Why There Will Never Be a Miniseries about Rutherford B. Hayes

We don't have HBO, but I wanted to see John Adams, the miniseries based on the David McCullough book that aired earlier this year. This weekend I rented the DVDs, and I just finished watching the series today.

Generally, reviews were very good. There were some criticisms and I had some minor ones myself, but overall I really enjoyed it. Paul Giamatti, who played Adams, was excellent, and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams was even better. I would expect them both to get Emmy nominations later this week.

Almost as good as John Adams was this conversation that I had in the video store on Saturday when I rented the DVDs.

"I haven't seen anybody take these out before," the teenager at the check-out told me. "What's it about?"

"John Adams," I said. "He was the second president."

"Oh. Nobody knows who the second president is." And he laughed at himself, adding, "Maybe that's why nobody took these out yet."

Maybe. Maybe.

My Other Hometown (Summer Photos Day 7 of 69)

It didn't occur to me yesterday, when I was posting about my hometown in Connecticut, that Clare and I had a trip planned to New York today. The juxtaposition (yeah, I know big words) of these posts works pretty well. For nearly a quarter of my life, Manhattan was the home where I lived, worked and went to school. I loved living there and I love going back. When I win the lottery, I'll probably buy an apartment in Manhattan.

On hot summer days when I lived in New York, I'd sometimes "take the boat out." That meant that I was taking the free ride on the Staten Island Ferry to take in the view and maybe some cooler air. Today, even though it was already cool and misting, Clare and I did the same thing. We boarded the ferry at Bowling Green in Manhattan, I pointed out Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, then we got off at Staten Island, got right back in line to board again, and returned to Manhattan—all for the price of nothing. It's the best deal in New York. The picture isn't the best, but on a foggy day on a moving boat the auto focus wasn't giving me any help at all.

After the ferry ride, we grabbed lunch in Little Italy, headed up to Times Square to Clare's favorite Toys R Us (where there's a four-story ferris wheel inside the store but still not a huge selection of Legos), and then to the Ziegfeld Theatre (my favorite movie theater on the planet) where we saw Kit Kittredge: An American Girl which we both liked.

Here are a couple more pictures from the day. I'm pretty sure we'll be down at least once more this summer.

Friday Talent Round-Up

No More Pencils, No More Books...


Finally!!! Clare's last day of first grade is here. I don't know why, but I haven't looked forward to a summer this much since I was a kid. Maybe it's because Clare is such a great age to have fun with, maybe it's because it was such a long winter, or maybe it's because of a tough couple of months earlier this year. Whatever the reason, I'm ready for it...but no, I won't be bringing drinks to Clare. She'll have to fetch her own...and I'll just clean up the mess after her.

Sixty-Nine, Dude

That's sixty-nine as in how many days there are before Clare starts second grade. Since I plan on having fun with Clare (and, yes, getting some work done) I probably won't want to spend a lot of time blogging this summer. But, this blog pretty much needs a kick in the pants and has for some time. That's when I got my big idea (apologies to Pinky Dinky Doo).

It's not such an orginal idea actually. PG at Annoyingly Boring is doing it for a whole year, and Alissa at Life's Little Adventures is great at it. "It" is photographing and posting pictures. Despite not having too much skill with a camera, I plan to post a picture for sixty-nine days to document our summer adventures. My first poor effort (Clare is too washed out) is of Clare walking away from the school bus up above. Check back, okay? I don't want becoming a photo blog (with a few real posts too) to be the death of Clare's Dad (I mean the blog, by the way, not me).

Jack Blacklisted

There have been marketing studies done (I can't find any evidence of them but trust me...really) to show that most young girls will go to movies featuring heroes who are boys (like Peter Pan, Finding Nemo, or Cars) but that boys generally won't go to movies in which girls are the main character (like Cinderella or The Little Mermaid).

I think there's some truth in this, but it also has its limits. I still can't get Clare interested in Star Wars—even after I pushed the princess angle. I also didn't expect her limits to be reached at an animated film directed at kids. But, showing once again that she's all girl, Clare has declared Kung Fu Panda to be a "boy movie" and doesn't want to go.

