Take Me Home Tonight

Tiki Man wanted to go home with Zach. Unfortunately, we gave him the slip. Maybe next time

Tiki vs. Binky

Tiki Man saw the pacifier, and that was all she wrote. He's going down!

Visitors from Afar

Amy came from Athens Georgia and Molly came from Phoenix in order to attend Allen & Ashley's wedding. I don't think they got an award or trinket for their efforts.

During the Ordeal

Here's the picture of Shane right before the ordeal. Everyone turned to face the alter, and I noticed that we had what looked like a rebellion on our hands.

Shortly after this picture was snapped, Shane passed out.

But it wasn't a tree-falls-in-the-woods kind of faint, it was more of a I'm-not-going-down-without-a-fight kind of faint. He started to go down twice, waving off help both times, before he was finally dragged off the altar and laid out on the floor.

He doesn't remember a thing and the bride and groom didn't notice it going on. It's a Pi Day miracle.

Before the Ordeal

Here's Kelly, Mike, Shane, and Amber outside of Allen & Ashley's wedding. We're going to call this the before picture.

Going to the Chapel

Here's Zach going to his first wedding, Allen & Ashley's.

He's looking mighty dapper in his snazzy sweater. Good job, Mommy!

First Day of Day Care

Here's Zach when he arrived at the first day of Day Care. He was asleep, but roused a bit when the camera flashed. Then he went back to sleep, so you can see that it was totally traumatic for him.

Kitty Crossword

This is what Eddy thinks about my desire to do the crossword. I'm not sure whether she's blocking the crossword because it was where my cone of attention was focused, or whether she thinks she is helping with it.

Baby's First Geocache

We took Zach out for his first Geocache search.

I love the waterfall in Legacy Park, and wanted to place a cache there myself. Unfortunately, we played by the rules and asked permission. As far as we know, we are still waiting for Lee's Summit Parks & Recreation to put together a policy on Geocaches.

Still, it's a great place for a Geocache and it's always good to have an excuse to go hiking around the park on one of the first beautiful springlike day.

Testing out the Baby Björn

The nice weather prompted us to try out the Baby Björn carrier over in Legacy Park. My first time out, I found myself leaning forward so Zach's head wouldn't pound against my chest. I tucked a blanket in between me and Zach the next time I loaded him up, and it worked great (OK, it worked a little better).

As you can see, Zach loves going out for a walk.

I have to confirm that the Baby Björn is a Daddy Torture Device, just as Eric warned me.

Snowy Owl

My friend Matt Gearheart just sent me an email about a Snowy Owl he found near Breckenridge, Missouri, which is east of Cameron. Matt is a member of the Audubon Society of Missouri and does some awesome photography.

Check out his picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/gearbox08/SnowyOwlBreckenridgeMissouri#5305810651748012178

Library Trip

Zachary has already shown an interest in his origins. We're trying to encourage reading, so we had to say yes to his selection.

Soft & Squishy

Cats love cozy soft warm fabrics, which means the kinds of things we wrap the baby up in are also the kinds of things they love!

Eddy is on the edge, skirting that fine line of getting as close as possible without disturbing the baby. Excellent work!

Love comes 16 years early

We went out to eat at the Corner Cafe on Valentine's Day, taking Zack with us. In the booth next to us was his future girlfriend, Hannah. She couldn't take her eyes off him. They'll have to wait 16 years before they can go out, though.

Last Nights Party

You can always tell it was a good party the night before when the empties are left strewn all around.

Deer Blind

We took a little walk through the woods and Cole and Nick got to test out the local Deer Blind.

They did not shoot anything.

Daddy's First Bath

Here's what Zachary looked like as Daddy gave him his first bath.

Baby and Daddy are doing fine, now.

Cruel Deception

I told Zachary we would be going for a helicopter ride.

He was seriously disappointed to be sitting around all day in gun muffler ear muffs while waiting. Finally, I had to give him a bottle of formula to make it up to him.

Thanks Aunt Bobbie!

Look at the wonderful quilt we got from Aunt Bobbie!

Zach can't wait to meet her to thank her in person!

Thanks Aunt Bobbie!

The Amazing Gardening Karzak

Watch as Zack uses his newborn psychic powers.

"I believe the envelope has .... Radishes."

It was amazing. He was absolutely right. He beamed the answer right into my head.

