otpid/web huggingface dataset:
Yesterday I attended a mothers' group playdate. Formally it was an "ice cream social." A big fan of ice cream, I didn't intend to miss it, even though my child is too young to play with the happy, babbling, walking toddlers. My child was, after pitching one of his usual fits about being put into the car seat for the fifteen minutes it took to drive there, finally, blissfully asleep in his stroller (read: torture chamber), so I had hands and, for a moment, mind free.The mothers who turned up all seemed like women I could relate to, would love to get to know, and would find interesting--the type who have opinions about social issues and like to read. I was eager to dig in and get to know them.  Unfortunately for my social craving, each woman was busy being a mother--which meant following behind their toddlers to keep them from tripping into the street, or retrieving a ball that was sent flying into the next yard, or scooping ice cream into tiny mouths. I felt disappointed. I ate my indulgent bowl of ice cream with extra jimmies and caramel sauce silently. I asked a few questions, made a few comments, and was politely answered before that particular mother had to return to her task of being absolutely available to her child.  And as I sat there in my sort of smugness, feeling disappointed  not to have discussion with what I knew to be intelligent, interesting women--my own child struck up a caterwauling so loud that I was barely heard shouting over him that I would go walk him in his stroller to quiet him. The stroller walk was a temporary balm. Feeding him even more temporary. Changing him had almost no effect at all.  And so I got up with apologies, barely heard over his plaintive wailing, and madly dashed for my car, trying to speak reasonably to my child that we would soon be home. That his suffering was nearly over. That if he could just hang in there a few minutes more, the lovely rythm of the car would lull him to sleep or at least calm. And in my haste I realized that I was in exactly the same position as those other mothers. That intelligent conversation from my end would also have to wait.
So I was bragging at work today that I fixed my Ipod Mini. The battery wasn't holding a charge so I ordered a new battery, and while searching I realized you could use a compact flash drive to upgrade it, so I got a 16gb compact flash drive for cheap on Newegg.  Anyway, my co-worker got all excited when I mentioned it because her sister's Ipod was broken. So I offered to fix it, and I took it home today to troubleshoot. It turns out it's the battery so since I knew I'd be opening the case later I figured I'd just open it now to save myself a step when the new battery comes in. I thought I was super careful opening it, but I guess I slipped or bent the front slightly, because now the LCD has a big ass dark spot and I'm out 30 bucks for a new LCD.
When you're helping your daughter potty train your three year old grandson, and all seems to be going so well.....  but...  (maybe I should say "butt"....)  he suddenly seems to be regressing, after just impressing the socks off the whole family because he hasn't had an "accident" in days and days....  and all of a sudden you just know, he's about had it with this whole blue and green plastic toilet in Papa's bathroom thing....(excuse me, but what color is YOUR toilet? Is it plastic and is it blue and green?)...  AND his daddy took him on his first fishing trip last weekend (he's three but Andy's thirty and hey, it's time to get serious about fishing...)  ..and the only place to pee is in the grass because guess what, your fishing license doesn't include bathrooms for three year olds in training.  OK. Cameron and I are outside today (just after the break of dawn because after about 9 a.m. forget about it - this is the hottest place on earth and there's just no way....  ..and Cameron says to me, "Nana. I'm gonna pee in the grass."  Excuse me. I don't think so. So I'm trying to explain to him , peeing in the grass is only OK when you're with your macho daddy in the woods. Or at the lake.  Cameron is three years old, barely, and I love it that Andy couldn't wait to take him fishing, but really, there are no potty training things at the lake.  Hence...pee on the grass. I have grass. I guess I have pee places I didn't know I had.  Anyway, here's what happened to me yesterday and I apologize but really, learn from my mistake.  We've been dealing with a little backtracking. If you're a young mom, well first of all, bless your heart because you're young and  I'm not.  Cameron is in pull-ups. They didn't have pull-ups when I potty trained his mommy, Krissy. So I didn't know that those little whatever they are marking things on the front of the pullup clue you in if the adorable little child has wet himself.  Now I know.  We're going through a little bit of a regression thing right now, so after nap yesterday, I've got Cameron positioned on his bright blue and green plastic potty which is just so similar to the great big white porcelain monster toilet he's going to face in kindergarten, and he's all calm.  So I decide to see if  he's had an accident while he was napping.  He's sitting there, holding his little thing down just like we've taught him to do (he's got that part down) and he's peeing and smiling at Nana.  I still don't know why I did this, but I had to see if the little marking things on the front of his pullup had disappeared which would mean he'd wet himself duing his nap.  My word. How stupid can you get?  I stuck my hand down the front of that pullup to see if it was wet.  Gag. You don't want to know what I brought out of that pullup. It was too late. I was in it with three fingers up to the second knuckle. Oh.my.word.  And Cameron looks at me, and my disgusting hand, and says,  "Good one, huh Nana."  God bless grandmothers.
