Orlando, Part 7

Legoland!  A short drive, but we made it without incident thanks to the Ipad.  Let's talk about what we did!

My favorite part about Legoland was that it was fast, all day long.  No long lines.  I hate those.  We did a dragon roller coaster twice (Tyler has become a big fan of coasters), a few smaller rides, and then a shooting Gallery with moving stuff and legos.  Jess and I tied, and Tyler didn't get any.  We are really good at rides.  

After lunch, we saw Wildstyle!  Tyler went up and nerviously waved hi for a while, we got some pictures, as you do, and then we found a place where you got to *build* with legos.  Tyler really liked that one.  We made a bunch of lego cars and raced them.  Tyler named his car "Serious Guy".  They had a place where you could build buildings with Duplos and then try and shake them down with earthquake power, but what I mostly learned from my experiments was that Duplos are really strong.  

Then Tyler got to drive a car.  It was all very controlled, but he definitely did it.  He made turns and avoided obstacles, unless mom asked him to wave hi.  It's not good to drive distracted.  We were quite proud.  

We did a bunch more rides, they move you around fast.  

Then was miniland, and that was neat.  That's where they have all the lego replicas of Vegas, the shuttle, Star Wars, various cities, it was really neat to see the stuff.  Also they had buttons that made things move.  

They had a waterski show we got to watch, too.  They had pirates, and action, and people going off jumps.  Neat.  There were fireworks at the end, and they only scared Tyler a little.  

And, of course, there were lots of legos to see.  Tyler and Jess got some ice cream while I wandered through shops.  Lots of things to like, but nothing that made me want to buy it right away.  I would have had to get it home afterwards.  I did end up getting a few small things to play with, but Jess is right, it's too small to have those around the house while Casey is learning to crawl.  Cats knock them off tables, they end up all over the place, and Casey is definitely at the stage where those things are too small and probably dangerous for her.  Soon, though.  I have some saved up for later.  

Then we came back to the hotel, got some sleep, and flew back home.  We had some fun at the airport, too.  Tyler made some new friends and drove cars and Dinosaur puppets around with them.  It was a good way to spend the time before the flight.  

Of course, then the kids got sick on the flight home, and we spent much of the past week with them at home fighting off fevers and bad attitudes.  It's definitely the most exhausting vacation I've ever had.  

-N

Orlando now 6 of them

Did you know that Epcot is still a thing?  I'm convinced that it only still exists because of 1) corporate sponsorship and 2) that sweet golf ball.  Anyway, we went.

The first thing we did was a ride where you got to 'design' your own car and then test drive it. Tyler did a pretty good job designing the car with a little help from dad.  He made a big truck with a jet engine and huge wheels.  Also there were flames on the side.  And it was green.  Then we got to go through a coaster.  Tyler was pretty into the coaster, especially when it went outside and went all fast.  Then he got a score for his car, and we went into the 'check out these cars' area, brought to you by Dodge.  Which was actually pretty cool, because one of Tyler's favorite things to do is to just sit in the drivers seat of a car.

We went on Mission: Space next.  It's in a centrifuge!  It was pretty intense, actually.  I clenched my legs, just in case.  Then you had to push some buttons or else...well, or else the computer did it for you.  I was curious what would happen if everyone on your 'team' deliberately tried to fail everything.  We probably would have still made it to Mars.

While Jess went on the ride, Tyler and I sat around and ate goldfish.  We took turns.

We went to 'The Seas" next.  There's a Nemo ride, and then an aquarium!  I liked the critters to see.  Eels, lionfish, cuttlefish, even a dolphin.  I had good fun.  I liked the part where they tried to make Sharks less scary. Cause they are just fish, after all.

We stopped for lunch and had to put up with a tantrum, but after that we got to go on Soarin', which is the dumbest name for a ride ever.  Kinda fun, though.  It's like Imax with a big moving chair.  Then a boat ride through their experimental greenhouse.  I hope some of their experiments work, because they look pretty neat.  Also, Tilapia!  Yum.

