Sparkle And Fade?

Marin gave me a ticket to a concert as one of my Christmas presents this year.

The band Everclear was doing a concert in Houston in January, and when I looked up their tour, I found that they were doing a 30th anniversary celebration of the album Sparkle and Fade. Sparkle and Fade is one of my all-time favorite albums, and the opportunity to see the band play all the songs from it really excited me. I knew that Marin was a big fan of the album too, and I asked her if she wanted to go. When I mentioned the idea that Marin could get us tickets as her Christmas present to me, she liked the idea and went for it.

Well, today, the concert arrived. Marin and I headed downtown to The House of Blues to see the show.

It was a pretty good show, although we were thrown a curveball. The 30th anniversary of Sparkle and Fade was last year, and apparently, the shows of that tour ended in December, so they weren't celebrating the album anymore. They didn't play every song from the album. They still played several songs, but not all of them. I was a little sad about that. The songs they did play were good, and they played all of their hits, so I couldn't really complain. I was just expecting a different show than I got, and expectations can really prejudice an experience.

We had a lot of fun, although the two of us were both really tired. I work an early morning schedule now, so I was up way past my bedtime, and Marin gets worn out by the kids she teaches at school each day.

I did record my favorite song from them. They played it as their final encore.

The really exciting part came at the very end of the show when the band was throwing their guitar picks, drumsticks, and even setlists out into the crowd. The people at the very front were getting all of that stuff, and it seemed as though we didn't have a chance at anything, but at the very end, the drummer tossed a stick deeper into the crowd. I could see that it was coming right at me, and I knew the most likely thing was that it would bounce off my hands and fall to someone else. I jumped as it came down. There was a sea of hands reaching for it all around me, but I managed to get my hands on it. I grabbed it with both hands, and held on as tightly as I could to make sure that I didn't drop it or have it snatched from my hands before my claim on it could be acknowledged by all the others who had been reaching for it.

"Good catch," somebody behind me said. I brought my arms down, and there it was. I've gotten a guitar pick from several bands over the years, Anthrax and Joe Satriani when I was a kid,,,

...and I got a pick from Death Cab For Cutie when Katy and I went to their show a few years back...

...but I've never come away with a drumstick. That's a bigger prize.

As we walked away, I gave it to Marin to keep as a souvenir. I don't know what Marin is going to do with it, but it'll be a fun memory at least.

Commander Morgan and Rin-Rin

Many years ago...I'd say it was 2004...I shot a movie starring Morgan. It was supposed to star Marin and Morgan, but Marin was so young that when I tried to tell her to do something, she sat down and cried. So, I wrote her out of the script. I've showed it to so many people, so many times, that I'm sure you're probably already familiar with it. But, just in case you're not, here it is. The Unusual Adventures of Morgan Page, Chapter One: Snowland:

So, not long after that movie, I started production on another film starring the kids. This time, Marin was old enough to do more than just cry. I came up with an idea for a space movie in the tradition of the old film serials that you would get in the 1930s and 1940s, like Flash Gordon and Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe. Ours would be called Commander Morgan and Rin-Rin.

We started shooting in 2005, and ran into a snag. The videotape we were shooting on that first day was defective, and a lot of the stuff we shot was no good. Well, that got me depressed about losing all that work I'd done, and so I quit on the movie.

It sat on a shelf for ten years, but just a little while before we moved to Texas, I came across that video again. I thought that I ought to at least do something with it, maybe a trailer for the movie or something smaller scale. When I looked at the video and compared it to the old script I'd written, I realized that I had all that I actually needed...at least from the four-year-old Morgan, who has since been replaced by a hulking, six-foot-five adult, and can therefore not be brought in for reshoots. I needed to shoot some spaceships on a green screen and all the stuff for the bad guy, but the rest was enough. I could actually complete that old movie.

So, I set to work, and after months of collecting everything I needed, I...promptly let it sit on the shelf for several more years. Things came up, we moved to Texas, I started a new job, and all the things that such a task entailed made me forget all about the movie. But, the great thing about recorded media is that it's recorded. When I remembered it again, it was still there waiting. All I had to do was edit it. That was a bigger task than I thought it might be, but I went ahead with it, and finally finished it...about twenty years late. But amazingly, it's actually done.

So, here's the finished product. Commander Morgan and Rin-Rin: Episode 14, The Attack of the Monster Robot.

I hope you liked it. It's silly, but pretty fun, I thought. I also have a Halloween movie that we shot in 2006 where Morgan, Marin, and Katy meet ghosts while out trick-or-treating. I guess that's my next project. I should finish the edit of that one up around 2035. So, mark your calendars.

Jupiter's Vaccination Adventure

Back in December...or maybe it was even November...we got an email from our vet saying that Jupiter, our cat, was in need of her booster shot for her rabies vaccination. It's a busy time of year, so we didn't jump right on it, but eventually we got around to it...mostly because the kids sent me a reminder text. I guess they were concerned. I should have been too, as will become apparent through the course of this story.

