The T3sk3y Defenestrator

I know many of you have heard the good news by now, but H3th3r and I are expecting our first child in August! Mom-to-be is doing well – she’s in week 14 and is starting to get her strength back. We also had to take a big jump yesterday and make the first trip to find H3th3r her first maternity clothes. Heh. Anyway, the potential big day is August 27th!

In honor of the big news, here’s the Top Ten Reasons Geeks Make Good Fathers – as reprinted from imhelendt’s Blog:

Top ten reasons Geeks make good fathers

1. LEGOS. The Geek is really more of a Man-Child than an adult. In their minds, they are still 10. They freakin’ still love to play with their legos, and have never grown up. I have one friend, WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS, that still has legos in his room. He doesn’t have kids. Just legos. Of course, my children love legos and Steve will lovingly spend hours playing legos with them.
2. VIDEO GAMES. Due to the whole Man-Child thing as stated in #1, the Geek loves video games. And he’s good at them too. My husband is the hit of all the kids’ friends because not only can he talk video games, he plays them too. If my children get “stuck” while playing their Gameboys and bring it to me for assistance, all I can do is feebly hold it and say ” Mommy doesn’t know how to play this.” Daddy, however, can beat the game.
3. MATH. A huge plus here. No matter how old they get, Steve can still help with the math homework. My ability to be of assistance is going to last another few years before *I* end up throwing the math homework across the room in disgust.
4. SMART KIDS. Smart Geeks make smart children. Although for the most part, it’s great to have really intelligent children, when your just turned two year old is using the word PREPOSTEROUS correctly, it makes for some difficult times as they get older. I literally spend a large part of my time scheming to stay one step ahead of my oldest child.
5. UP ON TECHNOLOGY. The beautiful thing about having a Geek for a parent is that you aren’t wondering what your children are doing online. You *KNOW* what they are doing online and you can limit it if necessary.
   It’s fabulous peace of mind.
6. SCIENCE FAIR PROJECTS. Children of the Geeks always have the coolest science fair projects. And you don’t have to cajole your Geek into helping. You’ll find him fiddling around with the science materials whether you asked him to help or not.
7. TOY ASSEMBLY. You will never, ever have to spend six hours of your life, that you will never get back, trying to assemble some 2,000 piece toy at 3 am on Christmas Eve again. The Geek can do it in minutes flat. Usually without the directions. Whereas I have tried to assemble toys and said “Mommy has to go to the bathroom” just so I could escape and scream into my pillow in frustration, if the Geek is around, he can take it right off your hands. I now just say “Daddy is really good at this, let’s wait until he gets home.”
8. GADGETS. Never again will you have to wonder what that new electronic toy is that all the kids have. In fact, your Geek will probably already own it. The problem arises when the Geek won’t share with the children. “Daddy, I want a digital camera.” After the child leaves the room: “I’m not spending hundreds of dollars on a digital camera for him, he’s too young.” I say “Let’s get him a cheap one.” Steve looks at me as if I just said Aliens are invited to dinner. ” To have it take crappy pictures?” He scoffs and walks away in disgust. No sub-par electronics in this house! How dare I suggest it.
9. SMART IS COOL. Having a Geek for a father instills the message into your children that smart is cool. They idolize Daddy. Hopefully, they’ll want to grow up to be just like him.
10. BEING IDOLIZED IS GOOD FOR YOUR GEEK. Course, you have to be careful that his head doesn’t get TOO BIG. That’s why I blog. Gotta keep his ego in check SOMEHOW.

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… other people are just cheesy.

Here’s what I did for my highschool job instead of flipping burgers:

One Of These Nights

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Okay.. not the same Mark Teskey. I do think having WWI trenches in my backyard would be cool, though..

Replica battle trenches built to renew interest in WWI

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Monday night apparently just wasn’t meant to be.

It started with the best of intentions.. my friend Tad and I were to get out and do a little night snowboarding at Welch Village. (good deal!) Since it was the first time out this season for both of us, it took a little longer than usual to get our gear ready. (bad deal.)

To make sure we had the most possible time, we even decided to forgo a decent dinner and opted instead for a little quick BK on the road (bad deal). Yep – even forgot to get cheese on my Angus steakburger. (really bad deal)

We arrived at Welch at about 7:45. Two hours and fifteen minutes is a little short, but so are the hills. We strolled up to the ticket counter to discover that Welch doesn’t close at 10, it closes at 9 on Monday nights. Since tickets were $30, we didn’t really feel like getting all ready and shelling out the $30 for 75 minutes. Bummer. (really really bad deal)

We turned around and went back to Hastings figuring that we’d have a beer and wings and watch the Olympics. (good deal!) We found a place that had $1 Miller Highlife bottles (really good deal!) and awesome blazing hot wings (really really good deal!!). Life was looking good.. until we saw the Olympics:

Two hours of ice dancing. (REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD DEAL).

Yeah, two guys bellied up with a beer and wings watching ice dancing in a bar just isn’t cool. At least the beer and wings were good.

