Strollin' Along EighthAve

2008-07-25T10:35:00.002-04:00

Wow, such a long time between posts! My apologies, friends. Work has had me absolutely hopping crazy lately. Additionally, taking care of two kids is more than twice as much work as one child, I've come to learn. How people cope with more than that, I just don't know. You just surrender a significant portion of your non-child aspects of life and keep going.

As I said, work has been wall-to-wall for a while now, but vacation is next week, Yay! I'll be seeing SAW down in Nashville, so it should be splendid. We'll be hitting HatchShowPrint while we're there and many of the other tourist staples of Nashville and possibly Memphis.

What else has been keeping me busy, you ask? Well, we got one of those above-ground pools with the inflatable ring that holds it all together. I had to bust a hump to get that thing set up. The first time, we thought we'd take a shot at just putting it on the ground, even though there's a slight slope to our backyard. The fact that the next day, about a foot of what had been a wall became a floor, we realized it wasn't the answer.

So I dug and dug and dumped over 30 bags of paving sand in the backyard to get it semi-level. I got close. but still a bit off, but not enough for it to topple. We just decided that since our dog passed away, we didn't really do anything with it. The sun in the afternoon is so intense it burnt the grass up regularly, so we thought that we wanted to do something with it so the kids would have fun. So we got a 13' x 39" and it's just right. Not too deep for my son, but deep enough that when we get in to play, we can be up to our shoulders if we get on our knees. And if my son's friends come over to swim, they have enough room to play without constantly being all over each other. Our little girl loves it, too. She's going to be the fish of the two. The boy was terrified of the water at first, the girl hasn't been able to get enough of it from the beginning. But the boy is getting better and is having fun swimming underwater, something he has been extremely afraid of because of ear problems.

But anyway, there have been those things, but I'll admit it, I got a Wii for Father's Day and have been captivated by it. We have the Wii sports that comes with it, but we also got Carnival Games, Disney-Pixar Cars, Pinbusters and...the truly greatest time-blowing game ever - Speed Racer. I have so much fun playing Speed Racer! All the car-fu combat during the races - hehe! too much fun. The tail-flip and torpedo maneuver is especially fun to watch. I like that's it challenging enough to keep you interested, but not so hard that you end up in last place all the time.

So anyway, aside from sleep, an occasional dinner out with Mrs. Dave, that's been my life. I'm really looking forward to vacation, so keep your eyes open here for anything interesting that develops.

Dave

Album Art Exercise

2008-03-08T09:29:00.002-05:00

Streeeetch 2,3,4 - march 2,3,4

My acquaintance and part-time nemesis on the How Forum, jlmonty posted this cool creative exercise which uses a Wikipedia randomizer, a random quote generator and Flickr Explore Interesting (because you'll rarely find a dud there) images to create Album Art. Click on the Wikipedia link and the title of the article is your band's name, click on the quote generator-go to the last quote on the page-the last four words of that quote are your album's title and click on the Flickr link - use the image in the upper-rightmost image for your album's artwork, no matter what it is or how unrelated it may be to your "artist" or album title. My buddy Jeope also suggested that you add a brief description of the band or music that they play. I like this idea, but found it easier sometimes to me to describe who the music is for, so pardon me if I jump around a little that way.

Simmer in your creative design juices for no more than 5-10 minutes and see what happens. Here are my results - I must admit, I found this a little addictive.

This was my first shot, I'm thinking an ecstasy trippin' euro techno vibe here.

80s Hair Metal

A Female Alt Rock Polka

Popular in Swingers Clubs across the world

REALLY Popular in Swingers Clubs across the world. I swear this is an actual random collection using the method above!

This is an actual former band, but not an actual former album. 90s Grunge with a sense of irony.

This one I cheated on. I found a quote from Kanye West that ended with "My misery is your pleasure" and just had to find the band and album art to fit it.

Death metal with a drop of early 90s alt rock whiney-assedness

For the Prozac Overdosed Crowd

Think Yanni without the zing.

Techno with a twang.

For recovering addicts

I'll have a blog-exclusive cover shortly!

But be sure to click on the link to the How Forum thread to see some other terrific 5 minute works of great design!

Dave

Howiezine 11 - Ambigram Alphabet

2008-02-26T22:03:00.003-05:00

This is my page for Howiezine 11 - Alphabet. I dug deep to challenge myself with this one, for it was not enough merely to create some sort of ambigram for the zine, no! I wanted to something special. So, let's do one half of the alphabet on each side of the page! Yes! Wait...no! Let's do half on each side of the page such that it's the same graphic, just flipped over, but you see the other half of the alphabet! Yes! Wait...no! Let's make it even more challenging, let's make it so it's a cut out and you won't have alignment issues, YES!

Ok, wait a sec, cutting all that out by hand is going to take for-freaking-ever! So I scaled it back to the flip-over ambigram. The cut-out would have been really cool, though.

The E/N and the G/V combinations were really tough, so work with me when you notice the N is sideways. ;-)

This is A-M:

and N-Z - I think if you know the N is sideways, the rest falls into place.

I would have liked to do more stylized lettering, but it took so long to get to this point and trying to cut it out - I just ran out of time. Still pretty cool, though!

Dave

The Legend of the Club-Tusked Walrus

2008-02-20T23:14:00.004-05:00

Here we find the very rare skull of the ancient club-tusked walrus on an arctic ice floe. Referred to jokingly by scientists as "an evolutionary mistake," this walrus was at a distinct disadvantage for both fighting off predators and climbing out of the water, which modern walruses are better equipped to do.

However, in addition to being extinct, the club-tusked is also notable for it's eyes. Unlike most mammals, indeed most animals, the eyes do not completely decompose. Not bone, but a substance closer to a metal in consistency, it is highly unusual to find an intact set such as this specimen. It is not known if the X in the eye was visible when the animal was alive or only after it died.

The species was discovered in 1906 when a large block of ice broke away from a glacier. Unlike most paleontological finds, scientists didn't have to dig deep to find it, it simply floated by them as they were on their way to unearth a Woolly Mammoth.

Astounded with their discovery, much fanfare surrounded the curious-looking creature. Inspired by the coverage, a young Charles Schulz, who worked for a Minnesota Newspaper as an editorial cartoonist, studied the photos of the animal and then made a decision that would affect the cartooning world forever. He used the distinct X shape in the eye to indicate a character in his cartoon that was either dead or passed-out drunk.

The trend soon became an expected convention in all manner of cartooning. Shows you how even the most unlikely and unintentional connections can have far reaching effects.

Have a Blue Christmas!

2007-12-21T22:28:00.000-05:00

Another gadgety thing, but fun. Hope you have a great Christmas and a terrific 2008, with more posts here, I hope!

Dave

Create Your Own Video

Gadgety, but when it works, it works

2007-09-19T23:18:00.000-04:00

I stumbled onto Slide's website and played around with the slide show feature. Kinda cool if the content works with it. These just seemed so natural...

Then there is this, an older set of chestnuts, but fun...

Fun, huh?

Dave

Please Wear Appropriate Ear Protection

2007-08-21T16:30:00.000-04:00

If you are female or a female will be able to view your screen as your read this, because they are just going to squeal at how cute this is...

I told you!

Hehehe - alright, I suppose the easiest way to do this is with a grid. Top left square is A1(even thought it's a part of a bigger picture), bottom right is E4. These shots were taken at dinner one night when little girl was in great spirits (which she usually is). It was a lot of fun. Originally we were just trying to capture a particular face she was making, but it turned into more.

A1 - Little girl concentrating on picking up a piece of her dinner.

A3 - Looking excited about what mommy has or is singing (forget which)

A4 - Hmm, wonder what I can fit in here?

B4 - Contemplative little girl

C3 - This is as close as we got to the face we were trying to capture. Her eyebrows are usually a little tighter together, but close enough. She's just usually so excited when she is making this face.

C4 - Are we done yet? Look at the curls that stick out to the right. Sneaky little things they are, or at least used to be. When she was younger they were practically invisible and would often tickle your nose when you were least expecting it.

D1 & D2 - The ancient Chinese Green Bean Torture technique and her response. We feel bad we had to resort to this, but sometimes parenting ain't easy...

D3 - Our happy little girl. She's always in such a good mood unless she's very hungry or really tired. We are so lucky to have such a mellow cutie. She's a little higher maintenance than her brother was at that age, but compared to some other baby girls I've seen, she's no problem at all.

E1 - Just looking adorable as can be! At the same time, can you see that hint of evil mischief in her eyes? This one is going to be slick...

E4 - Of course, where would little girl be without her favorite person in the world, her big brother? How many fewer photos would I have to take because said big brother keeps jumping in the shot? Many! ;-)

Hard to believe she's almost a year old already! She has been such a good baby, I couldn't ask for more in a daughter. Please God, don't make me pay dearly for it when she's a teenager!

Dave

8 on eight

2007-08-06T11:16:00.000-04:00

I got tagged by Mel... and yes, I do not hesitate to make use of that fact and phraseology at every opportunity I get...

So 8 random things about eighthave...

• I can make my shoulderblades stick straight out of my back, sort of like a cat. It's a double joint-ish thing that has only led to shoulders that are hard to sleep on sometimes

• I was once dragged out to sea by a man-eating lobster - it's true, I swear, he just didn't get to finish the job

• I'm an aspiring Children's book writer

• I now wish that I had followed some childhood intuitions and played the drums, so that I could now be a Blue Man.

• It wasn't strange to me that both sets of my grandparents lived next door to each other. I thought everyone's grandparents lived close together because my cousins' grandparents lived only across the street and down the road about 1/4 of a mile away from our common grandparents.

• I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I had always lived in upstate New York where I was born, or if I had stayed in Texas, where we moved when I was 9 or 10. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disappointed in how it actually turned out here in Baltimore, I just wonder.

• I miss my dog. I had to put him to sleep in February.

• In baseball (and baseball ONLY) I'm a switch hitter and found I preferred hitting lefty after many years of hitting righty. Can't throw, draw or do much else with any aptitude left handed, though.

I'm tagging Jeope, Lew and I'll have to think of others later, because Mel got the other ones I was thinking of...

Dave

A Mighty Wind

2007-04-03T08:56:00.001-04:00

Here's a post I wouldn't have thought I'd be writing today. Last night I got a call on my way home from the lovely Mrs. Dave and she said something to the effect of The Gazebo is in the middle of the yard and I don't think we'll be able to fix it. Eeeek. Over the past weekend, we bought and put together a small gazebo-ish screened-in canopy for the deck out back. It was a great idea, it gets pretty hot out there in the summer and makes it all but unusable because it gets so much afternoon and evening sun. I can't remember the last time we just spent time out on the deck enjoying ourselves aside from grilling dinner.

So, I get the call on the way home, and all I can do is shake my head. I get home and find that she wasn't exagerrating. This was the view from our kitchen:

From the other side:

So, suddenly my job for the night was to dismantle as much as I could of the thing. I got about halfway through. So now what to do about it? Go back to Lowe's and ask them if there is a return policy for dumb-asses? The only things that are truly irreversibly damaged on it are the crossbars that hold one corner to the other. I'm not as sure about the roof, but that might have a small problem. I don't know, I may contact the manufacturer and see if they'll send us new crossbars. We shall see.

Oy! Life!

Dave

Do you get it?

2007-04-02T13:59:00.000-04:00

I drive by this sign every day on the way to and from work. I'm at a loss as to what they are trying to accomplish with the way that have treated the type. Any thoughts?

Oh, and an update - Hamm has been found, cork intact. Thank you for your concern, photos to come soon.

Dave

So that's what that little thingy does, or - you think you know a camera...or...flower power!

2007-03-29T16:53:00.000-04:00

So that's what the little flower thing does. After having a camera for about a year and a half, you'd think I knew the thing inside and out. Of course not, this is modern technology. No idea why, but I had simply never paid much mind to the fact that there is this little button on my digital camera with a flower on it. So, I've been trying to get a decent photo of these two little toys I got last week. They are the car versions of Toy Story Characters featured at the end of the Cars movie. I'm still looking for a Sully and Mike if you should come by the set... ahem... I actually also have the Hamm car, but he's somewhere in the house misplaced by my son.

Anyway, like I was saying, I've been trying to get a decent photo of them with the digicam and hadn't been too successful. I could get a photo, but they just took up such a small percentage of the field, it was pathetic. So, I had just figured I couldn't do it that close, then I accidentally pushed the flower button. Bingo! Suddenly I'm in bidness! So I go from crappy to being able to see detail you can barely see with the naked eye (seriously, Buzz' helmet doesn't look all that dusty). Combine that with the handy-dandy timer so the camera doesn't move and viola!

Dave

North and South of the Border

2007-03-19T09:56:00.000-04:00

My good buddy Jeope is a fine Canadian citizen. Why he likes to freeze his assets in Winnipeg, as a Mid-Atlantic American, I cannot understand. Be that as it may, I still like him a lot, and his photography and illustration work has inspired me to do more with this blog than when I originally started it. After meeting him in Vegas at the HOW Conference, I found him to be much like his online personality, only with odor.

Ok, cross that with my listening to the book Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. This is the prequel to The DaVinci Code (or is it the TDC is just the sequel to A&D - bah!). If you know the story, ambigrams play an important symbolic role in the story. So I checked out the book just to see the ambigrams. It really touched a nerve for me, I guess. I've been fiddling with ambigrams ever since. I even went out and got WordPlay by John Langdon (yes he was the inspiration for the main character's name) and checked out his website. I was just blown away. I still have a ways to go in terms of artistic excellence, but I'm getting the hang of the conceptual side.

Now, put those two items together and lay it on the US-Canada border, if he looked at it from the north facing south, and I looked at it from the south facing north, we'd see the same thing:

I got a lot of inspiration from Jeope saying on a forum that his parents were hippies and part of the reason they picked this name is because the letters were all round. Just looking at the word Jeope made me think it might not happen at first. The J is an odd duck kind of letter, and many of the ways I tried to combine the J and the E were just way too forced to be very legible. Then just before I gave up on it, one of my doodles suddenly had the answer, which you see above. Great! I think to myself. Now if I can just combine a P and an E, Oy! no easy task there either. Given the loopiness of the J and the E, I started playing with that idea here as well. I came up with the shapes you see above, but the E was again looking a bit forced, Ok, next to the J, it wasn't reading like an E unless you point it out. Well, the O was easy, thank goodness. I had all the letters, but it just didn't seem quite right. The E just kept sayin' "I ain't right yet." After a lot of different experiments, it turned out that just overlapping the EO&P a bit solved the problem. The O cuts off the E in a good place to make it readable as a lower case e, either printed or written in cursive. Then the whole thing snapped together just right.

So that one was fun. Something else was bugging me though. While I did a good ambigram for that, I had a nagging feeling that there was more to explore with Jeope. Round and round and round letters, hmmmm...Oh! Let's try this and whoa! It worked. Can you figure it out? It's not an ambigram at all, just an interesting presentation of the name. Can you figure it out?

Enjoy!

Dave

Things I didn't think I'd miss

2007-03-12T11:14:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been just over a month since my buddy and pet of almost ten years passed away. We had to put my dog BJ to sleep because his medical bills were mounting and his health was eroding. He had gotten skinny and was having trouble controlling when and where he relieved himself, often in the house near the end. He was a great little dog and for some reason this weekend, I missed him terribly.

It made me think about what is different about life since he passed and a couple of things came to mind. First, the kitchen floor gets a lot dirtier below the dinner table than it ever used to before, especially by my son's chair. Second, now I have to wonder if I actually heard the doorbell. The little fella was a good alarm dog, for sure and he never missed the chance to bark at someone at the door. Lastly, the mornings aren't quite as warm. On cold nights, he would hop up in bed with us, and often lay along our legs and we'd keep each other warm.

The other day when I got home from work, I got out of the car and expected to see his little Batman-like ears peeking over the window sill, but they weren't. It was just a WHAM here's reality moment. Anyway, I miss you buddy. I hope you're having fun up there.

Dave

Mommy Said Knock You Out!

2007-03-05T23:22:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you get lucky and hit the shutter button at just the right time and then the caption hits you so fast, it just can't be wrong. I mean, what else could she be thinking with that expression? ;-)

Dave

What love can do...or...Love Hurts

2007-02-16T12:57:00.000-05:00

Hello all!

Before I get to the subject mentioned in the title, I wanted to let y'all know that I did land a sweet job! The interview that went so well on Tuesday panned out! So we're celebrating here. Yay!

Now onto the subject:

I've been meaning to do this for a while, but today presented the perfect opportunity. The photo below was not posed in any way by me. My son put the pair of Winnie-the-Poohs on the desk next to each other just like this. But they were both purchased on the same day roughly 5 years ago. On that day they looked virtually identical. But now these several years later, the love and devotion of a little boy whose best friend is a stuffed bear of very little brain has more than begun to show its impact on poor Winnie. Pooh made for great chewing material in the ear and nose areas, and on the back there is a spot where the boy put a "tail" on Pooh because he didn't really have one. It was more of a bump than a tail.

The constant companionship, death-defying stunts, trips to daycare and nights spent comforting said boy, have cost him his fluffy fur, the boy's naked period cost him his red shirt and many trips to the popular "Suds" night club here in the house have cost him his golden yellow color, leaving him a mere pale version of what he once was. But despite all that, Pooh is still the A1 favorite toy. It will be a little sad when it loses that position, but I think we'll hang on to him when he does.

Dave

Life is what happens

2007-02-12T10:02:00.000-05:00

Hello all,

Lest you have thought I've completely forgotten about my blog, I haven't. A few things have been going on that have taken priority. Mainly, finding a new job. I feel so close to one I can taste it, I just need to get the call. Bah! It's torturous waiting, you know? The first interview went extremely well, the second one went even better and the guy said he had a very difficult decision to make. I think I've done everything I could to make a good impression. Even the last thank you note I sent went an extra step I think. We had talked about our kids, and he told me that he had a son that was approximately the same age as my daughter.

So, I went to a book/card store after the interview and was looking for a good thank you card. Well, all the thank you cards that you can buy individually are all inappropriate for what I needed. "What you did meant so much to me..." "You're so special..." Blech. So, I hunted a little longer and came across some blank cards. I looked through a bunch, most of which were rather blah. BUT then I came across one with Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Dr. Seuss book The Cat in the Hat. With nothing else really in the realm of possibility, my brain started chewing on how to make this work. I hesitated many times, but ultimately did get it.

The artwork itself was more than just T1 and T2, it was a more artistic interpretation than simply straight copy from the book. There was a little more color, and you could see the brush strokes, etc. plus it was on a grid background that had all these hand-drawn circles in the boxes that were pretty cool. I wrote on the inside something to the effect of "As you will surely find out in the next couple of year of reading the Cat in the Hat to your son, Thing 1 and Thing 2 are quite a team. I think we can make a great team, too. I want the job and hope you want me to fill the position. Thanks again for taking the time to talk to me. I look forward to hearing from you! Dave"

So, here's hoping...

