Utah Trip: BYU Visit

I took W along and we went to visit my alma mater.  It was the first time I'd been back there since about '99 I think.  Some things were different, and many were the same (the landscaping is still amazing and the bathrooms are very very clean).  

A funny boy and a funny sculpture in the Lee Library.  As we went in many buildings, he commented, "Daddy has 30 schools!"  and "Are we going to see your teacher?"

We went to see my pseudonymous friend Sans Auto and his fun toys like this Bod Pod. 

Mr. Sans and his beloved "fixie", which is so called because it has a fixed gear.  So, you don't shift, and if you want to slow down you provide the resistance yourself (no coaster brake even!).  He's also set with a generating hub, so his lights will run on his own power as well.  And if you saw his calves you'd know he's got plenty of that!

BYU recently built an indoor training facility.  That's sure got to be handy when it's either blazing hot outside or freezing cold.  Helps to have wealthy alumni!  :-)

Utah Trip: Zundel Reunion

L's people had a big shindig in Willard, UT.  Here are her bro Jeff and his wife Dana.  They were borrowing our son A.  They look so comfy, especially considering it was about 95 degrees out.  We coastal Oregonians pretty much melted!

Food, sprinklers, races, wiffle ball bats, footballs, toys . . . I know, let's play in the mud!  This appears to be E and her cousins Will and Talon.

3 of L's 4 bros, Jeff, Brian, and Jordan (in the super 80's shades)

L's sister Kim and their newest Adam, Dana (borrowing ours), Nancy (sis in law), and L, again looking remarkably well considering the heat.

Nightmare Inbox

L wanted to be able to search her Gmail on our Mail application.  That's because she belonged to a email list related to Gluten/Casein-free eating and wants to find info.  So, we downloaded all the mail, about 200 at a time.  It was running a LOT in the background.  Now it's all done, and seeing that number gives me a glimpse of what it must be like to be famous.  I will now click the "mark all as read" and see if the computer overheats.  :-)

Photo Booth is FUN!

One good way to get W to ham it up (and me too, for that matter) is to put a camera in front of us.  This was the first time we've tried Photo Booth.  I'm finding so much to love on the Mac!

My Naughty Little Clicky Girl

(Regarding the above . . . I just had to play with the Photo Booth App)

So I went to the mailbox today and found these surprises.  Now, I like to get stuff from Netflix, but these were in the hard DVD cases, which means somebody at my house has been buying used DVDs.  I came in and told my wife, "Please tell me you've purchased some used movies from Netflix."  Nope, she hadn't.  Not knowing what they were for sure, and not wanting to void my chances of being able to return them, I checked my account online.  I had received Disturbia, Superbad, and Surf's Up!.  Well, 1 out of 3 ain't bad (we actually thought Surf's Up was pretty good . . . it's got Napoleon's voice, which is flippin' sweet!).  Superbad is too super-bad for my viewing pleasure . . . not too stoked on Disturbia either.

So anyway, how did this happen?  Well, Netflix has a cool thing (sort of?) where you can watch lots of movies online.  I hooked up one of our computers to a TV and E likes to watch cheesy Scooby Doo and animated Zelda episodes that way.  Evidently, she's become a little click happy, and since you have to be logged in to Netflix to use the view-on-demand, she had the ability to buy things.  I should have seen this coming . . . we already recently discovered that the Spongebob Squarepants Movie had mysteriously appeared at the top of our Queue.  

So I called Netflix about it.  I got a real person in the United States within about 5 minutes, and she was very helpful.  I told her we were cool with paying and just keeping Surf's Up (it was 6 bucks) but that I'd like to return the other 2 (unopened).  She said they'll actually just let me keep the other two, so they get credit from me for good customer service.  Not quite as good as Apple, but still I'm pleased.  Anybody want a copy of Superbad or Disturbia?

So, obviously we need to be more vigilant now that E has had some online shenanigans.  Immediately, we will turn off/unplug the monitor as the streaming cartoons are playing, but longer-term she will figure that out.  Suggestions are welcome!

North Head Lighthouse

This is the best I could get asking her to smile nicely. Not bad . . .


The lighthouse is in pretty rough shape when you get up close, but the texture is cool. It was a really pretty day.


It'll always be my favorite lighthouse because I asked L to marry me in its top.


I liked the way the light, shadows, colors, and perspective work together in this one.

