Surprise Assignment

Little Kat had taken the last day of school before vacation of because he was afraid of crazy people thinking it was the end of the world. That sounded like a good course of action. That is, it sounded prudent until I found that Little Kat missed his science class. He is not doing that well in science. And he was not a forward thinker. He did not get in contact with anyone from his class to find out what he missed.

Momoko was suspicious that it was so far into the semester, but Little Kat had not made any progress on his science fair project. Momoko made Little Kat email his science teacher to ask about this. For most of the vacation, Little Kat said he did not receive a reply from his science teacher. Finally Momoko could not take it any more. She asked Little Kat to log into his email account to verify that the teacher was not responding propmpty.

All of a sudden, Little Kat confessed that his science teacher had responded to his email. And it turns out Little Kst missed the asssignment for writing his research paper. Typicsl Little Kat, trying to get out of work. Now he has a bunch of work to complete this weekend. If if we not for Momoko, this would be another zero for a major assignment.

The Return Home

Today was the last day of our trip. We set our alarms to go off early. Had to check out of the hotel in the morning. Momoko drove us our of town. We went the long way, because the short cut had signs stating there was construction. It was a long 2 hour drive to get to Sonic for breakfast.

We savored the Sonic food, because it will be the last we have for a while. Then Momoko complained about having to face the massive bridge we needed to cross. It is a couple miles long. Luckily all lanes were open. So Momoko could drive in the middle lane. It was helpful that is was foggy. You could not see how far down the water was under the bridge.

Momoko wanted to avoid one of the tough merges into high speed traffic on the highway. Therefore we took the long route around the city. It was snowing when we returned. Kit Kat's friend had watched our gerbils while we were gone. So Momoko and Little Kat ran over a thank you card with some cash to the friend.

Since Kit Kit is still with her dad, we enjoyed a Chipoltle dinner. We suspect Kit Kat likes burritos from Chipoltle. However she always complains when we even bring up the idea of eating at the restaurant.

Down by the Boardwalk

I woke up earlier today. We went to lunch at the Little House of Pancakes. We were the only people in the restaurant upon arrival. I ordered a belly buster fish sandwich. Little Kat's omelette was missing sour cream. So we sent him to the kitchen to get what he was due.

Later we drove down to the end of the boardwalk. It was not blocked off by police like yesterday. I rented Little Kat a fun cycle, which is a three wheel bike that is low to the ground. It looks like a Big Wheel for adults. When Little Kat tired, I took the bike for a spin around the block a few times.

Little Kat spied a shop which advertised everything in the store for ten bucks. We went in and Little Kat bought a custom "Like a Boss" tee shirt. Then we went into a flashy arcade. By then I was tired. Momoko was cold. It was time to return to the hotel room.

Lunch Choices

I slept in late today. It is our vacation after all. Momoko and Little Kat were hungry. So I got ready quickly after getting up. Momoko was in the mood for breakfast style food. She wanted to go to Denny's. Little Kat advised against it. Momoko agreed that the Denny's by our hotel was not first rate. So we took a long ride down the strip.

Now there were about 100 blocks for us to drive by. Many of the restaurants were closed for the winter. We found a pizza place. We also passed a diner that we ate at before. However the top choice turned out to be a pancake house. The sign on the door stated that they were closing in 30 minutes. The host informed us that there was plenty of time left for lunch.

Afterwards we needed to fill up the gas tank. Someone told me there was an Exxon at the end of the strip. They were wrong. We ended up having to take the road out of town. Luckily that road brought us by an Exxon. On the way back to the hotel, we drove slowly by the hotel Kit Kat stayed when she came to the beach with her friends. We also got out and went to the boardwalk to spy on the beach. The winds were too heavy, so that only lasted a minute or two.

Vacation Time

Little Kat proposed that we take a trip during Christmas break. He thought we should hit the beach. So I made reservations for an Oceanfront hotel room. Little Kat packed the night before the trip. In the morning, I saw that there was snow on the ground. Momoko declared that I would need to drive if there was bad weather. Therefore I sent her out to get us breakfast before the trip. She did a lot of complaining about even driving down the street to McDonald's.

