Happy Halloween!!

Unfortunately, Joel was not with us this year, and we do live in a country that doesn't really celebrate the holiday, but we still had Halloween last night!! The Army housing area held a really nice carnival and trick-or-treating. Here is Ava in her pink kitty costume (thanks, Grandma!):

She was a little tired by this point. Going backwards in time, here are some pictures of the costume contest last weekend. Guess who won a $15 gift certificate, redeemable for an awesome toy, for most unusual costume? I'll leave it up to your imagination...

I'm sure you need a close up of the finished costume-

Aidan and Ava had other events to attend, and it's sooooo embarrassing to wear the same thing twice, so here are Aidan and Ava wearing different costumes at a Moms' Club Halloween party. Aidan is a dinosaur/dragon (so is his best friend, Patrick, who is also in the picture) and Ava is a ballerina. Sure, she can't walk, but what does that have to do with anything?
So, that about wraps up the Halloween report. Make sure you send us your costume pictures!!! Thanks to Heller and Linda for already sending in their transvestite gondolier/K-Fed picture!

Don't tell Joel...

I went to the PX today to meet a friend of mine and give her a lasagna I made, since she is having a hard time. (No jokes about how she'll be worse off after eating my cooking, ahem, mom/Joel.) While I was there, I thought I'd innocently stop in and get another flannel pj set for Ava, because it gets pretty cold at night in this marble tomb of an apartment we live in. But, while in there, I saw that they were having a sale- by any 5 sale items, save an additional 25%; get 10 items, get an additional 50% off. What kind of willpower must you have to resist something like that? It's almost like you'd have to have some kind of sickness to NOT take them up on that.

So, I got $173.47 of clothes for a mere $53.17. What a deal. It's mostly pajamas, so the kids will be looking stylish 24 hours a day. Rah!

Tulanian alumni magazine, here we come!

Last week, Joel and I (and the kids) ran a Tulane table at the high school college fair. Joel was quite the salesman, trying to convince every one that walked by to go to Tulane on an ROTC scholarship. Aidan's favorite part of the night was when they started handing out pints of ice cream for some reason, even though the fall weather has definitely arrived and ice cream was probably the last thing anyone else wanted. For my part, I was primarily motivated by the $50 gift certificate all participants received. One of the funniest things to me was the Harvard table- does anyone really need convincing to go to Harvard??

The Great Pumpkin

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, especially when we are able to crank up the smoke machine, but it has been a little subdued lately. Last year, we were en route to Korea, and had no pumpkin of our own. This year, we're in Italy, and while they do celebrate the holiday to some degree (mostly limited to bar parties) there's no trick or treating or yard decorating or any of the usual Halloween type events like in the states. So, we decided to carve one of our pumpkins early to get Aidan in the spirit.

Joel got the carving kit at the grocery store, and Aidan picked out a picture of a monster carrying a trick-or-treat bag. He was really into it at first:

But, he decided the insides were too gross and refused to help scoop out the pumpkin. No fear, that's mommy's favorite job!

Then he took a rest while Joel worked on the design.

The finished product- pretty awesome!!!!

Unfortunately, this pumpkin totally rotted away in a few days, due to us keeping it inside in the warm house and lighting it every morning during breakfast and every night during dinner, at the request of one little boy. No problem; there are four more pumpkins outside our front door, waiting to be carved!

More, please!

At Ava's 4 month check up, the doctor suggested that she could start to eat some solid foods, starting with rice cereal. Always one to rely on the advice of a medical professional, I started her on milky cereal...over a month later. But, she has caught on and is eating well. So well, in fact, that we don't really have any of those classic baby pictures with tons of food on her face and clothes. She's actually quite mannerly.

