But what was up with Blue Man Group?  Talk about pointless stuntcasting. And what the hell did Dr. Cox do to his hair? How in the world is Jordan letting him walk around like that?

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Katherine, telling me about her day at school.

"Daddy, I painted under a table at school today."

?? "You mean you painted on a table?"

"Yah, I painted under the table."

"Are you saying under or on? You mean on a table?"

"No, under."

"Well that's silly, how do you paint under a table?"

"You take your paper and your paints, and you put them on the floor and you lay down on your stomach so that your feet stick out the end, and then you paint Chinese."

Well, that sentence took an interesting turn right there are at the end. "You painted Chinese?"

"Yes I did."

"Chinese letters? Which characters did you paint?"

"No, silly, not letters. I just painted a chinese building."

"What's a chinese building look like?" She begins flailing her painting hand around in space, as if I can imagine what she's trying to visualize for me. "How do you know what Chinese buildings look like?"

"I learned it from watching tv."

"What show taught you that?" Then it hit me. "Ohh! Sagwa, the Siamese Cat, right? You saw Chinese buildings on that show?"

"Yeah, Sagwa showed me."

Mystery solved. Thought I would like to see what her Chinese building looks like.

Opera Mini is quite easily the best browser out there for small mobile devices.  I've just installed the newest version on my v360 with no difficulties at all.  It's such a treat to work with an interface that's actually designed for the phone right from the start, and not to constantly have to remember whether to press the 5 button, or select, or menu or what.

I continue to be quite pleased by my purchase.  I've got a great browser now.  I can read my gmail.  Plus, I use it as an image wallet instead of constantly rotating through pictures in my regular wallet and getting them all creased and faded.  And hey, who cares about the backlash over customized ring tones, I like being able to use any mp3 I want.  Beats yet another techno-mix.

Coming soon:  I've also sent some video podcasts directly to the phone, so now whenever we've got some time to kill with the kids I can let them watch episodes of Dora, Diego and Blue's Clues without having to carry around my iPod.  When I get directions setup for how to do that, I'll post.

Took the kids (4 and 2) to see Happy Feet this weekend.  IMAX style, which I explained to Katherine simply as, "A zillion times bigger than the movie screen you're thinking of - the biggest movie screen in the world."  It was a pretty easy call from the minute I saw the commercials -- just a big ol' mess of animated, dancing and singing penguins.  Perfect kids movie.

Ummm.... not so much.

Yes, it's an animated dancing and singing penguin movie.  But it's also lots and lots of other things.  It's long.  It's scary.  And it's so crazy over the top political in its environmental message that I'm pretty sure I saw an animated Al Gore in there somewhere near the end.  We get it.  Humans screw up the food chain.  And it will take a miracle, such as thousands of penguins tap dancing, to make people realize that.  Perhaps that second part of the message wasn't what the producers intended, but it comes with the story.

Although the movie is only a little longer than the typical kids movie (I think it still comes in at under 100 minutes), man did they shove alot of movie in here.  It's as if somebody read the basic 36 plots and tried to shove them all in.  He's different from the crowd, so he is shunned.  Doesn't get to play in any penguin games, so to speak.  Check.  His dad wants him to be what society wants him to be, rather than to be himself, so there's got to be the falling out and the reconciliation.  Check.  (This part was the weakest of all the stories, by the way).  He's got to get the girl.  This was so obvious that they didn't even make much of a conflict out of it, it was obvious from the beginning.  And he's got to go on a journey to save everyone.  This was the part where it got scary and, quite frankly, depressing.  Again I say, "We get it. Humans bad.  Animals innocent victims."  It's hard to say "hero's journey" while talking about animated penguins, but really, if you see it, you'll see what I mean. 

Here's a comparison.  Did you see the Spielberg A.I. movie?  Remember how it just never really ended?  How it just kept getting darker and darker and you were never really sure if it was just going to stop on a downer note, or if it was going to circle back around?  This movie's got a bunch of that toward the end.  I'm not saying whether it circles back around or not, lest I be accused of spoiling it.

