Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Jun. 21st, 2004 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, Omaha, Yamaarashi-chan, Kouryou-chan and I all drove over to Port Orchard to have a lovely dinner with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
charlesks and riverheart. They had invited us over long ago, proposing to watch over one of both of the girls some night for babysitting purposes so Omaha and I could have some private time together, and Omaha and I figured it would be better if Kouryou-chan got to know the two of them better before we tried anything like that. Gods, but they have a gorgeous house in the middle of nowhere. Their "partial mountain view" is the stuff of dreams: a clear shot across the sound with a grand site of Rainier, especially if it blows, across a green pond absolutely alive with frogs.
They made us a wonderful meal of barbecue chicken, pasta, and a salad, and we stayed up late, but eventually had to take the ferry back home, so we packed the kids into their pyjamas and drove home. They were out by the time we got to the ferry, so we all waited in the car, then drove home and tucked them into bed.
The girls at the Burien Strawberry Festival.Saturday, after a quick breakfast of cereal and peanut butter toast with bananas, we went to the JoAnne's fabrics that's closing down, then hauled over to the Burien Strawberry Festival. It's one of those small-town things that gives kitsch a bad name, but the girls had a blast with the strawberry shortcakes and the fire drill instruction given by the fire department. The evil church next to the festival did what they did every hire: hired better children's entertainment-- monster truck inflated slides, bouncy castles-- than what the city had bought in to entice kids up into their lawn, where they could pestered by "youth counsellors" asking them "Where will you go when you die?" We managed to talk the girls into not going over there. Instead, they went and did the mirror painting and the clay crafts and generally had fun. We avoided the karaoke spot, where teenagers were murdering songs so badly I was tempted to put up "CRIME SCENE: DO NOT CROSS" tape.
But it was so hot that we wandered over to Angle Lake, the ultimate in middle-class entertainment. That's not such a bad thing, after all. The swimming area is a very gently sloped region filled with mostly very small children wandering around. Yamaarashi-chan and Kouryou-chan splashed in the water; I had to wade in once when Yamaarashi-chan tried to prove she was "brave" by wandering into the deeper water, mostly to get into shouting range since there were so many kids screaming she couldn't hear me shouting "Come back!"
The deep water area was mostly taken over with about thirty older teenagers mostly of Pacific island descent. The distinctions between the genders surprised me: all the men were muscular and lean, but all of the women were significantly heavyset. There wasn't much eye candy except for one young lady who should step in front of Peter Hegre's cameras and one young man who would not have been out of place at the Matrix: Reloaded rave. Within half an hour, though, clouds wandered in and the girls were cold, so we packed it in.
Typically, when we got home the clouds had blown away. I decided to make dinner: hamburgers, steamed corn on the cob, french fries, and a really yummy salsa for the burgers. (2 seeded, chopped tomatoes, 1 small diced onion, 1/3 cup chopped avocado, 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, juice of one lime and 2 tsp tequila, 1/2 tsp salt. I didn't have any tequila, but there was a small, dusty bottle of vodka in the back of the cabinet and that worked fine. Toss everything together.) FallenPegasus showed up after dinner and we fed him, too. We put the kids to bed and then put Moulin Rouge on the TV. I played more Half Life and finished chapter "Surface Tension."
Sunday, I woke up to two beautiful, giggling girls trying to cuddle me and succeeding mostly in smothering me while chanting "Happy Father's Day!" Gods, I have such great kids. I discovered that Yamaarashi-chan is so ticklish that if I talk while she's hugging me the vibrations of my voice against her shoulder makes her giggle. Cool. She's embarassed by it. I made waffles with blueberries for breakfast, received three wonderful father's day cards, and then sadly I headed out to work. My excessively paranoid manager and his manager has decided we're on mandatory six days. I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that my last assignment, for which I have about ten days to complete, involves two different scheduling sets, one for launching systems and one for setting priorities.
I discovered a really cool collection of algorithms called the tree view system, which lays out trees of numerical data in two-dimensional graphic layout tables. I don't know if there's anything in the Isilon system that I could efficiently display with this technique, but it's nice to have.
And dammit, there's a bug in co_working that blows away my working display directory. Not a serious problem; if I delete the contents it rebuilds correctly, but the whole idea was to enable partial rebuilds. Grr.... This'll only delay Dreamteam Calamaties by a few days.
I headed home after only three hours or so there, where I discovered a pair of sunburned little girls having lunch. They were out riding their bikes and got just a little overheated. It's not bad, mostly just a little pink about the face, the kind of thing every kid has to experience once or twice a summer. I spent some time with the kids just horsing around in the front yard, and then it was time to take Yamaarashi-chan back to her mother's house. She was already having fun and didn't want to go, but rules are rules.
Man, it was hot. Omaha and I, and even Kouryou-chan, were all stunned by the late afternoon heat. We didn't want to cook, so we wandered down to the Italian joint around the corner for dinner and to celebrate father's day. Omaha put Kouryou-chan to bed while I cleaned the kitchen and then we tried to go to bed.