PC Hangover

I'm so tired of dealing with all these IT issues.

Calculus Burnout

Those Logarithmic Scales are making me drowsy.

Little Maintenance Man

This is how Zack likes to watch his favorite scene in Galaxy Quest.

[after blowing two of Sarris' men out the airlock]
Fred Kwan: Sorry, I was - door was a little sticky. Did you see that? I'll get one of my boys up here with a can of WD-40.

No Two Alike

These snowflakes landed perfectly on my car window, and were like a big microscope slide full of samples.

You can see the perfect little 6 sides of each flake.

I found 7 duplicates, though. So I'm thinking the old adage that no two snowflakes are exactly alike does not apply to me, or I have a magic Jeep window.

Bath Time

"Always check the water temperature before bath time!"

Next!

"That was too easy. I'm bored."

Cubical

"I need a challenge" says Zachary.

Moving Sky

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.
Let's see if this works. Here's a cool nighttime sky video I found on the Astronomy picture of the day.

Jaunty New Year

I thought Cuppy struck a particularly jaunty pose in this picture. We had my in-laws over for helping out with our newborn son, and they brought their dog Ellie. While the dog is not nasty to cats, the 3 youngest cats want nothing to do with him. They went outside and stayed away.

Cuppy found the outlet pipe to the pond spillway, which she just fits into. It's a pretty safe spot, with two outlets, impossible for a fox or dog to get at her. She seems to be showing off her secret lair to me.

I call it the Cat Cave.

The Elusive Newborn

Here is Zachary Alexander Jones, during his first checkup at age 4½ days old.

They discovered no superpowers, much to my disappointment. We'll have to instill those into him, I guess. Maybe if we just brag him up enough, people will think we believe he has some superpowers.

By the way, sitting up and smiling are not superpowers! I will not change my standards just because he's my child. I expect nothing less than flying, x-ray vision, super stretchy limbs, or incredible speed in my superbaby.

I guess I would settle for good health and normal growth.

Walking Stick

When I was little, we saw walking sticks and praying mantises all the time. They don't seem to be as plentiful anymore. This one was on the mailbox, about 5" long.

I remember a picture from a Time-Life book that I saw when I was little. There was an African child with a walking stick that was about 20" long, clinging to his chest.

Kissing Elk

Fortunately, this story turned out OK. While in the middle of filming this Christmas Day stunt, I imagined that things could go terribly wrong.

This is the "Hooved Animal Enclosure" in Fleming Park at Lake Jacomo. They started Buffalo and Elk herds here years ago when an Elk with a radio tag that was from northern Wyoming wandered all the way down here and was captured by some local animal control people before he got hit on the highway. Somehow, they got him a mate and started a herd. I've gone out to visit them for years.

They used to have signs that said not to feed them, now the signs just say not to feed them anything but carrots and apples and a few other fruits and vegetables. I remember reading the sign last time I was over at the Buffalo pen and it said not to feed them bread, it could hurt them. I'm not sure how bread hurts a buffalo, except when it's wrapped around a bison burger.

I wanted to get a daring, kiss the elk pose for this picture, and while I was close to the fence, I started wondering if he could poke an eye out if he wanted to. The actual danger is that he tried to slip me some tongue.

Plummelo Experiment

Have you heard of a Pummelo? They are sometimes called Pomelos.

I saw some in the store and decided to try it. I love Grapefruits, and somehow expected that this was just a big grapefruit on steroids.

When I cut through it, the first thing I noticed was this enormous layer of flesh below the rind. It's like a sponge, like and springy.

The fruit is close enough to Grapefruit that I feel pretty safe in saying that if you like Grapefruit, you'll like Pummelos. A Grapefruit is easier to cut through and take apart, and there seems to be more juice in a Grapefruit.

The essortment.com site's description of the fruit talks about how it is an ancestor to the Grapefruit, mostly grown in Southeast Asia. It says that some people believe the skin can help you with coughing and epileptic seizures. Good luck with that.

Hiding out in the mom cave

Here's Junior again. We're not sure whether he is shy, itching his face, or playing peek-a-boo in this photo. We were not able to get a clear shot this day.

Smiling away in fetusland

Did you know that babies smiled when they were still inside of their mommy's tummies? I did not know that.

By the way, those are not horns, and our baby is not the devil. Although we reserve the right to refute that at some time or times in the future when he is driving us nuts.

