The Mike Stories, Pt. 23

Last weekend I came downstairs after a nice morning of sleeping in, and was just on my way to the kitchen to get breakfast - when I ran into Mike. He was just standing there in his bathrobe with two hand weights. That's it. He was just standing there with Morpheus, not doing anything. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he didn't know. When I told him he was a strange man - he responded with "maybe you should take a picture" - and so I did. Here it is (enjoy):

A couple of nights ago Mike and I were upstairs getting ready for bed, and he seemed quite proud of himself when he asked me if I had been online lately. I hesitantly told him that I had, but that I had no idea what he was so proud of himself for, and that considering the internet is a rather large place - he'd have to narrow it down a bit for me.

Then he asked if I had seen his twitter postings. I told him that I had not, and asked what he had posted. He told me he had posted a bunch of stuff, and that I should go read them. I told him that my computer was downstairs, and that I didn't feel like going down just for that, since I was on my way to bed. He seemed very anxious for me to see it, and so I told him maybe HE should go downstairs and get a laptop so he could pull it up for me. And so then he pulls out his laptop from right under the bed and starts looking it up.

At that point, I noticed his browser was in Spanish - so I asked him about that, and he said he had set it up that way. I think Spanish Mike is slowly taking over, and before I know it, I'm going to have an exclusively Spanish husband. At least he'll come in handy if we make it down to Costa Rica in March.

So then he finally gets his twitter page up, and he can't figure out how to navigate it. He started in complaining about how it didn't work right and was hard to navigate. I snatched the laptop away from him and found what he was trying to show me in about 2 clicks. (He thought I was a genius - to which I told him he just needed better reasoning skills).

And what was the big mysterious thing he was so proud of, you wonder? He had discovered that he could use voice recognition technology on his phone to produce tweets, and he had been tweeting all the way home during his commute. He even tweeted two photos, and after seeing them I told him that he should not be allowed to drive if he was just going to focus his attention on tweeting and taking photos instead of watching the road. Want to see it for yourself? The date in question was Jan 19th. (I find it best to back up to the first post of a particular day, and read up rather than down, so you can see the chronological progression of his insanity)

The Mike Stories, Pt. 22

Mike pulled most of the shelving out of the pantry....

Here's a shot inside the pantry.... not only is most of the shelving missing, but he's opened the trap door to go under the house. it's very creep down there.

A look down into the creepy under-the-house crawl space.... yes, that is Mike's foot

And finally, here he is coming back up from the creepy underground. and yes, that is a head lamp my nerdy husband is wearing. :)

Mike claims he was down there doing some task related to turning off the electricity flowing to power outlets that were in the deck that he recently pulled out of the back yard. but lets face it - he probably just wanted to play around under he house & screw around with the nicely organized pantry.

The Mike Stories, Pt. 21

So today I learned that Mike's steam cleaning method involves heating water on the stove to boiling, then tossing it around the living room (see below). Eventually he does get around to using our steam cleaner to suck up the water - but I thought it looked like a lot of the mischievous sort of fun to throw water all over the carpet while I was watching him work earlier.

I'm not too fond of the last step, however, which involves trying to dry the resulting wet carpet. not only does it take forever, but Mike goes ahead and brings every fan we own into the living room area and sets them on high. the wind factor in my living room is annoying this time of year, as is the fan noise!

Here's a fun conversation Mike and I had in the kitchen while he was on the water-boiling phase of this carpet cleaning adventure (and I was working on my madder dyeing project - see my other blog for details):

Mike: you shouldn't be in here
Me: but I'm dyeing!
Mike: you're dying?
Me: uh-huh!
Mike: oooooh - that kind of dyeing!

The Mike Stories, Pt. 20

One a couple of weeks ago, I found a roll of toilet paper caught between the blankets when I was trying to go to bed. I made a face and asked Mike about it, which sparked the following conversation:

Mike: you never know when you might need it!
Me: why might i need toilet paper in bed? do you think i'm going to pee the bed?
Mike: you can't be too careful.
Me: so that applies to the possibility that i might pee the bed, but not to fire safety and the possibility that you might burn down the house?
Mike I'm not going to burn down the house!
Me: right.... so that's a good reason not to install the smoke detector, but you still think you need toilet paper in the bed?
Mike: yes!

