Then marvel at the ensuing confusion as inertia and low-friction, colliding-body physics play out before your eyes.

The kids were a half hour late for school after we watched this season's first icy wipeout unfold. I don't think the lady in the white, all-wheel-drive SUV was ready for her right turn to go so wrong at the bottom of the hill, as she hammered a nice 30 degree camber into a compact's front wheel.

After helping push one of the cars out of the road, we sat around and waited to pass along a witness report to an overworked officer with a cool snow hat. It was a worthy cue, and I spent the rest of the way to school describing ice-driving tactics to Giselle--who will be in learner's permit territory next year :-O

Then marvel at the ensuing confusion as inertia and low-friction, colliding-body physics play out before your eyes.

The kids were a half hour late for school after we watched this season's first icy wipeout unfold. I don't think the lady in the white, all-wheel-drive SUV was ready for her right turn to go so wrong at the bottom of the hill, as she hammered a nice 30 degree camber into the black sedan's front wheel.

After helping push one of the cars out of the road, we sat around and waited to pass along a witness report to an overworked officer with a cool snow hat. It was a worthy cue, and I spent the rest of the way to school describing ice-driving tactics to Giselle--who will be in learner's permit territory next year :-O

You think you're a fresh-grad/veteran/whatever, designer rock-star with your Adobe Creative Suite powers, but we warned you there would be PowerPoint jobs mixed in there too. And you were like 'Hey, no-prob! Not my favorite program, but everybody's gotta do it--bring it on!' and I still cringed on your behalf, waiting and wondering which job was going to nuke your confidence and throw chunks of the team into an hours-long tizzy.

And so, I spent three-quarters of my day today helping clean up the latest deadline-enmeshed PowerPoint trainwreck while trying to exude calmness to the project managers frustrated by the disaster. There's no telling which candy-coated Microsoft land mine is going to demolish the 30 to 150 bullet-riddled pages the artist spent days coaxing into cohesion, but the reconstructive surgery is never easy. Ever.

Always wishing we could migrate our clients to PDF presentations. But. It'll never happen.

Giselle jumps in, "--no wait, tuburculosis? Isn't that where they take out the thingamahoogies in the back of your neck?"

Me: "Thingamahoogies???"

To which Harrison clarifies, "--that's tonsils, Giselle...tonsils..."

"ohhhh yeahhhh, tonsilectomy...DON'T MOCK ME!"

--- clip clip clip clip ---

F: Where are those landing?
S: IN THE TRASH CAN!

--- son slowly approaches down hallway, hands held Nosferatu-style before him ---

F: Ok, let me see--hold still--sheesh, did you drink too much coffee this morning? ...OK, this pinkie still needs work...and this one is pointy!
D: Harrison!
S: I just do it to my pinkies.
D: See! He sharpens them into daggers!
S: I made them just for you Giselle...hehehh...AACK!

--- Extreme Ruckuss as daughter throws back chair and chases son into the bathroom. ---

As Amanda and the kids were bagging up all the debris, I was treated to:

Amanda:
"Harrison--hold the bag OPEN--"

Harrison:
"I'm TRYING. The wind keeps blowing it shut."
:: pregnant pause, ripe with frustration, downcast eyes, and a wrinkled brow ::
"I'm NOT the creator of laws and physics, you know."

As Callahan once said: "A man's GOT to know his limitations."

::Shudder::

I felt a cold chill rush through me when this ad popped up in my rss browser earlier today. It flashes me back to the scene where Lambert gets it at the end of Alien.

I don't design for the family & kid crowd, but wow, there's obviously a lot of fun to be had there. The team that put this ad together at Disney had to know this would pop the Fight-or-Flight Adrenaline cork for some folks. I wonder if they had a few laughs about that.

Giselle looks distractedly at my 5 o'clock shadow: You have a little mustache...

Me, rubbing hand across face: hmmmmm

Harrison, patiently from the other room: Dad's a boy….He went through puberty….He went through puberty and his body--

Giselle: SHUT! UP! HARRISON!

This is all theirs. I just compiled the frames into a quicktime movie and showed them how to add sound in iMovie. Please exercise caution if you suffer from motion sickness.

I ran across some comments earlier about how cat herding isn't as difficult as it's made out to be--due to the ease with which cat's can be lead into position through anticipation of desirable food products. It's just a terminology issue. Cat herding in its native form is still an entirely wretched activity.

In the early days of Cat Husbandry, it was readily noted that the Cat Lurers fared far better than the Cat Herders. For example, on the desolate reaches of the Jilf al Kabir, those with little means were frequently unable to proffer the scarce meat and fish scraps needed to lure the increasingly ferrel beasts across the blistering landscape. These less-adept Catsmen and women were subsequently reduced to herding their charges with rocks, switches and animated shooing, eventually becoming the butt of many jokes and cautionary tales across the region. Thus the implications of the modern simile, "...like herding cats".

Without meat scraps or cream to sustain a lengthy journey, the question may be asked: how did these nomadic cat herders manage to cross the bleak expanses with their hordes essentially intact? What is often forgotten are the plentiful stores of fat and moisture that the ancient cats maintained in their ample shoulder humps. This of course permitted extended travel across vast wastelands between key oases. Today, the readily spoiled domestic cat no longer possesses an obvious hump. However, the loose skin at the scruff of the neck still provides vestigial evidence of this fascinating anatomical feature...and a ready handle with which the modern Cat Herder may swiftly (and with minimal lacerations) manipulate members of their willful herds.*

Thanks Tom:

*If you are a student who reached this site via Google and you use this information in your report on Felis catus, you will get an F.

So nice.

But now it's gone and I had to get another one. So, what's the chrome-plated future look like? It looks like shredded greenbacks flying out of my wallet, that's what it looks like. If I want a phone that can tether to my laptop, and I try to get advice from a human being (in person, over the phone, no matter) I'm funneled straight into the Commitment-Zone. You see, in the future, only weenies want phones that are internet-ready just SOME of the time. So I could sign up for a contract to shell out thirty extra bucks a month for unlimited broadband that I can't justify, or I could trim down to the minimum fifteen dollars a month for 150 Mb of access--which is a plan that essentially allows you to know you HAVE access, but strictly AVOID using it, because you know if you do start using it you'll end up enjoying a regular, burning rash of killer overage charges.

Fortunately, I'm capable of researching my way out of the gaping Pitcher Plant of digestive broadband fees and I found a couple phones swirling around in a sad little eddy on the Verizon website for under fifty bucks that still allowed you to tether and do occasional broadband with no monthly commitment. Option 1 had crummy standby battery life. So I got Option 2. Which is where I realized something else that I guess I knew, but never really thought about. Which is, besides being a money pit, cell phones are also a fashion marker. And I guess I might as well be wearing a pocket protector and huge horn rims, because I got me a flip phone. Coworker walks up:
"So what kind of phone did you end up getting"
[[shows phone]]
"ohhhh....you got a flip phone...." [[goes silent with an I'm-not-going-to-say-anything-else look on face]]

So, whatever. I'm glad I'm 40 years old and I don't care anymore. I'm going to go shopping for sock suspenders now.

Bet she's confused...
...
First comes confusion.
Then anger.
Then sadness...
...
Then laziness and laying on the couch all the time...couch-potato-ness
Oh and I forgot bargaining.

Harrison: Tick...Tick...Tick...
Giselle: STOP!
Harrison: Tick...Tick...Tick...
Amanda: What's going on!?
Giselle: Just so you know, if he doesn't stop being annoying, it isn't going to end well for him.
--unexpected silence--