Natural Habitat

This is the natural habitat of the larval human.

When tiny, the larval human is helpless and needs careful watching and protection. This involves soft squishy fabrics, soothing colors, and new curtains and wall paint. Without the proper material lining the nest, the baby may never make it to adulthood, or college, which is a form of suspended adolescence that some humans enter rather than going straight to adulthood.

Big Fly

This story reminds me of a horror story, a combination of a Twilight Zone episode and the movie "The Fly".

I was working on my shower and opened up a window that had been shut for quite a long time. Out of the recess in the base of the window came some insects that had not been able to escape up until then.

Some were those new lady bugs. You may have heard of the infestation of Asian Lady Bugs. Here's a description from the University of Kentucky's Entomology Department website: "One species of lady beetle, Harmonia axyridis, can be a nuisance however, when they fly to buildings in search of overwintering sites and end up indoors. Once inside they crawl about on windows, walls, attics, etc., often emitting a noxious odor and yellowish staining fluid before dying." See http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef416.asp if you want to explore information about the Lady Bug, or better yet, if you want to attend the University of Kentucky and become an Entomologist. That's what Gary Larson of The Far Side cartoon fame was.

The other species that was in the window were house flies.

Big deal, right? So what's even worth mentioning house flies? Well, first of all, these flies were enormous. They weren't as big as honey bees, but they were closer to that size than a lady bug. When they flew, they were loud. They put out this annoying buzz you could not ignore.

The strange thing about the flies is that I got a Buddhist reincarnation vibe off of them. Each day, I would go in and there would be one up by the light, buzzing and bumping into the light cover.

I kept a red fly swatter and disposed of the fly as soon as I could.

Every day, without fail, a new fly would be back to replace the one I whacked the day before. What was going on here? Reincarnation? Reanimation? Insect stalking? An entomological conspiracy?

We may never know.

Baby on Board

There's a little baby inside there.

We are looking forward to meeting him when he decides to come out.

Dancing with the Dogs

Those fancy ballroom dancing shows have got nothing on this Thanksgiving driveway scene.

I'm not sure if Bo knows he's not leading.

Turkey Courtship

This guy should feel lucky just to be out of the oven after Thanksgiving.

Instead, he is showing off to one of his lady friends.

Toe Jam Revisited

I talked about my messed up toes when I got back from climbing San Luis last summer.

See the 9/6/08 entry at:

http://wagginganimaltales.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html#2818870327477483661

This is an update. 2½ months in, the black marks on the toes are working their way to the end.

The curious thing about this was the original pattern. I've blackened a toenail before, and it's usually the whole toenail. This time, it was a wedge shaped pattern on the outer edge of the toe.

That was one heck of a mountain climb. I still want to do it again. Andrea thinks the cog train on Pike's Peak should be our next 14er. I agree.

Spider Shower

This morning when I checked out the comics, I got an unexpected laugh.

I admit this is stupid, but for some reason I find it hilarious.

On one hand, it reminds me of my shower. I've had spiders up near the ceiling that I sometimes see when I'm taking a shower. I like spiders, so it's not a big deal, but now I associate spiders with the shower. Just not in a horrifying way like this cartoon.

Are the spiders stunned, asleep, or dead? It seems to me that they'd be webbed out and suspended, not actually flowing out and falling. Unless they were demon spiders intent on inflicting maximum psychological damage.

The other thing I think about is plumbing design. That was my job when I first got out of the military for a few years. I see the delivery of spiders through a shower head as a real plumbing challenge. Someone must have really wanted to prank that soapy shower dude to come up with that kind of plumbing genius.

The Strangest Echo of Childhood

When cleaning out the basement, we came across an old love seat style couch. This old couch smelled really bad. I can't really describe it, "musty" does not do it justice. Musty is usually a mildly offensive smell, like a little of the oxygen is missing and something bad has replaced it.

This was much worse than that. It wasn't like something had died, but it was like the couch had to die.

The problem is that Andrea loves the little love seat. So we planned to re-upholster it "some day".

In the meantime, we were cleaning out the basement, to take the aged smell out, and the couch needed some work. I took it outside and started stripping the old cloth off. There was as strange stuffing that looks like the bird's nest material you see in the bottom of hanging plant baskets and a batting that looked like a cross between a rat's nest and fiberglass insulation.

