Still Incredible

I pre-ordered The Incredibles from Amazon and it arrived last night, and it's indicative of us that as soon as the box appeared, we opened it and watched it through AGAIN! Hee.

Then we watched Jack Jack Attack!! and died laughing. Especially since, as fairly recently new parents, the psychobabble about Mozart, flash cards, and specific types of toys stimulating neural development is fresh in our minds. Though I'll readily admit much happiness at not getting THAT kind of neural development. Wow.

Seeing the outakes was mildly interesting in that the movie they'd originally thought of would have been vastly different. I don't think it would have been better, but it would have made very different points about family life and about the kind of commitment it takes to be a parent. Some of which made me very thoughtful.

So, as usual, the DVD delivers more than the movie itself, and I'm very glad I pre-ordered it. Along with my shiny, sweet copy of Porco Rosso, which I'm half sad about as it probably means it's not going to theater distribution, but glad to have a clean copy instead of my old, grainy subbed copy that Jet watches constantly and tells me, in no uncertain terms, to STOP reading/talking, he likes the Japanese dialog just as it is, dang it.

Still Incredible

I pre-ordered The Incredibles from Amazon and it arrived last night, and it's indicative of us that as soon as the box appeared, we opened it and watched it through AGAIN! Hee.

Then we watched Jack Jack Attack!! and died laughing. Especially since, as fairly recently new parents, the psychobabble about Mozart, flash cards, and specific types of toys stimulating neural development is fresh in our minds. Though I'll readily admit much happiness at not getting THAT kind of neural development. Wow.

Seeing the outakes was mildly interesting in that the movie they'd originally thought of would have been vastly different. I don't think it would have been better, but it would have made very different points about family life and about the kind of commitment it takes to be a parent. Some of which made me very thoughtful.

So, as usual, the DVD delivers more than the movie itself, and I'm very glad I pre-ordered it. Along with my shiny, sweet copy of Porco Rosso, which I'm half sad about as it probably means it's not going to theater distribution, but glad to have a clean copy instead of my old, grainy subbed copy that Jet watches constantly and tells me, in no uncertain terms, to STOP reading/talking, he likes the Japanese dialog just as it is, dang it.

Tired but Happier

I wasn't thinking of going swimming tonight. Jet was. He and John had talked about it during a very full day.

I have had a really packed week. Too much stuff at work and while I dealt with all of it (nearly wrote 'most', but, honestly, I dealt with every darned thing the week threw at me from six hours of meetings straight to very calm on the surface people dealing with both a late release and a reorg (which was about as good as a reorg can get in that it was just moving people around, no one let go at all, it was just to align resources with what we really wanted to do, but, heck, it's still a reorg) at the same time to hiring someone who is very cool, but it's still more management work on my part when I have so much to do, still, with my own work). I'm still on the "technical" track rather than the "management" track, which means that I have to produce stuff as well as coordinating other people to produce.

From Tuesday through yesterday I'd come home a zombie, eat whatever John put in front of me and desperately try to decompress from the sheer amount of stressed human contact. And usually it wasn't until 1 or, at best, midnight, that I unwound enough to go to bed, mostly through doing an ungodly amount of knitting on little Sonya's baby blanket. It's nearly done, about four and a half foot square of hand knit Stuff. I found that I really like Celestial Seasoning's Vanilla Honey Chamomille. Mmm... soothing. I also found out that Tension Tamer tastes horrible without adding honey, but it really does unwind my back. Whew.

Today, for a change, since I didn't have anything I had to talk with anyone about in the afternoon I went home. Do not lunch, do not setup laptop, and I went to sleep for two hours, straight. Jet was asleep for his nap when I got up, and John and I worked without interruption for a good hour before I heard, "Mama!! Mama!" as I was crooning along with Annie Lennox's Medusa I guess Jet must have heard me. So I picked him up, and he curled up against me and went back to sleep while I typed commands to my source control setup.

Hee.

Admittedly, they'd have put me to sleep, too. I was checking in all the sources to a document that I'm working on publishing next week.

I had my iTunes on and Jet seemed to sleep to it just fine. He woke up when I started laying down a solitaire setup and the sound effects were on. After a cup of chocolate milk and a bathroom break he and John were ready to go swimming. I had enough work I wasn't sure I wanted to, but I'd skipped any exercise for so long, I knew that part of my tension problems had to do with no exercise. So I went. Made the time and effort.

And it was worth it. We had a blast.

In the River, Jet rode one of the inner tubes, and while on top of it he started shivering.

John asked, "Are you shivering?"

Jet retorted, smartly, "I'm just shivering in Spanish!"

Huh?

A hot shower fixed that. During the showers in the family locker room, John and Jet hit upon using the wall hair dryer to blow out socks ("Look! A foot!" cried Jet at the inflated sock), which warmed them very nicely for feet.

Then we went to Johnny Carino's for dinner. Waited half an hour in the waiting area with Jet smashing Mr. Incredible into the waiting disk and then sliding down my leg as he "escaped the gate". Then Jet spent half an hour coloring all the noodles on his placemat a very bright green ("Look! Green mac and cheese! It's for mama, not me."). Then he suddenly discovered his huge bowl of buttered spaghetti with parmesean and had the waitress put more cheese on it three times before he nearly finished the whole thing. It was, easily, an adult-sized serving of spaghetti and Jet nearly ate the whole thing. I was... astonished.