I'll have you know I'm really a Romanesco Broccoli

I found this at the commissary the other day, and although I have absolutely no intention of actually eating it, I bought it anyway with the sole intention of showing Joel (and you, the viewing public, of course). The little sign at the store said it was a green cauliflower, but I looked online and the pictures I saw of green cauliflower actually looked like green cauliflower, not like 3-D edible fractals. So, I don't even know if it really IS green cauliflower, or some disgusting mutation from a cauliflower and a broccoli mating. Just looking at it and thinking about eating it really creeps me out. Anyway, now it can just sit in the fridge and rot and slime up my crisper like all of the other vegetables I buy. Good riddance, freaky nubby space veggie!

Transformers Update

There's a costume contest coming up this Saturday for the kids on post. So the heat is on for me to wrap up this Transformers costume. Tonight I finished up the details on the shoulder pieces and constructed the foot sections. Here's a peek at me handiwork:





Should have the finished product done sometime tomorrow or Wednesday. Tune in for the exciting conclusion!

More Transformers

Worked a little more on Aidan's costume this weekend. Time's getting short and I need to wrap it together soon. There's a contest next weekend that we want to have him enter with the costume. Maybe we'll win that gift certificate to Cinnabon!

Anyway, worked today on getting the autobot stencil for the shoulder pieces. As everyone knows, Optimus Prime has two autobot decals on his shoulders. No self-respecting Prime costume would be without them. I got the design from an autobot picture off the interwebs. Then I traced it over in Adobe Illustrator and printed it onto cardstock. A little work with the Xtaco knife yielded a workable stencil. Here's a quick test run. Pretty sharp, I think.

Jump Around

Every year around now, all the retail outlets start trotting out the holiday crap for everyone to start choking on. My personnel favorites are the dancing santas, snowmen, and elves that sing holiday songs or other popular tunes.

Aidan and I were at the PX on post today and came across one of these singing things. This one was a penguin choir that sang a little tune and danced and shook around. The choice of the song, however, was a little odd. It was not a Christmas song, or even a holiday song. It was the 1992 House of Pain hit single "Jump Around". Now, why these penguins were singing Jump Around, we may never know. However, Aidan got a kick out of the singing penguins and took their decidedly un-holiday anthem to heart. I was there to capture all the action. Check it out.

More than meets the eye

First off, big thanks to my parents for turning around a package to me very quickly. I had ordered something from Amazon (you'll see it in a minute) that they wouldn't ship to Italy. What might this piece of contraband be that Amazon, in their unrelenting corporate responsibility, saw fit to prohibit from shipping to Italy? Explosives? No. Demolition how-to manuals? Of course not. High end computer technology? Closer.

It's the Optimus Prime voice changing helmet, of course! What would happen if this fell into the wrong hands? Here's Aidan, totally enamoured with his new toy:





Wow. Pretty cool. And it can be adjusted to fit adult heads too. As soon as Halloween is over, this baby is mine. Which brings me to my next issue: Halloween costumes.

This year, I took it as a labor of love to make Aidan's Halloween costume myself. I enjoy making stuff like that, and thought this would be a good opportunity to flex that creative muscle. So at the beginning of the month, when Aidan asked for a Transformer costume, I knew I had my work cut out for me. After two weeks spending some free time in the garage, I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. After having cut and fit the chest plate, shoulder, and arm pieces from scrap cardboard, last night I went for the initial paint. Here's what that looked like:



The chest piece is laying flat here, but it folds up to make an Optimus-looking body for a 4 year old. I covered the cardboard in clear packing tape, because the paint coated it well and gave the tape a glossy metallic look. More robot-y. I'll have more pics as I get it together and have Aidan put it on. But once that happens, we might not get it off of him again.

Email Follow Up

Joel hit on most of the funny emails we were checking out the other day, but he did forget to mention one idea, which was to come up with the most confusing email address possible. We came up with this, which is (not surprisingly) still available: number1dot.@gmail.com or even mynameatgeemaledotcom@gmail.com
Also, I don't know if it was clear from his post that I started taking a dance class, so there are some emails making fun of my tap dancing mixed in with simpsons jokes and also my catch phrase, "I don't like that." And, while I do really like "This American Life" and "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," even checking into npr.lover was a total joke. I'm not an anything lover, which is the problem, I guess- if only I was really, really into something, I could announce it to the world via my email address, unashamedly. But, here we are. Perhaps widespread.ennui is the most appropriate...