Before we left, I noticed mold in the shower. I could not leave for a few days while mold stayed unchecked. So I broke out the bleach and gave the shower a scrub down. That took a bit of energy out of me. I buckled down and drove the car to the beach anyway.

We drove by the Post Office on the way out to deposit our mail. We also dropped Momoko at the bookstore to purchase the Alchemist, a book the family plans to start reading on vacation. Then we were off. We left early enough to avoid rush hour traffic. Half way through the trip, we stopped at Sonic for lunch. It was most tasty.

The rain got treacherous as we neared the beach. Luckily the was not such a huge line to check into the hotel.

Vague Ending to The Giver

Today the family finally completed reading the book The Giver. However not everybody shared the same understanding of what happend in the end. Here are some facts. The boy was starving. His body was going numb due to the cold. The mountain he needed to climb was treacherously steep. And he stumbled. He had lost many of his memories.

Little Kat and I were certain that this boy died. There were too many suspicious circumstances for a boy who had come to the end of his journey. It felt more like he died dreaming of reaching his final destination. The top answer on Yahoo agreed with Little Kat and I. This boy died.

Momoko and then Kit Kat believed the boy lived on. They were not sure of the details. But they assumed there were good things in his future. Strangely enough, the author agrees with Momoko and Kit Kat. The author states in an interview that this is an optomistic ending.

Others chime in that the boy reappears in the second and third books of the trilogy. That, combined with the author's comments, made me change my mind about the ending. I still think the author did not do a good job in explaining what happened. Many say that she left the ending intentionally vague so the reader could determine what the like.

Pesky Branch

I had decided to take a buddy of mine out for lunch to celebrate his birthday. The day before I had spied the opening of a Roy Rogers restaurant close to my house. I was tempted to take him there for old times sake. But I figured he deserved something a bit more fancy that burgers and fries. We ended up going to a New Orleans style restaurant. There we took advantage of their tasty breakfast buffet.

On the way back home, I ran over a branch that was on our street. I recalled that Momoko had swerved earlier in the week to avoid this very branch. Wouldn't any slackers bother to pick up the branch and remove it from the street? I guess not. So I walked down the street and collected the branch. I was more disturbed that the end of the branch showed it was cut with a saw. This was not a random branch that fell from a tree. Somebody cut it down and left it in the street.

I gave the house by the branch an evil eye. Then I saw that there was nobody home. In fact, I rarely see the owners at the house. I guess they must not live here all the time. Still it was a fail. Can't anybody else pick up a darn stick impeding traffic? As always, I do not shy away from leading by example. Follow my lead people.

End of the World

Today marks the end of the Mayan calendar. To some, they thought that meant it was also the end of the world. Little Kat was a bit concerned about this. He did not think the world was actually ending. He was more concerned that somebody who thought it was the end of the world might want to do some damage or harm to Little Kat.

Little Kat voiced his opinion to Momoko and myself. He propsed that he stay home from school today just in case. Momoko approved this plan. So Little Kat did not have to wake up really early as he normally does to catch his bus. In fact, Little Kat slept through the whole morning.

I went to McDonald's for lunch because my bro gave me some valuable coupons. It was only when I came back that I realized that Little Kat was still in the house. He had still not woken up. Usually when Little Kat or Kit Kat stays home from school, I offer to pick them up a bit of lunch.

Luckily Little Kat eventually woke up. He needed to. He is responsible for cooking dinner tonight. Momoko is out partying again with some friends from work. So it might just be Little Kat and I for dinner tonight.

Anime Club

Little Kat is part of anime club at his high school. He seems to like it a lot. This week was his holiday party at anime club. But there was just one problem. How was Little Kat going to come home from anime club? Kit Kat is out of town. Momoko was busy with her own holiday party. That left just me.

The problem is that Little Kat gets out of anime club during my work hours. I already had to spend a few work hours this week taking Kit Kat to the airport since nobody else could. Everyone wanted to go to their holiday parties. I really could not help out. But it was just a quick 15 minute drive to the school to pick up Little Kat, right?

