Gingerbread House?

Every year, we put a gingerbread house together and decorate it as a family at Christmastime. Does it still count as Christmastime on the 29th? It's still the holiday season, because New Year's Eve hasn't passed yet, so I count it.

Of course, in all the years we've been doing this, we've never had a gingerbread house quite like this.

My wife usually gets a gingerbread house kit these days. It's much easier to do it that way. It comes with the gingerbread pieces already cut out, as well as several bags of (not particularly tasty) candy that you can use to decorate it with. She usually supplements that candy supply with a few purchases of her own

So, we used the frosting that came with the kit, and glued the house together. 

Then the kids started adding their artistic candy displays to the exterior.

But soon, we ran into an issue. The frosting just wasn't working to keep the house together. We pulled off the candy that had already been stuck on there, and applied more and more frosting to shore up the sagging walls and roof, but it was to no avail. The thing just would hold together. It was like we were using Elmer's Glue when we thought we were using Super Glue.

Eventually, we had to give up and let it collapse on itself. So, behold, here is our gingerbread house for 2016:

The kids didn't really mind. It just meant that they got to scarf all the candy sooner than usual. They didn't have to give the gingerbread house a week on display, since nobody wanted to look at what had become of it.

Ice Castles

Years ago, I'd guess at least 2012, but possibly even earlier, we did a news story about this thing called the Ice Castles. Someone, using hoses, sprinklers, and the cold of winter, was creating these fantastic icicle formations.

It was open to the public as an attraction, a fun winter activity for the whole family. When I saw that first news story, I became enchanted. I really wanted to go there. I looked up their website, found out when they were open, how much it would be, and we started planning our excursion. But it was relatively expensive for a family our size, and it was all the way up in a town in the mountains. We kept finding other things to do on weekends, and forgetting about the Ice Castles, and before we knew it, winter was over. The ice had melted, and they were closed for the season.

The next year, winter returned as it does, and I started planning again. But we pulled the same shenanigans, and before we knew it, Winter was over, and we hadn't gone. The next year, I was determined. I was going to go for sure, nothing was going to keep me away this time...except that the Ice Castles had moved away. When I went to their website this year, I was informed that the people who ran the ice castles had decided that there just wasn't enough cold weather in our mountains to maintain them for a long enough time for it to be worth it. They'd found a place in Colorado instead, approximately ten hours away.

Now I was completely out of luck, and also completely dejected. I'd missed my chance forever. They were gone.

So, imagine my excitement a few years later when I learned that the Ice Castles were returning. Apparently they'd done well enough in Colorado that they were expanding. They had a location somewhere in the New England area now...I want to say Maine, but checking their website makes me think it was New Hampshire. Apparently, with more franchises, they don't have to be open as long, so they returned to us and reopened their third/first location.

Now that they were back, we resumed our past relationship with them. Meaning each year, at the start of the winter, we swore that we wouldn't miss them this time. Then, as the winter wore on, and Christmas ate up all our funds, and time was hard to come by, and it kept slipping our mind, we never went.

It happened again and again, until this year. I don't know what changed, maybe just the right opportunity coming up right after a payday or something, but we still had enough money for it, and we were all going to be available to attend, and we actually remembered that it was open and we wanted to go.

So, Finally, the Thursday before New Year's, we all got in the car, and drove up the Canyon to see the Ice Castles.

It was really amazing, all that I'd imagined all these years.

The ice sculptures (I guess sculptures is the best word for them, although no one used a hammer and chisel on them or anything) were at least fifteen feet tall. There was a big ring of them going all the way around the place, so we were in a sort of ice fort.

And there were no prohibitions on touching. You could touch the icicles all you wanted. I quickly had to admonish Little, to keep him from breaking them off, though.

I guess it's my Boy Scout "Leave No Trace" training that makes me get on my kids' cases for stuff like this, but I want everything we see to be there for others to experience as well. Of course there's worse things that you could do than touching or even breaking the ice. I had to keep yelling at him for licking the ice too.

They had an ice throne, and a slide you could crash your way down if you were willing to wait in line for a while.

In hindsight, waiting for the slide may not have been the best idea, or at least waiting for it when we did might have been dumb. We probably should have saved it for the last thing that we did before leaving. Instead, we stood in line for what felt like a half an hour for a three second slide down some ice sheets.

