Kind Of A Slow & Relaxing Weekend

The sun was out and just warm enough to open the windows which some of the animals took full advantage of.

"H" took one step closer to becoming a man today, he changed his first flat tire.

Course Selection Begins

and even the cat is weighing in on it.

All I Got Was

"Goose" got accepted for college
The college got a check.
And all I got was a bumper sticker.
Somethings just not right........

Congrats

"Goose" just got accepted at "GCSU" friends they grow up fast and expensively.

My Cool Christmas Gift

Sporting my Christmas cuff links yesterday, they were gift from my Dad. He received them as a High School graduation gift from his parents in 1953. Probably the oldest thing I own.

A Rant And Then Some

You just gotta love Oreo's, they fill you up (3 cookies 160 calories), they go great with milk, and you can combine them with other good stuff (for example - cream cheese & white chocolate) to make great stuff.

OK, here's the rant part - what's up with this NEW easily re-sealed bag? Around here there's no need for an Oreo bag to ever be re-sealed, they don't last that long. Once you pull back the seal on this redesigned bag you still need Houdini to extricate the cookies from their plastic grave.
So I'm making "Oreo Balls" which after you extricate the Oreo's from the newly engineered bag requires that you mix the cookies into a fine chocolaty powder.

Now here's the "then some" part. In case you didn't know know this - When using a blender to crush the Oreos and the Oreo powder gets impacted around the blades - do not, in frustration, ram a wooden spoon into the depths of the chocolaty powder. Because you end up with chocolaty powder mixed with toothpicks and a useless spoon.
I'm sure the beer in the above picture did not impact my judgment in this situation.
Fast forward - another trip to the store and the involvement of a slightly heavier duty piece of kitchen equipment - no more broken spoons and a tray of "Oreo Balls" in the fridge.

Breakfast Around Here

usually contains oatmeal, especially on chilly mornings.

Mine - Steel cut oats, peanut butter & protein powder

The Wife - In the form of a cookie with raisins, of course.

It's the Holiday Season

The Fall decorations are tucked (shoved in a closet) away and the Christmas gear is starting to creep in. I'm free from decorating until next weekend, when the wreaths get hung (with care).

Kids Just Don't Understand

Way way way back in the 80's there was a song "Parents Just Don't Understand" done by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince aka.. Will Smith, before he was an actor he was a rapper. Someone needs to update that song and make a "Kids Just Don't Understand" version.....
Yesterday was clean the house day and I drew short straw - clean the upstairs - which actually entails a pre-clean before the actual cleaning can begin.
The pre-clean yesterday consisted of getting all the clothes and other assorted junk off the floor before vacuuming could begin. I take a more tough-love approach to the pre-clean than most others in the house, everything on the floor goes on the bed, in other words I ain't cleaning up their mess.
I didn't hear much complaining until 11:00pm when they got ready for bed and lo' and behold they both discovered that their bed was full of their junk.

How can a girl be so messy? Even the cat is unfazed must mean he's used to it.

I can't believe that "H" has anything left in his closet, but he does.

When it comes to tracking a childs growth most people put a little mark on the doorway molding, not "H" he slaps all of the size stickers from his clothes on his closet doors. Yeah Kids Just Don't Understand......

The Kids Just Rolled Back In

Both of them lacking sleep, needless to say it's wonderful around here this afternoon.

"Goose" and her friends decided to recreate one of the scenes from "Thriller"

While "H" was more concerned with scoring as much candy as possible, my guesstimate is around 4 lbs which equates to 1 cavity, 12-15 hours of elevated sugar levels and numerous candy wrapper strewn throughout the house.

The group contained a Buddha, Zombie Cheerleader, Go-Go Dancer, Jack Sparrow, Dragon, Audrey Hepburn & Mr. Viking.

Bento Frick's World Style

One of the nerdy sites that I frequent is "Bento Lunches" if for no other reason than to hear "The Wife" moan about any parent that would take this much time to prepare their kids lunch apparently has no life.
If you have never heard of Bento Wikipedia sums it up best:
Bentō is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables as a side dish.
As you can see by the picture it's very nice, neat, well organized and compact. People that eat Bento claim that it's a great way to control their weight. No duh it's gotta be hard to cram more than a couple hundred calories into a 2" by 2" box.
I have been known to partake in Bento lunches except I pack a "Mr Bento" because I need to feed the machine and 200 calories is not going to do it.

OK, I told you all that stuff so I could now tell you the following stuff.

After hearing "The Wife" tell me that making Bento lunches just isn't practical and no one is going appreciate all the hard work I decided to pack her an appropriate Bento .