So I finish up a meeting at work. Then I rush over to Little Kat's school. He calls me on my cell phone as soon as I get there. I tell him I am at his school. Little Kat has bad news for me. His school just went into lock down. Nobody leaves his classroom or school. Why me?

Of course Murphy's Law kicks in, and they hold an impromptu meeting at work where I am the key guy. There is nothing I can do. I tell the security lady that I am there to pick up Little Kat. She has them page Little Kat a couple times. But his teacher needs to arrange an escort for Little Kat.

I end up waiting around 45 minutes until somebody can bring Little Kat out to me car. I punch it home. Then I run to my meeting. I join the meeting late and take charge. Luckily we were working with some code that I programmed. After working out a few kinks, the program runs super fast and everyone is giving each other high fives. I still need to stay late at work to wrap everything up.

What is the moral of this story? I can no longer transport Little Kat from anime club. No exceptions.

Food and Nutrition

Every day when Little Kat comes home from school, I quiz him about the day. The goal of this interrogation is to ensure Little Kat has written down any homework assignment he has. If it does not get written down, chances are Little Kat will forget and not turn in his homework.

When Little Kat has no homework, I dig deeper to find out what happened in class. Sometimes he forgets that he had some outstanding class work that turned into homework. One benefit of these discussions is that I hear about Little Kat's Food & Nutrition class. To me, that is just a cooking class.

That class should be no trouble for Little Kat. Momoko has been making Little Kat cook us dinner for a long time now. And he sometimes experiments with new recipes. He should be an expert by now.

Today Little Kat cooked grilled chicken. He said it turned out good. Usually he samples the foods he cooks. I think his team eats what he cooks as well. Last week he cooked some funnel cake. It must have been really good. They had him make it two classes in a row.

Kit Kat Departs

I woke up a little late this morning. Kit Kat was still sleeping. I made a bit of noise, and sure enough, Kit Kat got up 15 minutes later. It was an hour from when we needed to leave to catch her plane. I hurried and took care of immediate issues at work. Then I brought my car closer to the house.

Kit Kat spent about 5 minutes saying goodbye to all the gerbils. Then I put her large heavy suitcase in the back seat of my car. On the ride to the airport, we discussed Kindle books. I am on a free electronic book binge. Kit Kat reads electronic books as well, having just purchased the Kindle Fire tablet.

The airport hourly parking lot was crowded. I saw why when we entered the terminal. The lines to check in were huge. I had to leave Kit Kat at that point. I had a work meeting I needed to return to. Thought I could grab a burger for lunch. Should have went to McDonald's. Instead I waited forever in line at Fuddrucker's. But oh that burger was good.

At home I texted Kit Kat a few hours later. She made it fine onto the plane and met her dad. Then I decided to take Kit Kat's car for a spin. Had to get into the habit of driving it around so the battery does not die while Kit Kat is away for a whopping 4 weeks. She did not leave me a lot of gas in her car.

The All Nighter

I stayed up late as usual two nights ago. What was strange was that I heard Kit Kat moving around in her room into the late night hours. Well she is done with school. So she can stay up late too. The next morning I heard Kit Kat's alarm go off. But she was not turning it off. Disturbing.

I went downstairs and told Kit Kat her alarm was going off. I asked if she just woke up. She said she had been awake for a long time. Weird. She was a bit snippy with her response too. I guess she had to wake up early to get ready for her trip to visit her dad for Christmas.

Later in the day I ran to the store. When I came back, Kit Kat was cleaning out her car. It was then that she told me she had stayed up the entire night. Whoa. Perhaps she was anxious about her upcoming trip. Or maybe she was worried about school. I figured she had better go to bed early the following night.

Momoko had other plans for Kit Kat that night. She wanted to spend some time with her before her trip. So they watched Rock of Ages together against my better judgement.

Lunch Failure

I was scheduled to go to lunch with my friend today. He got busy and had to reschedule it. So I asked Momoko if she wanted to go out. Of course she did. Then she asked the kids to come along too. Since this will be the last time we go out before Kit Kat leaves to spend Christmas with her dad, we let Kit Kat decide on where to go. She wanted soup from Olive Garden.

