My computer has been fixed, the kids are well into their school pattern, and this has been the driest and warmest winter I can remember. I think I’m set to restart this.

I don’t plan on doing the whole 30 days thing again. Not yet. Not right away. But I need to do something.

This post is 2 fold. First off to test to make sure this thing still works. I just updated and haven’t used it in months. So far, so good. The second is to publicly put out my intent in hopes of motivating me to keep it up. We’ll see how that goes.

The format will likely change as things in my life have changed over the last couple of years. It will likely be a lot less about poker and a lot more about general life stuff with the family along with things that will won’t fit on my twitter. So here is my reboot.

To be continued…

Last night Amy asks me if Sadie feels warm. I’ll openly admit that, unless they are to the point that one could fry and egg on their heads, I have trouble noticing when their body temperature stretches out of the range of normal. Amy broke out the oft used thermometer and sure enough, she was definitely suffering from a fever.

Due to the new stitches she is brandishing on her foot, the fever required a bit more caution. So at almost 10pm, she packed up Sadie for her second ER visit in a week. Meanwhile, I tried to wrangle 7 kids to bed (our remaining 4 and 3 cousins that are staying the week).

There is the saying, when it rains, it pours. Well, this is when it literally starts pouring. A storm rolled in and unleashed its fury of rain, wind and lightning that lit up the sky like the 4th of July. It seemed each flash made the lights flicker.

Ever try getting 7 storm scared kids tucked in? You would be better off herding cats. Then shortly after 11, the power went off. We waited for it to eventually to pop back on. And waited. And waited.

It would have been too easy to have flashlights at the ready. Instead, we broke out our cellphones wandering around by LED light. After a while, the kids started making shadow puppets with the lights on the ceiling. At least they were making the best of the situation. It even made the younger kids a bit less tense. Once a half an hour rolled around with still no lights, I decided we need to break out the candles. Again, the novelty seemed to be a good distraction which was welcome.

Is that it? Oh, how I wish. Amy was having issues of her own at the ER. For reasons unknown, it was packed and she ended up waiting around forever. We kept texting back and forth comparing our tales of woe. Isn’t technology fun?

When I thought we were out of the woods, Avery came out of the bathroom gagging. I quickly grabbed a bowl and barely got it back to him in time for him to avoid throwing up all over the floor. ::Sigh:: Good times.

The good news was that Sadie’s fever was not from an infection from her stitches. They still looked good and sent her home with instructions to treat the fever with motrin and tylenol. Amy didn’t get back to the house until after 12 and around 1 once all the storms passed, we convinced the kids to go to bed. I was beat. I didn’t need electricity to sleep so we got everyone set. I woke up around 4 and the electricity was back on again. My alarm was flashing 1 at me which means the power didn’t return until 3 am. We were 4 hours without power.

PS. Amy’s new hypothesis is Sadie has strep so another trip to the Dr. is in order.

The whole Netflix community seems to be divided between “Netflix is money grubbing bastards” and “hey, who gives a fuck, it’s still a good deal”. I fall somewhere in between and I think a lot of people who fell under the former group are actually people who likely have a similar view to mine, but feel the need to overreact since it’s the internet.

Any one who knows me or has read this blog knows I’m into movies. I’m not quite a hardcore movie buff, but I’m definitely enjoy my movies. Over the years, I contemplated getting a netflix subscription but never pulled the trigger until they started the streaming service. I just don’t have the time to watch the movies on the dvd service. I also had concern over how much I could watch due to using the postal service as a delivery system.

The reality is I will go through spans, like now, where I’ve had Soylent Green sitting on my desk for a month. Summer is tough. And since I’m in a smaller metro area, I don’t have a distribution center in my city which means the turn around for disks is likely 4 days. Theoretically on a good month, I would get like 6 movies a month. Realistically on a good month, it’s 4 if I watch them within a day which really doesn’t make it worth it. That was worth the $2 for me. It probably isn’t worth the $8 for me.

