“I’m petting your fur.”
“People don’t have fur.”
“You have fur daddy.”

Evie was a little candy crazy after Halloween. Finally Sara took the candy away from her altogether. Evie said, “Give it back, you twit!” It took us a little while, but we eventually remembered that this was a line in a book we have. Who said T.V. was a bad influence? Turns out it’s books you have to watch out for.

Sometimes Evie really wants Sara to do something, but Sara is busy doing something else, so I have to do it instead. This usually involves tears and tantruming. For instance, Evie needed to get her sweatshirt on, but Sara was getting ready to go, so I did it for her. In these situations, Evie asks Sara, “Mommy, did you put my sweatshirt on?” and Sara says, “Yes” and then Evie is fine. I guess her logic is that, her mommy wouldn’t lie to her, so even though she clearly remembers me putting it on her, if mommy said I didn’t, then I didn’t.

Ah the innocence of kids. Your mommy lies to you, dear. Let’s see if she figures that out first, or how to operate the computer and find daddy’s blog!

This is why they shouldn’t let geeks have kids:

But who am I to say anything, I did buy the TCP/IP and v2.0 shirts for Evie.

Link via Make My Mood.

My post the other day on Fences got me thinking of what downloaded software I have that I use a lot. As I said, there really aren’t a lot of things that I use a lot, but there is one program that I use quite a bit that I’ve never mentioned on here. And that is a disservice to you, my readers.

The program is Paint.NET, and it is an image editing software. Don’t let the “Paint” in the name fool you, it is more  similar to Photoshop than to the Paint program that comes with Windows. Except that Paint.NET is free, and Photoshop costs about $700.

It takes a while to get used to, just like it would if you were new to Photoshop. There are a lot of crazy complicated features. But once you get your bearings, it is pretty easy to do some pretty advanced stuff. And I’ve always been able to find tutorials specific to Paint.NET about anything that I couldn’t figure out. There is a pretty active community, including people making many plugins, which you can install to get extra functionality.

So, before you go drop $700 on Photoshop, give Paint.NET a try. And if you’re happy with whatever image editing software you have, ignore this post.

I realize it is after Halloween, and I kind of missed the boat on some of this stuff. But I’m not saving it until next year, so I need to clean these out.

Check out this recipe for a creepy, edible “meat hand“:

The finger nails and bone sticking out of the back are onions. Most of the rest of it is like a meatloaf with cheese melted on top.

Link via InteractiveReader (on twitter)

Second off, check out this geeky pumpkin wrap up over on MegDesk.

Third, check out this clip from NPR Science Friday, that discusses important research into zombies and how their brains work. (The audio is about 15 minutes)

Link via my mother-in-law, who actually called me on the phone to tell me I should be listening to it live.

Finally, I know a lot of you readers are big Wizard of Oz fans, so I give you this:

Link via PlanetDan.

It was a good weekend. Evie really got into the Halloween experience. I wasn’t sure if she was going to be a little too young to understand or appreciate things, but I don’t think she was. She was a little shy with saying “Trick-or-treat!” and she often forgot to say, “Thank you!” or she would mumble it to Sara or I after she had already turned away. But she caught on really quick to holding her bucket up and getting a piece of candy.

We went to a certain street in our neighborhood that is known to be a little crazy about Halloween, drawing people from all over the city. Every story I heard about the place was totally true, and we were done by 5:30. I can only imagine how crazy it would be by 6:30 or 7. My mom kept saying, “This is like a movie!” It was pretty crazy, but it was a lot of fun to be around so many people who were really into the spirit of things. There were lots of displays in yards, people dressed up, and spooky decorations, but these people really took it to the next level. One of my favorite things was a giant spider rigged 20 feet overhead with a pulley system, so it could drop down on unsuspecting people. I also remember a giant plastic knife that was rigged out on a rope, so it could go flying across the street through the air as if possessed.

There were some houses that Evie thought were too scary to go to. There was a giant spider suspended over a door that Evie refused to walk under, even though she confided to Sara, “It’s not real.” Another person in a mask took her by surprise and she just froze in place, refusing to move until the person dangled some M&M’s for her. Sara and I agreed that M&Ms were probably the only thing that could have gotten her to go any closer.

But overall, Evie had a blast. My mom remarked that Evie would probably be playing “trick-or-treat” for quite some time to come. I think we didn’t do too bad either, considering we convinced her to stop in the middle and eat a banana. I doubt any of the other parents had such luck.