Now our Olive Garden always has very poor service. I don't expect much when I go there. They continued their weak service today. Couldn't get any breadsticks until after the entire meal was done. I asked for butter to go with the breadsticks. Needed to ask a few times before I could get some. There were a lot of other failures - no lemon for the water, having to ask multiple times for water refills, long delays for the soup.

A manager came by and asked how our lunch was. I told him it was basically a failure. I gave him a few examples where the poor service pretty much ruined the lunch. The manager was apologetic. He agreed to comp one of the meals (take it off the bill). I thought that was at least an attempt to recover from the big time fail.

When my bill came, I saw that no meals were comped. I asked to speak with the manager. He said he comped my bill. Then I asked him to show me where. He then said that I must have received the wrong bill. When he came back with another bill, it was still wrong. The manager apologized and went back to take care of it.

In any other restaurant, I would have thought I was getting punked. You know, it was some type of candid camera to see how I would react to a setup. By I was in Olive Garden. I knew this was just their sorry service as usual. The only reason we even return is that the family loves some of their food.

Pumpkin Surprise

Earlier this week, Little Kat was running late for school. I thought he might miss his bus. Luckily Momoko was leaving for work at the same time. She gave Little Kat a ride to the bus stop. Disaster averted. I got up normal time, went downstairs to my study, and started work.

I got a text from Momoko. It said that she found a pumpkin under my car. What??? I do recall there were a bunch of pumpkins on the curb across the street. I looked outside and those pumpkins were gone. I went outside and sure enough, under my car, was a small pumpkin.

At first I thought it might be some kids fooling around. However Momoko later said that the pumpkins from across the street had somehow rolled out into the road. Since Little Kat was running late, I guess they could not stop to remove the pumpkin under my car themselves.

Secret Setting

My initial impression of my new iPhone 5 phone was not good. When I am at home, I like to connect the phone to the world using the wireless Internet connection in my house. That technique incurs no extra cost from our cell phone provider. With my previous iPhone, that was not a problem. The iPhone 5 kept switching over to LTE or 4g mode. That uses up my previous data bandwidth from the cell phone company.

In the first month alone, I racked up a $15 charge for going over my monthly limit. And the month was not over. I blamed the iPhone and our cell phone provider. This was a double fail since they ended up charging us more per month anyway because I got the iPhone 5.

My plan was to call up our cell phone provider and complain. I was prepared to return the darn iPhone 5 if necessary. They would not like that as we signed me up for a 2 year contract. The only difficulty is that the phones are in Momoko's name. I don't really have any direct relationship with the cell phone company. Arguing in such a position is always trickier than if I was the actual customer.

I was thinking that I might end up buying an iPad that only has the capability to run off the house wireless connection. The iPad 2, which is the previous generation iPad, costs $399. And Target was having a special this week where you could get a $50 gift card if you buy one. I told Momoko about my plan. She told me to try out her iPad 2 first.

Momoko turned off the cellular data option on her iPad 2 to ensure I would not use up her cellular bandwidth. Wait a minute. If Momoko could do that with her iPad, could I do that with my iPhone 5? Yes! Now my iPhone only uses the house wireless network. No more charges for going over my 4g monthly limit. Thank you Momoko. You saved the day. I should have known to go to Momoko with this first. She is the Apple Corporation enthusiast in the house.

Failure with Fries

Momoko promised the kids that she would take them to the movies if they hung the Christmas lights outside. Well the kids held up their end of the bargain. So today they planned to go to the movies. They like to catch the early show because it is cheap. And there are less crowds to fight in parking lot and theater. Their show started at 10:20am. So they planned to leave for breakfast at an evil 9:00am.

After a tough week with my college class and work, there was no way I was waking up Saturday morning before 9:00am. I stayed in bed all morning. I did wake up for lunch and was very hungry. When I came downstairs, I found a bunch of Arbys fries on the kitchen floor along with some other trash. I immediately left a voice mail for Momoko, telling her they had better come home after the movie to explain who caused this mess.

