Snail Toothpicks

My father is a pig with a hat on his head

2011-06-19T20:56:00.009-04:00

It's been over a month since my last post, so I guess it's time to write another one. I won't even pretend that I remember everything that's happened during that time. There have been a few recent events of note, though. First is G's birthday - he's six years old now! Hard to believe. He's finishing Kindergarten this week. Here are some pictures from the family party we had for him on Sunday night the day before his actual birthday. They were taken on a cell phone camera so the quality isn't the greatest. (They would be even worse if I'd taken them with my phone.)

Today was Father's day, of course. G went to church with me so he could sing with the Primary. On the way home in the car he was telling me about what they did in sharing time. I don't pretend to have understood it - it involved two German doctors and some strange pictures that supposedly represented germs. Anyway, he got to pick one of the songs, not directly but by picking one of the pictures. I guess the doctors probably interpreted. He said he picked a picture of a pig with a hat on its head. I asked him what the song was, and he said he didn't remember but he thought it was a song about fathers. So I sang it for him:

My father is a pig with a hat on his head,
My father is a pig with a hat on his head,
My father is a pig with a hat on his head,
It's the strangest thing you'll ever see.

My father is a pig with a hat on his head,
My father is a pig with a hat on his head,
My father is a pig with a hat on his head,
The only thing sillier is me.

I finished up just as we were pulling into the driveway and he ran screaming to his mother.
I went inside and the first thing I saw was a plastic pig snout that he'd recently picked up at a birthday party. So I put it on and put a hat on my head and went to see him.
Here's a picture he took of me:
One last picture. This is from a different birthday party he went to recently. It was for a kid in his primary class. The invitation indicated a Star Wars theme, but not much more. So we were surprised when we got there to find a full scale carnival going on. This picture is of G with his face painted.

Fathers and sons and hamsters

2011-05-14T17:38:00.002-04:00

This weekend was the Father and Sons campout for our stake. I wasn't able to leave work until a little before 6, so by the time I got home, got Griffin, and drove out to the camp site it was already a little after 8. I knew we were going to be that late so I stopped at McDonalds on the way to pick up dinner which we ate in the car on the rest of the way. We arrived just in time for the fireside, then I found out where our ward was located and we went there. It was a little fun finding a place for the tent and setting it up in the dark, but it was a nice clear night with the moon over half full so we managed. Then we went in the tent and spent quite a while making shadow animals on the tent wall and telling jokes and silly stories until way past G's normal bed time.

It was a somewhat restless night - G woke me up once because he didn't want to go out by himself to use a tree, and in the very early morning a very noise gaggle of geese flew in to the lake we were camping beside. (We didn't get up that early.)

After we did get up we took the tent down and put it away. G was a big help with that. Then we went to breakfast. After that we wandered around for a while with one of the boys in G's primary class and his dad and brother while we waited for a canoe to become available. The five of us then took the canoe for a trip around the lake. After going back to the campsite to see G's friend's tent (G was a little too helpful with that), we went back to the main camp area and played tug-a-war and soccer and baseball and other games for a while before heading home.

I just asked G what his favorite part of the campout was. He said it was the shadow puppet show. It occurs to me that we could have stayed home to do that. Oh, well. I know he really enjoyed the canoe trip as well, and that would have been harder to do at home.

I notice that it's been a while since I wrote here. In the interval, Tigera's name changed to Bubbles, but Bubbles got wet tail and had to go back to the pet shop. Then a week later they called to tell me he had died. So we have a new hamster now. His name was Tiger for quite a while, but I think now he's Tom. I doubt it is possible to teach a hamster to come when he's called by name, but even if it isn't ours will probably never manage the trick with how often the name changes. Anyway, Tom/Tiger is doing well. He's already outlived his predecessor by quite a bit. He's well past the point where the pet store would take him back if he got sick. He also seems friendlier and more at home in his cage.

Sorry about the lack of pictures this time. I forgot to take my camera on the campout. I think another family in our ward got a picture of us in the canoe, if I get a copy of that I'll add it in here.

Spring has sprung

2011-04-10T18:30:00.007-04:00

No guarantees that we won't still have more snow (and the shadiest corner of the back yard still has a rather impressive snow bank), but we've finally started to have some occasional springlike weather. The baseball season has started (quick, somebody tell the Red Sox!) and outdoor activities are possible without a coat. Here's a video of G getting ready for T-ball, which I believe will be starting soon.

