The Gentle Spaz

My brother's dog Ray is such a nice dog. He doesn't seem to be exceptionally bright, but he's so good natured.

Watching him bounce around and frolic clumsily, you would probably think that he's kind of a bull in a china shop, but he proved to be surprizingly gentle around baby Zach.

The only thing to worry about was that he couldn't seem to resist giving a lick on Zach's hand or cheek as he passed by. Zach's tiny stature makes him an ideal unprotected target for dog kisses.

photo by Andrea

Vulcan Mind Meld

During Kyle's recent visit, he attempted to answer an age old mystery.

What would happen if you transferred the mind of a cat into a dog and vice versa.

Unfortunately, we will never know, because the experiment was interrupted by breakfast.

Heart Pond

I used to use views of a pond down the street as the cover photo on this blog. The pond is heart shaped from above, and we've always called it the heart pond.

I hate to take down the gull picture, so I'm putting two recent cool photos of the heart pond in the blog rather than letting them headline.

Bradford Pears

I love this time of the year when the bradford pears are in bloom.

Baby Grass

Here comes the next generation of baby grass.

I hope it works. We've got a yard that reminds me of Branson. It's full of bald knobbers.

Delicate Frost

I noticed that just a little sunshine erased the frost quickly.

I like the lines of remaining frost protected by small shadows from the tree branches.

Starball Freeze Rays

I noticed that there were rays of raised frozen ridges coming off of the Starballs in puddles.

I'm sure it has something to do with seeding the crystallization during the freezing process.

In any case, it looks pretty cool.

Red Maples of Spring

I never noticed how red the maples were when they budded out before this year.

Back that Mockingbird Up

This is a Mockingbird I saw recently in the parking lot where I previously heard one of the funniest things that I've ever heard from a bird. He was mimicking a backup warning beeper, with a pretty uncanny resemblance.

This guy was living in a bush right next to where I first heard the backup bird. I'm not sure if he's the one, or the son of the one.

Melting Piles

When the snow first comes down, it is so white and beautiful.

It always surprises me how dirty and grimy it is when it melts.

Symbol Confusion

I thought the CR-V logo was one of those little Christian Fish symbols. I wonder if the Japanese are closet Christians?

Blooms & Blankets of Snow

This is something that you don't see very often.

Fully bloomed Bradford Pears with a thick blanket of snow below them.

The snow did not kill the trees, surprisingly.

Getting a Sense of Scale

Many parents that have seen Zach have commented that they forgot that their baby was that little.

So here's a couple of examples of scale against my hands.

Some day he'll be 6'5" and will make jokes about my bald spot as he looks down on the top of my head.

I'll then cut off his allowance and not let him borrow the family hovercraft to go out on his date that weekend.

Sting Like A Bee

Here's Zach practicing his Muhammed Ali moves. Cover the chin and go for the knockout with a quick left jab.

Word Up

Zach was listening to Word Up by Cameo (he likes early 90's music) and after listening to the part where they go "Wave your hands in the air like you don't care..." he promptly fell asleep.

Jordi LaSmudge

Smudgie is one of the X-Cats. His super mutant power is super spider multi eyes. This enhancement means that no kibbles will escape him.

Withdrawal

Is this what they mean by going cold turkey?

Money Shot

This is the photo we will use for the Baby Mount Rushmore scupting template.

Revision

OK, that last entry about me was somewhat amusing.

Daddy is Dull

This is what Zach thinks of his daddy's blog.

Anti-Thought Brakes

Just as I was trying to take a nap yesterday, I heard two loud metallic CRUMPs. I had been up half the night feeding my son, and then up early for the breakfast round, so I wasn't bright and alert. I thought the noise was some workers next door. They have one of those giant dumpsters that clangs when you throw something big in it, but not that loud. All I could think was, "Why the hell are they out working in a snowstorm early on a Saturday morning?"

Then the doorbell rang and it was a man that had been in an accident in my front yard. He was testing the crumple point of the guard rail around our curve. He said that the antilock brakes locked up the steering. The redesign brakes because people had the tendency to stomp on them in an emergency and go into a skid.
Anti-lock technology is supposed to pulse the brakes to get you to a stop in the shortest possible time without going into a skid. Part of not going into a skid is also maintaining the ability to steer the car, I would think. So I guess they didn't design them to be exactly idiot proof, did they?

Mother Nature Dumps on Spring

The flowers were blooming, the grass was turning green, the earth smelled sweet, and the trees were starting to bud out (but the insects weren't really out yet). Against the backdrop of the sun shining and birds singing, last weekend my brother warned that winter was not through with us.

I just had to mock and defy the weather gods and scoff at his pediction. I brought this down on us.

Prospector Dance

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Paul Rudd
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We recently discovered that our son loves to do the Prospector Dance. This was immortalized by Paul Rudd on the embedded video from the Daily Show. Skip forward to the 2:35 mark to see the action.



Zach likes to do the prospector dance in his bouncy chair. I hear the old-timey accent and smell the mule (or maybe it's just time to change the diaper).

Circus Mouse

Check out this little acrobat. They say cats have nine lives, but this guy must have a few extra ones, too.

Yesterday, I saw all the cats in the courtyard looking up at the roof. Speedy was on top of a pillar and it looked like she was going to attempt an impossible jump to the roof. It would have been about 5' high and 6' over.

Then I saw what she was wanting to jump at something that was on the wall. There was a tiny mouse almost 8' up a brick wall. I guess fear can make you do some pretty impressive things, but I would not have expected that the mouse could actually climb that high.