A few other rides.  Went through the imagination station where they actually used the phrase "next stop: imagination".  We decided to skip Captain EO, too weird even for us.  We saw some other stuff, and then decided to call it early.  Epcot is pretty strange.

We went to a Rainforest cafe with the family.  We had to do walk along Downtown Disney, which we had to do slowly, cause of grandparents, but I had Casey on my chest, and she was very cute, and was holding on to my fingers a lot.  We walked through the shops for a while, and then had some food at the Cafe.  Tyler was clearly concerned by the animatronic monkeys, but after a few storms he settled down.  He needed me to cover his ears for the first rainstorm, though.

I checked out the art store on the way out, which was pretty neat, but certainly too expensive, and then we went home and fell asleep.

Orlando the Fifth

The next day we went to Universal Islands of adventure, A similar thing, just with different intellectual properties involved.

Jess and I rode the Hulk coaster first, definitely too fast for Tyler, but we both really liked it.  Then we got to the Spider Man Ride.  No line, thank goodness, because we rode it like 5 times in a row.  It was really neat, it had 3d stuff, bookended by real props.  It made for a terrifically impressive ride.  Tyler loved it, though he mostly closed his eyes for the parts with the bad guys.  In the middle of all those rides, we went across the street to meet with the real, live, Spider Man.  He was pretty great.  Had spider-banter and everything.  He even did it for the spanish-speaking family in front of us.  Tyler told spider-man he had just been on his ride.  He also told spider-man that the bad guys "were using potty words outside the potty".  This is how you calibrate the moral compass of a three-year-old.

We rode a ride called the Pternadon flier, which you had to be *under* a certain height to ride.  But you got to bring an adult, so Tyler went twice and took each parent once.  Kind of him.  Then we got churros.

Next stop was Harry Potter Land!  It's really pretty looking.  They had a big Hogwarts building with a ride inside that Jess and I went on.  Similar to spider man, you went back and forth between video screens and real things, both of which looked pretty great.  The ride moved a lot as well, it was fun.  While Jess and I alternated rides, they had a ride-share room that was playing the Harry Potter movie.  Tyler was entranced.

There was a smaller roller coaster next door that was perfect for Tyler, he went on it three times.  Having less busy days at the park certainly makes it easier to enjoy yourself.  Then we got lunch.  They had butterbeer and Pumpkin Fizz.  The Fizz was pretty good, mostly just a soda, but with a nice flavor.  I'm pretty sure butterbeer might just be pumpkin fizz with foamed butter on top.  Certainly looks like beer, but tastes like candy.  I can see why they'd put it in the book.

Jess went on another ride while I looked around at the shops.  I bought a crap-ton of candy, but little else.  I considered the wands, but it didn't seem right to buy someone else's wand.  You'd want to make your own.  Anyway, while I was looking at things, the park got hit by a *downpour*.  I got trapped under an awning and ended up getting my shoes really wet.  Jess managed to ride it out with Tyler in the entrance of a bathroom.  Eventually the rain passed and we went on a roller coaster called the Dragon.  It was pretty fast and fun, though it took us some time to figure out how to reconnect for the parent-swap.

Then off to Dr. Seuss Land.  Which was neat, because Tyler finally got all the references.  We did a few rides there, and the Cat in the Hat ride is surprisingly creepy.  Tyler liked it enough to ride it twice, though.

Next we went off to a stuntman spectacular called Sinbad.  It started off with a firecracker bang that scared Tyler pretty good.  He covered his eyes and ears for a while, but eventually opened up and watched with wonder for the rest.  He got really excited when Sinbad picked up a sword.  Anyway there was fun, and stunts, and more fireworks at the end, but Tyler had a great time.  We met the stunt-people at the end, too.  Tyler asked if the Bad Guys were good now.  We told him yes.

