Tuesday, February 13, 2007

CalTrain

I hurried this morning to get out the door with Jonah, drop him off at daycare and make it onto my bullet train to San Francisco. I made it with five minutes to spare. Nice. I felt sorry for a lady I helped in the parking lot minutes before. She asked me how to pay for parking. I pointed out the machine and explained she had to pay $2 and put a tag on her dashboard. No big deal but the train would be leaving soon and her car was far away. She wasn't going to make it. I thought about what she would do if she missed the bullet and how much longer it would take her to get where she was going.

The good news is I'm sure she made her train. The bad news is that it's 40 minutes later and the train still hasn't left. There was an announcement that a "Trespasser" had been on the train in Mountain and all trains are stopped.

I got a really good seat. So that's nice. It faces the direction the train would go. If it were going. And my battery says it'll last another 2 1/2 hours even while I play music. I'm going to upload a picture and then get back to work. At least I have a job where it's not a big deal if I come in late.

Update!We'll be leaving in 4 minutes. I'm glad I stuck it out. We'll see how long this train takes to get to San Francisco now. Normally it takes an hour.

That's a picture of Jonah as a conductor there. He's not the actual conductor today.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Cooties

Jonah and I played Cootie, the game for preschoolers. It was a lot of fun strictly because Jonah is so funny and nice.

It's no surprise when I say Cootie is bankrupt of depth and fun. At least for adults. It does have plastic cooties though! And dice are good. There's nothing wrong with dice. Well, it has one die. So not "Dice" per se. Still though it has a die. Don't be confused when you read the rules though. They call it a "Cootie Cube," but let me assure you, it's a die.

The basic deal in Cootie is you roll the die on your turn. If you get a 1 you can pick a Cootie body. Once you have a body then you need to get a 2 to get a head. After that the sky's the limit! Well, okay 3-6 and you get other Cootie parts.

The beginning of the game is all about rolling that sweet sweet 1. That elusive unrollable 1, without which you cannot do anything. That 1 that Jonah rolled right away and that took me more than 20 rolls to get.

Actually Jonah offered to roll for me. And he rolled the 1. I'm pretty sure I'd still be rolling now if it weren't for his help.

I have some pictures of our Cootie game but I'll have to post 'em later.

Eventually Jonah achieved Cootie perfection with all six legs, some antennae (which he preferred to leave unattached), and a mouth. Mine was 3 legs short of a full Cootie.

A short interview with Jonah about Cootie: What was your favorite part of Cootie? My favorite part was the red shiny die.
What were your favorite numbers that you rolled? 2s and 1s, 3s.
Was I good at rolling or bad? Bad.
What should I tell other kids who might like to play Cootie? Make a picture of this movie on the computer. (Note: We were watching a DVD at the time...)