There is a lot of construction going on around these parts.  Mostly apartment buildings.  There are some I don’t really like because they look all patchworky.  There’s a high rise that looks funny to me because the windows are about 4 different shades of blue.  We took to calling it urban camouflage. (Urban Camouflage, so close to being a cover band name) I want to like it, but I really don’t.

While passing an under construction one, I noticed the siding going up in beige and red.  It isn’t all the way up yet, so I’m holding out home somebody just screwed it up, but one section has the two colors in a weird pattern.  It isn’t really even a pattern, it’s just random looking.  My husband is all like “You don’t like this fly urban look?”

Fly Urban Look covers hip hop of course.  And most likely they do it poorly.

My Birthday is this week!  Yay!  Unfortunately my son has a Boy Scout court of honor to attend the same day.  My husband sarcastically said “At least you’re guaranteed cake.”  Then I punched him.  Kidding.  Maybe.

In seriousness he asked if I wanted two cakes that day.  Yes, but no, of course not.  But I do want my own cake.  Because the court of honor cake will be from the grocery and, while still cake, is only adequate cake.  A cover band is born.

Adequate Cake only covers Cake songs and they only do it adequately.  No, not songs about cake silly.  Cake the awesome band!  I’ll be dancing over here in my short skirt and long jacket.

My husband has decided to start showing our son the worst movies he can find.  That’s the only excuse I can come up with for them watching Robot Holocaust yesterday.  I can only hope that he never shows him Jupiter Ascending, the absolute worst movie I have ever paid good money to see.   True fact: Every movie I have seen since Jupiter Ascending is “at least it’s not as bad as Jupiter Ascending.”

I can’t tell you the plot the “classic” Robot Holocaust  because I left the room in the first five minutes it was so bad(at least it’s not as bad as Jupiter Ascending).  An hour later, I declared bedtime as I was attempting to save my child from further harm. “But there is only 20 minutes left!”  So I stayed to watch the end.  During the credits, I had to point out that there would be no post credits scene as the movie is too old for that(thanks Marvel!).  They start naming off the players in this gem when our son starts laughing at a character called “Irradiated Female”.  We all couldn’t stop giggling at that point.

Irradiated Female is an all girl punk rock group.  They can play whatever song they want that is how punk rock they are.

Some friends of our recently took a trip out west.  On a stop in some tourist trap they found a Zoltar machine.  Unbelievably, they didn’t get a fortune!  More believable is that their teenagers didn’t know the reference.  You guys remember the movie Big, right?  The one where a kid wishes on a fortune teller machine to be big and wakes up as Tom Hanks?  That is the Zoltar fortune teller!  They found Zoltar in Sedona.  Seems legit.

Zoltar in Sedona is a rather new agey group.  Lot’s of Enya covers I’m thinking.

 

After trying for practically every year since moving to the area, we finally scored some tickets to the White House Christmas Tree lighting in 2015.  Sadly they were for the standing room only section, but we soldiered on because I felt like we needed to experience this at least once.  There are many things I will never do again and standing waiting for someone to light a Christmas Tree from probably three football fields away is definitely on that list.  (Also on the list, DC fireworks, um.. this may be a list of 2 things…)  So on the day of the lighting, we get the kid out of school early and take the train down. They want you there about 4 hours too early.  I get it, security and whatnot.  But it was cold.  And it was getting dark as we were standing there waiting for something to happen.  We weren’t the only antsy ones.  There was a couple standing close to us.  I didn’t pay them much attention until she starts talking really loudly.  “Kevin.. when this end?”  It was too perfect.  Obama hadn’t even shown up yet!

We weren’t the only ones that left as soon as the lights came on.

Ideally, this would be a band you wouldn’t want to end.

I have weird elbows.  Most people call them double jointed.  All people call them “Ewwww” when they see them for the first time.  I don’t really care.  When people do this I just say that it’s my best party trick and move on.  My favorite instance was in a yoga class.  I did a super cool pose until someone pointed them out.  A girl said “Ewww” really loud.  She’s a peach and a grown-ass woman.  You can’t keep these things to yourself at this age?  After I was chastised by the teacher, I couldn’t hold the pose again.