Also, the other reason I haven't posted much is because I got found out. I had kept this blog more or less a secret from Mrs. Dave because I just wanted it to be something I did for me. Something to showcase some of my artwork, rants, personal thoughts and various other items of miscellany relevent to my life. It's not that I didn't want to share it with her, most of the stuff she was aware of, but for some reason, I just wanted to keep the blog to myself. Well, in a recent computer switcheroo, the blog address was still in the cache of my old computer and in the drop-down box and she happened upon it. So I was busted. I was a little let down by that. But, I'm back, and hopefully shall continue fearlessly.

Lastly, as you may be aware, last Friday, I had to put my dog to sleep. Hardest thing I may have ever done. I'm a little haunted by his last cry and his eyes moments after his death. We did the right thing, but I'll see those eyes forever. I miss him so much already.

Anyway. That's for now. Hopefully, I'll have good job news to post very soon.

Take care, y'all.

Dave

I believe that it's my tushy

2007-01-03T23:26:00.000-05:00

I sometimes have a knack for coming up with weird lyrics for incredibly short and often-associated-with-bodily-functions songs. Since my last post was such a downer, I thought I'd share this just to show I'm not going to be standing on the ledge of any building anytime soon.

Here's something I came up with while changing my daughter recently, it has a bouncy, yet down-home feel:

When my diaper is warm and mushy
it's time to put cream on my tushy!

Of course, I'm singing this in my daughter's stead. ;-)

However, other little ears in the house have picked up on this little ditty. So now I frequently hear from my son in a remarkably dead-on impression:

When my diaper is so squishy
I believe that it's my tushy!

His just has such a different, yet hilarious meaning.

Alright, here's another one - unrelated to the above, please don't turn me in to the authorities, it's all very innocent, though I could see why you wouldn't think so, little kids just have cute tushies!:

My pants are falling down,
My pants are falling down,
Oh, no! my shorts are low,
My pants are falling down!

-----------------

Can I tell you how proud I am of how Mrs. Dave and I are raising our son? Yesterday, we invited Dave Jr.'s cousin who is the same age over to spend the day. At one point during lunch my son was just being himself and talking while more or less free-associating ideas. It amuses him greatly. Well, my sister is less encouraging when it comes to imagination. Things were meant to be played with like this - you don't want to take too many pictures with that kiddie camera, you'll run the batteries out - don't pretend that toy car is crashing into a volcano even though it's tons of fun- etc. Whereas our son will just blow you away with the stuff he comes up with while playing with what's available. - Anyway, during lunch, his cousin said "Dave Jr., why do you say so many silly things?" I was floored. We really are letting him be as creative as he wants to/can be. Yay!

Alright, gotta go!

Dave

sigh

2007-01-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

Well, for those who don't already know, I lost my job exactly one week before Christmas, so this year hasn't been quite as jolly for me. It was fun watching the kids and such, but lingering in the back of my head is the fact, I have no work. Worse, when my home computer died shortly after I accepted this last job, I lost all my software and files I hadn't backed up. Worse yet, in my haste to get out of the place, I deleted tons of photos I had loaded onto my MacBook, including photos of my daughter's birth. :-( All is not lost, there are other photos, but there were some really good ones I would have liked to keep.

So, here I am, no computer with software a designer needs, no job, no nothing but my life, wife and kids. Fortunately, CompUSA had a really good sale on internal hard drives, so I was able to get a new 200GB one for about $50 after rebate. I also have a good friend that is an IT Wizard that had a copy of Windows XP I could load. Now I just have to swallow hard and buy the Adobe Creative Suite. But I'm going to make the most of it. I haven't started looking for a new job in earnest because of the holidays and such. I figure most people aren't going to be around or looking at this point. I may even take a swing at doing some freelancing once I get the software to do the work.

But, we're still alive in 2007. It has to be a better year than 2006! With the exception of my wonderful little girl being born and the HOW Conference, good riddance!

I hope your outlook is a little more hopeful. But don't count me out yet!

Dave

Fun in a Photobooth

2006-12-07T13:19:00.000-05:00

It's been so long since my last post! There's been so much I've wanted to post here, but the new job is keeping me hella-busy and the baby has been occupying the evening hours.

So, in the few minutes I have here, I thought I'd post something completely inane. I now have a MacBook Pro 17" that I use for work, and included with it is a cute, if not particularly useful program called Photobooth. It uses the little camera built in to the computer generally used for video conferencing. Photobooth is definitely the right name, though because a MacBook is a cumbersome camera. ;-)

So anyway, here's some fun I had with it - oh, I should note that photoshop was not used in the creation of these images! Obviously, in most cases...

Me, perfectly happy and perfectly symmetrical.

This one is kinda freaky. Reminds me of that game you play with a ball bearing on two metal bars and you try to get the ball all the way to the end without dropping it.

Balanced, but bored...

I have 3-I vision!

The Ogre-like Cyclops

Quick, who's the one-eyed hypertensive alien I seem to resemble...

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

So many ideas in my head, but I just can't express them verbally...

My impression of the pyramid on the back of American dollar bills...

They say you can't love someone else until you love yourself.

FOOM! My head just couldn't hold any more information

Good Heavens! I've blown my head off!

Hopefully, I'll have something more interesting next time!

Dave

Testing 1, 2, 1, 2...

2006-11-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

This thing on?

Cool, believe it or not, this is the small one!

Women: The Leaker Sex

2006-10-24T11:01:00.000-04:00

In general, I love women, you could even broaden that to include most females of the species with a few notable exceptions, but I won't note them now. But anyway, life with a recently pregnant woman and a baby girl have led me to conclude that they are, simply, the leaker sex. My little girl has already peed on me more than my son ever did, and Mrs. Dave has stuff coming out of places I didn't realize had holes. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, just making an observation.

But, in other news, I can't wait to show y'all the pictures I took last weekend. There used to be a park for kids in a suburb of Baltimore (Ellicott City) called The Enchanted Forest. It closed either before or shortly after I moved to Maryland, so I never really knew what it was like, other than it had big faerie tale characters. Mrs. Dave, before she got so leaky, had very fond memories of visiting that park as a child, indeed even her parents recall visiting it when they were young. But I didn't know much about it because I was well past the target age group by the time I got to Maryland. After the park closed, everything there was pretty much left to rot. A shopping center was built in it's place, which actually incorporated part of what remained of the park. So now we have the Enchanted Forest Shopping Center instead of just The Enchanted Forest. Well, an entreprenurial farm owner had the idea to restore those old attractions and move them to his farm. It is a mighty task, but the work they have done so far is outstanding. So, keep your eyes open for that. It's worth checking out. I'd post them now, but...

It's late on a Sunday night, and I start my new job tomorrow! Yay! Can't wait to get started. As I posted on the HOW forum, I guess it all happens for a reason. I got the time off to be with Mrs. Dave and the baby and I got a job that is going to be exciting, I'll have more influence on the final product and defining the company's brand, plus they've given me everything I've asked for. I mean, at my old job it would have taken, literally, decades of raises (at the pace I was keeping) to get to the salary I have now. Plus, they have gotten a brand spankin' new MacBook Pro 17", a 30" monitor (I'll be in the glowing cubicle...), a Wacom Intuos tablet, wireless keyboard and on and on, plus what amounts to an assistant so I can work on stuff instead of worrying about other crap. What more could I ask for? So, I'd like to hit the sack a little early, or at least on time tonight. I'll have to post photos of the new workplace. It's pretty cool. I'll be working in the "Barrel Building" of an old brewery that has been remodeled into some nice office space. Stay tuned for that.

Those of you wondering about the baby, overall she is doing well. She has some tummy trouble right now that we can't seem to get straightened out. The poor thing is so gassy and uncomfortable sometimes. We haven't pinned down the culprit yet, but hope to soon. Otherwise, she has been delightful, and I couldn't be more proud.

Anyway, that's news from here for now. Hopefully I'll be able to post here a little more often now, even if it's just to share inane ramblings. ;-).

Oh! Last thing, if you're a digital photographer, whether just a cool point and shooter like me, or have a heftier SLR, check out the Gorillapod. I'm hoping to get my hands on one for my camera soon. I love the little "nature" movie they have on the site.

Enjoy!

Dave

Introducing!

2006-10-05T12:01:00.000-04:00

My fabulous new daughter, Cora!

Now you know you can't get through this without the story. Fortunately, this was less stressful than when my son was born.

We showed up at the hospital at the predetermined time of 9 am, to get ready for the 11 am surgery. When we got there, though, they told us the doctor had been called away to another hospital and would be late. Dang. So we hung around for a couple of hours until he popped into the room like a magician. He asked if we were ready, and said we'd get started in about 20 minutes. So we headed from the pre-delivery area to post-delivery, where the OR is located. They had us get into our scrubs, put Mrs. Dave on the table, etc. Here's a shot of us just before we went into the OR.

So, we get into the OR. It's the same one my son was born in. There's something neat about the fact they were born in the exact same place.

The operation went very smoothly and at 2:41 pm on Sept. 18th 2006, Cora was born! I'm going to put a few extra breaks in here to say WARNING: The photo below is NOT for the squeamish! It's really not that bad, there's not much blood and you can't see any part of my wife because she's all covered, but it's of the baby in the precious little time the are just "natal". Not prenatal or postnatal, just natal.

Cora was 7lbs, 6 oz. and 20 3/4 inches long. It's weird, with both kids, when the doctor pulls them out, they look like rubber dolls.

Here she is at about 2 minutes old.

A few minutes later (don't worry, the blood is just cord blood, no one was hurt in the making of this photo):

Here is the proud big brother and his mommy with Cora:

And here is big brother giving his new little sister her first Pooh bear:

This one is kinda freaky, but you didn't think I'd let the opportunity to do a long exposure shot go to waste, do you? Cora was a bit jaundiced, and this is one of the ways they treat it, using light therapy. She was on this bed for about 24 hours.

Here are a couple of her on the way home. Kinda makes you wonder if they think about actual babies when they design car seats...

Here are a couple from when we got home.

She's terrific, though. She's had a bit of acid reflux and constipation, but even with that, she's not a screecher. She's quite content and happy to look around when she's not eating or sleeping. ;-). But I can already tell she's got me wrapped around her little finger! How could I not be with that face?

Dave

B minus two weeks and counting!

2006-09-05T11:22:00.000-04:00

Less than two weeks now until the arrival of our daughter! It's been the highlight of my day to get in bed at night and spend 10 minutes or so watching Mrs. Dave's belly ripple, swell and generally wriggle around on it's own. At one point, I'm pretty sure I saw the face as she turned her head. I think this because there was a big swell in the belly and this little pea-sized bump moved across it about where a nose would be. It's still too early to tell who she looks more like, and I could be completely off-base, but it was fun while it lasted. I'll post some photos of the room soon. After repainting a couple of times, it looks pretty good.

Stay tuned!!!

Dave

avoid direct exposure

2006-08-29T12:12:00.000-04:00

This was interesting. One day when I was at work, the overhead lights were off and it was relatively dark. I had a laser pointer and some Coca-Cola bottlecaps on my desk and shone the pointer in one, and thought it was cool how the whole thing lit up. I still have other ideas on what I could do with this theory, but I need more bottlecaps. Anyway, this turned out kinda kewl. All I did was shine the laser pointer from under inverted cap. The wild thing is the graininess. If you've ever looked at the spot from a laser pointer, you see the red, but there's all this movement, like some kind of powerful fusion is happening on a small scale. There are thousands of tiny bursts of light. I don't know if it's the power of the laser or just the nature of it, but the same characteristics go through the plastic in the cap and reflect on sides. That's what's making the graininess more than the low light, though that does play a role, I'm sure.

And yes, that's my finger there on the left side.

Dave

The latest

2006-08-21T14:42:00.000-04:00

Hello All!

Sorry that I lied about updating my blog more often. But it seems life has gotten too interesting again. In case you weren't aware, I lost my job with Gigantic Enormous due to irreconcilable differences. I'm a designer, she's a bitch. Ok, sorry, just kidding, got that from Larry the Cable Guy. Nah, I'm a designer, not an accountant, not marketing manager, a designer. I was getting very frustrated with the way I was spending most of my time doing anything but design. I think my passive-aggressive tendencies got the best of me and my frustration worked itself out in other ways.

I got along with my old boss ok personally, but once I had been told I wasn't doing well, she became the ultimate micro-manager, and that didn't work for me. I found myself spending more time accounting for how I was spending my time than anything else. Plus I was told to be more proactive...*sigh*...hard to be more proactive when you've got an annoying Cocker Spaniel nipping at your heels all the time.

So, it came down to me or her, and since she was the boss, she won. Fine. But to wit, I did make a big effort to change my ways to her style. It just didn't happen well enough fast enough. However, the other side showed NO interest in trying to work with me and my style. So after a while I honestly stopped caring. Here's what it basically melted down to - she wanted me to be both the designer and the account executive for my design "group" (just me) because that's what she was used to. I couldn't just give her rough drafts for her thoughts on specific elements without getting comments like "Are you sure this is ready for me to look at?" That always meant she had some sort of gotcha. I JUST WANTED TO KNOW IF YOU PREFER THE CLOSE UP OR THE F'N WIDE SHOT ON THE COVER!!! THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO BE GIVING ME SHIT ABOUT THE COPYRIGHT DATE!!! If I had anyone else to run the ideas by that had any idea of what they were talking about, I would, but I didn't and needed input.

So, screw it, I'm gone, fine. It's for the best. I was looking anyway, I just would have preferred it on my terms, not theirs. I'll be Ok, there's just the stress of a baby on the way verrrrry soon. AAAAACK! Actually, I'm not panicked yet, but could be soon. I have an interview this Wednesday. Here's hoping!

Sorry, had to rant.

Dave

The Howiezine that should have beeeeen

2006-07-31T15:23:00.000-04:00

I'm such a tool. I signed up for the Howiezine and didn't follow through. I did the thing, just not in time, which makes the opposite of sense. I liked this one, too dangit. So to all participating Howies, if my dumbassedness delayed getting this issue to you, you have my greatest apologies.

The theme for this one was "Lost Toys." My grandma used to have one of these at her house and I played with it many, many times while I was there. I wish I knew where it was now, I'd be interested to see what condition it is in. But aside from it's current condition, it was exactly like this one.

Dave

The second most confusing dog there is

2006-07-31T12:24:00.000-04:00

Only Bryn's dog, Wrigley (love that name) is a bigger medical mystery. But fortunately he seems to be doing better.

This is truly getting weird. Last week, for sure, our dog was diabetic. He had all the classic symptoms and test results. So we start treating him as such. We have to go out and collect is urine twice a day (my day's highlight) and test it with these little strips that change colors. We've been following the vet's instructions carefully with the insulin injections. We started with 8 cc-s twice a day. Then when his tests hadn't really changed much, the vet said to give him x amount of insulin for this reading, y insulin for another reading, no insulin for the low end of the test. We haven't given him any insulin for a few days now and he's practically back to normal, getting into the garbage and such (the SimpleHuman can works great by the way, I'm talking about the upstairs bathroom cans now). It's perplexing. Maybe he just hates the needles so much, he convinced himself he didn't really need to be diabetic, sorry! I'mahappypuppy, I'mahappypuppy!

Oy! I wish all these experiments with disease would stop! It's frickin' expensive as hell!

Dave

Won't you be my sugar doggie?

2006-07-27T09:59:00.000-04:00

I think I mentioned this a while ago, but I don't feel like looking back right now, so if you know the first part of this, bear with me. A few months ago my dog, a miniature schnauzer, got very sick. He had the worst case of pancreatitis our vet had ever seen. His tests weren't just off the chart, they were way, way, way off the chart. So we did everything the vet told us and he seemed to get quite a bit better. The vet also told us things to watch out for, mainly lethargy and increased drinking and peeing. I started noticing both last Wednesday. At first, I thought it wasn't anything but my imagination because Mrs. Dave wasn't home and I was just being overly sensitive. But it didn't subside.

So back to the vet we go. After doing some tests, he confirmed that our little fella is diabetic. The good thing is that we seem to have caught it very early, before it affected any of his organs adversely. The bad thing is that we now have to test his urine every day, and give him two shots every day, of which he is not very fond. I can't blame him. I had to give myself shots for a while earlier this year, and it's no fun. But more fun is collecting his urine, which is especially tough when he lifts his leg to pee on the fence. The things we Americans do for our pets!

So, right now, he is a "healthy" diabetic, we just hope he stays that way.

Dave

Open Sesame, Close Sesame, Open Sesame!

2006-07-17T10:22:00.000-04:00

On the weekend between the How conference and vacation, we went to Sesame Place, as I mentioned in my last post. It's probably not the kind of place you want to take a date, but for a family with young kids that are generally too small for conventional rides at big theme parks, this is the ultimate in fun theme park. Our plan was to wake up Saturday morning, have breakfast, etc. then head up to the park. And it actually worked out that way for a change. ;-)

We got on the road and beach traffic in Delaware was pretty heavy, so we slugged through that, and when we got to Philadelphia, the traffic wasn't too bad until we got near downtown. Then it really slowed down badly. A truck had broken down in the left lane. There is only a minimal shoulder in that part of the road so he couldn't pull off out of the way of traffic. He was pushing the truck by himself. I'm not sure where he was going because the shoulder didn't widen for a long time, but he was doing it. After that the traffic was more like what we expected. All in all, a 2.25 hour trip took about 4 to complete.

So we checked into the hotel, headed over to Sesame Place. It was overcast and looked threatening, but we gave it a shot. We parked in the Ernie lot, in the red section and made our way in.

Here's the entrance (click any image to enlarge):

You go through this and across a large plaza before you get to the actual gate to the park. We brought a bunch of water and some snacks because we had heard that the food was really expensive at the park, and not the greatest quality. But when we got to the gate, the rolling cooler we brought was just barely too big and they wouldn't let us in with it. So I went back to Ernie lot red section and switched the stuff out to a smaller cooler we brought (thank goodness). Then I headed back again. This gave the weather a chance to get that much more threatening.
But we went in, anyway. We had a two-day pass, so we figured we had nothing to lose, we could just come back the next day for anything we missed that day. Here is the inside gate:

As we made our first few steps through the gate, of course it started to rain. It was light and we were in a park where half the rides have large amounts of water associated with them, we thought we'd be Ok, at least for a while. We made our way in and the first place we came to was Ernie's WaterWorks. Somehow, we missed the very front section entrance with the big waterslides. But anyway, the waterworks was great fun for ducks and fish.

You have to go through the Good Ship Sesame to get to the waterworks.

A wide shot of the main section of the thing:

The kids had a blast running through the multi-directional deluge. They really did it right. Lots of water, lots of color and they incorporated the safety aspects of it (mainly non-slip material on the ground) into the design. It all fit nicely. Well, as the kids were having fun, an official looking teenager came through saying that the works was closed because of lightning. Dang it. So we left that area and as we started to explore the drier attractions, the heavens opened. We sought shelter in a shop nearby, hoping to wait the storm out, but the rain only got heavier.

Fortunately, they gave us a "Sunny Day Pass". We can head up there again some time without paying more. We had dinner and since we didn't have much else to do, went to a local mall to walk around for a bit before going back to the hotel and turning in.

The next day was also overcast, but brighter. It rained a little, but not nearly like the day before. So it worked out Ok. We got there at around 10 am when it opened. Out in the plaza between the entrance and ticket gate are these squares on the ground with various characters handprints in them.

Once you make it through the ticket gate, there's a garden in the middle of another plaza and it has these horticultural creations, kinda cool.

