This is several months late, but there’s a point to all this…
In July, we went to Detroit (well, a little bit outside of it) to visit Claudine and Dan for 4th of July weekend. Their neighbor across the street always puts on a good fireworks show. It was a pretty awesome show, except for the time that the cops came by and told them to stop. No big accidents, just a little law breaking. We had a great time, and some DELICIOUS bratwurst that Dan picked up while driving around in Ohio.
What was pretty cool is that Dan got his party sponsored by Greased Lightning. He got a party kit, complete with plates, napkins, t-shirts, foam lightning bolts, temporary tattoos - all the fixings for a fun party. All he had to do was submit a video to enter their contest. So click on this link to see (and vote for) the video that was made - that’s Johnny and Frank singing Greased Lightning, and my sister Fatima who’s spelling out the words with sparklers (I took the pictures). Make sure you vote for Dan’s video to win!!!
One of the things I loved doing as a kid, walking home from school, was listening to the rustling of leaves as my feet shuffled through. I think it’s something that’s built into our brains - see leaves, run through, throw them in the air. Yesterday Dave and his dad got to work on raking the leaves in the backyard. Dave’s dad brought over Justin’s dog Brody, who eventually had to be tied to the hammock because he was getting too crazy. Ben was getting a little crazy as well, running from pile to pile and later picking up bunches of leaves and throwing them into the air. He was in heaven.
Simple things like that make for wonderful memories.
Last weekend was a BUSY weekend - I knew that it was going to be a marathon, but it was seriously exhausting.
It started off on Friday with a trip to Woodfield. We decided to eat at Red Robin and ran into an old friend from college, some we hadn’t seen in more than a decade. It’s weird to run into people from college now - before when it would happen, it would be at clubs or bars and we’re out socializing anyway. Now, we’re at the mall or eating dinner at family joints and we’re introducing our spouses and kids. We then spent the rest of our time there hanging out at the Lego store.
Saturday morning I overslept, which made me off for the rest of the day since I had a plan for what I was going to do. After getting the family fed and Ben ready for his grandparents (where were taking him for the day) I was able to get ready. Dave was on call that day, so he was stuck at home while I made my rounds.
First off was Deo and Laura’s wedding. I actually got to the wedding on time, and it was a quick, beautiful ceremony. There were a lot of people from college there, it was nice to see people and catch up a bit. I got a little nostalgic during the ceremony, remembering how young we all were and now most of us were married, with kids or with kids on the way. Life goes by so fast!
Right after Deo’s wedding, I drove back home, changed into a t-shirt and jeans, put my hair up and ran back out to head out to Tall Steve’s whirlyball birthday celebration. I love whirlyball…I would say it’s my best sport. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s basically lacrosse played on bumper cars. It takes a bit for beginners to figure out how to maneuver the cars (because it’s not your normal bumper car steering wheel) and learning how to score (it’s easier to score with a gentle flick of the wrist than to whip it at the target), but once you figure that out, and how important teamwork is to win the game, you can be a master! Its a lot of fun and a great way to bring people together. We played a lot in X-Systems. Anyway, it was Tall Steve’s big “really old” birthday party, and it was nice to see old faces lugging around their new babies.
We left whirlyball early (after 1 too many games, but what could I do, we went into overtime!) to go home and change. My sisters came over and we all quickly changed, got into my car, and headed for Chinatown. We ran into some frustrating traffic on the way (why?!? it’s saturday!) but got to the Vince and Kim’s reception before too many people were there (Fata was in charge of bringing the wishing well for cards). Luckily, Claudine and I found some pretty good, legal parking on the main street. Although we’d been to Furama many times before - mostly for parties, this was our first Chinese wedding. Ten courses is a LOT of food! It was pretty much delicious (except for the cauliflower/broccoli in sauce - but veggies aren’t my thing). It was a good time, with some great music. By the end of the night my feet were aching and I was exhausted!
Whew - that was just one day!
On Sunday, we went to church, then headed home and watched the first quarter of the Bears game which ROCKED! Then we headed out with my cousin and her kids to see “Disney Playhouse Live!“. At first, we couldn’t tell if Ben was having a good time - he was so serious and intense as he was watching the show, he didn’t move at all and didn’t want to be touched. But then when intermission came, he yelled, “More!” and after we told him they were coming back, he kept on pointing to the stage and saying, “They’re coming back soon!” He was so happy and active during intermission, but as soon as the lights went down, he was back into serious statue mode. In the end, he loved it. He kept on talking about it and asking if we could go back to the show.
