Mr. Mom

Posted on February 11th, 2009

Today I am the Manny.

I’m taking care of The Mighty Baby and The Awesome Dog while HoBiscuit goes to work and brings home the bacon. Because I love her so very, very much, I’m even going to prepare dinner for her and have it hot and ready to serve as soon as she walks through the front door.

FYI, I’m making pork chops, corn and spicy potatoes.

In other news that won’t get my ass kicked to Timbuktu, HoBiscuit and I finally bought a TV for the living room. It’s the Samsung LN55A950 and it rocks. Great picture, blackest blacks and almost no judder or pixelation. I couldn’t be happier.

But it gets better.

We also got a home theater PC (HTPC) and hooked it up to the Samsung. I’m still setting it up, but so far it is pretty cool and I’m thrilled to be able to surf the web and do “light” work on a supersized 55″ screen. The only real drawback is that The Mighty Baby screams and cries every time I try to use the HTPC because SHE wants to play with the keyboard! She is soooo going to be the little Geekette when she gets a little older.

And I couldn’t be more proud.

Filed under Family, Geek Life, HoBiscuit | 3 Comments »

Marauding Rugrats

Posted on August 13th, 2007

GeekHaus Child Infiltration Test Alpha — Passed

This weekend marked the first time we, and our home, has had children under three over for a visit and although the apartment survived without any damage, the same can’t be said for HoBiscuit and I. In fact, the looks of terror on our faces as the small children ran rampant throughout our house was enough for the parents of said children to fall to the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter.

They even pointed. And did spit-takes.

Saturday was our baby-test, where our friends with a nine-month-old baby came over to visit. Before I get into details, let me say that this little girl is very, very cute. So cute that I find myself questioning whether there might have been a mix-up at the hospital leading to my friends taking home the wrong baby. I mean, my friends aren’t Quasimodo and Medusa, but still… for them to have such an adorable baby must be some sort of crazy cosmic joke on me. I swear, if my baby is ugly I’m going to find a way to suck some of the cuteness out of their baby and inject it into mine. Heck, I might just do it anyway to give my little girl a leg up on the cute baby competitions at the playground. And I’m telling you, those playground mothers are fiercely competitive!

They scare me.

So, this nine-month-old bundle of cuteness comes over on Saturday and HoBiscuit and I are so frightened of her that we can barely bring ourselves to sit down near her. At one point, her parents needed to change her diaper and offered to allow HoBiscuit or me do it as ‘practice’. I jumped and ran away so fast that there was a whistling noise as the air rushed to fill the space I had occupied in the room. Later, after they had gone home, I felt the need to hose down my leather couch to remove all the drool she had left behind as a memento of her visit.

Yeah, I’m a little bit of a neatnick.

On Sunday some other friends came over with their 18-month old and two and a half year old boys. The main difference between these two boys and my other friends’ little girl, aside from the plumbing, is that the boys are what they call ‘toddlers’. That means they can stand up and walk under their own power.

O. M. G.

I never knew children were so fast! I honestly believe these boys were planning trouble before they arrived at the apartment. They had to have had a plan of attack that they worked out beforehand, with PowerPoint slides and topography maps and everything, because they almost instinctively knew where to go to make every adult in the room jump up after them shouting, “No! No! No!”

I think that was their favorite game.

And, I now know that one day the human race will definitely find a way of traveling faster than the speed of light, or perhaps inventing some sort of instantaneous transporter, because these two kids could get from point A to point B so fast I had to learn how to blink without letting my eyelids meet. They would literally be sitting down on the rug at our feet, happily playing with some cars or something and the very next millisecond they would be across the room trying to lick a power outlet. Meanwhile, mom and dad are doubled over laughing so hard at the scared-out-of-our-minds look on both HoBiscuit and my faces that they can’t even manage to stop the 18 month-old boy from grounding goldfish snacks into the carpet and then eating the powdery residue off the floor. Why didn’t I ever notice how horrible children were before HoBiscuit got pregnant?

Holy crap, what am I going to do when I’m a father?

Filed under Geek Life, HoBiscuit | 2 Comments »

Ah! Geek Laziness

Posted on July 11th, 2007

The movie 40 Year Old Virgin will be my downfall.

Yesterday, I was sitting at home all alone when it dawned on me that I had in my possession six discs containing the entire first season of a TV series I have loved for over 15 years. This show which I love so much was created based on a movie, which was based on a comic book, which was first published around 1988. Ever since I first saw the opening credits of the badly copied VHS tape of the original movies I have been waiting to see more of this series. And so I was astounded to discover that I had the willpower to abstain from watching these discs for an entire week while entertaining family and friends for the Independence holiday festivities.

But yesterday I was alone. And free.

Free to sit down in my amazing new home theater, fire up my 7.1 surround-sound system, power on the HD projector and watch my most favoritest TV adaptation of a comic book ever in all its 106″ widescreen glory. And let me tell you, it was glorious. I watched all 10 hours of it in one sitting and I only got up once to eat and use the bathroom. I laughed a lot and I even teared up a few times (big softy that I am) while sitting there in the dark and I loved every moment of watching these characters come to life after almost 7 years of waiting.