Other than that, it was a pretty quiet weekend. We dealt with the time change (though I never found a suitable hour to re-live) and we did some getting ready for the impeding winter, including packing our grill off to storage and removing the tomato cages from the garden. Yesterday was officially the last day for the garden, and I expect it will either be demolished immediately, or sit tantalizingly empty forever, just out of reach. It is possible that we could get another plot in some other garden elsewhere, but I am sort of drained about the whole garden thing, so we might just sit it out. We’ll see.

Finally, we found the time to hit up our favorite breakfast spot, Yolk. Everything was delicious, as usual. But the interesting thing was that my mom ordered the “South Beach” and it was something to see. People were literally turning their heads as it was carried through the restaurant. That might have been because it looked like perhaps my mom was the Don Corleone of the fruit mafia, and she had just ordered someone to bring her the head of the Chiquita Banana lady.

The South Beach consists of half of an entire pineapple, on its side, piled high with granola, strawberries, orange slices, and other fruit. This stuff is literally overflowing off the top and piling up on the surrounding plate. After my mom ate all she could, we cut off the top and bottom and still couldn’t fit it in the largest to-go box they had. It was worth ordering, just to see the thing.

Unfortunately, the picture I took on my camera phone doesn’t really do it justice, so you’ll just have to imagine it.

Evie, dressed as the bat Stellaluna, enjoyed her first ever trick-or-treating experience! This Halloween, I hope all of you have as much fun as a toddler!

Stellaluna visits the bats

The other day, we drove miles and miles to go to one of our favorite restaurants, Outback Steakhouse. Hey Outback, what’s the deal with the Outback-free bubble over Chicago? A lot of people live here, you might want to give it a try!

Anyway, we were ordering Evie a kids meal and we decided we might as well order her a milk. We knew she wouldn’t drink it, but it came with the meal, so we thought “might as well”. We have tried since the dawn of time to get that girl to drink milk, she is not interested. Right about the time that she was quitting bottles, we had some success giving her milk in a bottle, but I think that was the bottle nostalgia factor. Other than that, nada. And when I say we tried, I mean it! We started drinking milk ourselves with every meal, we tried calling it different names, we bought fun Elmo cups that could be used only for milk, we even let Evie decorate cups herself with cow stickers. I even remember a string of a couple of nights were Sara and I would “moo” every time we took a drink! She wasn’t having it.

So imagine my surprise when she started going to town on the glass of milk at Outback! Quick to seize the opportunity, I started saying things like, “How is that Outback Milk?” or “Mmm, you really like Outback Milk, don’t you?” Then we went to the store and bought some 2% milk (we have previously tried whole and skim, plus a couple of custom-made varieties involving a mixture of skim and half-and-half). The 2% carton is blue, which we told her indicates Outback Milk. We also dug out a few cups that looked as close as possible to the cup she had at Outback, including some straws.

So far, it seems to be working! She is sucking that stuff down like there’s no tomorrow. I’m sure she will pull her usual stunt and decide tomorrow that she’s totally off the milk again, so I’m holding my breath. Overall though, even if this only goes on for a couple of weeks, I think we did a most excellent job of thinking on our feet and capitalizing on a situation.

If Evie asks you to see her “muscles” you’d better say no. For some reason, Evie got it in her head that her “muscles” are on her bottom. Well, to be more specific, the whole thing is a bottom, but each cheek is a muscle. And who doesn’t like to show off their muscles?

Sara: ::Buuuuuuurp::
Evie: “Mommy, you said moo?”

Me: “Are you doing something naughty?”
Evie: “No. I’m doing something funny.”

Me: “I’m pretty hungry, I think I’m going to come back there and eat that cookie!”
Evie, getting upset: “No daddy! Don’t eat my cookie!”
Me: “Aw, I’m sorry, I was just teasing. I won’t eat your cookie.”
Evie, handing me the cookie: “You can have it daddy.”
Me: “Oh, no honey, I…”
Evie, yanking it back: “Just teasing!”

I was recently alerted to a new college humor-esqe website, Make My Mood. Basically, every day there’s just a new, completely random little picture of some sort to brighten your day. There seems to be no connection or theme, other than “funny”.

I was originally on the site to see this great 10 second rundown of a CSI episode (how do they get away with making that show a whole hour?), when I started clicking through the archives and saw a lot of other good stuff, including:

This unbelievable video of a guy almost getting hit by a bus:

And these totally awesome fire screens that make it look like you’re sacking a city:

If that isn’t enough to make you want to visit the site, I don’t know what you want from me.

I mean seriously, NOWHERE? For starters, there are like a thousand species of dinosaur.

Because, as we all know, I would totally ride a dinosaur, if I saw one.

Homer: He might have all the money in the world, but there’s one thing he can’t buy.
Marge: What’s that?
Homer: …..A dinosaur.

(comic via xkcd)