Dear Polaroid x800,

I needed a camera I could use while snorkeling on my next vacation.  You were an affordable digital camera that was supposed to be waterproof up to 30' deep.  It seemed like a match made in heaven.  I had visions of taking you all the places my Other Camera was too awkward to go - like into my pocket so I don't look like a dweeb with a giant camera around my neck at every school function and field trip.  We'd take beautiful pictures together, you and I, and maybe you would even be tough enough to withstand my daughter's love.

I realize now that ours was a relationship doomed from the start.  How could you withhold so much information from me when we first met in the store, like what size memory card you required?  And how was I supposed to know your, um, batteries were so small, since there's no mention of your AAA requirements on your packaging?  If you had just spelled out plainly what your needs were, we could have saved ourselves a lot of time running back and forth.

You left out a few other things, too - like the wrist strap that would be sort of necessary if we, I don't know, actually went into the water.  Thanks for making me take an hour to make one the day I left for vacation - I needed the extra work that day.  And your owner's manual ... oh, a digital one is nice and all, but not all of us have time to boot up the computer every time we want to check to see how to take a closeup shot.  Way to go green and make me waste more than 40 pages of my own paper!

Maybe it's me, not you, I thought.  I was willing to overlook your faults, if only you could perform as you boasted when we first met.  But alas, you couldn't walk the walk.

Sure, if I took you out in bright light and focused on things at a distance, you performed acceptably well.

Of course, your screen is so small and poorly designed that it's damn near impossible to see anything on it in the full sun, but I can point and guess if I have to.  And yes, that's pretty grainy for a photo taken with an 8 megapixel camera used in full sun, but maybe I just needed a period of adjustment.  I had been with my Other Camera - you know, the one you saw me with on land all the time - for several years.

The real problems started as soon as I got you wet.  Trying to take pictures in the pool without putting my face in the water was futile; you can't see the viewscreen unless you're directly in front of it, and the refraction of the water wasn't helping things.  A few of the pictures in the pool turned out completely black, which is tricky to do when you're photographing in bright Jamaican morning light.  I tried taking some shots in the ocean, too, finding actual things to aim at that I could (sort of) see on the viewscreen.  I got pictures like this one of a rock with fish around it:

At least I think that's what it was.  For comparison's sake, here's a picture of the same area, taken from above the water with the Other Camera (so you can see it's not a silt issue, it's your performance issue):

(That picture, by the way, was taken from my fourth floor balcony at 6:30am on a cloudy day with my 5 megapixel camera that's more than four years old.  Yay for 10x zoom, a steady hand, and a good camera!)

After trying to take a few pictures in the water, I took a few more in the air, and I was surprised that the best of them looked like this:

Some people would pay $5 for an iPhone app to get that effect, but all I wanted was a clear picture.  I checked to make sure I hadn't inadvertently applied suntan lotion to the lens, only to find condensation all over the inside of it.  Inside the waterproof camera.  Don't believe me?  How about a picture from a few minutes later, after I had let you sit in the sun for a while and half of the condensation was gone?

Oh, and did I mention your lack of stamina?  After only a few dozen pictures, your battery indicators were already showing you were down to less than 1/4 of a full charge.  Between that and the fact that the batteries fall completely out of the camera any time you open the door to get the memory card or connect the camera to the computer to transfer pictures, I think you aren't exactly the smartest camera on the block.  More like, "the camera on the block that was designed by an idiot with a complete lack of understanding of how an underwater camera - or a camera of any sort - will actually be used by a consumer."

To say I am displeased with you would be understating it.  Pissed off, wrathful, intent on vengeance ... that's more the level we're talking here.  I could have gotten better photos with a cheap point-and-shoot sealed inside a ziplock bag, for god's sake.

I'll be calling your parents about this tomorrow morning, you can be sure of that, and they'd better be prepared to make restitution.  Because I'm not going back to Jamaica anytime soon, and thanks to you, I have exactly ZERO usable shots from the water, you stupid piece of useless misrepresented underpowered poorly designed crap.

Also, you're ugly, and your mother dresses you funny.  So there!

