New Fun Bonanza Amusement Awesomeness Land!

Great news, everyone!

I am starting an amusement park in my own house, and everyone will love it! It is called:

TINKERTOWN!!!!!!!

Doesn't that sound fun? It makes me sad that the <blink> tag is deprecated, because I really think it's appropriate here. Anyway, TINKERTOWN is perfect for the whole family, with exciting activities for all ages! If you love taking things apart and jiggling handles and doing strange things to power cords with painter's tape just to make appliances continue to work properly, TINKERTOWN is the place for you!

First, dive into Dishwasher Depths! When a dishwasher has two filters that need to be cleaned regularly, it makes perfect sense to make them as inaccessible as possible, so we need YOU, intrepid explorer, to navigate through several levels of increasingly difficult panel removal! Beware: this is the only time in your life you will ever need a Torx screwdriver*, so get ready for a detour to the hardware store if you're caught unprepared. You will also be faced with a critical choice: do you wear gloves and risk dropping tiny screws in ridiculous crevices, or do you forgo hand protection and let all that gross stuff touch your actual skin? When you finally reach the final stage, race to remove all the variously textured substances before the urge to barf overtakes you! Participants are allowed to pause the adventure twice during the final battle -- first to start a blog post, and then to wash their hands fifty times and think about how no one appreciates what they do. Before you reassemble all the panels, make sure you find the toothpick in the food grinder! There is always a toothpick in there!

The excitement continues as you venture into the icy realm of Freezer Fantasia! First, it's a heart-pumping physical challenge as you go down to the circuit breaker in the basement, turn off what you think is the switch for the refrigerator based on what someone wrote on the box illegibly in pencil fifty years ago, run back upstairs, find out that was the wrong switch, run back downstairs, and try again! Then, exercise those Tetris skills as you try to fit everything that's in the freezer into a tiny cooler! Is the fun over? No! Now, it's a race against the clock as you get out your trusty hair dryer and try to melt the ice dam in the drain hole beneath the bottom panel of this supposedly modern, frost-free appliance before the stuff that wouldn't fit in the cooler hits the Food Temperature Danger Zone! Finally, put everything back in the freezer and go down to the basement to turn the circuit breaker back on. Just make sure you don't remember to relabel the circuits! It would ruin the fun three months from now when water starts dripping into the fridge and it's time to do it all again!

Visitors young and old will love the mini-games scattered throughout the park:

• Reset the Modem
• Jiggle the Toilet Handle
• Turn the Power Adapter Plug Back and Forth Just the Right Way in the Jack to Get it Working Again Because Someone Bumped It Earlier
• Reach Into the Toilet Tank and Put the Flapper Back on its Stupid Useless Hinge Nubs
• Google the Error Code

(Unfortunately, our Seattle location, unlike our previous Rhode Island facility, does not offer Hotwire the Boiler)

Come on down to TINKERTOWN! Admission will be super cheap! Make your reservations now!

*You will actually need two Torx screwdrivers.

Tossing & Turning

Reasons I haven't gotten enough sleep over the past few nights:

1) I had a dream that I went to Archie McPhee with Soren, and he found a little plastic knick-knack that he liked a lot, but since it was the last one in the bin, that meant it was popular and the price had been increased to five thousand dollars. I spent a lot of time arguing with the management over this policy. Woke up irritated.

2) People and their STUPID FIREWORKS making my neighbor's dog bark ALL NIGHT LONG.

3) I could NOT think of that one actor's name. It was really bugging me. It definitely had an L in it, and five or six syllables. Finally had to get up at 3:30 to look it up on the internets. Kenneth Branagh.

Soren's New Documentary

While I was watching the pictures upload from Soren's camera, flashing by at high speed, it occurred to me that a movie might be the best way to present his work. So, complete with soundtrack, here is his latest slice-of-life film!

Oh, and we live in Seattle now. Good. Now the blog is totally up to date, and I don't have to feel like I need to fill you in on a million things before I post again.

And now, our feature presentation:

The Start of a New Career

I only cried a tiny bit after they drove away.



I know he's done the preschool thing for a couple years, but this... is REAL school. He's so excited. And I'm excited for him. I loved school, especially elementary school, and I can't wait to see how he thrives in this new phase of his life.

I'm proud of you, Soren!