Is it for kids?  Maybe a little older than mine. Mine recognize the penguins, they did the plastic toys you can get at Burger King, they watch the commercials and so on.  Did they understand the movie?  Eh. The 2yr old certainly didn't.  The 4yr old found it mostly scary.  But then again she finds all movies scary, including Strawberry Shortcake.  She does not like bad guys.  And this movie does have a bunch of them.  There's a boatload of scenes where the penguins are chased by scary predators (during such scenes I'm turning to my wife and saying, "Oh come on, do they really have to do this again??")

Overall, was it enjoyable?  Cute.  Not as good as I'd hoped.  The direction is pretty lousy, if you can say that about an animated movie.  Lots of music, though you get the feeling that you never really hear a song from beginning to end.  Lots of dancing, but never really any focus on anything other than feet moving so fast you pretty much can't tell that they're moving, before cutting away to a scene of thousands of them doing the same thing.  The "final battle", if you can call it that, between the young penguins and the old guard was actually pretty entertaining - the old penguins do this sort of baritone chant to the "Great Guin", trying to drown out the music that the young ones are making, and it blends nicely.

This is getting too long.  It was a nice, typical Thanksgiving movie.  Glad we saw it.  Wish it was better.

The girls are now playing that game where they get to "be" everyone. You know, when watching the Macy's Parade and seeing a dance number and they take turns saying, "I'm the purple one!" or "I'm the pink one!"

So last night we're reading a Beauty and the Beast princess story, starring Belle. "I'm Belle," says Elizabeth (who is 2, for those that don't usually follow along).

"Daddy," whispers Katherine (4), "I'll be Belle too. But don't tell Elizabeth, she doesn't think that both of us can be Belle."

"You not Belle!" shouts Elizabeth, who obviously heard.

"Who can Katherine be?" I ask, trying to be peacemaker not simply because I'm physically in the middle of them.

"I Belle!" says Elizabeth. "Katherine, you can be the Beast!"

Ah, love. Elizabeth finds this hysterical, Katherine not so much.

Over the weekend, Katherine is trying to use logic to determine what television show Brendan (6months) might like to watch. Since, after all, he is a boy and he might not like the same shows that girls like. Katherine decides that he might like "Manny", or "Bob the Builder." This is because, to quote Katherine, "Because Daddy, Brendan is so small, I don't know what he wants to be when he grows up. He could be a hunter, or maybe a hair dresser...."

"Hopefully not a hair dresser," said Daddy.

"Why not a hair dresser?"

"Oh, just one of Daddy's jokes that you're not supposed to get, sweetheart."

Our favorite quotable TV show is set to premiere soon, on November 30. Apparently Blue Man Group will make a guest appearance.

I don't really care about Blue Man Group (saw them twice, a million years ago), I just wanted a reason to post another story about the Scrubs season premiere :).

In what turned out to be not so big a surprise at all, Emmitt Smith wins Dancing with the Stars.  From the very beginning of the show, Mario Lopez was the clear favorite, Emmitt one of the long shots.  They cast some sort of athlete every year -- Evander Hollyfield, Jerry Rice, and now Emmitt -- only Emmitt was clearly the best of them.  By judging both final dance competitions identically (both Mario and Emmitt received a 59 combined on three dances) the judges basically turned it into a popularity contest.  Mario was probably the better dancer.  But the audience liked Emmitt more.  He smiled more.  He had more fun. 

I think most importantly, though, is that the audience liked Cheryl better than they liked Karina.  Cheryl's the champ from last year.  People know her.  She also looked...well, nicer.  Every week Kerry would commented that she just didn't liked Karina's face.  She looked mean, like she was too competitive and wasn't having a very good time. 

So, there you go.  One of the token athletes finally won it.  It turned out better than I expected, really, from what I originally saw the list.  Jerry Springer was actually great to watch.  Sure he was the comedy act, but in a good way.  The whole "waltz and my daughter's wedding" thing was nice, and when he got all choked up when it was finally time for him to leave, he showed some real class.