So last Wednesday afternoon I’m slaving away on the Convention floor when my cell starts vibrating.  And vibrating.  And vibrating.  Not really an unusual occurrence as I was in charge of coordinating photography and all IT requests.  But unusual in that it wouldn’t stop.   I checked and I had 5 text messages from WB.  This is odd in that with him at camp, I rarely hear from him.  As I started reading the text’s, my phone started to ring.  My mother.  First thought “He’s hurt.  Someones died.”  I know, I shouldn’t think the worse, but I’m a Mom and 2000km away from her youngin.
Thursday was a bit muggy and clammy too, as I rode into work on the Burgman. The motorcycle went over the 500 mile mark, just 100 miles from the 600 mile service interval I went ahead and set up an appointment for Saturday to have the machine serviced at the selling dealer, Suzuki of Atlanta in Lawrenceville. I decided that since it is so close for the service that it might as well be done, a rule of thumb I use is that it is never too early to do a service especially when it is the first major service.
OK, I’m good with the yoga again.    Yesterday, I forced myself to do a double just to get past all this crap that’s been scaring me.  Just to gut my way through the anxiety.  I’m glad I did.  It wasn’t a killer double, just to be clear - the first class was close to killer because I was practicing at the studio with lousy air circulation and the teacher didn’t manage that very well so it was huuuummmiiiiddd and hot and the air wasn’t moving; second class was being taught by my fave teacher (and good friend) so I knew I was okay to just do the standing series then leave if that’s what I needed to do.  And that’s what I did, Standing then hit the showers.  I had just enough of a second wind to do the first half of the class, and I felt good about it, so no guilt.
My mother's driving me nuts. Nothing new there, right? Anyways, I'm scraping and painting the porch for her (she keeps saying I'm staining it, but I agree with Kevin, if I have to scrape it off, I'm painting it), and every day she comes out and rubs her finger on the wood, and if even a miniscule sliver of paint comes off, she decides I haven't scraped it enough. It's a porch, it sits out in the annoyingly hot weather (god awful humid lately) it's been rained on lately, and just normal wear and tear makes it so it keeps flaking. SO IT'S GONNA FLAKE ESPECIALLY IF YOU RUB ON THE PARTICULARLY WEATHERED SPOTS. I just looked at the weather and it might rain. Crossing my fingers that it will, beause then the porch will be too wet to paint.
Last weekend was a short jaunt up to Canada that turned into a bit of an extended road trip. It might have been more fun if work hadn't been associated with it. Also, whenever they get around to building an airport in Vancouver I'll be a happy little guy. After leaving the apartment at 6:45 AM, flying 2 hours, taking  a cab to Seattle, and then driving seven hours up to Whistler including a border crossing, it's safe to say that I felt pretty much like a dick with legs.                    It was nice, as usual to see everyone. We met up at The Hall of Justice in Ballard and filled ourselves with biscuits and gravy for our long dive.                   It sure was pretty.                       The hotel and festival were site were up in Whistler at an active ski resort. It was a hell of a place for a festival. I didn't really pay much attention to anything other than the VIP bar, but as usual I got to see some old friends.                   All told it was about 45 minutes worth of work in broad daylight.                    It was the end of the line for the Interpolers. Their last show was on Friday, the first day of the festival. I walked up on stage on Sunday to find this familiar little artifact, Interpol's keyboards. I sent Ally an email with a picture of it. He responded rather quickly suggesting that I just push it into a ditch and leave it there for future civilizations to ponder over.                    Now I'm back in my living room, digging my home and SF. My neighbor, incidentally, is an extra from Mad Max, and I think that he is awesome. I have this elaborate fantasy that involves eating pizza with him on a merry-go-round.                     Adieu.
One of my cherished memories of Bangkok is arriving late at night at Don Muang and catching a taxi into Sukumvit. While on the road, well past midnight, the taxi was passed by a pair of motorcyclists riding laid back without using their hands, just racing wildly into the night. It just seemed so Thai, so here's a short video of some crazy guy doing the stunt in the middle of the day:   Motorcyclist Without Hands via Jil in Cagayan
I have something sad to tell you.   We lost Thomas this afternoon.   He died in his dad's arms.  He was not in pain.   He'd had a very, very exhausting day and night and morning of wet, depressed breathing, but he hadn't really been alert since bedtime last night.  These are the last three things Thomas did:  the "hey, look at me, I've got a humungous bowl on my head" joke for his hospice nurse on Tuesday, and then last night, he woke up to watch Blue's clues and to wave at Steve and Blue.  And then he gave his dada kisses before bedtime.  Today, we held him for a long time.  We told him lots of good things, and sang to him, and held him some more.