No such luck. Kouryou-chan has a terrible cough. She kept us up all night. Those parental instincts are strong and every time I heard this deep, hacking cough my brain would say "Wake up, your kid needs you!" Grr... About three in the morning, Omaha and I set up the humidifier in her room in the hopes that would help. It seemed to, a little. I pulled myself out of bed twenty minutes late.
charlesks and riverheart. They had invited us over long ago, proposing to watch over one of both of the girls some night for babysitting purposes so Omaha and I could have some private time together, and Omaha and I figured it would be better if Kouryou-chan got to know the two of them better before we tried anything like that. Gods, but they have a gorgeous house in the middle of nowhere. Their "partial mountain view" is the stuff of dreams: a clear shot across the sound with a grand site of Rainier, especially if it blows, across a green pond absolutely alive with frogs.They made us a wonderful meal of barbecue chicken, pasta, and a salad, and we stayed up late, but eventually had to take the ferry back home, so we packed the kids into their pyjamas and drove home. They were out by the time we got to the ferry, so we all waited in the car, then drove home and tucked them into bed.
The girls at the Burien Strawberry Festival.
But it was so hot that we wandered over to Angle Lake, the ultimate in middle-class entertainment. That's not such a bad thing, after all. The swimming area is a very gently sloped region filled with mostly very small children wandering around. Yamaarashi-chan and Kouryou-chan splashed in the water; I had to wade in once when Yamaarashi-chan tried to prove she was "brave" by wandering into the deeper water, mostly to get into shouting range since there were so many kids screaming she couldn't hear me shouting "Come back!"
The deep water area was mostly taken over with about thirty older teenagers mostly of Pacific island descent. The distinctions between the genders surprised me: all the men were muscular and lean, but all of the women were significantly heavyset. There wasn't much eye candy except for one young lady who should step in front of Peter Hegre's cameras and one young man who would not have been out of place at the Matrix: Reloaded rave. Within half an hour, though, clouds wandered in and the girls were cold, so we packed it in.
Typically, when we got home the clouds had blown away. I decided to make dinner: hamburgers, steamed corn on the cob, french fries, and a really yummy salsa for the burgers. (2 seeded, chopped tomatoes, 1 small diced onion, 1/3 cup chopped avocado, 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, juice of one lime and 2 tsp tequila, 1/2 tsp salt. I didn't have any tequila, but there was a small, dusty bottle of vodka in the back of the cabinet and that worked fine. Toss everything together.) FallenPegasus showed up after dinner and we fed him, too. We put the kids to bed and then put Moulin Rouge on the TV. I played more Half Life and finished chapter "Surface Tension."
Sunday, I woke up to two beautiful, giggling girls trying to cuddle me and succeeding mostly in smothering me while chanting "Happy Father's Day!" Gods, I have such great kids. I discovered that Yamaarashi-chan is so ticklish that if I talk while she's hugging me the vibrations of my voice against her shoulder makes her giggle. Cool. She's embarassed by it. I made waffles with blueberries for breakfast, received three wonderful father's day cards, and then sadly I headed out to work. My excessively paranoid manager and his manager has decided we're on mandatory six days. I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that my last assignment, for which I have about ten days to complete, involves two different scheduling sets, one for launching systems and one for setting priorities.
I discovered a really cool collection of algorithms called the tree view system, which lays out trees of numerical data in two-dimensional graphic layout tables. I don't know if there's anything in the Isilon system that I could efficiently display with this technique, but it's nice to have.
And dammit, there's a bug in co_working that blows away my working display directory. Not a serious problem; if I delete the contents it rebuilds correctly, but the whole idea was to enable partial rebuilds. Grr.... This'll only delay Dreamteam Calamaties by a few days.
I headed home after only three hours or so there, where I discovered a pair of sunburned little girls having lunch. They were out riding their bikes and got just a little overheated. It's not bad, mostly just a little pink about the face, the kind of thing every kid has to experience once or twice a summer. I spent some time with the kids just horsing around in the front yard, and then it was time to take Yamaarashi-chan back to her mother's house. She was already having fun and didn't want to go, but rules are rules.
Man, it was hot. Omaha and I, and even Kouryou-chan, were all stunned by the late afternoon heat. We didn't want to cook, so we wandered down to the Italian joint around the corner for dinner and to celebrate father's day. Omaha put Kouryou-chan to bed while I cleaned the kitchen and then we tried to go to bed.
No such luck. Kouryou-chan has a terrible cough. She kept us up all night. Those parental instincts are strong and every time I heard this deep, hacking cough my brain would say "Wake up, your kid needs you!" Grr... About three in the morning, Omaha and I set up the humidifier in her room in the hopes that would help. It seemed to, a little. I pulled myself out of bed twenty minutes late.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-21 11:32 am (UTC)They may have been Samoan. Samoan culture highly values those particular traits in men and in women, and the young women were probably at the height of attractiveness to the young men. Many island cultures share the same or similar cultural values. It's only after they adopt Caucasian cultural values that they start instilling the stereotypical American ideal of beauty in their young women.