Women and children can be careless, men can't

The title of the post is from this scene in The Godfather. I watched some of it last night on tv.

Je m'ennuie comme merde

I'm listening to White Stripes in Concert live from NPR of all places. Pretty goood.

Not just chalk drawings

Today we all went to Via Colori, a festival in the Short North where artists use the ground as their substrate and create cool drawings. I think this festival is to all of Columbus' festivals what Thanksgiving is to holidays. The good one. The one where hordes of drunks don't litter the crowd. A nice cool time of year and good music playing in the background and everyone's kind of relaxed. Nice art, an area for kids to draw too (Via Bambino), good food vendors and no beer vendors (that I saw). No one appreciates a drink more than me, but beer and these festivals just don't mix well.

Also, to see more images of the festival check out this flickr slideshow.

The new new thing?

I spend a significant chunk of my leisure time trying to figure out how to create a wickedly popular site. "I wish I thought of that" shoots through my head when I see sites like Grouphug and other sites (I tend to like user-generated content, keeps things fresh).

My technological toolset is limited; I believed that would hinder me from creating the next cool site until I saw another confessional, PostSecret. It's an art installation as much as it is a website. People mail their secret written on a 4" x 6" postcard and the creator posts about 10 of these images every Sunday. It doesn't have an online archive, it uses a Blogger template and domain (free hosting), is wildly popular (according to technorati) and a fun site to visit. It's even become a book (info on the site). Nice job Frank, your my hero and inspiration that an incredibly popular and imaginative site can be created with a fairly simple toolset.

Papa, are you a Buckeye?

Frankie asked me repeatedly this weekend if I was a Buckeye? Something she heard in school I suppose. I didn't attend OSU, I'm not a football fan, I don't care about football, but I felt the need to be what she wanted me to be. I told her, yes, I'm a Buckeye. I still don't know what it means, but she seemed happy with the answer. I guess I'll try to balance being myself and also be what she needs me to be. I hope it's good enough.

I came this close to telling a priest to go to hell

Last night was our weekly father/daughter outing. We started the night, as usual, at Wendy's. How quickly our order is taken dictates Frankie's behavior. If we're waited on quickly, Frankie stays by my side, but if it takes about 2-3 minutes, Frankie will not be restrained and runs laps around the Wendy's via the window sill. She's two and a half and, based on many observations, kids that age are generally pretty impatient and extremely active.

I didn't think much of it. After she took a lap around the "restaurant" and I was anxiously about to order, she started poking around in the cabinets just below the condiment counter. She was just doddling about; it was pretty benign behavior, she was slowly opening a salt packet and doing a little exploring. Nothing too destructive. I thought it was reasonable and no one seemed to be bothered ... except the priest behind me. He informed me in an authoritarian tone that child leashes exist and maybe I should consider getting one. After suppressing my strong desire to tell him where to go, I just nodded disapprovingly and let the old fart groan. Exasperated with me, he only said, "at least you're watching her". We finally got our food and that night she happened to be well behaved during her meal. I was afraid if she started throwing ketchup we might have been orderdered an exorcism.

I'll be the one with the potty attached to my waist

Last weekend, we hung around almost the entire 3 days letting Frankie, in various states of undress, run no further than 50 feet from a potty. She was pretty good and had only a few accidents all weekend. Tuesday came and she returned to diapers for daycare (with still some daily potty usage).

This weekend we'll continue the attack - but we're not staying home. So beware Columbus, I'll be the one carrying the potty when we go out. And, I'm not afraid to use it. Wish us luck.

And, on a totally unrelated note: Congratulations to my nephew Andy for getting married to Kaitlyn tomorrow. I'm sorry we couldn't make it. I hope your day is special.

40's the new 20

When we get a babysitter, we've realized we like to do something pretty mindless. Movies are ok but if they're too intense, it's just not right. Levity's the key to a fun night away from the nighttime routine. The other night, we saw 40 Year Old Virgin. Most excellent choice. I think watching Andy (Steve Carell) get his chest hair waxed was the funniest scene. The title of this post was a quote from the flick.

Steve Carell of NBC's The Office is pretty awesome and quite different than his character in that series.

Here it comes

I don't mean to be moaning about something relatively trivial compared to the chaos in Louisiana, but if you check gas prices in Columbus, you'll notice that here in the Heartland, gas is $3 +/- $0.40. My pathetic attempts to squeeze a few more mpg out of my little car:

-accelerating more slowly

-coasting to redlights rather than driving quickly up to them

-parking in the first space in the parking lot and walking to the store instead of doing the zamboni-style hunt for a parking space

-keeping my tires at precisely 32 psig.

-skipping the a/c

Don't know if any of it will help, but it can't hurt. I think things are going to get a lot worse. At least we can all laugh at the poor judgement used by the folks who bought Hummers.

columbus gas prices