The reason this is significant? I kind of wanted to go. Can anyone give me a quick review?

Have a great weekend, everyone. And a great summer—it starts at 7:59 EDT tonight.

Hey, You Guyyyyys!!!

This news deserves a special post.

Has everyone seen that PBS is bringing back The Electric Company? There may even be a guest appearance by Rita Moreno. And they'd be nuts to not at least ask Morgan Freeman.

I'm sure the new show won't be anything like it used to be, but I hope it makes it and Clare gives it a chance. I'm all excited thinking that we can actually watch a show directed at her age group and not one for toddlers or pre-teens. But what are the chances that she'd actually want to watch something like that?

Friday Talent Round-Up

Rambling…

It’s been a while since I’ve gone a week without posting…and I don’t even have a vacation to blame it on this time. I’ve been at your blogs though. I’ve been checking out more of the dad and mom blogs in my blogroll. Unfortunately I haven’t commented as much—if I did I could probably spend all day on blogs.

Seeing so many more dad blogs than when I first started blogging about two and a half years ago makes me wish we had a huge master list or website to promote them all. I listed just about every dad blog I could find when I started, but I know there are so many more now. Social sites like Parentricity, the Stay at Home Dads Forum, cre8Buzz, and even Facebook are great for members to include blogs and interact, but I’m still wishing we had one great single site for dad bloggers.

…and Ranting

I told myself I wasn’t going to complain about winter anymore. I probably even made a comment like that on some of your blogs. But this is really getting old. It’s the end of February and temperatures are still like early January. It was two bleeping degrees this morning and there’s more snow coming tonight. If there are any more snow days, Clare really will be in school until the last week of June.

I’ll stop now, but I have one question. Why can’t the extra day in leap year be in the summer?

This Is Comfort?

I’m not so great at cooking or coming up with anything original to make for dinner. Usually I go with the same things week after week. This week, though, Clare’s Mom suggested meatloaf—which is something we’ve probably had only two or three times in the past ten years. My own comfort food is pasta—or macaroni as my Mom’s Italian family calls any kind of pasta.

I knew the general ingredients of meatloaf, but really had no idea what to do other than mush them together. I went over to the Food Network’s food.com and looked for some instruction. I found a recipe that claimed to be easy, but needed a few more ingredients than I had. It looked pretty good though, so I went shopping and got to work.

Here’s where more complaining starts. Am I slow or does everyone take a lot longer to make something than the “prep time” suggests? It may take Tyler Florence twenty minutes to put a meatloaf together, but it took me nearly forty-five.

Still Lost

I also spent some time this week on websites and message boards about Lost. I love how this show answers something and creates so many more questions in the process. How great was last night’s episode, brutha? Anyone else still watching?

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Friday (I Should Just Call It Saturday, Shouldn’t I) Talent Round-Up

Clare’s Movie Review: Hannah Montana

Clare’s Mom and I took Clare and her best friend to see the movie of the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour today. Both girls had the same review and it surprised me—they both were bored. They liked the movie, but wanted more of Hannah and less of Miley. Sorry, Miley, if you want to keep the career alive you might just have to stay Hannah Montana all your life.

Billy Ray always amazes too. No matter what that guy does with his hair it looks bad. In the movie he had kind of a Kristy McNichol shag going on.

I liked the movie. I should say, I guess, that I wasn’t as bored as I expected to be. It did a great job of capturing some of the excitement backstage and on stage at the concert. The girl can put on a show.

Like Daughter, Like Father

We told Clare a few weeks ago that we’d be going to the Hannah Montana movie. And we repeated over and over again that it was the movie we were going to and not the concert. Every few days though, Clare would say something to show that she just didn’t get that we’d only be seeing a movie. Just a few days ago she asked if I could take her backstage. If she hadn’t already, I guess she finally figured it out today.

Clare’s not the only one in the family who’s a little slow. Yesterday, Clare’s Mom got a call from 1-800-CONTACTS with a question about an order she placed online. The conversation ended something like this:

“She’s not home right now. But I can tell her to call you back,” I said.

“That would be great,” was the answer.

“Just give me the phone number,” I said.

“It’s 1-800-CONTACTS.”

