowded Saturday. With help from the staff, we found everything on my list and then some. The soda was too expensive. Instead we got the knock-off drinks. Instead of Dr. Pepper, we got some Dr. Thunder. The kids swear it tastes as good. We shall see.

A Penny Saved

My piggy banks have been overflowing. So there is only one thing to do. I rolled up my coins and brought them to the bank. But there was a problem. I had so many coins that I ran out of coin roll wrappers. That's ok. I made a first run to the bank. Almost had three hundred bucks of coins to deposit.

With my new coin roll wrappers from the bank, I rolled up the rest of the coins. That was another fifty bucks. I am feeling pretty large now. If I were irresponsible, I would go out and spend this money now. However we just got the property tax bill from the county. Taxes are going up as usual. Can't pay that massive tax bill all at once. They let me it in installments. These coins I deposited will help out a little bit. Let's hope that by the time I have to pay the next installment, I have a lot more coins to roll up and deposit at the bank.

Get Physical

Today we had a family games night. The kids picked out Apples to Apples for us to play. Normally we play the junior version because the words are easier. This time we used the big cat version. Kit Kat won after 30 minutes of play.

Momoko had set aside 1 hour for us to do games. What were we going to do with the extra time? Kit Kat wanted to play on the Wii. I suggested we spend a little while exercising.

At the beginning of this year, we exercised regularly as a family. We got it up to 30 minutes of exercise a day. This was mostly Momoko, Kit Kat, and myself. Somehow we got off track around March. Momoko and Kit Kat said I was the reason we stopped. I cannot recall the details. However if I was the reason for the stop, I will make it my business to start it back up again.

Nobody likes to exercise. It is no fun. It hurts. But you know what they say? No pain no gain. I told the family we could start small and exercise for 5 minutes. How could they say no to that? They tried. But I insisted. We ended up exercising for 7 minutes. Tomorrow I plan to make the family exercise for 6 minutes. Who knows? We might even go longer. The only trouble is that we have 3 exercise machines. I think we can find a way to get a 4th machine. It is a little tight on space in the basement. But for a healthy family, I think we can find a way.

Theme Park Adventure

My company had an employee appreciation day this weekend. They rented out a theme park for us. I only got two tickets. So I went with Little Kat. The traffic to get there was terrible. I almost turned around and went home before arriving. However we charged on. It was raining at our house. However after 2+ hours of driving, we found the theme park to be sunny weather.

Little Kat and I made a bee line to the go karts. He came in first place after the 10 laps of driving. It took over an hour in line to ride the go karts, But it was worth it. By the time we were done there, we were starved. Luckily there was free food in the pavilions. Little Kat and I loaded up on food. I was disappointed they had no free burgers. Little Kat was more disturbed that there was no chili for his hot dogs.

Next Little Kat tried to get me to ride some crazy spider looking spinner. No thanks. I held his bag as he went on it alone. We searched for some bumper cars next. One was closed for the summer. The other was for little kids. Little Kat tried to win a Domo stuffed animal by playing some carnival game. No luck there. We returned to the go kart. It was fun again. We grabbed some free soft drinks. I was worried about the drive home. So Little Kat bought some souvenirs and we went home.

The drive home had a lot of bad traffic too. However we got home in around 2 hours. Grabbed some burgers at Burger King. After dinner it was time to go to bed. It is a school and work night.

Dotty Dots

I visited the Dotts Dots site. Had them generate a logo for Chinwagger. Now the image above is nothing special. But if you go to the Dotty Dots site itself, you will seem some interesting effects if you move your mouse over the logo. The dots fly around to avoid your mouse. Note that this does not seem to work with Internet Explorer. You have to use a browser like Firefox to see the site.

Story About a Missing Cat

You got to read this story I found online. A woman who works as a secretary has lost her cat Missy. She enlists the help of an artist to create some "Lost Cat" color posters.

Big mistake. This artist goes off on a rampage of awesome posters, none of which help to find Missy.

I found this poster with the giant cat to the left to be the best. You could almost believe it being the poster for a real movie. Ha ha.

Family Workers

Yesterday I had the family come outside and help me with the yard work. Little Kat had his friend spend the night. So his friend came outside to help too. Momoko did not want the friend cutting the grass with the lawn mower. So he had to pick up stick and bag the grass.

I chopped up a huge pile of sticks and branches. Bagged them all. They filled up 4 trash cans worth. Momoko took the hard task of cutting the grass on the treacherous hill. Kit Kat finished up her part of the work then went to the movies with her friends.

With Little Kat's friend going home, and Kit Kat gone for the night, I asked Little Kat where he would like to go out for dinner. He wanted to go to a Mongolian BBQ place. The price was high. I called around and found a Chinese buffet that cost less and provided soft drinks with the price. We went and Little Kat found that the Delicious Chicken was not so delicious. He also did not care for the stuffed mushrooms. But everything else was great.

Lazy Weekend

We made it to the holiday weekend. The kids scheduled up a bunch of activities themselves. Kit Kat went out swimming with her friends late last night. I went out to eat with a college buddy. Today Kit Kat and Little Kat are about to go shopping with some friends.

Little Kat was watching some TV. His friend was late to pick him up for shopping. So Little Kat called him up. Looks like Little Kat was too lazy to hold his cell phone while he called his friend. So Little Kat placed the phone on the couch, and laid his head down on the phone.

Next Little Kat lost the laziness. He pulled out the Wii Fit and did a bike riding exercise. Little Kat's friend called him back. Did Little Kat stop his game? No way. He picked up the phone, kept bicycling, and talked with his friend. Amazing.

My bro is about to come over and watch some movies with me today. They are from Netflix. But they seem to be B movies. I don't really care. No work on Monday. Yes.

Some Shed Issues

I shopped around a bit for somebody to bring me my shed. Personally I like Home Depot. There is just one problem. They require you to have a location chosen that is flat. My shed needs to go in the back of the yard. And our yard slopes up on that side.

Now I guess I could hire somebody to dig out the back side of the yard. But that sounds expensive. Another idea is to hire some guys that would build the shed right on the hill. But that might also be very costly.

The only option could be to build the shed myself. That might be the most painful option. However it would be exactly what we want. And I could teach Little Kat a thing or two about assembling buildings. We shall see.