Call In The High Command

Last week I promised some pictures of the small child at the zoo from her school field trip, and I'm finally back to deliver.

One of the areas that she really enjoyed was the petting zoo, where she hung around on this calf. I think it was a handy place to hang out and not have to put her legs to work. I had no complaints, less chasing for me.

In the same area, they had a mock cow that she was able to "milk". This was a popular favorite with all of the school kids.

Over in the sun bear exhibit, cousin Rachel decided to drop by and check out the macaws with Bren. Don't worry, she snuck back to class before anyone missed her. Shhh, keep it on the down low. Shouldn't be a problem since no one reads these blogs. Pow! Self-inflicted diss!

What a star-studded day it turned out to be at the zoo. Angelina Jolie, fresh off her Oscars appearance, went back in time to ride the tractor in the petting zoo with our small child. Brenna, not knowing who Angelina is, threw a fit when the Tomb Raider (I'm dating myself here, sorry) star refused to take turns.

Back over in the sun bear area, Brenna posed for a picture at the faux ticket booth with none other than Sean "P-Diddy" "Puffy" "Afro Puffs" "Cocoa Puffs" Combs.

I can never pronounce this guys name, but even that guy from Borat showed up in the same area to pose on this giant stone toad. I hear he's in a new movie about middle eastern dictators. Who knew.

I thoroughly enjoyed updating you on Brenna's zoo adventures, hopefully I can come up with something else to post in the near future.

Zoo!

Wow, nine days already since I last posted anything. That's pretty sad. I had aspirations of posting at least every other day, and here we are most of the way through February and I've maybe posted five or six this month. It's almost like I have a five year old and household chores to take care of daily, in addition to working occasionally.

This may be the first time in the history of blogdom that I have a leg up on the wife on pictures. This past Saturday I took the small child to the Ren Festival, and was looking to blog about that first, but saw the wife taking those shots off of my camera a few days ago, so I can assume that the world of Crackbook is well aware of our exploits on that fateful day.

But lo, unbeknownst to her (at least I think), I uploaded my Brenna and Daddy zoo pictures to my netbook, free from the clutches of Crackbook. What I'm referring to here was a school field trip last Thursday that I was volunteered to go along as a supervising adult. I had Brenna and one other girl for the day, and after I obtain permission from the wife to do so, in my next blog I'll post some pictures of Brenna and this friend (who were connected at the hip) and what they did and saw at the aforementioned zoo.

In the meantime, here are some non-Brenna related pictures of the animals we saw. The two little girls refused to walk very far on their own, so we stayed in one particular area of the zoo, but I managed to take a few shots (and yes, I kept an eye on them, as well).

Since the weather is nice, and we were there first thing in the morning, the animals were all very active, which was cool.

The first one we saw was the elephants having breakfast.



The desert tortoise was at the front of his exhibit, and moving around, which was also pretty neat.



The iguana was sunning himself when we passed by his abode.

In the sun bear exhibit, we got an upclose look at this nasty looking fellow. I think he's a piranha.

Here's a lady feeding some cranes. These are my favorite birds at the zoo, sorry they're so far off you can't really see what they look like.

In the same water exhibit were some flamingoes.

We managed to catch one of the sun bears up close and personal, as well. That was a special treat that both girls really enjoyed.

Another treat was getting to watch the bald eagles while the two girls played some bear eating human game in a tunnel that was nearby.

We also walked through monkey village. Brenna took a stab at taking a picture of one of these fast moving monkeys, and caught the ass end of one here. Nicely focused, though.



Here's another shot of the same monkey, hanging out nearby.

And I would be remiss in not posting this shot of the orangutans playing in their exhibit. This was our final stop before I had to drag the two children back to the front gate.

Take Two

I was nearly finished with this blog yesterday when our home laptop decided to delete everything I had typed to that point. To make matters worse, for some reason the blog site wasn't auto saving my post as I was going along, so I was left with nothing to show for my time. In my disgust, I placed the laptop in the trash can for the remainder of the afternoon so it could think about what it had done.

I will do my best to recreate what I had commented on yesterday. As I recall, I made some witty comments about having not blogged in a week, due to spending the weekend with Brenna while Emily was at the festival, but not being sure where the other four or five days had gone.

I then redirected you, the two or three blog followers, to the these pictures of Emily giving me a mohawk, and made some additional witty comments about her enjoyment in doing creative hair sculpting whilst shaving my luscious locks down to near baldness that I am now. I also commented on the photo I had posted last time of my mutton chops, when I was testing out the Civil War general look whilst shaving down my scraggly beard. I finally asked you, the two or three devoted followers, to comment on your preference, Civil War mutton chops, or White Bread Mr. T mohawk. As I'm not travelling for work again until June, I may get bored enough to rock of the two looks until that time.

Ok, this is the point where the other laptop (which, by the way, I'm never using again) crapped on me.

The brother-in-law and I are going to see Van Halen in June. I haven't seen them in concert since 1992 and have never seen them with David Lee Roth, so it should be interesting, especially considering how good their new album is. I'm stating on record now that I'll be shocked if this thing doesn't win a Grammy next year for best rock album of 2012. There, I said it.

Back in 1992 I think I paid maybe thirty bucks to go to that show. My, how times have changed. This was my birthday, Father's Day and National Mutton Chops Day present, combined, I'm thinking. To my credit, I was talked into spending this money. Short of maybe seeing Jimi Hendrix rise from the dead, I don't think anyone is worth paying this kind of money to see in person.

By the way, don't ever buy these. Emily and I were looking for a healthy alternative for snack bars, and invested a substantial amount of money in a box of these from COSCO. They're aweful. They come in three favors, Rotting Ape Carcass (Banana Nut Crunch), Dirty Sock (Chocolate Covered Pretzel), and Peanut Butter Flavored Sheetrock. The last one is tolerable, the other two, at least if I have any say in it, will be collecting dust in the pantry, or become bird food.

