Halloween - The Disney Princess Edition

Today marks the fourth Halloween we've celebrated in this house. The first year it was only me and my sister-in-law (no kids yet, and PJ was still at work). The second year was when Amelie and Camille were six months old, and dressed up as pig and cow. Last year was the third, and the kids dressed up as witches.

This year was the Disney Princess year.

The night started quietly enough. I set up the table and the candies on our front step, and waited around for the first kids to show. Sure enough, three kids came around along with their mom--or was it their sister? Her cleavage confused me. Not that I minded too much, but it seemed inappropriate--like she was heading to a party right after, and she was hurrying the kids along.

Anyway, there was a steady stream of kids after that (with more appropriately dressed parents). One thing I noticed was that the kids more often than not just took one piece of candy when told that they could take whatever they wanted (probably because they were being watched closely by their parents). The most popular item seemed to be the Skittles, Sour Bursts and Starbursts (yup, the "fruit" candies).

Around 6-ish the kids were finally dressed up in their Princess costumes, ready to get their candies. Amelie dressed as Cinderella, while Camille went as Aurora. They looked really regal in their outfits, although the tiaras didn't seem to agree with them. Mommy came home, and off we went to trick-or-treat.

The girls were shy at first, but eventually they warmed up, with Camille even learning "trickortreat!" It got a bit too chilly, though, and we headed home after hitting around ten houses.

They seemed to enjoy it, though (especially the candy part). Hopefully next year they're a bit less shy, and they can walk up and ring the doorbell on their own. Wonder what their costume would be then, though...

Very Short Stories

Wired has this story about several authors that came up with very short stories (6 words!). The list of authors is pretty stellar--Neil Gaiman, Arthur Clarke, Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Alan Moore--heck, even Steve Meretzky, Infocom god, had an entry.

The most poignant one, though, was from Ernest Hemmingway:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

It can be read many different ways--but to me (as a dad), it's pretty heartbreaking.

Stating the Obvious

"A new study from the University of Illinois indicates that more weight in the car means lower gas mileage."

In other news, studies have shown that water is wet.

Someone actually funded this study? Oy.

Play Ball!

The NBA season is going to be starting any day now (actually, next week). I haven't really been following that closely; my love for the NBA has been eclipsed by the NFL and MLB (go Cards!) I don't really pay attention until the playoffs--and then it's more about the teams I don't want to see win. I do have a couple of things I'd like to see:

(1) Yao Ming do well. Playoffs for the Rockets!
(2) Orlando make the playoffs with Dwight, Darko and JJ. I think they will, but I'm not sure how far they'll go.
(3) The Clippers repeating (if not surpassing) their run
(4) A rematch of Suns/Lakers in the first round
(5) King James vs Flash in the Eastern Conference Finals
(6) Timmy wins another championship. Yes, I like boring.
(7) Raja Bell vs Ron Artest. Did you see Raja Bell take on Brad Miller? Wow.

How do I see the playoffs shaking out? Hmm...

WESTERN:
(1) Lakers/Suns, Rockets/Mavericks, Clippers/Nuggets, Spurs/Hornets
(2) Suns/Mavericks, Spurs/Clippers
(3) Mavericks/Spurs
(4) Spurs

EASTERN
(1) Bulls/Pistons, Heat/Magic, Cavs/Wizards, Nets/Pacers
(2) Bulls/Heat, Cavs/Nets
(3) Heat/Cavs
(4) Heat

Spurs in six.

With that, I just jinxed the Spurs. Oh well.

Master Baker

Heh. That was our team name way back in college, when we were performing systems analysis on a bakery.

Anyway, after our apple-picking at Julian, we had a bunch of apples we didn't know what to do with. One of my ma-in-law's friends sent us a recipe for apple loaf. Came out pretty well (my kids loved it). A bit too much sugar, though--I'll probably cut it back next time.

APPLE LOAF
4 cups apples, peeled and diced
2 cups granulated sugar
3 cups flour
1 cup butter (2 sticks), melted then cooled
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs

Mix the apples and the sugar in a large bowl. Mix thoroughly and let sit at room temperature for two hours. Watch a football game or something.

Mix the flour, baking soda and cinammon in another bowl. Combine with the apple/sugar mixture. Mix the butter, eggs and vanilla together with this mixture. Keep mixing until it's combined pretty well.

Heat up the oven to 375 degrees. Grease/spray down two 4.5 x 8.5 loaf pans. Pour enough mixture into each. Bake for 90 minutes. Cool in the pans. Enjoy!

Word Sandwich

I've always thought that I'm fairly good with words. I'm pretty good at Scrabble, and I'm fairly proficient at crosswords. The game Word Sandwich kicks my ass, though.

The game is pretty easy to pick up--you'll need to guess a five-letter word. If you're wrong, it'll place it either on-top or below. Keep going until you manage to narrow it down to the correct word. The earlier you get it, the higher your score. You start with 1,000 points. Each incorrect guess subtracts points, and the multiplier goes down as you try to think of the word.

It's hard to think when you see that slider go from a x5 multiplier all the way to x1 as you try to think of a word between hoary and horse.

So far I haven't even cracked 10,000 points. Some people just think better under pressure, I guess. Me, I think I need to create an index on my internal dictionary to speed up queries.

Pic of the day: 10-16-06/10-17-06

Hmm, this "every day" posting's not gonna work. I wasn't able to post yesterday, and it just gets difficult. I'll just go ahead an put it on picasaweb (yes, I'm a Google ho) and update it at least weekly.

Loveseat

Back to Back

Pic of the day: 10-15-06

Whoops, looks like I posted Saturday's pic on Sunday. Is Blogger on EST or something?

