kris

Through the microscope

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On our walk with the dogs tonight:

Me:   "The moon looks like a full moon tonight."

Kris: "Yeah, it would look great through a microscope."

Me:   "Really?"




It was funny at 1:00 am

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Last night, after watching another episode of Ultimate Fighter, a nominally bad, "mixed martial arts, reality, sports, non-event" series on Spike TV where 16 guys compete for a contract with the Ultimate Fighters Championship in Survivor-like challenges and beat-the-shit out of each other elimination rounds, Kris and I cleaned up the living room a bit. Note, I say, "nominally bad," but I watch religiously every week, Kris watches it with me, we'll be watching the finals on April 9th and don't think for one second I'm not paying the $40 Pay-Per-View fee to watch Coture and Liddell beat the crap out of each other in the Championship showdown on the 16th (go Coture!).

Whoops, side-tracked there.

I had recently rearranged the furniture and moved several pieces out of the living room, opening it up, making it look bigger. You could see the rugs in the room, for the first time in a long while.

While wandering into the space, marvelling we had so much:

Me: "Wow, look at all this open space. I think I should fill it."

Kris: "Therein lies the problem."

Kris then proceeded to show me just how nice having the extra space can be. He arranged a few of the couch pillows on the floor, and, stepping back, ran across the room, and took a flying leap into the pillows.

Although the first shot is my favorite, Kris was determined to get a good picture of himself completely horizontal.

I haven't laughed so hard in months. My stomach is still aching from laughter 12 hours later.

No, I spent it all on fish.

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Me: "Do we have enough money to put some away into an IRA this year?"

Kris: "No. I spent it all on fish."

Kris participates in a Fantasy Baseball league every year. Actually, two of them. One is drafted by email, another one is drafted by auction. In the auction one, each team manager (i.e. Kris is one) in turn calls out a player name, followed by an opening bid for that amount. All other managers are then allowed to call out higher bids until a high price is met, and the player is drafted onto the highest bidder's team.

Each manager has $260 for 23 players: 9 pitchers and 14 players.

Kris has been playing for a few years, each year refining his process for selecting a team. This year, he wrote a program to help him out. And, like all good software developers, he wanted to test his software in an as-close-to-real-as-possible situation. He invited several friends over for dinner, software testing and, time permitting, a game of Settlers of Cataan.

This morning we started getting ready for the group to head over. I cleaned up the house as Kris went to the store for fixings for salmon fajitas. When we had fajitas last, I used a little over a half of a pound of salmon for the four of us. It wasn't quite enough food, but it was close.

I must have forgotten that I used only half the fish I bought last time, or forgot to tell Kris how much it was, because when he returned, he had more fish than I was expecting him to have.

He had eight pounds of salmon.

Eight. Pounds.

Any idea how much eight pounds of fresh Wild Alaskan Salmon costs?

Yeah.

That IRA?

Maybe next year.

Crime? Be-Fow-LING the castle!

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Here's an excerpt from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

Page 126, third paragraph:

"Name ... Harry Potter. Crime ..."
"It was only a bit of mud!" said Harry.
"It's only a bit of mud to you, boy, but to me it's an extra hour of scrubbing!" shouted Filch, a drip shivering unpleasantly at the end of his bulbous nose. "Crime ... befouling the castle ... suggested sentence ..."

A couple days ago, Kris was sitting next to me on the couch. At the top of his lungs, he yells, "Crime?!" Startled, I looked over at him.

"Befouling the castle!"

What?

And then he let one rip.

Now, if you've never been in the presence of one of Kris' farts, let me warn you that they are quite, um, odorous. When I hear one, I flee.

Fast.

Of course, I can't say mine smell any better. I'm just used to my smells.

So, our new word for "Flee for your life if you wish to avoid the smells emanating from my butt!" is "Crime?" yelled at the top of one's lungs. The proper way to finish the warning is, of course, "Befouling the castle!"

It's quite entertaining.

Do You Look Back if No One is There?

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I took Kris to the airport this morning.

We received a call from his sister yesterday that his father was having chest pains in church. He went into open-heart surgery 2 hours ago. Kris is flying back home today, and should be there when his father wakes up tonight.

I think I've managed to see Kris for 8 days this month. I think that's a new low water mark for us. I miss him.

When I dropped him off at the airport, I went around to park the car as he was checking in. Wade Hellner gave Kris his Southwest Rapid Rewards ticket, so he could fly out on a moments notice (thank you again, Wade!). Wade booked the ticket last night, which meant Kris couldn't check in online. So, I dropped him off, went to park the car, and then went inside to get that last 10 minutes with him before he spent the day travelling back east.

I think when we split at the "Ticketed passengers only beyond this point" spot, he assumed I left. I hadn't. I waited until he was through the line, turned the corner and walked to his gate. I managed to squeeze in an extra 4 minutes there. Even if he was 10+ yards away.

He didn't turn around to wave, though. Didn't know I was still there.

I miss you, Kris. Be safe. Love and prayers to your dad.