“I know where you’re calling from. I just need the phone number,” I shot back.

“Sir, the phone number is 1-800-CONTACTS.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll leave the message,” I said, a little embarrassed.

Embarrassment didn’t make me any smarter though. As soon as I hung up I wrote the number down.

A State Divided

For a small state, Connecticut is divided on a lot of issues. We may be the third smallest in area, but we’re the fourth most densely populated. That and being between New York and Massachusetts gives us Yankees or Nutmeggers (I’m not even sure where that name came from) some diverse opinions.

Some of us live in the New York metropolitan area; others near the Massachusetts border and still others near the Rhode Island shores. Some hard core New Englanders don’t even think of us as part of them—possibly due to the state’s also being considered part of the tri-state area of New York-New Jersey-Connecticut. True, we’re not all cow farmers or clam diggers, but we are New Englanders. A lot of us are even Patriots or Red Sox fans.

Politically, we’re pretty evenly divided too. We’ve got a Republican governor, but the Democrats won the state in the past four presidential elections. (I think the county I live in voted for Bush in 2004 though.) Before that, the Republicans won for five presidential elections in a row. Historically, we’re probably thought of as old boy, old money Republicans in the country’s richest state. In reality, the majority of us are fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We do have some obscenely rich suburbs, but we’ve also got some depressed urban areas. The presidential candidates are actually spending some time here before the primary this Tuesday even though we only have seven electoral votes. It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.

What probably divides us most though, what often pits brother against brother, is sports. Like I said, some of us in Connecticut support Boston teams. Others, especially those of us closer to New York than Boston (I’m almost equidistant, by the way), are fans of the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Knicks or other New York metropolitan teams. It can get ugly sometimes when even in families the support is divided.

So, after all this, where do I stand on this important weekend?

Go, Giants.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Friday(ish) Talent Round-Up

Thanks to the Writers Guild…

…for giving me the time to watch or re-watch some older shows on DVD. This week we’re watching Arrested Development. We also just watched the first season of 30 Rock again. I’m not a big fan of Alec Baldwin personally, but he’s hilarious on this show. Tina Fey is a riot too. She only added commentary to one of last season’s episodes on the DVD, but I’d watch a disc full of those if she made them.

I was just clued in by John at The Disney Blog that Tina Fey is Tinkerbell in this photo ad for Disney’s Year of a Million Dreams campaign. I love everything this woman does.

Thanks to Facebook…

…for hooking me up with a few dad blogging buddies and a couple other dad bloggers that I haven’t read much. I just created a Facebook group that's open to all other dad bloggers. I noticed that the moms had a group, so I figured why shouldn’t we? If you’re a dad blogger on Facebook, look it up and join. If you’re not on Facebook, no pressure, but why not? I just read somewhere (don’t make me look for it again) that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is thirty and forty-somethings. That’s probably because the twenty-somethings and teens were all on there already.

Thanks to Mom…

…for making me obsessed with throwing some things out and saving some pretty unusual things. We’re not rat packers by any sense—I hate having clutter around. But I do have a few boxes filled with things I’ve saved as far back as grade school.

A recent conversation with my Mom showed me where I might be headed.

“Clare’s got four wiggly teeth,” I told her.

“Are they almost ready to fall out?” she asked.

“Just about. The tooth fairy’ll be coming to our house.”

“I’ve still got your baby teeth,” she said. “You want to see them sometime?”

My jaw dropped. I think I’m going to start throwing more out.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

I Should Have Thought of This Years Ago

Clare's never been interested in Star Wars. To her, it was "that movie that Daddy likes," but she's never wanted to see it.

Today I thought of a new angle.

"There's a princess in it," I told her.

"COOL!!!"

She didn't stay interested all the way through, but she watched some of it. It's a start, right?

Channeling Julie Andrews

The Disney Blog posted a video today that had me laughing out loud. (That’s LOL for all you texters.) It helps to know something about High School Musical 2 and The Sound of Music. (I actually met someone in law school who had never heard of The Sound of Music. She went to the University of Chicago, so I wasn't that surprised.) Even Clare thought this was funny.

