Friday, August 12, 2005

Back with some banalities

Since my last post I went on vacation to San Diego with my family and my brother-in-law, sister-in-law and their two great children. We really centered the experience around the kids. Ours are almost-five and almost-three. There's are 13 and 11. So, we got there a couple of days earlier than them and went to Lego Land and did kid's activities around the pool. Lego Land, surprisingly, was really fun. My five year old, Grady, surprised me by going on a pretty scary roller coaster twice. It scared my wife more than him. Once the others arrived, we got to SeaWorld, The San Diego Zoo, Old Town San Diego, La Jolla and some good restaurants.

In random order, here a few things that I have seen, been on my mind, or have happened to me.

  • At the San Diego Zoo, we got there right when the park opened and took the AerialTram to the opposite end of the park. When we exited the platform, I saw two white dogs being walked towards us. One was larger than the other. I commented to the group that it was odd to see dogs at a zoo. Well, only one was a dog. The other, as it approached with its jaws clamped around a full-sized Gatorade bottle, turned out to be an Arctic Wolf. It was beautiful, and very tall. It kept hopping up on the hip-high walls of the path we were on to scan the pens for the animals. The handlers were trying to whisk the wolf away and telling us to keep our distance. Later we saw two handlers walking an Ocelot and vigorously asking people not to touch it. My brother-in-law, Chris, later hypothesized they do this public walking of animals on purpose to generate some word-of-mouth excitement. I'm sure he's right, as there are plenty of other times during the day these animals could be moved, but it was still kind of thrilling. Oh, and I thought it was kind of cool that the wolf had a domesticized canine as its friend.
  • Yesterday morning I was driving to the post office and passed a newly mowed field near our house. Something caught my eye and I slowed down and realized there were two grey foxes walking around. I did a quick u-turn and parked next to the field. Before they noticed me, I realized they were scanning the freshly mowed field for mice. After the foxes noticed me, they remained motionless and stared me straight in the eyes for over three minutes. I've never seen a fox up close like that before. (And, yes, I had to look up whether the plural of fox was foxes or fox.)

  • I have noticed a lot of PT Cruisers on the road recently. I have always disliked that car for its looks, and also for its quality (I was unlucky enough to be given one as a rental car). But now I have another reason to dislike PT Cruisers. In the last day I've seen at least 10 of them, and ALL 10 have had something displayed on the back. Either a trite bumper sticker, a variety of Support Our Troops, Fight Breast Cancer..... ribbons, vanity license plates or fancy club decals of some sort. I mean, isn't it enough to own one of the cheesiest cars on the road, without having to go over the top and add more kitsch? Ugh. Stop. Now that I've mentioned it, keep an eye out for this sad phenomenon.
  • My son, Liam, who turns 3 in late November, is finally starting to poop on the toilet. It's been a long time coming, and boy is it exhilerating to finally have him buy into the program. So far, he's gone five times in about as many days. So about 50% of the time. And, he's done it at school, which is very good considering all the distractions he has there. Ours is almost a diaper-free house. For those of you who can't appreciate what that means, you'll just have to trust me. It is a big deal. BIG. DEAL.
  • I'm still struggling with what to do next for my career (or for that matter, even for a job). It's not fun, and is part of the reason I took a hiatus from this blog. I just have had too much negative energy in me. Any posting would have been nasty or hurtful.
  • We have another funnel spider in our backyard that Grady and I enjoy feeding. Remember last year? (Spiderrific and Spider Update) This year's spider isn't as big ..... yet. We're supplying it daily with ants, beetles and small bees to see how much we can fatten it up before the first frost. Though, nothing will beat the spider we had in our old house. See ugh, shiver, scary picture here.
  • While in Coronado, just outside of San Diego, we saw a modest house for sale. We stopped and got a flyer to see what real estate prices were like. A house that looked like it might go for around $500K house in Portland, was $4.3 Million in Coronado. Caarayzeee!
  • I posted some pictures a while back from our 4th of July vacation in Maine. I didn't mention it here on the blog, but here is the link: pictures. Once again, I loudly sing the virtues of Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. Now selling for about $60 on the Web. Well worth it.
  • With me not blogging, I've lost interest in some of the other blogs I used to read. The only ones I'm keeping regular tabs on are Chelsie's, Erik's and WaiterRant. I look forward to catching up with MyNacho and Ill Jackass when I'm feeling a bit more social.

Well, thanks for sticking with me this far down. More to come. As you know, comments are always welcome and much appreciated.

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