As yet unclaimed emails

Call me Johnny Bandwagon-Jumper. Yesterday I signed up for a Gmail account and I'm in the process of switching over from my old Hotmail address. It seemed like a good idea, so I was trying to talk Jessica into switching her old Yahoo Mail address over to Gmail too. She's been wanting to get a new email in the hopes of thwarting the penis enlargement spammers that have somehow been targeting her.

She's been meaning to switch for a while, but a critical requirement for her is having a cool email address. Currently, she's rocking standardlines, which is from an indie song lyric that she liked. She was trying to get awesomej, which is her Wii nickname. Unfortunately, that was taken by someone; perhaps someone more awesome.

So we were playing around on the Gmail sign-up sheet with trying to find another equally cool email address. As we were trying out different names, we were surprised to find out which names were available and which weren't. We explored a couple of different themes and tried out different logins within that framework. For example, Islamic extremists:

Available
- jihad. mamma

Unavailable
- i.heart.jihad
- mohammad.jihad

Another discovery was that certain words were not allowed in any address. Like the F-word, for example. This eliminated a whole series of great emails, like:

Unavailable
- f***.a.monkey
- monkey.f***

We tried a number of Transformer related emails, mostly for my entertainment.

Unavailable
- optimus.prime
- megatron

Available
- megatron1000000
- i.heart.megatron
- i.heart.optimus
- optimus.rulez

We hit a couple of other themes, but were unable to decide on a good handle for Jessica. Any suggestions based on these results?

Unavailable
- androids.dungeon
- NPR.lover
- i.dont.like.that
- shuffle.hop.step
- 742evergreenterrace
- areyouhavingalaugh

Available
- horn.of.gondor
- tiptapscrap
- miss.springfield
- little.dog.lover
- edna.krabapple
- widespread.ennui

League Night

I come from a family of hard-core bowlers, so it was no surprise that Aidan would pick up the sport so easily. Note the avante-garde pin arrangement.

Fall Arts and Crap

My "friend" Mandy once described my decorating style as "arts and crap," but I prefer to describe it instead as having Martha Stewart-aspirations. I guess there's not a lot difference, only the skill level. Anyway, I had Aidan work on some fall decorations I wanted made (one more reason to have children: slave labor). Here is the centerpiece we made by cutting leaves out of construction paper and painting them.






We first got the leaves wet and crumpled them, then let them dry before proceeding to step two, the paining. I like to call this the "dirty water" technique: Aidan got the paint brush wet and then dipped in about five colors of water color paint. It made the leaves look really mottled. And awesome.





Here is a wreath Aidan made, using the same technique, except not crumpling first. We glued the leaves on a cardboard circle. Cheap!

Tiny Soccer

Aidan has started soccer season. I am really surprised they even let 3-year old kids play soccer, or any other team sports, but here we are. Mostly, the kids chase the ball around like it's an ice cream truck on the hottest day of the summer.










Here is a close up of my sweetie. He has started making an awful, over-the-top smile face lately, so this natural smile is really appreciated. his team is the "Green Dragons," even though Aidan had offered another name. "I think 'The superheros who use powers to get bad guys' is a little long for our team name, Aidan," his coach said as she gently let him down. If only- I have to say that would have been the coolest team name ever!

All aboard for Switzerland!

To continue with the Family Adventure Series while Joel is gone, I decided to take the kids on a trip to Switzerland and a ride on the St. Moritz Express.
The little red train takes an unbelievably beautiful route through the mountains, from Italy to St. Moritz. There were lots of tunnels, covered bridges, scenic overlooks, and a famous 360-degree turn. Such a fanciful thing would never be built in this day and age.



