Touching base, the house, The Boy, Dragon*Con, 50/50
Remember me?
It's been something of a crazy month. Forget the calendar - THIS is the new year.
We're back in the house! Maybe that should be in all caps? WE ARE FINALLY BACK IN THE HOUSE! Seven and a half months and 25% more than we planned on spending later we have a renovated home that still feels like our house but has plumbing and wiring that work (how novel), well-insulated walls, plenty of storage space, and OH YEAH...A SECOND BATHROOM!
During the long process of unpacking from the move, unpacking the storage unit, and slowly figuring out where everything works (mostly complete but man, it's that last 10%, right?) there have been moments that I just sat down, stunned that this was really ours. The old place had some charm but was mostly just an OLD HOUSE that needed tons of work and could never be made quite as clean as one would want. Now, everything is new but not. I feel incredibly lucky and very grateful to our building designer and general contractor. This is worth every concert we skipped, every trip we passed on, every frugality of the past ten months (and TBH the next ten!)
Unfortunately the extra money ate up what we had put aside to pour into the yard - hardscape and irrigation and landscaping all have to wait. Between the bulldozers and the extreme drought our yard was been reduced to hard-packed dirt and nothing more. Even the bamboo that regularly encroaches from our neighbor to the back is dying. We've managed to keep the trees alive but they are struggling. So it's just dust and dirt for the foreseeable future. And mud when we finally get rain. We REALLY need Amhad Hassan from YardCrashers to come and save us (uh, I may be a little addicted to that show!)
IN OTHER NEWS
The Boy survived two weeks of Marching Band practice in 105˚F -108˚F temps to become a fully-bonded crazed member of the equally crazed saxophone section of his High School Marching Band. And he learned to play bridge at lunch - although they're scoring system is a bit wonky. He started High School last week and is thus far managing to keep his head above water even with band practice until 6pm and an average of 1.5 hours of homework a day. The bus to his magnet school leaves our neighborhood at 6:43 am (his classes start at 8:15) so we've been alternating - bus on the days he get's to sleep by 10:00, driving him an hour later when HW has him up later. Either way he's not actually getting enough sleep so I don't know how this will shake out.
He is LOVING his SciTech (engineering challenge class) teacher, a cute geeky 26 yo Who nerd; his Algebra II w/ proofs teacher, and his new sensei in Japanese 2. Not as excited about his teachers for World Geography, Biology, and English 1 but they're fine - just quieter than the others.
We went to the first football game of the season last Friday and despite a 30 year gap in my high school football game attendance it was pretty much the same as always. HUGE turnout from the little town we were in, band members jamming and cheering, students shouting themselves hoarse, lots of glitter, silly string, packs of girls circling...circling..circling. First downs and flags on plays. Even as a non-fan it's hard not to get caught up in it. The visitor side was full of player parents, band parents, color guard parents, dance team parents...and even some folks who didn't have a kid out there.
ETA: Have to say the dance team (OMG SO MUCH GLITTER) has the BEST NAME EVER: The Liberal Arts and Science Academy shares a campus and fine arts/athletics with LBJ High School so the dancers are called...THE FIRST LADIES! :D
By 11pm the Hutto Hippos (yes, really) had trounced our LBJ Jaguars and The Boy had mostly lost his voice...Friday night in Texas.
IN OTHER OTHER NEWS
I leave for Dragon*Con in (OMG) two days. Uh, not remotely ready but I will be. If you will be there and want to meet up drop a comment here or check my twitter feed (also 'dremiel') it's locked but Im happy to add folks who are not my 14 yo son or RL folks who I don't particularly want to see me squeeing about Tom Hardy or the other fandom silliness.
IN ADDITIONAL OTHER NEWS
I saw a sneak of 50/50 last night (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Angelica Huston) I really have no idea how they are going to market a darkly hilarious, very real feeling cancer survivor tale but I hope they figure it out. The movie was wonderful. Deeply affecting without feeling like an after school special. It managed to hit the right balance between the realities of dealing with cancer/chemo/everyone else's reactions and the absurdity of it all. The whole cast was lovely but at heart it is a tremendous (I would say star-making but I think he's already on his way) performance by Gordon-Leavitt who is never less than totally credible. He owns the role and drives the entire movie and makes it look effortless. Seth Rogen is beautifully believable as a bit-of-dick-with-a-heart-of-gold best friend (he can be so nuts that I forget what a good actor he is when he dials it down). And Angelica Huston is gold, as always - I admire her courage in allowing herself to look old and tired and a little worn down by what life has dished out without ever looking defeated.
It was also VERY VERY VERY FUNNY! My companion for the evening is a cancer survivor and I'm a former caregiver for a cancer patient but you don't have to have any connection to cancer to find the film howlingly amusing. I particularly enjoyed Seth Rogen trying to get JGL to capitalize on his cancer to score with the ladies - and the moment when a hook up is about to fizzle and JGL's character takes off his cap to reveal his bald chemo head.
I may try to write up more of a review...we'll see.
