Willie and Teddy's Excellent Adventure: 2010

12/19/2010

So okay, last Sunday morning papa was looking like he was going to take a circular saw to a piece of the closet downstairs, in other words, chop up a piece of the house, so Monday morning the house got even. It started with a subtle gas smell in the basement in the morning. Papa kind of noticed it, but thought it wasn't too bad. Then mommy went downstairs to work, and she said she smelt gas and it was giving her a headache. In the meantime, papa's got a load of laundry in the washer and one in the GAS dryer. Uh oh. So he called the gas company and a guy showed up 15 minutes later with this cool device that sniffs gas in PPM (parts per million) and guess what the guy found? TWO gas leaks, one at the dryer connection and one in the water heater thermostat control. But that's not all. He also saw that the dryer's lint line was stuffed up and was blowing lint back into the laundry room, and probably carbon monoxide (that explains a lot) and he said that we shouldn't use the dryer til the vent gets cleaned. Anyway, he went away and papa went to the laundromat to dry the two loads of wet laundry. But the wierdest thing is that it still smelled like gas in the basement. Then papa started looking really closely at the furnace and noticed it was trying to come on, but wouldn't. Then he took out the ignitor (an electrified iron heating element) and was poking it with a multimeter and he figured out that the ignitor had a hairline crack in it which killed it. So then he called Laurie because 18 years ago she had an ignitor go out and did she remember where she got it? Right. He called Sears and they didn't have one but offered to order one, but he just ordered one himself cuz you can get anything on Amazon, but we didn't know when it was going to come, and it was 40 degrees outside and the house was getting down to under 60. Hey, says papa, we've got a gas fireplace. So he lit the fireplace and put a fan on the mantle to blow the warmed air toward the cold air return, and he turned on the furnace's fan, even though the heat in the furnace didn't work, the fan did. And we were able to heat the house that way, though not incredibly well, but we didn't freeze. On Wednesday the new ignitor showed up and 10 minutes later it was in and the furnace was lit and we were warm. So papa was telling me (Willie) all this in the kitchen and he was leaning on a corner of the kitchen counter and suddenly the counter went SNAP and the seam between two big slabs kinda cracked a little. The house definitely knows something is up. And I won't even bring up Mommy lighting a kitchen towel on fire. Luckily the smoke alarm didn't immediately activate. On Saturday I made myself some chicken nuggets, and I put on some cayenne pepper--well some hit the hot pan directly and for the next hour everybody was coughing and spluttering and having weird reactions. Hmmm, maybe I should use more next time.

It's winter break and so far we've been playing Magic and spinning bears from the fan and watching papa make a fool of himself over his football team, who happened to win this week, but they won't next week, so then we'll put up some video of him stomping on his jersey after they lose. it's very amusing.

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We scored another set of buckyballs. I now have two sets of gold after trading my original set of silver to Willie, who now has 3.

Willie tried to make a snub dodecahedron with all 3 sets but it collapsed on itself. he should stick to small stuff like this.

I (Teddy) was helping kindergarteners build gingerbread houses and I made my own extra chock full of sugary goodness. Hey Willie, want some?

Do I? Who do I have to kill? Of course I do. What do you got? Did you say sugar? Mike n ikes? Marshmallows? Chocolate kisses and chips? Gummy bears? Sour worms? Frosting? YUMMY!

SNARF SNORG INHALE CHOMP (Ow, that was my arm).

Not enough candy--must have MORE!

This isn't a piece of paper--it's a rare piece of paper. No, you can't have it--it's mine! MINE I SAY!

The bears are all terrified of the chicken man. Chicken man? Who is the chicken man that these otherwise fearless bears are so scared of?

Behold--the chicken man! Despair at his terrifying visage. Speaking of terror, we finished watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the THIRD time. Not in a row, and not all once--we'd be sitting in front of the TV for 12 hours straight if we did that. Hmmm, that gives me an idea...

Copyright 1997-2010, The Berman brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

12/12/2010

We continued the Chanukah parade this week, full of fiery candles and wax and latkes and stuff. We've also gotten back to watching Lord of the Rings movies--we managed to make it thru the first two extended ones, and we'll see the last one next weekend. Seeing as how next weekend is the start of winter break, we'll be sure to be watching movies non-stop. Papa was seen around the downstairs closet with a tape measure which can only mean that he is dreaming of a bigger TV again. This time he may be serious because Big Willie came over and they were plotting together for about an hour this morning. We'll believe it when it happens, but if it happens, please make it so before the super bowl. Speaking of the super bowl, we know one team that won't be in it--the Raiders. Papa is like some kind of weirdly conditioned animal where every sunday of football season he gets all excited and then by 4 pm he's stomping up and down on his jersey again. You'd think he'd learn his lesson and just like whatever team is in first place by a lot of games instead of the losers he roots for.