The ride was neat, if a little rough on the landing. I hit so hard that my butt hurt for the rest of the night. The problem with waiting in line for the slide was that we stopped moving. It's not so bad being out in the cold as long as you are dressed for it, and you keep moving and exercising your body so it produces heat. Standing in line blew that for us completely. I'd admonished the kids repeatedly to wear the warmest possible clothes, but it wasn't long after the slide that my daughter had had enough of the cold.

She said her feet were so cold they were painful and burning. We tried to hold off the end for a few minutes longer by swinging by the snack booth and getting some hot chocolate for everybody.

 With night fallen, we got he chance to see the place in the dark, which is pretty special.

All the ice sculptures have LED lights inside of them, so it gets even more pretty.

But our time was up. It wasn't just the one daughter complaining anymore. It was time to get back to the car, and start up the heater. So, we headed out.

It sure was worth the trip, though.

Baleful Glare

Okay, everybody, it's the moment you've all been waiting for. This is my cat...

...The one that hates me. That should be obvious judging by the baleful glare she's giving me in this picture.

There you go, though. I'm pandering to all you cat lovers out there.

Isn't she sweet?

TGMG 188: Nobody's Favorite Christmas Songs

In case you didn't see, part three of the Christmas Extravaganza hit on Christmas day as well. Rish had to post it by himself, because I was dying of a cold and couldn't even be bothered to wipe my own...sorry, tangent...anyway, he missed one step, so it never appeared on the feed, just on the blog page. So, if you didn't know this existed, now you do! And it's on the TGMG feed as well. You can find it there, or follow the link above, or you can just push the play button below and listen here.

Merry Christmas 2016

I don't make it into the family pictures very much. I'm the one who is behind the camera taking them usually. Every now and then, somebody decides to take a picture of me, though. Like for Christmas today, I managed to make it into two pictures. Each time, I'm showing off toys that I got...and considering that I'm in my forties, probably shouldn't be the case.

I mean her I am in 1986, thirty years ago today.

Yikes what a terrible picture that one is. Then here's me today.

You can take the boy out of the toy room, but you can't take the toy room out of the boy. That's a saying, right?

Dunesteef Episode 188: Holiday Episode Part 2

Okay, here it is, part two of the holiday extravaganza made it just in time for Christmas. It's as if Santa himself brought it down your podcast chimney for you.

“No one knew who the present was from; there was no name written on the box.”

This time, we present “The Box” by Gino Moretto, “The Holiday Trip: Guest-Starring Captain America and Bucky” by Rish Outfield, and “A Christmas Wish” by B.D. Anklevich produced by Justin Charles music added by Big. And don’t forget, Christopher Walken is always watching.

Hope you enjoy it. If you want to check out this episode, go listen to it on the main Dunesteef podcast feed—(EDIT: Now that the feed is gone, the only way to hear the show is over on the Dunesteef Podcast YouTube page, which I am embedding below).

Little vs. Christmas

Every year, Bill O'Reilly over at Fox News Channel has a story or two about the war on Christmas:

Now, I don't know if there's any war on Christmas in America or not, but if there is, it would seem that we might be raising one of the generals in the cause. When Little Anklevich was a baby, he was really drawn to the presents under the tree. We had to build a barrier around the tree to keep him away. He seemed to have put that stuff in the past...until this year.

Little's been having a real problem waiting for Christmas to come. He just can't handle the wait. He's been caught a few times getting into presents under the tree. We've had to re-wrap a couple over the month of December. We got fed up the last time it happened, and gave him a really stern talking to, a bunch of threats, and told him Santa was watching.

It didn't really work, though, it seems. This morning, I woke up, and Little wasn't in bed like usual. I called his name, and went downstairs looking for him, and he stood up from behind the couch, looking more guilty than the cat that ate the canary.

I went down, and found what he was up to. I texted my wife this about the incident:

Little woke up before me, ran straight downstairs, and did this:

He said he just wanted to see what it was.

I yelled at him a lot, then I told him he doesn't get this present for Christmas anymore. Maybe next year or something.

I was so mad at him. He cried, but just because he was being yelled at, and not really out of any sense of guilt. I was just at a loss. I didn't know what to do.