The kids had to hit Ernie's WaterWorks, first of course because they thought that's all the park was. But we did eventually get them to move on to other areas. While we were at the waterworks, we noticed these guys in the lazy river:

But next was the big event. That which made the trip worthwhile for my son and me. He had never been on something like this before, and before this day, was pretty much petrified of any sort of ride that moved on it's own. Even the little quarter rides at the mall or Toys R Us, he would sit in them, but don't you dare put a quarter in it and make it move. So, I was worried that I might scare the bejeezus out of him to go down a waterslide. A big waterslide. But he wanted to. I thought he might freak out mid-slide and try to get out, but blessedly no, he had an absolute blast! I think he was nervous as anything at the top, but once we got going and he knew I was with him the whole way, he started shrieking in delight.

He loved it so much, we rode it again immediately! Then we rode again later. So much for my concerns. However, they weren't completely unfounded, we tried to get him to go on the kiddie waterslide by himself. He was willing, but as soon as he fell through the ring, that was it, no go. He needed daddy to be there and daddies weren't allowed on that slide.

Following that, we played in some shallow pools that spurted water every which way, icluding one overseen by Bert and Ernie (sorry for the Ernie groove here, it's not intentional):

Then we moved on to our first dry event. My son's grandparents were with us and took him on the teacups. Again, we figured he'd freak, but he was a trooper and even had fun, though his cousin wouldn't let him spin the cup as much as he wanted.

From there, we spotted where the characters come to visit and take photos. We got a picture with Big Bird which was cute, but this one of Elmo gives you an idea of what the place is like.

Then we went to "Cookie Mountain". The object is to use the handles to climb to the top, then have fun sliding on your butt to the bottom of the cookie monster blue mountain.

Next was the rope tunnels. I had to be aboard for this one as well for my son to do it. Let's just say that those things aren't built for 6' tall 250 lb guys, ok? My weight wasn't really the issue, height was. To get through the thing, I had to virtually put my head just over my knees and navigate, watching my son sail through. I was exhausted after we were done, my thighs were killing me. But we made it through the whole thing, and I believe my son was equally tired afterward. In the photo below, we were at least 30 feet off the ground.

After this we realized that we needed to move to another part of the park to get in place for the parade. We had plenty of time, so we took a ride on the lazy river, which was fun. It has a lot of waterfalls and various other water obstacles to get through. On a hot day, it would have been nice and refreshing. But it was merely on the warm side of room temperature that day. At this point the splashing water was getting pretty cold!

We then went to see the parade. I took a bunch of photos, but these two were best. Watch Bert boogie, but he couldn't hold a candle to the count. The count could dance and jump and touch his toes in midair over most of the kids heads. It was impressive. Maybe being part bat had something to do with it. I dunno. I can easily picture a certain newlywed who used to work here doing that kind of move...

That was cool, but my son thought that the lazy river was cooler, and wanted to go back to that. So we did, and rode around twice. He's in the yellow life preserver that's way too big (in case you couldn't tell by the fact that he's on my lap and we're waving. The oversized preserver is my fault, but it looked ok when we were putting it on, honest!) Also note the duck wondering just how mad the world has gone, people are floating and swimming in the water and the ducks and fish are not (see below).

Somewhere along the line, I snapped this, just a decoration on the facade of the fish market, but I thought it neat.

Lastly, I have to give Mrs. Dave credit for this one, because while I was on said lazy river, she snapped this shot of my niece playing once again at the WaterWorks.

After my son and I got out of the lazy river, he played for a few minutes in the waterworks, too. I went in to see what my niece was doing, when he came over and said "Daddy, would you come over and..." I couldn't hear the last part. I got closer and he said again "Daddy, would you..." then he was overcome with shivering, so I picked him up and took him out to warm up and dry off. He was shaking so badly. I wrapped him in a dry towel and held him close to get warm. He said he didn't want to dry off half-heartedly, and didn't really put up much fight as we left the park. He had a great time and was thoroughly exhausted.

But if you have little ones and want to go to a great place that is fun for the kids, but also interesting to the parents, go to Sesame Place. You won't regret it. It's sparkling-ly clean, well laid out and just altogether done right. There were many guys there who probably shouldn't have had their shirts off, but that's the only real complaint I can think of. I'd definitely go back again without hesitation.

Dave

Are you kidding?

2006-07-10T14:19:00.000-04:00

May 23 was my last post here? Holy shite! Well, I was busy for a while with the Howies in Vegas site for a while, then actually went to the conference, was busy as anything with work, then went to Sesame Place, worked another week, then went on vacation to Ocean City, MD. So I'm back. I'll have photos of everything mentioned above soon. But I've had a great time for the past month. Certainly better than it was two years ago when I was so sick.

But the mom and baby are coming along well, just two months to go! I don't remember who I've told and who I haven't, but we're having a little girl! Our little boy wanted a brother, but he's getting used to the idea of a sister. When we were tickled orange, we thought that it just wasn't meant for us to find out what gender the baby would be. But at a later sonogram in the doctor's office, it was only too obvious what the baby was going to be.

So anyway, that's the big news from here at the moment. I'll be posting more regularly from now on.

Dave

Go! Go! Gadget Camera!

2006-05-23T14:49:00.000-04:00

Had some fun with my digital camera this weekend. We went to Baltimore's Inner Harbor for the pre-Preakness celebration. There were hot air balloons and fireworks, etc. We took the kids down to see the balloons mainly and had a great time. There was a prom on one of the cruise boats, so there were a bunch of city kids in their tuxs and gowns. One thing I found strange was that many of the girls had flip-flops on. They looked new, but not like anything special, just flip-flops. But to each his/her own.

Anyway, here are a few photos from that trip. I learned some things I hadn't realized about my camera. I found that the slow flash feature works really well for exposure, but you really, really need a tripod to do it right. Plus, I also got to use the fireworks setting for what it was intended.

Here we go...

Ok, this isn't from that night, but it's cool. It's my boy playing Superman on a swing.

Ok, now on to the harbor

You will see in some photos people wearing pink bunny ears. Here's why:

It's cool in the twilight to see the balloons fire

One really cool thing they had down there was a balloon laying on its side, so you could walk into it. Big fans kept it inflated as much as it was.

And here is a little more abstract shot, but still in the balloon.

Here are a couple of shots of another balloon taken when it was getting darker. This one was fun from a photographic point of view.

Yours Truly

Then in another area a few other balloons were attempting to join in, but only one was successful because it was so windy.

Then there were the fireworks using the fireworks setting on the camera. Nice, but I wish I had the tripod.

Have fun!

Dave

Delayed = Denied?

2006-05-10T16:57:00.000-04:00

What a headache-inducing day in court. After just waiting around for a couple of hours so the lawyers could get their acts together, everything is still a mess. The good thing is that the kids still live where they were living yesterday, that is, they were not returned to their numbnut and wackjob. The bad news is that both psychologists, who were to provide critical testimony, were sick with fairly serious health issues. So, because the Children's Services lawyer didn't think they had a strong enough case without them, the decided to suspend the trial.

What does that mean? Well, this isn't really a criminal trial, because the evidence is all circumstantial and the "reasonable doubt" aspect comes into play. 3 year-olds aren't exactly reliable witnesses, too unfortunately. So, this is sort of like a lower-stakes trial, with the consequence being whether these two poor excuses for humans are fit to get their children back. Those psychologists were going to say "NO FRICKIN' (that's a medical term) WAY!" There was a chance that they would get started with the proceeding yesterday and continue later, but later was going to be August, and that was just too long between hearings. So they suspended the trial.

The result? The charges are not dropped, but who knows how likely they are to have to ever go to trial on them. They may never have to face any legal repercussions because of it. But at least the kids are still safe and where they belong, though now the visitation, especially for the boy, is ridiculous. We can only hope they will face the music at some point. They (numbnut and wackjob) have to submit to mental health evaluations, too. THAT will be interesting, if we ever find out the results. This isn't some personality test, this is much more thorough, and hopefully, they'll find that they are both cracked.

Then there's the custody hearing. That may not happen for a year! That's a lot more fuzzy, but Mrs. Dave's parents are going to try to get full custody. The good thing is that the social workers and psychologists are still 100% behind us. They have all been clear and emphatic that these kids cannot go back to the situation they were in.

So, we didn't win the battle, it was more of a draw - but we will win the war.

Dave

Try to follow this!

2006-05-08T16:29:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow the hearing regarding custody of my niece gets started. Just got a call from Mrs. Dave saying the key witness on our side of things is in the hospital and won't be available tomorrow. Blech. So, there probably won't be anything decided tomorrow, they'll just get things started.

So anyway, I was trying to explain this situation to a coworker the other day and it gets complicated. So, without getting into anything too fancy I tried to solve the problem with this graphic. I'm not sure if I nailed it, but it will at least give you an idea of what's going on. I'm sure that simply reading about it can get confusing. I know there's a lot of letters down there, but once you get started, it should make sense.

House - This is where my niece(N), her father(NF), his girlfriend and her son lived. To keep the structure parallel, Boy is B and his mother is BM. There are many other reasons to refer to her as a BM, but that's another post. So, just for clarity, NF and BM are a couple that live together, but are not married. This is where a majority of the abuse of both kids took place.

Red - Any relatives of my niece. Blue - any relatives of the boy.

Gray Circle - My niece's mother, now deceased.

US - Literally us, Mrs. Dave and me. We are the Niece's Maternal Aunt and Uncle (NMAU)

GP - A set of Grandparents, on the boy's side there is a GM and GF because they are no longer together.

Orange Ring - This is the person that B told about the abuse that was going on. BPGF reported it to Chils's services.

Green Ring - This is where the children were initially placed after they were removed from the house.

Purple Rings - Where N and B are now (with their particular sides of the family)

L - This is a person or couple that has a lawyer involved in the hearing tomorrow.

It's dizzying even when you're in the middle of it!

Dave

Illustration (Last) Friday - Under the...

2006-05-04T12:58:00.000-04:00

Since I don't have enough time at lunch to do anything complex, so I closed my eyes and this was the first idea I had for the theme of Under the Sea

Dave

Tickled Orange

2006-05-02T12:47:00.000-04:00

Oy! This is crazy. We went to get the big sonogram yesterday. All seems to be in good shape, at least what we could see. The baby was a little stubborn and wouldn't move into a position where the sonographer could get a good look at all 4 chambers of the heart. But it was great to get a nice long look at the baby. S/he waved and showed us s/he could put its foot directly over the top of its head!

The thing was, for as sure as our OB was that the baby is a boy (see the Feelin' Blue post) the sonographer was sure it was a girl. The sono said "I wouldn't paint the walls pink, but I'm pretty sure." From different angles, she couldn't see a...well, you know...and she thought she caught a good glimpse of girl parts. I thought I saw them, too, but I'm not a sonographer, so i wasn't sure.

So, this means it's a good thing we didn't buy the paint we decided to get in anticipation of a boy! Now that we are back at square one, not knowing for sure either way, we're going neutral. We're going to paint the room orange and white somehow, still working out the details.

Dave

A Determined Dog vs. a Simple Human

2006-05-01T12:32:00.000-04:00

I can't believe it has come to this. It's absurd, really. After years of fighting the good fight, doing everything we could think of short of this and thousands of dollars in vet bills, we realized that there is just something so deeply-rooted in my dog's psyche that he simply cannot control himself when it comes to the kitchen garbage (well, really any garbage, but kitchen most of all).

No amount of swatting his rear with a newspaper or hand has deterred him, no amount of positive reinforcement training has worked, he goes back for the rush every time. After the recent trips to the Pet Hospital (see the Weekend Grosses post), you might think he'd put 1 and 1 together and figure that his recent illness may have had something to do with his raiding the trash can. Oh, no. After we got him home and healthy again, he waited. He waited for the first opportunity when we weren't paying attention. Then, sure as the sun rises, we heard the garbage can hitting the deck. So, we give. He won. We'll never be able to break his habit.

But we have found a way to defend the garbage (and in turn, the dog's stomach). It's ludicrous. This is the kind of thing you see and think "Boy, how do you spend $XX on THAT?" What is it? Our new Simple Human 38 liter garbage can. $99 at Lowes. You read that right, $99 for a freakin' trash can. My grandchildren better be passing this can down to their grandchildren.

So far it has worked. What makes it special? The liner isn't exposed, first of all. He would pull on that sometimes to knock it over. But probably most importantly, he can't push the lid up on this to gain access to the garbage. The lid sits inside the lip of the can, so there's nothing he can get his nose under to push up. And lastly, this is heavier. It's not heavy per se, but compared to the plastic Wal-Mart standard issue model we had before, it's hefty, so the dog has a much harder time knocking it over. It's really nice as garbage cans go, but I still can't believe we spent 100 bucks on the thing. But we exercised restrain in that we could have gotten the 50 liter size for a paltry $179. If there is such a thing as loving your pet too much, I think we are definitely treading close to the line. It may be in the distance compared to other people and their pets, but I think I can see it from here.

Dave

My Bisexual Tree

2006-04-26T13:07:00.000-04:00

Not quite a year after we moved into the house we live in now, we discovered that our tree in our front yard has an identity problem, and ever since, we've affectionately referred to it as our bisexual tree. I don't know quite how it works, a landscaping guy tried to explain it to me, but this tree is two distinctly different kinds of tree at once, a mutant of sorts, I suppose. For all but maybe two weeks in April, you'd never be able to tell, but for those two weeks, part of the tree blooms with wonderful little white flowers (dogwood, I think), and the other part blooms not just a different color, but a completely different pink flower.

Whatever the case, it's a happy little tree(thanks Deb!) just as it is. There must be something attractive about it, because the week the white flowers open, the front yard sounds like an airport with all the bumble bee traffic. Fortunately, they are too concerned with the flowers to worry about people.

(click to enlarge)

Here's a shot of the Easter eggs my son made, I was just playing around with how close i could get to an object and have it still be in focus, but it's still fun.

And finally, I have to give Mrs. Dave mad props for the cake she made for my son's birthday. Because she made not one, not two, but three of these things! One for my son's daycare class, one for his nursery school class and one for his birthday party. I don't know how she has the patience for it, but bless her, she does. Each car was a little different, but this was the basic idea. Strangely enough the biggest problem she had was getting the number 4 right on both doors. On two cakes the passenger side door 4 was backwards. Small potatoes, though. And yes, it was a "Hot Wheels" themed party in case you were wondering. One thing has concerned me with the flame style though, and I've seen it many more places than just in Hot Wheels stuff. When did flames start all looking like the Grinch's hand as he's about to pluck an ornament of some poor Who's Christmas tree? Look around, you'll see what I mean.

And Curses Again!

2006-04-24T16:25:00.000-04:00

I went out to my car to get a CD I'd left in it. On the curb was what looked like maybe a broken branch of a tree with a leaf on it or something. It was a little breezy and for whatever reason, I noticed that it wasn't moving when the wind blew, at least not as much as you'd expect. I looked a little closer to see why it was stuck, and then I realized that it wasn't a leafy twig at all, it was a gorgeous butterfly. I've never seen this kind of butterfly before, probably because it's camouflage is so good. It's wings were green and were attached to it's body by reddish brown stems that looked very much like branches.

I don't know if it was just emerging from its cocoon or not, but the body was fuzzy and white with red legs, though I couldn't really see anything that looked like a head from my angle. It's wings had "tails" for lack of a better word, like a kite, in flight they would dangle down below the wing. But it was resting on the side of the curb, and the tails stuck straight out behind it. If I can figure out how to get the photos off of my phone, I'll post what I can. That's the reason for the "Again" part of this post.

I didn't have my digital camera with me today, so the phone was all I had. Complicating matters was the fact that it was sunny and I couldn't see worth a damn what I was shooting with the phone. I feel like I'm telling a parallel story to "I once caught a fish this big!" When I got inside, I saw the pictures are Ok, but don't really show what a beautiful creature this thing was.

Dave

Curses!

2006-04-24T10:33:00.000-04:00

I either forget to bring my camera with me or the cord to connect it to the dang computer.

I look forward to this baby being born if for no other reason than Mrs. Dave will hopefully feel better soon after. She doesn't seem able to eat much of anything that agrees with her, so she's often in that semi-nauseous mode.

Poor kid had a 24-hour something-r-other. You could tell he didn't feel 100%, but we went to have dinner at Pizza Hut, and he was coloring his placemat, then said he didn't feel good again, and wanted to put his head down. So he sat in my lap and within 5 minutes he fell asleep sitting up. I laid him down on the seat (he had his hoodie sweatshirt still on) and he slept all through dinner. We took him home and got him to bed and he slept for about 11-12 hours. He was downright springy Sunday, though.

We continued to strip the wallpaper from our spare bedroom, which will become the nursery. Mrs. Dave is hooked on doing some kind of wood crown molding or something. It will be easier this time around because all the corners are square, but I don't know if I'm sold on the idea. We shall see. If it works with the rest of the room (which will probably be orange and white) I'll go with it. Good thing is that we have a minivan this time around, so we won't have to cut the boards short to fit them in the vehicle. Last time we only had an Acura Integra and the boards needed to be 10' long and we just couldn't fit them, so we have these seams at the midpoints of three sides of my son's room. You don't really notice if you aren't looking for it, but I know it's there. But Mrs. Dave also wants to paint the top part of the wall with the letters and animals in the crib bumper. Should be interesting, if nothing else!

Dave

Dave

Weekend Grosses

2006-04-10T15:22:00.000-04:00

If it wasn't for everyone else doing it, I think I'd get sick myself. This past weekend was one of the oddest, most disgusting periods of 48 hours I've ever been through. I won't go into too much detail here to protect the squeamish, but ick. It started off on Thursday. Our dog has a serious garbage problem. He will wait and wait and attack the trash can in our kitchen at every opportunity, as I have mentioned on this blog before. Well, Thursday was the big score for him. He got a huge chunk of my son's birthday cake and who knows what else. Well, we expected him to be barfing quite a bit as a result, and he didn't let us down. He has a very sensitive stomach, and whenever he eats a lot of something other than his regular food, he barfs.

So, usually it works itself out within a day. But this time, it kept going through Friday night and into Saturday morning. We got worried that it was lasting so long. Because he was becoming rather lethargic. So we took him to the vet. They put an IV in him to rehydrate him and gave him some medicine to settle his stomach. He came back home with some new food, and he seemed to be in better spirits, though still not 100%. When we got home, it was almost time for my son's birthday party. So we put the dog's cage upstairs an let him rest in peace and quiet up there. He was fine for a while, but still seemed somewhat out of it. The party was over and we let him back downstairs. We offered him some food, but he wasn't interested. We gave him some pain medication the Vet gave us and went to bed.

The next morning, all seemed well, though the dog was still not quite his usual energetic self. I offered him food again, and he didn't want any. So I gave him another pain pill, and he relaxed in the corner of the kitchen as he often does. Then he was moving about a bit and he laid down where his food and water bowls usually are. This was unusual, but we didn't think a lot of it because he was probably sleepy from the pill. We went into the living room and a few minutes later, we hear the dog's paws scrambling on the kitchen floor like crazy. He is in a full-fledged grand-mal seizure. We did our best to make sure he wouldn't hurt himself, but he was disoriented and probably scared and snapped at Mrs. Dave when she tried to calm him. Then he more or less relaxed and acted as if nothing happened.

