Creepy Technology

When I saw this, my first reaction was something along the lines of, "Holy cow what...!?" because this is some seriously creepy shtuff. I mean, I'm all for moving forward on the technology front, and it's hugely awesome, but this thing looks like a pair of disembodied legs attached to a tank, or a truly mutant monkey. Check it out. It's like, totally the beginning of the dalek invasion.

On other topics, the ambulance came today - second time in the three years we've been at this place. The first time was because someone fell off, but today, one of the dads thought he was having a heart attack. I was driving home from Adam's school, having taken him to Santa's Helper thing, and as I was stopping at the stop sign to turn onto Dillard, a firetruck blazed by, sirens wailing. I thought, uh oh, someone's got a fire.

Silly me.

Everything was fine, thank goodness, and I got to follow the firetruck into my own drive way, which was something new. Adam got a junior firefighter sticker for helping out (he fetched a chair), so he was happy about that. The dogs were joyous at seeing something new, and Jessie was completely out of control, dratted dog, sniffing at the firefighter's crotches as they tried to tend to this poor man. Jack, thank goodness, came right away when I called him and stayed put in the garage until they left, after which I brought him inside and gave him a treat as a reward. Jessie, dumb dog, got no such thing.

Anyways, some pics of the firetruck and ambulance, which I took on the sly, and Adam's Junior Firefighter 'badge'.

Here's the ambulance through the trees.

The fire truck from the garage

And Adam's sticker for helping out.

The Hansen Family

My Grandparents have a framed cross-stich work on the wall of my grandfather's computer room. It's the pattern of a cartoon car with little lines around the wheels to indicate high speeds. In front of it is a little tube-like thing.

It reads, "I'd love to live life in the fast lane, but I'm married to a...speed bump."

Every time I see it, I laugh. I'm not quite sure how it came to be (I've never asked), but I'm fairly certain that my grandpa doesn't cross-stitch, and I'm pretty sure that my grandma always drives the speed-limit.

It's kind of a subtle humor, but in my experience it permeates every single Hansen and sub-Hansen in my family - along with some other kinds of humor, too! (See the contagion called laughter, below.)

I've been given the dubious fortune of being the daughter of the daughter arguably closest in personality to my grandfather, and I'm quite my mother's daughter. (Does that make sense?) Which means, among other things, that I inherited that lead foot of hers. She's always yelling at me to slow down! except when she's driving, and I have to hide behind a book lest I stomp on my imaginary brake pedal every other wheel-rotation, so she has absolutely no room to talk!

I could write for years on my family's quirks, but I'll refrain and just say that I love all you guys. You're the best family in the world.

Crazyness and all.

:)

Holiday Decorating

Everyone knows that you're supposed to put up your Christmas lights the first weekend after Thanksgiving, right? Except Adam wanted to put our lights up early, so we made a fun adventure out of it.

We got all our requirements - staple gun, potato, camera - and, of course, the mandatory help.

Here's Foxy, carefully supervising Mom as she clips the lights on the roof.

Watch out, Foxy, Adam's taking aim!!!

Looking quite wide-eyed here.

Here's Echo, peering out Mom's bedroom window to make sure everything's going according to plan.

And Foxy again, helping me with the lights over the garage.

We all thought it was a grand adventure, climbing around on the roof, and the lights look so nice now, all lit up. Too bad Christmas only comes once a year!

the contagion called laughter

Sometimes, my mother just can't help herself. She gets it from her dad, I think - it's that Hansen trait.

We were going grocery shopping, both of us kind of grouchy (her more than me!), and in the parking lot she got out of the car while I fiddled with my iPod for a minute, finding a song I liked, yada yada. She shut her door and locked it with the little thingamabob on her keyring, and the car beeped obediently and I looked up to see the Security light flashing an ominous red. Anyone who has ever taken shelter from the bitter winter cold in the car knows what that means.

If I manually unlock it, I thought vaguely, maybe the alarm won't go off.

Me, being nearly equally dextrous with both hands, tend to use one hand for tasks that don't need two, especially since I'm usually holding a book and keeping my place in it with a finger. So, I reached over right-handedly and manually pulled on the little door-lock tab, then let go to reach for the door handle. Except the door tab flipped back, and the door was locked again.

Here's where my hand works faster than my brain. Long before I registered it, I'd already flipped it unlocked again, not even thinking about it. Again, I reached for the handle, and whoops, locked again. Now a tiny inkling of something wrong tickled in my distracted head - something along the lines of, whoops, didn't pull hard enough...

So this time, giving a miniscule amount of attention to the problem, I pulled the flap a little harder, wiggled it for good measure, and reached (yet again!) for the door handle.

And yeah, you guessed it - it locked again.

Here, at last, I woke up a bit and took a good look at that disagreeable lock. And knew at once what was going on. Huffing a little, I set down my book and reached over with both hands, forcibly holding the lock and pulling open the door, staggering out and already looking...

And there she was, doubled over, tears streaming down a very red face, laughing so hard she could barely breathe. And laughter's contagious, don't you know. Together, we stumbled into the grocery store, laughing like hyenas. I'm sure we garnered many curious stares, and perhaps some indulgent chuckles.

Life. It's good, mostly.

Orange Kitten

Debbie just told me how to get my digital pics onto my computer - painlessly! I know! Amazing, isn't it? No cables, no fighting-with-the-software (I've always hated loading pictures onto my computer).

So, being that I can now easily upload pics, I thought I'd post some of the little kitten I have at the moment. Here he is - isn't he the most adorable thing ever?

And here, drinking from his bottle.

And here, looking curious and utterly bewildered.

Little Black Cat

I took this quite a while ago, but I never get tired of looking at it. It always gives me a kick to see it when I scroll through my pictures.

Believe it or not, Foxy is actually sound asleep. She's not rolling over, mid-blink. She's quite zonked out.

She looks pretty darn happy, doesn't she?

Ready...set...BLOG!!!

I'm thinking this whole blog endeavor is very much overdue. I thought about starting one when Kristen started one, oh, positively ages ago, and...um, didn't. Then, I seriously considered setting one up when Debbie made one, but, er, I didn't. And then I found out (months ago) that Kirsten, Heather, and Jessica all have blogs, and decided I very much had to start one of my own, but I...ah, got sidetracked, and didn't.

But Look! I am here! I have Crossed the Line! I am part of the Blogger crowd! Right?

Right.

So. News. Um. Well. Weeeelllll........

I won a saddle last weekend! Not that anyone is particularly interested in that, except it was a very expensive saddle, which, upon resale, gave (will give) me the funds to buy my own car! Now that is exciting! No more borrowing my dad's grungy old Explorer. No more squabbling with my mother over the nifty new Outback. No more staring in dismay at the only other vehicle at my disposal - the huge, horrible, no good, very bad Ford F350 with oversized tires and no friggin' turning radius. No more! For I shall soon have a car of my own!!!

Naturally, a saddle won't buy a very expensive car no matter how fine the leather grain is - but there is something satisfactory in being able to say, "I can buy my own car, with my own money, and I don't have to rely on anyone to get it."