I got an appointment in late December during the Christmas break, and took the cat to the vet. She was unhappy to be stuffed into her cat carrier, and yowled at me the whole drive there to let her out, but I stood firm and kept her locked up. We checked in at the vet, where they told us that we were late for her booster, and therefore couldn't get the three-year shot. Instead, it would have to be the one-year version. I groaned. I didn't realize there was a deadline. I would have made sure to be on time if I knew that I'd have to come every year instead of every three years if I missed it. They sent us to a room for Jupiter's examination and vaccinations. 

When the nurse and doctor came in, they were exactly the type of people you would expect to be working at a low-cost veterinary clinic called Texas Litter Control. They seemed to really love animals and the nurse couldn't help but unzip Jupiter's cat carrier and try to pet her.

"Ooh," she yelped, and snatched her hand back out. "She scratched me a little bit there."

I looked over and saw her holding her hand. Jupiter was still in the carrier, facing away from where the opening had been unzipped. "Oh no," I said, "We're you coming at her from behind? Yeah, she probably wouldn't appreciate that."

That's the kind of thing that would elicit a nip on any one of us who live with the cat from day to day, much less a unfamiliar hand entering an unpleasant confined space attached to an unseen stranger. I don't think Jupiter is a particularly sassy cat, so you would think that these people have dealt with this enough to know not to approach an unfamiliar cat like that, but apparently not.

The nurse went to the sink to wash her wound, and the doctor asked me to put Jupiter up on the scale to weight her. While we saw just how fat the cat was becoming, the nurse finished up her hand cleaning and left the room. The doctor waited for a moment for her to return, and then finally said, "I'm going to go see if the nurse has gotten someone to help her with that scratch and if another person is coming to help me."

I sat down and waited...it took longer than expected. At last, someone opened the door and said, "Are you the onen with the cat that bit the nurse?"

"Oh, yeah. I mean, it was a scratch, but yeah—"

"It was a bite," she interrupted me with a tone that brooked no argument and made me feel as though I was in the principal's office in elementary school.

"Oh, okay," I said. "I didn't see it. The nurse said it was a scratch."

"Okay, well, let me tell you what has to happen now," the woman continued. "Because your cat is overdue for her rabies vaccination and she bit the nurse, she is going to have to go on quarantine for ten days. We can't give her the shot until after that quarantine period. Be sure to let us know if you see any signs of her acting rabid...lethargy, foaming at the mouth, irritability...that kind of stuff."

I was ushered out and had to make a new appointment for ten days later for the rabies booster.

I was pretty irritated, I'll have to admit. I didn't want to have to come all the way back out here on another day. I berated Jupiter for biting the nurse...although I really couldn't blame her that much, and, of course, the cat doesn't speak English, so it was all gibberish to her.

The trouble was that Jupiter had to stay inside until her quarantine ended. Jupiter was an outside cat...not a completely outside cat. She actually spent more of her time indoors lounging around and sleeping, but being outside was the thing that made her happy. She lived to be outside. She was at the door meowing first thing every morning, and often several more times throughout each day. Staying inside for ten days wasn't going to be easy.

I wasn't really worried that she might be rabid and that this quarantine was for a good reason, but I was worried about how this process might make our cat insufferable. When I got home, I carried her from the car to the house, and that was the last that she saw of the outdoors.

True to my hunch, for the next ten days she spent a lot of time at the back door begging to be let outside, meowing and meowing in a most pitiful manner. What surprised me was the changes that seemed to come over her, however. 

When she was a kitten, she was very fun, playful, friendly, and loving. As the years have gone by, though, she's dropped most of those characteristics. When she walks past me and I reach to pet her, she would bow her back downward to avoid my hand and quickly scurry away. That was the best way to sum up her attitude for the last several years.

Now that she was quarantined indoors, though, she suddenly seemed to return to her kitten ways. All of a sudden, she frequently wanted us to pet her. Gone was the bowed back. She didn't scurry away from you unless you were opening the back door for her to leave. She was pleasant and friendly. Marin, who wasn't around for her kitten age and has never developed any rapport with the cat, was surprised to find her acting friendly and outgoing even to her.

After ten days of this sudden change, I was convinced that this probably needed to be the way of things from now on. When we got our second cat, Freya, and Shantell insisted that it should be an indoor cat, I objected. How could you do that to a cat? They're animals. They're not meant to be pent up indoors at all times, I scoffed. Nevertheless, Freya has never spent more than a few moments outdoors. But now, I found myself completely changing my tune.

I used to be really attached to Jupiter when she was little, friendly, and cute, but I'd grown very detached from her since, because she was so much the opposite of that lately. Now she was returning to herself, and I insisted that this indoors only thing needed to be the standard operating procedure from now on.