I have thankfully passed on these genes to my child.  He is even more flexible than I.  He recently started doing this thing where he can move his scalp.  It looks like he is wearing a toupee.  Plus his eyebrows don’t move when he does it and it is creepy and awesome.  Yes, I realize this probably has nothing to do with flexibility.  Anyway, I called it his “2nd best party trick.”

Seems to me 2nd Best Party Trick should be a wedding band.  They probably include silly things as instruments.  Like kazoos or a washboard.

On a recent trip to Pittsburgh, we were channel surfing in our hotel.  A soccer game came on.  Honestly, soccer is the most boring game.  Except for maybe golf.  How many sports enthusiasts can I offend?  I’m just getting started baby.  So, obviously, there were two teams playing.  Couldn’t tell you who, but one WAS a Canadian team.  The announcer (yeller?) was talking about a particular player and something they had just done.  Probably running.. or standing, there was a lot of that happening, we are talking about soccer here.  The announcer said the player was a “Clinical Canadian”.  Bam.

Clinical Canadian does Barenaked Ladies coves exclusively.  Because why not.

 

Side note.  Why does WordPress think yeller is misspelled?  I actually had to look it up to be sure.

So my son comes to me and tells me about a book he wants to read.  He’s seem references to it in a couple places and has heard how good it is.  I’m always up for finding him a good book that he will read.  He likes to read but is very picky.  So I’m all “great!!  What’s the book?”  “Don Quecksito”  I laughed so hard I cried.  Yeah, not great parenting.  But he is good at laughing along.  So grateful he is a kid who can laugh at himself.  I wouldn’t make it through this if his feelings got hurt at that stuff.

Quecksito.  I misspell it every time.  I’m open for suggestions as to what they would play.  I think Quecksito is a confused bunch of kids playing in a garage who haven’t found their jam yet.

Due to reasons beyond our control, we had to switch garbage companies. Now, before moving to Northern Virginia, I had never lived anywhere where garbage collections weren’t run by the city or something. The fee for city service was just taken out of taxes or whatever. I don’t know (care) how these things work. But here in Northern Virginia, there are like four companies to choose from, and we have to pay for it out of our hard earned money. Except now there are only 3 companies. The closing one gave us, as customers, to a rival. So now we have a new garbage company. This new one didn’t bother to tell us when our collection days are.

Now for regular garbage, that is not a problem; the new company uses the same two days as the one that closed. Jealous of two days? That’s right, we have garbage come twice a week! Fancy. But recycling is on a new day – an entirely different day and we had no idea. So we put the recycling out on our old day, and it sat there. For two days. So it gets dragged back in. Unfortunately, it got dragged in the night before our actual pick up day. Woe is me. So this week we have TWO weeks worth of recycling to take out. And it’s a lot because reasons. So after dinner Jason was flustered looking at all the stuff. “Put your shoes on and help me.. um take out, take out the, take out the everything!” Sometimes I could kiss that man.

Ok, all the times 🙂

Take out the Everything is a DJ doing some awesome EDM covers. I know, redundant.

Logan is of the age now where he has to write papers for school. This fast is super irritating as no one has taught him how to do such things. It’s a real trial by fire. He had a couple of papers that he was working on over an extended snow break we had. I’m the de-facto editor in the house because of my excellent grammar skillz. We all happen to be in the car and talking about his progress on the papers when his font selection turns up. See, Logan likes to use Comic Sans of all things. And I make fun of him for it because it’s just silly looking. I would show it to you, but I just found out how annoying it is to try and change fonts in WordPress. I’m just really shocked that none of his teachers have called him on it so far. Surely high school will be different on that front? Maybe they just don’t care in middle school?

So Jason asks “What kind of font would you prefer?” It’s not like I know that many by name, but I throw out a couple. “Arial, Times New Roman, Helvetica…” “Oh, so you’re a Helvetica Girl are you?”

Why yes, yes I am a Helvetica Girl.

Helvetica Girl does do some Lisa Loeb style covers, but also writes her songs dedicated to her literary heroines. I’m sure she’s a Jane Austen fan. She probably sleeps in her car with her homeless mother, plays mostly in coffee shops, and local bookstores.