Sincerely,

Your ex-owner

What I did on my spring break in Jamaica

I spent last week at a resort where there was a nanny to take care of my kid and I had no responsibilities other than to sit on the beach while enjoying the view and drinking Adult Beverages.  I knit an entire tank top, most of a size 13 man's sock, and 1/4 of a skirt for the kidlet.

I knit on the beach.

I knit on the balcony.

I knit on the beach again.

I knit on the balcony again.

I knit in the bar.

I did not knit on the glass-bottom boat (too wet), in the restaurant (too many nom-noms in the antipasto bar to try), or while sleeping (at least intentionally).

I also took more than 1,000 pictures and videos, read 3 books and played a lot of Angry Birds.

It was a good week.

This is probably a bad idea

Found a video that was so funny, I had to stop watching it after a minute just so I could catch my breath.  I haven't finished it, so the last 5 minutes of it could suck, and the commentary is seriously NSFW, but daaaaaang, the first bit is funny.

So here it is:



ETA: Oh, sweet baby jeebus, playing this is so much fun! The "Crunch!" when his head hits the track is classic, as is the fake Chariots of Fire theme music that plays if you actually get ANY forward motion going. You have to try it: http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html

Also, some of my favorite comments from the forum where I found this:

So you KNOW I had to try it myself. I thought I was going to die laughing just at the impossible contortions I was making this guy do. Then he backflipped and his head actually made a thundering CRUNCH on the ground. Now I am dead from laughing.
ETA: I think I’ve got the moonwalk down pretty solid.
ETA: I got to 2.7 meters before he decided to fuck the ground furiously and then crack open his skull on his own knee.
ETA: I got to 10.8 meters! This guy is really good on his knees. (his trainer must be nellum’s mom.)
ETA: STOP RUNNING BACKWARDS YOU NOODLE LEGGED GIT!!!!
*****
Somewhere between the starting line and the finish line is an actual fucking hurdle you have to manage to jump in order to win the race. Seriously, I’m not even sure how it’s physically possible, although I’ve never gotten that far. Most people just wind up pushing it to the finish line as the ground-hump their way along.
*****

YEAH BABY!

Knocked that hurdle down and humped my way over it.

Course, nobody warned me there’s a fucking jump at the end.

*****

I am currently attempting to hump my way to victory. I take breaks sometimes. I do love how each time I sort of move him forward the inspirational music half starts to play. Go QWOP!

ETA I hit the part where you need to jump and I managed to hump the bar to the ground but it is stuck in the characters crotch. I may have to hump it the last 50m.

*****

*****

I think “Humping our way to victory” should become the official LSG motto. I know it’s going to show up in my vocabulary as soon as I can work it in, as a synonym for slogging on the face of ridiculously epic failure. Kind of like this last job I’m winding up.

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude, this is awesome

For more details on just why this is so awesome, you'll have to visit the other blog.

Again with the tiredness

Thursday night I made 10 shirts for Liza and the spelling bee contestants from Kindergarten.  Do you have any idea how hard your hand cramps after using that much puffy fabric paint?

Friday I watched Liza at the spelling bee, where she won "Bravest Speller."  The judge said it looked like she was thinking, "Okay, Mr. Microphone, I know you want to eat my face off, but they told me I needed to use you to win, so I'll just stand way over here and be prepared to run away if you make any sudden movements."  What do you think?

Oh, and I hereby declare that the silent "h" in words like "wheel" is stupid and should be abolished.

Saturday I was getting ready to start painting the bathroom when the power went out.  You know, on the day when it was raining.  And the battery backup on our sump pump was out of juice.  So I got to bail - over the course of 3 hours - 60 gallons of water out of my sump hole, or, as I like to call it, The Black Hole of Olmsted Falls.

In the 10-minute increments between bailings I managed to get the basement even more tidy than it was before.  Um, yay?

When the power came back on, Jason asked if I still planned to paint the bathroom that day.  Two-word answer that starts with "f" and ends with "no."

Sunday I finally got the walls painted.
Monday I got the trim painted.
This morning I got the caulking done and moved all the towel rods and cabinets and curtains back in.  After another hour of cleaning all the dust off of everything, it looks pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.

Even if I still don't have a fucking faucet, which, if you recall, was THE ENTIRE REASON I STARTED THIS PROJECT ALMOST A MONTH AGO.

This afternoon I went outside to look at something other than my bathroom or basement for the first time in like a week and a half.  It was worth the trip.