Humorously, Shantell was against it. She thought it would be sad to make Jupiter stay inside. Somehow, with different cats, we'd switched sides of the argument. Shantell relented, however, and the decision was made. It's not permanent, after all. We could change our minds if it becomes a problem of some sort.

When the ten days were finally up, I stuffed Jupiter back into the cat carrier and drove her back to the vet.

She must have remembered her last misadventure, because she whined at me from the back seat a lot more this time than she did last time.

At the vet, I made sure everyone understood what had happened last time and that they should handle her with care just in case. I didn't want to leave there without that stinking shot. The nurse put on long oven mitt-like gloves, and they threw a towel over Jupiter's head while they jabbed her backside with the vaccines she needed. Jupiter hissed and spit. She was not having it, but they were wise about it this time around, so no problems took place.

They sent me on my way, and I brought Jupiter back home to stay inside from now on. Maybe by the next time, she'll be less ornery about it, and there won't be the chance of a bite...but I doubt it. What's going to scare a cat more than going to the vet? You get stuffed in a sack and taken to a strange place that smells of other animals, including dogs, and they expect you to act all sweet and calm? Not likely.

All I know is that so far the indoor life has Jupiter acting like a little angel. Isn't she cute?

Marin Turns 24

Marin's 24 years old this year. She's basically an old lady. And now that she's an old lady, she has all those boring adult responsibilities, like having to go to work even though it's your birthday. When she was younger, our tradition was to keep the kids out of school on their birthday, and take them around for a day of fun that included going out to eat, going for a hike, or going bowling, or even something as big as spending the day at an amusement park. Now, well, adults don't get that kind of treatment. When you're an adult, you gotta take what you can get.

Marin's birthday was on a Monday, so we did some of the celebrations on Sunday. Shantell put together a fancy dinner for her, cooking up one of her favorite dishes. Marin requested her fried lasagna recipe for dinner. That's something that we first had at Olive Garden, and then looked into how to make it ourselves. They're pretty darn good.

After dinner, we went out in the backyard and had a fire in our fire pit. That's something that everybody enjoys in our family.

We made s'mores, although they were modified s'mores, since we'd run out of graham crackers. Shantell had some biscoff cookies that she thought would make for tasty replacements, and they must have, because I didn't hear anyone complaining.

That was it for Sunday. On Monday, Shantell rushed home to wrap up the celebrations. She didn't have time to make another fancy meal, so she picked up Chinese food on the way home, only to find upon arriving that all the kids had been eating already, and nobody was very hungry. She sighed at the wasted effort and money, and finished up Marin's requested cake while the kids nibbled here and there on the Chinese food. At least we could eat it the next day or something. We put some candles on Marin's cake.

That's one set of two and one set of four to make 24. We sang the happy birthday song, and she blew the candles out.

We gave her some presents, which you can see draped all over her in this shot:

And that was it. We all got back to our lives, and we'll honor Marin again next year when she turns a whole quarter century old...yikes!

New Year!

We're old and boring now, so we don't do all that much on New Year's Eve...although we also didn't do much on New Year's Eve either when we were young and...well, boring. So, of course we didn't do all that much this year either.

Each year, our big event of New Year's Eve is the charcuterie board that Shantell puts together. It's always a really great spread, and this year Shantell did another really great job.

You can click on the photo to get a close up view of the picture.

We all sat down to eat, and enjoyed turning the spread on the charcuterie board into a spreading waistline.

Simon had his friend, Rex, over for the big night, and they played video games most of the night, but we did get them to sit with us at the dinner table and play some old-poerson style board games for a bit, however.

Then the hour arrived. We all gathered in the front room, poured some Martinelli's into our flutes, and waited for the countdown to start. We put on a channel that was streaming fireworks shows from around the world. As the time grew short, they went to Dallas, which is, of course, a big city in our time zone. We got ready for them to countdown...there was a little clock in the very corner of the screen, but they left most of it free of graphics so we could see the fireworks when they started. It still said 11:58 on that clock when fireworks began to burst from all directions outside the house. They'd been going pretty constantly for hours, but their intensity had suddenly jumped to a completely different level.

Simon looked at his phone, and made a puzzled face. "Hey, it's already midnight," he said, holding up his phone to show the clock on his lock screen.

"What?" we all said, confused.

"We missed it," Simon said. "Should we celebrate now?"

I wanted a countdown, so I stepped in before we gave up on that. "No, we're going by the time on the TV. It'll be there in a second."

However, there never was a countdown. The news anchor who was narrating the Dallas event never did a countdown. Instead, we just saw the ball on the top of the Reunion Tower flashing lights for a while, and then, suddenly the fireworks began. At this point, there was no more waiting. We all shrugged and shouted, "Happy New Year!"

