Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Go Sox!

To the people from Chicagoland that are related to us :
Congratulations! the White Sox are division Champs! Good luck in October, we will be rooting for them from here. We will try to overlook the, "pitchers not hitting" thing, and get behind an American League Team.

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Potty Schmotty

Today, Riley came home with a Thomas sticker because he went pee-pee on the potty at day-care. Riley is only wearing Pull-Ups when he sleeps now. Yesterday we took Riley to his speech evaluation, and it went very well. We suspected that Riley had some muscle-related speech issues for a while, and the evaluation confirmed our suspicions. In about a month, Riley will be going for speech class twice a week. We are all confident that he will do well and get over his, ‘fricative-stop’ problem.

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Big Hello to the 'rents!

Today my Dad asked me the inevitable question, "What is a blog?" Well, I sure hope that my explanation was satisfactory, and that Mom and Dad have found their way here. Everybody give them a great big "blogosphere" welcome. We hope that they check the archives for all the posts that they have missed. I wonder what a page like this looks like with AOL ver. 5.0?

Football

Those of you, who know Michael, know that he has been a Minnesota Vikings fan for a long time. Last year the Vikings openly supported G. W. Bush in the Presidential election, thus, Michael has forsaken his support of the Purple-People-Eaters for good. Go 49ers!!!

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Mother Of All Home Centers

In what boardroom does it make any sense to open a Lowes Home Center across the street from a Home Depot? The whole idea is just preposterous, and possible dangerous. I am sure that the local gravitational fields surrounding the compound will be altered by the proximity of so many 4-packs of #12 screws. If this were a normal free market, propinquity such as this would benefit consumers. The two planetoid-sized stores would continue to cut prices in order to lure customers into their vast expanses of convenient parking. Considering these places operate on a volume-sale basis, profits on individual sales are at a bare minimum already. The idea of a price war involving hammers is out of the question.

Daily Riley

This Post Is Rated PG-13

After any ad for the new movie "Cry Wolf", you will hear these words, "Rated PG-13 for violence, terror, disturbing images, language, sexuality and a brief drug reference."

Isn't that, a brief drug reference?

Pluto Gets Put on Waivers

"Come in here Pluto. Close the door. This is the toughest job a manager has, but the solar system is looking to make a change, and we have to send you back down to the Kuiper Belt."

I think that we all liked Pluto, but all good things...

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Welcome Back...

Welcome back to the Show Barry! We sure did miss you.

Barry Bonds returned to the Giants lineup tonight for the first game of a three game series with the division-leading Padres. The pre-game enthusiasm of the 39,095 fans on hand quickly cooled when Giants starter, (RHP) Kevin Correia, took the mound and loaded the bases without notching a hit. Well, no hits for the Padres anyway, Correia hit San Diego 2nd baseman Mark Loretta with the 8th pitch of the ballgame. Correia’s awful start might have had something to do with the 20 minuets of, 'welcome back Barry' activities delaying the start of the game. Barry lead off the 2nd inning against (RHP) Adam Eaton with a ground-rule double that looked like HR number 704 for long enough that it gave every Giants fan that warm fuzzy feeling we have missed all season long.

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Jake Is A Monster

Yes, that's a ukulele.

You can buy his stuff Here

This Kid Can Play

San Francisco	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	ERA
Cain (W, 2-1)	9.0	2	1	1	1	8	1	1.71

Last nights numbers for Matt's complete game! He also slugged a double! Congratulations on your first big league hit Matt!

Recent Artwork

The fascination with custom CD labels, and Photoshop filters continues. This worked well as a disk label and a jewel case insert booklet.

Why does Pat hate Hugo?

One thing that has not been very clear to me is why Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Hugo Chávez. I think that it is interesting that his reasoning is ignored, even as he is method is condemed by all sides. What the hell was he thinking? In his on-air "apology”, he stated some reasons that might hold some water.