And then just now, we're getting ready to leave the house to go out to a late lunch, because I've been trapped in the house for 36 hours watching my madder experiment while it sat on the stove. (read my other blog for details). Here's how that conversation went:

Mike: you should go get ready so we can go. I'm hungry.
Me: I'm almost ready, I just need to put my clothes on.
Mike: yeah, that takes a long time. first you have to look at your hair, then you have to check your pores....
Me: check my pores huh?
Mike: yeah, that's why girls get that magnifying mirror isn't it? i've seen Sex and the City, I know what's up!
Me: you are a funny man, Mr. Roshak!

[little does he know that i skipped checking my pores in favor of writing this latest Mike Stories episode for you] ;)

The Mike Stories, Pt. 19

Mike and I were sitting in the living room watching tv and doing homework when a commercial for the new Wii Pictionary game came on. Mike suggested that I should invite my artist friends over to play pictionary with me. I told him that was an awesome idea, and agreed that I should... he wanted to know if i would put out a variety of different drawing media for use during such a game of pictionary - why not?!

then I asked him if he would be intimidated playing pictionary with a room full of artists. he said "no, why should I? it's all about the guessing!" then I reminded him that when he draws, maybe nobody would know what it was.... that was when it dawned on him that he would be on a team, and he could lose the game for his team if he couldn't draw something in such a way that people could figure out what it was.... so he said "yeah.... maybe i'll be scorekeeper then!"

The Mike Stories, Pt. 18

Mike and I have tickets to the whole film noir cycle at the Seattle Art Museum, and we're about halfway through it right now. Last night we went to see The House on Telegraph Hill. After the movie, on our way back to the car, I casually asked Mike if he had noticed that we're (by far) the youngest audience members each week. He said:

"yeah, i think an old folks home drops off a bus of people"

I just started laughing, and reminded him that the movies were made in the 1940's - and that the oldest people we see in the audience were probably just kids when the movies came out, and that a lot of the people we see when we go to SAM each week probably remember watching these movies (or movies like them) when they were kids. It would be like Mike and I getting excited and going to a special showing of '80's movies in a theater when we're elderly.

Then he tells me:

"yeah, but i see them all hanging out together in the lobby before the movie!"

i asked if he was talking about them being all lined up outside the theater (to which he replied that he was), and so i told him that they were probably lined up to buy their tickets. I told him that not everybody bought a ticket for the whole series like we did - and that we get to skip to the head of the line and just go in because of our pass to the whole cycle. I'm still a little confused at how it didn't occur to him that a whole line of people outside of a movie theater were just there buying tickets. How is it that the first thought that came to him about it was that they must have all been friends from the old folks home?

Mike cracks me up!

The Mike Stories, Pt. 17

Last night Mike and I were laying in bed talking, and somehow the topic of underwear came up. Not just any underwear, but Mormon underwear. For some reason, Mike was convinced that Mormon underwear was made of burlap. (we spent about 10 minutes arguing about it: Mike saying "yes it is" and me saying "no it's not")

Then Mike told me he was going to look it up. I told him: good - you should! then you'll see that you're wrong!

Mike swore that it had to be either burlap or wool, and that it was supposed to be uncomfortable. Naturally I disagreed, but then he went on to tell me that it was supposed to be uncomfortable for some sort of religious suffering purposes. I called him a liar.

Then he got out his iPod, which gets internet access - and found a photo of Mormon underwear from the 1800's. I told him he was SUPPOSED to be looking for modern Mormon underwear, and that antique Mormon underwear didn't count (although I suspect it still wasn't made of burlap)!

Eventually Mike found a website that described Mormon underwear as being made of any lightweight material. I told him that neither burlap or wool would count as lightweight, and therefore he was wrong. plus my understanding is that the underwear is worn as a reminder of God's protection. (do I have any Mormon readers who can verify that)?