Monthly Archives: February 2008

on Netflix

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So I have been a Netflix member since way, way back. I looked and I joined over 5 years ago now.

The best part of Netflix is that I hate going to rent movies, but love watching them. When you go to the movie rental place it takes forever to decide on what movie to watch, if everyone watching will like it, do they have a copy, etc. Netflix lets me just add moves and then they show up. I started out with the 3 moves at a time plan, but switched to 1 at a time a couple years ago. Now that I have kids it is totally awesome because we get the chance to go to the theater about once or twice a year.

The problem is how to find out about moves. At first I would take a pen and paper to the rental place when I would go with someone (thats when I had roommates). I would make notes and then go online and add the moves that looked good. Now what I find works well is once a month or so I will check out the Apple Trailers page. I watch the trailers and add the movies. The trailers are for movies that aren't even theaters yet, but I add them anyway and Netflix adds them to a “Save” section until they are close to coming out on DVD. So I end up getting the movie about a year after I add it. That is nice because I forget what the movie is about, but I like it because I did watch the trailer. Apple has all the Indie moves that you probably won't find in Blockbuster or Hollywood Video so I get cool Documentaries and Foreign Films too.

The one flaw with this is that Netflix doesn't always have movies in their lists when they are still being made so they need a notes option so I can add moves that they don't have yet.

Netflix is also lame for TV shows on DVD. They treat each Disc as one move so to watch most shows it takes 4 to get through a season. For TV shows we usually just get them from the Library.

Valentines Day Treats

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So, we try to keep a healthy diet: whole grains, low sugar, lots of fruits and veggies, but then comes the holidays. Not so bad when you're a grown-up: have a cup cake or a few pieces of chocolate and call it good, but when you're a kid there are treats galore!!! Eli's daycare is having a Valentine's Day party. On the food sign up list there's cookies, cupcakes, brownies & candy, plus punch (read: Hawaiian Punch and 7-up. Very healthy.) Now I'm all about Valentine's Day: pink and red hearts, making special cards, I can't get enough! But do I want my kids full of food coloring, refined sugar and white flour? Not really. So I started looking for fun, healthy-ish treats for my kid and his daycare friends. Some I found included strawberry yogurt (have you ever looked at the sugar content of strawberry yogurt?) mixed with strawberry cool whip (yummy red dye #479) as a dip for graham crackers, pretzels & fruit. Might as wall give them another cupcake!
Some I thought of included Strawberry “Mousse:” Cream cheese, thawed strawberries (no sugar added), a little honey blended with enough milk or or yogurt to make i dippable. Yes, cream cheese has fat, but for the average active kid, no big deal. Find some whole grain graham crackers, fresh fruit, etc, and you've got a special (pink!) treat, that won't send them bouncing off the walls. Plus, they get to DIP. What kids doesn't like food that involves dip. Or use it as a filling for mini-cream puffs.
Strawberry smoothies seems like another fun V-Day treat, but I can't quite figure out how to make them in advance. Ooooo. Maybe freeze them into and ice cube tray with a little red popsicle stick… VDay popsicles!
Or what about pretzels, raisins, nuts and a FEW m-n-m's, in a little Valentine's dixie cup. What kid wouldn't love that?
Heart shaped cheese slices seems perfectly, well, cheezy. And kids like cheezy.
Rice crispy treats cut out with a SMALL heart shaped cookie cutter seems reasonable, too.
100% juice w/ sparkling water… now that I can get behind (even 100% juice w/ “pop”).
In the end, I guess I just can't imagine being 2 years old and being offered a full size cup-cake, a brownie, psycho-sugar punch, candy and heaven knows what else, and feeling good at the end of the day. Bring on the treats, but only a few, and make 'em small. Just enough to make the day celebrating love and friendship a little bit special.

Weekend Ski Trip

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We had a great time skiing on Saturday. There was about few inches of powder on the cars in the morning and it seemed like there was more on the mountain. Temps were in the 28-30 range most of the day and the morning was sunny and clear, it started snowing and blowing in the afternoon but it was still fun even though the visibility was spotty at times.

Bridgit thought it was the best MI snow she had ever skied. Our group started heading in for the day around 3 but Bridgit and I kept skiing until 4 or so. Bridgit spent a bit of the day skiing with little T, so she was still rearing to go and I managed to keep up with her (good thing she was skiing for two). She figured that she wouldn’t be on the slopes much or any in CO so she had better make the most of it. I decided to start tackling moguls in the morning before I got too wore out to do them, and wow do they work your legs. I think I am starting to get the hang of them, but I had some problems controlling my speed when it was steep or icy in between the bumps. I will still need to work on them more before I take on Pallavicini. Bridgit and John keep telling me that I need to work on keeping shoulders pointing down hill and when I really work at it it feels right, but it isn’t natural yet.

Alex has come leaps and bounds since last year. He has started skiing blacks now, but it was hard to keep him away from the “freestyle” course they had set up. It was a terrain park they had set up for Boardercross. It had starting gates and a number of berm/jump things set up and he had a blast skiing it over and over and over.

That night Pat told Bridgit that Katie said “no blacks and no moguls” but it was too late. Except for when she was with Theresa (4yo) she was skiing mostly/all blacks. She only did mogul runs when she was going to be going what she called “Tom speed”, which I think means really really fast ;-) . I figure that June-Bug will have the feel of skiing down now so that will make things easier.

The next morning we woke up and it was -4 without the windchill and it was blowing in the 30mph range. Nobody thought that skiing would be fun. We had some fun white-out conditions on the drive home and we couldn’t even see Boyne Mtn. when we drove past it. We also got stuck behind an accident for an hour on I-75 and managed to get the other car warned and routed around it.

I am feeling pumped about CO and more ready now.

sick

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All of us have been sick over the past couple weeks. Bridgit started us out with getting sick and then later that week Eli had a cold and then fever. Friday I got a pounding headache and fever and now I just have a massive head cold.

I guess that is what we get having a kid in child care and both of us working in schools. More sleep, acetaminophen, vitamins, and grapefruit seed extract.