If you don’t know the shows, check out the blog anyway. It’s got daily news updates about all things Disney.

Christmas Time Is Here

Did anyone else watch A Charlie Brown Christmas tonight? I think we’ve started a new tradition of pairing Charlie Brown with Chinese food. And falling asleep halfway through it.

I know Charlie Brown's a little preachy and corny, but I still like it. For anyone who might prefer a parody of it, check out this version dubbed by the cast of Scrubs a few years back.

Today I also took advantage of fifty degree weather and put up some Christmas decorations outside—a couple of reindeer in the front garden and white lights on evergreen boughs across the front porch.

When we were driving to swimming lessons tonight, Clare pointed out every house that had more colorful, more blinking, and just plain more lights than we do.

“More isn’t always better,” I told her.

“Why?” was all she said back.

Tough one to explain. Anybody want to take a crack at it?

Clare's Movie Review: Enchanted

I’ll be honest. I expected more from this movie. That said, it was pretty great. I really liked it; Clare loved it; and Clare’s Mom says it’s her new favorite. (Patrick Dempsey probably has something to do with that last opinion.)

The animation at the beginning and end of the film isn’t that stunning. I expect more from Disney—especially when they only have about twenty minutes of animation in a full-length movie. Some of the plot seemed recycled too, but it was all with a twist.

For those who don’t know, Enchanted is the story of a princess-to-be who’s pushed through a waterfall in an animated fairy-tale land and ends up in real-life New York City. She’s followed by her prince, a couple of villainous characters, and a chipmunk who can talk in fairy-tale animation but not in our world.

There are nods to classic Disney princesses: poison apples, glass slippers, wicked stepmothers disguised as old hags, witches turning to dragons, and birds and mice who help clean the house and sew clothes. As for the biggest twist, in the end it’s the princess who saves her prince. Enchanted is also a musical and one “showstopper” set in Central Park was especially great.

Here’s what Clare had to say about Enchanted:

Clare’s Dad: Did you like the movie?

Clare: Yeah.

CD: Who was your favorite character?

C: Pip. [The chipmunk.]

CD: Not the princess?

C: Her too.

CD: Do you still want to be a princess?

C: Can we go to New York?!

I think my little girl’s priorities are changing—she was more excited by New York than the princess. I should be fine as long as she doesn’t expect me to take her to Bergdorf.

Midweek Madness

Clare’s Mom is away for business again this week—actually just until tomorrow. (But wait! I’ve just heard from her and she’ll be home tonight.) Even though I’ve gotten nothing accomplished, it’s been kind of a busy week.

Monday was a school holiday. What better way to spend Veterans Day than with a SpongeBob Squarepants marathon, right? Aside from maybe the History Channel, I doubt anything on television acknowledged that Veterans Day was observed on Monday. Does any kids’ show even mention holidays like this anymore?

On Tuesday, Clare stayed home from school. I wasn’t sure if she was faking, but she told me that her stomach hurt. She didn’t want any breakfast and was holding her stomach even when she didn’t know I was watching. So I let her get away with it. She stayed on the couch most of the morning, but was jumping around by noon.

We cracked open a few of Clare’s birthday presents this week. (Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes by the way.) With eighteen kids at a party a couple weeks ago and a family party this past weekend—where she didn’t even get any clothes as presents—Clare is pretty set for toys for the rest of the year. I’m sure she’d disagree though.

One of the games we opened up was Sorry! I don’t remember ever having this game, but I think I played it a few times with friends. I wanted to take a quick look at the rules and they were pretty daunting—we’re talking more rules than a U.N. summit. Once we got going though, it was pretty easy—and pretty easy for Clare to win. One thing hit me though—when I first picked up one of the game pieces I had this weird flashback about a Robin Hood game that I had as a kid with the same kind of pieces. It was like touching the piece brought back a memory of something I hadn’t thought of for about thirty years. Does that ever happen to anyone else? Or am I going crazy?

Clare went back to school today. After school, I had a conference with her teacher and got her first report card of first grade. There’s room for improvement when it comes to staying focused and paying attention—but even when she looks like she’s drifting off somewhere she still knows what’s going on and can answer a question that the teacher didn’t think Clare heard. That’s probably one of the most frustrating kinds of students. At least she’s not as crazy as her old man.