This morning, I heard a cat playing around the front door, and I discovered that there was the mouse, clinging to the side of a partition, about 6' off the ground. After a brief chase, I captured the mouse and released it away from the cats. I'm hoping it makes its way back to Mouseville, because they need him back in the circus.

Junkyard Cleanup

We always enjoyed seeing the massive truck graveyard just south of Gardner off of I-35, ever since we were little.

It looks like it's being taken down for scrap. All the trucks are stipped and stacked and being hauled off.

I used to like to see how the southern end of it, where they started it, had all these really old dump trucks and busses and the newer models came later, marching off to the north. For a long time, it didn't look too junky and it wasn't too big, but I've noticed it has been growing big in the last several years. I wonder if it's going to go back to being just an empty field again? I wonder how many mice and racoons were living in the trucks?

Stay a Spell

The strange buffalo sculpture outside of the Wyatt Earp Inn did not make me want to stay at Beto Junction. I'm surprised they had vacancies.

Wintery Plain

The Flint Hills just north of Wichita still look plenty wintery.

Go a little further south

The Bradford Pears in Wichita are almost past their blossums. If you go a hundred miles south and out onto the plains, spring is a week or two ahead.

Bradford Pears

You probably could pack more blossums on these trees, I'm just not sure where you'd put them.

Zach & Cole

Cole told us that he wished he was Zach's older brother so he could teach him neat things like how to tie his shoe, how to tag street signs with graffiti, and how to put rocks in your snowballs before you throw them. OK, those last two were things I was going to teach Zach.

Spring Training

It's the first pitch of spring. Sometimes the baseball just gets into a boy's blood, doesn't it?

I like the missing teeth. I'm going to tell everyone that he got them knocked out in a fight with a mad dog that was attacking a little girl. That makes him tough and chivalrous. I didn't ask him how he really lost them. Sometimes you have to yank them out with a string. I remember I lost one in a butter sandwich at lunch at school. Talk about a gentle departure. I'm glad I didn't swallow it.

Turkey Bathhouse

I've got an old compost heap that is mostly used up. It turns into this nice fine dusty stuff eventually.

The turkeys have discovered it and love to take little dust baths in it. I was wondering what those funny little wallows were. I thought maybe they were some tiny form of alien crop circle.

The cats like to get dusted up, too. Andrea says they are putting on "pretty powder". She's so cute.

By any other name...

You have to love the flowers that come up early in the spring, when the ground is still strewn with leaves and everything else is still dead and colorless from the winter.

The simple yellow Daffodil is always a welcome sight to see this time of year. It comes after the crocus, but before tulips and just about everything else.

We've always called them Daffodils, but they are also know as Narcissus (which leads to the inevitable problem of how to pluralize it) and also Jonquils. Nobody I know calls them Jonquils, but it's a tranquil name. Wikipedia says it's not technically correct. It also says they are sometimes called buttercups. You can see why. That's one bright yellow.

Sneaky Turkey

This is that weird time of year where the turkeys behave a little different. This loner may be a hen hiding her nest. They have been clustered in large flocks up until now. I hope she's nesting. I want to see the little baby turkeys this year, but they are so secretive and shy right after they hatch.

Here come the Forsythias!

Andrea loves the Forsythias. They came back pretty early this year. We hope they don't get nailed by another snow or freeze.

Mockingbird

Andrea recently discovered Mockingbirds in Legacy Park, mostly because of how much it was singing.

Here is one we met in the parking lot of the library.

You gotta love the way they can make up any song they want to sing.

LSHS Grads and their Tigers

Here's another picture from Molly's incredible site: www.mollybphotos.com

This is Molly's pet Siberian White Tiger, Sasha. Sasha likes to have her belly rubbed and she likes playing with the neighbor's chihuahua. Molly makes her wear bright blue contacts, which she doesn't seem to mind. They recently bottle broke her, so Molly has to feed her a 22 oz. T-bone steak every day. She's trying to teach Sasha to hunt the neighborhood rabbits to keep her food bill down. Sasha is an adopted cat that Molly got on her last visit to Las Vegas, from Siegfield and Roy, who are only too happy to get rid of the extra cubs.

Run for your Lives!

Here's another photo from my friend Molly's site: www.mollybphotos.com

She said that ostriches like shiny things and this one was on its way to attack her camera.

She didn't say what the ostrich was saying while it was attacking, but I'm guessing it was "Moooolllllleeeee! Moooolllllleeeee!" with an Australian accent.

Molly's close encounter

My friend Molly has some excellent pictures at www.mollybphotos.com I asked her if I could borrow some for the blog, and this is one that she sent me.

She was only about 4 feet away from the owl when she took this picture. I think she may not have asked the wise little owl how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop.

Drunken Doggie

My friend Molly sent me this picture of her dog, Tonka.

Apparently, he likes to sneak a beer from time to time. This time, he pased out before he could hide his empties.

The Hornet's Nest

Paul found a hornet's nest down on the farm.

It smelled funny, so we decided to explore the inside of the nest.

Can you believe this is what it looks like inside? It's just like a paper wasp nest with each layer shaped like an old fashioned light fixture, but it's got several layers, then a porous bottom where they climb in, and a jacket around the outside to protect the whole mess from the elements. It's the skyscraper equivalent to wasp nest building.

Just think, there is probably no fossil record for something as delicate as a wasp's nest. I wonder how many ancient insects built strange and elaborate nests that we will never know about?