As I was stripping this material off, I found these deep pockets on the sides where things that come out of your pockets can really find a good hiding place.

Out of this hiding place came a dog-chewed block from my childhood, and a 1967 stamp and 1966 dime, as well as three of the dextroamphetimine pills I used to take for hyperactivity when I was a kid. One was in good enough condition to pull the code off and figure out what they were. I'd wondered that for years.

Sister Golden Cat Delight

The picture does not do justice to this scene.

At the right time in the fall, the sweet gums turn bright yellow. When the sun shines through them just right, the room lights up in a golden glow.

Speedy likes to sit on a fleece pad and look out the window in the bright light.

Election Day

This picture was taken with one hand, while I voted for President with the other.

Golden Arches

There usually comes a time in the fall where the sweet gum trees make a golden yellow canopy over our driveway.

It is usually way too short.

Foggy Fall Foliage

We had thick fog last weekend. It took until mid day before it finally lifted.

A Flash of Fall

Here is a picture I took while driving, trying to document the fall colors.

This driveway has a long line of red oaks on either side of it, but with digital cameras, you don't always get what you want. I tried to time it so the camera would take the picture straight down the driveway, but it fired off early.

I don't understand how the fountain grass is in focus, but the background is a blur. The blur is not focal, it's from motion. It must be a trick of panning the camera perfectly through the motion so the center stays in frame while the outside moves in or out of center.

I like the result.

Environmental Emissions

When the trash truck came up to our office's dumpster last week, it started to leak some kind of fluid while it was stopped in our parking lot.

This stuff was jet black and nasty looking. Nick opened his window right as it started and yelled at them to make it stop. The two guys working the trash truck didn't seem overly concerned or excited. "It's whatever is in your trash" was the response to pointing it out. While this was not true, they hadn't even begun dumping when the fluid started shooting out.

The fluid that came out was mostly oil, along with some really nasty residue. I looked inside of our dumpster, which did not have anything like this in it. The dumpster is new and handles mostly paper, so it's not nasty at all.

The trash company says they are going to come out and power wash the oil off the parking lot, but they haven't done it yet. This just puts the problem into the grass, so I'm not sure if it solves the problem, or just pushes it into the weeds.

Mold & Mildew Nightmare

We knew we had problems in the basement.

Andrea could smell it, even more so once she got pregnant, that dank disturbing basement scent.

We had two forms of mold and some mildew, as confirmed by a professional nastiness investigator, who also tried to scare the hell out of us about radon (his score there was 1&1).

The basement was covered with paneling and stucco almost 30 years ago, when my father had dreams of finishing the basement. The redecoration did not get completed, and the walls sat for years, condensing moisture. The perfect environment for growing mold.

So we stripped all the panelling off the walls and got rid of it. The smell is gone.

Slug Migrates for Winter

For some reason, this reminds me of a Far Side Cartoon. Something about "Look Mommy, the slugs are going south for the winter!"

Slugs are in the same family as snails, they seem to have evolved past snails, because some have internal or vestigial shells (around the part on their back called a mantle). They are made up mostly of water and need to secrete mucus in order to hold in their water and move over the terrain without injury. Sometimes they go over the windows on our sliding glass doors and leave little trails.

They have little feelers that look like antennae on their heads. These are called tentacles, and the upper pair are optical, while the lower pair is for smell/taste.

Slugs are hermaphrodites, meaning they are both male and female. They mate by curling in a ball around each other and lay eggs in the ground. Sometimes they crawl underground to get through the winter, but often they die in the winter. They also have problems in the heat of summer, if it's too dry and they have to find a dark, cool, moist place to seek refuge to get through the dry spell.

I was once with a friend when her cat walked in, working its jaw like a little franken-cat. His muzzle was covered with what we thought at first was foam (from drooling), but we soon discovered was a rubbery substance. The cat allowed me to peel the material out of his mouth, and somewhat off his face. However, it was like rubber cement, and I could not get it all out of the fur around his mouth. When the biggest plug came out of his mouth (I think it went into his throat and he was close to choking on it), the cat was back to normal and ran off to do more cat mischief.

I described the scene later to my brother, who is a veterinarian and he believes that the cat tried to eat a slug. The slug probably secreted some protective mucus when the cat started biting on it, and the mucus quickly congealed and became stuck on the cat's snout and in his mouth.

That's a hell of a defense mechanism.