“If you look back just a few years, there was a popular coup that overthrew him[Chavez]; and what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing; and as a result, within about 48 hours, that coup was broken, Chavez was back in power. But we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he’s going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent. I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger, and this is in our sphere of influence, so we can’t let this happen.” -Pat Robertson

Strong words from a man that made a deal with Mobutu Sese Seko a few years back. What's the matter Pat, lost your taste for dealing with dictators?
Makes me wonder what Pat's interests (or potential interests) are in Venezuela? Does he have some stake in the oil, or is this another Diamond scheme. Beating a path down that road, I found that the Venezuelan government is cracking down on illegal mining in the country. Anybody out there have any information on Pat's holdings in South America?

Aren’t cats great?

Another week has slid by in the Golden State and the Howden’s are looking forward to the weekend.  Riley seems to have settled into his new room at daycare, so we have far less drama in the morning.
       Last month Michael went over to Bed, Bath, AND BEYOND and bought a bathroom rug, toilet surround and seat cover.  This is standard B,B,&B super-soft-on-rubber-pad rug, and it really made the bathroom more comfortable.  Almost immediately, we noticed pieces of the carpet pile ‘falling off’ the rug.  Then, as more and more appeared, we realized that our lovely pet cats were removing it.  All of a sudden we remembered that we had had a rug just like this (except it was pink) back in San Francisco, and the kitty cats did the same thing to it.  Aren’t cats great?  

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Daily Riley

Time Lag

Spent the day reading the fantastic novel, "to say Nothing of the Dog", by Connie Willis. It's a time traveling, Victorian romance/sci-fi novel that made me laugh out loud. It is a perfect book to spend a day off with.
Went out to get gas in the bike this morning and found that it cost $12.00 to fill it up. Much better than the $50 it takes to fill the car. I intend to ride the bike to work tomorrow, first time in over three years. Tried to put on my chaps today, but it seems that the leather has shrunk up while hanging in the closet. Time is cruel.

But, we know that her heart will go on

Celine Dion loses it on a Larry King special.

Way to go Larry! Get her to sing a song!

Thanks to Crooks and Liars

Editorial Comment

Difficult to say it better than this Keith Olbermann Editorial.

It's making the rounds today so I am passing it on.

Real Estate Update

We've cooled off our search for a condo due to the INSANE prices. There is no place in Michael's mind that a $690,000.00 3 bedroom condo can exist. We reject this reality, so we will continue to rent. This is not a bad thing because we like our apartment, and the town we are in. We are hoping that a correction is coming soon, otherwise a commute will be in order. Oh well.

Bourbon has made shooting at things that move seem like a good idea for years...

John and I were chatting yesterday; how is it that 48 hours inside a ruined city might turn average folk into something like, "The Lord of the Flies"? John pointed out that bourbon was involved. Of course! I thought, people were drinking bourbon and then shooting at helicopters. Bourbon has made shooting at things that move seem like a good idea for years in the US. This revelation made us feel much better about my fellow man than we had been. We make our home in the San Francisco Bay area, which, you may have heard, is prone to earthquakes. We were very unsettled by the thought of our neighbors taking pot shots at rescue workers after the next big quake. Now we feel we should all be OK, as long as people do not substitute bourbon for water in the aftermath. Our hearts go out to all the victims, but we beg those of you that have, stop acting like complete idiots. Your situation is no excuse for this behavior; you should be acting like a better human, not an animal. Try the bottled water, it goes well with bourbon.

Super-Close-up

Gimmie that camera, Mommy.

Just a reminder...

...after today, no more white shoes.

Another Victory for Freedom!

We spent part of our labor day holiday being good American consumers. Remember, if we don't buy crap at Target, the terrorists win. Saturday, we cleaned and rearranged our bedroom only to find that we were in need of a new floor lamp. Riley continues to only want to poo in his pull-ups, so we needed some of those as well. I have a theory about lamps: All lamps are ugly. They are truly mankind's least appealing artifact. So, we ambled through Target after a brief stop at Mitchell park and found a lamp. We also picked up a cool new toy for Riley called Tube Traxx.



Take that! You freedom hating wackos!!!

See how it goes...

Today we helped a friend start a blog and decided that, we might as well have one too.  We hope to use this blog to keep in touch with friends on the east coast, and elsewhere.  Let us see how it goes, shall we?