Well, I got dressed and took him to the Pet ER immediately. After waiting around for a long time, they did some blood tests, but really couldn't find any cause of the seizure. 3-4 hours later, we finally head home again. The dog seems to still be in that less-than-100% mode, but we go for a walk, and he seems happy to be out. He ate some dinner, and was relaxing in the living room. In the meantime we ate dinner. our son was eating slowly as usual and complained about his stomach being upset. Since we had been talking to him about how the dog's stomach was upset, we figured he was just trying to get out of eating dinner and using it as an excuse. We just told him to finish his dinner. That was a mistake. Within 5 minutes, he was barfing his lunch and dinner. Ick. So we cleaned that up. And finished what we could of our dinner. Then we went to the living room to watch a little TV before taking my son up for his bath.

That's when seizure #2 hit. It's a very odd thing to see this happen to a dog, especially since there's not a damn thing you can do about it, other than make sure he can't hurt himself. He was lying down on the floor and suddenly his head pops up, and he shakes it uncharacteristically. His nose starts to quiver first, followed by hard, uncontrolled opening and closing of his mouth (biting his tongue in the process). His head started to shake, differently from at first, now more like he didn't know what it was doing, then it seemed to pause for just a second, though his body was tensing up, before it shot through his neck. Then he jumped up on all four legs, and ran around in a circle. A funny thing to note while observing this horrible event, was that my son has a toy tower thing with cavemen, sorta like Fred Flintstone. But the whole idea is to build the tower and knock it down. Great fun. Well, the dog was laying on the floor next to that toy and as he was up and running in a circle, he collapsed, but crashed right into the tower, sending pieces everywhere, like a bowling ball hitting a strike. Overall, tragic, but funny at the same time...Anyway, he fell on his back and his legs flailed wildly, then simply became rigid. The poor thing looked so lost and confused. While his legs were still rigid, he started to heave and threw up his dinner. So we cleaned that up and I took him to the Pet ER again.

It's about 8:45 pm. We sign in, and shortly we're put in an exam room. The tech takes the dog's vitals, and leaves. Then we wait. And wait. And wait. Now it's almost 10:45 pm. So I go up to the front desk, not realizing how much time had passed and asked if anyone was coming soon. The doctor was in in less than 5 minutes, very apologetic, he was either told incorrectly or misunderstood that we had left. So, they take the dog and put him on an IV again, and put him on "seizure watch". I call home and find out that our son hasn't stopped vomiting, and Mrs. Dave isn't feeling so good either. She can't even stay on the phone long enough for me to tell her about what happened with the dog.

I get home and try to make everyone comfortable, but the night is only beginning. The boy barfs several more times and so does the wife. Let's just say things went downhill from there and I spent a good portion of the next few hours cleaning up after everyone. Doing so, I'm almost getting sick myself from the smell. Then we get a call from the Pet ER, the dog has had another seizure. Oy! Not sure what to think now. So, around 2 am, I'm able to go down to the couch (my wife and son were keeping their misery company with each other in our bed) and catch a few z-s. At 5:30, I hear my wife yelling out again, so I'm there to clean up again, and get them anything else they needed. I call out of work, then try to go to sleep again. Fortunately, I woke not to my wife yelling that she or the boy had just made a mess, just that she wanted more ginger ale. My son woke and came downstairs and ate some cheerios and ginger ale. He watched Noggin for a while. Then I got up to take a shower and get the dog.

When I leave, I notice my son has fallen asleep on the floor, so I just cover him up and head out. I get the dog from the ER, and he seems to be in much better spirits. He was happy to see me, and had no problem hopping in the car. So I took him to the his regular vet (who is also on of the head honchos of the Pet ER) and they have found some blood levels that indicate he has one of the highest levels of something, and it definitely pointed to pancreatitis. So, he kept him for the afternoon, just to make sure he didn't have more seizures and to make sure he was hydrated.

So, here I am this afternoon, Mrs. Dave and Dave, Jr. have been sleeping much of the afternoon, thank goodness. I've just been surfing the web a little and taking far too long to write this. I'm going to pick up the dog to bring him home shortly, and hopefully he'll be back to normal. We'll see.

But I just really don't want to clean up anything else that either came out of the right end the wrong way or wrong end the wrong way. I'm grossed out this weekend and on top of everything else, I have jury duty tomorrow. Blech. Wish me luck, and thanks for reading all this, if you bothered.

Dave

Feelin' Blue

2006-04-07T15:00:00.000-04:00

Well, only sorta. Our OB does ultrasounds in his office at almost every appointment. He has a machine that he says "is long since paid for" and doesn't charge for it. He does it mainly to just make sure everything is going as it should and the baby is the right size compared to the due date, etc. Well, last appt. he took a look and asked my son what he thought it was going to be. My son wants a brother. So, the doctor moved the sensor around and such and though it was fuzzy, it's looking like it's a little boy! The doctor said he couldn't say with 100% certainty, but based on his experience, that's where he would put his money.

I'm just thrilled that it's healthy and progressing normally. But I'd be lying if I were to say I'm not a little disappointed it's not a girl. This is, in all likelihood, the last child I'll father, and I just wanted it to be a girl so I had one of each. Another reason is because I've always wanted a daughter named Cora. I've just loved that name since I knew a girl in college named that. It wouldn't be naming the baby after her, I just really liked the name a lot. So please don't think I'm not excited that it's a boy, it's fantastic! I just realized that I'll probably never have Cora, and that made me just a little sad.

But don't go buggin' me for the boy's name! I'm not tellin' til he's here.

Dave

In Hot Water

2006-04-03T14:40:00.000-04:00

As if what we knew wasn't enough, more info is being revealed about my niece's father (just no way I'm going to refer to him as any kind of brother, in-law or otherwise). My niece is now seeing a counselor to help her deal with what has happened to her. I'm getting this information second hand, but it's from a very reliable source. She is responding better than we ever expected. This doctor must really know what she's doing. In just a few sessions she has manages to get my niece to reveal that in addition to the other crap her father did to her, she has also been locked up in a dark, cold crawlspace under the house (it doesn't have a basement as most people would think of it) for periods of time and in addition to the cold water treatment mentioned a while ago, she was also given the same treatment with very hot water. That's more than any of us have been able to get out of her...ever.

The rage builds and builds for anyone who actually cares about this little girl. And the rage still burns in my niece. I saw a full-fledged - well - temper tantrum, but that hardly begins to describe what she does. You can never really be sure what might set her off, but when things don't go her way, particularly after she has had a visitation with her father, she loses control. Unfortunately, the target of her rage is often the grandmother she lives with now. But my niece will try to hit, kick, scratch, bite, try to break her grandmother's glasses and basically inflict as much damage as she can. I'm no psychiatrist, but the difference between that and when she's her normal self is the closest thing I've seen to split personalities. Her screaming is piercing (though not as bad as it was when she was a baby, that was unbelievable) and these fits can last a long time. When we were there, she also took off her clothes and I didn't see it, but she apparently also has taken to banging her head on furniture/walls etc.

For the first time, I was actually scared of what she might do during one of these fits. My son goes to daycare, so when he hears another child crying, he doesn't get too alarmed, because someone is always crying at daycare. So, while my niece was having this fit, my son was playing with one of her toys on an end table. She hadn't been at all concerned about what he was playing with before the fit started. But during this one, she suddenly noticed that he had her toy. She broke away from her grandmother and ran over to my son. I saw her head rise over his shoulder, then fall quickly. I thought for sure she had bitten him and braced for the scream of pain, but was relieved when she ran away with the toy and he wasn't crying and hadn't been hurt. Then later, after she calmed down, she wanted to give kisses goodbye and she came over to me and went to give me a kiss on the cheek. From the corner of my eye, I saw her mouth open wide, and when her lips touched my cheek I flinched because I thought for sure she was going to bite me. But that was just her new kissing technique, and she and I were fine.

It's just so absolutely maddening to know that this is all that creep's fault and that he probably won't have to lose anything in his life because of it. Oh, he may very well lose his child, but he obviously doesn't care about her, and judging by the way he shoved her off onto anyone who would take her, would be glad to be rid of her. The only reason I think he is putting up any kind of fight is to save face, of which he's doing a terrible job. His lies seem to be ganging up on him now, and this counselor my niece is seeing is certain that my niece is suffering from the classic symptoms of an abused child.

I hope there is not more to come in this regard, but we'll see.

Dave

The Drive

2006-03-22T11:14:00.000-05:00

Here's a blur I did a while ago that I always thought looked kinda cool. It's been sitting in my camera for a while, and I finally busted it out (click to enlarge).

Paramour

2006-03-13T10:36:00.000-05:00

Dictionary.com defines paramour as: A lover, especially one in an adulterous relationship.

This was an interesting term to hear used in a courtroom. The adultery aspect doesn't seem to necessarily apply every time from what I heard, but it's fair enough to say that it means someone of romantic interest to a person in the courtroom.

The hearing regarding my niece was on Friday. I took the day off from work to go, only to get there and have it be postponed. This case is very complex and no less than 7 lawyers will be involved. It was for that reason that the hearing was postponed until May. However, some good things did come of it. Most importantly, my niece will remain with my in-laws under the current visitation agreement (one night a week, 2 hours on Saturday). My niece's father's parents (her other set of grandparents) wanted visitation on Saturdays from 9am to 6pm. Thank goodness the judge shot that down. We have little doubt that any time my niece would spend with her other grandparents would most likely be time spent unsupervised with her father and likely his paramour.

You could almost see the hairs stand up on everyone's neck (at least on our side of the situation) when my niece's father's lawyer said that there was no danger in returning my niece home. He and his paramour were taking parenting classes and that made everything better, so it was Ok to return her home. Thank goodness the judge wasn't buying that argument. I wanted her to hold up the report and say to the lawyer, "Are you kidding me???"

So, at the end of the hearing nothing had really changed, which was a win for us. After the hearing, my in-law's lawyer seemed excited that my niece's father's lawyer (I'd love to use names here to make it less confusing, I really would, but I don't want to jeopardize anything, so bear with me.) played a few cards that show that he (niece's father) is lying to his own lawyer about the situation.

The laugher of the whole situation was when my niece's other grandparents tried to claim that my in-laws were refusing to let them visit with my niece. Couldn't be further from the truth, they only called my niece twice the whole time since she was removed from her father's home, and never made any attempt to visit with her at all.

It was difficult for me to control myself while at the courthouse. I wanted so badly just to break the jerk's kneecaps. I can't begin to tell you the level of contempt I have for this piece of garbage. Any trace of respect I had for him just as my niece's father is completely gone and I hope he gets the legal equivalent of a kick to the balls once a minute (so it doesn't get numb) for the rest of his life for what he's done.

The social worker on this case seems to carry a lot of clout with the court system, and she is not recommeding that my niece be returned to her father's home. Let's hope that's how it all works out.

Thanks for reading, everyone.

Dave

The Big News!

2006-03-08T11:40:00.000-05:00

It's been so hard to keep it to myself! Mrs. Dave is pregnant with our second child! Woohooo! The baby is due Sept. 22, and will likely be born Sept. 18 because that's our OB's surgery day and Mrs. Dave will have a C-section. We're thrilled and can't wait. This one is putting Mrs. Dave through the wringer compared to our son. She's been very nauseous (but not sick) and a muscle in that area is objecting to the stretching demands, but it's nothing serious.

We heard the heartbeat at the doctor's office yesterday, nice and strong. As my son put it, "She's jumping up and down on the bed!" Everyone is predicting a girl because of how Heather feels (relatively lousy), but we don't know what the sex of the baby is, at least at this point.

We've got the crib bumper already, and Heather knows more or less what she wants to do in the nursery. We have to commence demolition of the current baseball decor and all the extra junk in there (our old mattress and box spring, clean out the closet, etc.). I've taken some of it down already, but not much. I'll post photos as we make progress.

But we're very excited and can't wait to meet our new addition. Odd thing with this one, when we were expecting our son, I was ready for the wait until he was born, but this one, I want it now, why wait? Oh, right, good thinking, babies don't do well out of the womb at this point. Ok, I'll wait patiently now...

Dave

Wait til her husband finds out...

2006-03-03T11:28:00.000-05:00

I got tagged by maria...

Four jobs I've had in my life:
[1] Lifeguard (great tan, sun-bleached hair, nice life)
[2] Waiter at Pizza Hut - Still trying to get the grease off my hands
[3] Pet store assistant manager - worst job ever for me
[4] graphic designer (Yay! What I should have done in the first place)

Four movies I would watch over and over:
[1] Strange Brew
[2] Raiders of the Lost Ark
[3] First Blood
[4] Any Pixar movie

Four places I have lived:
[1] Upstate New York
[2] Suburban Chicago (but not for very long, and I was very young)
[3] Houston, TX
[4] Baltimore, MD - at 4 different places within 5 miles of each other.

Four TV Shows I like to watch:
[1] NFL Football
[2] South Park
[3] Just can't seem to change the channel when wild animal documentaries are on.
[4] Unwrapped

Four Places I have been on vacation:
[1] Orlando-honeymoon, among other vacations
[2] Myrtle Beach, SC
[3] Grand Bahama Island, Bahamas
[4] Bar Harbor, Maine

Four Websites I visit daily:
[1] HOW Design
[2] Newsgator-to catch up with my bloggin' buddies
[3] MSNBC
[4] Google, natch.

Four of my favorite foods:
[1] chocolate-Hershey Eggs, KitKat Bites and M&Ms in that order.
[2] crabcakes and Mrs. Dave's crab dip
[3] mahi mahi
[4] Five Guys Hamburgers, I have to stop at 4???

Four places I would rather be right now:
[1] in bed with Mrs. Dave
[2] Diving off of Grand Cayman Island or the Great Barrier Reef, in the shark-free zone
[3] Bora Bora
[4] Anyplace where I felt adventurous

Bloggers I am tagging:
[1] Jeff
[2] Mary
[3] LEW!
[4] Jeope (Maria tagged you but I don't know if you've seen it... )

Dave

What do you think of the new digs?

2006-02-28T17:36:00.000-05:00

I'm not done re-decorating, but hopefully, all the hard stuff is done and I just have to rework some colors. Putting shocket in the post title has been a huge pain in the butt to figure out, but I'm kind of like a blind person finding my way through a strange castle there. But I think I made it work, finally. We'll see. Hopefully, I'll put some pictures up and the like tomorrow. Wanna help me pick out curtains?

Dave

More thotz on 2006

2006-02-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

These thotz are partially inspired by the Olympics, but not all...

• How to improve, or at least make more entertaining, the Winter Olympics:

1. Allow elbowing in short track speed skating. Nothing to the head, but everything else is fair game. I'm imagining late in the race the announcers sounding something like this - "Oh boy Jim, I think we may be headed for a new world record in this event. It looks like this may be the longest it has ever taken a race to finish, because we currently have two of the four racers oddly contorted and unconscious in the corner of the track. Hope they can get some medical attention soon, but Olympic rules dictate that no one but the competitors are allowed on the ice until the race is concluded. However, as our other two athletes are engaged in a fistfight, I don't know how soon it may happen..."

2. Introduce the Winter Olympic Triathlon. Perhaps you've heard of the Biathlon. It's where the athletes cross-country ski from site to site where they stop, drop and shoot a gun at targets. The Winter triathlon is just like that except instead of just shooting at targets, it's combined with Aerials. So the athlete goes from site to site and stops, drops, and fires at Aerialists from opposing teams. Each gun-toting athlete gets 6 shots. If the Aerialist lands on anything but his/her feet, it's considered a hit. If the aerialist does land on his/her feet, wounded or otherwise, it's a miss.

3. Mixed Doubles Luge It's a fight to see who can make it to the finish least distracted.

4. Ice Pole Dancing Tanith, oh Tanith, I got yer gold medal right here...

5. Full Contact Curling It's just like the sport is now, only there is one guy from the other team trying to stop the rock from getting to the end. To fend him off is another player from the offense trying to push him back. The guys with the brooms and such are still there.

Ok, the day after Valentine's day is the official start of the Easter season, right? Hershey has what they call simply "Eggs." And I just can't get enough of them. They are not the kind where you unwrap the foil for the chocolate nugget, these are more akin to M&Ms, with a candy shell. They are dangerous, dangerous things. Those and KitKat bites are my favorite candies. Oh, and Halloween M&Ms, you can't beat those.

Audiobooks - Listen to them? I recently listened to The Da Vinci Code and I'm glad I did! Prior to Mrs. Dave being interested in it, I didn't really care much about it one way or another, it sounded kinda more High-falutin' than what I usually would go for, though I knew zilch about it. But she was interested, and I noticed that it has been on the bestseller list for about three years straight, so there must be something to it. I was very pleasantly surprised. It's a great audiobook if you've never given one a chance. I forget the guy's name who reads it, but he's a really good voice actor. I can't wait to see this movie. Of course, it will probably not quite live up to the book, a movie rarely does, but I have high hopes. Everyone keeps saying that Tom Hanks is miscast as Langdon, but I don't think so. He's not exactly how I pictured him, but he's not some huge jump that I can't believe they picked him. But the actress playing Sophie Niveau, purrrrrrr. Also not how I pictured her (for some reason, I kept picturing an actual human version of Mirage from the Incredibles (Syndrome's female assistant), but this actress will do just fine. ;-)

Dave

Bandwagoneer

2006-02-24T14:45:00.000-05:00

Alright, guess I'm going to have to join the gang and customize this puppy of a blog. So tell me dear readers, all 4 or 5 of you, should my theme be something along the lines of the photo blurs or should I go with the shocked socket theme like in my HOW Avatar? Or would you not be able to face another day without seeing the back of my son's head? Hmmmmmm?

Dave

Holy Canoli!

2006-02-21T12:56:00.000-05:00

Has it really been that long since I last posted? Guess I haven't been too creative here the past couple of weeks. We had a big snowstorm last week. Had about a foot of snow. Usually that would cause widespread panic in Baltimore, but this time it was a fairly controlled response considering how much there was. Got to work the next morning no problem. Funny thing was, almost as fast as it came, it went away. We had a couple of days in the 50s and 60s that wiped most of it out. Today, only the really huge piles of plowed snow are still around.

Things with my niece have improved, thank goodness, but they are still tense. She is now with Mrs. Dave's parents, which is really the best place for her. They are going for temporary custody (we'll find out in March) and after that, permanent custody. But the web of lies her father and his girlfriend have woven has only snared themselves. And every new one just digs them a little deeper. It's just becoming increasingly clear that they have no concern whatsoever about my niece except as a status symbol. They are now claiming that she is uncontrollable because she has an Oppositional Disorder (BS!). She's a little girl that didn't have the chance to bond with her mother or anyone else for an extended period of time, then had to endure her father and his girlfriend beating and abusing her. So here's one of the snares they have caught themselves in. They have said (in a joint session with a counselor) that they don't have the problems with her behavior like Mrs. Dave's parents do when she stays with them overnight (screaming fits, biting, scratching), but yet they think she has an Oppositional Disorder? It just doesn't fit, and the professionals surrounding the situation are starting to realize it.