A final thing called Poseidon's adventure, a neat tour through a few rooms with clever tricks.  My favorite was when they flashed you with light and when your eyesight came back, you were in a completely different room.  That was a neat trick.

Jess and Tyler wrapped up the day by going on Spider Man two more times (total of seven!) while I looked around the shops for anything interesting.  I didn't find anything of note.  On the way home we picked up Pizza, and went to sleep early.

Orlando thing 4

Our plan was to go back for more Magic Kingdom this day, but we decided to take it easy and go to the park later, getting as much sleep as we could after our gigantic roller coaster party the night before.  We had one more breakfast  with the Halls and sent them on their way home.  We relaxed around the hotel for a bit, too, making some plans and recharging batteries.

Then we went back to Magic Kingdom for a shortish day.  We went on the Winnie the Pooh ride a couple of times, which was nice because they had things for him to do in the line.  He liked the ride, too, which was funny because it reminded me a lot of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which scared the pants off of him last time we went to Disney.  So he's growing.

I liked taking Tyler on the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse.  For one, he really likes treehouses, and I got to try and explain the story to him.  It's a fun story.  I got to do that a lot on other rides, too.  There's a lot of disney lore and Tyler hasn't seen most of it.  Peter pan?  No idea.  Brave?  Not seen.  Lots of stuff like that.

After a few more rides we had lunch, then had to wait out a bout of rain.  In the afternoon we got to meet Mikey. He talks now!  I don't know how they queue it, but Mikey had a few phrases he could say, and his mouth moved and everything.  Tyler was mostly silent, but we got some nice pictures, and when we were done Tyler saw some Mikey dolls and got really excited, like this was a Mikey Mouse that was safe to talk with.  He played with the doll and shook his hand and everything.  It was cute.

When we stepped outside we were in the middle of a parade, so we stopped and watched.  There were some really impressive floats.  I liked the Tangled one a lot, the princess had a frying pan, and the guys were on swinging hammers.  We made our second trip to Splash Mountain after that and then departed the park.

Afternoon dinner was a thank-you dinner to Grandma and Grammie for watching Casey all day for us.  They insisted that they didn't need thanks, and that the Grandbaby kisses were thanks enough.  Still, we went out for some dinner, got home, and all fell asleep again.  We did that a lot, it was a fun vacation, but quite tiring.

Orlando, Post #3

The next day (Monday, for those keeping track) was all about the Magic Kingdom.  We started in the morning with the myself, Jess, and Tyler, and then continued in the evening with Shannon and her family, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We got there nice and early, and the park was largely unoccupied.  We took the opportunity to go on a Buzz Lightyear ride a few times.  You get a zapper and get to zap bad guys along a big, indoor track.  Tyler got 1200 points, which isn't bad until you consider that I got nearly 200,000!  I am the best at shooting things!  I didn't brag at Tyler too much.  We went on the ride twice cause there was no line.  My favorite way to do Disney rides: quickly.

We also went on the Tomorrowland Peoplemover, which was a nice tour of the area.  Another ride in the middle that's essentially just the Dumbo ride again (there are a lot of those, but Tyler does like them) and then a track where you can drive a car, though there is a guide bar in the middle so you don't crash into anything.  That ride was terrible, everytime Tyler hit the bar, it jerked the wheel out of his hands.  I took over the steering eventually and got us back home, but we were done with that one.  Also, gasoline powered cars in Tomorrowland?  Lame.

Mickey's Philharmagic was nice.  It was a 3D show with some puffs of air and a lot of classical Disney tunes.  The music was, as always, great to hear, even if the 3D was wonky.  Tyler's favorite part was where Donald got shot at us at the end of the movie and when the house lights came on, you turned around to see an animatronic Donald Butt stuck in the wall.  He laughed at that.

Small world, Tyler may have even remembered that one from before.  We saw the big clock at the end chime and tell the time.  Tyler wanted to have that happen every time, but we never got the timing right again.

