greyduck.net

Past, Present, Future – Round Eighteen

PAST: How well do you remember your childhood, especially before age 10 or so?
PRESENT: Do you keep track of things like appointments and pertinent facts well, or do things tend to fall out of your short term memory?
FUTURE: A medical procedure becomes available that promises a complete restoration of every memory you’ve ever stored in your brain. Do you take advantage of it?
(Yes, shades of McCaffrey’s Crystal Line there. Hey, I liked that one.)
Please please please comment so I know you’re doing these things. Trawling Google for PPFers is damned tedious. *smirk* The link back to the PPF is shown below. Thank you!
http://greyduck.net/ppf/

20 June, 2003
Bits of random during trying times.
In the interests of wasting valueless time, here are some bits and pieces:
- Wendi’s getting a lot of mileage out of her journal nowadays. In a weird sort of way, it seems as though she’s been waiting for the right kind of incentive to really start writing out all of the things going on in her life. I’m almost ashamed to admit that she’s doing a better job of journalling her life right now than I am. Hey, more power to her, though.
- Say what you will about Compa– er, HP computers, but you have to admit that the SmartStart CDs are just about the coolest thing to have if you need to set up Windows servers without much oversight or effort. Very neat.
- I took Lilith out to dinner last night, partly because any time spent with Lil’ is time well spent, and partly because I wanted a real-world test of my financial independence. Yes, I have my own (very small) bank account now. Whee! Dinner was nice, the company was great, and nobody yelled at Lil’ for accidentally picking the same song twice on the jukebox…
- The KWJJ/KOTK move-in is progressing more-or-less as planned. Email is working, though not without some issues related to the incestuous relationship between Groupwise and Outlook. The computers we ordered supposedly shipped on Monday so we’re hoping to have everything set up for the incoming Sales and Traffic folk by the end of next week. Wish me luck.
- Me? I’m doing okay. Some days are better than others, and I’m learning a lot about myself. I’m scared, yes. But I have to do what I think is right, and a little fear isn’t going to stop me. I also have some of the coolest friends anywhere to back me up. There are worse places to be.
19 June, 2003
Okay, you sick bastards.

I’d like to suggest that the deluded sicko who came here via a search for “sakura humping her staff” should just turn himself over to the authorities right now.
I have nothing at all to say to whoever found Mari’s thingie via the phrase “peter pan slash fiction.” Instead I’ll just back away slowly, ever so slowly. She’s getting good traffic off of “mutual masturbation” as well, I feel obliged to point out.
For those keeping score, “ryoko naked” is currently way ahead of “aeka naked” by a roughly five-to-one ratio in search hits to this website. In a similar vein, if you’ll pardon the potential pun, “family orgy” is on top of “grandma orgy” in search hits to Mari’s thingie by about four to one.
All of this is in lieu of a real journal entry. I figured too much time had passed since my last search-query round up. Aren’t you lucky I have such a strong sense of responsibility to keep the spirit of Google bashing/baiting alive around here?