Friday Talent Round-Up

Welcome Home, Clare’s Mom

Clare’s Mom comes home today. Clare and I survived the week. We ate out a couple times—that was easier than cooking for just Clare and me. We also drank Hershey syrup straight from the bottle, stayed up late, and ate too much. (In unrelated healthy news, I went to the gym twice this week after not going for months. I'm determined to be in better shape by forty—so I've got seven months.)

I’ll be glad to have Clare’s Mom back. We missed her.

Notes from Watching TV

Clare has taken to ordering up episodes of Higglytown Heroes after dinner. A recent hero was a referee. Dentists and lawyers can’t be too far behind.

Has anyone noticed that on Friday and Saturday nights TV commercials are aimed at young parents and senior citizens? Are advertisers suggesting that these two groups keep the same hours?

We Did Send Her to Catholic School After All

I caught Clare singing to herself this week. It sounded like Farmer in the Dell, but the words weren’t right. When I asked her to sing louder, I realized that she was singing the Ten Commandments to the tune of Farmer in the Dell. And I caught her at Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery. I was too scared to ask her if she even knew what adultery meant.

Search Party

I’ve had a few interesting searches show up in the stats recently. Here are some of my favorites.

Kindergarten outfits: See something you like? Clare will be very excited that she’s a trend setter.

Orgo sucks: No f-ing kidding. It made me realize I didn't want to be a doctor bad enough to have to deal with science.

Education about eyeballs: Nothing to see here. I’m pretty sure you need orgo to be an ophthalmologist too.

Hong Kong Phooey catch phrases: I’ve never mentioned Hong Kong Phooey in the blog, as far as I remember, but it’s cool to be in this search.

European costume parades: Yeah…I’ve been meaning to blog about this too. You’re just a little early. Keep reading.

Monster flounder: This one stymied me at first too. But he’s not such a monstrous little guy.

Staying home gaps in resume man: I hear you, man, I’m dealing with it too.

Email preschoolers: I don’t recommend it. You’ll wait years for an intelligible reply.

Envoy SUV feminine: I hope not. I gave it a boy’s name.

High school musical back round: This is the often-missed scene where the basketball team sings Row Your Boat just before the big game.

Getting away from suburban life: Got any ideas?

Saint Dymphna costume: How about a cloak and a Harp? Yeah, I mean the beer.

And my favorite Google search ever:

Preppy porn: Thank you, J. Crew swimsuit issue.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Meet the new Jan Brady

Clare's been trying on her Halloween pirate costume. Here's a sneak peak at the wig...the one that Clare thinks she needs so she isn't a blond pirate. It works I guess...as long as she doesn't wear it to Lucy Winters' party.

Friday (Evening) Talent Round-Up

Big Date Week

Clare’s Mom was away overnight for work on Thursday, so Clare and I had a date night out. I took her to one of her favorite restaurants—Chez Ronald. (One of the fun facts on her Happy Meal bag was that astronauts grow up to two inches in space. That might explain why Lance Bass wanted to go and Major Tom didn’t want to come back.)

Tonight, Clare went to kids’ night at the YMCA and Clare’s Mom and I went out. We went to a great new restaurant (it’s actually been open almost a year, but it was new to us). I could get used to having a couple dates every week—if only I could get Clare to pick up the tab once in a while.

Confessions of a TV Addict

Many new and returning shows had their season premieres on TV this week. Since I’m trying to cut back, there are only a few that I watched—Ugly Betty, The Office, How I Met Your Mother and Law & Order: SVU are some of my favorites. A new one I liked was Dirty Sexy Money. I'll throw a real confession in here too—I may be the only TV junkie who doesn’t like Heroes. I watched a couple episodes last season and just never got interested. Am I the only one?

Blog Burnout

I don’t know if it was because I felt sick earlier in the week or something else, but my interest in blogging hit a low over the past few days. It may just be because I’m spending more time working on other things. There’s no immediate danger that I’ll stop blogging, but I may slow down—especially while I focus my efforts on work. Anyone else get the blog burnout occasionally? I doubt it’s just me.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Troubled Tuesday

I’m not really troubled. I’m whiny. But Whiny Tuesday is a lousy title. So is Troubled Tuesday for that matter, but it’s the best I’ve got.