Essentially it means I’m being priced out of this service. I’m losing something I had and enjoyed but have to say no since netflix’s decision has made this unavailable to me. It’s frustrating to lose something you have.

On the other side of this, the streaming is awesome. We got rid of our cable before we started with netflix and streaming has really made it so that very few members of the household miss it. Since we can stream 2 connections at a time, we likely stream somewhere between 20-30 hours a week. Absolutely and easily worth $8 a month.

If netflix had decided to increase streaming by $4, I would have said “Still worth it”. For me, they could have raised that $4, and raised the dvd combo by $2 and I would stay with both. At that point, $4 would be reasonable for dvd service and, as I stated, I don’t mind paying for a service that we get a ton of usage out of. That would have been the extra $6 I’m facing now and still be able to have my dvd service that I will sorely miss. I think the decisions they are making are really going to hurt their subscription numbers more than they anticipated.

I understand netflix is doing this in response to their own rising costs and they want to make money. I understand that, but as a consumer, I shouldn’t have to concern myself with their costs. It’s their responsibility to find a way to make money and this is how they have decided to accomplish that. Should people have reacted the way they did with anger? No. But I can definitely understand the frustration of being priced out of a service that you have been enjoying and would like to keep.

Yesterday while driving in the car, the song came on from the mixed CD my wife had made for the trip to her parents. My lazy ass hasn’t yet gotten the receiver moved from the old van so we don’t have the ipod to listen to.

Anyway, I had a big eureka moment as the song came on. Listening to the lyrics, I finally figured it out.

Jimmy Stewart followed Kim to where her portrait hangs on the wall

Before I thought that was just some random strange shit that Harvey Danger had put into their song. They have a tendency to do that although most of it does truly mean something. That something isn’t always clear.

Turns out the whole song is about the great Hitchcock movie, Vertigo. Great movie with twists in true Hitchcock style that I recently watched. It’s definitely in my top 3 of the Hitchcock movies I’ve seen so far (along with Psycho and Rear Window) further strengthening my serious affinity for the director.

I’ll admit, that putting that together, even though it wasn’t that special of a task was a real mind fuck moment for me. I’m gonna blame that one on being tired, cause even writing this out now, I’m like “Dumbass, that should have been obvious”. But it really did a number on me and only made me enjoy the song even more. The band obviously liked the movie too if they went to the lengths of writing a song based on it.

The song fits so well with the movie that the video is nothing but clips from the movie adjoined to the lyrics that are explaining the scenes. It’s like a mini version of the movie without the twist ending. Enjoy.

But now I kind of feel bad about beating her. It’s an empty victory. So follow her here.

Anyway, we don’t have a scale, but my mom always has one. Out of curiosity, I have a habit of weighing myself when we are there. This time was no different. I have been getting plenty of exercise lately thanks to the great deluge. Don’t know if any one told you, but sandbagging is hard work.

Conversation on the way home:

Me: I weighed myself on Mom’s scale and it said 193. I think I’ve lost like 10 lbs. (I had previously weighed around 205)
Amy: I think her scale is off.
Me: *gives Amy a deflated look*
Me: Thanks

I now have multi-dimensions of pain in my muscles. I should probably think about increasing my life insurance if I need to keep this up too much longer. Some one should at least profit from me being driven into the ground.

If anything, this is just eating away any desire I would have to live on the water. Well, maybe not totally, but it might have to be one of those nice man made lakes that are regulated. Seems a better way to go.

Pictures of the flood can be found here. Twitter updates can be found here.

Yesterday’s song didn’t seem to help so instead of a song about rain causing a flood, today I’m gonna go with a song about a drought. Couldn’t hurt right?

Warning, if you have a known allergy to 80′s metal hair bands, you might not want to listen.

My code monkey hands were not meant for hard labor. But that’s what the day called for. My boss left work this morning at 9 am after he got a call that water was up to his driveway. I got an email in the afternoon asking for help for sand bagging. So I came home, changed, picked up TJ and we went out to try and ready his home for the rising water.