We got some lunch (Disney is really, really good at feeding lots of people) and then Jess and Tyler went on a carousel while I wandered around and looked at stuff.  I ran into a parade in the central area that was quite insistent that 1) it was time to party and 2) you needed to put your hands up.

Then we went on a Roller Coaster with Tyler.  Definitely the most extreme ride he'd ever gone on, but he *loved* it.  We went on it twice.  He had a huge smile and kept saying "whee" as we zipped around corners.  It was called "Barnstorming", in case you're curious to look it up, but Tyler was a huge fan (and just tall enough to ride on it.  40 inches turned out be a magic number for him, lots of fun rides at that height.)

Then we went on Pirates of the Caribbean, which Tyler liked, and then Splash Mountain, with may have been his favorite ride of all, surprisingly enough for us.  He really liked the big drop at the end, though he closed his eyes because he "didn't want to get wet".  The main reason he didn't get wet is that he is pretty short, and most of the water just went right over him.

We were exhausted at this point, and because we took a shuttle in, we just took a taxi back.  We left the kids with Grandma, and, because we are crazy people, took the Hall family and went right back for a evening of more Disney.

It's called "Very Merry Christmas", and they limit the number of people that can go and keep the park open till midnight, which means you can go on lots of rides very quickly, if you want.  They also have free Cookies and Hot Chocolate, which we got right after we got some coffee, because we needed the energy.

Also, we ended up having a waffle with Nutella for dinner.  Not well balanced, but we had rides to do.

We did all the fast rides that Tyler wouldn't be able to do: the new 7 Dwarves ride which was not terribly exciting, but had a lot of neat things to look at.  We did all three of the 'Mountains' (Space, Thunder, and Splash) twice each.  I think I liked space mountain best, because Shannon kept shrieking at all the twists and turns.  The longest time was involved in simply walking from the exit back to the entrance again.

We were outdoors for one of the fireworks displays and took a moment to observe and wonder.  We had a nice spot, in between all the sites where they set off the fireworks.  Some of them were so big and so loud that I could actually feel them a little bit when they went off.  A fantastic finish and we even gave them some applause before running off to the next ride.

We completed the evening fully exhausted, doing a few last rides before piling into the truck to head back to the hotel.  We fell asleep on the drive home, but didn't get to sleep until about 1:00 in the morning.

Casey was hungry at 4.

Orlando, Part 2

Today was our Disney's Animal Kingdom day.  It's a neat little companion park.  We got up early, had some magic pancakes, and drove over with all of us (including Shannon and Family) in the Car.  It was really nice to have a big car on this trip.

We actually got there a little before the park opened, so we hung out by the Christmas tree in the entrance and had some coffee.  The place selling coffee also had gigantic Doughnuts and Cookies.  I declined, but we ended up getting a cookie to share with everyone on the way out of the park.

They had some neat things to see on the way in, people were standing around with huge spiders in boxes and neat bones for the kids to touch.  I liked that part.  The first ride we went on was one of those 3d+things poking you and air spraying you theatres called "it's hard to be a bug".  I liked it, but Tyler was terrified of the whole experience, and that was before the bugs attacked us.  Fortunately, he was gone by then, he would have really been spooked by that.

Expedition to Everest was their big coaster, and we went on that with the Hall Boys.  Tyler was too small, but we figured out you could do a parent swap and the second parent got to take two other people along, so we parlayed that into a couple of extra rides for interested kids.

They had a more Kid-friendly area nearby that we went to.  It had a dumbo-style ride that Tyler went on three times and really liked.  Nearby there was another ride that Tyler was tall enough for, a ride through a dark, animatronic dinoscape.  It moved a lot.  We told Tyler it might jostle him a bit, so he said the rid was a little "jossly".  Was dark and spooky for him, too, but he felt brave for having done it.  We got him a latex dino puppet to celebrate.