I'm not sure that video will work. It doesn't work in the edit window where I am creating this post, but it meets all the criteria listed by Blogger so I don't know why. I'll go ahead an publish and see if it works after that. If not, I'll try to figure out how to make it work for you later.

G's mom is out of town on a business trip all week, so I'll be Mr. Mom this week. Of course, things are really heating up on my major project at work right now. For a while it looked like things would be delayed enough that I could safely take the whole week off, but as it is I will be working a short day tomorrow and probably Wednesday and maybe working from home for much of the rest of the week. I'm still looking forward to not having to drive out to Peabody every day this week.

I almost forgot the other big news of the weekend. We've had a new addition to the family. Here he is:
Meet Tigerra the hamster. (I lobbied for Harry and/or Agent H, but I guess I lost.) I think the picture came out pretty good, and I hope so because I'm afraid I blinded the poor critter taking it.

Update: The video works for me now. Let me know if you have trouble viewing it.

... Back

2011-03-21T20:21:00.003-04:00

I guess I should have knocked on wood or something.

Going, Going ...

2011-03-20T17:32:00.002-04:00

This is G with his friend from across the street, standing in front of the remains of his fort. You know, the one he was sitting on top of in a picture a few weeks ago. There was a picture of him sitting on top of a larger snow pile in that same post, and that pile is even smaller than this one now (it's in a sunnier spot). At the rate things are going, we may lose the last of our snow before the end of this week. And with any luck we won't be getting any more any time soon.

Franklin Park Zoo

2011-03-05T21:15:00.008-05:00

Inspired in part by the pictures Julia sent us from the reunion which included Hogle Zoo pictures (thanks, Julia!), G and I decided to go to the Franklin Park Zoo today. I'd never been before. I was under the impression that it was the main Zoo in Boston. That's probably true if you mean actually in Boston. In fact, it may be the only zoo in Boston. But there are at least two others in the Boston area, and having been to all three now I'm not sure that Franklin Park isn't the worst. That might not be fair since I visited the others in the summer. Only about half of the exhibits were actually open today. Many of the animals which are unable to withstand the cold weather have no provision for indoor viewing. In some cases I think they may actually be shipped somewhere farther south for the winter. Anyway, the Stone Zoo probably isn't really any better. In fact, if you were to combine the Stone Zoo with the Franklin Park Zoo (and eliminate the resulting redundancies) you'd probably end up with something close to Hogle Zoo. In some ways they really are combined, except for geographically. They appear to have a combined management. Although our single day's admission to Franklin Park wouldn't have gotten us into the Stone Zoo as well, if I'd bought a year's membership that would have worked for both.

The Franklin Park Zoo is still plenty large enough to tire out a 5 year old walking completely through it. Some of the missing animals have rather large habitats. And it was interesting to see which animals were able to deal with the cold and which weren't. For instance, we saw a rather large lion outside sunning itself on a rock. The rock was clear but the rest of the habitat was still covered in snow. Some tigers were also outside in an area with lots of snow on the ground. An area which I think would normally have held both zebras and giraffes had the zebras, but no giraffes.

There was a rather large indoor exhibit area for tropical animals which included a very large colony of gorillas. I tried to get a picture of the tiny baby gorilla clinging to its mother's leg as she walked around, but the crowd in front of the window was too large and by the time I was able to get close enough for a picture the mother had wandered out of sight. I did get a few pictures elsewhere, though. Here's G with a red panda. (The red panda is on the roof of the building behind G.)

G is for goat:

G hanging out with the flamingos:

G wanted to get his picture with the mandrill. This was in the tropical building and the area wasn't well lit. In the resulting picture G was well lit, but the mandrill was completely in the dark. I've tried to edit the picture to enhance the mandrill without completely washing G out. This is as good as I could get it. Maybe it's for the best, considering the mandrill's position and the prominence of a certain portion of his anatomy.

Finally, I'm not sure why zoos always seem to have a playground area, but the Franklin Park Zoo is no exception and as usual G was as interested in playing in it as he was in seeing any of the animals. This despite the fact that the ground in the play area was still very much snow covered.

Today was actually a rather warm day - the high was in the lower 50's. We only had one day this week that didn't get above freezing, It snowed enough last Sunday morning that church was canceled, but we've had more rain than snow since then. If it weren't for the still deep snow on the ground everywhere that hasn't been shoveled or plowed it would really feel like spring.

Sledding, Flat Stanley, and Winning the Lottery

2011-03-01T23:33:00.008-05:00

Spring may finally be arriving here. We had more snow over the weekend - somewhere near half a foot, or at least that's how high it was piled on my car. But since then we've been having rain and the highs have been well above freezing. I just checked the ten day forecast and we have another cold snap coming on Thursday but the highs are supposed to quickly get back up into the 40's after that and stay there, so in a couple of weeks we may even have some patches of bare ground.