For the past two days, I’ve felt awful—not so bad when I wake up, but then a miserable headache on the right side of my head. I think it’s a sinus thing—I probably need a good decongestant. The naps are working out a little too though—it’s probably just the lying down that makes it better.

Christmas catalogs are coming already. Some of the same ones whose mailing lists I tried getting off of last year. Aren’t these companies interested in saving trees and money? When I want something from them I go right to their websites without looking at their catalogs anyway.

I went over to MyBlogLog yesterday. So I now I need a Yahoo! account to sign in? I must have account names and passwords at over fifty different sites—that I can remember—it’s probably a lot more than that. And I don’t have exactly the same names and passwords everywhere—to try to have some kind of security. Can't we just sign in with our eyeballs or something already?

Marcel Marceau died this past weekend. I’ve got nothing to say about that. Brett Somers from one of my favorite game shows died just over a week ago too. Now she can join Gene Rayburn and Charles Nelson Reilly in __________.

Obviously I don’t have much to say about anything today. I just figured that rather than bore you away with no post, I’ll drive you away with a boring post. It may be time to find some ridiculous internet quiz and post the results. Better yet, why don’t you do one and post your results? Let me know in a comment and I’ll match whatever quizzes readers do and post my results later in the week.

Wha’ choo talkin’ ‘bout, Dad?

Now that Clare is almost six, I’m beginning to be concerned about her TV watching habits. It’s not that she’s watching too much TV—okay, maybe sometimes she is—it’s that she may not be watching the right things. I’m not talking about her watching Jerry Springer or Showtime—which she isn’t—I’m talking about her missing some of the classics.

When I was kid in the 70s, there were about seven stations to watch, maybe twenty once we got cable. If I turned on the TV after school or on the weekends, at least one of my choices was sure to be an old episode of I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island, or The Brady Bunch—and I’d watch it. Today, with so much great kids’ TV, Clare sticks to Disney, Nickelodeon or PBS Kids. Not a bad thing, but…

Because Clare and I are both fans of Kim Possible, Clare gets the joke if I say “Booya!” If I say, “Hicka bicka boo,” she answers, “Hoo-sha!” But will Clare, or anyone in her generation, know many of the classic characters, scenes and catch phrases of TV? I only had about twenty years of classics to catch up on—which repeats generously provided to me. But Clare, she’s missed half a century of cultural references already.

If Clare breaks a vase and I say, “Mom always said, ‘Don’t play ball in the house,’” will she get the joke? Or will she wonder when Mom said that?

Will Clare ever understand the significance of Mayberry, 1313 Mockingbird Lane, or a three hour tour? Will she ever look for Gopher on a cruise to Puerto Vallarta? If I point to the sky and shout, “De plane! De plane!” will she look at me like I’ve lost it?

If I call someone a meathead, say “Stifle it, Edith” or “Sit on it, Potsie,” will Clare wonder who the heck these people are? “Up your nose with a rubber hose” would probably put the same confused look on her face.

If I clutch my chest and yell, “I’m comin’, Elizabeth” will Clare laugh or just wonder what to do? If she asks if I really need help, saying “Wha’ choo talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” won’t clear things up.

Will Clare ever know what Vitameatavegamin is? Will she ever sing “California here we come” like the Ricardos and Mertzes when she’s crossing the George Washington Bridge?

If I jump through the car window will Clare think “General Lee?” Or will she wonder when it was exactly that I lost my mind?

Clare may never get it if I shout “Dyn-o-mite!” or “Norm!” She’ll wonder who Norm is. She won’t even get the reference if someone calls me “Derwood.” She won’t even understand “G’night, John Boy.”

“Same bat time, same bat channel?” It won’t mean anything to her. “Five six seven eight?” She’ll never follow that with “Schlemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated.”

And, even though the reference is now only a little over a decade old, I should probably cancel my plans to go to her high school in twelve years, raise my fist, and shout, “Donna Martin graduates!”