4 Hershey Kisses and a Hershey Dark Chocolate Mini-Bar

Father Son Day Revisted

There's only so much quality video game time any 14 year old boy can stand, yeah right, before it's Father Son time. Similar to "Hammer Time" but without the parachute pants.
The last time we choose cutting the grass as "Father Son time was 4 years ago", and "H" has managed to grow a few inches since then.
and we hooked him up with a new mower. Kids can be useful if you approach it correctly.

Is It Fall?

The cats think it is. The windows are open & the air conditioning is off, lets hope it stays that way.

It's Game Time

Goose's school had their home opener Friday night, they lost. One of the schools written in stone traditions is that only seniors are allowed to wear camo pants on game day (Friday). Goose has waited 3 long years to sport the camo look and it's finally time. With the camo you also get the fashion trend of black tank tops and maroon & gold body paint, oh yippee.

Our driveway looked like an HGTV show.

Finally it was game time, BOW DOWN to the seniors y'all.

The Progression Of Things Around Here

The general progression of things around "Frick's World" is that simple and cheap things, projects or ideas will usually snowball into complicated and expensive.
For example I present to you the scenario below:

Below is a plate rack in our kitchen, it's been there awhile looks good and serves its purpose, whatever that purpose is. We don't use the plates so they should last in theory forever.

It's a nice plate rack, I like it.

"The Wife". while shopping, sees some new plates that will look nice on the
kitchen plate rack that currently is holding plates that we never use.

This, I think would be the "Simple & Cheap" part.

To my eyes it looks great in the plate rack, even though I found no fault with the old plates.

The key to the sentence above is "To my eyes" because if you look at the picture below
you can plainly see the plate rack is blocking the cute inscription on the plate.

Now comes the "Complicated & Expensive" part.
Since the current rack is covering the cute inscription it will require a new plate rack. This will require removal of the perfectly good old rack, patching the holes, because you know there's no way to find a new rack that has the same screw pattern. An additional trip to the plate rack store and 15 minutes with a screw driver I present to you the new plate rack and plates.

I'm sure I'll grow to like this one as much as I liked the previous one.

And always remember "Share Laughter"

Someone Beens Painting

I didn't go and run off with a Smurf, "The Wife" decided to do some painting today and apparently she did it barefooted. Using my CSI deductive reasoning skills I can theorize a few things

• There is now something robin egg blue in my house
• Somewhere there is a whole mess of paint on the floor
• I will have to clean up the above mess
• "The Wife" will now require a pedicure

and how come the "little piggie that stayed home" is bigger than "this piggie went to market"?

I've Been Shopping

I decided to treat myself to a couple of items off my Amazon list and it's not even my birthday.

First to come off of the list was the "Gymboss" interval timer. Sometimes at the park I'll sprint for 1:00 minute and then walk for 2:00 minutes I'll do this usually 7 times, makes for a quick heart pounding workout. The issue is that I can't count set my watch for two different intervals and then try to remember if that was my 4th or 5th sprinting session. Gymboss lets you set different intervals as well as the number of intervals. It's small and clips right onto your shorts, it can even be set to vibrate so if your at the gym you won't disturb others. There's only 3 buttons and can be programmed in about 2 minutes the first time you use it.

Next off the list a set of "Smoking Buds" from "Skullcandy". Fricksworld has at least 6 iPods laying around and at least twice that many sets of headphones. Apple is the master of form & function but they can't build a set of headphones to save their life. To me they are very tinny allow for lots of ambient noise to seep in and will not stay in my ear when doing anything physical. Now I love my "Bose" headphones, on a plane they can't be beat, but not practical for wearing while doing anything physical. Enter the Smoking Buds these fit in the ear and stay in the ear with their silicone buds, they limit ambient noise and the bass response is amazing plus they have cool skulls on them, marketing at its finest.

Happy Birthday Goose

Goose turned 18 this week, it's gone by quick. The remaining "Salamander Sister" broke in applied some urban art to her sled and kidnapped her for an early morning breakfast at iHop.

Frickmas #43

We held the 43rd annual Frickmas celebration this morning. The celebration began with me un-wrapping my gifts!!!!!

First up a new iPod iTouch. Which means the old iPod gets passed down to the youngest.
In typical Apple fashion it was out of the box up and running in less than 5 minutes. It connected with my access point imported my internet bookmarks without a hitch. The screen works just like you see it on TV. Touch, tap scroll I'm holding my breath since this is a first generation iTouch that it won't be laden with bugs & glitches,
Landed (3) new t-shirts for those dress up evening outings.


My parents gave me tickets for the Ga Tech North - Carolina next month including dinner at the Varsity.
My Aunt laid some cash on me which will go for iTouch accessories, gotta feed the beast.......

Patience Is A Virtue?

Except when it comes to baking cookies. The girls around here apparently don't have the patience to wait for the oven to heat up and then wait for the cookies to well, actually cook. They just eat the cookie raw right out of the tube.