Blue Curaçao

We got a cool mixed drink recipe app for the iPad and now we're on a Blue Curaçao kick. Just thought I'd warn you.

Killing Giants, And A Wife Or Two

I've been reading to Zach at bedtime since he was a baby. Only the books have changed. He likes a wide variety of subjects, from fantasy to adventure and even classics like "Old Man and the Sea".

Currently we're plowing our way story by story through a collection of old children's fairy tales. You've no doubt heard the names of these stories, but if your only exposure to them is through the syrupy censorship of Disney, you've never really experienced them. Most of these old yarns seem to be aimed at scaring the living shit out of children to keep them from wandering into the woods. Disobeying parents also typically results in a gruesome death.

We just finished "Jack The Giant Killer", which I think is an early form of "Jack and the Beanstalk", as the two stores (both of which are in this book) seem to share basic elements. If "Jack The Giant Killer" was ever made into a movie, it would basically be a hack and slash type gore-fest. The protagonist acquires a cloak of invisibility and a sword of sharpness and goes around the countryside killing giants in the most unholy and sadistic ways, severing their heads and sending them to King Arthur as proof of his great accomplishments. There is a minor subplot about a local duke and his wife who befriend Jack and beg him not to get himself into more danger, but this just coaxes Jack to lure a particularly nasty two-headed giant over to the Duke's castle and slay it in front of a few dozen astonished dinner guests. This is the giant who famously says "Fa Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman." right before Jack dispatches him (them?). And that's pretty much the plot. Jack's huge advantage of invisibility and a sharp weapon pretty much guarantees he's going to win every battle with ease.

Other tales we've read in this book include "The Girl with the Golden Locks", which doesn't resemble Goldilocks at all, and "The Golden Goose" that does not lay golden eggs. And then there was "Bluebeard", a tale about a creepy guy with, you guessed it, a blue beard, who murders his wives and stuffs them into a closet. He gives his new young wife keys to the house and specifically tells her to never go into that closet under the stairs and then goes out of town. So you can imagine what happens. She unlocks the closet, finds the gory bodies, Bluebeard comes home and finds out she was in the closet, and, well, you'll just have to read the ending. If you dare. That particular story, with it's very graphic depiction of dismemberment and murder, scared the bejeezus out of Zach. Bluebeard was supposedly modeled after Gilles de Rais, go read about him too. If you dare.

It is enlightening to read these original tales and realize that long before television and video games, our kids were subjected to large heaping servings of violence and death on a daily basis. And right at bedtime too.

Welcome to 37 MPG

I got my Focus yesterday! Love it, love it. It's much smaller than the Five-Hundred it replaces, but also much tighter and way better looking.

Heather: "You have a car with COLOR now!!!"

And despite the 33 MPG rating for highway, and the fact that it's not broken in yet, I just got 37 MPG on my way to work today. In mixed driving! That's a number I can live with. And the whole thing, loaded up and taxed out, was less than $20 grand.

The Bluetooth phone integration is my favorite thing...I can now fully appear to other drivers to be talking to myself in this car.

It's very spunky for a 2.0L 4-banger too. It's not going to come close to my Mustangs of yesteryear, but this is a new car for a new era in my life.

All around, I think I made a good choice, especially in the land of stratospheric gas prices. I like seeing: "450 miles to empty".

And the 7-color ambient lighting is way cool.

Kuler

Adobe has a very cool online application for choosing harmonious color schemes. If you are anywhere near the time for decorating your house, check it out. You can get lost in color theory and you'll finally see how the best decorators come up with those color schemes.

And cooler still, you can upload a picture and it will extract color harmonies from it, in case you want to redecorate your whole house to match that photo you bought from me :)

Uniform Compliance

I'm wearing my Best Buy uniform today. Blue polo shirt and beige Dockers. If I were to actually go into Best Buy today, I would be assailed by customers wanting to know where the iPods are located, or how much a 500GB hard drive costs.

That is why I won't be going into Best Buy today.

I also avoid Target when I wear a red polo.

Re-Focusing

Ahh, gone are the wonderful days of the V8 Mustang, a distant memory. The current gas situation combined with my high-mileage driving loops have finally stuck me in the back to the point of surrender. I ordered my new car the other day, and this one was chosen for its MPG, not its BHP.

It's a Focus, four-banger, and it gets 33 MPG. This alone will save us over $100 a month. But it's also an inexpensive car, and the payment is another $150 reduction over the bulky, driveway-colored Five-Hundred.

Zach loves blue and I have been promising to get our next car in his favorite color. So Vista Blue it is. I even splurged on Auto Trans so HB can drive it and multi-colored mood lighting so I can feel just a little bit funky while I putt down the street saving gas.

Incidentally, I have decided to do an occasional series of posts on cars that I have owned in my life. Cars are such a big part of Americana, they are very well integrated into our lives, almost like family. I want to remember some of the quirks and good times I've had with cars. Watch for the first one soon.