My wife replied with this:

I think we need to move all his presents out. The temptation is too much.

I wasn't convinced. He's opened more than just his own present over the month. I replied:

He'll just open other people's presents.

Earlier in the morning, through my sleep fog, I'd noticed Little creeping through my room headed for the presents for the extended family gift exchange. None of those were his, but he was going to open them anyway. I stopped him in his tracks, but I went back to sleep, and he went to work elsewhere. I told my wife:

Before he opened that one, he woke up, got out of bed, and went straight over and grabbed one of the little presents for the gift exchange. He only didn't open that one too because I woke up and asked him what he was doing.

She was distressed with the news. She responded:

Ahhh! Got to keep him out 2 more days.

Well, he didn't get any more chances to go after things that morning...I thought. We both got ready to go to school and work, and headed out. Later that day, I got another text from my wife, a picture:

And an explanation of just what it was showing me:

He actually opened all the presents, and then hid them. He had his own Christmas this morning.

My response was a little panicked. We were only two days from Christmas, but I didn't think there was anything left that Little hadn't spoiled. I was sure that he'd seen all of his presents now:

Oh crap. So, what do we do? I told him he wasn't getting the one he had opened, but now it's all of them?

My wife had a handle on it:

I'm packing them up right now. Told him he doesn't get them. He doesn't care. Not sad or upset or anything. Says it matter of factly that he just can't wait.

He was out of control. He couldn't hold back at all, and he readily admitted it. He still wasn't even done. My wife texted me again:

And he just barely opened another one. We are packing up all the presents right now.

At last, she sent me this picture, the tree with no presents at all:

With the words:

Sad little Christmas tree.

Dunesteef Episode 187: Holiday Episode Part 1

New Episode Up! Part 1 of the Holiday Extravaganza is here.

“No one knew who the present was from; there was no name written on the box.”

That’s the premise for this year’s Broken Mirror Holiday episode. Hear what contributors AspirationRealized , Bria Burton, Michael O’Haegher, Marshal Latham, Nathan Ahlgrim, Josh Roseman, and Michael Grey do with the idea. No offense.

AspirationRealized wants us to tell you that he’s a moron and forgot to include his real name anywhere, but he swears that it is Cameron Howard. Probably a false name though.

Check it out folks! Find it in your podcast feed if you are subscribed—(EDIT: Now that the feed is gone, the only way to hear the show is over on the Dunesteef Podcast YouTube page, which I am embedding below).

Getting The Christmas Goose Early

My wife dragged me out to Ikea today.

She actually met me there on my way home from work. She wanted to show me couches. She had had enough of the smelly old broken-down couch that we'd been living with for the last while. My older son and I have plopped down into it with all of our considerable weight too many times, and cracked the frame. And I think either the cat...or the Little Guy...peed on it at least once, probably more than once. Then there's this, Little's art projects that he'd completed on the couch.

It was uncomfortable, smelly, ugly, and damaged to a huge degree, and my wife didn't want to put up with it any more.

So, she showcased several couches for me (she'd been here to look at them before), and we decided on a particular one. We hadn't really planned on buying it today, though. This was supposed to be just a look and see kind of thing, so we were a little unprepared. We didn't really have transportation that would fit an entire couch in there. Instead, we had to use the twine that Ikea provides to tie the part that wouldn't fit inside the car onto the roof.

 I wasn't particularly pleased with the idea. I'm not much in the way of tying knots. I somehow squeaked by on the requirements for knot tying in Boy Scouts without really learning them. I think I did it more like when you cram for a test, and fill your head with knowledge that will remain there for about twenty-four hours until you take the test, and then by the next day you've forgotten it all.

On top of that, I've done hundreds of news stories over the years about people who didn't secure their loads to their cars well enough, and had them fall off and kill the people behind them. So, pictures like these are going through my mind as I tie this box to our roof with more and more and more twine.

My wife drove the car, and she did it slowly at my insistence. I followed her in my car all the way home, hoping to at least make sure that if any car was damaged by this box coming off it was our own, and therefore no one would press charges. And, miracle of miracles, we made it safe and sound.

She was so happy. She got her couch. It wasn't quite Christmas yet, but she'd already gotten her goose. She was enjoying her Christmas present on December 19th. Lucky girl.