St. Moritz was really beautiful and scenic, but we didn't have much time there before we had to get back on the bus for the return trip. This was a convenient photo-op next to the tourism office. Hmmm... convenient place to put a wooden chalet...

Ca'Bruzzo Winery tour

While Joel is off in Bulgaria becoming a bigamist, I am dumping my kids off and getting smashed at the local wineries. Just kidding... sort of. Here are some pictures from the winery tour I went on with the post travel office.

First, we went on a tour of the vineyards. This is a family-run, organic winery- no pesticides, no fertilizer, no irrigation. It's amazing anything grows here at all! They grow a few different types of grapes here, mostly purple ones. As you can tell, I am a real wine enthusiast now, with all the lingo down!

Of course, some old woman on the tour has to go and make an ass of herself and, by association, Americans, by asking the farmer if he's ever heard of these great Concord grapes that we have in the U.S., and why don't they make wine from those? They make a great jelly and grape juice! she says. I did learn something pretty cool- ALL of the grape vines in Europe are grafted onto American roots, due to a pestilence that attacks the vines; apparently one of our varieties is resistant.

Here is a close up of some of the grapes- beautiful!! They were very sweet, because they have been on the vine so long.

For the grand finale, the owner smoked a cigar while he played guitar and sang songs in Italian. We relaxed and ate cheeses and salami on wonderful bread and drank the wines. Who could ever get tired of this??

Monte Berico

There is a Basilica here, Monte Berico, in Vicenza that has a really awesome view. I drove over there and took some pictures the other day. Peep this:

Tiny Chess Game

In Bulgaria, there's a whole sub-culture of tiny old men that gather in the parks and place chess on normal sized boards with normal sized pieces.

I didn't believe it when I first saw it, but you can't deny this photographic evidence:





Yet another bizarre part of Bulgarian culture.

War-stache

I don't know what it is about being deployed in Iraq, but it makes soldiers want to grow their mustaches out. Plenty of guys do it. When I was deployed in 2003, I sported one for a couple of months. I kept it until it got thick and collected so much Iraqi sand and dust that anything I ate tasted like dirt. To be honest, the food wasn't that delectable to begin with, but you've got to have standards.

So I wasn't too surprised when my brother Justin sent me this picture of his Iraqi war-stache.



Nice, right? For comparison, here's my profile pic with a artificial mustache. Notice the family resemblance? Uncanny, I know. Although I think I do look a little more sophisticated in my picture. Look at that sublime eyebrow raise. Goosebumps!

Did you remember what today is?

Today is September 11th. For those that have forgotten, six years ago the U.S. was attacked by terrorist who hijacked commercial airlines and flew them into the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon.



Three thousand Americans lost their lives that day.

More than three thousand, seven hundred American soldiers and civilians have lost their lives during the four years of war since then.

But what is on the front page of MSN today?



"Summer's Biggest Scandal"? Paris and Lindsey are front page news on 9/11? I'm surprised they mentioned 9/11 on the front page at all. At least they gave a small link on the left of the page to acknowledge the fact that it was 9/11.

For today, try to not read the celebrity gossip news and sports box scores. For today, think of how the world has changed in the last six years and how that's affected your life and the lives of your loved ones. Today, remember the fallen Americans that were killed six years ago today and the thousands that have died since.

Never forget.
Never forget.
Never forget.

A funny thing happened last night...

Well, what do you know?

After a night out on the town, I wake up to find myself married to a Bulgarian girl. Who knew it could be so easy? Jessica's not going to be thrilled about this.



And if she's going to be pissed about that, she's going to be furious about this. Due to a huge misunderstanding, which I will admit was partially my fault, I didn't wed one but two Bulgarian girls last night.



Good grief.

At least the priest was nice enough to only charge me for his services once, since he only technically performed one ceremony. Here's a shot of me and him hanging out afterward.



