Miscellania

My Dad

My dad has been gone so long now – I think I’ve now lived the majority of my life without him.

It’s funny – I don’t miss him much any more, but sometimes I just remember him with his dark brown square glasses frames and his checked shirts (the yellow and brown and white one, or the blue one) and his receding hairline and what was left of his hair straight back – just remember, out of nowhere, as if I’d seen him just yesterday.

It’s more than 25 years now. It is strange how the mind works. Because other days I can’t remember him much at all, just this dim figure. Today I am remembering him clearly – these ghosts seem to come and go in my mind, each coming forward to take their turn. Being the second hoariest of my ghosts, he doesn’t get his turn as often as the others.

The Virtuous War Continues

Published by dean on October 11, 2012 | Leave a response

Quoted directly from comments on new code: set to year 2000 and add two digit year discriminant below (this is not a kosher coding but I highly doubt this business will be arround in 2100 (today is 2012) It is this mindset that I struggle against every day. Every fucking day I have to argue, [...]

Flying

HouseApes 1.0 and 2.0 in the rocket ship ride at Disneyland – would have been Monday, after dinner, September 24th.

The Dreams of the Mad Are As Poems To Wise Men

Published by dean on October 3, 2012 | 1 Response

The alarm woke me from a dream in which a shabby bearded man behind a deli counter draped shredded carrot over his beard and said ‘What is celine?’ after which a white-jacketed host climbed over the suddenly lower deli counter and said ‘No, because this is JULIENNE!’ while he shook a fistful in the shabby [...]

4015 Days

Some numbers accumulated in the last 4015 days:
11 years ago today, Chris went into labour about midmorning. Since that day:
41 – pairs of pants gone through at the knee
1,283 – tantrums due to frustration
320 – pounds of dirt washed off
1,197 – bits of Lego
70 – pounds of boy
16 – forgotten homework assignments
4:21 PM – actual time he made his appearance
852 – bits of junk, garbage and broken things picked up and stowed in pockets
14 – cumulative days spent in time out
16,932 – stains

5,788 – hugs
seemingly infinite – energy

 

Mellowsweet

Published by dean on September 4, 2012 | 6 Responses

Yesterday Chris called September ‘bittersweet’. But really, there’s no bitterness in September for me. I think it is my favourite month of the year, and god knows I love May and June and July and August for all kinds of reasons.  Mostly because I am a creature of the light. I love the long days, [...]

A Different Form of Gallery

I have to figure out how to get NextGen not to warp the image when it creates the thumbnail.

Click on any of the thumbnails to see a larger version. Once you’ve got the viewer open, you can scroll through the gallery.

New Look

Published by dean on September 2, 2012 | Leave a response

Alright, so the upgrade didn’t go so well. I ended up doing a new install of WordPress and pointing it at a new set of tables. All the old content is still there, it’s just not connected to this version of the blog. I will have to go through and manually insert the data from [...]

2004-02-04 10:00:57

Published by dean on February 4, 2004 | Leave a response

In this article(dead link removed), the author (didn’t note the name) descries various travel blunders, 90% of which I agree with. However, I disagree with point 6: We take our kids where we shouldn’t. There are places where young children should never go. A five-star luxury suite is no place for a toddler, for example. [...]