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Fancy duds usually mean I've got to go to shul, but in this case they mean I have to go to school, for an evening band concert. I didn't like having to wear "real" pants and a shirt with a collar, but I did like taking them off later.

Hmmmm, boxes must mean PRESENTS! Hooray! It's my new laser blaster. It's my new video game system. It's my new thermonuclear reactor. It's my new donut factory. It's my new 10,000 piece lego set. It's my new supercomputer. WHAT IS IT?

Doesn't feel like a thermonuclear powered supercomputer gaming system. There must be some mistake.

Eighth night, drat, it's over. And I didn't get my thermonuclear powered supercomputer gaming system. There's always next year.

In the meantime, it's time for stapler wars!

No comment from me other than you should really admire my naturally curly hair.

The finishing touches of the snub dodecahedron which I've dressed up as the Death Star, complete with super planet destroying firing weapon mechanism. This should impress the geometry class, and the emperor.

Copyright 1997-2010, the Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

12/5/2010

So after Thanksgiving and the snow week, this week was back to normal which means go back to school and wake up early in the morning and freeze our behinds off waiting for the bus. Hannukah also started this week, but papa's been making noises about those Maccabee zealots sounding a lot like those guys that took over the government in Iran, except the Iran guys are getting a lot of attention and staying in power, and eventually the descendants of the maccabees got exiled and later turned into us and we're not in power, and not zealots, and might be looked at by the maccabees as Helenists and whoa boy, that would be bad news for us if we ran into maccabees in the street because they would like get all up in our grills and tell us off for not being zealots like them and maybe make us illegal and stuff because we're not all zealot-y like them. Anywho, this is just a long way of saying that papa thinks it's kind of weird to be doing all these extra prayers this week celebrating this zealotry of the maccabees and the Iran zealots and other-place zealots are so feared and hated and stuff. that's all.

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This is the snub dodecahedron which papa calls the snubadubahedron. It's a project for my geometry class. It's got 92 sides, well, it will have 92 sides after I put in the missing 12 pentagons. But then again, if the pentagon goes missing, who's gonna care? Rimshot--ba dum bump.

Anyway, I made a tiny model for a mockup before doing my full size one. We made it out of card stock which didn't really want to go thru our printer (to print the outline of the various shapes before folding, spindling and mutilating). Tonight I hung out with another guy from my class and he was building his out of balsa and glue. Really complicated. I'm planning on complicating mine with batteries and LED's and trap doors, and maybe a few laser blasters.

Chanukah is here and that can only mean one thing--LATKES! Hooray. Zealotry, bad. Latkes, good.

I won't eat them til you get that camera away from me. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times it's rude to take pix of people while their eating.

See what I mean? Now how in any way is this a flattering picture? I mean this just totally proves my point. Dude, put the camera down.

The Think Geek catalog is here--hooray. Now, what should be buy? Expendable shirt? No. $900 plasma rifle? YES!!!!

The plasma rifle better come with a lifetime supply of marshmallows for $900 or the deal is off.

So, it's a good thing you can't see them in this picture, but we got bucky balls for 1st night of hannukah. Well, you can kind of see them on the table in front of Teddy. Anyway, now I (willie) have two sets of bucky balls and I can make more complicated shapes than ever, and Teddy is now learning how to make shapes and he promised not to swallow any of the bucky balls because we saw what they did on the Wootcast real product demo, and it was gross and we wouldn't want that to happen to us.

Copyright 1997-2010, The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

11/28/2010

We missed a week--sorry about that. You see, the snow started falling last Sunday night, and the excitement was just plain high. Teddy had the week off from school officially for parent/teacher conferences, but I (Willie) had to go to school Monday thru Wednesday. Well, that was the plan anyway. So a call came in from the school at 6:30 Monday morning that school would let out 2 hours early. What? I've still got to go to school with snow on the ground? Unprecedented I say. Okay, so I went to school, and got home two hours early, and good thing I did because that's when then snow, and the temperature, really started falling. Before we knew it, there was 6 inches of fluff on the ground, and the temps were in the 20's. So then Tuesday school was cancelled, and the parent/teacher conference. Then Tuesday night, Wednesday school was cancelled. You probably know the rest of the story.