Anyway, that's what's up here. How are you.
It's been something of a crazy month. Forget the calendar - THIS is the new year.
We're back in the house! Maybe that should be in all caps? WE ARE FINALLY BACK IN THE HOUSE! Seven and a half months and 25% more than we planned on spending later we have a renovated home that still feels like our house but has plumbing and wiring that work (how novel), well-insulated walls, plenty of storage space, and OH YEAH...A SECOND BATHROOM!
During the long process of unpacking from the move, unpacking the storage unit, and slowly figuring out where everything works (mostly complete but man, it's that last 10%, right?) there have been moments that I just sat down, stunned that this was really ours. The old place had some charm but was mostly just an OLD HOUSE that needed tons of work and could never be made quite as clean as one would want. Now, everything is new but not. I feel incredibly lucky and very grateful to our building designer and general contractor. This is worth every concert we skipped, every trip we passed on, every frugality of the past ten months (and TBH the next ten!)
Unfortunately the extra money ate up what we had put aside to pour into the yard - hardscape and irrigation and landscaping all have to wait. Between the bulldozers and the extreme drought our yard was been reduced to hard-packed dirt and nothing more. Even the bamboo that regularly encroaches from our neighbor to the back is dying. We've managed to keep the trees alive but they are struggling. So it's just dust and dirt for the foreseeable future. And mud when we finally get rain. We REALLY need Amhad Hassan from YardCrashers to come and save us (uh, I may be a little addicted to that show!)
IN OTHER NEWS
The Boy survived two weeks of Marching Band practice in 105˚F -108˚F temps to become a fully-bonded crazed member of the equally crazed saxophone section of his High School Marching Band. And he learned to play bridge at lunch - although they're scoring system is a bit wonky. He started High School last week and is thus far managing to keep his head above water even with band practice until 6pm and an average of 1.5 hours of homework a day. The bus to his magnet school leaves our neighborhood at 6:43 am (his classes start at 8:15) so we've been alternating - bus on the days he get's to sleep by 10:00, driving him an hour later when HW has him up later. Either way he's not actually getting enough sleep so I don't know how this will shake out.
He is LOVING his SciTech (engineering challenge class) teacher, a cute geeky 26 yo Who nerd; his Algebra II w/ proofs teacher, and his new sensei in Japanese 2. Not as excited about his teachers for World Geography, Biology, and English 1 but they're fine - just quieter than the others.
We went to the first football game of the season last Friday and despite a 30 year gap in my high school football game attendance it was pretty much the same as always. HUGE turnout from the little town we were in, band members jamming and cheering, students shouting themselves hoarse, lots of glitter, silly string, packs of girls circling...circling..circling. First downs and flags on plays. Even as a non-fan it's hard not to get caught up in it. The visitor side was full of player parents, band parents, color guard parents, dance team parents...and even some folks who didn't have a kid out there.
ETA: Have to say the dance team (OMG SO MUCH GLITTER) has the BEST NAME EVER: The Liberal Arts and Science Academy shares a campus and fine arts/athletics with LBJ High School so the dancers are called...THE FIRST LADIES! :D
By 11pm the Hutto Hippos (yes, really) had trounced our LBJ Jaguars and The Boy had mostly lost his voice...Friday night in Texas.
IN OTHER OTHER NEWS
I leave for Dragon*Con in (OMG) two days. Uh, not remotely ready but I will be. If you will be there and want to meet up drop a comment here or check my twitter feed (also 'dremiel') it's locked but Im happy to add folks who are not my 14 yo son or RL folks who I don't particularly want to see me squeeing about Tom Hardy or the other fandom silliness.
IN ADDITIONAL OTHER NEWS
I saw a sneak of 50/50 last night (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Angelica Huston) I really have no idea how they are going to market a darkly hilarious, very real feeling cancer survivor tale but I hope they figure it out. The movie was wonderful. Deeply affecting without feeling like an after school special. It managed to hit the right balance between the realities of dealing with cancer/chemo/everyone else's reactions and the absurdity of it all. The whole cast was lovely but at heart it is a tremendous (I would say star-making but I think he's already on his way) performance by Gordon-Leavitt who is never less than totally credible. He owns the role and drives the entire movie and makes it look effortless. Seth Rogen is beautifully believable as a bit-of-dick-with-a-heart-of-gold best friend (he can be so nuts that I forget what a good actor he is when he dials it down). And Angelica Huston is gold, as always - I admire her courage in allowing herself to look old and tired and a little worn down by what life has dished out without ever looking defeated.
It was also VERY VERY VERY FUNNY! My companion for the evening is a cancer survivor and I'm a former caregiver for a cancer patient but you don't have to have any connection to cancer to find the film howlingly amusing. I particularly enjoyed Seth Rogen trying to get JGL to capitalize on his cancer to score with the ladies - and the moment when a hook up is about to fizzle and JGL's character takes off his cap to reveal his bald chemo head.
I may try to write up more of a review...we'll see.
Anyway, that's what's up here. How are you.