Don't ask if you don't want to hear the answer

She's not even six, and she's already pulling an attitude on her homework? God, it's going to be a long 12 more years ...

I am so very, very tired

Because:

• Yesterday I finished the first round of taping and mudding on the drywall above my new bathtub ... at 10:15pm.
  
  
  
  
• And then I sat up for a while trying to make sure the sump pump was working.
• And then when I tried to go to sleep, The Storm of Massive Rain and Eternal Lightning-ness started up, making it impossible to get to sleep
• So I checked on the sump pump - still working.
• And then when I tried to go to sleep, I listened to the worsening storm and worried about the sump pump.
• So I checked on the sump pump - still working.
• The last time I checked the clock, it was 3:30am.
• At 6am Jason got up, went downstairs, came back upstairs, and announced that our whole basement was several inches underwater.
• So then Jason, Liza and I carted everything from the basement upstairs, sorting it into "dry," "wet," and "why the hell did we have that anyway?" piles in different rooms in the house.
  
  
  
  
• I also wet vacuumed all the puddles up out of the basement.
• Then I took Liza to school, only an hour late.
• Then I went to Home Depot, where I joined half of the residents of Cuyahoga County in the aisles for mops, shelving units, wet vacs, and garbage bags.  I wish Home Depot also sold alcohol.
• Then I did the second round of mudding on the bathroom walls.
  
  
  
  
• Then I carried the "why the hell did we have that anyway?" pile out to the garbage.
• Then I started mopping the floor in the basement, first with Clorox, then with water.  Now instead of mildew, it smells like bleach and mildew and wet cat hair.
• Then I started moving things back into the basement, sorting out a bunch of stuff for Goodwill and the consignment store.  Goodwill candidates = anything I don't feel like we use enough to justify carrying it back downstairs and placing in an elevated storage spot.  That's a lot of stuff, at this point.
• Then I dug a path through the debris in my office to the computer, where I started typing this post.
• And now I'm going to go find some Tylenol and play Angry Birds until I stop wanting to cry or throw something through a wall.  Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue ...

So, how's your day been going?

Whooooooooosh

That sound you heard yesterday was my 5-year blogiversary flying by, unnoticed by anyone but me.  We've come a long way, baby.

And maybe I'll have more to say about it after I shower off the drywall dust, drive across town, help a bunch of 5-year-olds play with Legos, drive back across town, and meet with the contractor who's supposed to help me remove the cast-iron tub from my tiny bathroom.  That gives me plenty of time to think up something pithy and momentous to say.  Because otherwise, all I've got is BOO-YAH, BABY!!!!

Upgrading your bathroom in 75,212 easy steps

1. Purchase a house thoughtfully designed with the plumbing for the main bathroom running through an unheated, uninsulated little architectural vomit of an overhang at the back of the house, then wait for a particularly cold couple of nights.
2. Attempt to take a shower the next morning and realize that your cold water line has frozen solid.  Rig a heat lamp in the access panel behind the bathtub and thaw out the pipes, leaving the lamp on until the cold weather ends.  This means, of course, that for fire safety reasons you won't be able to put anything in the closet housing the access panel, and you'll have to go to sleep with light streaming from your bedroom closet like something from a horror movie.
3. Realize that the frozen pipes now have a slight leak in them, just a few drips here an there.  Realize that nothing good can come from this, and you wanted to switch from a two-handle shower to a one-handle shower, anyway, so now's a good time to take care of that.
4. Have George the Plumber come give an estimate for doing the actual plumbing work to fix the leaks and move the handles.  Confirm which area of the tiles will need to be removed to make room for the new controller.  Arrange to have him come do the work the following Tuesday.
5. Decide that since the tile near the current handles will need to be replaced, anyway, and the grout in that area is all moldy and gross, it will be easiest to just remove the bottom two rows of tile from around the whole bathtub and replace them with something pretty.
6. Purchase a grout saw, repair grout (for the moldy gross sections above the sections being removed), extra grout saw blades.  Start shopping for tile.
7. Use grout saw to remove the grossest grout above the area to be removed.  This is fun - look how pretty the white grout looks! Now start removing all of the grout around the four tiles that need to be removed so the new controller can be installed.  This is less fun - feel how much your hand aches!  Remove tiles, taking care to keep them as whole as possible so you can use them to patch around the new controller.
8. Shop for tile, deciding that even if you only plan to replace 8 square feet of tile, you can't justify spending $60 a sq. ft. for awesome tile (below) when there's acceptable tile for less than $10.
   