17 June, 2003
Father’s Day 2003

When your day starts with breakfast in bed and the giving of gifts, you know it’s not going to be too bad of a day.
Wendi and the kids brought me french toast and bacon. I love bacon. Mmmmm, bacon. I also received a bunch of Father’s Day cards, both commerical and handmade. Add to that a stack of music CDs and you’re talking about a pretty good morning.
For the record, pardon the pun: Phil Collins’ “No Jacket Required” and “But Seriously,” and Sting’s “Brand New Day” and “All This Time.” One of the discs I already owned, but that’s okay. I was very touched and very happy all the same.
I spent most of the day playing games by myself, recouperating from the stresses of work and from the strange day Saturday turned out to be. At day’s end, Wendi went out and picked up a bit of chinese-ish food from Safeway as well as various pizza-like objects and a whole bunch of Henry’s root beer.
A side note for those who are interested: If you really want to butter me up then bring me Stouffer’s french bread pizzas, the pepperoni if you please. Thank you.
Another side note: Safeway’s chinese-ish food is really not all that great. As if you needed to be warned.
One more side note: Henry Weinhard’s is the best root beer on the planet, bar none.
I put in a call to my own father late in the evening. Some incorrect notions about the divorce needed laying to rest, and we talked about falling headfirst into major life changes. All in all, we had a nice chat.
The last event for the evening was a round of Boggle with all five members of the current household. Yes, even “grampa” got into the act. After a number of truly horrid rounds (“I can’t believe you managed to make that entire half all vowels!” alternated with “Um, how did you manage to only get one vowel?”) we closed out the game with the boys all well ahead on points. I won, of course.
Yet another side note: We play Boggle with slightly modified rules. To wit, the kids are the only ones allowed to write down or score from three-letter words. It forces the adults to really work for their words, and it ensures that the children will get a respectable score as long as they put forth reasonable effort.
After the Boggle game we shipped the kids off to bed, Grampa went singing, and that was pretty much the end of the day…
I can only hope that dads everywhere had at least as good a day as I did. Happy Father’s Day!

16 June, 2003
Snapshots Galore

My sister Christine and her husband John are in town this week on something of a late honeymoon. Today the Kerezman household went to my Aunt Jean’s place outside of Wilsonville to a family gathering where Sis could show off her hubby. Grandma Arlene and her husband Walter arrived with Great-Grandma Penny in tow. We collectively chowed down on burgers and hot dogs and chips and later on some chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and M&M Minis sprinkled on top. Man, that was a nice cake.

Erica got to feed goats and hold a turkey. Alex got to play on a piano. Both kids splashed around in the pool for a while.

The adults talked a lot as adults are prone to doing, especially members of a family that isn’t exactly known for its frequent gatherings.

A nice time was had by all, everyone praised Sis for landing herself such a nice and good-looking husband, and the awkward family moments were kept to a merciful minimum.

For the complete set of images I snapped during the afternoon, check out the “Family Gathering, June 2003” gallery.

I also uploaded (finally!) a few of the pics from back when one of the Sakura-Con staffers had some folks over for a housewarming. Look in “People, Places, Things” to see his super-cool, super-mini screening/gaming room.

There are more random images strewn about, but you’ll just have to poke around in the Gallery to find them all. Happy hunting!

14 June, 2003
Past, Present, Future – Round Seventeen

I’d like to begin by welcoming the dozens who arrive here via The Memes List, and remind you (politely, ever so politely) that you are encouraged (very, ever so very) to leave a comment (it’s the “quack me up” or “wisequacks” link at the bottom of any given entry) so we all (okay, just me, to stroke my ego) know where to find your answers (assuming you don’t flee in disgust swearing off the whole thing as a bad job).
Was that silly enough for you? No? Good. Let’s proceed, then.
PAST: I can’t believe you used to do that. I mean, really. Didn’t anyone tell you that you shouldn’t? The mess! The smell! We won’t even go into what could happen if you got caught. You didn’t get caught, right? Right?
PRESENT: If you were faced with the choice right this minute would it be the leafy green homogenized free-range cajun-style, or the scented glossy well-coiffed hardwood islander variety? Hurry, hurry, we don’t have all day!
FUTURE: The language barrier has largely been surmounted, but the passive-agressive alien race with the lovely aquamarine eyes and the poison stingers and the remarkably prehensile appendages still has so much to learn about the myriad cultures of homo sapiens. You’ve been called in as an expert on the obscure subject of…?
For the record, as if anything said here counted as a valid method of tracking reality, I don’t smoke anything. I don’t even like smoked salmon all that much. If you want to share the silliness with your readers then I suggest you link back to the PPF using something that looks a lot like http://greyduck.net/ppf/ or whatever it translates to in your extraterrestrial tongue. Or speech-assist appendage, anyway. Sheesh, you aliens are so damned weird anyway. Why can’t you just have two arms, two legs and one set of genitalia like the rest of us? Freaks.

13 June, 2003