Little D's 9 Months Old

I know I got it right this time. May 19th is Declan's 9th month.

We went to Libs' parents place for the May long weekend. We got a few choice shots, but mostly Libs took some video of my windmilling with Declan. It looks a little harrowing I admit, but my hands never come off him.




It's not hard to relax. In a hammock.


The weekend before, we got some shots with Mommy.


I rarely frame the "Lemme hold the camera away from us and take a shot" correctly.


He does laps around these things now. It's just plain ridiculous.


This was the first time he's actually touched the bike. And it was running, by the way.

Camgasm Update

The fine folks at CustomWeather gave me access to their weather service a little while ago.

After finally getting a chance to play with it again, I ran into problem after problem trying to connect.

Well, it's been worked out and now camgasm.com has a cute little current weather reporting system for the time being.

What am I doing with it?

step 1. I get your IP address
step 2. I send that IP to GeoBytes IPlocator.
step 3. Now that I have the city, I query CustomWeather and get back the xml with your local weather.

fun fun.

The Quietly Talented

It turns out the nice lady down the street self-published a book of verse. "For children...of all ages." she told Libs.

It's a lovely book.



Here's an excerpt:

i used to think :
that horses were fathers and cows were the mothers;
and cats and dogs were sisters and brothers;
a deer was a mom; a moose was a dad;
and mice were all good and rats were quite bad;
eagles were angry and dolphins were not
and we hooman beans were the best of the lot.

If you're interested in getting ahold of a copy, email Leona.

Music to Think With

Yesterday, I was in a contemplative mood. Just in time, Nancy Sinatra's Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) came on my iTunes.

I'm not going to put the whole thing here, but there's a snippet above.

Baby-proofing

This weekend, Libs and I went on a baby-proofing extravaganza. We wrapped the fireplace foot (lintel?) with this cool foam stuff. Declan really likes to climb it for some reason. I installed wood onto the railing so we would be able to use our brand new pressure bottom of stair gate, since he's also, somewhere along the line, taught himself to awkwardly climb stairs.

For me, the pièce de resistance is my solution to a power bar and power cord fairground I had beside my desk. (I apologize, but two printers, two USB and firewire hubs, two monitors, a CPU, a scanner, firewire hard drive, cable modem and wireless router all need to be plugged in for Libs and I both to use our separate computers. Her computer is on the other side of the room.)

My solution, IMHO, is pretty smart. Buy a Rubbermaid bin with a locking lid, drill two holes in the end, and put all my power supplies, cords, etc. in it.


Note the vent holes.



Sweet.

Even Libs has to admit that it looks very good and knowing little Declan won't be sticking whatever he's capable of sticking in one of those outlets on a power bar or chewing on a cord running the juice to my Mac is reassuring.

Random Acts of Violence

Last Saturday and Sunday Libs and I worked on our front garden. I dug a trench and put in edging, libs dumped two huge bags of dirt and we did some planting. The pièce de resistance was a four pack of solar lights we picked up.

We were very pleased with ourselves and what we'd accomplished. The yard wasn't finished by any stretch, but it was started. And it looked nice.

Well, this evening, I stepped out front to throw out some garbage and noticed the lights weren't there. One was, but the rest weren't. Oh no, wait, there was a tidy pile of them with the solar panel on the side of the garden. Oh no, wait, it's not a tidy pile, it's a broken, twisted, mangled pile.

Way to go, teenaged passersby that decided that my stuff was worth trashing. Congratulations on fueling the suspicion I already harbor towards my fellow man. Thank you SO MUCH for allowing us to waste fifty dollars that gave us that little bit of happiness. You've given us so much and we got you nothing at all. Nothing but a cheap thrill on a Wednesday night. Wooooo, bunch of big guys, trashing some poor shlep's little doodad less than a week after he got it. Getting wasted on mom's peach schnappes and running around breaking stuff must feel so great. God, I wish I'd caught you. It would have been worth it happening just to catch you. (thanks, John Travolta in Pulp Fiction for the inspiration in the line). I own a bat specifically for people like you.

From Canadian Tire's website


From our front yard



Thanks again, asses.