   
9. Purchase tile, thinset mortar, notched trowel, smooth trowel, more grout saw blades, a more ergonomic grout saw, a Dremel rotary tool, a grout-removal kit for the Dremel, tile spacers, grout, float, sponge, and probably a few other things you don't realize you need yet and that they won't stock at just one store so you'll have to drive for 30 minutes to get to the other home improvement store to buy the rest.  Find your heaviest hammer, crappy chisel you don't mind ruining, safety glasses, ear protection, dust mask, and trusty Purdy 6-in-1 painter's tool.  The 6-in-1 is going to be your best friend for the rest of the project, so go ahead and give it a catchy name now.
10. Begin removing grout along the top of the tiles to be removed, using the grout saw followed by the Dremel.  Tell your spouse that using the Dremel is the most fun you've had with a power tool in a long, long time. 
11. Let your child help with the grout removal.  No, she doesn't get to use the Dremel, that's my toy.
    
     
12. Begin removing tile, trying to keep as much of it in good condition as you can because who knows, you might need it some day there's such a market for used 1970s tile that can be best described as "inoffensive."  Get annoyed when you chip the edges of a few pieces of tile that aren't supposed to be removed, then realize that's why you need the good condition tiles, to replace the ones you mess up along the edge.
   
13. Step back and look at what you're doing.  Seriously.  Take a look at the wallboard and the tile.  I'm fairly certain the paper front of the drywall isn't supposed to come off with the tile, and the inside of the drywall isn't supposed to be gray and spongy, is it? And all that fleecy stuff with little black shiny egg-looking balls in it is just insulation, right?  Not anything to worry about, just JESUS LORD HELP ME JESUS A GIANT MAN-EATING SILVERFISH JUST RAN OVER MY HAND AND MY WALL IS INFESTED WITH (MOSTLY DEAD) BUGS AND I THINK I'M GOING TO HURL ALL OVER THE TILE DEBRIS IN MY BATHTUB 

14. Okay, fine.  You're an adult, you can handle these things.  Sweep up bug debris, bag all funky/moldy/buggy tile and get it out of the house, sweep again, vacuum, etc.  Realize that "I'll just tile an 8" strip around the tub" has turned into "I'll just replace the drywall and then tile an 8" strip around the tub."  Call the plumber to reschedule because god only knows how long this is going to take.
15. Continue chipping off the tile, one row at a time, to determine where the water damage stops.  Maybe it's just a few more rows and then everything will be dry and happy and mercifully bug-free!
16. Or not.
17. Give up when you realize that all of the walls are moving when you lean on them, and you're going to have to take all the tile down to replace all of the drywall around the shower.  Have fun removing tile with no thought to keeping any of it - heavy hammer to the rescue!  The walls move so much that you can whack at a row of tiles halfway up the wall and tiles below it just fall off the wall!  It's so much fun, let the kid help! And make sure you can't see that she's wearing safety glasses so her grandmothers will call up and be all irate about it!
    
    
    
18. The drywall probably stopped the moisture from ruining the insulation, right?  So we'll just pull down the drywall and zip - zop - put some back up and we're done, right?
19. Or not.
    
    
20. Door closed, vent fan on high, all debris double-bagged, no one allowed in the room but the worker, work shoes left in room, respirator upgraded to Darth Vader model, all work clothes washed separately from rest of laundry, worker showers immediately after finishing for the day.  Learn new phrase for what we're doing from episode of Glee watched that night - the Full Silkwood.
21. Realize that you don't really feel like doing THAT much tile work.  Maybe one of those plastic tub surrounds would be a good alternative?  Wait, they attach directly to studs, so I don't even have to drywall under them?  Sign me up!
22. Drywall removal - fun when all you need is your hands and a 6-in-1 tool!
23. Insulation removal - fun when all you need is your hands and a 6-in-1 tool!
24. Mold removal - fun when ... oh, fuck it, scrubbing mildew off of the guts of your house isn't fun, no matter what tools you get to use.
    