After stopping home for a bit, we went to my cousin Trully’s place for our annual cousin pumpkin carving night. Every year (except for last year, I think) we get together to carve pumpkins. This year was our best turnout every - we had about 16 people (not counting half people) come with 11 pumpkins carved. Carving pumpkins is pretty hard work, and we had joked that we didn’t have to use pumpkins as an excuse to get together - it was too tiring! However, I think it’s something that we all look forward to at this time of the year. We didn’t even bother with the kids - we just let them run around and fend for themselves.
So it was a pretty busy weekend for us! I’ve got a lot more pictures from Deo and Kim’s weddings, I’ll post them up eventually. (meaning probably never, but we’ll see!)
We saw a lot of animals in Alaska. We took a stop at the Anchorage zoo, which really was a big forest with pens to hold animals (with the exception of the Polar Bear habitat). It was a really great place, even though it’s smaller than most zoos I’ve seen. But outside of the zoo, there was a ton of wildlife to be seen! We saw two moose (mooses? meese? mice?) when we were in a shuttle. They were just outside someone’s yard, chewing on some bushes. They didn’t look like I expected, but I guess it’s because it’s not the season for horns yet. There were also a ton of bald eagles everywhere, though they were usually high up in the trees or far away (as you can see from the two golf ball looking like things in one of my pictures). From the train going to Seward we saw the white backsides of beluga whales popping above the water every now and then (no WAY I was going to catch those guys in a pictures - they’re too fast and it’s hard to tell when they’re coming up for air). From the boat we could see dolphins/porpoises, seals and jellyfish. At port, we saw a “wild” cat, and there were lots of dogs for Benjamin to play with.
We also saw a couple shows. In Anchorage, when taking the free trolley Ben met a little puppy that the driver let him play with. She told us that the puppy’s parents were in the Wildride Sled Dog Show, a show that features dogs that compete in the Iditarod. We had some free time, so we went to the show. Since Ben had already met one of the mushers (people who race and care for the dogs) he got one of the prizes during the show, which was pretty cool. It was a fun show to watch and it was really interesting to learn about how tough the conditions out there and how important the bond is between leader and their dogs and their proper care.
In Ketchikan, we saw the Great Lumberjack Show. I didn’t think I’d be entertained too much, but it was actually a lot of fun to watch the lumberjacks compete at various events. The emcee was so personable and made the whole audience feel comfortable. The crowd was divided between two different “camps” and cheered for the lumberjacks in their own camp. There were a lot of events to show off their skills, but I think my favorite was the logrolling. The springboard chop was the most impressive, though…
As I may have mentioned before, I went on vacation with Ben and my in-laws. Dave didn’t come because he was studying for his board exam. It was a perfect time for us to go to Alaska, because I’ve always wanted to go and Dave’s not a fan of non-tropical/snowboarding-free vacations. Having my in-laws around was a great help, because they would take care of Ben if I wanted to explore a little bit (I liked exploring the different towns, Dave’s dad liked hanging out on the boat with Ben).
In today’s vacation picture installment, I’ve got the various family pictures. I’m not in a lot of them because I’d rather be behind the lens than in front of it. Also, Ben will have his very own “solo shots” post, because he’s such a ham that he had a TON of pictures taken by himself.
I’m using a different gallery program for these shots - if you want to go to the next picture without having to close the picture, hover your mouse near the top right hand corner of the photo and you’ll see an arrow appear. Click on it and you’ll go to the next picture.
So it’s pretty late, even for Alaska, and I need to get up at 5am tomorrow to catch a 6:45 train to Seward, which is 4 hours away. But I wanted to post a couple pictures before I leave Anchorage. We had a pretty busy day today - went on a trolley tour around the city, went to the zoo, and saw a sled dog show. Much happened during and inbetween those times. I’d like to say I’ll write about that later, but those words, as you may know already, are probably just lies!
Here’s a couple pics that I’ve chosen for your enjoyment:
We passed by the Alaska State Trooper Museum, and saw on the window that they had a rebuilt Hudson Hornet in there - it’s Ben’s favorite car from “Cars”!