I forgot to take my camera with me when we went sledding on President's day, so no pictures from that (sorry Rachelle). It wasn't really a very good sledding day, anyway. We only got an inch or two of snow that morning, and the local sledding hill had been sledded to death before that - all the previous snow had been compacted into solid ice. So while we could make pretty good time sledding down the hill it was pretty hard on our bottoms and getting back up the hill was nearly impossible.

To make up for the lack of sledding pictures from last week, here is a picture from a year ago:
Also, one other picture. We had a visit from Flat Stanley, and he went to a Star Wars themed birthday party with G on Saturday. Here's a picture of them with a couple of other boys at the party:
Both of the boys in the picture with G and Flat Stanley are in G's primary class. The one on the left is the birthday boy.

I understand that Flat Stanley also went to Parker's Maple Barn in New Hampshire that morning, but I don't have any pictures of that since I wasn't there.

The other notable event on Saturday is that G and I both got richer. G's big brothers were playing in a basketball league (M's team won the championship!), and they had a raffle for a fund raiser. There was a winner for each day of the month in February. On Saturday I got a call informing me that I'd won on the previous Thursday. Later that day I went to pick up my winnings at the local hardware store (I won $50). As I was leaving I ran into G with his mother and brothers as they were going in to pick up his winnings - he'd won that day's drawing. (This was after Parker's Maple Barn and before the birthday party.) He also won $50, which in his case just about doubled his net worth.

Latest weather report

2011-02-21T12:14:00.002-05:00

I asked G what I should write about today, and he said that I should write that it's snowing again. So I guess this is going to be a weather blog for another day.

We've actually had much better weather for the last week. We've had a few days that were almost warm. The level of the snow in the yard dropped by over a foot - maybe closer to two. That doesn't mean that the ground became visible anywhere, but at least I know where my garbage can is now.

I had a fun week getting home from work. On Sunday one of my headlights burned out. On Monday I spent my lunch break looking in vain for an auto parts store near my work. That evening when I went out to go home I discovered that the other headlight had also burned out. It was very late and pitch dark at this point, so I wasn't sure how I was going to get home until I realized that the bright beams used the same bulbs. So I switched bulbs between the regular headlights and the brights and was able to get to the weekend that way.

Later in the week I forgot to turn my lights off when I got to work, so by the time I left late that evening the battery was dead. Fortunately I was able to get a jump start, although the first person I found wasn't able to help since he had a battery without normal terminals and we couldn't figure out how to hook up to them.

G and I have both been feeling under the weather lately. G started feeling miserable a week ago Friday and really only started feeling right over this past weekend. I started feeling lousy on Tuesday and also didn't start to feel good again until yesterday. We're both doing okay today, though, so we're about to take advantage of the latest addition to the snow pack by going sledding.

Back online

2011-02-06T15:01:00.003-05:00

Yes, we're still alive here in the lovely town of Groton. I read Mom's list of things she's thankful for, weather-wise, and thought I'd help her with her gratitude. So here are some pictures I took yesterday. The first is G on top of the largest pile of snow by my driveway, the second is G in his snow fort. Of course, these are the more extreme piles, but even in the lowest spots it is nearly up to my waist. Yesterday afternoon and evening we had freezing rain to put a nice slick surface on everything. Today it's actually very warm - I think it's the warmest day we've had yet this year, by about 5 degrees. It must be at least 40 F. Of course, the forcast is for colder and more snow tomorrow and Tuesday.

As long as I'm I'm posting again, here are some pictures of G at his fall T-ball skills camp.

Birthday party

2008-10-19T17:14:00.001-04:00

Yesterday G went to a birthday party for one of the girls in his preschool class. I'm not certain, but I think this was his first non-family birthday party. Here's a picture of him with the birthday girl (on his left):

Here he is with his girlfriend. He only recently told me that he has a girlfriend, but I'm reliably informed that they've been an item for a long time, and have even had their wedding all planned for months. It's going to be in a castle, and G is going dressed as a ghost.

Here's G on his way to church this morning dressed in his new coat and tie.

After I took a picture of him, he insisted on taking a picture of me. I think he did a pretty good job, other than his choice of subject.

Firetrucks

2008-10-05T22:43:00.000-04:00

The Groton Fire Department had a safety fair this weekend, and as part of it they had all of their firetrucks out where the kids could see them. G is a big fan of trucks in general, and firetrucks in particular, so we went to see them. Here is G next to Engine #7.