And then HoBiscuit came home.

Remember earlier when I said that the 40 Year Old Virgin would be my downfall? Well, if you’ve seen that movie you might remember one scene where Dave (Paul Rudd) and Cal (Seth Rogen) are playing a video game while making fun of each other. It is that scene that will now haunt me for the rest of my life because, you see, HoBiscuit just happened to come home from work at the big finale of the series when the two leads finally (finally!) profess their feelings for each other.

And I almost (almost!) needed tissues.

HoBiscuit – “You know how I know you’re gay?”
GeekMan – “Shhhh! This is the best part!”
HoBiscuit – “Because you love Ah! My Goddess.”
Geekman – [snif] “I hate you.”

Damn, I can’t wait for the Season 2 box set to be released!

Filed under Geek Life, HoBiscuit | 2 Comments »

Brokeback GeekMan

Posted on June 26th, 2007

I broke my back on Friday.

Well, ‘broke’ is a strong word, but I definitely did something bad to my lower back and moving has become a painful thing that I’m trying to avoid. At all costs. So forgive me for not yet finishing my series on buying a computer, but I promise you it will be done as soon as I can get myself to sit comfortably for longer than 20 minutes at a time. I’ll be back soon, so no worries. And if anyone still cares, the baby is doing well and HoBiscuit is healthy and happy as she gets nice and big. Almost as if she’s swallowed a basketball that is slowly morphing into a beach ball. It’s so cute when she forgets how big she’s gotten and she tries to squeeze through a small opening between rows of seats in a restaurant. Wait. If HoBiscuit doesn’t think knocking into things with her belly is cute or funny, does that mean I’m not allowed to either?

Really? Oh. Well then, maybe it’s not cute after all.

Filed under Geek Life, HoBiscuit, Quickie | 3 Comments »

Double Standards Suck

Posted on August 22nd, 2006

I am losing the domestic war.

If you’re not married, if you’re not living with someone day in and day out with nowhere else for you to go but where you and this other person share a living space, then you have no idea what I mean by domestic war. You won’t understand the daily battles fought over whose turn it is to do the dishes, or why a neat pile to one party is a mess to the other, or how important… no, vital control of the TV remote is to having a quiet and happy home. You don’t know about the thermostat skirmishes won or lost due to the availability and proximity of a blanket to the couch and you will have no understanding of how, by letting your significant other win even a small victory over something so trivial as who is going to get up from their comfortable seat and close the window, can lead to your downfall and thus to your imminent pussyfication.

And it is more and more imminent for me every day.

This became quite clear to me last night when I was sitting on the couch watching football and HoBiscuit decided to join me. And by join me, I mean that she literally crawled over me, inserted herself between me and the arm of the couch that I was sitting against, pushed, twisted and squirmed until she fit there with her head on me and her legs over the arm of the couch, and then kneaded my stomach with the back of her head until she was comfortable.

And then she began to talk.

Now guys, think back to your youth when you used to think your father was an idiot. Remember how, when your mother was talking or telling him to do something, he never seemed to actually hear what she was saying? And later on, he always asked you what your mother had said because he couldn’t remember? Well, I don’t think it was because your father was stupid, I think it was more like a survival instinct because as soon as HoBiscuit started talking to me, I couldn’t hear her anymore.

It was like magic.

One second she’s yammering away about something unimportant to me, like maybe how she hates work or how she saw this great dress on sale or something, and the next moment I can’t hear a word she’s saying but I can hear Al Michaels saying the Cowboys are kicking the Saints’ asses.

Like I said; magic.

Anywaste, at some point HoBiscuit stopped talking and started napping, on my stomach remember, and it began to get a little uncomfortable for me. Not wanting to startle her, I gently tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to go lay down somewhere else because even though this might have been a comfortable position for her it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me. Without even shifting her weight HoBiscuit said, “But I’m so comfortable and you’re such a nice pillow that I think I’ll stay right where I am.”

Which got me thinking.

You see, if she had been sitting on the couch enjoying one of her favorite TV shows and I had come along and pushed and prodded my way onto the couch as she had, and then used her body as a pillow like she had with my body, and then started talking to her about things that were not important to her like she had just done to me then I don’t think she would have been quite as understanding and complacent as I had been. And then, to top it all off, if her body felt as uncomfortable as mine was feeling at that moment with her head on my stomach, and she asked me to get off of her and I didn’t get off her, I believe she would not have been pleased and we might have even had a fight of some sort with her calling me insensitive and uncaring or something. In other words, she believed she could get away with this type of behavior while at the same time I could not.

Basically, she was perpetuating a double standard.

I believed that this was wrong. In fact, I felt so strongly about this that I even mentioned my whole reasoning to her. I explained, at great length, my position that she shouldn’t be able to get away with this type of behavior and what made her believe she could get away with it when I could not. And do you know what she did? She opened one eye, looked up at me from my very pained belly and said, “Because I’m cute and you love me.” And then she went back to sleep.

Point. Set. Match.

Filed under Geek Life, HoBiscuit | 2 Comments »