Ducks at Hyvee

Zach likes to go to Hyvee. I let him run free around the store. Well, that's not exactly true. He's not completely free, I'm always a couple of steps away from him. I guess it's more true to say I let him choose where to go.

When we get to the parking lot, he wants to see the "ducks". They are on the lake next to the store, and I've tried to explain that they are geese, but he's stuck on ducks. They aren't always there, and sometimes they walk on the ice, other times they walk on the shore. It's a nice diversion before playing chase in aisles of the grocery store.

Convertible Bed

Zach's first bed is a Hot Wheels car. It's also a convertible. I found him converting it into a desk one morning. He loves to play with his letters, and he loves rearrange things like the way he used the slats in his bed to form a little desk.

Trump Tower

With all the construction and renovation in the Las Vegas area, the least interesting and least compelling was the blank gold rectangle of the new Trump Casinos. I looked at it and wondered how someone with so much money and supposedly so much business savvy could make such an obviously moronic move.

Seismic Zones

One company at the PowerGEN show provided a service to help protect equipment from earthquakes. They had this really pretty map of seismic zones in the U.S.

You can probably identify the New Madrid zone, after the big 1811/1812 quakes of that name. What surprised me was the zone in South Carolina. Before the Virginia Earthquake of August 2011, I never suspected that there were any active zones near the east coast. There is even a little circle right around the epicenter of the earthquake. I notice the dead zone with little activity in northern plains corresponds roughly with the line the glaciers went down to during the last ice age.

PowerGEN Show

I went to the PowerGEN show in Las Vegas to rub elbows with the other exhibitors. I ended up having to hack the exhibitor database to get a free exhibitor badge. Then I ended up hearing a tale of anger from the customer of another Rep. There was the crappy food kiosk food-like substances and Vegas escorts hired to staff the booths (where they found ones with such solid technical knowledge is a mystery).

Was it worth it? This is what you always ask after a trade show, and I've never heard a convincing answer one way or the other.

Vegas

Las Vegas always looks to me like the most gaudy combination of a fashion magazine and a liquor ad combined together and puked out an entertainment based playhouse on a massive scale.

Viva Cash Vegas

I did it again. This time, less than 5 minutes after getting off the plane at Las Vegas. 7 triple triple, which is the third largest jackpot you can get off the Triple Double Diamond machine. It took me $6 and about 5 minutes. Then I stopped and did not gamble again the rest of the trip.

Puppy Hat

Zach loves his puppy hat with the floppy ears.

Halloween Gives Way to Christmas

The funny thing about pumpkins is that they don't rot for a long time, if you don't carve a face in them.

How do you like the Vanna White-like presentation of the new Christmas decorations?

Kiss the Glass

I remember doing it when I was little, the strange neutral, yet not completely flavorless taste of kissing the glass. Maybe it's inherited.

Christmas Lights

The best thing about Christmas is always the many forms and displays of lights.

Beeyudeen

Zach loved his wooden building blocks that made intricate marble mazes. Whenever he wanted to play with it, he would say "I wanna beeyud!"

The problem was that he would want to "build" first thing in the morning when we had to go to work, so I had to bribe him with the promise that he would get to drive, while I scraped the frost off the window.

Halloween Echo

Well into December, you still see an occasional reminder of the Halloween season.

The sad pumpkin was in the gutter, like a homeless drunk, forgotten, neglected, a sad reminder of happier times.

It did seem like an odd place to ditch your jack-o-lantern.

Dust Up

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, mother nature gave us a little dusting of snow.

Two months later, it was still the most snow we got in the season.

Minnesota Run

I had a last minute trip to Minneapolis on the first of December. It consisted of getting in the car and driving for 7 hours, getting up and watching powder spin in a mixer for a day, then hopping back in the car and driving back home for another 7 hours with an eerie orange moon on the horizon.

I stopped in a small town called Faribault to get something at the local Dairy Queen that might keep me awake. While dropping something in the trash, I found this most excellent picture of the local high school's girls swimming and diving team.

It's difficult to get farther away from the ocean, which was my first clue that the picture was probably photo shopped. I understand the imagery of an ocean being evoked by swimming, but what I don't understand is why this ocean is stormy with lightning bolts and a cruel and rocky shore. Or why the women are bright and sunny when the ocean is dark and stormy.

I wasn't sure whether this was confusing because I had a severe lack of sleep, or whether it was just inherently confusing.

Second Thanksgiving

We got to have two Thanksgivings, since Andrea worked on Thursday, and the Rose clan in Des Moines was willing to delay for a day to include us! Yea!

Nate and Zach were two peas in a pod again, and loved running around with grandmother and grandpa.

Photos by Andrea

First Thanksgiving

Andrea worked on Thanksgiving Day, so I took Zach over to Warren & Barb's and had Thanksgiving with my brothers and their in-laws.

Zach was Mr. Social Butterfly for once. I remember when Cole was little and went through a shy phase, and you couldn't talk to him because he would hide behind Warren's leg. Zach was right there talking to everyone. He went in and plopped down on the couch between Bill & Sharon Yohn, completely at home.

He ended up visiting the boy's rooms, their cozy crash pad in the basement, and on the swingset in the back yard. That was the favorite place of the day, and Cole was more than happy to hang out with him while he was on it.

Then we all ate and fell into turkey comas.