The Full Catastrophe » brian

Being Married To Brian Is Fun

Anna — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:37:47 +0000

Brian surprised me with a trip to Catalina last weekend. I gladly accepted this trip in lieu of the typical card & flowers Mother’s Day combo. Once again, Brian’s mom stepped up to take the kids for us. Thanks, Vicki!

I learned in May 2005 (my first Mother’s Day) that I am the kind of mom who is perfectly happy celebrating Mother’s Day without my kids. Lucky for me, Brian supports me in this way of life. This may be due to the fact that once we witnessed a married couple arguing about how the man wanted to spend Father’s Day. They were in the parking lot of the zoo, in front of their kids, when it finally came out that the dad would have preferred to watch the Padres game on the TV. If it is your day, you should get to do what you want to do. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

Catalina is darling! It was my first trip there. Followers of the list may remember that kayaking around the island is something I’m wanting to do. We actually had intentions to rent some kayaks, the only problem was the fact that the boat rental place was right next to this beachside bar and we were both reading such good books and it felt really good in the sun that day and well we certainly plan on going back to Catalina and well you know it just didn’t happen. No regrets, whatsoever about that one.

Oscar sent us to Catalina with a pirates treasue map. We used it to find the cocktails on the beach!

Golf carts were a lot less strenuous than kayaks.

Rubik’s Cube

Brian — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:58:37 +0000

Considering the lofty goals Anna has on her “100 Things” list, I feel a bit silly admitting this, but one of the things I’ve always wanted to learn was how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. I’m not sure exactly where this comes from, but I suspect it is some sort of repressed childhood frustration (I have a distinct memory of disassembling the cube I had as a kid in order to “solve” it).

I don’t think that I had ever voiced this desire to anyone, but by pure coincidence a Rubik’s Cube is precisely the birthday gift that Oscar picked out for me. This had to be some sort of sign, right? The universe was clearly telling me it was time to fulfill this goal.

So, for the past few weeks I’ve been studying the various cube solving strategies and practicing whenever I had time. Just yesterday I managed to complete the cube for the first time and am now at the point where I can consistently solve it! Lest anyone get too impressed, there’s not much too it beyond recognizing a handful of patterns and memorizing a series of associated algorithms (pretty much the same thing I do for my day job). Nonetheless, I’m proud to have finally mastered the cube and would be crossing this off my list if I had one.

In order to preserve a record of my achievement, I shot a video which you can find below. Note that I’m not particularly fast yet so I’ve sped up the video to 1.5x so that you don’t have to suffer through 4 minutes of me spinning plastic cubes around.

Enjoy.

Rubik’s Cube from Brian DeHamer on Vimeo.

Bowling = 4 Thumbs Up

Anna — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:10:59 +0000

We were setting ‘em up and knocking them down last night during the kids’ first trip to the bowling alley. Oscar had the second highest score with the aid of gutter bumpers. Yeah, he beat me, but I shared my frames with Laurel. For those of you around San Diego, we recommend that you check out the SDSU bowling alley. It was especially fun for Brian, I think. He spent a lot of time when he was a kid skateboarding around the campus and hanging out with his friends (probably watching the coeds in their convertible Cabriolets!). Naturally, we brought the flip along and put this together:

On our way home, “Add It Up” by The Violent Femmes was on the radio and Brian commented that the song was a perfect soundtrack to his high school days and all of the time he spent at State. We stayed in the car till the song was done and decided that portions of that song were going to have to go into our kids bowling video. After many minutes of careful editing and loading onto You Tube, we found for the second time this week that the song and all of the audio is muted out by Warner Brothers (the kids love this cheesy Pink song, “Rock Star”, it is on par cheesy-wise with “Welcome to the Jungle”). I guess Warner thinks it is losing money somehow, but honestly it isn’t. No one makes money from their You Tube videos and if anything, Warner is getting free promotion of their products. We acquired the music legally and are bummed that we aren’t able to use it to its fullest potential. Apparently, we aren’t the only ones that are a bit p.o.’ed.

What We’re Talking About

Anna — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:54:33 +0000

I’ve been saying lots of spontaneous Yes We Can’s and Barack Obama’s as the inauguration gets closer. I’ll be watching all the action tomorrow and am very excited…but not as excited as Lydia must be. Check out her new blog from Washington:
http://www.threegoodnerves.blogspot.com/

Don’t ask Laurel about Yes We Can, though. She learned how to say no yesterday. It is horrible and adorable at the same time. I’ll try to get some video for you guys.

Oscar and Brian have been in creative modes. Brian has just completed a couple of photography classes and Oscar has written a poem. I’ll leave you with their work.

Silliness and happiness
Fun stuff to do
Underline two-hundred and two
Welcome to the zoo fair
So much to have fun

Finally Getting The Costumes Posted

Anna — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:19:45 +0000

A ghost

and a Star Wars guy

I got the ghost costume on Etsy. I just LOVE Etsy. The last several purchases I’ve made online have come from that site. Oscar’s costume was all stuff we had around the house. I was very pleased to see how proudly he wore it next to all of the other kids in commercially designed outfits.

Did you know that if he weren’t a software wizard, Brian would be a video editor? Check out his latest creation:

Brian on Lifehacker

Anna — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:49:13 +0000

I was planning on blogging about yesterday’s good stuff* until Brian got himself posted on Lifehacker today! Earlier this week he submitted photos of his home office on Lifehacker’s “Featured Workspace” series and wouldn’t you know it, he’s been featured. More than 11,000 people have read this post already–he’s got his 15 minutes of fame we reckon! The shed-office is entirely his design and creation and he’s done a great job turning 120 square feet into a comfortable place to get work done. It is amazing to see his fellow webizens compliment his effort.

* Yesterday’s Good Stuff
1. I got a triple word score on a Scrabble bingo
2. Oscar decided that we was tired and went to his bed for a nap all by himself