Future Poltergeist

Yesterday I was looking at the maps on the wall with Relia and DF.  I asked her where she'd like to take a trip, and while she had many wonderful answers, the one that stuck with me was her desire to take a train to Kansas.  Me: Why Kansas? Relia: I want to go there and stay at an inn! Me: An inn? Relia: (tilts her head) Yes.  The one spelled I-N-N-N.  Um, ok, sweetie.  I'll see if I can make that happen.  In related news, DF got upset with her about Georgia.  I told them that they grow peaches there (it's on the map) and Relia said she loves them so much she'd eat them all.  This prompted DF to stamp his foot and yell, "Not all of them, Relia!".  Don't worry buddy, I'll make sure she leaves some peaches for you.

A typically thoughtful article on anticipation for the Olympics here .  The whole article is worth reading.  Don't miss the things that Joe is looking forward to in Sochi. This morning, the kids and I were looking at the maps on the wall.  This lead to some image searches at Google and that led me to take a look at Sochi .  Looks like a nice place.  I can now find it on a map, and with a little practice I'm sure Relia can too.

Yes, it's a new post.  I'm going to see if I can revive this blog.  Next month, in addition to doing NaNoWriMo, I'm going to do NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post Month).  The idea is to simply blog at least once per day, every day for a month.  I used to do that regularly but obviously I've fallen away from it.  I'll see if a good month can bring that back in line.

One of the most irritating scientific claims, for my money, is the idea that travel to a different star is impossible.  Or at least so economically difficult that it will never happen.  I was pleased to see this article that talks about how current or near-current technology could do it. 

One of the purest joys that I get from parenting is teaching things to my kids.  Relia especially right now, because she's at that age where she wants to know everything and can actually understand a great deal.  The other morning she asked me about New Jersey.  I explained to her that when Europeans moved there, they were reminded of the island of Jersey .  We then looked around for other 'New' states and cities (New York, New Orleans, etc.). She surprised me by saying that Minnesota doesn't have any of the 'new' cities.  I told her that we have New London and New Ulm, but her point was well taken.  Somehow she got the idea that Minnesota is far enough inland that it wasn't part of that tradition where regions were renamed for the European counterparts. I was a proud papa.

Over on my Great Books blog, I've branched off a bit and have been blogging my way through a book called 'The 100 Best Poems of All Time'.  They're collected here .  Every week (or so) I blog my way through one of them in an attempt to broaden my understanding of poetry.  Anyway, I thought that since this blog is not very busy anymore, my few remaining readers might be interested in having me share them over here too.  Drop a comment and let me. 

DF is convinced that he will someday (soon) be a baby again. He'll go back in Mommy's tummy and 'go to work' with here and all that. I told him that I wasn't sure that would happen. He asked why and I said that it had never happened to me. He . . . didn't want to talk about it anymore.

Interesting pics of an albino humpback whale that lives near Australia.  No idea how it feels about revenge though.

This is the twelfth anniversary of one of the worst days in our country's history.  Of course, I don't need to tell you that.  Everyone reading this blog is old enough to know what happened and I doubt there is a mental adult in the country that doesn't know what happened. Everyone remembers where they were on that day.  All of us have stories about where we were when we found out and what we did next.  That doesn't make it unique.  Just about everyone of the right age remembers where they were when the Challenger blew up or when JFK was shot.  Big events make a big emotional impact.  They're easier to remember. I was thinking about this today and I was struck by how September 11th stands out, maybe especially for my generation.  With the rise of social media and the relative ease of reconnecting on the internet in the middle 00's, I reestablished ties with most of the important people of my high school years.  With many of them, we talked ...