Well, sort of lucky. This was an Ikea couch after all, so she still had to assemble it. A few days later, and our family room looked (and smelled) much better.

Goofy Text

Watching the Cowboys game, and my non-gay friend and I had this humorous text exchange. Make sure you read what type before you send it, or you might be misunderstood.

Boop-Beep-De-Doop-Boop

Just remembering my favorite holiday special of all time. Hope everyone is having a wonderful season. Boop-ee-doop-a-doop-doop-SEX!

Weather Woes

We almost moved to Texas this month, but instead an opportunity came up here in town that was better. 

These temperatures are starting to make me think we might have made a mistake. This is the second stint of temps in the teens this month. Eff this noise!

What A Mess

Weather was so bad that I was afraid that today might be Big Anklevich's last ride.

It was insane. But, I live to make another commute! Huzzah!

Pirates

I've heard people who steal your Amazon packages off your porch during the holiday season euphemistically called Porch Pirates. A little comical. Today, whoever is writing the story about them in the news show decided to call them Package Pirates instead. That just conjures up a different image. They might want to rethink that one.

Nailed It

We just made some Christmas cookies with an icing recipe that my wife found on Pinterest. It was hard work. A lot of toil and sweat, but...Nailed it!

Hearth And Home

There's this thing on Hulu called FIREPLACE FOR YOUR HOME. It's nothing but a shot of a fire burning in a hearth for something like an hour and a half.

We put it on as a joke, but I'm amazed at how weirdly inviting and warm it makes the room feel. It's a video not a real fire, but I still just want to sit in front of it and be warm and happy.

First Skate

First ice skating of the year at the free outdoor ice sheet. We always try to go every year in December to improve our holiday cheer.

Usually, it's horribly uncomfortable to wear these skates, but my feet didn't hurt too bad, today. It was fun.

The Last Straw

We got our four-year-old this build your own straw thing.

He's been making every conceivable variation and drinking water with each. Now he's having to pee every five seconds. I guess you have to test out your creation, or you won't know if it's watertight.

Dish Washer?

We fixed the dishwasher problem, but surprisingly it still looks like this in my kitchen.

I guess you can bring a horse to a dishwasher, but you can't make him wash his dishes.

Promoted

In a recent post, I mentioned how my wife became emotional thinking about the possibility that we might move away and our kids wouldn't get to see Santa come by on a firetruck anymore. That possibility was probably news to you. The possibility that Rish and I might soon live in a different state from each other sounds pretty grim. Well, you can put it out of your mind now, because it has been decided, and we're not moving after all.

Where my wife works is going through some changes. Her job was kind of up in the air for the last little bit. She was stuck in the same position for a while, unable to move up, even though she was ready to do so. Her company has been doing a lot of expansion lately, however, and the position she was looking to move into has become available in other cities.

She started looking into the possibilities available to her. It seemed like not a week would go by without her asking me if I was willing to move to another new city. Memphis? Norfolk? Tacoma? London? (The answer to that last one was an emphatic yes). Finally, an opportunity in Houston, Texas surfaced that appeared to be the one we were going to actually take. Conditions were likely to be so favorable that there was going to be no way we would turn it down.

She started preparing the kids to the likelihood of our departure. She spent days worth of her free time browsing real estate listings in the area trying to determine the best neighborhood to live in. She started working out a strategy on how we would go through the process of moving. Would we all go at once? Would I stay to get the house sold? Would we let the kids finish out the year at school before uprooting them?

After months of anticipation, in the last few weeks the dominoes finally began falling. Her boss was hired as a supervisor in Houston and wanted to bring her along to the new location. My wife applied for the Houston job, but her boss's recently vacated job here was also posted. So she applied to that one too.

Houston seemed like it was probably going to be our only choice. My wife worried about our kids, and how they would take the transition. She also worried about what kind of job I could get in Houston once I knew for sure that I needed to start looking. Would she get a big pay raise, only to have me get a big pay cut, and have the whole thing be for no gain whatsoever?