Normally North Dakota is a fairly arid place. Little moisture and certainly not the place you normally have to concern yourselves of with flooding. The last few years have changed that. Unfortunately for my boss, he has to wait it out for a few more weeks as the snow melt from the mountains continue to cause issue. There is flooding down the river on the Mississippi and they have tried to keep the water back but it sounds like if they don’t do controlled releases, they will soon be uncontrolled which is worse for everyone down the Missouri and then to the Mississippi.

This is a short post cause, frankly, I’m too tired for much else. Gonna just post a song that I couldn’t help think about while we filled bags and built walls.

I haven’t heard much advertisement other than through friends, so I wasn’t sure what to expect for a turn out. When we got to the VFW, the parking lot closely rivaled the full load from a Bobcat’s games. We almost regretted not getting our tickets early. That ended up being a non-issue. The setup they have I think they could support twice as many spectators as they can at the Bobcat’s games.

I’m going to be honest. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I really don’t know much about Roller Derby short of a few 5 minute ESPN segments and that episode of Psych where Juliet goes undercover to infiltrate a roller derby crime team. Not to say that all derbiers (I don’t know what they technical like to be called) are deliquents and criminals. I haven’t even seen Whip It yet (but it is on my netflix queue behind a few Hitchcock movies).

Truth be told, right now I’m kinda hoping that idea of derbiers not being violent felons is true. I’m also hoping they don’t mind being called derbiers in case I’m wrong. A few of those girls really look like they could hurt me beyond what I would consider my acceptable pain threshold for a deserved beating. It’s probably best to just try and avoid the subject and move on.

I did try to get some pictures at the event, but the lighting wasn’t allowing that possible from the bleachers. I likely could have gotten some good shots from the “suicide seating” down next to the ring, but I think the potential of coming back to the bleachers after leaving my wife with 4 kids would have put me into a situation I mentioned above in which the pain I was owed was beyond what I was comfortable facing. I will look through the pictures and see if I can “salvage” a few of them and post them online.

Speaking of the “suicide seats”, it took me most of the way through the first bout to distinguish WTF he was saying concerning them. I wasn’t sure if he was saying “Get the f’ off the floor” or “come on down”. Eventually, I grasped the point he was trying to convey was “Get your kids off the floor so we don’t get sued when your child inevitably gets bashed in the face by a wayward skate”. Understandable. Others must have had similar difficulty understanding the announcers as I saw tons of people leading their kid to certain disfigurement. Either that or after properly weighed the risks and rewards of the action and logically determined being that much closer to the skaters would be a much larger mark on that child’s life than the potential of having a skate wheel divot permanently branded on their child’s forehead. Sound call, there, bucko.

The crowd really didn’t seem to get into it for the first bout. I’m not sure if it was apathy, confusion, a lack of appropriate alcohol having been consumed, or something else I have yet to consider, but they was a marked difference between the two bouts in terms of fan participation. I didn’t mind as it gave me an opportunity to try and figure out how it worked.

As for the kids, while I don’t think there is anything wrong with it for the kids, my younger kids had difficulty grasping the subtleties of the scoring mechanics. It’s easy to understand “When the ball goes through the hoop, they score points”. It’s a bit more difficult to understand “When the girl with the star on her head passes all all the apposing team the first time, they score a point for each apposing player there after”. It basically meant I heard a lot of “Why are they cheering?”.

They still enjoyed coming out, but I don’t think they want to be season ticket holders. At least until they are able to comprehend a multifaceted system of scoring consisting of following intervals of occurrences on the field covered with 10 bodies speeding around an oval and colliding like they are being forced through a large hadron collider. Kids. What are you gonna do?

All in all, I had a good time and was glad I was able to go. I think it is something that would be fun to go with a group of friends and maybe if I can get on the floor, have a chance to get some pictures worth posting. Sans kids.

PS. If you are a derbier but find the term “derbier” unsavory, please spare my pretty face and just tell me what else to use. I mean no disrespect.

I have posted this on my twitter already, but it’s just such a well put together piece that it’s worth the extra bit of exposure.

(via Ransom Riggs)