But at least she's safe and in an environment where she feels comfortable. Hopefully in March things will go our way. Stay tuned. Oh, but this isn't the March news mentioned in an earlier post. No, no, there's more...

Dave

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

2006-02-08T13:23:00.000-05:00

In response to many requests (so what if they were all from me?), I am, for the first time, posting wallpapers of my blurred visions. I have this as my own wallpaper on my computer and thought it was cool enough to post. I get a lot of comments about it at work, "Whoa, way out dude..." the majority of them. You can thank Veer for supplying the Cinema display size specs for you.

So, without further ado, enjoy.

1920x1200
1680x1050
1600x1024
1440x900
1280x1024
1024x768

Ok, I find it hard to believe you are reading my blog if you need these two, but since I am all-loving, here you go...

800x600
640x480

Oh, I know, the other thing with this wallpaper is that I challenged myself to find a useful purpose for the "Fish" Text Warper in Photoshop. Interesting how it worked out. Can you find it? Just an FYI, with the exception of flopping a copy of the graphic layer to fit across the cinema sizes and the fish text, the graphic itself is untouched in photoshop. No sharpening, no blurring, no color correcting, no liquifying filter, nothin', just ghostly coolness.

Dave

Potpourri

2006-02-03T12:39:00.000-05:00

Just like the category in Jeopardy! and smelling just the opposite of that stuff women keep in jars and in cloth bags, here's a bunch of photos taken recently. Most are from my trip to Savannah Georgia for my company's National Sales Meeting, but not all. (Click on an image to see a larger version)

1. Here are a few blurs that turned out to be very interesting, at least to me.

This one is just neat in how tight the blur is. Almost like a bunch of bows were tied together in a line.

I love the streamer/party feel of this one. But if you look closely, you'll see all these arrows pointing the same direction. There are actually just two of them, pointing to the lanes you can use at the time to go through the tunnel.

This one reminds me of the Washington DC subway map.

Lastly, this one is way cool. It's just a photo of my stereo display in my car, but it's very ghostlike in a way.

On to Savannah...

Just to prove I flew there, in case you needed it...from my usual seat...

I think it was foggy throughout the southern US the day I went down to Savannah, and the day after. Here is a shot of the Savannah River.

And a little further down the shore...

This was taken from the dock in front of the hotel.

Here is one of the ferries that take people from the convention center to downtown. I was playing with the sepia tone setting on my camera, turned out kinda cool.

Again with the sepia setting, one of the many palm trees in the courtyard/garden of the hotel.

Here's a shot of the hotel itself. I stayed in room second floor from the top, on the left side, the first room between the rooms with balconies. (I was jealous).

Here was the view from that room.

I accidentally forgot one particular medicine I needed, so I had occasion to drive through Savannah. It's beautiful, too bad I couldn't capture more or better pictures than these:

Here are the famous trees that make a beautiful canopy over the streets of Savannah, while I know I saw it, I don't remember the name of this breed of trees. All I know is that they are creepy and beautiful at the same time.

Now this image is oriented the way it was taken, which was by holding the steering wheel of the car with my left hand and holding the camera in my right, pointing the camera out the window from under my left arm to try to capture the top of the church. I could put it the normal way, but this way is more fun.

The next day turned out to be much nicer, however windier:

That morning I took the ferry across to get some souveniers for the boy. This photo really doesn't do justice to how neat this bridge is. I forgot to take my camera when I played golf, there would have been some great shots of the bridge from there. The way the wires criss-cross is mesmerizing.

Here is the deck of the ferry as we made our way across.

And last, the inside of the ferry, very cool considering.

So, that oughta make you happy for a few minutes...;-)

Thanks for all the guesses on the news coming in March. You are all very, very close.

Dave

Savannah, Fare you well

2006-01-27T14:58:00.000-05:00

Late Wednesday night, I got back from my company's National Sales Meeting in Savannah, Georgia. What a nice place, at least from what I can tell. I got a bit of a head cold down there which put me out of commission yesterday, but I'm feeling better today. My voice has been put in Barry White mode, baby. It's so deep. But anyway, I didn't get to spend much time hangin' out in town, but the little I did was nice. I took some photos that I'll post soon. I just have too much work to catch up on to do it today.

Oh, and there is likely to be some big news around here in March, so don't hit that back button or dare close your browser, believe me it's worth waiting for!!!!

Dave

"Thanks for the challenge."

2006-01-18T14:07:00.000-05:00

That's what the most recent doctor to check out my bicep said. Stumped 'em again! One bad thing is that the other side of the muscle has developed so much to compensate for the right side, I can resist the strength test, unlike before. So, I had ten viles of blood drawn this morning to see if they can figure it all out. But this was a neurologist who has been a doctor almost as long as I've been alive, so I've really got something weird going on.

I'm starting to think I was just made of spare parts.

Dave

Zup folks?

2006-01-17T13:07:00.000-05:00

Just a note to say that work has been kickin' me in the proverbial ass lately, so not much time to play with the blog. I have a couple of new blurs that are neat. Who'da thought a radio display had so much visual creative potential?

But the news on my niece hasn't changed a lot. Although, one thing to share with you to give you an idea of just what kind of asshole we're dealing with, we got a report from the social worker listing many incidents of suspected abuse. Along with the cold water treatment (and spanking if she tried to get away) which the girlfriend admitted to, there was also an incident where her dad "put her to bed for a nap" and according to him she *****GRRRRRRRRRRRR***** JUST WOKE UP WITH TWO BLACK EYES!!!!! How the #$@^&% does a three year old get two black eyes during a nap without the parent noticing????

Oh, then there was the incident where she clearly had bruises on her face from where someone had grabbed her face, sort of with her chin in the valley between the thumb and index finger. In that case, again, according to him, THE DOG NIPPED HER. He clearly has no idea how far her face would have had to be in the dog's mouth for that to happen. I would think there would also be some tooth marks. If I had a dog that did something like that to my daughter, the dog would be gone the next day.

But it's all lies anyway. The girlfriend's son also said that one of the reasons they beat her was because she told lies and was bad all the time. Again, how does a three-year-old lie beyond saying they didn't do something they actually did? And no wonder she was bad so much, she was HUNGRY (another frequent punishment was being put to bed without dinner, but the weight loss was because she and the girlfriend are "out running around all the time), BEING TERRORIZED and BEATEN, I can't imagine why she was having problems.

Pathetic. This guy needs to be put in general population and then a loud announcement needs to be made at lunch about what he's in prison for...

Good news is that her speech continues to improve and she's put on more weight since last time I posted. And, my goodness, she still has your standard 3 year old tantrums, but the out-of-control rages and biting have stopped since she was taken away from those dolts.

Dave

Better or Worse? Depends on your perspective

2006-01-09T16:36:00.000-05:00

The news on my niece gets better/worse. Better - Now that she's out of that house she has begun to put weight on. As I mentioned before, she had been losing weight since the spring. She's put on 3 pounds since just before Christmas. Better - She seems to be doing better, she's not out of control so much. Worse - we found out one of the things her father and his girlfriend were doing to her, aside from not feeding her much and beating her, was to, as punishment for some misbehavior, sit her in a tub of ice water for a few minutes, no wonder she went through a spell of screeching through her baths when at Mrs. Dave's parents.

Perhaps it's a term that is thrown around too easily today because of recent controversy, but people are using the term "torture" when referring to how she was treated. The social worker is hot on their asses to have them both arrested. Hang 'em high as far as I'm concerned. Mrs. Dave's parents are going to try to get custody, if for some reason, they can't, we'll certainly be next in line. I could go into a lot more detail, but it's too depressing. I just can't imagine, with all the people out there that want children but can't have them how someone fortunate enough to have one (on purpose anyway) could do this to a little girl.

Dave

Doo-Dee-Dee-Doo-Dah

2006-01-05T13:13:00.000-05:00

Ok, if the title doesn't make sense, I'm trying to simulate the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" notes. Well, anyway, it works for me.

Here is a slow release photo I took of a Christmas card I got for my son. You push a button and instead of some annoying midi-style tune, these really bright lights flash like crazy. It's wild. I'm not talking about some little red LED to light Rudolph's nose, this thing could be used to direct traffic. Below is the cool photo and below it, the card from which it came.

And here's another blur of the tunnel I thought was pretty cool:

Thotz as we enter 2006

2006-01-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

Here are a few thoughts that have been running through my head recently, none really is deserving of it's own post, but together it works, and since it's the New Year, what the heck.

- Ok, this one is just weird, but Spencer Kayden has a sexy voice. Where might you have heard it? As Mrs. Pepper on Blue's Clues, of course - twisted, I know, but listening to a BC CD my son got at the library made me realize it... Here she is:

and her alter ego:

- June 2004 continues to haunt me. In case you weren't around or don't remember, I got very sick then and it turned out to be a combination of colitis (or Crohn's Disease, one or the other, but it doesn't really matter, they are treated the same), which basically means my large intestine gets annoyed easily. What made me sick was the fact that it got so fed up with me, it stopped doing one of it's major responsibilities, releasing water into the rest of my body. I got dehydrated badly and went downhill from there. I ended up in the hospital not because of the colitis, but because the emergency room doctor thought I had a blood clot. Well, it's hard to say for certain whether I did or not now, but subsequent blood tests, etc. have led the doctors to the conclusion that it's in my best interest to be on a blood thinner.

Ok, fast forward to now...On Friday, I have to go in for a colonoscopy to make sure everything is ok in there. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that...now, normally that would mean a day or two of discomfort, but nothing that big a deal. But in my case, it will be a somewhat bigger deal. No one has said they will have to, but during a scope, the doc may have to do a biopsy. Since that would mean cutting something, that means something will probably bleed. That's not good when you're on blood thinners. So, I have to do what's called a "window". I stop taking my usual blood thinners, and give myself an injection twice a day. The injection blood thinner gets out of my system in a day (the pills take several days). The injections are leaving awful-looking bruises on my stomach. But I stop the injections a day before the scope so my blood will be able to coagulate (clot like it's supposed to) if they do any cutting while they're in there, this is the "window." Then I go back on the regular thinners afterward in addition to continuing to inject myself for another week. I have new respect for diabetics...Yuck!

- Christmas was great! The little guy made out like a bandit, of course. We (Mrs. Dave and I) got ourselves a new entertainment system because our old one had bitten the dust. It's a panasonic home theater system and it's awesome. I got Mrs. Dave an iPod Nano, which she seems to like a lot. I got clothes and Mrs. Dave got me a Bose SoundDock for my iPod. It killed me to have to return it. We had to decide between the SoundDock and the entertainment system, and the system won this round. But no worries. We also got an iFusion iPod player that is way-cool. Maybe not as good as the Bose, but much better than I expected. iFusion is this little hard-shell suitcase of a thing. It has a zipper and opens like a suitcase but reveals a set of speakers and dock for your iPod. Just plant your iPod in there, plug it in (or not if the iFusion batteries are charged) and jam to completely portable tunes. The sound is great considering the size, and the cool thing is that you can still connect it to your computer while it's in the player, download stuff, etc. plus, when the iFusion is plugged in it charges the iPod. We got it mainly because my son's cheapo CD player that we use during baths and such finally crapped out. But if you're looking for a good little iPod player, this is a great option!

- My "Brother-In-Law" is a complete asswipe, no, that's being euphamistic, he's the turd, dang, still not strong enough. Imagine the place at the treatment plant where all the waste from everywhere in town goes before it gets "treated". That's my brother in law. His daughter, my niece, was taken away from him again by social services for suspicion of abuse. We don't doubt it's true, we've seen bruises all over her. We took a picture of the one that was shaped exactly like someone's hand on her rear end. And it looked like a rather old bruise. Can you imagine the force with which she was hit to leave a bruise of the entire hand (think about your open palm and what you would have to do to leave a bruise with your thumb)? This is a three-year-old girl he's doing this to! A girl who has never known her real mother (Mrs. Dave's sister) because she died a month and a half after my niece was born.

She's been shuffled around to so many places in her life, she probably has no idea where she belongs. We've been helpless to do anything about it because that $#$%#&* is her father. Fortunately, someone who wasn't as worried about not seeing her again called social services when the boy she lived with ($*^%$%*^'s girlfriend's son) told his grandfather some of the things that have been going on with my niece (details of which we still don't know). But whatever he said, it was enough to get both kids taken away from their parents for an extended period of time. It's a nightmare. I'd adopt her in a second if I could. She is a handful, but I think with some consistency in her surroundings and lots of love, and particularly the absence of abject fear of being beaten senseless, she could become a relatively normal girl. We may never know because of the amount of damage that has already been done.

We're just hoping that it's my niece's mother above that is making all this happen so my niece can be happy again. She didn't deserve to be treated the way she was. Like I said, this is a THREE YEAR-OLD. It will be another interesting year in this saga. Let's just hope it works out the best for her.

Dave

Please indulge me

2005-12-21T14:44:00.000-05:00

These are just too much fun.

1. I believe this is the toll plaza I drive through to get home

2. I Love the Chinese New Year feel of this shot:

3. This one is perhaps the least abstract, it's of the wall of the tunnel I drive through, near the end.

4. This one looks like light grafitti, too cool.

And just to prove I haven't completely abandoned regular photography, here is a photo of the Snowman Mini-Cakes (too big to be cupcakes, but too small to be regular cakes)that Mrs. Dave, the most fabulous mother a little boy could wish to have, made for my son's daycare Christmas party.

Another Drive-By Shooting

2005-12-13T11:34:00.000-05:00

After a few days delay while Blogger was working out some kinks...

With apologies to the photographer's whose book is titled "Drive By Shooting," Here is another drive by that just turned out another neat texture. This time I was driving by a house near my neighborhood. They have these two bushes in front of their house very densely covered in colored lights. Too bad that's the only thing in their yard that's decorated. But I gave it a shot and it's pretty cool result.

Dave

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2005-12-12T13:37:00.000-05:00

Christmas 2005 is thundering down the time continuum at a breakneck pace.We're getting ready, but it seems like such small steps that Christmas will be over by the time we're all done. I remember so well the agony of waiting for Christmas to arrive when I was a kid. December was the longest month on the calendar. Now it's more like "Wasn't it just Summer? Don't-blink-D'oh!-You-missed-it." Haven't gotten anything for Mrs. Dave for Christmas yet. Got her birthday (Dec. 24, ain't she lucky!) present, but that's all.

But anyway, here's our Christmas tree this year. In this photo, I used the long exposure time and a tripod, and it came out pretty well. The picture isn't excessively yellow because of the camera or the light, our walls are actually yellow. In this picture, the tree isn't finished, it was still a work in progress. You can see the blur of my son and wife's hands in the lower right. Oh, please don't mind the needles and stuff on the floor, we cleaned those up later...

Warning: The "awwwwww" factor is high for this next photo! Although not nearly as pathetic as Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, my son decided that our tree just needed a little love. And if that doesn't make sense, go watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special again. He's a very compassionate little boy.

But now the tree is fully decorated. Ours is a nostalgic tree more than a work of art. We get a new sourdough ornament every year and always get at least one, if not two ornaments from places we've traveled to. So, this year we had a "snowman" that was made to look like he was made of ice, but when you look closer, you see he's actually dice. We also got one of the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. I'll post a pic of the completed tree soon.

Oh, and one of the things that we did the weekend before last was go to HersheyPark. They open around the holidays so you can go buy candy, see Santa and his reindeer, drink the best damn hot chocolate you ever had, have some fun and see the Sweet Lights, a huge, huge light display that you drive through. It's neat. But, while we were there, we took the kids to see Santa Claus. Well, he had to be simply THE most boring Santa Claus ever. He barely moved. He didn't speak, I'd have thought he was a mannequin if his eyes didn't occasionally move. But he didn't ask the kids what they wanted or anything. But I think this photo explains a lot:

I have more photos from Hershey, just no time to post this minute. Gotta run!

Dave

The Long Drive Home

2005-12-05T13:17:00.000-05:00

Big ups to my virtual pal Jeope Wolfe for inpiring this with his Ghosts photography. These aren't ghosts, but using extended exposure time on my camera got these results. They're just so stinkin' cool, I just had to share. Last Friday night was a looooooooooooong ride home from work. There was an accident in or near one of the tunnels I take to go home and it had traffic everywhere snarled. So, whilst biding my time in traffic, I pulled out the camera to see what would happen if... and I tried a couple of different settings. These were just far out...

Click on the images to see at a decent size...

This is one taken of a sign that crosses the highway warning of the accident more than 15 miles ahead. I think the streaks are flashing lights, but it's wild. This is 100% untouched in Photoshop except to resize to fit on screen.

This image is of the truck in front of me, but I put the base of the camera on the left side of the steering wheel (9 o'clock position) and while it was exposing, moved it around the steering wheel to the 3 o'clock position. It turned out really neat. Again, no photoshop adjustments except for size...

Dave

Coding for the unco-ode-inated

2005-12-05T10:29:00.000-05:00

Can anyone help, or know someone who can help me with the layout of this site? All I want to do really is just switch the position of the profile and links stuff with the article content, ie, I'd like the profile, etc. on the left instead of the right. This is mainly so I can post bigger photos without screwing up the layout (as it works now, so I use Blogger photos, which makes a smaller preview you can click on), but sometimes I want the bigger shot without the muss and fuss. Anyone know what to do?

Thanks!

Dave

Stump the Doc, II

2005-11-30T14:19:00.000-05:00

I had another appointment with the doctor Monday. She got the results of my spine X-ray, and everything there was perfectly normal. So, I have to go see a neurologist to see if s/he can figure it out. But my primary doctor says it isn't an orthopedic problem from what she can tell. I'm just hoping it isn't some weird psychosematic thing where there's no earthly reason for this to be happening except my brain isn't telling the muscle to work.

So strange. I looked up some cool anatomy illustration graphics of the arm, and with my admittedly small amount of medical knowledge, think that the problem is with the Long Bed Biceps Bronchii. It was interesting seeing how it's put together. From what I can tell, it seems to start at one point in the shoulder, then about halfway down the arm, it kind of splits in two, then wraps around the forarm side of the elbow. The two branches, if you will, are called the long bed (the outer side) and the short bed (closer to your body). My short bed seems to be Ok, in fact it seems to be trying to pick up the slack best it can, it has grown a bit. But the long bed is on vacation right now.

So stay tuned, I'll holla when I see the next contestant on Stump the Doc!

Dave

Ti-iii-iime ain't on my side

2005-11-29T14:05:00.000-05:00

no it ain't,
for the Howiezine

So much for making a big splash with my first Howiezine! I had a cool idea for doing one where a guy is on a golf course looking for his ball, which is in the foreground in a very unusual spot (in a tree, impaled on a deer's antlers, something like that) and the text was "I lost me" then read on the ball, the logo for the Nike "Mojo" line of golf balls. No idea what I'd do for found with that concept, but I liked that one. Well, I frittered time away to the point where I couldn't finish that concept in time for the deadline. So I panicked a bit. So, I figured, why not use that emotion for the page? So that's what I went with because I didn't have anything else. The first page is supposed to be a classified ad or poster roughly cut from the paper or taped to a lightpole. The second is the panic button I found and pushed and if you look closely, punched, repeatedly to no effect. What worse, it didn't print out nearly as well as this image would have you believe. But, in a way that makes the concept work that much better!...uh...right?

