Note to Teen

who saw the intro video?

mama's boy?

was that not surreal?

As promised, Kate's first day of school photo.

After a busy but very fun PAX schedule, I spent Labor Day laying low and doing little more than combing through recipe books and magazines so I could make out a menu plan and go grocery shopping once I get paid. Since Kate came back to Seattle two weeks early, needing school clothes and supplies on the heels of our Finland/Gencon two-week whirlwind (and I didn't get any child support all summer) we were feeling significantly less flush than usual but not so much so that we couldn't at least enjoy some fun at PAX. Kate and I attended with three-day badges while Pramas worked the Flying Lab booth and then we all got to enjoy connecting in the evenings with friends and seeing Jonathan Coulton and The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets doing their late night musical performances. We even ducked out of PAX for a little while on Saturday to enjoy the nice weather and a final summer bbq with the usual suspects at R&C's. J&J were there with the fabulous Miss V so it really felt like the gang was all together again.

Labor Day evening I got an unexpected call from my brother who wanted to know if we were free for a visit if he came up to Seattle. He's been very busy since starting med school and until this summer it had been 18 months since I'd seen him so we were happy to make time, especially since Tuesday was Kate's last day of summer vacation. In honor of the day she got to take Uncle Chad to the Family Fun Center in Renton and we belted him with water cannons on the bumper boats, drove go-karts, played laser tag, and spent good money on games that gave tickets for plastic junk.

We met Chris after work and had dinner at Marco's Supperclub in Belltown after an unfortunate delay in the form of a flat tire on the Alaska Way Viaduct. There's a dime-sized circular hole in the tire where we ran over something (a bolt perhaps) that I heard crack against the wheel well and then started losing pressure fast. Luckily I was able to limp the 1/4 mile to the Seneca St. exit and get onto 1st Avenue without the tire completely shredding and Chad was all brotherly and changed the tire for us. That means today I'm headed out to get new tires on the car (they needed to be replaced soon anyway).

Kate is off to her first day of 7th Grade. I took our annual first day of school photo and will put it up soon.

How people experiencing schadenfreude over Bristol Palin's pregnancy can still claim some moral high ground is beyond me.

Let me make my point clear - while I feel that her teenage daughter being pregnant is a direct result of her abstinence-only "sex education" policies, I DO NOT see it as retribution for them. In fact, I even think that considering it a misfortune is not my call, or your call, to make.

My own great-grandmother gave birth to my grandfather when she was 15. She had 4 more children, then raised their children and their children's children. She finally got to put her feet up when her children's children's children started to arrive. She's the real Josi.

So being a pregnant teen isn't always tragic, and assuming so in order to experience delight in someone else's misfortune is sickening. That it is currently being done on a national level...

are liberals really that bitter? are y'all that comfortable with letting that part of you rule your thoughts and words and actions? so how, then, are you different from the "other side" again? you're blowing your credibility as the caring and conscientious half of the nation.

I wonder if

a. Gov. Palin
b. First Gentleman Palin
c. their daughter
d. the boy who knocked her up

ever wished (d) had worn a condom...?

( wah wah wah wah whine )

That's a CARBON STEEL fork with a CLEAN break and no striations. Which shows several things: (a) Bob was at a stop when he was hit, (b) he was hit with considerable force, (c) the driver was not attempting a stop/slow down at the time she hit him.

( now for Bob's face )

Major computer meltodown #2. This one caused by evil viruses (themselves caused by Bob's mp3 habit).

If you sent me an email within the past few days - I will get back to you soon.

Bob can't move his left arm too much because of his shoulder bruise, so he's going around saying:

I've been McCained.

I told him he's going to hell for that one.

Bob got hit by a car right in front of my apartment, at 6pm tonight. We just got back from the ER. He's going to be ok.

But seriously, people - you idiots, asshats and FOOLS who don't wear helmets... like Bob...

his face met a windshield. they removed an inch long shard from his upper eyelid. somehow - it went all in the way in, sideways, slipping in between the layers of skin, instead of piercing his eyeball. many more shards of glass were removed from his face.

his hip and legs and shoulder and wrist and elbow are scraped/bruised/cut/swollen. no broken bones, no concussion, lotsa stitches and a very achy body.

So, dangerous_bunny, your LiveJournal reveals...

You are... 2% unique (blame, for example, your interest in stomping in the woods) and 28% herdlike (partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy yoga). When it comes to friends you are popular. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are wary of trusting strangers. Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is conventional.

Your overall weirdness is: 21

(The average level of weirdness is: 28.
You are weirder than 46% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

"I'm the head of the class, I'm POPULAR!"

I'm wary of trusting anybody these days.

I think if this meme really took the time to know me, it would realize I am far weirder than it's calculations could take into account.

Wonder how they figure interestingness? I'm thinking if I'm that popular, I'm pretty damn interesting too. *chides self* you can't get 100% in every category, Kell.

Y'all were so awesome last time, that I'm asking for your input once again...

the layout of this page:
http://croshaydesign.com/croshayHats_new.php needs help.

However - this isn't a situation where I can control every little aspect of the page. All of the content is being pulled from the product catalog database, and the photos & categories & names of the products are dynamically generated (so that all I need to do is add a product to the database, and it will show up on the website whenever its product-type is referenced).

anyone else out there have experience with dynamically generated content and the layout issues it presents?

(oh, and for the technically minded - I'm trying to use tables instead of CSS positioning because it's easier to loop table-rows... or am I missing something?)

Wow... an interesting statistic via aldoushuxley:

Cook County, the home of Chicago, has a larger population than each of New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Ireland, and Uruguay.

and this is exactly why I go a little crazy when I leave here. I need to live in the sort of place that has that many people, because I NEED the diversity and opportunity that it brings. It takes 5.3 million people crammed into 945 square miles for that to happen, it seems.

Joe Biden?

bleh.

Finland sure was beautiful.

I'm slowly but surely getting some of my Finland photos up online.