My kids do things . . .

The joys of potty training! L found her like this the other day . . .


W is not impressed . . . and he's waaaaay into 80's fashion. Little Pat(rick) Benatar or something.

He's Growin' Up!

Takin' a snooze.


Sister with little bro.


It's hard to get him to smile, but she's workin' hard at it.


Sometimes I get to hold him too! He's my little cuddle friend.

Long Beach Boardwalk Run

It's especially good nowadays to get the kids out of the house.  After a quick call to Surfer Sands in Long Beach, WA to confirm sandwich availability (they were in fact running low), we headed out.  L and AC stayed in the van and I ran the kids.  I captured the footage with my new Flip Video Ultra, which is a flash-memory-based handheld camera.  So far I really dig it and feel like it was a good investment of my American Express Costco rebate.  I am NOT digging how it works with my Windows machine.  It was halfway decent until I tried to load Adobe Premiere Elements program, which now (coincidentally?) ceases to work.  I ran the repair utility to no avail.  So, I'm a step of frustration closer to getting my Mac . . .

More Baby Photos

He's back by popular demand . . .

. . . and still sleepy and not looking very impressed by you. I'd imagine he'll strike this pose a lot on his desk in school.


Hey, he DOES have eyes! "You wanna piece of me?"


More big eyes! He's a cool little man.

It's Aliiiiiiive!

Special thanks to Barry Z, the laptop rides again with a new Western
Digital Scorpio 120 gig hard drive. $69.99 from Newegg.com with free
3-day shipping. It's like having a new (slow and pre-sticky-kid-
fingerprinted) laptop and it comes with the fun of re-installing all
the programs. Yay!

The Bri-onic Man at 33!

This will highlight how far behind I've gotten on this blog, but here are some pictures from my birthday back on Feb. 22!

E chose some presents from me, including this Spongebob balloon!


Here I'm very very excited because I'm pretty sure my sister got me a MacBook Air . . . this is the container they come in, right? :-)


Here are some things I actually received that are a lot of fun. The frame has cards representing different adventures I've had like biking and climbing mountains and stuff. Also, I got a really sweet Pedro card! I, unlike Pedro, do not have to shave my head because it's feeling too hot! Thanks everybody!


I got to choose the birthday dessert, so I chose chocolate pudding cake. YUM! You just throw a bunch of stuff in a cake pan and it looks like a big watery chocolatey puddle, you put it in the oven, and it sorts itself out. Really! It's miraculous.

My Poor Laptop

As I allude to below, my 80 gig hard drive in my laptop failed. I have tried many things (short of spraying WD-40 in there :-) like whacking it, dropping it, and freezing it, with no luck, So, I had the joy of re-doing my taxes I had just done the weekend before (and not backed up yet). I'm very good at backing up the tax files once they're done, but since I wasn't done yet I hadn't. That pretty much killed a couple Saturdays. Interestingly, my taxes worked out a little better when I re-did them. Weird.
I can't hate HP. This laptop is like 3 to 3 1/2 years old and this is the first hardware problem. It's slower than slow, but I suppose that's because it's running at 1.4 ghz Centrino.
Techno lesson learned: if a file exists in only one place, it doesn't exist.

It's Baby Time!

My apologies to all who've wanted to see this little guy sooner. I had the unfortunate occurrence of the hard drive on my laptop catastrophically failing, so I don't spend much time on the computer these days. Maybe I'll do a blog post about that . . .

Our new son, who for the purposes of this blog will be AC, came amazingly quickly. I'd just given anesthetic to a patient at work when L called and said her water had broken. So, I apologized to the patient (who was very understanding) and scurried home. After loading up, I got to use some GTI power and we hauled to Seaside Providence. Of course, we ran into road construction on the way . . .
We arrived at the hospital around 4 and he was born at 5:45. They didn't have time to get the epidural in, so L did it all-natural. We feel like he was more responsive right off the bat without all the drugs to him (via mom) and also that L is on the mend faster than she would've been also. The fact that her mom is here is also a huge help too!


Tuesday, we brought E and W to see their new baby bro. E liked to stand on a chair by him and was very careful to pat him nicely. Wonder how long that'll last. :-)

Paternity Test is Back . . .

. . . yep, he's mine. Like father, like son. ;-)


Also, his mom loves frogs, and you can see that he does a mean impersonation!