Spring and uninventions
I thought I hadn't posted a blog for a really long time, but I looked and it's only been a couple of months so that's not too bad. I haven't been taking too many pictures I guess. But here is a quick fill-in of things that have been happening.
It was winter and then it was spring. Like everywhere else, we had a pretty warm winter. You won't hear me complain about that. A couple more winters like this one and I might be convinced to stay in Wyoming longer.
Zia playing in the thaw with friends.
Not pictured: smell of winter's worth of cow poop defrosting
I've been pretty busy, but no real art projects. I did paint this bird house for my two favorite things: theater and Sheridan. Yeah, I bet they didn't get anywhere close to my 20 hours of that. Mental note not to participate in charity events again.
This is how Boomer has been helping me lately.
Pretty much all Lincoln did this winter was build with Legos. Here is one of his own creations.
Lincoln turned four.
Amber turned more-than-four.
Eating breakfast (Wild, I know).
Smushing on Boomer. I really like this picture. I think it captures Lincoln and Boomer's relationship extremely well.
Sometimes Zia makes her own lunch. This is called the Super Sandwich. She's been making these for years. It is one part ham, one part butter, one part peanut butter, and one part jelly.
So, last year the town Easter egg hunt was this big disaster. There were about 200 kids and about 200 eggs. This year I designed the flyer and hooked up an Easter bunny costume. For the flyer I went with a "There will be Blood" theme. Needless to say, this was met with confusion. But I will consider it a success for one reason: there are no other "There Will Be Blood" themed Easter Egg Hunt Flyers anywhere, ever.
So, the Easter hunt went better. There were 2400 eggs so everyone got some. Ian was the Easter bunny. He did a good job.
I guess Amber already put up pictures of the kids, but this was my favorite one.
Zia had her First Communion at church. This made it easy for me to pick the date of my one day of going to church for the year.
I forgot to upload pictures of our new garage. Yeah, it's still being worked on, 8 months later. The masonry has been done and everything else is pretty much together, except for the landscaping. One of the byproducts of the new garage ended up being the slab of the old garage, which we left to use a basketball court, etc. The kids love it and spend a lot of time riding their bikes around on it.
For Easter we bought Lincoln a small electric four wheeler and Zia a new bike. The four wheeler has easily been the favorite and gets a lot of use.
My dad, Amber's dad and I went to an auction in Buffalo one morning. Those guys sure do talk fast and it gave me a headache after a couple of hours. The people at the auction were almost exactly as I had pictured them. Also, I did not buy anything at the auction. Just like eBay, it's difficult to get a good deal.
And this is a roadkilled pheasant. They're pretty amazingly colored birds. That is all about the dead pheasant.
Zia and Lincoln have a name for this. I think it's the Tiger Train. I forget.
Zia and a friend playing outside.
We finally got around to burning all the brush piles. It turned into a picnic. Grandpa Mark was out there for about 6 hours.
Another picture of stuff burning. This is a winter's worth of sensitive documents in the fireplace. I thought it sort of looked like a monster. Like Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock or something.
And as a totally inappropriate closer, I'm going to include this scan of two recent Archie comics I bought for Zia. Maybe they should make these sexier so I buy them, huh? And underneath it I'm going to put this picture of the kids. It's going to be great.
The Nice-Passable-Crappy Weather Project
I know what you're thinking: two blogs in one week! But this isn't a blog. It's science.
One year ago Sunday I started recording the weather every day on a free wildlife calendar we got somewhere. Each day I determined whether the weather/temperature was Nice, Passable or Crappy. I also noted whether it was really windy, when there were storms, and sometimes, particularly if it was really hot or really cold, I wrote down the temperature.
I judged whether a day was Nice, Passable or Crappy with a lot of leeway depending on the season. For example, 30 degrees in the winter is nice. 30 degrees in June is crappy. Windstorms, thunderstorms with wind, blizzards, excessive rain - all those things instantly receive the Crappy rating. Also, days when the temperature reached above 88 or so degrees received the Crappy rating. This is because, due to physical handicaps I can't go swimming and the hot weather is uncomfortable for me in other ways.
After Amber say the results I tallied she said, "I can't believe you rated that many days 'Nice.'" So, you see, I was very objective. SCIENCE.
I should also note that last winter was cold and awful, and that this winter has been pretty nice. So, I think we can safely say that those two extremes have balanced themselves out.
The results:
Recorded weather for 339 days out of 365. The other days I was out of town.
October was the nicest month with 17 Nice days. February and August were the two worst months with 17 and 22 Crappy days respectively.
In Ranchester during 2011 (and one month of 2012!) the weather was 31.26% Nice, 28.6% Passable, and 39.8% Crappy. It was windy (winds at least 35 mph, as high as 68 mph) 43 days of the year, or 12.7% of the time. It was -10 or colder 11 days of the year, and probably more, since I did a poor job at recording temperatures.
So, there you have it! Crappy weather wins!
Trip to Disney World
We survived our five day trip to Florida. We got home last night at 2 AM after several long (but on-time) plane rides. If you know me, you know that I don't like hot weather, traveling, and lots of people (actually, we could probably shorten that to "people" in general). Florida has all those things. That being said, the weather was very pleasant (warm, but never hot), and the crowds, I'm told, are much less than during the peak times during the busy season. The kids had a great time and there were no tears or fits the entire trip, even though Lincoln got so worn out every day that we had to trek back to the hotel so that he could get in a nap while Zia went swimming.
We drove to Billings the night before because we had an early flight.
All through this trip Zia made friends with kids where ever she went, particularly when she went swimming. These girls were her best friends until she made new best friends the next day. We're not sure where she got this skill. Not from either of us.
How come vacations always start out like this?
Early morning in Salt Lake.
So excited.