After dropping Tad off at about 10:30, I looked forward to popping the freshly repaired System 11 circuit board back into my Black Knight 2000 pinball machine to fix some switch matrix issues that I’ve been having (good deal!). Not only did it not work, it worked worse than before (ARRRGH!).

I threw in the towel at 12:30 and went to bed figuring that I just wasn’t going to catch a break.

AFTERMATH: After finding two burned out and corroded connectors on the offending wiring harness for the switch matrix on my Black Knight 2000 – I replaced them on Tuesday and got everything working again after a 3 month downtime. (AWESOME DEAL!)

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I promise, I won’t rant about NBC’s Olympic coverage on EVERY post for the next week…

Today I’m going to rant about the American public.

This morning I happened to catch the headlines on USA Today stating that American Idol outscored the Olympics by 2:1. The article goes on to interview some woman that stated

“My husband and I just haven’t been interested this year. Even the gut-wrenching stories haven’t made us interested in the games.”

It really makes me sick that people would rather watch manufactured pop stars than a once every four year event that people train their whole lives for. I guess I’d rather watch manufactured pop stars than gut-wrenching stories, too. Okay – I guess this did turn into a rant against NBC Sports.

Fortunately, TiVO came to the rescue and grabbed some daytime Olympics for me to watch. It was 5 hours completely free of gut-wrenching stories and chock full of real competition that wasn’t a talent show – like figure skating. There was 2 hours of the entire women’s biathalon event – and you didn’t even see how the US athletes did! Then, there was almost 3 hours of curling, the US vs. Sweden. There was drama, excitement, strategy – and no gut-wrenching stories. It was great! What channel was I watching? The USA Network.

I’ll admit – not everyone is amused by curling as I am – but I look at it as my last chance to make the Olympics. I think my chances are good – virtually all of the US mens and womens team is from Minnesota, and there are only a few hundred curlers in the world. Therefore, my odds are about 1:360 (I think). Book your airline tickets now to see me at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics!

One final note: does anybody else think the medals this year look like AOL discs?

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I feel sorry for this guy, but conceptually, it makes me happy:

Minnesota Krispy Kremes closes

Don’t get me wrong, anything fried and sweet is pretty good… but I’ve never seen the manic appeal for Krispy Kremes. They are sort of the Wonder Bread of doughnuts in my book. Nothing but nothing beats real doughnuts – everything from the old-fashioned cake doughnuts to maple long johns to the almighty lemon bismarck to the king-of-all-doughnuts… the Apple Fritter.

If you want a real diabetic breakfast coma, skip Krispy Kreme and go straight for the Chaska Bakery.. dozens of different hand-made delights – and no sissy pastries.

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Okay – I suppose I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me since a certain other T3sk3y works for Ha11mark..

Anybody have a good way to spend the day? I get to spend mine on a 2-hour design review from 8-10 PM. How romantic.

edit: heh.

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It’s not often that I post solely about television – but there’s been a bunch of it.� It also has apparently stood in the way of me posting for about the last two weeks!

The big one of course is the Olympics – and so far it’s living up to the billing and my fears.� All the promos talk about how you need to stay tuned for the “DRAMA” and “ALL THE STORIES ABOUT THE ATHLETES”.

Get it through your heads, NBC – I don’t care about the athletes.� I don’t care about their childhood.� I don’t care about their road to Olympic Glory.� This isn’t VH1′s “Behind the Music” where every band hit it big, turned to drugs, got clean, then made a comeback.� It’s the Olympics.� SHOW SOME ACTION!!!!!!!

Bummer though for slalom hopeful Kristina Koznick (Burnsville Native) – She goes independant, crashes in SLC in 2002, then blows her knee a week before the games.� You gotta root for somebody that lists Buck Hill as her home course.

We’ve also been tuned to the latest installment of “Survivor – Exile Island”.� Yeah, it’s totally trash TV but for some reason I like it.� I don’t have any clear cut favorites yet – but there is ineptitude everywhere.� I could probably do without any more of the crazy smoking detox guy and Serie’s swimsuit.� I also sort of got a chuckle at sending Bruce to Exile Island – that’s the one guy that could handle it!

Finally – we’ve also become addicts of “Beauty and the Geek”.� This is the show where they put pretty (but really dumb) women with really smart (but really socially inept) guys in hopes that they would learn from each other.� As it’s turning out (surprise, surprise) – the beauties aren’t all that dumb (and some aren’t actually all that beautiful) – and not all the geeks are that geeky.� Wes, for example, got totally outed last week during his makeover.� Ding ding ding – not a geek.� Cheryl – goes 3 for 3 with computer questions AND wins the computer assembly challenge.� Ding ding ding – not that dumb.� Both H3ath3r (heh) and I felt bad for Tristan (also not that dumb) though – getting teamed up with a dork like Chris and repeatedly getting sent to the challenge room as a result.

Ah, TV is so much more interesting than politics.

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