Anderblog Unplugged

So, as everyone already knows because I whine about it three times a day on Facebook, the hurricane knocked our power out on Sunday. While a sparking power line in the middle of the yard would usually be considered a bad thing, it would be preferable to what we have, which is a dead power line in the middle of our yard. It's hanging off our house, which means it isn't going to kill anyone and National Grid won't be interested in it until September 5th.

On the bright side, it isn't so bad in our case because our neighbors all have power. Not only do I get to fill up my daily jealousy quota super fast, I also get to daisy-chain a bunch of heavy-duty extension cords from an outlet in our SUPER AWESOME neighbors' basement through one of our first floor windows. So we get to power one to three things at a time, depending on the draw. Right now, it's the interwebs, a laptop with a busted battery, and a desk lamp. Later on, it will be the TV and a floor lamp and maybe the Wii. At bedtime, I'll plug the fridge back in. I'm a little sad because I want to use the toaster oven to bake some of the cookie dough I made this afternoon, but I won't be able to watch TV while the oven's going. So if I don't answer the phone tomorrow, it's because I contracted a horrible salmonella infection from eating raw cookie dough. Or I'm screening my calls and I don't like you.

Any Agricola fans out there? No? Oh well. You can stop reading now. Anyway, the extension cord situation totally reminds me of Agricola. I can choose to Check Email, After Bake Cookies also Eat Cookies, or Chill Perishables, but I can't do them all at once. I clearly should have chosen the Bake Cookies action earlier in the day, but I needed to Regain Sanity and/or Stop the Kids From Fighting, so I plugged the TV in instead. And now that the Feeding phase has begun, I'm screwed. I only hope that the Major Improvement I'm waiting for comes before the 5th.

The Gracious 5-Year-Old: By Way of Explanation

Dear Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Anderson,

Sorry this thank-you note is so late. Soren actually made it about 5 minutes after he opened your card, so the lateness is completely my fault. I've been putting off writing the explanatory note which I feel should accompany the card.

When Soren opened your birthday card and found a $100 bill inside, he was deliriously happy. I am thrilled to say that his second response (after "WOW! A HUNDRED DOLLARS!" was to try to figure out how to show his appreciation. First, he asked me if I had a hundred dollars, and when I replied in the affirmative, he suggested I send it to you.

I told him that you'd probably be even happier with a really nice thank-you card, especially if he made it himself. He thought that was a great idea, and set to work right away. Within minutes, he was ready to show off his masterpiece.

The interior featured his trademark card decoration: a whole bunch of hearts. He's a very loving boy.



The front of the card... well, he used the card you sent as inspiration. As you recall, you sent this one:



So, riffing off the "Five Years Fun" motif, he... wrote this.



After stifling some laughter and mild horror, I managed to ask him why he decided to write that on the front of your card. He replied "Because their card said they wanted me to have 5 years of fun, and they sent me a hundred dollars, so I want them to have a HUNDRED years of fun!"

Anyway, I decided to send his card along, just with a little note of explanation so you knew what exactly he was getting at. It really isn't that he thinks you're a hundred years old. Although I guess that might not be a big deal to you at this point. I don't really know.

So, thank you again for the very generous birthday gift! Soren is going to use it to buy a scooter. I talked him out of using it to get 100 one-dollar Matchbox cars.

Love,
Kirsten (and Soren)

I have a Fisher-Price Cam-er-a, I Like to Take Pho-to-graphs

Ansel showed us his unique perspective on Yosemite with his Korona, and Soren is showing us his unique perspective with his Fisher-Price digital camera. Signed prints of his 640x480 images are available for purchase in sizes between 24"x36" to billboard size (3" pixels).

Offerings are available in several categories:

Favorite Remote Controls


Title: Samsung and Wii


Title: In Soviet Russia, Remote Control Car Control You!

Intimate Spaces


Title: Civil Disobedience: Time-out with a Transcendentalist [1]


Title: The Scullery Maid's Contempt

Portraits of the Artist


Title: Contentment with Pillowy


Title: Curious Quiet

Professional Models


Title: Don't Hate Me for Being Under Thirty Pounds [2]

Other


Title: Puppy with a Chance of Meatballs

[1] The picture on the wall is a portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Maybe Mommy and Daddy should find a naughty spot without a view of Thoreau's inspiration.

[2] If a parent is behind the camera, Sigrid runs toward the photographer so she can look at the picture of herself, often before a picture is taken; only Soren can get these poses.