Tag: interesting

Things I find interesting

Wow, it is cold.

We’re in Antigo, WI. It’s -40 with the wind chill. Do I need to point out that it doesn’t matter whether I say that in Fahrenheit or Celcius? If you don’t count the wind, it’s only 15 below (F).

Why am I here? My airline miles from all the travel I did starting in 2000 were about to expire. Grace hasn’t really seen snow. There was a super-saver fare, and Diane’s father’s 85th birthday is coming up.

Need I point out how painful 40 below is? We packed 5 bags for 3 of us for 4 days, and it’s not enough.

Grace was outstanding traveling. I’ve gotten to spend lots of time with her, and she’s behaving extraordinarily well! The worst part of it all was when the plane was landing, and her ears hurt. She didn’t believe that chewing gum would help, and wouldn’t try yawning for me.

While driving from Chicago to Clintonville, WI, we stopped for provisions. Grace got out of the car to stretch her legs, and walked over to the snow by the parking lot. I stopped her and zipped up her coat, then she walked into the snow and picked some up — without gloves. Presumably to try and make a snowball. That’s her big thing about this trip — she wants to have a snowball fight with me!

She only did that once, go figure! It’s so cold that the snow is really dry and powdery. I had her stomp her feet all the way back to the car, so that the snow she walked in wouldn’t melt and get her socks and shoes wet.

Last night, on the way from dinner in Clintonville to Antigo, we saw the non-wind-chill temperature drop to 19 belowDsc04938. I’m quite certain that that is the coldest I’ve ever experienced in my life, and I am more convinced than ever that I will never choose to do this kind of winter travel ever again, nor will I ever move further from the equator than I do now — about 4100 miles.

A big step in not trying to lose…

So, Grace has been big on playing tic-tac-toe.  I try to let her win.

The other day, we started playing connect-4.  The real one, that drops checkers into the plastic maze.  I didn’t let her win.  She lost 5 games in a row.

Then, she started to win.  She won 4 games in a row before we had to go to Grandma’s…

If only I had an extra $48,500 lying around…

So there was the big Trek auction at Christie’s last week.

And, the only thing I could be interested in, Picard’s flute from “The Inner Light”, went for $48,000, after being initially estimated at $800-1200.

Oh, to have that kind on money to blow on a non-functioning prop.

Anyone watched Trekkies lately? Or Trekkies 2? How about Galaxy Quest?

Oh, and if I had an extra $48,500 lying around, I’d buy Grace a really nice DVD player and that episode, and put them in storage for when she got older. I’d then put the other $48,000 and change into a nice long-term investment for her.

Flashback video!

Revisiting “The Inner Light”

So this morning Grace comes home from Grandparents, stopping with Daddy Cy at the store to get fingerpaints. Oh, some food, too.

Anyway, she’s using a paintbrush with the fingerpaints (Yay! Less mess!) when the brush falls off the table.

Paint-valanche!

she called out. I still hear myself whenever she opens her mouth…and I find myself wondering if she even knows the word “avalanche” that this particular recurring wordplay derives from.

Now, we go back to Friday. Conversation turned to ST:TNG, in particular, the poem about Data‘s cat, Spot, Ode to Spot. Why, you might ask? Oh, yes, now we go back a few weeks. We Grace got a new kitten Thunder when we first rescued him , and named it Thunder. End second level of recursion, so back to last Friday…

While researching the Spot Ode, I pulled out the one and only DVD of ST:TNG edpisodes we have, The Picard Collection. The entire reason we bought it was for The Inner Light – the only Hugo award winning television episode of anything in the past 35 years.

I haven’t watched this episode for years — I can tell from my emotional state. I remember it being good, but not this good. Especially the scene with the daughter growing up (which everyone is still quoting 15 years later).

Seize the time, Meribor. Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.

I love you, father.

That scene hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks after the “Paint-valanche” moment.

Extra innings? No, just an extra outing.

The best photo

We decided to stay an extra day, to take the kids to White Sands.

It also allowed us to split the trip back into two days — a vast improvement over the trip out.

And Grace got to do sledding, without that awful cold that was always involved when I was a child. Lucky girl!

Grace learning about time and pressure -- in a geological sense.She especially liked the sand rocks!

I thought it was interesting how abruptly the mountains stopped.


Oh, and a few bad things about the resort:

  1. It was a pepsi place
  2. Being a casino on a reservation in a state that hasn’t legalized gambling means that they cannot allow alcohol in the casino. How lame is that?
  3. They ran out of hot water the last day we were there
  4. It was cold most of the time

Still, it was quite pretty, except for the lack of ocean.

Now, my revenge is complete.

So, Cy and I played a full 18 holes together today.

Having never played the back 9 before, we were both pretty amazed when I parred hole 10.

Hole 12

And, to make my revenge complete, it needs to be noted that I outdrove him on 15 of the 18 holes.

Just ducky!

Oh, and we took Grace for a walk to feed the ducks popcorn!
Finally, I got to play craps, and we left the table up $450.

Absolutly nobody else cares about this

…but I learned something today.

So, for weeks, I’ve been leaving divots behind the ball, grounding the club way, way too early.

So today, at the driving range, I finally got the “lead with the wrists” and “hit down on the ball”. These things combine to ensure that you uncock your wrists at the last possible moment, so that the ball gets maximum speed, *and* get the ball lined up after the hips start the rotation away from the backswing.

Combine that with my 6th grip change in 6 weeks (thanks, Ray!), and I think I’ve made the transition from “really, really bad golfer” to “really bad golfer”.

(Another month at the driving range, and I may actually mean that!)

Crash — the 1996 Cronenberg one

Now here’s a film I remember walking out of hating.

Now? I saw it a few years back — 2002 or so — and thinking

Not as bad as I remembered it…

I’m flipping around tonight, and my first instinct was to suddenly realize the adrenaline rush similarity between the “thrill” of an accident and sex.

I still can not relate to the main characters and their colective fetish, but I can now understand it better.

And of course, while it’s on, Grace wakes up. Time to change the station!

Thinking about laughter

Today, we each had a turn watching Grace by ourselves. We all seemed to enjoy it quite a bit!

It struck me again — not that I’ve gone on about it here — that my favorite sound is her laughter. Grace has a fantastic giggle. Cy got back home before she went down to her grandparents’ to spend the night, so he got his good-night kiss and hug before she left. It quickly escalated to knock-me-over hugs (video forthcoming) and kiss-attacks, both of which invariably cause a bout of giggles. It was almost as much fun to be a bystander!

Later, on our way to eat, we started talking about her developing sense of humor. I was noticing the resurgence of the knock-me-over hug, and remembering back to the first pun she understood:

We were upstairs in Cy’s office, long before it became as messy as it is now. I was sitting on the rug (wait for it!), and she was handing out knock-me-over hugs galore. I told her to wait a moment, and grabbed the rug, and told her to give me another knock-me-over hug. She did, but I held onto the rug, and pointed out that it wasn’t a knock-me-over hug, it was a knock-me-over rug. I was rewarded with a fresh bout of giggles!

This was at about 18 months. (That’s a year and a half to you and me.) Before that, even, there was another event we love to remember:

We were watching some news channel. It doesn’t matter which one, but it wasn’t named after an animal. There was a doctor speaking on screen. He was wearing surgical scrubs, the full get-up, including the hairnet. The scrubs were of a uniform color, but the hairnet portion was mostly white with drawings on it. Grace watched until he came on the screen, then piped up,

“He’s wearing big girl panties on his head!”

It goes back to her first joke: she would take anything — paper, food, toys, anything — and put it on her head, telling us “Hat!” Sometimes, we still get that one!