Not loans are created equal, and that is the tough truth I learned today.  Just to share with you, I got a lump sum from the company I work for to be used to buy a car.  As I canvass for the car that suits my need, I centered on one that is fuel efficient and would not cost me a lot – a subcompact.  The car costs about $12,500 here in our country, and the lump sum I got is about $10,000.  I was initially tempted to put the $10,000 in stocks, but I will not risk my money versus the declining trend in stocks.  Oil could have been an opportunity, but I am a bit new with commodities.  (But that is another story!)   Anyways, so what I did was get an auto loan to cover for the shortage and plan to do pay by lump sum in the hope of having my loan restructured, either shortening the loan term from four years to three years or reducing the monthly amortization dramatically.  But in our country, such scheme only applies for housing loans.  What happened then to me was that my lump sum was treated as advance payment for the next two years.  Too bad I did not clear it with the loan officer.  At any rate, I am now free to pay the loan in 24 months and by the time I resume payment, the monthly amortization will be smaller against my monthly income.  Now that’s a good thing!
Sometimes things catch up with you, tight in the chest and expanding. Things like responsibility and loss. “It looks like Eden,” I said, and watched the river roving through the thick carpet of green that filled the valley and splashed up and over the hills. I was thinking about heaven. The greens would be a little more like emeralds, and the blues a little more like lapis lazuli. A weekend band rocked behind us, and people sat quietly, complacent in paradise. The sights and sounds of yesterday (or was it two days ago or three?) stuck to my brain like the taste of  picarones  and syrup in my mouth.   Welcome to the jungle, a gold-kissed version of reality that moves as slowly, yet as steadily, as the Rio Mayo below me. Men and women grow joyfully gray and wrinkled beneath the sun, and children sent away to the real world spend their dream-lives trying to get back. They look at concrete walls and see visions of canoe races and bicycling down to the hot springs on breezy, shady nights to slip into the sumptuous steam and perspire like they always have into the clear, scalding water. Coming back, a rare treat, is like watching a parade. Every place and every face is on display for you, a homecoming parade of colors and sensations and tastes.
Moving Forward  .  Friday kicked off with a three-hour breakfast meeting, as we gear up for the San Francisco shoot of Harimaya Bridge. There is still much do, but the experience of the last few years has made tackling the legal and pragmatic aspects of film production much easier than it was the first time around. One of the main themes to come out of this morning was that we remain convinced that     Harimaya Bridge     has the potential to be something special.  Towards the end of the meeting, we met one of the actors to go over some details, and she said something that really struck a chord ... she told us that everytime she reads the end of the script, she cries.  Which means that our screenwriter/director hit it out of the park.
Last night, I met with two book clubs at the Shoreline in  Battle Lake --the Clitherall Lake Book Club and the Battle Lake Book Club (the Laker Girls). It was fun! They had M & Ms and good questions, and there were no haters. I even picked up some solid gossip, like:    Battle Lake is the only Minnesota town to birth TWO  Princess Kays of the Milky Way . And one of them was at the meeting last night, cute as a freakin' button.  I should read books by  Shirley Hazzard .  Women never forget their first loves (which means I've never had one because I don't remember him. Oooh! Or maybe it means I'm not a woman.).  Men in Otter Tail County don't read. They CAN read, but choose not to. It's hard to juggle  The Secret Life of Bees  and the thirty ought the same time, so something's gotta go, and it sure ain't gonna be the gun. That's my hypothesis.    Fun stuff. I'd do it again. I also had time before the book club meeting to run up  Inspiration Peak  (a site featured prominently in the forthcoming   Knee High by July  ), which is gorgeous this time of year. Make a trip there!  I was just going to sign off, but then obsessively checked my amazon.com rankings and realized that the official   June Bug   cover is out there! Whee! Great work, Lisa!
I've nerver have a slip-and-slide when I was a child. Never when to a friend that had one out. So my sister bought one for her daughters. So on Saturday, they took it out. I've ask the kid if they wanted me to go play with them! They said yes. I've wait my turn(Got to show the example after all), and I did go for my first time. I have to mention that it was slitly downhill. I've start to run and when i did arrive at the end, where there is a kind of reservoir, I didn't really stop(it said children age between 3 and 12 after all on it). I was lucky, I only scratch a little bit my side. It is good, because there is no mark right now.