All I can say is that Superheroes will be better. I promise!!!

Dave

Click on an image to enlarge:

Super-wuss

2005-11-22T11:38:00.000-05:00

You know how in cartoons when a character who thinks he's stronger than he is, and when he flexes his bicep it sags into a U shape? That's how I feel right now, almost literally. My bicep has stopped working. Literally. I didn't injure it to my knowledge, it doesn't hurt at all, it just doesn't work. I can't hold my 32 lb. son in my right arm now for more than a few seconds, and even then it's a challenge. It's the strangest thing. It's just my bicep and the supporting muscles get tired very easily because they are doing so much more work than normal now, because the bicep itself is the workhorse so-to-speak.

But I went to the doctor to see what's up and she is stumped. She said it seems like I would either
a) be in pain or
b) more muscles wouldn't be functioning or
c) the bicep would at least be twitching involuntarily for the normal causes of this condition or
d) the reason for the problem would be obvious (say for instance, the muscle had detached from the bone or something)

She thinks it has something to do with my spine, but I could see the wheels in her head grinding a bit on the symptoms. She's a very smart doctor, and problems of this nature are her specialty, so to stump her like this unusual and a bit disconcerting. I have another appointment next week. She said she is going to consult with some other doctors on my problem since it doesn't fit the usual description. I also noted that there has been a numbness in half the pad part of my right thumb since we were in Vegas. Interestingly to me, she said that the nerves to the bicep and the ones to the thumb would be affected by different disks in the spine, so she didn't think they were related, at least that way...

I asked her if there was a chance this was muscular dystrophy or something similar, and she doesn't think so. She said if it were something like that, I would have a much more general exhaustion, not just a specific muscle. So, she didn't think it was a sign of Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy or Lou Gehrig's Disease. But, the thing that has me a bit scared is that she wants to put off for as long as she can doing something called an EMG. I don't remember what that stands for, but basically they take a needle and stick it into the muscle to try to stimulate it.
It wasn't comforting that she said it was like getting a root canal without novacaine. eeek!

So, that's the story for now. Stay tuned next week as we play round 2 of Stump the Doc!

Dave

Sin City II

2005-10-28T16:14:00.000-04:00

Alright, so here's the rest of the trip. We went to a place called Kahunaville Friday night, it's in Treasure Island. Ok, but nothing special. They have a mini fountain show in there. Meh.

So, next day we get up and on the way out, I see this little guy in the atrium. Kinda cute:

We decided to check out Mandalay Bay and Luxor to start the day. Along the way, I got this shot of New York, New York:

Mandalay Bay was nice, it will certainly hold the HOW conference next year, but there really wasn't much to take a photo of. I suppose I could have taken a photo of the headless Lenin statue, but it wasn't that big a deal to me. It's HUGE though, takes up a lot more space than the towers would have you believe. We had our lunch at the nearly empty House of Blues. Again, the food was nothing exciting.

Next we went to Luxor, and it just wouldn't be a trip to Vegas without this photo, right?

Oh, I forgot to mention...On the first two days, we spent entirely too much time and money here, but we just couldn't help ourselves:

Now, on to Bellagio.

Here is the famous lobby ceiling:

In the garden behind the lobby there was this cool arrangement with this smoky mist swirling around the base of the plant.

Here's a few wider views of the garden, the leaves are made of glass:

And here's the fountain during the day:

This is outside of Ceasars Palace:

Here is the lobby of the Venetian.

And here is the ceiling above it:

And down the hall away from the lobby:

And, at last, some more interesting photos of the Mirage, where we stayed. The first few are from the Volcano lake in front of the hotel, then one of Siegfried and Roy's tigers.

These photos are from Siegfreid and Roy's Secret Garden. It was Ok, it wasn't much considering the admission price, but it's the way it goes. Getting the dolphin photos was neat, BUT they must let a tiger sleep in the area where you can look at them underwater, it stunk like cat pee to high heaven! Ack! The big cats themselves didn't smell so bad, though one lion did try to pee on us. Fortunately, I wasn't in the line of fire. Phew!

I have a lot of pictures of the big cats, but most have the mesh cage in front, which kind of ruins the photo, but I liked this one, the motion just had a cool effect.

So, somewhere along the way, we made our way back to the Bellagio. I think this was after we saw Zumanity (great show, if you like Cirque Du Soliel, and don't mind nudity and foul language, you'll probably love it, like I did). We took the tram from the Monte Carlo to the Bellagio (not sure we saved any steps as you have to go (say it with me) to the other side of the casino and through the "Avenue of Dreams" to get to it. But, when we arrived at the Bellagio, we came in through the back and came across this chocolate store that we wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Neat stuff. Yes the chocolate is actually dripping from one pan to another until it gets to the bottom.

So, then we go outside to see the fountain at night (much more impressive, though it's great during the day, too), so here are a few obligatory Bellagio fountain night photos:

Here is the Volcano at the Mirage from street level at night:

Our last visit was to the Wynn Hotel. It was really nice, but not as big a deal as I thought it would be given all the hype. One cool thing was the sign out front. The Wynn logo bar moved up and down the height of the sign and was integrated into the message on the board. Really well-designed idea.

Here is a waterfall outside of a cafe. Note the statue of a female in the water, apparently who thinks the waterfall is a god...;-)

So, this part of the strip will have to wait until next time for us. We never made it further north than this. So, from the land of broken dreams and perfect pedicures, see you next time! Happy Trails to you, until we meet again!

Dave

Sin City

2005-10-27T14:11:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a little while since I posted, but be warned! This one is going to be big and make up for the time.

So, as I've mentioned on the How Forum several times and possibly here, Mrs. Dave and I went to Vegas to celebrate out 10th wedding anniversary. Hard to believe it's been that long, but I'd do another ten standing on my head if I had to, as long as I spend it with her.

So, here it goes...

Thursday, Oct. 20:

Wake up rather bleary-eyed at 4:45 for our 8:15 flight. We had packed all we could the night before, so we just had to get the last few things in. We loaded up and headed out to the airport. About halfway there, it dawned on me I forgot my camera. OH,JEEZ! How could I do that??? I take my camera everywhere. damnitdamnitdamnit. Well, we were too far along to turn back and get it, so I just made peace with the fact that I'd be without it. I'd get some crappy disposable and have to be happy. We got to the airport,checked our bags, and had some time to kill so we grabbed some breakfast. Before we knew it, it was time to go.

The flight out there was merely Ok. We were on a fairly old plane that they were upgrading (and stopped halfway from what we could tell). There was not a lot of leg room from the hip to the knee. My knees were right up to the seat in front of me. The seats were hard and felt like they were tipping ever so slightly forward. But I was with my baby, so I made the best of it. We watched Batman Begins on the way. That was a great movie! I'd like to see it again where I didn't have a jet engine buzzing in my ear, but I could hear well enough to know it was good. Otherwise the trip was uneventful except when I spilled my drink on myself.

We got to Vegas relieved to be able to stand for a while. It was a 5 hour flight, but the elapsed time with zone change was 2 hours and 15 minutes. ie-it was 10:30 am in Vegas. After we got our bags, we went to catch the shuttle to the hotel. I don't think I'm going to do this ever again. We went outside to the ticket booth and it was absolutely jammed. So we waited and got our tickets. Then we waited for the shuttle. We were about third in line for the thing. When the shuttle arrived, the seemingly dozens of people descended on it. There was no order at all, and we got shut out of this shuttle, which really ticked me off because we were among the first in "line", but still didn't get on. Mrs. Dave complained to the busy-guy-walking-around-that-looked-like-he-was-in-charge, and he basically shrugged his shoulders. But I think it had some impact, as he made every get in some sort of organized line for the next one, which we did board...after an hour or so of waiting.

But that's where any real complaints end. We got to the Mirage just fine, and lucked out and our room was ready when we got there (they originally told us it would be 2-3 hours). So we went and unpacked. We paid a little extra to get the "Premium View" room, and it really was. It was a great vantage point on the strip and allowed us to see the volcano erupt easily. More on that in a bit.

So, we decided we ought to head out and collect our tickets to the shows, just to be sure everything was in order. We had to go to the Venetian, which is across the street (still a good hike), Bally's, which didn't look that far away, and New York, New York, which, while it was down the block, didn't look unreachable.

Oy.

Vegas is BIIIIIIG. It might not seem like it at first, but these hotels are HUGE. And everything you want to see is always on the other side of the casino. We got our Blue Man Group tickets at the Venetian and had a little lunch there. Since I was sans-camera we looked in a store for a digital one. I saw a couple that I liked, but since I hadn't done much research on them, didn't really know what's good and what's not. I knew a couple that i was interested in, but didn't see them at this store. So we kept looking. We then trekked to Ballys for our Jubilee tickets. At this point our feet were already tired. We got those tickets and headed down to New York, New York. On the map, it didn't seem all that far.

Oy.

Did I mention Las Vegas is BIIIIG? Well, we got there finally and got the tickets. We were just about wiped out. We stopped for ice cream and drinks, but thought we should head back so we would make it in time for that night's show. If it was a long walk down, it was a longer walk back. We changed clothes and I don't remember for sure at the moment, but I think we took a taxi down to the show because we were tired. We got to the show and sat down in pretty decent seats. We were in the first row of regular seats (not at the tables in what would be the orchestra seating in most theatres), just off to the right. At this point, Mrs. Dave and I are in good spirits, but exhausted. It's 10 pm our time (7pm vegas time) and we've walked our butts off the first day.

The Jubilee show was good, classic Vegas cheese. But that's what made it charming. Well, all the boobs didn't hurt either. ;-) I guess what caught me off-guard was how different I felt about seeing these girls' ta-tas. That wasn't the only reason they were there, like in a strip club, so it was a bit odd by comparison. I almost felt guilty enjoying their charms. Some of the costumes were out and out ridiculous, several looked like Christmas balls with boobs. Those were also the ones who looked like it took every ounce of concentration they had to keep their balance. But it was enjoyable, though I felt bad when I dozed off slightly during the juggling act.

After the show, we checked out the Bellagio fountain for a bit, then went to Ceasars Palace to have dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. On the way there, we stopped in the Sony Style store and looked at digital cameras there. And there it was, the camera I was looking for. A Cybershot DSC-P200. Too cool. 7.2 megapixels of magic right there. I'd read some good things about this one, and the price wasn't too bad considering the MP. So, for my birthday Mrs. Dave said I could get that and a 1 Gig memory stick. WOOHOO!!!! Happy David! Dinner was good, and when we got back to our room, we were so tired. I had just enough energy to charge the camera, read a little bit about it, then crash.

Friday, October 21

We got up late the next day and took our time getting ready. I played with the camera a bit while waiting for Mrs. Dave and got this photo:

Not bad, but the double pane window caused some reflection that I couldn't avoid, even with the lens right up against the glass.

Since it was kinda late for breakfast, we decided to go straight to lunch at Margaritaville. I really wanted to go there for lunch one of the days, so this was as good as any. On the way out of our hotel, I couldn't help but take a few shots of the atrium in the lobby. It was pretty cool.

This one I took because of the plant in the foreground. There were three or four of these pots with the grass in them, and they were right at eye level, so everyone had to run their fingers through it.

Here's a shot of the check-in desk at the Mirage. That's a gigantic aquarium with some good-size fish and a big ol' Moray Eel, he was creepy!

Now, as I was saying, Margaritaville:

Inside:
This is as you enter the main dining area. You're going under the volcano and one of the pirate ships to get to this point. I really dig seaplanes, and though this one is fake, it's still pretty cool.

Here's a shot of a table similar to ours. We were also amongst the fishing poles. But the table is at the end of one of the "boats". The chairs don't move back and forth, like a real boat, but you didn't feel like you were sitting close enough to the table. Plus, you were sitting side-by-side with your co-hort and the chair didn't quite rotate far enough that you could look directly at each other without turning your head. Just a little weird, nothing major. I just kept having the urge to scoot my chair in, but couldn't. The food was Ok, I had a crabcake sandwich. Nothing to write home about, but a blog is completely different. ;-)

Here was our view of the volcano. We saw it erupt once, but it wasn't anything spectacular from this perspective. Don't know how it looked on the other side.

But this was cool. The various animals from his songs all together and hanging from the ceiling, just like in nature! ;-)

We bought a few things at the store of course, including an inflatable seaplane, couldn't help myself.

So, with full bellies, we headed out again. Next stop: Paris.

I had been to Paris the last time I was in Vegas, it's a nice place. With the ceilings painted like the sky (they do the same at Cesars and the Venetian, too) it feels kinda like your outside when inside. I'm proud to note that with the next three photos (which I took), I later found virtually the exact same shot in a slick brochure or sign. It's just nice to know I'm developing some sort of photographic eye.

Here are some shots from the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. The guy on the elevator said that they originally wanted to make the tower even bigger, but since the airport was so close, they had to settle for half the size of the original. Interesting. Imagine if it was full size! The deck is pretty small. You have to squeeze by someone walking the other way if anyone is standing on the side at that point. I wasn't nervous about the height, I was nervous about dropping my new camera out of the tiny holes they make in the fence to poke your camera through. At the time I hadn't realized that my camera came with a wriststrap.

Here's the southern end of the strip. Madalay Bay (with the gold windows) is the last big resort in that direction.

Here's the best unobstructed shot I could get of the Bellagio fountain, it looks like a model in this shot:

And though I have others, here is a shot of the strip north of Paris. Ceasars Palace is in the foreground, the Mirage further up and to the right.

Next we stopped into the Aladdin. There's a big mall in there. It was ok, but just a mall. It has this area where they have a rainstorm every half hour. It was Ok, but not all that impressive given the scale of other things around it.

So then we ended up at the MGM Grand and New York, New York again, so we took the monorail back to the Mirage. We got to the room thinking we had time before our show to change clothes (we really needed to), but I looked at our tickets for Blue Man Group and we got them confused with Zumanity, the show was going to start in 15 minutes!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCKKKKK!!!!! So, we couldn't change, we just hauled butt out of the hotel over to the Venetian. Did I mention earlier that our room was all the way at the end of the hall?

Oy.

Here's a view from the center looking down the hall to our room at the end on the right. I should have had Mrs. Dave stand in front of our door to give it some better perspective. It might not look like much here, but we were at least 100 yards down the hall, if not more.

But, anyway, we get to the Venetian, to the theatre just in time, and sit down for the show. Here is the only photo I got inside. You have to take a pledge at the beginning of the show not to photograph or record any of it, but this was before the pledge. ;-) It's a photo of a series of statues standing around a tornado tube. Now, on it's own, it's interesting, but not for very long. Well, they get to a part of the show where they talk about how your eyes work, rods and cones, persistence of vision, etc. (if they would have presented it like this in science class, I would have paid more attention!!) and how your brain makes it seem like you are seeing everything as a smooth picture, when you're not. It's the thing that makes animation work as it does. Then, the little statues start spinning around fast, just a blur. Then they turn on a strobe light and in a second or two, it looks not like a bunch of statues spinning around, but like each statue is staying in it's place and dancing to the music! It was one of the coolest damn things I've ever seen. Absolutely mesmerizing. And no, I'm not at liberty to tell you why the people in the shot are covered in plastic and have paper wrapped around their heads!

But the whole show is phenomenal. Worth every single penny. It was funny, it was great music, it was creative, and the big paper party at the end was too much fun! The Blue Men and the band were out in the lobby posing for pictures afterward. It was too crowded for me to get to them, but I was able to get this shot, I have no idea who the woman is.

Ok, I'll end this entry with these, and pick up the last two days next time.

After the BMG show we went to that store and got some BM fun stuff. Then we headed out of the hotel and took a gondola ride. It was pretty cool. Isabella had a beautiful voice and Mrs. Dave and I kissed under the bridge. I don't know if the indoor ride is any longer, but the outdoor one doesn't last long. We thought it went around to somewhere we couldn't see, but nope. Under the bridge once, under the bridge twice and you're done. It was really neat, don't get me wrong, just a lot shorter than I thought it would be. Here's a few photos. One of Isabella and us, then two shots from the square.

This one is a little blurry, but I still liked it. The night scene feature of this camera is outstanding, you just need to be sure it's on a a tripod or surface.

Here's another that shows better how well it works...

Well, that's the first two days...stay tuned!

Dave

Peep! Peep! Here comes Thomas!

2005-10-11T12:32:00.000-04:00

I finally got around to scanning some photos from our Day out with Thomas. Can I just say, my scanner at work is the pits? Ugh. So sad. But nonetheless, on with the show!

Things start out at The Red Caboose Motel. As mentioned in a previous post, all the rooms here are in old railroad cabooses. I was a little worried about staying here, just because I'd heard some good and not-so-good things about the place. Fortunately, there is a new owner and he's working hard to update the place. You can tell where some of the stuff still needs work, but it seems to be coming along. The caboose we stayed in happened to be newly renovated. We were the first people to stay in it since it was renovated. It even still smelled like paint (but not too much). It was a nice enough place, I suppose, but rather plain on the inside for something so neat on the outside.

Here is the exterior:

And the interior - the "Skylight" was a neat, with no curtains, it made sure we got up on time!

Here is a shot of some of the other cabooses from inside of our caboose. It's a neat variety of different types of cars.

So, after taking our showers and getting dressed, we headed to "The Dining Car" which is a real train car (not sure if it was an actual dining car when it was originally used or not). We could see the Strasburg Railroad grounds from here, and all the tents and trains getting ready for the throngs of Thomas fans.

While we were eating there, we could see Thomas giving rides, which only heightened the excitement of little boy. Alas, even the threat of Thomas not allowing him to ride didn't make little man eat any faster than normal. ;-) He's slooooooooooowww. But after he finally finished, we headed out to the car, and who should happen to be chugging down the track? Everyone's #1 blue engine, Thomas!

Little boy couldn't have been more thrilled to ride on Thomas' coaches (he decided we were riding on Clarabel, just so you know). I really felt like I was doing my job as a parent right that day. He was just beaming through the whole thing.

Here is a little closer look at Thomas, he's much bigger in person than on TV!

Here's a look inside the coach Thomas pulled (and pushed), somehow, saying "Here'a a look inside Clarabel just sounded dirty. ;-)

I thought that this would be something that would take 2, maybe 3 hours to do at best. Boy was I wrong. We were there and really busy from 10 am til 5 pm. It gave us time to do everything we wanted to do, though. The only disappointing part was that when it was time for the long train ride (not on Thomas, but an equally neat train), we were in line to get on this neat old coach that you could tell has been lovingly restored, and the crowd just kept inching in on the sides and while we started out maybe 4th in line, we couldn't get a seat on the coach because the people in front of us just kept letting everyone else go ahead. We did get on the train, but it was in a lounge car and we had to sit in ordinary parlor chairs. It was still neat, but after being in the coach, we would rather have sat up there. But that's a pretty minor complaint in the realm of things.

I didn't have time to scan the photos of some of the other stuff, but this gives you a pretty good idea of what was happening there. Little Boy also got to meet and take a picture with Sir Topham Hatt. Little Boy has absolutely no fear of large characters. You would have thought he and STH had been friends for years. Little Boy threw and arm around him and smiled like he was the happiest kid in the world. We were a little surprise (and it probably had to do with little boy's energy level) that he wasn't excited to get to see Thomas close up, not to say he didn't like it. But, we probably were out of the parking lot all of 5 minutes before little boy fell fast asleep. I think that's the sign of having a really great day. We couldn't even rouse him to get some ice cream, and that's saying something!