We arrived at the resort in time for the kids to swim after dinner.
Day One: Magic Kingdom.
The Buzz Lightyear ride.
I thought I was totally killing it on this ride (a shooting gallery that keeps track of your points) after I maxed out the score. But later in the day I saw two old ladies walking around with buttons saying that they also scored the maximum points on the ride, so...must not be much of an achievement.
Asto-Orbiter
I have no idea why the Tomorrowland Speedway is still there. It's old. It's smelly. But for some reason we took pictures there, so maybe that's why.
Here are some things I noticed during my visit.
- The rides are very short, the lines can be long. Like 2-4 minutes short. That wouldn't be a big deal, but people will wait up to an hour to ride. This is the case with the new(er) Toy Story Mania ride in Hollywood Studios. We waited 30 minutes for that one, by far the longest the waited for any ride, and it ended up being a few minutes long. Otherwise, the waits weren't bad at all and we used the Fastpass tickets for the lengthy ones, so no biggie. But anyway, really short rides. Like Pirates of Caribbean. I remember that one from my last visit when I was twelve. What I didn't remember is that it's only a couple of minutes long. If you blink, you'd miss it.
Part of the TS Mania line.
- Video screens have replaced a lot of the animatronics. Rides like Seas with Nemo, Journey to Imagination (which, sadly, is completely different than the version I remember from twenty years ago), and Toy Story Mania basically are just you driving by video screens in glorified carnival carts. Even the Mexico ride in Epcot is mostly just video panels now. Lame.
- Sometimes you can walk a long ways in Disney before you hear someone speaking in English. Everyone seems to be from Europe or from South America. And you know how everyone always claims that Americans are such bastards when they travel overseas? Yeah, you guys act the same way when you come to America.
- There are a lot of fat people at Disney. Maybe there are just a lot of fat people period. If you want to make money in the future, invest in scooters. Just like the movie Wall-E. There are numerous other blogs about this.
Haunted Mansion was my favorite one, but the kids were NOT so sure, and wouldn't go on it with me again.
Another aspect of Disney World is the character meet and greet. Generally you will be in a line with a bunch of unruly, entitled Brazilians. And then the lady before you will take 40 pictures of her kids with the character with her cellphone. And then she'll make the professional photographer take pictures of HER with her cellphone. Unbelievable. Happened every day.
This is how Pluto signs autographs.
Parade.
Oh, let's just throw in a couple of fat people pictures. I wish I would have taken more.
So, this guy had an Angry Birds shirt on. I stalked him for a couple of minutes, but I could never get a picture of the front of him. But man. It was something else.
Day Two: Hollywood Studios.
We ended up going to Hollywood Studios for two days. The kids really liked the Star Tours ride. Zia was selected as the Rebel spy during one of our rides, and Amber picked for another. So, I guess we have a lot of rebel spies in our family.
Kids waiting for Star Tours.
Why buy a shirt when you can just pose with it?
The Indiana Jones stunt show was exactly the same as it was when I saw it twenty years ago. Exactly.
What the crowd looks like for that show.
Lincoln swimming at the hotel. He only comes up for just barely long enough to catch his breath. He's a lifeguard's worst nightmare because he always looks like he's drowning.
See that douche bag behind Lincoln? His wife used an iphone to check stats on a basketball game and relayed every single point, foul and substitution across the water to him for 20 minutes while he ignored his son.
We rode buses to Downtown Disney because Lincoln really wanted to go to the Lego store there. Never mind that you can buy Legos at Walmart back at home. He HAD to go there. Downtown Disney is sort of a shopping area, but no one is actually shopping. They're all just walking around. Tons of people. We got some Legos and got out of there. 60 minutes of bus riding for that.
They don't look worn out, do they?
Some resort architecture.
Zia enjoying a desert that she can paint and eat too.
Day Three: Epcot
Out of all the parks, Epcot was a little disappointing to me. Rides like Journey to Imagination used to be great. Now it sucks. Horizons is gone. Spaceship Earth was never very exciting even though it looks exciting. Luckily, there are some good new rides like Soarin' and Test Track to fill the gap, but it still feels a bit dated. And I never did like the World Showcase. So much walking. So little payoff.
Zia took this picture of a Hannah Montana prop. I don't know anything about it.
Somewhere in Epcot you can taste pop from all over the world. Beverly was BAD.
Big lemons.
A napkin.
We ate at a restaurant with a fish tank.
Dessert with bloody skid mark.
Really bummed this picture isn't better. Because man, my face was funny.
If only there was a black metal church burning ride.
Spot Amber!
Day Four: Animal Kingdom.
AK is the newest park. It is really beautiful and the amount of detail that Disney has put into the villages and buildings is incredible. I didn't do a very good job of photographing that sadly. AK also has some great thrill rides like Dinosaur and Expedition Everest.
Lincoln went on Dinosaur. When the light can back on and the ride stopped, I looked at him: His eyes were shut tight. I don't think he saw many dinosaurs!
AK also has a retro dinosaur carnival style park. This ride sort of made me sick.
You can pet goats at AK.
And they've got llamas!
We watched some kind of pig get spayed in the operating theater. Pretty neat, actually.
Some images of the details in the buildings.
AK has an animal safari ride with real trucks. Very impressive and fun.
We did talk Zia into riding Expedition Everest (AK's rollercoaster). Here she is being nervous about it.
Walked back to Epcot for the fireworks and dinner.
Day Five: Went back to Hollywood Studios and flew home. A very long day.
Overall, we had a very fun time. Disney is what it is. It may be evil in some ways, but the amount of thought that they've put into every aspect of the parks is amazing. Also amazing is that everyone who visits there comes away feeling like they've really experienced all sorts of things and happened upon special events. I know it's all an engineered facade, but they've really got it down pat...