Even “M-I-C (See you real soon.) K-E-Y (Why? Because we like you.)” isn’t used on Disney anymore. (That was the right answer to Friday’s question, by the way. Fridays on the original Mickey Mouse Club was Talent Round-Up Day.)

What do you think? Will some of these characters and catch phrases one day be long forgotten? Or will our kids eventually understand the references? Do you remember any other great ones and still use them? Do your kids know other ones?

With a generation between us, they’ll probably always be “off by that much.”

Goodbye, Farewell and Boo-ya!

I'm a television junkie. It’s a sickness that I’ve written about before. I’ll watch almost anything—except Oprah or shopping networks—on just about any channel. When a series’ final episode is on, I’ll sometimes watch it even if I haven’t watched the show. In 1980, I had to know who shot J.R. even though I’d never seen Dallas before that. On May 22, 1995—which I pinpointed thanks to the power of the Internet—I had no means of recording television and tried to watch the season finale of Melrose Place, a Laverne and Shirley reunion, and the series finale of Blossom all at the same time. I warned you it was a sickness.

Lately, I haven’t been so bad. I’ll still watch almost anything, but there are only a few shows that I really follow. And I won’t bother watching just any final or “special” episode of a show I haven’t seen before.

This weekend was different. This past weekend—thanks to a preview on Disney on Demand—we said goodbye to Kim Possible.

Kim is the first show that Clare, Clare’s Mom and I have all really enjoyed together. Clare’s Mom and I have even watched some episodes without Clare. (She thinks that Ron Stoppable is the TV character most like me since Chandler Bing.)

It wasn’t until the last year that we became fans, but we easily caught up on back episodes and plotlines. We really benefited from fans saving the show from cancellation a season earlier too. Now, after only one year of watching new episodes, our favorite show has ended. (I won’t give details because it hasn’t aired on the Disney Channel yet. A series marathon runs from today at noon until the final episode this Friday night.) I’d like to see a new Kim Possible movie or a spin-off starring the Tweebs (Hicka Bicka Boo?), but that’s unlikely.

So—here’s another one for the baby book—Clare has watched her first final episode. That’s the sitch.

Friday Talent Round-Up

The Beach Boys Should Have Been from Connecticut

Thanks to a conversation with L.A. Daddy and some research at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, I’ve learned that the average summer ocean temperature in southern New England is actually a couple degrees warmer than it is in Los Angeles. I guess I won’t complain about the weather here anymore…so much…in the summer anyway…except for this hundred percent humidity we’ve had all week. Okay….I’ll still complain. But the fact that we have warmer water is pretty cool, isn’t it?

Break Out the Baby Book…and the Parental Controls

Clare just passed another milestone. She ordered TV on demand for the first time by herself. And I’ve never showed her how to do it; I don’t think Clare’s Mom has either. Good thing she only watched Kim Possible.

Five…four…three…

Only five more days until Clare starts first grade. So we’ll be enjoying the weekend. If I see even a hint of the sun tomorrow and the temperature crosses 70, we’re going to the beach.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Friday Talent Round-Up

I can’t believe it’s Friday again already. Clare has only one full week left before school starts and then our summer together’ll be over.

Like a few of the rest of you, I’m in a summer slump—there’s not much to blog about and I’d rather be outside. I haven’t even posted at other blogs I write at in a while. (So what do you do when that happens? Start another new blog, duh. More on that in a couple weeks.)

Thanks for all the blogiversary and anniversary wishes over the past week. There’s nothing like an anniversary or birthday to bring out some lurking readers. Keep the comments coming.

As a gardening update, we’re getting lots of little carrots now—not bad for seeds planted in a pot. We’ve got a watermelon that’s getting bigger every day too—I wasn’t sure it would ever make it this far.

Enjoy the weekend, everyone. If you’re having a High School Musical sleepover—or getting one of those wake up calls from Sharpay or Chad—I hope we’ll get to read about it. Clare’s not enough into that yet to have a party or get a call—but it’s only a matter of time. She already wants to go to a Hannah Montana concert. We’ve been to a Wiggles concert, but five—six when the concert happens—is still too young for this. It is, isn’t it?