BunkBlog

Alex has lost his marbles. Well, at least two of them. The marble run game he’s got started with twelve and now it has ten. I’m sure I’ll fall on my ass one day soon and find them.

I really wish he’d stop quoting every cartoon he’s ever seen as his entire vocabulary, but he is having fun with the marbles. I’m trying to teach him that the longer runs are usually slower, which seems so basic to us but not so obvious to him.

Went to see March of the Penguins with monkey boy today. Wow, what a fantastic film. I can’t believe the amount of time the crew must have spent on the scene during an Antarctic winter. Great views of the birds, especially close-ups of the fur-like feathers. Beautiful.

If you want to see a movie that is rated G and doesn’t involve talking animals, this is probably the only one that will come out this year.

Conversation between father and son:

Son: Could you super glue this back together?

Dad: No.

S: But I want it back together.

D: Did I tell you that if you bashed your toys together they would break?

S: Yes.

D: Did you bash your toys together after I told you not to?

S: Yes.

D: Did they break?

S: Yes.

D: There ya go.

After San Diego, we drove up the coast, getting to the Holland American store just as it opened. Then we continued past Santa Barbara and spent an hour or two in Solvang, including the Mission Santa Ynez. Alex scored a bag of candy.

Monterey! There is just so much cool stuff to do in the Monterey area that we ended up cutting out a lot of planned trips to do the unplanned.

Of course, we went to Cannery Row and Fisherman’s Wharf to eat seafood and watch sea lions.

And we went to the fantastic Monterey Bay Aquarium, where we spent much longer than my usual 3-4 hours. I’ve never spent a full day at the aquarium before, but there was much to see and many people to push through.

Alex got a stuffed sea otter, which has become one of his favorite sleeping buddies for the past week. We had some of the most inattentive service imaginable on Cannery Row, and made up for it with the best service on Fisherman’s Wharf (we love you, Fadi!).

We also went to two missions in the Monterey area, Carmel and San Juan Bautista. Carmel Mission is where Junipero Serra was buried, and San Juan Bautista includes a view of the original El Camino Real behind the cemetary.

We spent a day at the San Diego Wild Animal Park with my grandfather. He’s a member of the San Diego Zoo, so we only ended up paying for Alex’s ticket. Pretty sweet deal, and Grandpa knew his way around the park pretty well – he’s spry for 87.

Among the lions and tigers and bears, Alex also got to feed some lorikeets. Those little buggers sure can suck down that sugar water!

When Alex is older, we’ll go back during a cooler time of year and take all those long walks into the various habitats. Two miles of leisurely strolling is neat; two miles of dragging a recalcitrant five year-old is less so by far.

We learned a lot about the different animals in the park; I even discovered that Europe has bison too – who knew?

We spent a rather long day at Disneyland, waiting in a lot of lines. This is the first time I’ve been to the park during tourist season, and it will hopefullybe my last. We got to see the big 50th Anniversary parade twice, and went on the big rides.

Alex and I started out with the Astro Orbiters – he only wanted to go up, never down. 🙂 We all went to Star Tours, which is just as cool now as it was nearly twenty years ago when they put it in. Always worth the wait, especially with the cool waiting area you get to hang out in. Space Mountain is closed until next month, so we went on Autopia, which reminded us that the FastPass thing Disney does is essential for some rides. When did Autopia become a popular ride? It was always a short line when I lived in SoCal, but definitely not this year. Hooboy.

Armed with the knowledge that the park was substantially more crowded than any other time I’d been there and that Alex really wanted to go on Splash Mountain, we headed across the park to get our FastPasses for that ride. Amazingly, at 11:30 we got passes to return at 4:30 that afternoon! While I waited in the line to get the passes that would allow us to not wait in a longer line, Angela and Alex went on the Pooh ride. He was very happy.

Then we had to hit the Tiki Room, which is just as over the top as always, although it is prettier now.

As the day progressed, we hit the Matterhorn, watched the big parade, met up with Dave and family, hit the Matterhorn again, attempted to go on Pirates (closed as we walked up, darnit), and shot Zerg with the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. All told, a pretty fun and busy day. We stayed through the final fireworks show, which is fantastic.

Alex and Nathan met a princess.

Time to give all the expectant readers a recap of our funfilled two weeks away from San Angelo. First up, Tucson…

We went to the Tucson Zoo, which is pretty nice. The peacock put on quite a show for us.

And, of course, we spent a lot of time talking with my Aunt Bette. Alex liked playing with her Roomba vacuuming robot, and the dogs thought Alex was an alien creature.

We had our court date this morning for finalizing the adoption. Alex is now officially and legally my son. Naturally, we got one more dose of “you should have paid thousands of dollars for a lawyer” this morning, but not too bad. Apparently even the judges aren’t sure what to do without lawyers leading them along. Weird.

We’ve been playing with Celestia the past couple days, and boy is my graphics card tired.

