doodledee

• I'm hard pressed to name an album in our house that's gotten more spins in the last 6 months than 'Meltdown' by Justin Roberts. Thankfully, in the world of kids tunes, it could be a lot, lot, lot worse. Which is why I'll have no problems dancing both with and like a 3-year old at the Cedar on Saturday as the JRB comes through town. If you don't have kids, borrow some. It'll be worth it. [Dec2]
• Indie crafts more you thing? You're in luck, because the No Coast Craft-o-Rama one day spectacular is scheduled for Saturday at the Midtown Global Market. Yep, you heard me. 80 or so independent crafters selling their handmades in a building stuffed full of tamales and Jamaican patties. What's not to love? [Dec2]
• For now I'm telling myself I'll be going to go to the paint store on Sunday to buy the paint for Operation Trim Work, but I'm fairly certain I'll be drinking beer and watching at least the first half of the Bears/Vikes debacle instead. Here's hoping they have Grossman mic'd up so we can hear his trash talking. [Dec3]

I think that's it. Should be doable.

The holiday season is officially underway and that can only mean one thing: that I'd be too busy studying the details of the various Black Friday ads to notice that when I unplugged the server and moved it to a different room, I didn't plug it back in correctly. Kudos to all you readers who wrote to bitch that the site was down, it's heartwarming to hear that you still find it worthwhile to come back and make sure I'm not dead or something.

Anywho, I've been doing some painting around the new house. (Figure juniorette is 2 months old, it's probably time to get her nursery in order.) I've got one more coat to go on the walls, which means it's time to tackle the 1000 linear feet of putzy trim work that's left. Unfortunately that involves painting a light color over a dark color, which means it's going to be a ton of coats and is going to take me forever and even when I'm done it probably won't look very good because I'm a clown of a painter. It's bad enough that I've already made a few calls and I'm starting to get bids on having someone come in and do it for me. Of course the first bid came in and it's super effing expensive, which makes sense in a way, because - as the dude explained - it's a light color over a dark color and it'll take him a ton of coats. Doy.

So now I'm trying to have the Hoffmonian conversation with myself whereby I determine what my own time is worth and factor that into deciding if I should hire it out. In other words, if I determine my time is worth $20/hour, and it'll take me 30 hours to do the painting, any bid under $600 should be deemed acceptable to me. Seems reasonable, right? That's because it is, right up until the point where I start thinking "$600 dollars?! I could buy all new high buck brushes and tons of that criminally expensive blue tape and paint it myself for way less than that!" You'll note that that dismissal did not include a value for the aforementioned "cost of personal time" variable. It never does for me. I'm thinking that means I value my own time at $1/hr. I was going to say $0, but that sounds so pathetic, I had to go with $1.

Long story short, I'm thinking it's back to a Dave special. But at least I'll get some new brushes out of the deal. And a pink room.

We had our neighborhood chili cook-off last weekend. I was too tired to make mine the night before, so I went to bed banking on juniorette waking me early enough the next morning to get everything fully simmered and tenderized before the 11am shotgun. She didn't disappoint. And neither did the chili, of which there were 10 or so crockpots full, bubbling away on a folding church table in a neighbor's garage. There was also a half keg of beer and a jungle gym thing for the kids to play on. One of those seems normal at 11am and one seems a bit premature. I mean seriously, don't most kids prefer to climb around on stuff in the afternoon? Badump.

My entry was judged to be either second or third place. I'm honestly not sure which, as I had to leave to play soccer right before the formal vote counting took place. (Stuffing your face at a chili cookoff immediately before playing soccer? What could possibly go wrong?) When I came home Libby told me that neighbor.dude brought over my trophy refrigerator magnet said I won second place but the trophy magnet says "second runner up", which I'm pretty sure is pageant speak for "third". Either way, not a bad showing.

Thinking about it, my chili recipe has never won a cookoff. It always shows respectably, but it never wins. I think it's probably because it's just straight chili and not some crazy cheese and shrimp white 4 bean chili2.0 mashup, which is what the winner always seems to be at these things. In fact, check that. Thinking about it some more, the winner is usually just whatever chili has the most cheese in it. Not that I can argue with that. Or with any of it. I mean, it's just chili, and just because some doof is willing to risk jeopardizing the entire institution of chili by melting a block of velveeta into his entry doesn't mean chili justice hasn't been served if he wins. Cheater.

Chili on.

I'm not going to bore you with stories of how long the lines were, or about how the pen they gave me was inadequately inky to fill in the little bubbles on the ballot, leaving me temporarily disenfranchised by ball point. And I'm not going to bore you with the awesome details of the little old lady who maintained order in the line at my polling place. (Her favorite technique: treating us like 5 year olds. Did it work? You damn right it did.) I'm not even going to bore you with complaints related to the fact that some exit polls revealed voters leaving their precincts with free donuts in tow, while my precinct was somehow devoid of donuts. (And for the record, that one chapped my hide especially raw.)

What I will say is this. Thanks to my fake tivo, I barely saw a political ad all season. Also, parades are way better during election years. Oh, and one more thing. This was the first year I personally knew someone running for one of the 'bigger' races, insomuch as I used to occasionally have lunch with the Independent Party's Secretary of State candidate Joel Spoonheim. He was a real nice guy. He lost, natch.

See you in 2008.