So why oh why do the producers have to keep fixing the final show?  During the first season everybody screamed fix when Kelly Monaco, nearly eliminated in the first week, came all the way back to get a perfect 30 score in the final week, even though she tripped a few times. They did it again this season.  It's like they gathered in a room and said, "Ok, how can we make the last show end up a high note?"  You could have called that 59 for both dancers in your sleep.  I mean, really -- Emmitt gets a 9 from Bruno for a shaky lift in the last dance, but Mario's "Ok, now I put Karina across here, pause, now I lift her up, pause, now she puts her hands down, pause..." lift was supposedly perfect, and the best dance of the season?  Nope, not buying it.  The excuses the judges found to take away points were too forced for me. Somebody told them "Ok, Len, you find some reason to take a point from Emmitt, and Bruno, you find some reason to take a point from Mario."  I suppose it makes for a better finale, but it's just so obvious it's a little insulting.

Got a message on the company email yesterday that there's going to be a movie filming on our street and in the building next store, so be prepared for the traffic and detours and so on.  Turns out that this movie is The Game Plan, starring The Rock.  How cool is that?  I wandered downstairs today for lunch (nice that it is 60+ degrees outside) and yeah, they're shooting a movie all right.  Just like you see...well, in the movies. Lots of big spotlights, and people carrying around what look like posterboards with tinfoil on them.  We can't get anywhere near the action, of course, but the crowds are positioned so that you can get a glimpse.  I didn't get to see him (yet), but apparently others have, as I heard some conversation like "Can you see him?  He's sitting in the front seat of the car.  There, he just got out, that's him..."

What reaallllllly annoys me is that according to the trivia for the movie, just last week they were filming in my own hometown!  Argh. The Rock was wandering around my home town and I missed it.  That's annoying.  Surely that would have merited a sick day from work.  After all you can hardly expect North Andover to draw the same sort of crowd that downtown Boston does.

Didn't he just make a football movie?

Update: It's funny how different audiences see things. I'm in a meeting, there's a pause while we wait for some people, and I toss out, "So, did anybody go downstairs to see The Rock? He's shooting a movie."

Lady across the table looks interested, but kind of shrugs off the reference with, "I don't know who that is. Who else is in it?"

"Kyra Sedgewick," I say.

"Oh my god I love her!" she says, and begins chatting excitedly with the woman next to her about this woman's movies.

All I know about Kyra Sedgewick is that she's Kevin Bacon's wife, and I sat across the row from her on a plane once. One of those moments to kick yourself, because the entire flight I kept wondering, "Is that Kyra Sedgewick?" but not having the guts to ask. She was with two kids. Getting off the plane she even had trouble with her luggage and I should have been a gentleman and offered to help lug it, but I didn't. I think I assumed that when she walked off the plane there'd be people waiting for her or something. Instead I went home, went online and looked her up, and sure enough that was her - the description of the two kids matched perfectly. So now I tell people that my Kevin Bacon number is 2. :)

Sometimes we all have our days. Just got back from the worst vacation I've ever had, which culminated in packing the 5 members of my family into a single hotel room for the evening. Nothing quite like going to bed for the night at 6:30pm, afraid to even turn on the television for fear of waking one of them up and setting off a chain reaction.

During the weekend, Katherine got a "princess puppet" from Grammie and Papa. During the confusion of changing hotels, it was misplaced. She kept trying to dig through the bags looking for it, and I kept telling her to leave the bags alone, there was enough chaos as it was, and that we would be sure to find the puppet in the morning.

This morning she came up to me and said, "Daddy, later are we gonna find that puppet?"

And I said, and I am so proud of myself in this moment :-/, "Katherine, if you mention that puppet one more time I am going to throw it out the window. You've already asked me about the puppet, and I already told you that I promised that we would find the puppet. Now don't say puppet anymore."

To which Katherine responded, ever so calmly and patiently, "Ok. But Daddy? I didn't say puppet. I said later are gonna see Grammie and Papa?"