It was pretty lame, but to be fair, ever since we got rid of cable about fifteen years ago, this has been a difficulty we always face. The days of putting Dick Clark on the TV and counting down with the replay of the Times Square ball drop are long over, and we still haven't found a substitute for it.

We still had some fun, though, so it was all good.

Maybe next year we'll have a better answer. We probably need to attend some public party like we did a few years ago in San Antonio, although that night had its own issues. I know they do one like that in Houston every year, so maybe my blog post will come to you from that event next year. We'll see what I can manage.

Gingerbread II

I mentioned, in my post about the Page Family Gingerbread Contest, that we had bought a pre-made kit of a little gingerbread village to make this year. Even thouigh the Page Family Contest moved that kit to the background, we still meant to construct it, and that day finally arrived this Sunday evening.

Marin got to work assembling each house, and demonstrated that she'd learned all the wrong lessons from the Page contest. Instead of making sure to give the icing plenty of time to dry to ensure a solid construction or something like that, what she learned was to use the hot glue gun and avoid any trouble from the get go.

"It's just gross pre-made gingerbread," she said, "no one's going to eat these things."

Well, she was probably right, but they definitely wouldn't now, anyway.

There were four tiny houses. Each one was made of cookies no bigger than the palm of your hand, so the houses weren't going to be too difficult to decorate...unless you consider miniturizing the decorations difficult.

Each of the three kids picked a house, and Shantell got the leftover one. Marin claimed the A-frame cabin.

Katy and Simon got houses with a more standard shape.

Shantell's house had a flat roof instead of a peaked one, and that's why the kids left it for last.

They toiled away at them for a while. Shantell was the first to call it quits. Not because she was actually done, but because the house, despite being held together with glue rather than icing, was starting to break. She'd been picking it up and holding it in her hand as she iced it and attached candy, and she'd apparently squeezed it enough that the walls were collapsing inward. This is where it was when she declared it a lost cause to go any further.

I don't know what else she might have done, but it looks pretty good to me.

Here's how Marin's A-frame came out:

Neco wafers for roof tiles and chocolate rocks covering the walls of the stone cabin was her design. Simon and Katy both used these rainbow-colored sour belts as roof shingles.

Simon draped them across the front of the house, and even made a flag for the top as well. Katy made her house into a log cabin using pretzels.

Although, I think log cabins usually have horizontal logs, so maybe vertical logs like this have some other type of designation to describe them with.

What mattered is that we all had some fun, and everybody got a chance to build a gingerbread house this Christmas season. Here's a shot of the whole village together:

Christmas Day

Now that our kids are older, Christmas is always a much more low key affair. There's not a lot of craziness, screaming, or running around like there used to be. Now, we calmly open our presents, smile, and say thank you. It even feels like there's way less presents to open, though that can't be the case, since we're only one person less than the whole family living at home right now. It's just calm without little ones.

I still make the kids do some things that they've always done. I still like to take a picture of everyone at the top of the stairs before they come down to see what Santa brought.

I suppose that comes from having taken pictures like these every Christmas growing up.

Once we let the kids come down, they went through their presents and then their stockings.

Simon was first, of course.

Then it was Katy's turn.

Marin took her turn.

Then, we had our own stocking. This is a new thing that Marin and Katy have been doing. They decided that Mom and Dad needed a stocking as well.

That was a lot of fun. 

That wasn't all. Even the cats got something. Santa was thorough, and it looked like Freya really liked her new toy.

After Santa's big moment, it was time to make our usual Christmas breakfast. Shantell always makes some kind of egg strata each year. This time, the strata was made with croissants, so it was even more decadent than usual.

After breakfast, it was time to get down to the rest of the gifts. We all had presents to open. Among the highlights was the watercolor painting that Marin got for Katy...

Two years ago, just before Christmas, we had to put Juno to sleep, it was very hard and very sad, and Marin thought it would be nice to give Katy this as something to remember Juno by.

Marin bought us tickets to go to see a band that we both love, Everckear, when they come to Houston in January for their 30th anniversary tour of their Sparkle and Fade album.

Katy bought Simon this kooky Pokemon stuffed animal to put on his shelf...I can't remember what it was called. Bulbasaur maybe? Something like that.

Katy got Shantell a countertop recipe card thing, and designed and printed cards with a lot of our favorite recipes on them.

The girls also got Shantell a pair of shoes that she really wanted but would never have bought for herself. She was really tickled to get them, and spent several minutes gushing about how pretty the shoes were.

And there were many more. The gifts this year were really thoughtful and heartfelt, and it was really enjoyable to be a part of their distribution. I'm not going to recount every single one of them, to keep this post from going too long, however. I'll just stop here and say that the Page family Christmas was a really delightful affair, and I'm forver grateful for my wonderful family. My life would be worthless and empty without them.