Little Headbanger

It may appear that Zach is mad in this picture, but that was not the case. I was switching through radio stations to find something that he liked, and some really dark heavy rock came on. He was doing a little headbanging motion and put this hilarious scowl on his face.

It was the perfect expression for that particular song, too.

As soon as the music was switched, his faced popped back into happy little boy mode.

More Sidewalk Chalk Art

These masterpieces lasted only one day, as a 3" rain came the later that day and into the night and wiped them out.

Chalk Walk

Zach is discoving chalk art, though the skillful examples of his artistic mother.

Steamy Summer

This summer, the constant rain and very high temperatures would make something like fog form many days. It wasn't exactly fog, it was more like steam. Fog forms in cool low places and if you drive down the road, it disappears where the breeze sweeps it away or on higher ground. This stuff seems to fill the air in a very thin consistency, but up for quite some height. Sometimes, you're not even sure you're seeing it. And it's not cool, like fog, but steamy, like a sweat lodge. This is not supposed to be Alabama.

Puddle Dance

Zach got out of the car when we got home and homed in on the big puddle in the middle of the driveway. It was cloudy, overcast and dismal, having just rained.

This did not deter Zach from having an excellent time Puddle Stomping.

Many people have experienced small children and their fascination with puddles. However, this day, I believe Zach was channelling some Indian Spirit or something, because he didn't just stomp on the puddles, he did a complex little dance in the puddle.

I think he was thanking the rain gods for the moisture. He kept doing this little stepping dance through the puddle. He hasn't met a puddle he hasn't liked yet.

I have video, but it's rotated sideways because the boneheaded camera operator forgot that you should not turn the camera on its side when you shoot video.

I will try to get the video rotated and repost this.

Almost Invisible

Zach and I squeezed in a walk on a rainy afternoon after work, between rainstorms. We walked for about an hour, and it started raining when we were about 30 feet away from the car.

I kept hearing noises in the woods, but couldn't figure out what was going on until I spotted this pair. They stood so still and were so hard to see that I was pointing them out to Zach and he could not see them. Normally, he spots things before me.

Zacher's Crackers

Zach likes crackers. Sometimes, when I'm walking on a trail with him in the backpack, I pass crackers back to him to munch on. Here's a blind shot over my shoulder to see how he's doing back there. I like the evidence of cracker delight on his face.

Gastrointestinal Delights

Possibly the most excellent restaurant name I have ever seen.

I wonder what they use as a rating scheme instead of stars? Little cloud symbols?

Peek-a-boo

Zach was bored on the long drive back from Des Moines until Mommy got in the back seat with him and played a nice long game of peek-a-boo.

He's an expert.

Hat Trick

Zach got a nice engineer's hat from Grandma & Grandpa. He still hasn't figured out how to wear a hat yet.

Being cute, though, he's got that down pat.

Coronary Anyone?

Deep fat frying reaches the level of an art form at the Iowa State Fair.

Notice the little drawings of the yellow treats on a stick on the side of the stand? Why do they have little grey lines above them? Is that the stench coming out of them?

Go Tell Aunt Rhody

I always wondered what the Old Grey Goose was referring to.

As you can see, a "grey" goose is really kind of tan colored.

I want one.

Rooster Overload

I took Zach into the Chicken building and he got to look at all the various types of Roosters. He liked the sounds they were making and watching the roosters face off through the bars of their cages.

Ostrich Pecker

This guy really looked like he wanted to peck my eye out. He was really interested in Zach, and the feeling was mutual.

I do not imagine that an ostrich would be a good pet for a baby.

Tiny Goat

This miniature goat was not much bigger than a cat. Probably doesn't use a litter box, though.

Fair Cows

Zach seemed to be pretty casual about the cows at the Iowa State Fair.

I guess I did not expect him to run from them or want to jump on their backs, but he seemed to take them for granted.

Minature Train Display

We went into the miniature train display at the Iowa State Fair, and it was fun. Zach seemed to think it was just OK, until he realized that there were moving trains in there.

The funniest scenes were three drunken revelers outside of a bar, a man being arrested and handcuffed, a little guy with a still in the woods, Superman holding a car back from being swept away and a little Beetlejuice character in a cemetary.

High Winds II

You know you're in trouble when the clouds coming over the Interstate look like an alien spaceship from a movie coming in for a landing.

This cloud looked a lot like a giant mushroom cap. It was like an inverted bowl with the edge quickly moving to block the highway and the inside filled with black snaky clouds.

I was all for trying to ourrun it, getting north past it. Andrea wanted to pull over in Cameron and get into the basement of the local hospital.

