Don't you wish your baby could dance like me...

Couldn't pass up sharing this. She's got rhythm like her daddy :-)

jury duty... NOT

i've been notified of possible jury duty 3 times in my life, the first was when i was in college in NC, but it would have been in MD, so i had to be excused. The second was when i lived in Alexandria, and i never got a jury summons. And this time, i actually got a summons, but had to decline as i'm the primary care provider for my daughter. I've always wanted to be on a jury, but it just hasn't worked out so far. oh well...

Fun at the Park

It was a fairly nice day on Saturday, so we took Aria to a nearby park. it was her first time on a kiddie swing, and at first she didn't like it, so we played on the slides, and she loved those! after a while, I showed her how fun a swing can be (probably the most weight those things have seen in a long time). then we put her back in the kiddie swing, and she loved it! here's a clip of her giggling in the swing.

snow?

remember that snow we got - oh say, about 3 weeks ago? well we took pictures of Aria playing in it while i was shoveling, but i guess i was too worn out to post em after the work out that wet snow gave my back ;-)

I don't mind shoveling snow, because it falls in with my love of vacuuming and mowing. don't ask me why...

2 to 1 nap transition

I have to apologize to the grandparents. when you visit Aria on Tuesdays, you won't see her as much as you used to. and here's why:

She is now officially a 1 nap toddler! so, if you get here at 11, you will see her for about an hour. then she wakes up at around 2:30–3:00. your grand total of baby and you time will have dropped from 6.5 hrs to at most 4 hrs. so sorry. bring a book, or something to knit. or play scrabble. or play sudoku. or watch a movie. we have HBO now, not to mention our DVD collection...

The Wire season 5

yay. i called Comcast to turn on HBO halfway through the final season of The Wire. We figured we would watch the first half on HBO on demand, and catch the rest of the season as the episodes air - it's only a 10 episode season anyway, then turn HBO off.

The customer service (and i use that term loosely) agent on the phone gave us HBO free for 4 months, even though we've had it free before. so we'll be filling up our DVR :-)

BUT...
somehow, all of our digital basic channels got turned off when they turned on HBO. I called back and the guy i spoke to tried the standard reset the signal mess and me unplugging the cable box trick which only ever results in the guide losing all info on all upcoming shows over the next 2 weeks. and that's a pain cause i like to spend time just cruising the guide (and i like to think i'm an atypical guy - oh well).

So of course the customer service agent uses the standard fallback of scheduling a technician appointment. the last time I had to do this, they didn't show for the appointment because it never got scheduled. so this time, i made the guy promise that someone would show up between 6am and 9am. hey i'm awake anyway...

well, 9am rolls around, and no technician. i call Comcast, and guess what?? no appointment in the book! so the customer service agent says let me try to reset the signal... it's like a bad joke. even though i explained that it didn't work yesterday, but wow! this time it worked! stupid Comcast.

They must really want to keep customers as Verizon FIOS is being installed in more and more areas, our area just had it installed, but Verizon isn't quite finished. Honestly, that's the only reason we still have Comcast.

anybody have a fun customer service experience they'd like to share?

WoW Pacifist

as some of you may know, one of my many hobbies is playing a little-known online game called World of Warcraft (herein referred to as WoW). some say it is addicting, a waste of time, etc... i will not argue these points because it is what it is, and everyone gets something different from it. i will say that ANY activity/hobby that detracts from other more important aspects of your life is detrimental and should seriously be looked at. this applies to anything, not just video games. there. done with that.

anyway, this is a game centered around killing creatures, monsters, and other characters to progress further. but because of its scope and utter freedom to ultimately do whatever you want (there are people who create characters to do nothing more than spam chat channels to get you to go to their WoW website and pay them money to progress), some people have been coming up with interesting things to do (as mentioned in previous parenthetical). There is an Auction House in the game that is setup very much like eBay for people in the game to auction off items they find in the game that others may need. Some people play this Auction House like the stock market and corner the market on high-yield items to turn a profit. when i say profit, i mean in-game money, not real money of course. the more gold you have in-game, the better things you can get for yourself.

one new-to-me thing that i've found people doing is being a pacifist in the game and still progressing their character — albeit at a very slow rate. instead of killing creatures or other characters to level-up their character, they complete quests that require them to collect things, or come up with ingenious ways of completing quests without killing things. it seems like a waste of time to me, but it is just another way to take something and make it different and use it in a way that wasn't originally intended. link below for those interested.

http://pacifistundeadpriest.blogspot.com/

i promise i won't bore you with WoW much anymore. :-) maybe i'll make a tanking (WoW term for what i am in-game) blog...