Nemo the musical.  A 30-minute stage production about the nemo movie.  Fun to watch, though Tyler wet his pants and had to use the  restroom halfway through.   Interesting staging tricks to move the fish around the stage.

The Safari was next, a wide, segregated area with animals that they let roam 'free' and big jeeps that drive through.  We saw a lot of neat animals, Rhino, Zebra, Giraffes, and several more whose name I don't remember.  We took lots of pictures, but I can't figure out how to get the blogger app to upload, so I'll have to share them another way.

We took a train to another area about conservation, the train ride was neat to see all the cages and other centers that they use to take care of the animals from the Safari.  At the end of the ride they had some more animal attractions: cute little tamarind monkeys, a petting zoo, and a presentation with a few animals.  I like any place with a petting zoo, and the cow they had was very friendly.

They had a Bird show as well that we went to.  Some of them flew *very* close to my head.  My favorite was actually during the pre-show where a parrot had been trained to take bottles and cans to the recycle bins, one flew by my head so close I could have touched him.  The show itself had some great birds, too.  Parrots, a hawk, an Owl, and many more.  Tyler liked it the best when one of the guys came out from the stage and sat on a bench next to us.

Then we caught a Lion King stage show that had clearly been inspired by Cirque de Solei.  They had some animatronics that were *stunningly* impressive.  They had a Simba that moved so often and with such detail that I was several times convinced their had to be someone inside.  I don't think their was, though.  Jessie's favorite part was watching Tyler's excited expression. He liked the performance so much he actually clapped on his own.

We did a couple more parent-swap rides on the Everest Coaster as the sun fell, and then we all made our way back home, put the kids to sleep, and then fell asleep soon after.

-N

Orlando, Day 1

I like writing these, mostly for me.  It's always fun to look back and remember them.later on.  So, first day!

Tyler spent most of the morning being a big jerk.  We had to put him in time out a couple of times, but after lunch and a nap he calmed down.  We picked him up from his nap and went right to the plane to go to Orlando!

Flight went really well, our plane had TVs on the back of the seats, so Tyler pretty much just watched TV the entire way.  I got to watch Lucy.  Fun movie, dumb premise.  Casey slept on Jessie most of the way.  Jessie didn't seem to mind.

When we landed, Tyler ran up and gave Grandma a big running hug.  He's getting good at that.

We all got to the hotel and fell asleep.  We set Tyler up with a long sofa mattress in the closet.  He really liked having his own room.

The next morning, we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel.  The place had 'magic pancakes'.  It was a couple of robots that just sat there and would spit out a hot, fresh pancake every 20 seconds or so as needed.  Tyler really liked the magic pancakes.  I saw the thing break once at it just spit out one, huge pancake.

Our first stop on this, our mostly 'relaxing and hanging out with family' day, was just Downtown Disney.  We took both the kids and Grammie and had to park a little far away from where the action was, but our first stop was the Lego store.  We stayed there for like an hour.  They had a thing in front where you could build your own Lego Car and race it down a ramp.  Tyler was a huge fan.  The rest of the time he spent inside at the place where you can make your own Minifigures.  He made a few and we got them for him.  He really liked having "lego guys' to play with.  He would attach things to their feet and say they were Lord Business.  You have to have seen the Lego Movie to get the Joke.

We went back home to meet Anne-Marie, Jessie's cousin, and their little one.  He's one-and-a-bit, so he can walk but not talk, and he thought Tyler was the Bees Knees.  When we had to put Tyler down for a nap, he cried because his friend was gone.  Eventually, though, Shannon, Jessie's Sister, and her two older kids showed up.  They played with the little cousin.

We all went out to a nearby park to take some pictures and let the kids play.  Organizing that many young kids is always a challenge, but we managed.  I haven't looked at the pictures yet, actually.  I probably should.  Anyway, the kids had a blast on the playground and got out a lot of energy.  Then dinner!