I figured it might have beeb Little Kat. He often puts trash in the wrong place. Normally I can just call down the kids, figure out who failed, and have the guilty party clean up the mess. However I was irked that somebody tossed some fries on the floor and took off to have fun at the movies. When the family came home, Kit Kat said she put the fries in a bag, put that bag in another bag, and then deposited the double bagged fries in the trash. She said the fries must have fallen out of the trash can.

Now we have a trash can which requires you to push a pedal with your foot to open. Or you could lift up the top with your hand. Either way, you need to be standing directly in front of the trash can to put something in there. I was not buying the story that Kit Kat lifted up the lid and did not notice the fries falling down right underneath her feet. Suspicious at best.

Amazon Kindle Gold Mine

Now that I have the Kindle Program on my computer, I am downloading free titles like crazy. Got 25 free books on my computer now. Read 4 of them so far. The last one I read was The Test. Some rich guy is about to die. He realizes that he had the wrong priorities in life. All of his kids suffered. So he sets up a will that makes his children pass "the test" to earn their sizable inheritance.

One son wants to run for president of the USA. He needs that money bad. Another son wants nothing to do with the money. There is a drug addicted daughter who needs money for her and her friends to enjoy high price drugs. And there is an illegitimate child, who herself is wearlty and does not want any of the inheritance. There is also a stepdaughter who saw daddy through his illness to the end.

Oh that was such a great book. I forgot to mention that I also read some old shor stories from Donald Westlake. I love that author. One of them was a science fiction one that was not to my liking. The other, The Risk Profession, was old but was the classic Donald Westlake that I love.

Did I tell you that all these books are free? I love free. The good thing is that Amazon is not doing this for charity. They are getting me hooked so I will move to paying for some books. I will surely do that. But I don't plan to buy any electronic copies of books. I am going to buy the real thing - some printed books.

Amazon Kindle and the Test

I have come to realize that everyone in the family except me has electronic book readers except me. I bought Little Kat an Amazon Kindle reader this past year so he could have many books in one device while traveling. Momoko has her iPads, which feature an iBooks app from Apple. Kit Kat used to have an Amazon Kindle reader. She just upgraded to an Amazon Kindle Fire, which is a tablet that can server as a reader.

Now I prefer printed books over electronic copies. Still I feel like I was just left out. I started to research my options. At first I thought I might buy the cheapest Kindle reader like Little Kat has. But I found I don't like its screen. It is just too dark. The Apple iPads are too expensive. I was contemplating getting a Kindle Fire like Kit Kat. Then I figured there must be a better way.

There is a much better way. I found I could download a free Amazon Kindle reader program on my personal computer. Woo hoo. And if you search hard enough, you can find electronic books on Amazon for free. Immediately I downloaded a title from Tucker Max, a raunchy author whose style I love. Then for grins I read a book by a gay guy who has dating advice for the average girl. Sure. That one did not apply to me. The read was interesting.

Next I downloaded a free book on getting free books. Found a nifty web site that highlights good free books from Amazon. Then I finally downloaded The Test by Patricia Gussin. To tell the truth, I had never heard about her before. But I loved her book. Maybe I will buy some printed copies of her other books. More on The Test in a future blog post.

Working on the Truck

One of the tires on my truck was a little low on air. Normally I have an air compressor that I use for such tasks. But my last one broke. I did replace it, and tested it out on the truck. Now I bought an extremely cheap air compressor. I wanted to see whether a cheap one could do the job.

The first sign that I bought the wrong air compressor was when I read the warning that came with the compressor. It said you should wash your hands after use because it might cause cancer and sterility. WTF? That is reason enough to throw the darn thing out. But I wanted to see if it could do the job.

I used my tire pressure gauge to see that the passenger side front tire had only 14 pounds of pressure in it. Oh no. It is supposed to have around 35 pounds. So I hooked the air compressor up to the cigarette lighter. The thing automatically starts pumping out air. Another sign of a cheap model. It did not have a separate on/off switch.

The air compressor had its own gauge. However after a long time it only registered 20 pounds of pressure. I just kept letting the thing go. It got really hot. My final reading showed an air pressure of 23 pounds. Just not enough. I might have to go to the gas station and forget about buying a compressor.