    
    
25. Call George the Plumber and leave a message.
26. Call Jerry the Contractor and leave a message, because you are pretty sure that getting a giant cast-iron bathtub out of a tiny room is beyond your capabilities, no matter how much you'd like to take a sledgehammer to that ugly P.O.S.
27. Return tile, thinset mortar, notched trowel, smooth trowel, more grout saw blades, a more ergonomic grout saw, tile spacers, grout, float, sponge, and probably a few other things you don't need anymore since you're not doing the tile, realizing that they came from stores on opposite sides of town so it's going to take all day. 
28. Look for new tubs and surrounds at the local home improvement store, and then, dissatisfied with their selection, drive for half an hour to the other major store.  Talk with George the Guy in Plumbing (no relation to George the Plumber) and get the lowdown on how to install one of these babies.  Arrange for spouse to meet you at the store after work, rent the store truck, and haul the new tub and walls home.
29. Realize that you don't have anyplace to store a tub and plastic walls near the bathroom, so the boxes will just have to go wherever you can find a place for them, no matter how inconvenient.
    
    
30. Haul bags, boxes, and trash cans full of waste to the curb, along with the giant part of a tree that fell out of your neighbor's yard during the last ice storm.  The trash guys are going to love you.
31. Wait for George and Jerry to return your calls.
32. Blog.

Organization of my thoughts is a problem when I don't post for weeks at a time

So we'll just go with the tried-and-true (and dreaded) bullet points:

• February is long, calendar be damned.  But for $7 and a trip to the grocery store, I forced spring to come early, at least in my dining room.

• Last week the radio host gleefully announced that it was -5F, the coldest he's ever gotten to say on air.  I dealt with a snow (actually ice) day by throwing my old Calvin and Hobbes books in Liza's direction and taking pictures of her reading them while doing yoga.

• Helping prepare the kindergarten teams for the Lego Olympiad this spring sounded like such a good idea at the time, but after seeing the chaos of 10 kids and one pile of Legos, I may need some sort of pharmaceutical help to get through this.

• But seriously, how can you resist a face like this?  Who's a cute widdle engineer-in-training? 

• Lego Olympiad preparation = perfect excuse for me to play with all the cool working parts that came in the giant box of Lego-y goodness my mother found at a yard sale years ago.  See the working crane I put together in 5 minutes?  It tilts and swivels and has a rachety-winch thing.  

• Too much time indoors = time for a change.  Bye, bye, hair!

• Last week was ugly.  Jason was gone for part of the time, so Liza got to attend the 3-hour PTO meeting with me, where she had to work on the first math homework she's had in months and practice for her spelling test.  Did I mention we also had to decorate a Valentine's day mailbox, go to her science club at the LENSC, and finish her poster for the 100th day of school? And Friday she had a math test, a spelling test, a 100th day poster presentation, and a Valentine's Day party?  I thought her little head was going to explode, but she made it through in one piece.

• This weekend it warmed up enough to actually let the child go outside without risking any of her extremities.  So she threw snowballs at the house and attempted to stomp through the 2" thick layer of ice on top of the snow in our yard. 

• And then we went to see them band birds at the Rocky River Nature Center.  Liza got to release a downy woodpecker - she was much more enthusiastic before she realized that even small birds have talons.

• Also, we went tobogganing, but I think that deserves its own post.

38 don't get you nothin', buddy

It's not prime, it's not a multiple of 5 or 10, it's not a milestone - you get the DQ mini ice cream cake and some dudes to paint.  Next year I'll dust off the cheesecake recipe for you, okay?

Happy birthday, Jason!

True/False

1.  I let my kid go out in public looking like this:

2. I took 200 pictures at a kid's birthday party, and this was the least blurry one of them all:

3. My daughter has a great future ahead of her as a hairdresser.

4. Saturday nights at my house are a total party!

5. Prisms are just for making rainbows.

6. She hates waterslides.

7. I will never allow myself to appear in a swimsuit on this blog.

8. Fifty-four days from now, Jason and I will be sitting right here while some Jamaican nanny is in charge of our kid:

View Larger Map

9. My cat has no interest in wiping the smug expression off of this guy's face:

10. Sometimes I suck at keeping the blog updated.