We got matching Engine #7 tee shirts while we were there. Here is a picture of us later in the day wearing them. The color match seems much better than this is real life, I don't know what happened in this picture.
One more picture for today. This one is courtesy of G. I'm including it mostly so that someday, when he's a famous photographer, I can say I was the first person to publish one of his photos. (No, I don't have any reason to believe that he is likely to choose a career in photography. But you never know!) Anyway, I think this represents his view of the world whenever we go somewhere in the car.

For some reason I always seem to have G on General Conference weekends. If this continues, it will be a good thing when he's older and able to understand it. Right now, though, it makes it hard to catch the conference live. In fact, I don't even try. But even if it were more convenient, I have to admit I might not be too motivated to try to catch all the conference sessions live. Instead, I just download the sessions from lds.org and burn them to CD's so I can listen to them during my hour-long commute to work. It wasn't too long ago that people living in places like this were lucky to get one session of conference broadcast in their area, with no way to get any of the other sessions until the published report came out. I'm very grateful for the flexibility provided by modern technology.

Book fairs and pictures

2008-09-30T21:15:00.000-04:00

This evening I got a text message from G's mother saying that she was at a book fair at the middle school and Curious George was there. So G and I hurried over. I got a picture with my new camera phone:

That's G's older brother D on the left. G may end up in the newspaper - a reporter was there and took a picture of him giving Curious George 5. G got his picture in the paper about 2 years ago at a book fair with Clifford. Here are G's big brothers M and D, actually looking at books. In this case its some sort of an encyclopedia of all things Pokemon, which from what I saw was probably the best seller at this book fair. D bought it.

I got the new camera phone in part because one of G's favorite things to do is look at pictures of his cousins on all the other family blogs, and I thought I ought to post more pictures of him in case some of his cousins like to do that, too. So here are a couple more. First, the Incredible Hulk gets ready for Halloween:

Finally, G and D swinging in the back yard:

As you can see, it's not a particularly good camera, but at least I (almost) always have it with me.

I took the day off from work today in order to fulfill an assignment working in the temple laundry in the morning. Because I needed to get to the temple by 8:00, I couldn't take G to preschool as usual. I told him last night that I wouldn't be taking him, and why, so this morning when his mother was explaining it to him he said, "Yes, I know. I want to go to the temple. Do they have rides there?"

GROTONFEST!

2008-09-21T15:39:00.000-04:00

Yesterday G and I walked to our town's annual festival. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera. So no pictures of G in the ambulance or riding a horse. But thanks to the town electric utility I have a picture of G in the bucket of a truck used to lift people up to repair the power lines. This was the place where G probably had the most fun of the day, but also the site of his greatest disappointment. They had a drawing for a toy version of this truck, and G was heart-broken when he didn't win.

Arbeit macht frei

2008-09-01T21:00:00.000-04:00

I spent much of Labor Day working, appropriately enough I suppose. Not so much on my paying job yet, although the night is no more than middle-aged and I do need to get some things done for that before tomorrow. Mostly it was yard work, attempting to tame the trees and bushes (not to mention some sort of vine) that are trying to overwhelm the house. G was outside at first as well with his mother, grandma and brothers. They were also working on the yard - among other things, they were planting three small trees, one for each boy. G started getting tired just about the time the preparations for planting the trees were finished, so he didn't really participate much in the planting. Turning the water on and using the hose to get the ground wet was interesting enough to hold his attention for a while, but the closest I could get to having him participate in the actual placing of the tree in the ground was to hold him while I did it. After that he came inside at my place and quickly fell asleep. That put an end to my pruning for a while, so I started cleaning the kitchen instead. While G was sleeping his grandma took his brothers to the movie and his mother went shopping, so I got to hang out with him all afternoon and into the evening. After he woke up I decided to fire up the charcoal grill and barbecue some pork for dinner. I asked G if he wanted to come help, but he was interested in a show on TV so he declined. Then as I was on my way to start the fire he asked me, very seriously, "Dad, is the house going to blow up?" It didn't, and the pork turned out great.