On a serious note, these pictures were taken at my hotel last night. I came back from dinner to find that there were not one, but two different weddings being hosted by my hotel. Must be a popular place. Anyway, by the time that I came back from dinner, the booze had been flowing and everyone was my new best friend. After learning how to say congratulations in Bulgarian, I wished the wedding party the best and asked for pictures with the brides. Ideally, I wanted to get them both in the same shot, but the timing didn't work out. When I saw the priest hanging out, I went for the trifecta. I'm the Bulgarian "Wedding Crasher".

The priest was an interesting guy. After getting the hotel night manager to ask him in Bulgarian (the manager and the priest were acquaintances), he came over and gave me an uncomfortably long handshake while he asked me questions in Bulgarian and I waited for translation. After I got the picture, I asked my Bulgarian friend what that was all about. Apparently, the priest is hesitant to get his picture taken with people because there are semi-religious cults in Bulgaria that would try to get a picture with a priest to give credibility to their sect. So he was feeling me out with the questions to make sure I wasn't one of these cult wackos. Yet another bizarre glimpse into the world of Bulgaria.

Our Little Princess

I don't know about you, but the first thing I think about when I give birth is "What will this precious new baby be dressing up as for Halloween?" This may be because Joel and I have a special place in our hearts for Halloween, and in particular, Halloween parties...and, ahem, fog machines. So, after checking out all of the costumes for fairies, bees, peas, angels, superheros, hot dogs (and other disturbing food items), care bears, and caterpillars (actually, really cute for a crawling baby), we decided on a princess costume...Princess Leia!

Check out this awesome picture of the baby model:

Pretty sweet, huh? We had a little trouble finding it, but thanks to http://www.halloweencostumes4u.com/ we were able to get it. Maybe you should check them out for all of your holiday costume needs, as well!! (Does that smack of shameless promotion? They offer to refund the shipping cost to people who blog about the site.) But, I am a fan- they had this costume when the first ten sights I checked were sold out, so yay to them!!

In case you have missed this, here is the hot dog suit- delicious!!!

My Brilliant Idea

I don't know why, but when I'm in Bulgaria I seem to keep coming up with crazy business ideas. There's been a-plenty, but this post is just about one of them in particular.

But first, a little background...

All around Bulgaria, I keep seeing this very poster:



Now, I don't read Bulgarian. I can only go by what I can glean from the picture and what I know about Bulgaria. First, I can see that some thug-ish looking gentleman is prominently featured at the front of this poster. He appears to be surrounded by a throng of acquaintances; a mob of people, if you will. Second, I know that Bulgaria has a large and active underworld criminal element. Third, by the production quality and frequency that I see this poster, I make the assumption that this is for a TV show or movie in Bulgaria. So my first conclusion was that this was some sort of Bulgarian version of the Sopranos.

Turns out, my first conclusion was incorrect. The guy, I learned, is Slavi Trifonov, host of the Slavi Trifonov Show. From his website:

Slavi Trifonov`s Show is a daily sixty minute evening talk show broadcast from Monday to Friday from 22:30h 23:30h on the first private nationwide TV in Bulgaria - bTV. Although it is an external production it turned into the media emblem and basis upon which it started to build its image and prestige.

So, it's kind of like a Bulgarian version of Sabado Gigante. But I think that my original idea would actually be a better sell. A Bulgarian version of the Sopranos, with this guy Slavi as the lead. Set it in a suburb of Sofia, have Slavi go through a mid-life crisis while he's trying to balance the mob and his family, through a little Balkan flavor in there; it's a can't miss premise. Also, doesn't Slavi bear a little more than a passing resemblance to this guy?



Now, who can green light this baby? I'll set myself up as the executive producer, get some hot-shot Bulgarian director, and a crew of hungry university students for writers. It'll make millions.

