Turtle Song

Laser Gun Fight

Happy Square Root Day

03.03.09, you only get a couple of these each century. It's also my son's 4th birthday. So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
The conversations that are sticking with me from the birthday party are the ones about the activities the other kids are involved in. Is 3 too early for ice skating lessons, dance, gymnastics or soccer? The stories you hear about the standouts in most fields involve becoming dedicated at a VERY early age, but on the flip side there's the older brother of one of my son's friends who at 9 has "hung up the skates and retired from hockey." I guess providing the opportunity is okay, as long as you don't push too hard, but then you run the risk of a kid just siting and not participating or getting burned out on an activity that they could be good at later. Tough choices, still I we are thinking about a soccer league for our son this summer / fall.

No pictures or video of party yet.

Poster Contest

So tonight I found this contest on the Internet. It's hard for me to believe that the Simpsons have been on TV for 20 years, makes me feel old.
The weekend was full of birthday stuff for my son, cleaning Friday followed by the party Saturday. It went very well again his year, lots of fun & lots of people. We even had a few neighbors over, which is nice. 4 years in the house and just now having them over. Then Saturday night and Sunday were full of what I can only assume was food poisoning from an egg salad submarine. The up side is that I wasn't sick with anything long lasting and I was the only one who ate the sandwich. The down side was, well the effects of food poisoning. I'll do an actual birthday post tomorrow on the actual birthday.

Painting Project

The painting of the flower fairy decorative windows got started last night. I got one fairy done in about an hour and a half. By my estimate it will take about 18 fairies to fill the 3 windows and then separate backgrounds for the windows will need to be painted. So with 15 weeks until the due date, it's going to be a little tight to get the project done before the baby arrives. But it's not a hard deadline, so if the baby's early or I'm late it should be fine. Anyway, here's an idea of how much space is left on each window, or how big the fairies will be on the windows.

Fighting Weekend

So Saturday was a full day demo at the Ice Festival in Scranton and Sunday was a regional fighter practice in Syracuse. I don't know how the Ice Festival was, as I spent the entire time fighting at the demo. But my wife and son walked around and they said it was small but the ice sculptures were nice. And I got to be in the local Scranton papers the next day. I've put up one of the picture's here, where I'm giving a flower to a particularly blood thirsty girl. I'd taken (cut off) one of my opponent's arms, so in keeping with SCA convention, he dropped his shield. I asked the crowd if I too should drop my shield, sometimes seen as the chivalrous thing to do, and the little 4 year old girl yelled "Keep your shield", the prudent choice. I won the fight and gave her a fake flower we had to hand out to on lookers. Overall a nice Valentine's Day.
My elbow was killing my Saturday night, but fighting on Sunday seems to have mostly fixed it. That's my second injury a full day of fighting has fixed, the first one being a badly wrenched back a few years ago. I was able to stay on my exercise schedule on Monday, so it looks like just some lingering pain, not a serious impairment.


So yesterday starts the cleaning for my son's birthday party. YEAH! Nothing like a two week cleaning schedule to make things fun. Plus I still need to start the trivia DVD for the party.
And we go a new digital camera over the weekend. To replace the one with the non-functional LCD screen. And I got to try it out last night when my son started putting stickers on my wife's back while she was watching TV. After a few pictures I tried to test out the video function and got the following reaction: he says "Don't do a video of me" then takes the camera and puts it back in it's case. I'd already started the recording though, so here's what I got:

Aftermath of new electronics

So the new television yielded a BIG box and a TON of packing foam, formed into pieces not the loose peanut variety. My son has just about gotten all of the fun out of them, without passing the excessive mess line. I took some video of him and discovered that the LCD on the back of the digital camera is cracked and nonfunctional. So I shot the movies with a kind of point and hope approach. Time for a new camera, because I'll be shocked if you can replace teh LCD screen for less than buying a new camera.
Day 1 - short video:

Day 2 - LONG video