The rest of the story: Thursday was Thanksgiving. Good thing papa got out on Monday before the real snow hit to do his shopping, otherwise it would have been chili and corndogs for thanksgiving dinner. Our friends came for dinner, and what a feast it was: Smoked turkey (on the rotisserie BBQ) and ribs (in the new barrel smoker), stuffing, roasted potatoes and golden beets, fresh home made no-knead bread and popovers, cranberry sauce can, salad, and DESSERTS--slab apple pie, pumpkin pie and CHOCOLATE MALTED WHIPPED CREAM!!!!!!! So as you can tell, not much of this stuff excited us, the willie and teddy set. I (Willie) ate ribs, potatoes, bread, popovers, and CHOCOLATE WHIPPED CREAM. Mommy made some curry chicken so Teddy had a good meal too. We played Magic for a long time with our friends and stayed up way too late. All in all, a very successful holiday.

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Do you ever get the feeling that you are being watched? I do, and you know, it's just creepy.

So, those of you who don't believe us about the snow, check this out. The snow on the table got to about 6 inches deep, and the wind was so fierce, the snow got everywhere--even covered the porch and got right up to the front door.

One of the best things that happened was we had marathon sessions with our new favorite game--Angry Birds. Papa broke down and spent 99 cents on the game. He was having too much fun slingshotting birds into big pigs who had stolen their eggs.

Take that you egg stealing pig. SMASH!

And that, and that. And that. You get the idea. Snow + no school + iPod touch = happy campers.

So usually papa would get out and at least dig around grey car and put on its chains just in case he needed to get somewhere in the car. Not this time. He just figured with the thanksgiving holiday and having done all of his shopping already, we were all in for the duration.

Sounds good to me. Pass some more whipped cream.

Whipped cream? Mine! (says Noah)

Not if I, Willie the human whipped cream vacuum beat you to it. SLURP!!!!!!

11/14/2010

So here's what's good: Cayenne pepper. I (Willie) can't say that Papa has been right about too many things, but cayenne pepper is one thing he was more than right about. It's good on everything--french fries, chicken nuggets, hot sausages, hamburgers. I'm trying it on everything. I was sniffing his 'rice bowl' lunch today and I said it smelled pretty good, and he gave me a taste and, whaddaya know? It was good. Kind of spicy sweet. Then he told me it had hoisin sauce in it. I always hated hoisin but I guess I have to think about it. I also tried some veggie chicken vindaloo. The fake chicken was too rubbery for me, but the vindaloo was really good. Speaking of vindaloo, we started watching Red Dwarf. It's pretty hilarious, especially some of the stuff the 'Cat' says. Teddy laughed a lot also, but will never admit it. Another thing about this vindaloo that was really crazy (and we can't figure out how Yves--the maker--got away with it. So it says on the package Vegan and O-U kosher pareve (a word which means neither meat nor milk), but on the back of the package under ingredients it says may have egg or dairy. WHAT?!? I don't think the O-U people are going to be too happy about fake pareve chicken vindaloo having dairy in it. You guys are gonna be in trouble.

Teddy had a band concert this week and his trumpet playing is getting really good--not just the random blatts but the stuff that actually sounds like music. Good going Teddy--you'll be blowing like Miles Davis any time now.

We got to see Tante boo boo for a little while tonight and she shared some origami links with me. Thanks Tante.

It was math night at middle school this last Wednesday and me and papa went to see Mr. Pounder in action, and he did not dissappoint, getting off one 'annoying child' and a couple of 'get moving son's. If you want the really inflammatory stuff he says, you'll have to contact me directly because I shouldn't post that kind of stuff on the interwebs.

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Ya ya, origami, fold, spindle, mutilate.

Mmmmmm, cayenne. More. More. More.

Just keep your hands and feet away from his mouth, and that cayenne bottle. [Ed. note: it was fun watching willie power down the Louisiana hot sausage after his two hamburgers--it was so hot I thought he wouldn't finish it, but I was wrong.]

Pay attention to me. Me, that's me in the yellow shirt. Pay attention to me. Little brother talking. Hello, cute brother over here needs attention. Att-en-shun. Yup, that's what I need. Gimme some attention. You know you want to.