Kris gets all the fun

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I wasn't able to make class because I needed to be at MPUL tonight, so Kris went by himself. He said he had a great time doing sprinting drills. Here's what he gave me as his workout tonight.

Accelerations in the parking lot

    A twist on the catch the ball before it bounces twice, a cone was placed away from G (not sure how far). Kris ran from the starting point to the cone, planted and cut towards G. At the foot plant, G dropped a tennis ball. Kris was to catch it before the second bounce. 6-8 of these

Sprinting with bands

    With bands around his waist and G pulling backward on them, Kris did three sets of resistance sprinting. The first one was with small steps: feet moving just over ankles for quick feet work. The second was with high knees. The third was just sprinting as fast as he could.

Circuit

This circuit was a doozie. Probably would have worked better if I had been there to give Kris a bit of a rest.

  • Jump rope
  • Ice skaters with bands on legs, done in a semi circle. The first set with R foot in center, clockwise, then again counter-clockwise. The next set with L foot in center, CW and CCW.
  • 4 boxes: hop over with both feet, then L, then R
  • Side-to-sides over the weightbench (nominally the same as over the wood box, but higher by 50%)
  • Frog hopping along 4 cones with both feet, land on R foot, hold, then sprint. Repeat for L foot. For the last 3, G calls out which foot to land on
And that would be two times through that circuit. Ooof. I'm telling you, Kris gets all the good ones.

Wall sit

    Sit along the wall (i.e. back on the wall, legs at 90°), 25# weight on lap.

Abs (lower)

  • 6-12" leg holds
  • swimmers
  • crossovers
  • partner leg throw downs
  • 6-12" leg holds with partner pushdown (ugh!)

Another Bella Seizure

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Bella had another seizure tonight. I was in the office (working on MPUL stuff), and Kris was in the living room, playing online poker. I heard Kris say, "Bella, what's wrong?", before he yelled for me to come quick.

I dashed out to the living room, to see Bella in the green pillow, all tense, with very shallow breathing. Kris was standing over her, just flapping in arms looking down at her. When I asked him what I should do, take videos (the vet wanted a video of her behaviour to confirm diagnosis of seizures) or something, he said, just hold her, pet her.

So, I cuddled up next to Bella, started talking to her, making soothing noises. The seizure lasted about 4 minutes: 11:24 to 11:28, according to the VCR.

And Kris. What did Kris do? What did he do after I started petting Bella, soothing her to relax while this nasty seizure passed? What did he do?

He went back to play online poker.

Yay, Kris.

Cookie Time

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Kris is hosting FICA, a traditional Swedish Friday afternoon happy hour (or something like that) at Oracle tomorrow afternoon. Since he's hosting, we're making cookies for the crew.

Kris and I don't typically do a lot of cooking together, so this has been an adventure. We started off by baking chocolate chip cookies straight from the Nestle Toll House tube. Terribly entertaining.

Tonight is blueberry sugar cookies.

Maybe I'll try risotto tomorrow.

Worst. Defeat. Ever.

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Kris and I have a house policy that ensures life-long marital bliss. It goes like this:

You cook, I clean.  I cook, you clean.

Simple, yet very powerful. It means that, when it comes to food at least, all chores are shared. Of course, there's wiggle room in that policy. Health, deadlines and other issues, so sometimes the same person cooks and cleans. Fortunately, that's pretty rare.

When we're lazy, the policy shifts slightly to:

I order, you pick up.  You order, I pick up.

Usually, I do the ordering, Kris does the pick up.

Tonight, after returning home from the ASA MVP workout class, Kris did not want to leave the house. He offered pizza for dinner, I agreed, and he ordered.

Uh oh. He ordered? That means, oh no. I have to go pick up? Ugh!

Kris must have sensed this, because he offered roshambo instead of handing me the car keys, "Best 2 of 3. It was marital advise." (documented on our wedding video). So, I agreed.

And won decisively in the first two throws.

It was a crushing defeat. Worse roshambo ever. Kris ran away with the Cranberries, "In your head-ed! In your heh-eh-eh-ed!" ringing in his ears.

Poor Kris. Never rosham away what you already have.

Baked Oatmeal Recipe

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Hmmmmmmm... Maybe I'll implement the recipe.module for this site. For now, Kris' family's recipe for baked oatmeal. Mmmmmmmmmm........

3 eggs
1 C oil
2 C milk
2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 C brown sugar
3 tsp. cinnamin
4 tsp. baking powder
5 C uncooked oatmeal

Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately.
Add wet to dry while stirring.  Pour into greased
caserole dish and bake at 350º for 30 minutes or until
golden brown.

Jen comments, "We usually put some milk on it and heat it up (if it
didn't just come out of the oven). Shaun even adds
more cinnamin or brown sugar sometimes. Whatever
floats your boat. Enjoy!!! By the way--this makes
quite a bit so if you aren't having company and don't
want to eat baked oatmeal for several days, I would
half the recipe."

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