Oh. I feel big. :-/

Elizabeth seems to be at a "Love it" stage. And by that I don't mean that she's telling everybody she loves them. She loves stuff. She goes around the house looking at things and saying, "Izzat you coat, Daddy? I love your coat" or "Izzat Katherine's new toothbrush? Katherine, I love your new toothbrush." I have to remind myself that it only gets more fascinating from here. The other night I was reading her a book before bed, and the phone began to ring. Mind you, the phone is three rooms away, so I figured I'd let the machine get it. Elizabeth wiggles away from the book and starts climbing down from the bed. "I be right back, Daddy!" she says. "Where are you going?" I ask. "I be right back," she says. "I get the phone." Sure enough she walks down the hall into the bedroom, gets the phone, and brings it back to me. It has long since stopped ringing, but I go through the charade of answering it because it was just too cute.

Katherine, meanwhile, has begun spelling on her own, although don't tell her that or she'll freak out and stop doing it. As I cleaned the kitchen last night she sat at her doodlepad and would say "How do you spell Mommy, Daddy? What's the first letter." I'd say, "Well, sound it out, what's the first sound?" And she'd say "mmmmm....M!" And before you knew it, with no more coaching from me, she'd spelled the whole word, either from sound from memory, I'm not sure which. She hasn't quite mastered spacial planning, let, and often the first 2 letters of the word will take up the entire paper while the rest have to find space wherever they can. This is particularly charming when she spells her name, which is a very long name with lots of letters, none of which feels in the least obligated to line up next to its brothers. So while she does in fact get down a recognizable version of every letter, it looks like alphabet soup. I love it.

Rumor has it that Brendan is rolling over on his own now, though I haven't seen it yet. So we're playing that relatively cruel game where you shake a toy in his face and then place it deliberately out of his reach to see if he'll stretch for it and roll over. So far, nothing, just a frustrated 6month old wondering why Daddy got so mean. :) He's also teething, which means he's gone schizophrenic on us. His only moods are big toothless grinning at everything and everyone, or screaming himself purple. The latter usually happens at about 3:30 in the morning. Why couldn't we get one of the kids that wakes himself up because he's got the giggles? Oh well.

Sysadmin: "Your code is throwing a null pointer exception."

Me: "Scheisse!"

QA Guy: "I didn't know you spoke German."

Me: "And I forgot that you did."

Quick and simple, Monique goes home this week. It was pretty obvious, really. Mayyybe there was a slim chance for Emmitt (but look at the following he obviously has!) or even Joey, who was in the bottom two a few weeks back. Shame, really, but at least she went out on a good note. The stuff she was doing was pretty hard. And she got her 10s.

But did she have to be so annoying in the confessional booth? I deserved a 10 for my stage dive! I deserved a 10 for my backward flippy thingie! I deserved a ten for squeezing myself into this dress! I got my 10 this week but I don't care no mo!

Right now Mario is well ahead of everybody else, if you go entirely on judges scoring and entertainment value. But it's at this point that fanbase is the most important. It's quite possible that Emmitt could knock one of the others out.

At 4 and 2, Katherine and Elizabeth might well be at perfect Halloween age. They are very excited to dress up, and look forward to the holiday for weeks on end. Any sort of parties or other opportunity to dress up and show off are very exciting.

When it comes time for actual trick or treating, Katherine starts out strong, walking from house to house and doing a very good job of ringing doorbells, saying "Trick or Treat", only taking the offered amount of candy, and then saying "Thank you." This lasts for maybe an hour before we start hearing, "My bag is getting too heavy to carry, I think it's time to go home now." I know that very soon we will reach the day when she pulls out a map of our entire block and all surrounding streets, checking off each house as we go to make sure we don't miss a single one. But at this age, we actually have to drag her (luckily we had a wagon!) to the last 3-4 houses that are between us and home. Seems like a waste to walk right past houses that are all decorated with people standing in the doors ready to give out the treats. Katherine's not whining or screaming or anything, I mean, god, we wouldn't literally drag the child from house to house just so Daddy can load up on mini Reese's cups. She just spends the last few saying "Ok, is this the last one? Ok, just one more, and then we can go home."