We had reservations for Bucca Di Beppo, but as it turns out the place we were going was in a mall, and for those of you looking at a calendar, this was Black Friday.  Fortunately, we gave ourselves plenty of leeway, and once we got past the traffic getting out of the place, parking wasn't that hard.  We made it right on time.  Good for us.

We were at the Pope Table, which is huge and round and has a couple of neat features.  1) A huge lazy Susan that all the food goes on so everyone can eat it.  2) The Pope's head in the middle (yes, the current one) 3)  The top is arched so that the person directly across from you gets your voice funneled right into your ears.  It's really odd, but neat.  We ordered so goddamn much food you have no idea.  We put a pretty good dent in it before we all got stuffed, and then jessie ordered dessert.  She got a brownie sundae the size of Casey.  Collectively we polished it off, but it took some work.

We were loud and laughed a lot, and since our table was special, we got featured on the 'intro tour' a few times.  We started toasting people when they came around for the tour.  We got a lot of smiles from the wait staff for that.  Also I got to give our server a big tip, which felt nice.

Home and food comas for all.  Anne-Marie drove home with her family, but Shannon and her family stayed in the hotel near us and joined us for a few Disney days.

-N

ReaperCon, Days 3 and 4

Last one!  There's two more below this, so if you just see this, scroll down a bunch and start reading down there.

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Reapercon Day 3

After another early morning and good breakfast, I didn't have anything scheduled until 4:00 in the afternoon, so I took my time in the morning. I read the forums, considered whether or not to bring pizza or other goodies, looked for interesting games, that sort of thing. After a slow-going morning, I headed over to the con to do some stuff.

On the way in, I'm sure, I got stopped and asked about my Backpack. I got noticed for it *all the time*. People were super curious and wanted to know more about it, and I can't blame them. Its primary goal seems to be looking really, really cool. I'm going to change my Forum name to GuyWithCoolBackpack.

My first stop was to talk with Jeremy Bonnot, he's the guy that taught the 'how not to suck' class. Really nice guy, I asked him about getting smoother blends, and he invited me to just sit and watch him paint. It was very informative, and I'm super glad I took the time. I watched him paint for about an hour until they announced they were going to start the VCR teardown competition. That's where you get to break apart a VCR and build something cool out of the components. I was the only one there, at the start, and so I got to tearing it down and getting all the cool parts out. I found the head of the VCR, and pulled out the innards, and made the cool thing that I made. I'm sure you've seen pictures. It took a while, and my paint job was pretty spotty, but it was an absolute blast. I spent a lot of time working on it. Eventually a few others joined in, too. Tonya and Adam, Richard, and another lady named Lynn. There were some pretty good ideas in there, though all the paint jobs were clearly pretty rush affairs. I had a lot of fun doing that.

 

(This is my guy.  the neat metal thing in the middle spins!)

After a lot of that, I joined my color theory class. Yes, more color theory. It was incredibly useful, though. Whereas the beginner class focused on more practical rules, the more advanced class talked about visual design, composition, and other graphic design ideas that really made me think about color and where to put it in really great ways. It was a super-great class.

After that, and a little more milling around, and some dinner, it was time for the awards ceremony. My piece won a Bronze, which was actually right about what I was expecting. A lot of other people won bronzes, slivers, and golds, too. We were all very pumped. Richard, Ben's dad, actually won a Silver Sophie...completely by accident, as it turned out. But he got to take the trophy and hang onto it, and I'm sure they'll just cast another if they need it. It was neat to see one of the Sophie trophies, too. Something to aim for in the future.

After all of that excitement, I went out to dinner with Ben, Aaron, Vincent, Tonya, Adam, and a whole big bunch of other people. We had sushi, and I had a couple sets of crazy rolls. We sat around and chatted, handed around the Sophie, made jokes, and met a few new friends. A very nice ending to the eve. I got back home, did some packing, and then went to sleep.