Our small child is still enjoying swimming, now that she's reunited with Joey from Dawson's Creek. I took a few semi-action shots with the camera phone a few weeks ago, and here you can see the child displaying impeccable form in her backstroke.

Here she is hanging out, waiting her next turn with the instructor.

And here she is doing her best hidden dragon, crouching tiger impression. Sponge Bob is enthralled.




And without further ado, and keeping with the complete randomness that is today's blog post, I present to you Uni-Bill. Uni-Bill is getting married in June, and although because of a work trip, I will be unable to attend, we'll be heading to the misty mountains in April to pay our respects. Uni-Bill will be the father to a one or two-month old by then, so it should be an exciting time for all involved.

Finally, since I'm using the netbook for this post, spell check doesn't work for some reason, so I apologize for my fifth grade level abilities in that regards. At least I was able to make it through this post without any keyboard shenanigans.

More Santa Fe

The small child is on the couch with an ear that hurts, eating chocolate graham crackers and watching TV while the wife is napping. We're heading to the doctor soon, but don't worry, the small child is still singing along to the commercials, so she's feeling fine.

While I have a few minutes, here are a few more shots from our Santa Fe trip, these from my cell phone.

Here is Brenna at a cool restaurant we stumbled upon in Pecos, close to the national park we visited. She enjoyed some tasty cheese roll ups. Their key lime pie was tasty, but very tart.



They had oodles of insects behind glass at the aforementioned children's museum. Here are a few shots of the cases. Lots of butterflies in the first, and huge spiders in the second.





Finally, a shot of the indoor pool of death. I say that as we saw three different people fall on their who-ha's, just strolling along, minding their manners. The coating on the deck apparently turned to ice when wet, not the safest thing in the world.

More coherent blogs to follow when I have more than sixty seconds.

Fair Warning

1. I'm blogging on the crappy, possessed laptop
2. I only have minutes to complete this speed-blog before the family gets home, and I currently have nothing planned for dinner
3. I have no new photos to post from mine or Emily's camera
4. I'm months behind on emailing myself my pictures off my phone, so I'm presenting today some oldies that I'm just now unzipping off the aforementioned crappy laptop

It actually rains every now and again around here. Most recently back in December. Here's the evidence. December was a good month for rainbows, doubles even .



Our child likes to post with statues and other inanimate objects.

Here she is at Hobby Lobby back around November asking to be photographed with this scarecrow. Yes, it's warm enough at Thanksgiving here to send our kid to school in a shirt and short sleeve shirt.



Fast forward to Old Navy in December, posing with two different mannequins.



I swear I think she's holding this one's hand.



And here's the last mannequin. No, wait, it's Rachel! This was at a recent play of hers. I think the child had a cough at the time, and the lollipop was to sooth the savage beast (the cough, not the child) during the performance.

Rest In Pieces

I saw today where Chrissy and Janet finally made up after thirty years of not speaking. Good for them. If only Jack had been alive to see it. Better late than never, kids, don't go to the grave holding grudges, it's not good for your constitution.

A few nights ago our small child was in a function at the school celebrating the upcoming Olympics in London. Each grade came out bearing flags of different countries, and our small child was the first one out of the gate for the United States.



Here, I think, the kids are singing God Bless America. The small child is pointing skyward for the God part of the song, if memory serves. Either that or she's practicing finishing first in some Olympic event. Now that I think of it, she has a medal around her neck, which was given out at the end of the celebration, so I'm really not sure what she's doing here. Jesse Owens next to her is apparently saluting something as well, so who knows.



This is our deer in the headlights pose we've been doing recently.



A slightly different version here with cousin Rachel.



This guy, signing autographs below, was the guest speaker. Know who he is? He played ten years for the Bengals. Still don't know? I didn't either until I looked him up on Wikipedia.

"St. Louis was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in the seventh round (210th overall) in the 2000 NFL Draft. He garnered some infamy on December 24, 2006 when a poor snap of his caused a missed extra point within the last minute of the fourth quarter against the Denver Broncos, which cost the Bengals the game. This helped lead to their eventual failure to get into the 2006 playoffs. A year before, in the 2005 AFC wild card game against the Steelers, he also had a high snap on a field goal attempt. On the ensuing possession Jerome Bettis ran for a touchdown to give the Steelers a 21-17 lead. The Steelers went on to win that game.

In the 2009 season, St. Louis has delivered 5 bad snaps resulting in blocked or missed kicks in the 5 games he played, generating a city-wide backlash. The bad snaps came against Denver (week 1), Pittsburgh (week 3), Cleveland (week 4- a field goal and PAT were blocked), and Baltimore (week 5). In addition, a second bad snap against Baltimore was negated due to a penalty. He was waived on October 13, 2009."

Poor guy. To this day he probably can't show his face in Cincinnati, but he's safe in Mesa, Arizona, and I'm guessing even at the league minimum he probably made some decent money for his trouble. Anywho, he was there talking to the kids about good nutrition. Speaking of, I'm off to the treadmill before the wife and child arrive home for the afternoon.

Bubblin' It Up

I had a goal that I'd post a blog every day in the new year. According to the stats in the right margin, it would appear that I posted fifteen in January. I guess I was halfway there, which makes sense as I'm halfway there in many respects.

At any rate, I don't have much time today, so for your viewing enjoyment, please take a look at these various pictures of Brenna blowing bubbles at the children's museum I mentioned yesterday.

Perhaps my wife will be so kind as to comment on how she took the third picture down. That column bubble is pretty damn spiffy.