All this stuff kept circling around and around as we waited to see how the various opportunities turned out. Then we finally got some news. She was offered the job right here in town. Despite all her pessimistic views of what would happen here, she bested her competition, and won the position. However, they lowballed her on the salary. She was frankly a little offended by their offer. She asked for some time to discuss it with me, and that night, we went over and over all the possible aspects of the decision.

Eventually, it came to this, she would go through the first phone interview with Houston the next day, and ask them about what they would likely be able to offer. Then she would call back to her present job, and counter offer for a higher salary. No matter what they offered, she would take it, but if they stuck to the lowball figure, she would keep after the job in Houston to see if it would come out better.

When she put our plan in to action, it turned out that Houston didn't look quite as appealing as it could have, and the job here gave her the salary she wanted. It just didn't make sense to go through all the hassle of moving our family out of town--taking the kids away from their friends and schools to start all over again, send me in search of a new job with a possibly worse schedule and lack of equivalent benefits--when there was an equally great opportunity right here.

So, stay we will.

It's not a permanent thing, for sure. It's possible that things could change and we might have to hit the road eventually anyway. But, for the time being, we remain here. Houston...and even Norfolk or Tacoma or (please, please, please) London...may still await us. But for now, I'll be hanging around town with Rish the same as always.

Long Live The Chief

Am I racist if I sing along with a rap song I like? Do I have to do the radio version and stop every few seconds when a certain word is said? Asking for a friend.

In an unrelated not, I love this song. First heard it on Luke Cage and I can't get enough of it.

Earnestly

I put on Ernest Saves Christmas because it was on Netflix, and I thought my four-year-old might like it.

I've never seen an Ernest movie before. It's worse than I thought possible. It doesn't even seem like it was made in America. I feel like I'm watching a foreign movie dubbed into English, one from a culture completely unfamiliar to me. So strange.

The Mighty Have Fallen

Finally getting around to checking out the new Sting album and the new Metallica album.

I fell in love with Sting as a very young man. My sister had a copy of Nothing Like the Sun, and I remember listening to it on a long road trip in the back of our gigantic old junky van. So many of the songs on that album stood out as amazing to me.

"Englishman in New York" and "Sister Moon" and "They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo)" and "Fragile" and his cover of "Little Wing" (which I didn't even know the original yet at the time) and "Be Still My Beating Heart" and...well, they all blew me away with how emotional and moody they were. The only song on the album that didn't really speak to me was the single, "We'll Be Together," which was playing on all the radio stations at the time.

I still think of that as my all-time favorite Sting album, but my relationship with his music only deepened when Soul Cages came out. Again, the single, "All This Time," was playing on all the radio stations, and I appreciated it better than I did "We'll Be Together," but it was the rest of the songs on the album that really got me.

I didn't have that album, but my girlfriend did. This was my first serious girlfriend, and a few weeks after we started going out, she won two free CDs from a radio station. When she went to get it, she discovered that their selection to choose from was pretty slim. Nothing she was really after was there, but she could make do with a couple. 

She chose Squeeze's Play album, and Soul Cages by Sting. I suppose she probably listened to Squeeze a few times, but I never once heard her play it. Soul Cages, however, became our album. Sting became our artist. And, on a rotating basis, the various songs on the album became our songs.

If I thought the songs on Nothing Like the Sun were moody and emotional, I hadn't seen anything yet. The songs on Soul Cages are amazing. They all flow together, weaving a tapestry of story, meaning, and feeling. We listened to that CD until the laser burned out.

We lay on the bed in her room, making out and listening to Sting day in and day out. Imagine the kind of impression that makes on a young man with his very first girlfriend. He's never going to forget that music.

Sting still had several more great albums in him. Ten Summoners Tales was chock full of great songs. Mercury Falling became the same as Soul Cages for me with my second serious girlfriend. She once said she wanted to dance at our wedding to a few different songs on that album...there never was a wedding, but that's how serious our relationship was at one time.

I even appreciated most of the songs from Brand New Day, but that was where Sting was starting to slip. He seemed to be unhappy with the music that he was most known for. Or maybe he wanted to grow as an artist or something, and I guess I can understand that, but I wanted stuff like the songs that made me fall in love with him.

His subsequent albums had less and less stuff I wanted to hear, and now here we are in 2016.