Some random Olympics stuff: On Saturday, the IOC announced that Tokyo would host the 2020 Olympics.  This will be their second as they also hosted the 1964 summer games.  I have little doubt that they'll do a wonderful job.   In two years, they will announce the host of the 2022 winter games.  You can see the list of cities that are preparing bids here .   The list of potential bids is heavily European, which isn't surprising.  In 2022 it will have been 10 years since a European city hosted.  (Yes, Sochi is 'European' but it's far on the fringe of Europe.) The US will bid for, and almost certainly win, the 2024 summer games.  We haven't hosted since the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City and that twenty plus year gap is a big one.  A huge amount of funding and commercial support comes from the US so it is only fair that we get to host every so often. Not everyone is happy with the idea of a US city hosting the Olympics, in large pa...

While in the car today, a song from Moulin Rouge came up on my iPod.  Relia asked if it was from a movie and then insisted she wanted to see it.  I told her she would have to wait until she was older.  Until she was a teenager.  Relia: Next year I'll be seven.  (pause)  Technically, that's a teenager.  Good grief, they grow up fast. 

Me: Do you know what Leo's name means? Felix: No. Me: It means 'lion'. (pause) Do you know what Felix means? Felix: Yes. Me: What? Felix: (nothing) Me: It means 'lucky'. Felix: No! It means 'elephant'. It means 'elephant that scares baby lions'!

I'm watching Leo explore our house (again) as he does every day.  I just got hit with a wave of preemptive nostalgia for the days when he won't need to explore again.  You see, he goes from commonplace object to commonplace object trying to figure out a) what it is for and more importantly b) what fun thing he can do with it.  We also run into c) is it light enough to move around on his own.  Everything gets inspected closely until he is distracted into inspecting something else. The something else is usually Ozzie.  He loves that cat.  Whenever he sees Ozzie he lights up.  Goes over to him and tries to interact.  This means that Leo tips his head to one side to be adorable and holding out a finger for sniffing.  Well, waving a finger.  He knows to do that but he doesn't have the speed right yet.  Ozzie then gets some pats and fawning and shortly thereafter escapes.  (I should mention that Ozzie is better with kids than any o...

Yesterday I washed the van while the kids were in it.  I was doing my part to encourage it to rain.  Alas, no luck.  Before the wash, I gassed up and while I was doing that, I heard shouting from inside.  Someone was yelling something like 'daddy'.  I peered through the very dirty windows and put a finger over my lips to DF, in the 'quiet' sign.  Then I noticed LL's smiling face and gave him a smile in return and a wave.  After the pump was done I went inside and paid for the car wash.  When I got back to the van, both Relia and DF told me that it was LL who was shouting 'Da-da!'.  He did so again, just to convince me that it wasn't a fluke.  We're tough judgers of words here.  Before we credit a new word to one of our kids, we need it to be clear and in context.  No accidental ones for us!  This time he passed the test.  Da-da indeed. (Of course I could have done without the honor the middle of last night when he...

Some absolutely great stuff in here.  My favorite is: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing.

I was going to write up our weekend out but the FP Gal did a great job so I'm just going to link .  There were many highlights, but getting a baseball was right up there. 

Watched a bit of a Felix the Cat cartoon this morning. A while later our DF quietly asked me "when was I a cat?".

Fascinating story from the last days of WW II.  I can't believe they weren't more careful with this stuff.

On Friday night we went to Frontenac State Park.  ('Frontenac' is French for 'daddy long legs', of which we saw at least a million.)  We got to the camp site just after lunch and we were lucky that the previous tenants had already checked out.  We could go right in.  We set up the new tent and another small tent that the FP Gal bought for the kids to play in.  We handed out whistles to the older kids in case they got lost in the woods.  Eventually we had take them back because they wouldn't stop 'practicing'.  LL got some jingle bells which we attached to his pants.  We were afraid that he'd hate them but he surprised us and loved them.  Right connected to the back of our site was a path to In Yan Teopa rock. This led us down to the a couple of spots overlooking Lake Peppin.  I took the bigger kids down there and within minutes we saw two different bald eagles soar past!  We saw the rock from above.  It wasn't very impressiv...