Pshaw! I said, and kept driving.

The highlight of the trip, beyond the 60 to 70 mph winds and the trees whipping around like they were pieces of grass, was the semi truck and trailer on their side in the median after they were blown over.

The lowlight of the trip was the moron in an SUV that stopped in the left lane under a highway underpass, almost blocking the road, but virtually gauranteeing that someone would drive into him in the blinding rain. A day and a half later, going back through, we saw road signs and billboards that were knocked over and blown away. So I guess we were lucky.

The temperature dropped from 100 to 66 degrees in the course of the experience.

Escape from I-35

You know that someone on MODOT is not doing their job when you sit on an interstate at a complete standstill for 40 minutes and people have been so desperate to escape the stupidity that is this traffic nightmare for so many days that they have worn smooth dirt escape trails to the outer road.

High Winds I

This is the first incident of high winds, the freak storm on Wednesday, August 11th. A thunderstorm rolled in, as is very common this summer, only this time, it had these huge gusts of wind that came in with it.

I had beaten the storm home and was watching the storm from the dry comfort of my house, but it was a really fierce wind that kept kicking up. It would be going sideways for 2 to 5 minutes, stop for 10 or 15 minutes, and then do it again. This happened 3 or 4 times. Later, the sun tried to come back out and I noticed that there was leaf litter and debris in the street. It came from the walnut trees to the right, not the closer trees to the left. It threw the leaves over 100 feet and covered the road until the traffic cleared a path through it.

No one else in my office reported the winds at their house that night. The rain gauge had almost nothing in it, because every time it rained, it was coming down sideways, which did not allow rain to go into the gage.

More than just your regular little summer rain.

Butterflies and Caterpillars

Powell Gardens did it again. They had their annual Butterfly festival.

This year there were supposed to be moths the size of dinner plates, but we did not see any of those. We went out as early as we could to miss the midday sun, but it was still incredibly hot by the time we left.

While we did not see any giant moths, we did see blue morphos, which reminded me of the jungles of Panama, and the tiniest monarch caterpillars I have ever seen. They were about as big as two of the periods at the end of this sentence.

Fun Flat Rainbow

I took Zach into the Hen House Market, and the nice lady in front of me in line left her umbrella leaning against the check out stand. The nice young bagger ran out into the parking lot after her with the umbrella.

The checker asked why that silly lady had an umbrella. It was a reasonable question, the store opened to the West and the sun was shining bright in that direction. Usually the weather comes from that direction, too.

I left and headed east, and there was this strange storm that boiled up just east of town that I drove into. Before I got into it, I saw this huge flat rainbow.

Lush July

This is one of those wet summers. The grass is not turning brown, but staying bright green and needing mowing every week.

The storms keep rolling through every few days, like someone ordered a continuous stream of them.

That works out great when it's 85° or less, but this summer it's usually 95° or more and it's like trying to breathe through a wet washcloth.

Doing Daddy's Work

I brought Zach to work one hot Sunday afternoon, trying to escape into the air conditioning.

I quickly put him to work, but his one-finger typing leaves much to be desired. He's just not very fast yet. He makes up for it in enthusiasm, though.

I'm an Excellent Driver

Zach sometimes wants to get in the driver's seat when we get home.

It's only a few years before we start teaching him driving. I think we need to get him into a go-cart first. Actually, he needs to manage his Muffin Man scooter without slamming into the cabinets. Then he'll be ready.

Storm Warning

I was driving back from Salina on Tuesday night last week with a Regional Manager of ours. We were through some seriously hard rain.

It was a weird night, weather-wise. There were all kinds of storm cells forming and moving, we were constantly in and out of the rain. The lightning was unbelievable, from giant bolts to crazy sheets all over the sky.

When we got back, we headed to the Regional Manager's hotel, which is near a bank that had this big top tent looking fabric cover over their drive through. The wind shredded it.

There were tree limbs in the street and little power outages around the area. There were no tornadoes reported, but this as close as it gets to tornadoes without actually having them.

Voodoo Baseball

We went to the Royals game on Wednesday, hanging out in the Diamond Section, in relative comfort.

We had to meet up at the game, so Paul made a map for me.

It looks like a voodoo rendition of a skeleton without the head, doesn't it?

Blades of Death

For those that are unhappy about wind power, siting newfound concerns for bat or bird populations, or ascetic or auditory reasons why these things should not be there, I did some field investigations.

I found the nearest windmill to the road to be surrounded by cattle. Upon closer inspection, I did find that the cows were covered with a fine layer of shredded bat, but other than that, the sound was not too bad, and I found them to be quite picturesque.