Alex keeps wanting to look at the lava flows on Venus, and I’ve got models of the Deepspace 9 station and Babylon 5 and stuff all over the universe. This is going to be such a timesink this summer, I’m betting. Wonder if I can get it working on the TV-out for the Linux MythTV box I’ll be putting together. That would be cool – flying around space on the television, making Alex go, “ooh! Let me see the lava, Daddy!” over and over again. hehe

Pretty sure I saw JabberJenny down by the Concho today, with her family. I was a bit distracted trying to corral The Boy, as usual, but how many women in San Angelo have short dark hair with pink streaks, and a couple kids in tow? That’s my thought too. 🙂

Alex had another birthday party to go to this afternoon – grabbed a present from the cache in the closet. That is a tradition I’m going to keep up for as many years as kids will let me get away with it – we bought up a bunch of cheap toys at after-Christmas sales. Makes it really easy when one of his classmates has a party. So, this party was at the Rink; Alex has never skated before so you can imagine how much fun that was. Interior monolog: “must not laugh at him…must not laugh at him” heh

Went to go see Robots today, with Alex the monkey boy. It was pretty good, recommended for any kids. Might not be a big hit with serious folks, but it was entertaining fluff, and (most importantly) the Boy liked it.

Finished my homework a day earlier than necessary, played Pirates of the Spanish Main with monkey boy, went to the park until he asked to come home, watched Donnie Darko (brilliantly weird as hell), made barbecued pork loin for all and sundry (a hit), and now off to bed with nekkid woman.

Bonus – tomorrow is a day off.

Alex and I found some great deals at Toys R Us today. He spent ten bucks and got 5 Transformers, four of which turn into a super-dude. I spent three bucks and got a Lego Star Wars Battledroid worth 40. Oh, yeah.

I would like to take a moment to point out the Robosapien has dropped in price by 20% since Christmas. This would be a fine addition to any house with a 34 year-old man and 5 year-old boy. *hint*

Well, this has been a full weekend. I’m almost glad to go to work tomorrow – they don’t expect me to do as much there.

Friday, we had the “open one present” wait for Alex. He was about to explode by the time we called it “eve” and said he could open one. He got a cool RC Corvette in that round. Circuit City’s “get it free after rebate” system is a good thing for parents.

Friday evening, we headed out to my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law’s house (don’t try to figure out how this makes us family – it’s Texas). They are some of the most fantastic people around, and they wanted a house full of people for Christmas. We were happy to oblige them. Our contribution to the potluck included baklava, cheese and crackers, and a veggie tray. Somehow, we came back with more than we took over, including some presents for Alex and us’ns.

Saturday morning, we put the turkey in the oven. Twenty pound monster, it was. We put lemons and limes in the body and a tangerine in the neck; that was the moistest and most succulent turkey any of us had ever had. Alex got to open all the presents under the tree, and then more presents when the relatives came over in the afternoon. After all was unwrapped, he asked plaintively, “Why didn’t Santa bring me what I asked for?” As if he didn’t have a bushel of presents. His Oma (Dutch for grandma) contributed 25 bucks to his college fund, which will have a more long-lasting effect even if he doesn’t appreciate it yet. Much eating and drinking and sitting by the fire ensued. Everyone left with jars of homemade cranberry butter (which has no butter but can’t be called jelly because it lacks pectin) and most were given other leftovers as well, including more baklava and pumpkin pie.

Sunday saw the rise of the after-Christmas sales. We’ve already got most of the shopping done for next year’s presents, at least for the kids. It’s a very liberating feeling. They’re even wrapped and in the closet now. Mostly, this is just a good idea to avoid adding more work to the time which coincides with Finals week next year.

More photos of a cute boy and his toys are coming soon, no doubt.

We’ve posted more Christmas photos on the site. We’ve got pictures from Alex’s pre-K holiday program, the light displays here in San Angelo, and some of Alex looking cute.

Check out our Halloween photos. They are coolio. Yo.

New photos in the gallery, of Alex’s birthday party. He had lots of fun and there was much chaos.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a cool movie. Alex is running around the den screaming random Sky Captain-related phrases now, driving his mother insane.

Gorgeous movie, really. The first 30 or 40 minutes were fantastic, and then it slowed down a bit. Still maintained a great noir-like look and feel, but Paltrow was doing way too much of the intrepid female reporter crap. I know the movies it is aping were kind of melodramatic, so I’ll let it go a bit. The performance of the late Laurence Olivier was pretty cool, but not as realistic as I thought it would be. The trailers made it seem that Angelina Jolie was the lead, but she doesn’t even show up until at least an hour into the film.

Anyway, fun movie. No particular depth, and some of the surprises are telegraphed 5 to 30 minutes before the punch lines, but fun matinee. Go see it. Take your hyperactive little boys. They’ll love it.

Day started out well. Alex was impatient, of course, and popped into the den at 7 am to discover how much Santa had added to his stash. His Oma came over to play with him, and all was well. The toilet stopped flushing, and backed up into the tub. Drano and plungers had no effect. Angela got pulled over for speeding (warning thank goodness). Plumber only cost 130 bucks, but says our entire sewer line needs to be replaced some time in the next year, at a cost of 1400 dollars or so. Joy to the world.

Coming up next, dinner with a friend’s family at the house. Let’s hope the plumbing cooperates.