I had the scampi which was only impressive in the fact that the angel hair was perfectly cooked. I rarely find that in a restaurant. The shrimp was good, too, but the basil, tomato, and mushroom dressing wasn't that great. Not nearly enough garlic for a scampi. So I ate the "good stuff" and then asked for their "Lemon Delicacy", which was a gorgeous little dome of bitingly lemon cake over a disk of lemon cream all covered with a nicely sharp lemon sauce. It was deeply and refreshingly lemon with just enough cream to satisfy my dessert need. Yum. And not enormous, either, which was nice. Big enough for John to have a couple of bites and for me not to feel cheated by that.

So I'm home, now, and writing this between running things. I feel much less knotted up around myself.

Tomorrow is the Empty Bowls benefit. I'll get to see if my bowl is being auctioned or I'll get a chance to take my bowl home just for going there. :-) A win, either way.

Tired but Happier

I wasn't thinking of going swimming tonight. Jet was. He and John had talked about it during a very full day.

I have had a really packed week. Too much stuff at work and while I dealt with all of it (nearly wrote 'most', but, honestly, I dealt with every darned thing the week threw at me from six hours of meetings straight to very calm on the surface people dealing with both a late release and a reorg (which was about as good as a reorg can get in that it was just moving people around, no one let go at all, it was just to align resources with what we really wanted to do, but, heck, it's still a reorg) at the same time to hiring someone who is very cool, but it's still more management work on my part when I have so much to do, still, with my own work). I'm still on the "technical" track rather than the "management" track, which means that I have to produce stuff as well as coordinating other people to produce.

From Tuesday through yesterday I'd come home a zombie, eat whatever John put in front of me and desperately try to decompress from the sheer amount of stressed human contact. And usually it wasn't until 1 or, at best, midnight, that I unwound enough to go to bed, mostly through doing an ungodly amount of knitting on little Sonya's baby blanket. It's nearly done, about four and a half foot square of hand knit Stuff. I found that I really like Celestial Seasoning's Vanilla Honey Chamomille. Mmm... soothing. I also found out that Tension Tamer tastes horrible without adding honey, but it really does unwind my back. Whew.

Today, for a change, since I didn't have anything I had to talk with anyone about in the afternoon I went home. Do not lunch, do not setup laptop, and I went to sleep for two hours, straight. Jet was asleep for his nap when I got up, and John and I worked without interruption for a good hour before I heard, "Mama!! Mama!" as I was crooning along with Annie Lennox's Medusa I guess Jet must have heard me. So I picked him up, and he curled up against me and went back to sleep while I typed commands to my source control setup.

Hee.

Admittedly, they'd have put me to sleep, too. I was checking in all the sources to a document that I'm working on publishing next week.

I had my iTunes on and Jet seemed to sleep to it just fine. He woke up when I started laying down a solitaire setup and the sound effects were on. After a cup of chocolate milk and a bathroom break he and John were ready to go swimming. I had enough work I wasn't sure I wanted to, but I'd skipped any exercise for so long, I knew that part of my tension problems had to do with no exercise. So I went. Made the time and effort.

And it was worth it. We had a blast.

In the River, Jet rode one of the inner tubes, and while on top of it he started shivering.

John asked, "Are you shivering?"

Jet retorted, smartly, "I'm just shivering in Spanish!"

Huh?

A hot shower fixed that. During the showers in the family locker room, John and Jet hit upon using the wall hair dryer to blow out socks ("Look! A foot!" cried Jet at the inflated sock), which warmed them very nicely for feet.

Then we went to Johnny Carino's for dinner. Waited half an hour in the waiting area with Jet smashing Mr. Incredible into the waiting disk and then sliding down my leg as he "escaped the gate". Then Jet spent half an hour coloring all the noodles on his placemat a very bright green ("Look! Green mac and cheese! It's for mama, not me."). Then he suddenly discovered his huge bowl of buttered spaghetti with parmesean and had the waitress put more cheese on it three times before he nearly finished the whole thing. It was, easily, an adult-sized serving of spaghetti and Jet nearly ate the whole thing. I was... astonished.

I had the scampi which was only impressive in the fact that the angel hair was perfectly cooked. I rarely find that in a restaurant. The shrimp was good, too, but the basil, tomato, and mushroom dressing wasn't that great. Not nearly enough garlic for a scampi. So I ate the "good stuff" and then asked for their "Lemon Delicacy", which was a gorgeous little dome of bitingly lemon cake over a disk of lemon cream all covered with a nicely sharp lemon sauce. It was deeply and refreshingly lemon with just enough cream to satisfy my dessert need. Yum. And not enormous, either, which was nice. Big enough for John to have a couple of bites and for me not to feel cheated by that.

So I'm home, now, and writing this between running things. I feel much less knotted up around myself.

Tomorrow is the Empty Bowls benefit. I'll get to see if my bowl is being auctioned or I'll get a chance to take my bowl home just for going there. :-) A win, either way.