Watching Tarzan

Pic of the day: 10-14-06

Taken during a birthday party. The girls didn't like being cooped up inside, so we walked around in the park behind the house where the party was.

Walk the Line

Quickie Book Reviews

I read all these books in a span of a week. They're not really that thick, and I don't really need to engage any brain power to get through them (unlike, say, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell--excellent book, by the way).

The Righteous Men, by Sam Bourne (aka Jonathan Freedland). "It's like The Da Vinci Code, only with Jews!" is what you'd think. Actually, no, not really. It doesn't reveal a "hidden secret the Jews don't want you to know!!!!" like Da Vinci Code did; in fact, the peek into Jewish life was probably the most interesting aspect of the book. I'd say it's probably more like Angels and Demons. Not great art by any stretch, but a good little diversion. A bit predictable, though, and the end sequence made me roll my eyes.

Dragons of the Dwarven Depths, by Weis and Hickman. I think I wrote elsewhere that this a pure money-grab. This felt more like it was written by Weis rather than Hickman, as it reads in the same stilted style as Soul Forge, which I didn't even bother finishing. DotDD I actually finished, but it didn't have the same magic as the Chronicles and Legends.

Bad Twin, by "Gary Troup". Yeah, "Gary Troup" is an anagram for Purgatory. I only read this because of the Lost tie-in, which apart from mentioning Sydney, Oceanic Airlines, Hanso and Widmore, wasn't really connected in any way. Oh, I'm sure there's some hidden message or dome throwaway line which reveals all the secrets of Lost, but I was too bored with it to care.

Pic of the day: 10-13-06

Friday the 13th! Anyway...

Wake Up!

Pic of the day: 10-12-06

Picked up a great idea today...why not take a photo every day just to see how life changes? I'm going to start taking pictures of the girls daily and see how they change. This'll be interesting...

Today's photo:

Trying on shoes

Choychoy Favorites: DVDs

I've amassed a pretty big DVD library over the years; I've probably collected around a hundred of them since they came out. My very first DVD was The Matrix, and I've since gone on from there.

One thing I try to collect are the classic animated films--I've bought everything Pixar has come out with, most of the Disney titles, and the odd smattering of anime (Miyazaki's a favorite). Of the DVDs in my collection, these are the ones which get the most play. Not surprising because of my kids.

What DVDs are the most played in our house? Well, if I were to rank them, it would come out like this:

(1) Barbie's The Twelve Dancing Princesses. This gets played every single day (sometimes more than once!). When this comes on, the girls immediately begin to "dance". It's pretty amusing to watch them.
(2) Sleeping Beauty. Number one before Barbie knocked her off her throne. I'd argue that Aurora is the prettiest Disney princess of them all.
(3) The Little Mermaid. "Ayyel Mahmayd" was one of Amelie's first phrases.
(4) Beauty and the Beast. "Belle" was Camille's favorite.
(5) Howl's Moving Castle. The first feature-length film they really sat through, after watching The Wiggles and Maisy all the time. Heck, they pretty much memorized the dialogue!

They've also started branching out to stuff like The Incredibles and Tarzan, which is good. But if we want to quiet them down, we just put Barbie on.

The Little Mermaid

So I originally had the "Limited Edition" DVD of The Little Mermaid, which I received free when I bought the "Platinum Edition" DVD of Snow White. Last week Disney came out with the "Platinum Edition" of The Little Mermaid, and I told PJ that no way in hell were we going to buy it, as the content was the same. Who cares about "restored footage" , "special features" and "enhanced for widescreen TVs", right?

Of course I wound up buying it. What made it a bit more attractive was a free Sebastian plush when I bought it from Best Buy. This was to go along with the plush Flounder we already had; the only thing missing was a plush Ariel. Of course, we could always get the Barbie edition, but we figured the girls would just break it anyway.

What bothered me, though, was a trailer on the disc: The Little Mermaid III! Geez, I thought John Lasseter killed all sequels when Pixar took over Disney?

Fall TV

Fall TV has officially kicked into gear today, with the season premiere of Lost. And boy, was it a doozy! What sucks is that we'll only be getting six episodes before it goes into hiatus until February. Matthew Fox--or at least his character Jack Shepherd--is one intense dude (also, he's a bit of an ass). Looks like we also settle the Jack/Sawyer/Kate triangle.

We stayed around to watch the series premiere of The Nine, with Jack's little bro Scott Wolf. I guess it was okay--the only problem was I kept thinking that Audrey's boyfriend Jack Bauer could've saved them with little fuss.

Heroes is also a pretty cool show, although it moves a bit slowly and is a bit angsty. It's cool discovering their "powers", though--so far we have a telepath, a prognosticator (or "prognostipainter", as I read somewhere), a person who can bend the space/time continuum (who is also the best character, kinda like Naruto in his innocence), a person who can fly, his brother who might be able to fly, a girl with a healing factor to rival Logan, and a stripper who has a doppelganger.

Oh, and Hannibal Lecter's lurking around somewhere. Braiiiinnnnnssssss....

The Amazing Race is also back, and is slowly washing away the bad taste of the past two seasons.

Surprisingly, one of the better premieres is Ugly Betty, which is Salma Hayek's Americanized version of a telenovela. I didn't expect to enjoy it--but I wound up watching it while I was washing the dishes.

The only thing left is the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica. So, my TV viewing week is like this:

Sunday : The Amazing Race, NFL
Monday : Heroes, Studio 60 (if we get around to watching it)
Tuesday : nothing, really. I missed the premiere of Friday Night Lights
Wednesday: Lost, The Nine
Thursday : Ugly Betty
Friday : Battlestar Galactica
Saturday : Legion of Superheroes