Texas - it's a whole other country

2008-08-17T01:32:00.000-04:00

My brother Curtis flew in today from Austin, Texas to attend a conference. I picked him up at the airport, took him and his colleague to their hotel, and then brought my brother home to meet G. This all took a little longer than I'd planned for, partly because the airline lost his luggage. Well, they claim it's just on a later flight, and he might even have it by now. In any case, we had to wait at the baggage claim until it was clear that his bag wasn't coming out, and then he had to wait in line for a while in order to fill out a form. By the time we got home G was already in bed (although it was only 8:30 - why doesn't he ever go to bed that early when he's spending the night with me?) He wasn't asleep, though, so we got him up to come over for a short visit. The first thing he said when he got to the door was "I like your brother, Dad." He also said that Curtis looks like a cowboy, I think because of the hat he was wearing. I should have taken a picture of them together, but I didn't think of it. Anyway, we kept the visit short both because G needed to go back to bed and because Curtis was starving. Curtis and I walked over to the restaurant around the corner and had some excellent sandwiches. Curtis was surprised at how hot the peppers that came on the side were - he expected to find only wimpy peppers in Massachusetts. I let Curtis borrow a shirt in case his luggage doesn't show up before his presentation tomorrow. We took pictures of each other, and then I took him back to his hotel. We're going to try to get together again on Tuesday. Here's a picture - can you tell which guy spent the day in airports and on planes?
Neither can I.

Pictures from Utah

2008-08-17T00:25:00.000-04:00

I finally found the cable to download pictures from my camera. Here are some pictures from the Utah trip.
This picture was taken literally within a few minutes of the first time G met any of his cousins. It didn't take him any time at all to decide that cousins are a good thing.

G with cousins Jeremy and Micah are about to be eaten.

Cousins Emily and Maddie are next on the menu.
G out for a ride at Lagoon with cousin Micah.
G and cousin Zane sail the Seven Seas.
G with all the Utah cousins.

I may post some more Utah pictures later.

News only a parent could get excited about

2008-08-13T21:08:00.000-04:00

Today G wore underpants to school. About 6:00 P.M., as I was in the middle of an experiment, I got a text message from his mother informing me that he came home still wearing the same underpants, still clean. I commented on it, and my boss asks incredulously, "The preschool sends you announcements about this?"
I'm excited about this news, of course, but not half as excited as his mother is. I suspect this is partly because I really don't mind changing diapers much, but mostly it's because of the expense. And I don't just mean the expense of the diapers themselves - the cost of day care will go down significantly once G is potty trained. She's been trying to get him interested for at least a year now. Anyway, apparently the evening hasn't gone quite so well, but it's still a big day for G (or at least for his mother.)

I had no idea!

2008-08-05T00:46:00.000-04:00

Vacation aftermath

2008-07-30T20:12:00.000-04:00

G and I just got back from a week in Utah visiting family. It was a long trip for a three-year old, both in terms of time spent on planes and time spent away from his mother, but he handled it all pretty well. It was wonderful to see how well he got along with all his cousins, and I know he had a great time. Hopefully he will still remember everyone two years from now when I plan to take him back. I've got lots of pictures and I'll try to figure out how to post some of them as soon as I find the cable I need to get the pictures off of the camera and into the computer. Thanks to everyone who helped to make it such an enjoyable visit, especially Mom and Dad for putting us up and feeding us all week long.

I think we are both still suffering from jet lag. I was smart enough to take Tuesday and Wednesday off from work this week. We got back late enough on Monday night that it was actually Tuesday morning, so G spent the night with me and we both slept in - G didn't get up until after 10:00 that morning. G also spent much of the day with me since his mother had to work, we went to the park and the library. He went to see his mother just before 3:00 and promptly fell asleep. Today he got up only a little behind schedule, so hopefully tomorrow he will be back on track. Anyway, it's back to the regular grind for me tomorrow.

Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?

2008-07-30T13:54:00.000-04:00

While I was in Utah during the past week all of my blogging relatives urged me to start my own blog. I don't know that I'm likely to be very good at this - I've always had a perhaps too keen appreciation for the permanence of the written word, which makes me a very slow and deliberate writer. The idea that just about anyone might find and read what I write here is only likely to exacerbate my trepidation, even though I know that no one outside my family is ever likely to bother. That kind of feeling is entirely at odds with the spirit of blogging, so I'll try to overcome it.

A word about the title. I think my family will mostly get it, but on the off-chance that someday someone else wanders by and takes the time to read this, I'll explain. My grandfather was famous (within the family) for the often pithy, if almost always nonsensical things he would say in his sleep. Family members began to write down his unconscious utterings for the edification of the rest of the family. Many of these have even been compiled into a book, and I know several of them by heart. One of these somnolent aphorisms is, "People are always wondering what snails pick their teeth with." This, then, is my place to write about snail toothpicks and all the other, equally weighty things I ponder about.