My “real wildlife” quota of 1 animal has been filled on our first day - saw a couple moose grazing on people’s lawns as we drove by
Sometimes I think about what life would be like if she was still here…I don’t think my own life would be much different, though I know that she would really love spending time with Ben. She would nag me about his finicky eating habits, give him cute little nicknames, let him sit on her lap as she played mah jong with the titas. She would by him overalls and cheesy outfits, things I wouldn’t let him wear out in public unless he was going to visit her. She would come through our front door and he would run to her as he screams “Lola!!!” and run into her arms.
I’m sure that outside of my life, things would have been different. She had an uncanny way of diffusing drama, maybe because she tried so hard to please everyone, but more likely because she just cared so much about people. There has been WAY too much drama since she’s been gone.
Ben’s been sick for the last couple days. Not sure when it started - he was feverish last week but nothing happened, but then on Sunday he had a bit of a cough. Yesterday he was just miserable - coughing, sneezing and sniffling. He still hasn’t learned how to blow his nose yet, so we had to be on-hand to wipe his nose for him. In the late afternoon he was just a pitiful lump of sick baby - he just sat in my lap for the rest of the night, whimpering and not wanting to move.
He didn’t want to get off the couch last night so we just slept there, and woke up several times. I got more sleep than I did on Sunday night, but he was still a bit fussy this morning. I debated on taking a day off today to take care of him, but Dave was off of work anyway, so he took him to the grandparents.
Here he is holding his favorite Kabuki Scarab panda:
I’d like to take a second to talk about all my mini posts that have been popping up. The lovely Mizz Denizzy brought up that the mini posts are a bit difficult to read, and I just wanted to let you all in on the process behind those posts.
I’ve been using two programs/social networking sites lately (frankly, I’m not sure what they actually are). One is twitter. Essentially, it’s just a box that you can enter what you’re doing or thinking, and you can see what your “friends” or people you are following are up to as well. It’s a lot faster than taking the time to write up a post with a subject - but the drawback is you only have 140 characters to work with. Most of the time, though, that’s all I need. Before twitter, there’d be so many times during the day that I’d think to myself, “This would make an awesome post!” but never have the time to write about it. But with twitter i just have to open my app on my taskbar (I use twhirl to make quick updates in twitter) and type in whatever I want. Even better, if I’m out of the house, I can text message my thoughts to twitter to update my page. There’s also a function where you can reply to other people’s twits (tweets?) by putting an “@” in front of their user name. Twitter has gotten really popular - Barack Obama actually has a twitter site that has updates as to what he’s up to.
The other site is Plurk, which I’ve only been active in since last week (my internet crack dealer Walter sent this one over to me). Plurk is similar to Twitter, but the interface is different, as well as the whole feel of the community. Twitter is more based on the person - “Let me tell you what I’m doing”. Plurk is more of an interactive place - where it’s a lot easier to reply to people’s “plurks” and have discussions. Think of it as a discussion group for people with ADD. It’s a lot more social, and a lot more fun than twitter. The only downside (to me, anyway) is that there’s this reward system called “karma” that gives you points based on certain things (or takes them away). Some people on the site are karma crazy and that’s all they talk about. Me? I really don’t pay attention to it. Oh, and if you’d like to join, enter a comment and I’ll send you an invite - I get karma points for inviting friends. Not that I care about karma points.
So ANYWAY…I’m rambling.
I didn’t like having a separate Plurk area and a separate Twitter, so I used a function to import my Plurks into twitter. Everything is in one place. It gets a little weird, though, because plurks are usually in the third person, so they look odd in twitter.
Also, I want to keep some record of my twits on my blog, so items that are in twitter are posted to my blog. Usually this happens mid-day, which I hate, but that would account to the one day delay you see in some mini posts. I’d been kicking myself for not keeping track of Ben’s milestones, and having my twitters in my blog is a great way to remember these times. It fits the way my brain moves a thousand miles a second.
Any time you’re reading the mini posts and you see a line that starts with a colon (”:”) that means it was a post in my Plurk account. Any time you see an at sign (”@”) in a line, that means that I’m replying to someone else’s twitter, which, unfortunately for you, you can’t see. So they’ll probably make no sense to you.
So, I hope that helps. It bugs me that my blog is littered with my mini-blogs, but time is a luxury I no longer have. I’m also going to be changing this layout within the week because the current default layout has some crappy coding.
