The best part about being a parent is that you finally have an excuse to go back and buy all these toys that you wanted as a kid, but your parents never got you. Case in point, a slip n' slide. When I was a kid, I always wanted one of these. The closest that I got was to put down some trash bags in the front yard.... totally ghetto. Well, today at Target, I decided to get one for C and I to play on. Not only that, but it has tie fighters and x-wings all the way down the slide, culminating with the death star station in the mini-splash zone pool at the end. so dope.

The best part about it is that once you get the thing up and running, there's a huge warning that states the product is for 12 years and younger... whoosh, there goes the 30 year old dad down the slide, dodging tie fighters and splashing into the death star.

Oh yeah, C liked it too.

Ok I think I jacked my back... you see, today was Dad's work day at TCP - the preschool that Christopher attends. Today the main task was to remove the sand from the old sandboxes and replace it with new sand... holy crud.

We basically took out about 25 tons of sand and replaced it with 40 tons. It was nuts. To make it worse, about an hour into the job, we had to move these ficus trees that had overgrown their buckets and were rooted into the old sand. Well, for some reason, I thought I was still 18 and I just tried to pick up the largest tree by myself... except I used my upper body and forgot to use my legs... can you say... tweak!

So for the next 6 hours, I basically worked around my back. Once in a while it would spasm on me and I'd move around real quick... but we got the job done and things look great. We actually completely sheared the offending ficus, so we could move it back and not have it fall on the kids - I hope it lives... doh!

Anyway, the job was totally worth it. Later I brought C by to see the work we had done. Ms. Kayl was there and he got all sheepish and said hi. Then he saw everything we had done. Afterwards in the car, he just goes.. "Daddy, you're so kind"... it was totally rad. I told him that me and the other daddies just wanted our buddies to have a good time at school. Totally good times and makes the pain a little less brutal.

Renaissance Faire!!

So today we went to the renaissance faire. I have to admit that I got the idea when I went to the Coffee Bean yesterday morning and saw my old friend Chelsea all up in wenchgarb. I looked up the specifics on the computer, saw that this week was half price, and away we went.

Needless to say, but Christopher loved it. The minute we got in the place, I got him a sword and shield that he could walk around holding. Pretty cool b/c the shield looks just like a shield in his Knight book that he always says he wants. After that, we threw some battle axes, shot some crossbow bolts, tossed some darts, and watched some fencing. The highlight of the day, or so I thought, was the Royal Joust. Our knight was the White Knight and he ended up winning the joust. Unfortunately for him, he ended up having to go hand-to-hand with the sword and shield to win the joust - that armor had to be pretty hot.

After the joust was over, we were heading home, when this guy asked C if he wanted to learn how to swordfight. I could tell that he was timidly fired up to do it, so we went over to the stage. When we got there, it was pretty interesting to watch C's reaction. I could tell that he was pretty shy about going up on stage, but on the other hand, how often does he get to learn how to sword fight. Eventually, the desire won out and he jumped on stage - YAY! He got up there, learned how to salute, stab and parry like a pro. Good times.

All in all, it was a pretty sweet day. Now C really knows what a real knight tournament was like. I know people mock these ren faire things, but as a parent, it's pretty cool to let your kids experience history like this - sorta like a Civil War recreation... Now, for the adults that get a little carried away, that is just a tad odd... but to each their own :-)

Christopher with his sword and shield

Throwing axes at the target The white knight about to joust.

The white knight and black knight battle Christopher learning how to sword fight!

It's WEBER TIME!

So I managed to convince grandma that she needed a weber for bbq'ing. Having had a gas BBQ for the last 10 years, I was a newbie when it came to using briquets - hence an inordinate amount of lighter fluid. Which, might I add, I also added while the fire was lit... a big no no. Anyway, once I read the instructions and realized that the holes at the bottom needed to be open to get the fire going, I was on my way. The first meal was a couple of t-bone steaks and some corn wrapped in foil. I also threw in some mesquite wood chips and I think that offset the lighter fluid b/c the steaks turned out great. The grill is the perfect size if I needed to "borrow" it for a tail gate or two, too...

Emmy's first bike ride! So on the way back from in n' out - Christopher asked if we could ride our bikes to the park. He even suggested that Emmy could use his old bike seat! Christopher LOVED that seat - I was always worried that he would be upset when Emmy started riding in it, but nope. He helped get her in and get her fastened and everything. It's rad when kids prove you wrong and make you look like some worrying old geezer.

Anyway, we rode to the park and Emmy had a blast. At first she didn't like the helmet so much but she starting loving the bike. Awesome! 2 for 2 with kids that love the bike!

Tournament day! So Christopher has this knight book that describes how knights lived. One of the things that the books says that knights did was to participate in tournaments, so I dreamt up this idea of making a tournament with flags and archery and croquet.

Here's Christopher shooting at the target with his nerf bow and arrow...

msft sucks...

So I had a Sony Vaio with Windows Media Center Edition 2004 on it. I've been pretty happy with it, except for a few bits of trouble encoding divx movies on it. Anyway, I kept wondering when Sony was going to offer MCE 2005 for my model... I have heard NOTHING but great things about it and I was pumped to check out. They finally made it available 2 weeks ago and I ordered it the very first night it was available. The day it came to my work, I was gleaming. This was going to be my dessert for the night. The chance to geek out with a new OS... For normal people, this is lame. For geeks like me, nirvana.

UNFORTUNATELY...

Things have not really gone so well. This whole seamless upgrade thing? Bogus. No wonder why Sony didn't want to advertise this. It's hosed my entire system. For the last two days, I've been trying to upgrade. Now my machine is stuck in between versions, so I can't watch TV or view my media center. It totally blows.

You'd think, after 20 years of existance, MSFT could learn to get it friggin right? The best part is that since it's distributed by Sony, THEY handle customer care, which just point back to more useless MSFT web pages... It's the classic customer care circular reference of we don't want to take any responsibility for making a crappy product.

I don't get it. If I did that in my job, I'd be canned. Either that, or all my users would leave me in a heartbeat... The "advantages" of being a monopoly. You can screw the user and still demand money when you're done.

google maps

Google's satellite maps are probably the coolest thing I've seen on the web in 3 years.
If you haven't seen them, check them out. They've nailed everything.
* Click and drag with the mouse or use arrow keys
* Point to point driving directions with waypoints, that when you click, refocus the map and show a pop up with more detail on the direction
* Said pop up has a drop shadow on the map.
* Local integration

Amazing...http://maps.google.com

Mt St Helens	Niagra Falls	Grand Canyon
Ground Zero	Washington DC	San Francisco
Berkeley	Las Vegas	Space Needle
St. Louis Arch	Disneyland	Sea World