So, if you have a youngster and are wondering if this is worth going to, I can only speak about the Strasburg Railroad location, but it is absolutely a great experience. I'm very glad we went. Worth every penny (and by the time we left, we spent a lot of pennies at the clothing and toy store - yikes!) Go. Have a great time with the little one in your life!

Dave

God's View of Me, Part 1

2005-09-30T13:13:00.000-04:00

Hi Avenuers!

I'm hoping that this turns out to be a cool post. It at least seems like a good idea now. I checked out Google Earth and had a lot of fun playing with the satellite views of the world. So, I thought I would take you on a tour of my life as God might see it. ;-)

I was born in a small city in upstate New York called Elmira, not to be confused with the Halloween sex object Elvira. I'd show you exactly where I was born, but while I can drive by it, I can't find it on Google Earth. But it was at the big hospital in Elmira, in 1970. ;-)

I can vaguely remember living in one house before this (no idea where it is), and more clearly recall living with my grandparents for a time, but below is the house I would say I "grew up" in. My Dad and Grandfather and a bunch of their buddies/co-workers built this house. Two things I remember about it being built, 1. I climbed into my grandfathers truck and found a box of construction grade staples. I grabbed a handful and had about 20 punctures in my palm before I realized what was going on, and bled all over the floor of the truck. 2. After that, they gave me a small hammer, a few nails, confined me to a closet and said to pound the nails into the wall all I wanted, but don't leave the closet (there was no door at the time, just a big piece of plywood). But this is 1116 Park Terrace, Horseheads, NY. You can tell it's out in the boonies because it's right on the edge of Google Earth's Nobody-lives-there-anyway-why-bother-photographing-it edge at the bottom of the image.

Below this, are my grandparents' house. Outside of Charlie Bucket, I haven't met anyone else who had their sets of grandparents live so close. My mom was literally the girl next door. On the far left nearer to the top is a church, in the bottom right corner is a neighbor's house. The two houses in between were where my grandparents lived. My mom's parents lived in the one with the darker roof, my father's the house with the lighter roof. The memories here are too great to number, but it was a lot of room to run around in. And with 11 cousins and a sister, we needed it! It seems odd to me that my mom's father's garden isn't there anymore. The shed is still out there, but the greenhouse, cherry tree, grapevines and sunflowers are all gone now. My aunt lives in that house at the moment. The new owners of my father's parents place added a garage to the front, and took what used to be the garage and made that living space. I haven't been in it since the new owners bought it, apparently, they've done extensive remodeling. I'd love to see what it's like now.

Unfortunately, this is where all of my grandparents are now. Looking at this really made me realize how much I miss them.

I'm not sure what circumstances led to this, but for a brief time, we lived in the second house from the right. I believe we just rented it. Neither of the neighbors had a pool then, but I played in the field at the bottom center a lot. There was a big scary dog in the field (someone's yard) at the bottom right.

Here is where I spent several formative years. This is Sing Sing Elementary and Junior High Schools. Despite it's ominous-sounding name, it wasn't a bad place to go to elementary school. I went here from Kindergarten through 4th grade. I remember it snowing heaviily in April here. I don't remember ever having off of school because of snow. I mean, I remember playing in waist-deep in snow at recess (granted, I was much smaller then, but that's still a significant amount). That would never happen in Baltimore, where I live now. Schools close at the mere threat of snow. I'm not sure what the green-roof part of the building is, that's an addition since I went there.

So those are the most significant geographical points in my New York life, below are a just for fun. Below is the community pool that I used to absolutely love to go swimming in. It's hard to tell in this image whether it was drained or just shone brightly when the image was taken. I'm thinking it was drained for the season, as no one seems to be there.

Again, with an image on the edge of the boonies, below is the Arnot Mall. If you look at the post from a few weeks ago about the mall, you can see the inside back in the 60s. That part is right next to the area where the image starts to blur, running parallel to it. The other 4/5ths or so of the mall was built in the early 80s. It was a favorite hangout when I was in town. It has a big glider (engineless plane) in the center atrium, because that area is the "Soaring Capitol of the World".

I was disappointed to see what happened to Eldridge Park. It doesn't appear to really be there anymore. There was a roller coaster and a ride where you sat in a car that had this big wood or metal flap/sail thing. It spun around and you moved the flap to catch air, and it made you sail out further over the lake. It was cool. There was also a haunted house that I never went in, etc. Basically, the closest thing we had to a theme park. I was hoping on the next visit to maybe take some photos of the broke-down old place, but that seems impossible, now. *sniff*.

So, that's a brief history of my first ten years of life. Stay tuned for the following 4 years, known as the Houston era...

Dave

Douche the right thing

2005-09-28T13:21:00.000-04:00

It's only too funny. I have a Miniature Schnauzer, he's a great little dog with the heart of a wolf, at least in his mind. We call him our "alarm dog" because while he is great at making a lot of noise and acting vicious, when the danger actually gets close enough to do damage, his mantra is "Do what you want with the humans, but leave me alone!"

Anyway, ever since we got him he has bad problems with his ears getting infected. His ear canals are very small and very full of hair, which leads to said infections. Usually when they start to get serious, he starts thumping at his ears with his hind legs. He always seems to find the hollowest parts of the floor to do it, and usually it's very close to my son's room, and almost always while my son is asleep.

Well, he didn't seem to be going after his ears any more than normal, and when we had him groomed, the groomer said he had a yeast infection in his ears. Ick. I cleaned them out, and just tons of brown blech came out. I felt horrible. But the groomer said the way to take care of the infection was to 1. Clean his ears with the liquid that comes in douches for women, and 2. Treat with Monistat 7 for...you guessed it...7 days. I learned far more about "female problems" than I ever intended. Mrs. Dave was quite concerned that people might think she's some kind of filthy ho with all the female stuff we bought for the dog. It's no wonder "douche" has become such a funny word. Say it again and again...douche, douche, douche. Little Douche coup...I'm laughing at the mere mention right now!

But we are 4 or 5 days into it now, and I must say, it has worked splendidly. It may seem silly, but it's actually good advice if your dog has a problem with ear infections. Like Ripley said...believe it, or not...

Dave

Oh, I'm still working on my Thomas and mini-train photos, I've just been busy working on my resume and shiz.

C-ya!

Poddy Training

2005-09-19T14:41:00.000-04:00

I'm going through poddy training. Or my iPod is, because it WIPED itself clean. Everything gone, *poof* just like that. No formalities or emotional goodbyes, just gone. Gone.

I don't know if the problem was in iTunes or in the iPod, but I got a little pop-up warning about iTunes.exe being corrupt (even though iTunes was still working). While we were out this weekend, when we started our trip, it was fine, but the next day I couldn't get the thing to access any menus. I could fwd or go to previous songs in the list, but that was it (of course, stuck in my son's playlist). There was the coicidence of my getting a Kensington FM transmitter for my iPod (totally kick-ass, I was pleasantly surprised), but I don't think something like that could creep in and skunk the software without rendering the whole thing useless. We'll see. I reformatted the iPod and now I have to put all my music back on there. It's just a PITA, but I'm glad to have it working again.

Phew!

Dave

Lookie where I'm headed!

2005-09-09T16:23:00.000-04:00

This is where I'm going to be spending next Friday night (16th)! Not that I would normally stay at a place like this, much less be excited about it, but we are taking my son to the A Day Out with Thomas (the Tank Engine, for those of you without kiddies) at the Strasburg Railroad in Pennsylvania. He doesn't really know that he's going yet. We told him about it a while ago, but have learned better than to get him hyped up for something before the day of the event. He has trouble sleeping, etc. like any kid might. But it should be fun. I mean, can you think of anything more exciting than to spend the night in a caboose so you can see a real Thomas the Tank Engine if you were 3 years old? No way!

I hope to take some better photos than those on this site, I'll post them when we get back. I'm looking forward to it, just to see how he reacts to Thomas life sized, etc.

I really like Thomas the Tank Engine, too. I love the way the stories are told so that they teach some important lessons to the kids without using a sledgehammer to drive them home. They are subtle, but the kids still get the idea. Some shows are just so blatant about their message that they lose any sense of fun. I hope one day to write stories in that vein. Stay tuned, I'm hoping things turn out just ducky or something like that.

Dave

Fishin' for Compliments

2005-08-24T15:57:00.000-04:00

Check it out! The University of Baltimore features one of my graphic design projects on its Print Design Showcase page. Too Cool! This was my Independent Study project for the fictional University of Baltimore Barbarians football team. It was a lot of fun to work on. They haven't put a new project on this site for a really long time, so it's a special accomplishment.

Barbarians Project

Enjoy,

Dave

Back from the edge

2005-08-22T12:13:00.000-04:00

Back from vacation. Had a great time at Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland, played "too much" golf, ate "too many" of Mrs. Dave's awesome chocolate chip cookies, took "too few" pictures because I forgot to bring my danged camera, stayed in a place that was awesome (you know it's pretty good if the 3 year-old gets to sleep in a queen-sized bed), watched the little man "drive" our boat (he was actually steering with a little guidance now and then) and came home "too early." Well, actually, it was OK that we were coming home, I just didn't feel like driving.

Our schedule was a little odd compared to most of our vacations, we went up to the lake on Monday afternoon and came back late Friday morning, so we really only spent 3 solid days there, even though the vacation was a week.

I only wish I could have relaxed more. I left a lot of stuff up in the air and/or in the care of other people when I left. With a new boss that I want to continue to impress, I guess I just anticipated the worst-case scenarios and my stomach and jaw let me know every once in a while that I was worried about it. Turns out I needn't have been, but what can I do? It was just unusual because with one exception, I have a great ability to forget about work while I'm on vacation. Golf helped, but I played so poorly it was embarassing.

But anyway, I'm still meaning to post the photos of the miniature trains we rode on a while ago and some others. Got to get scannin' again. (Curse me and my "film" camera and "forgetful nature" as I skip right over the checkbox for Photos to CD).

So that's me, how the hell are you doin'?

Dave

March of the Penguins

2005-08-08T17:43:00.000-04:00

What a great movie. I'm a sucker for almost any wild animal documentary. But it was beautifully shot and told. Morgan Freeman does an excellent job in the narration. It was just a fascinating story. How about that Leopard Seal, though? Wow! I never realized there were seals that big, much less that aggressive. Grabbed that 'guin like it was a chew toy.

We took the little ones to see it. 3 and almost a half is probably a little too young for this kind of movie, but they enjoyed what they did see. As long as I kept the popcorn coming, my nephew was happy!

But, if you haven't seen it yet, take a chance and go see it. It's only about 80 minutes long, so it won't take up too much of your time, and I think you'll be happily surprised.

Dave

Whoa! I've been there!

2005-08-05T12:53:00.000-04:00

Veer.com posted a link to this blog, and I was just shocked that they had a photo of the Mall in town where I grew up. I posted a long comment on there, so I won't repeat it all here. It just caught me off guard. Lots of memories flooding back. Amazing what your brain can do with a little prodding. Who'd have thought I would see this link and it happen to have a photo of that dinky ol' little mall (now bigger)? I must say, I don't recall this mall ever being this well lit! This section always seemed kinda dark. Not in a bad way, but just definitely not as bright as this photo suggests.

Oops, forgot the link...

The Fabulous Horseheads Mall (Now the Arnot Mall)

Hopefully, since it's loaded onto blogger, he won't mind that I'm putting the photo here. But, see if your old haunt is on his site!

Dave

Buy 99, get 1 free, What a deal!

2005-08-03T10:44:00.000-04:00

So, a month-and-a-half ago I got my free ipod (yay!) and I've been slowly converting my CDs to digital files to put on it. Along the way, I picked up a couple of free tunes from Apple at the How Conference and won 6 from Colgate Max Fresh (game is over now, sorry). So, with no big contests going on to win more, at least that I'm aware of (and I'm not buying Slurpees just for free tunes!), I broke down and bought a $15 prepaid iTunes card at Target. But I started thinking, almost all of the songs on iTunes are 99¢, so when I have purchased 15 tunes, I'll have 15¢ left over and what do you do with that?? Maybe I'm just not the audiophile others are, but it may take a bit for me to get to 99 purchased songs. But I'd better do it within 2 years or I lose it.

So, I'm sure this has occurred to someone at Apple, why can't you buy a $14.85 iTunes card? Ok, there are album considerations, but be quiet with your "common sense".

Dave

Feed the Need

2005-07-27T01:43:00.000-04:00

I've been curious about how RSS feeds work and finally decided to give it a shot. Not that this is a must have feed, but if you want to try it yourself, click the feed logo in the link section and follow the instructions from there.

Enjoy!

Dave

Late Nite Drink and Dial

2005-07-26T15:17:00.000-04:00

So, Mrs. Dave is in New Orleans for a conference. She's apparently having quite a lot of fun because I got a call around 1 am from a more than slightly inebriated Mrs. Dave asking me what it is I do to keep her happy in bed! This was quite surprising as I could hear one of her companions in the background talking drunk-loud saying she wasn't getting it very good from her husband. My first thought was "try doing it a little more often than every other month!" So of course it came out as "Bring her by when you get back and I'll demonstrate."

I had no idea where they were aside from being somewhere in the French Quarter, so I tried to get as much embarassing info as possible. They talked about going by one of the strip clubs and were shocked that they showed much in the posters for the place. I also gathered that despite the fact that the other girl was in fact, once a catholic schoolgirl, she would not dress the part any longer for her hubby. "That's a problem," I said. So, between interruptions, I gathered that this was a catholic school girl that paid attention! So, I told her all hope was lost, but we could try. hehehehehe playing with a drunk's mind can be great fun.

Dave

From the "Things you can learn from your kids" file:

2005-07-25T10:44:00.000-04:00

When you are in a tight spot, say you just jumped on your dad's stomach when he wasn't expecting it, causing him significant pain for instance, apologize first (the bigger puppy dog eyes you can make, the better), then use this magical trick: say "Let's laugh." It's immediately disarming and gets the other person in a better mood. You don't even need to laugh at anything in particular, just laugh. I have to smile just thinking about it.

Destined to be some sort of world leader, I tell ya...

Dave

Somethin' I've been meaning to show you

2005-07-21T14:06:00.000-04:00

A while ago I posted about how much work went into repainting my son's bedroom, I believe in the end we went around the room about 40 times with removing the old wallpaper, painting the trim, 3 colors, masking, 2nd and 3rd coats, etc...

Well, I finally remembered that I had photos to share so you can see the result. We really like it. Good thing, too because it was way too much work to be unhappy with it when we were done!

Without further ado:

Here is the view from the doorway looking in. The only difference now is that we have put a couple of paintings of a moving truck and a dump truck on the wall to the right. We got those and the letters over the head of his bed from Target. Turned out kinda cool since there's red in his comforter, too.

Here is the wall to the left of the photo above. We got the sign at a Fall Festival last year. We were going to put it in our basement, but it just worked well in this room. When we got it, his room was still a "baby" room. But this is his big-boy room. We got the shelves at IKEA from their home office line. Worked perfectly. We really liked that having these prevented a dresser from taking up a huge amount of floor space. He has a closet organizer and all of his clothes and such are in there. But, with only the bed taking up floorspace, he has lots of room to set up his Thomas train tracks or whatever else he wants. We were going to put the shelves together in a block with the alternating doors/no doors, but it was kinda bulky looking. Then Mrs. Dave had the brilliant idea of separating them some, sort of giving us even more shelf space, plus it framed the sign just right. Can you tell Mrs. Dave is a reading teacher???? The shelf with doors on the right is full of more seasonal books (and Wiggles and Baby Einstein videos).

And finally (for today), here is a view of the room to the right of the first photo. Not really a lot to it except the closet doors and a small set of storage bins for the boy's smaller toys. Notice that they follow the pattern of the walls, except the red on bottom, but still, that worked!

So, turned out pretty well. The good thing is that if the boy's tastes should ever change from trucks and other things wheeled, the room can stay the same, just have to change the decorations.

Stay tuned over the next couple of days, I've got some photos of a couple of weekend trips we took recently. One to a balloon festival and another to a model train park like none you've probably ever seen! You can ride these models!

Dave

Illustration Friday: Sport

2005-07-01T15:30:00.000-04:00

Do I get thrown out of Illustration Friday for using a photograph mainly? Maybe I should start Design Friday? Anyway, I've always thought that surely God must enjoy a good fight because he built weapons and defenses into every animal. Really, he could have made us all docile plant eaters who don't overpopulate themselves if he wanted to. But no, he gave us earth dwellers claws, sharp teeth, horns, blazing speed, incredible strength, enormous size, camouflage, the ability to reproduce quickly, venom and brains or some combination of those. All to put up a good fight against one another to survive. I like the image because you don't know who won this...

Dave

Chicago, here I come!

2005-06-10T13:13:00.000-04:00

Well, it's the eve of the HOW Conference. I'm really pumped up to go! I couldn't feel much less prepared to go at this point, though. Nothing is ironed much less packed, I couldn't get my new business cards in time, I haven't printed my Howie badge yet, I still have to mow the lawn and install some new door locks, I want to enter my Barbarians project into the CMYK contest, but that's probably not going to happen til next issue now. Blech. I'm glad I picked up "The Now Habit" to work on my procrastination, but I just haven't had time to read it. (insert ironic chuckle here)

But, there are so many people I'll know this time! Von, Steve G (RDQ), Amy Craig and the sisterhood, Designgrrrl, Mel(issa), JReynard, Krudos, Jeff Fisher (of course) and Ed, and many others. It will be a blast! If I can, I'll post some entries here regarding the conference. Unfortunately, I don't have a digital camera, so I won't be able to do insta-photos here.

Sounds like the weather there won't be much different than it is here, so nothing lost or gained.

If you will be there, I can't wait to meet you, if not, we'll think about you and laugh after our 6th drink.

So long suckaz! ;-)

Dave

Sorry, not that anyone is reading this...

2005-06-06T11:28:00.000-04:00

Oy, just been so busy at work, no time for updates lately! Hope to resume with some regularity soon!

Dave

Odd, but entertaining mix

2005-05-27T13:52:00.000-04:00

I happened to get two gifts from co-workers over the past few weeks. My company is huge enough that we can throw $25 certificates around to each other to show appreciation for handing each other a paper clip and that kind of thing (ok, it has to be for something more than that, but we can hand out as many as we like, but can only receive 4 per year).

So, I happened to get two in two weeks time. Mine were for Amazon.com. I ordered the new Harry Potter book (obviously still waiting on that), but then I also got Team America: World Police Uncut and Uncensored. I haven't watched the film yet, but today at lunch, I watched a couple of the extras about the making of the movie, and it was really interesting. They had to have a TON of patience to make that film. It will be interesting to see how it differs from what I saw in the theater.

But the other item was for my son. It's a book called Finklehopper Frog. It is really a delightful children's book. Written in a very bouncy (as you would expect a Frog book to be), well-paced and well-rhymed tale about Finklehopper getting a "jazzy" jogging suit and trying to jog. The illustration is outstanding and it's really juat and all-around great work. I highly recommend it if you have little ones or just can appreciate a well-done children's book.