He came out with a new album about a month ago, and I haven't heard a single song off of it until today. Sting is my second favorite music act of all time. I'm listening to this album, and it doesn't really appeal to me very much. I don't know how many more times I'll bother to listen to it. It makes me really sad. Nothing can go on forever, but I sure would like them to.

As I said, Sting is my second favorite all-time. Metallica is my number one. When I was entering high school, Metallica was an ascending band. I was starting to realize that I really like hard rock music. I was listening to 93 Rock on the radio all the time, and I was interested in expanding my experience of the genre.

All the rocker kids at school wore Metallica shirts around, so they seemed a natural choice to check out. My first cassette that I bought was their $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited.

I was excited, because I could afford $5.98. I listened the hell out of that album, and before long, I had more. A friend gave me my all-time favorite album, Master of Puppets for my birthday. Then I got Ride the Lightning. Then Kill 'Em All. Then, And Jusice for All came out, and I got that one too.

Metallica was the perfect combination of strength and beauty. The music was both heavy as shit sometimes and melodic and moving at other times. It was perfect for an artistic teenage boy. I loved the beauty but also craved the thunderous, testosterone-driven aggression.

But, before I even got out of high school, Metallica started to change. They hired Bob Rock to produce their next album. Bob Rock was known for producing softer bands like, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, and Aerosmith. He had the golden touch though. Those bands sold a lot of albums, because he softened and mainstreamed their sound. That's what he did with Metallica.

They came out with the album that everyone knows, their self-titled black album. It was slower, softer, and lesser than Metallica had ever been before, but they sure sold a lot of records. Everybody was hearing them on the radio now. Even guys like Rish Outfield became fans of the band for a little while. Rish recently confessed to me that he went to their concert in 1992. That blows my mind.

Rock hit the skids in the '90s, and Metallica lost their way even worse. They seemed like they really liked their status as top-selling artists, and were willing to do whatever it took to stay that way. They all cut their long hair off at once and changed their sound significantly for their next album, Load. They even dumped that amazing wordmark of the bands name that they'd used on every album up until that point.

Then they dropped a second album just a year later called Reload.

They did a new garage days album, a double CD with their old stuff re-released and new covers to go with them. I saw them on MTV performing a song from the album, and when he was asked why they were doing an album of covers, he said, "people are buying the bootlegs." Their old garage days album, that first cassette that I bought, was now out of print, and Metallica didn't seem to like that someone else was getting their money.

This, of course, led to their disastrous fight with Napster, when they angered a lot of their former fans, and really solidified their image as corporate douchebags that just wanted money and didn't care about anything else.

A few years later, they tried a glorious comeback album. They'd heard about how their fans were angry with them, that they didn't appreciate how soft they'd become, and probably saw how well Nu Metal bands like System of a Down and Korn were doing, and they tried to imitate them. That's right, the band that was synonymous with Heavy Metal, basically the Michael Jacksons of Metal were trying to imitate the new young bands in their genre instead of doing what they'd always done to get to the top of the mountain in the first place.

It wasn't well received, and the band had to do another glorious comeback album years later.

Through all of this, I stuck with them. I liked their new sounds from the self-titled album to the grung rip-off albums to even St. Anger. It wasn't until they released Lulu, a collaboration with Lou Reed, that I realized that I probably wasn't a Metallica fan anymore. I couldn't go there.

I was on Facebook one day, when I saw a post announcing a song from their new album, I clicked on it to listen, and was horrified. I wondered what it would take for Metallica to make something that I wouldn't buy. They were my all-time favorite, after all, and if they came out with something, I bought it. But that day, I finally discovered.

I never bought Lulu, and I've never heard any of the songs from it either. It was possibly the worst thing I'd ever heard. Doubly worse, because it was Metallica that made it.

So now, here we are, years along, and Metallica has come out with a new album. It too came out weeks ago, and I'm just now getting around to listening, instead of buying it on day one.

And once again, it just doesn't appeal to me. Just like Sting, it seems like Metallica lost their way years ago, and just can't manage to recapture the magic. They were once infallible in my eyes. Then they became forgivable. Now, it's the worst of all. They're meh. The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference, and that seems to be how I feel about Metallica now--my all-time favorite band.

Interesting how far both of those artists have fallen in my esteem as the years go on. Once there was a time when I would have never thought that possible.