Buried Alive

I was relaying a story to a Bulgarian about safety coffins. For those of you not in the know, people in Victorian England and Europe would get these coffins that had bells attached to strings that the departed could pull in the event that they "wake up" from an accidental burial. Sounds crazy, but I guess it happened on more than one occasion back then. Check out this passage from deathonline.net:

Fear of premature burial was widespread in 18th and 19th century Europe, leading to the invention of the safety coffin. Over thirty different designs were patented in Germany in the second half of the 19th century. The common element was a mechanism for allowing the 'dead' to communicate with people above ground. Many designs included ropes which, when pulled, would ring the church bell, or a purpose-mounted bell. Others replaced the bell with a raiseable flag, a powerful fire cracker or a pyrotechnic rocket. Some included a shovel, a ladder and a supply of food and water. An essential element, which was overlooked in some designs, was a breathing tube to provide air and occasionally even sustenance.

Weird, right? So after reading this, my first question was, "How did people get mis-diagnosed as dead?" Any suggestions, Wikipedia?

At least one report of accidental burial goes back to the 13th Century. Hundreds of instances of accidental burials were documented in the 1600s during epidemics of plague, cholera, and smallpox. Revivals have been triggered by dropped coffins, grave robbers, embalming, and attempted dissections. Fearing premature burial, George Washington, on his deathbed, made his servants promise not to bury him until three days after his death. Patients in the 1990s have been documented as accidentally being bagged, trapped in a steel box, or sent to the morgue.

Sucks to be the doctor that mistakenly pronounced someone dead when they weren't. That's got to be the ultimate "D'oh!"

I also came across this super creepy painting by Antoine Wiertz called The Premature Burial. What kind of a wacked out painter do you have to be to paint this?



Oh wait, he's Belgian. No further explanation needed.

All figured out

I was counting up all the time that I've spent in Bulgaria, to include all the time that I will be spending here this month. By my count, I've been here 13 days already and I'll be here for 38 days once I leave on 30 September. That's not exactly the summer holiday that I was hoping to take this year, but I'm going to try to make the most of it.

So I've noticed a lot of similarities between the Bulgarians and a certain fictional alien race. I hate to make a Star Trek reference here, but unfortunately the analogy does fit. I'm talking about Klingons. Just take a look at this picture and decide for yourself:



Hmmm, separated at birth? But there's more! I've been hearing a lot of spoken Bulgarian lately and I can't help thinking that it bears more than a passing resemblance to the fictional language of the Klingons. Compare these two songs:

Klingon Song

Bulgarian Song (press the green button on the linked page)

Alright, now that's not just a passing coincidence. By the way, the Bulgarian song is actually being sung by the woman on the right in the picture above. No not that one. No, the one on the right. No, the woman. Ugh, just forget it.

Here's another thing about the Bulgarians that may or may not be like the Klingons, but certainly seems alien: they transpose the meanings of their headnods. That is to say, they nod their head side-to-side when they mean "yes" and up-and-down when they mean "no". It confuses the crap out of me. I've been here for a couple of weeks by now, and I still can't seem to remember this small but vital difference. All the time, I find myself talking to a Bulgarian, discussing some business, and thinking, "Why is this guy disagreeing with me? I thought we were on the same page with this?" Then I realize that he's shaking his head "no", but means "yes". Fricking confusing.

Also, I've been on pretty good terms with all the Bulgarians that I've met. But you couldn't tell by the way that they talk to me. There's something in their national character to talk loudly and agitated at you, even when you're talking about something pleasant. For example, I was at the cell phone store getting a Bulgarian number for my phone. I was already in the store, I had decided to buy this store's chip, I was going to put additional credit on the card. I was a slam dunk customer for these guys. But they were talking at a volume that was just below yelling and almost rushing me through the process, even though I was the only guy in the store for nearly 20 minutes. Where's the fire, fellas? I know there's a line of customers piling up behind me eager to drop some money on your... Oh wait, no there's not. It's just me. Go figure.

Anyway, it's a strange place filled with strange people. A little like Klingons, but not with the ridged foreheads and leather outfits. Well, maybe some leather outfits.

Later.