Elizabeth was doing equally well, walking up steps and saying "Trick or Treat" and "Thank you." Her idea of "offered amount of candy", however, seemed to be "As long as you're holding the bowl in my reach I'm going to keep taking pieces out of it." Keep in mind that, barring M&Ms, Elizabeth does not actually have any candy at all, so this whole adventure is more like "Pick a color and shape that looks interesting." She does very well until.....the dog. Just the other day Elizabeth had a "doggy scare me" moment, so we're not doing dogs right now. For the rest of the night I had a tiny 2yr old Dora latched onto me like a howler monkey, saying over and over, "No like doggy, daddy. Doggy scare me. No doggies." Which is cute for a little while, but when she doesn't think you're listening she'll pull your face around so she makes eye contact just so you're clear on the whole "no doggies" thing.

And can you believe that there was one lady who not only let her dog run free, but let it jump up and lick the kids? I mean, is this lady completely stupid? Why not just offer them spoonfuls of peanut butter right out of the jar and see which kids are allergic? Surely it's a smarter move to keep the animals away from the kids if you don't know how kids are going to react. Since every other house with dogs did exactly that, I'm going to say this lady was in the minority. Luckily it didn't seem to freak out Elizabeth too much, who actually wanted to touch the dog. But when the next house rolled around we were back to "Doggie scare me Daddy, no doggies."

Brendan just sort of hung out in his Bjorn thingie. I was amazed at the amount of people who offered him candy. The child is 5 months old. He's got exactly 1 tooth. No, he can't have an Almond Joy.

Speaking of which, who are the people still giving out Almond Joy and Mounds? Do any little kids like those? When I was little, I gave them to my dad. Last night, as we went through Katherine's candy pile, I gave them to... my dad. I still don't like the things. I will, however, snag the Snickers when I spot them.

Candy counting was interesting. It was very important to Katherine to count all of her pieces. When I emptied the bag for her she was upset with me, she wanted to do that. Turns out she had something like 36 pieces of candy, which is fairly moot because we just dump hers and her sisters into a big pile anyway.

But then came the "Which ones do I like" pile. There will come an age, I am sure, when the default answer to that question is "If I've never seen it I will assume that I like it unless it turns out to be gross." Katherine right now is in ultra conservative "I only eat what I've eaten before" mode. So she picks out the M&Ms, and the Smarties (good score on whoever was giving out Smarties. Love those.) and the Hershey bars. Anything with peanut butter she shrugs off. All the fruity sugary stuff (like skittles) goes to one edge of the table to ultimately end up in the trash. Then comes the explaining of each piece that Katherine does not recognize. Somehow I translated Kit Kat as "Like a Hershey bar, with a cracker in the middle. Kinda like a Pop Tart." I have no idea how or why I made that leap, but she's into poptarts recently, so that's a score. She seeks out all the KitKats. I try to argue that Reese's Pieces are just peanut butter M&Ms, but the peanut butter embargo is still in force, so none of that. Then I spot a S'more bar and explain that it's a marshmallow candy bar. Another big hit, since she's into marshmallows.

All total Katherine (Elizabeth was long asleep at this point) identified well less than half of her candy as stuff she would like. After that little separating exercise it all got dumped back into a big pile anyway. I'm curious to watch over the coming days to see which pieces actually do get eaten. I expect the enthusiasm to try new things has already dwindled and she'll stick with the M&Ms.

This weekend I was making omelets for breakfast. Elizabeth was first, and her egg had a double yolk. It was a very exciting day indeed. Katherine, who had requested cereal instead of omelet, immediately changed her order to omelet as well in the hopes of repeating the trick, but no such luck. We compromised, I made one omelet and split it between them.

I'm not sure what it means, exactly, but I think Elizabeth might be the next Dalai Lama.