Please, I need need need need some uh-TEN-tion!

Ha, I've escaped his clutches and can now read in peace. Finally.

Until next time anyway.

Copyright 1997-2010, The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

11/7/2010

Not much going on here. We did get to watch the Simpson's halloween specials from last year and this year, complete with commercials, but as usual, papa was quick on the remote so gunplay and such was on the entertainment menu for us.

Papa's been monkeying around with the internet connection and we occasionally find an open connection so we listen to video game soundtracks from youtube whenever we do. Yes, we know how to have fun. We've also been experimenting with Voice Control over Willie's iPod touch, and it plays the darndest things when you ask it to do something else. For example, when Willie says "what flavor is my ear" the iPod goes and plays some Lord of the Rings stuff. What does it mean?

The big internet news is that our 6 month experiment with Clear wireless broadband is over. They are one company that is clearly not ready for prime time. We give them 3 months until they declare bankruptcy based on their crappy service. So it's back to DSL for us, albeit at a higher speed, complete with our tails between our collective legs. But Papa's not done tinkering yet--he's working on some VOIP thing called Ooma (no, not Uma, but he can wish) that is part pyramid scheme and part miracle cure to the phone company's stranglehold on our phone line. We'll see how it works over DSL, cuz it didn't work well over Clear, but then nothing really worked well over Clear. Wouldn't that be ironic if the phone company's DSL line allowed us to cut our landline connection for phone service? Here's hoping.

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Behold, it's Annoying-Man to the rescue of this otherwise dull and dreary evening. Posing as a mild mannered, innocent younger brother, our hero prepares to leap into the teeth of danger.

Here's our hero poised behind his prey. Yes, Willie has little to fear to from our hero's mild manner, or does he?

BUNNY EARS! Yes ladies and gentlemen--Annoying-Man has struck again! Just when you least suspect nefarious activity is afoot, you too might be the victim of mirth and mayhem. A further word to the wise--don't accept so much as a jelly bean from this pajama'd crusader. The last fellow who did got 'skunk scent' disguised as licorice. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Copyright 1997-2010, The Berman Brothers, Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.

10/31/10

Same old everyday stuff happening around here. Papa nearly burned down the house. On this hallowed eve we accumulated over 8 pounds of candy between the two of us (including the yucky stuff). Mommy and Papa had their 17th anniversary--which would make papa 6 years old when he got married--we think something smells rotten in Denmark, and we're not talking about the burning deck. Half of the clocks in the house thought it was the time-change day, and the other half didn't. It was kind of confusing, but alas for Teddy, it did NOT make it so that he missed Sunday School.

One unusual thing is that we got to watch a bunch of sports this week--we watched some world series games--the commercials are better during the Super Bowl if you're wondering--and we got to see the Raiders slaughter the Seahawks today. Papa was happy, and we were happy because we got some of those real sugar imported from Mexico Coca Colas. Mmmmm. And did we mention halloween candy? Yes? It's hard to remember due to our sugar highs. Which, by the way, we have learned, are a myth.

We just finished reading the Lord Peter stories, and might be moving on to Poe, but then again, at some point we may just have to switch genres.... don't want to get in a rut, especially not one with all these Bad Influences....

I (Willie) finally finished my two literary analyses for the first quarter -- remind me to start earlier next time! -- and now have a lot more time to goof off. Yeah!

And speaking of Yeah, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to great-aunt Hamburg (or was that chopped liver) -- that's a code name, but you know who you are!

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So Papa's friend Fergie gave him this smoker barrel with instructions to burn the inside of the barrel before using it, so Papa did that, and burned up part of the deck while he was at it. What did you think was going to happen when you put a hot coal filled barrel on 10 year old cedar planks? He's not too bright, but at least he had a fire extinguisher nearby, and the hose to put out the hot spots.

Anyway, the smoker got moved to the driveway where it was successfully tested on small animals.

Mmmmm, yardbird. Don't worry, it wasn't anybody we knew.

STOP that right this instant. I'm finding this carnivore behavior unappetizing. Actually I was on traffic patrol duty this past week and mommy tracked me down, camera in hand.

Uh oh, the Georges have gotten an idea from Papa--they've cornered the moose in the bathroom, and it looks like they mean business.

Oh great, now what are they going to do with dead plush moose?

We'd better not see what happened to that moose. We'll be safe just sitting here reading the comics--nothing bad or violent ever happens in the comics.