Like I said, an odd, but entertaining mix, and I'm really looking forward to HP6!

Enjoy!

Dave

Will St. Pete forget that "other" stuff?

2005-05-27T13:50:00.000-04:00

since I did a sorta good deed?

A couple of weeks ago I entered our laundry room in the basement and saw something small move near some shelves. There it was, a good-sized mouse. He took off before I could catch him.

So, I'm thinking "Oh crap! How did s/he get in here?" There's no entryway from the outside to our basement, so we think he either came in through the new laundry vent somehow or through the hole where the satellite cable comes in, with the former being much more likely.

We go to Home Depot and look at our options. Most of which are unappealing, they either require poison, which wouldn't be good because my son or dog might get into it, and besides, what if the thing dies somewhere we can't get to it? Or worse, if we can reach it, it would just be a nasty thing to have to deal with.

Then there were your traditional mouse traps. Again, the nasty factor made these unappealing. Just eeeewwwwww. I have a bad thing about dead mice because once I was working on the interior of an old house and we were taking down cieling tiles and three very old dead mice fell on my head, kinda freaked me out.

Besides, I don't really want to kill this thing, I just want him out of my house. So, thinking there may be no other way, I happened to notice they had live traps. You put peanut butter in the end and when the mouse goes to get it, it moves the trap enough to close the door. I had no idea if it would work or not, but it was worth a shot.

Well, It only took two days and we bagged him! Funny thing was, I took him out to the woods to release him, but he didn't want to go. I carefully opened the door, hoping he wouldn't come out fighting. I gave it a little shake, no mouse. I shake a little harder and tilt the trap almost vertically, no mouse. I'm thinking, it will be really embarassing to go home and tell Mrs. Dave I thought we had it, but we didn't. But I shine the flashlight in there, and sure enough, he's in there, just hanging on for dear life. I gave one more good shake and he finally popped out.

I hope I haven't made him easy prey for a wandering fox or something, because he's covered in peanut butter. But, he looked at me, probably scared to death, or just blinded by the flashlight. He was all wet, not sure why, but after he got his bearings, he hauled ass. What really surprised me was he was jumping about 2 feet at a time. Boing, Boing, Boing and he was halfway into the woods.

So, do you think St. Pete will forget about stuff like Spring Break 1992 or my buddy's bachelor party or the "incident" at the Hustler Club in New Orleans? Does being kind to God's creatures (so what if we've been nuking some ants in our kitchen!) get you out of purgatory?

Dave

My Pet Hammerhead

2005-05-16T10:08:00.000-04:00

Apparently my luck and grace tickets expired on Saturday, because Sunday was rough for me. It started out well enough. Little boy got up a little earlier than normal, but he was good. So after a fine breakfast, we were upstairs getting ready to go to see little boy's grandparents. We were waiting for Mrs. Dave to finish getting ready.

Little boy and I were roughhousing on the bed, as we are prone to doing when nothing else is happening. So, we tumbled and wrestled and tickled and giggled. We had worn ourselves out a bit and I was lying on my back looking up. My son was looking back at me and imitating his mother scolding him "I'm not playing with you!" he said with a smile and pointed finger. He got a little closer, "I'm not playing with you!" This time I was laughing because he did the impression so well. I turned my eyes just to glance at the TV when, without warning, WHAM! It felt like a hammer hit me in the cheek just below my eye. I howled in pain and surprise, then little boy was crying and Mrs. Dave is trying to figure out what the hell happened.

Mrs. Dave, of all people taught little boy early on how to "clunk" heads. It was just a gentle head butt, but they've gotten a little out of control of late. We're trying to get him to stop, but it's a slow process. He just doesn't realize how hard he's doing it sometimes. But, he was just trying to clunk me on the forehead, but he brought the hammer down. Oy! It hurt the rest of the day! Fortunately, no bruising, though. A friend of mine had something similar happen, but it did a lot more damage, she was lucky it didn't break the bone around the eye orbit.

But, as I said, grace expired, too. We have semi-spiral stair cases in our house. That means that instead of a real landing to turn to continue up the stairs, there are two steps cut at 45°. Or you could say the landing is a triangle. But, I think semi-spiral stairs is accurate. But I'm going downstairs to check the laundry, when my foot slips on one of these stairs. I tried to catch myself (unfortunately it's not an uncommon occurence), but it was too late. My left foot shot out and headed further down the stair, and my right foot got stuck on the step enough that I couldn't get it in front of me. So, I'm rushing toward the wall, with no real way to stop. CRACK! I felt my knee impact the wall. I braced for the pain. I was sure I must have broken my kneecap with that noise...but nothing serious came. It was me vs. the wall and the wall lost. Luckily, I hit a hollow part of the wall instead of a stud, and it gave way. Walking down the stairs at my house can be dangerous for me, and ours are carpeted! So, of course, after she realized I was Ok, Mrs. Dave starts laughing uncontrollably.

But I wasn't done. Somehow, and it's still a mystery, I was using the restroom, *ahem* in the uniquely male position of standing, and while everything felt normal, somewhere, somehow things were taking a detour and hitting the wall. (Cue more of Mrs. Dave's uncontrolable laughter)It was truly bizarre. I shan't try to over analyze it, but how do you miss that bad?? ;-)

Dave

Illustration Friday - Nourishment

2005-05-13T11:54:00.000-04:00

Somebody had to do it! (Warning: may not be considered work-safe)

Here's a link, at least til I chose a new layout for this blog where I can have landscape images that don't screw with my bio and links.

Dave

Illustration Friday! Mischief

2005-05-06T17:03:00.000-04:00

Well, last week's was so much fun, I thought I'd try another. This weeks word is Mischief. That word always seemed to be coupled with the term "Satan finds work for idle hands." So I thought of Satan as working at the unemployment office, someplace I don't wanna be. I "borrowed" the devil and hand, but this is just for fun, so I thought, "What the hell?" >;-) Again, also used Keith Bowman's brushes liberally. I can't actually draw worth a damn, but I can put good stuff together...

Dave

Just one more!

2005-05-04T17:10:00.000-04:00

I just need one more referral for the iPod! I'd be so appreciative if you did it (if you haven't already, thanks Joepe!)

PLEASE???!!!! I'll be your bestest friend....

Here's the link again

Thanks in advance!!!

Dave

Please say I'm worth it

2005-05-02T15:31:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm taking the chance on this, and if you would be so kind, help me out. Since I can't actually afford one right now, I'm trying to get a free iPod from freeipods.com. I was going to try to be greedy and go for the Photo iPod, but I'll just be a wreck asking 10 people to be victi- uh, referrals. So for a standard iPod, I only need five, and I have two for sure.

So, if it helps, think of it as your saying congratulations on graduating and getting your Masters degree to me. You just have to sign up for one of their offers (Blockbuster, Napster, and a cool one from Teleflora - order flowers for your Mom, help Dave get an iPod! How cool is that??? Everybody wins!)

After I get home tonight, I'll get the link. YOU HAVE TO USE THIS LINK ONLY for me to get credit, you can't just go to freeipods.com. As soon as I get enough, I'll change this post to say so. I'm just in it for the freebies. ;-)

*Here is the link! Come one, come all!*

Thanks in advance!

Dave

Illustration Friday!

2005-04-29T15:43:00.000-04:00

Well, I don't remember ever doing something like this, but it was fun. Joepe inspired me to give it a shot. I've got a way to go before I'm on his level, but you have to start somewhere, right?

For those familiar with them, you'll easily recognize that I created the whole thing with brushes from Keith Bowman, a few may have also been from AngryBlue, but I'm not positive.

So, the theme is Ambition. I haven't felt like I've had a lot lately and need the proverbial carrot to get me going. What do you think?

Dave

I'm Kick-Ass

2005-04-27T13:50:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Ruggerswithpigs for this, I am a nearly perfect Jedi, though prone to self-inflicted injury, and my boss is James Bond:

Who knew?

Dave

The Environmental Terrorist

2005-04-25T10:20:00.000-04:00

Ack! The boy is destroying my environment! Not that he hasn't been his own mini hurricane in the past, but lately he is just into EVERYTHING. These paint supplies certainly need to be knocked over, those folded clothes definitely don't need to stay in the basket. Hey, that looks like I could reach it...I only need the one on the bottom of the pile...I'd really love to play with the sand from the sandbox inside...I'll park my tricycle right here behind where Mommy/Daddy are standing, oops, did I run over your toes for the 5th time...say, it's kinda quiet, I should whine or just outright cry about something...Oooh, Mommy and Daddy are putting together some shelves for my room, cool! I think I'll stand on one and see if they're fun to jump off, I wonder if that other shelf would be a good place to land...hey, no one's looking BJ(our dog), let's go downstairs and hide or go outside, in the rain...I'm bored, let me jump in the way at every oppotunity...

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Oh, we knew we would go through this, but it is unnerving some days!!! We were just trying to get his room finished and he would NOT get out of the way. He was in few time outs, but they only had a temporary effect. We can't get too upset with him, though. He was in trouble for not listening mainly. We just didn't want him hurt when we were moving big things around and couldn't necessarily see him all the time. He just wanted attention and we were just so busy just trying to get everything done in his room (touching up the paint, putting new decorations up, installing his new shelves, etc).

He just kept lingering around the paint cans and we know he is prone to "accidents" when he's around something he's interested in. We could just see the cans getting tipped over because he "tripped". But, we are probably 98% done, finally. Everything is painted (all 6 paints), his new decorations are hung, and we got these cabinets from IKEA that worked out really well. They just hang on the wall and we, well, I'll have to take photos to explain, but it's pretty cool, and little boy seems to like it a lot. He called the open cabinets his "Hot Dog Stand". Cool thing was that we hung the cabinets above the outlets, so even though the shelves take up a lot of space, he still has most of the floor to play on. So, it's cool, and hopefully life will return to some sense of normal soon. The house was a complete wreck while we were working on the room, not helped by our little Environmental Terrorist ;-), who we love very much.

Dave

What a drag it is getting old

2005-04-19T09:54:00.000-04:00

"I'm just not the same today"
I hear ev'ry muscle say
You just don't appreciate that we get tired
You're so hard to satisfy, We can't tranquilize your mind
And go runnin' for the shelter of our papa's little helper
And four gets you through the night, helps to minimize your plight

~ paraphrased from Lyrics by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

Man, I am one hurtin' pile of bones. I think this is the first time I've ever really felt my age catching up to me. I'm all of 34 years old, but felt really creaky this weekend.

Little boy isn't as little as he used to be. It's time for a big boy bed. No problem, right? Mrs. Dave wants to change a few things in little boy's room to go from super-cute baby's room (ever notice it's only a "nursery" until the kid is actually born, then it become (Baby's name)'s room?) to super-cute little boy's room. "I don't want to do anything major, and if we can keep from painting or only paint a little, that would be best." Bear in mind that this is a only a 10'x10' room.

So, now 4 colors of paint, 2 of which have two types (flat and semi-gloss) and two coats of all but one of those colors and types, and I'm shot. In case the previous sentence doesn't make sense, here's the deal. The cumulative number of trips around the room are in parenthesis.

Prep: Super-cute babyish wallpaper border needs to be removed. Fortunately I manage to get most of the top layer off just by pulling it off (1). Then we had to use a Paper Tiger to score the remainer of the wallpaper(2). I perhaps got a little too aggressive with it. But it did the job. Then we sprayed this stuff on the paper to remove it from the wall(3). It worked pretty well. It did an excellent job on the paper that was self-glued. The part where we had to paste it ourselved (I guess they forgot the self-glue on that batch), it was a little more difficult, but it still worked. Then had to scrape off the more stubborn areas(4). After that, and realizing I pushed too hard with the paper tiger, I had to go back and put a light spackle in the claw marks(5).

Now I had to spackle other holes in the wall from various reasons like pictures, shelves, etc(6). Sand all spackling smooth, including tiger marks(7). Next, caulk spaces between the crown molding and wall/ceiling(8/9). We should have done this when we first put the molding up, but ran out of time. Lots of messy overhead work. Ok, so after all of that, the room looks just the same only without the wallpaper border.

The PAINt:
Paint 1 - White Ceiling paint, two coats of edging the perimeter, two coats on the rest of the ceiling, lots of looking up and reaching overhead.(10,11,12,13)

Paint 2 - Yellow Semi-gloss for crown molding - mercifully, since the molding was yellow before, it only needed one coat. Again, lots of overhead reaching and looking. (14)

Paint 3 - Yellow flat - This goes around the top half (or so, maybe a little more) of the walls up to the crown molding. Most of which is at eye level or higher. Edging two coats, painting two coats (15,16,17,18)

Paint 4 - Green flat - at least it was supposed to be. We didn't double check and actually got green semi-gloss, right now we're thinking we can live with it rather than repaint it. We'll see. Two coats. - This is just a 10" or so stripe around the whole room. Probably the easiest to do, as the stripe is just about waist high. (19,20)

Paint 5 - Blue Flat. - This goes around the whole room from the green stripe down to the baseboards. Two coats. - It's a nice blue that is somewhere between navy and royal blue, not too dark, not too pastel. Edging two coats, painting two coats (21,22,23,24)

Paint 6 - Blue semi-gloss - For the baseboards, door frame, one side of the door and the closet doors. This was probably the killer of all of them. Doing the baseboards takes forever for such a small area. Right now, we only have one coat of that done and it absolutely needs another. It's just sitting indian-style and crouching down to paint the baseboard really takes a toll on your back. I got about halfway around the room before I had to stand up and man, that was painful! (25, 26-to come soon!)

But let us not forget the other trips around the room: For masking tape! Since we had so many colors, we had to be careful not to get them all over each other. So, we had to tape off first for the yellow(26), all the way around the room. Next was for blue(27), then the ceiling (to paint the molding)(28). After we get all that painted and tape pulled down, we had to put up the tape to contain the green stripe, so two times around for that(29,30)! Then we went around to touch up the green stripe(31,32 - once for yellow, once for blue). Masking tape can allow a little bleed through the edges, so we had to clean up some of the more glaring splotches. Of course, as I was going through it, I goofed and made it worse in a couple of spots than it was originally. Luckily nothing I can't fix by touching up with green.

I should note that Mrs. Dave edged the flat yellow once, did the first coat of green, did half of the caulking of the molding and touched up the yellow/green border. But most importantly, she painted the closet doors and the room door while I painted in the room itself.

So, after all is said and done, we went around that room about 35 times! I'll post some pictures when the room is done and we have all the furniture in. Right now, little boy's changing table is taking up a lot of space in our bedroom at the foot of our bed, as is the rocking chair his play kitchen. He's been sleeping in the guest bedroom the past two nights. But for all of our efforts, it has been worthwhile. We really like how it looks so far. It was just a lot of work for something that looks so 'simple'. But with all those trips around the room, looking/reaching up, crouching down, rolling the paint on, taping, untaping, running up and downstairs to get stuff, whew! it was a lot of exhausiting work!

Last night and the night before, it has never felt so good to get in bed. They were just days that every muscle hurt and let me know about it...loudly. Who would have thought painting would be such good exercise? And don't get me started on the shelves I still have to put together...

I need a nap...

Dave

The Cherry Blossom Festival

2005-04-14T10:55:00.000-04:00

Warning: This may be a long post Due to the number of photos!

Last weekend we went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC. It's the first time I've been to DC during the Festival, which is hard to believe because I've lived so close to it for 20 years. But anyway, we got up on Saturday morning and headed out. We drove down to the Silver Spring Metro station and took the train in from there. Turns out that was a great idea because I heard parking was ridiculous. And for $7.50 round trip for both Mrs. Dave and I, you can't beat the price! Parking would have easily been more than that. We got off at Metro Central which dropped us off a few blocks further north than I expected, but it was Ok. We wouldn't have seen the Mickey Mouses if we had gone to the Smithsonian Station, so it all worked out.

Little boy was great through the whole thing, as exhausting as it was. The brief synopsis is:

1. Went to the parade 2. Had lunch at the cafe in the American History museum 3. Went to see the Cherry Blossoms at the Tidal Basin 4. Went to the WWII memorial 5. Trekked back to see the Mickey Mouses as we headed back to the train. 6. Headed home

Here are the photos:

Here is the first big balloon. Little boy knows Arthur, but I don't think recognized him at this size.

Here was the big star of the show. The police motorcycles and Mickey came a close 2 and 3, but this was definitely #1.

Here is one of the many tulips on display near the Cherry Blossoms. I don't usually do much floral photography, but this turned out better than I expected.

This was one of the few shots I could get of the blossoms that didn't have a crowd of people in it.

Here's the obligatory Washington Monument shot, but it was a nice photo. Too bad the base was a dirtpile. I'm not sure what they are planning on doing, but there's a lot of construction, mainly earthmoving and such for a large area around the base of the monument.

Here are a few of the pillars that surround the WWII memorial.

Here is another part of the WWII memorial. Each star represents 1000 troops killed in action. This is less than half of the display.

Here's a wide shot of the memorial. It was much larger than I thought it would be.

Here is Gary Baseman's Mickey Mouse, what would James Victore say if he knew?

Here's another Mickey, little boy loved this one of course because he's a train engineer.

There are a lot of photos I would have liked to take, but there were just so many people down there obscuring everything to some degree. This was especially the case at the WWII memorial. In the photo of the pillars above, I had to wait what seemed like forever for people to get their heads out of the shot. You could look between the columns that hold the wreaths. To give you an idea of the size, most people (on the other side) would not be taller than the slab on the column where the state's name is.

Dave

It's a zoo in there

2005-04-12T13:34:00.000-04:00

We went to the Zoo for my son's 3rd birthday. Mrs. Dave and I took the day off to take him there. His party was the weekend before, but we wanted to do something special for his actual birthday as well. We had a lot of fun. Here are some photos:

1. Two cool dudes heading for the monkey house (where we belong).

This is a relatively new exhibit for the Polar Bears. The bears have been there for years in a very old habitat that was basically concrete shaped rocks surrounded by water. You could say this is similar, but the point of view is much better! And they have a better area to move around in away from the water. Polar Bears are impressive creatures in photos, but when one is just on the other side of the glass from you, you sense how much you underestimate their size. This one was playing with a big plastic barrel while we were there, having fun and cooling off. At one point (from a different perspective) we saw him/her jump from the rocks onto the barrel and it made a spectacular splash! It must have been something to see from the angle from which these photos were taken:

This is intimidating, even with super-strong glass between you and the bear.

But then he just gets goofy, looking at a little girl on her dad's shoulders.

Here he is playing with the barrel. He just rolled over on top of it. He was having a ball!

There are other photos, but these were the most impressive of the bunch. Look out soon for photos from our trip to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC!

Dave

Takin' a header

2005-04-08T11:43:00.000-04:00

What do you think of the new header? When I look at the code for this template, my brain starts to hurt, I know a little HTML, but that's about it. Web programming ain't my bag. But I just wanted something a little different up there. I don't know if I'll keep that particular image or not, but I thought it was a nice one to start with. Now that I know a little bit about what I have to work with, I can probably do more than just have a photo at one end, text at the other. Naaamean?

Dave