Not a lot of blogging on this site huh?  Hmm where to begin.  As some of you know I have been doing some running and swimming in anticipation of doing Xterra Ogden.  I ran college so the running comes pretty easy.  Swimming though, lets just say I have my issues.  I have been going to the pool at least once a week since late winter (for the most part).  I have been making progress but I am not comfortable at all in the water.  I am even less so when people are swimming close to me.  I don't know how to describe it but I really really don't like it. Anyway despite my fears i rented a wet suit and registered for the Scofield Tri in the Sprint division.  Rachel told me to line up on the outside so I would have fewer people around me which was good advice.  I was loving how bouyant the wetsuit made me feel.  In fact I was pretty confident that I would do a decent swim.  The gun went off and there I was in my own little recreation of the opening of "Saving Private Ryan".  3 seconds in a kick to the face knocked my goggles off. Shit.  I kept going, getting kicked a few more times.  About 200 yards in I am pretty sure  Kimbo Slice  connected with a haymaker from Nebraska.  My world was rocked!  I swallowed my body weight in water and my vision was blurry at best.  I floated on my back for a few minutes until my vision cleared and finally started the slow humiliating swim back to shore.  I did find my goggles though so that was pretty sweet.  Is the Universe trying to tell me that Tri's are not for me or is it a test of character?   It has been almost 2 weeks and I have not been back to the pool.  I will but not really sure when.  With 100 degree days on the horizon that may nudge me back soon.  A mile swim for Xterra? Not this year.
A couple of weeks ago  I’d mentioned  that the  Ellipse Center  was holding the All Arlington Salon, a show for people who live and work in Arlington, running from August 1st through September 13th, and with an opening tonight.   After a lot of hemming and hawing, I decided that my  Winged Migration  photo would go into the show. I love the huge numbers of geese as they fly through the air. And of course, I double- and triple-guessed myself. Was it the right choice? Would people like it?
Not only have I not written, but because I was away on vacation last week, I just noticed that I had four lovely comments to my post below. Thank you for reading. My vacation was nice, though it rained torrentially for about half of the time. It didn't matter. We still go to sleep, eat, and read, without having to clean up after ourselves, for an entire week. CJ and I went to Inspiration Point (disappointingly, just a high spot on a hill, not a park filled with cars populated by making-out couples) and we kayaked across the lake and around a tiny island, which was the farthest I've kayaked ever. There were nightly fun pre-school crazy times after dinner on the lawn. And when I was tracing kids in chalk on the sidewalk, a 3-year-old friend of mine said, "You're really good at that. You should be an artist when you grow up," which made me want to simultaneously laugh at her cuteness and sob bitterly, but instead I just chuckled and thanked her. And then after every kid got traced, the sidewalk looked as though there had been a particularly tragic mass shooting.  Now I've been back, and working, and work has been stressful, because of course one can't simply go on vacation without somehow making up for that time you were away. And, somehow on vacation CJ seems to have caught   hoof and mouth   hand, foot, and mouth disease , which is a thing that normally only little kids get. And it stays in your body for weeks after your symptoms go away, so I have to decide how long I really want to go without kissing my very own boyfriend. It feels cruel. Of course, it's very likely that I've already been exposed to it, and might be getting it any minute. My throat has been a little sore for a few days, but who knows what it could be? All I know is that CJ has been unable to eat anything but jello, yogurt, and ice cream for two whole days. And, not being able to sleep because I'm worrying about getting sick is making me more likely to get sick, which stresses me out so that I can't sleep, which forms a perfect and beautiful circle.  Anyway, more soon. I am going to try to do shorter, more frequent posts, which I believe I have promised before and not followed through with. WTF, me? Get it together!
I am sharing a recent real life situataion. I have not found a proper word except " Indifferent" to describe it.   There has a been a squeaking and irritating noise comming all the 24 hours for more than a month.  Initially, I  was at a loss to find out the source and the type of noise. During my morning walks, I tried to do a investigating work, but did not yeild any result. Then, I talked to the people in the surrounding place . Many have not bothered to  notice the noise.  Some have been hearing the irritating noise, but were not bothered to bother about it.
At least it wasn't as scary as last year's trip when Mum broke her leg!  We left very, very early Sat. morning which would have worked out well except for Ken didn't sleep well because he was too excited (about photography, not the trip).  This was the first time we attempted to take Buddy but not only did he travel well, he loved hiking (hopefully he lost some weight while he was at it!)!  We arrived about lunch time which gave us another half day to play in the mountains.  There was rain Saturday afternoon, a good chunk of Sunday, and even Monday, thanks to remnants of Hurricane Dolly.  We still managed to hike to Sapphire Point twice, Lily Pad Lakes, and Old Dillon Reservoir along with swimming in the pool, shopping at the outlet stores, and enjoying Pizza on the Plaza.  It was a refreshing break!  The pics below are primarily from Sapphie Point where the kids fed chipmunks.