Day 4:

Got up bright and early, got some breakfast, and packed up my stuff. Managed to get it all in one trip, surprisingly enough, and then got my stuff out to the car. A guy asked for a ride, and I said I would, as long as he would stop somewhere to get bagels for me. We went to one, but it turned out to be at a University, and it was all closed down. So instead we just drove back down to to convention, getting some donuts on the way. Yum.

I got there in plenty of time for my morning class: brushstrokes. I got some more instruction on layering, side-brushing, and plenty of other techniques. I'll have to go over my notes again to make sure I've got it all, but it was a very useful class. Anne Forester, the lady that taught it, had lots of energy, and she's actually in charge of the paints for the entire company, so she is an endless font of knowledge. She gave me some good advice on my minis, the same advice pretty much everyone gets: more contrast with highlights and shadows.

After that I stumbled into a CAV game, a mech-based wargame, and played that for a while. It was pretty fun, but large-scale wargaming isn't something I'm looking to get into anytime soon. Regardless, it was neat to learn the system, and I got some Reaper Bucks out of the event.

After that, we gathered everyone together that did the VCR build, including the guy I gave a ride to the Convention with. He had built something overnight. So we all stood up there while Reaper Brian announced the winner. I was expecting the lady that made the imps tearing through the wiring to win, especially when Brian announced that it was the one that made the judge laugh the most. But in a shocking turn of events...they gave it to me! I was genuinely surprised, and really happy! I got some cool mousesling bar-goers. I really like the mundane kind of stuff, so getting such a nice set was a real treat.

(Myself, ReaperBrian, and the Mouselings I won!)

Then was the Auction. There was a lot of neat stuff, but nothing I was planning to really go after. I figured the really cool stuff would be out of my price range, so I thought I'd bide my time and wait to see if there was anything I wanted. Also, the whole event was a lot of fun to watch. Cool things going, people winning stuff, it was a hoot. After a while, me not seeing anything particular I wanted, Tonya and Adam started bidding on some magnetic character markers that they used in their gaming. Not really having anything I wanted that badly in mind, I just gave them my tokens to see if they could win with it. Turns out they didn't need it, but the gesture was kindly received...

...especially a few minutes later, when something did come up that I wanted. A case for carrying miniatures, something I didn't have but could really use. I bid on it, and it ran up to $220, which was as much as I had. It looked like I was going to get it...until someone bid $230. Tonya just gave me some of hers, putting me up and letting me win it. Very nice of them.

Of course, as the auction went on, people had less and less money, and Vincent managed to clean up on a couple of really cool things. He got to design his own mini, got a bunch of cool figures, and then, in the greatest gesture, picked up a figure case that was going for far too cheap and just gave it to Adam and Tonya. They were quite pleased, and there were hugs and smiles all around.

Then the auction wrapped up, and I was anxious to get back on the road, in case I got to see Tyler before he went to bed. I said my goodbyes, thanked everyone I met, and many people at the company for putting on such a great event, and then got on the road. There was some really annoying traffic, but it was an uneventful drive. I got home filled with figures, painting knowledge, and really, really warm memories.

-N

ReaperCon, Day 2

More of this!  I wrote a lot

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I got up early again this morning, had a nice waffle and some other fixins for breakfast (very yummy) and then went off to the convention space to start the day. I got a nice parking space really close in (parking is at a premium out there) and walked in after everything opened up. My first order of business was to check my class schedule, I didn't want to be late again. Then I went over and got my Vampire bones box set. So excited! It was all dense and heavy and full of fun things to paint. I also got a whole lot of paint, which is good, because I'm still building up my paints at home, and also because I didn't bring any paints with me, and the paints they had available were a bit limited. I also called up Todd and eventually picked up his Vampire set. I'm excited to give that to him. After a little bit more hanging around, I went off to my first class of the day, one on Basic color theory.

The color theory class was great. It went over some basic terms, and gave some straightforward rules on how to know when colors work well on a miniature. In essence, you don't want too many colors that are too close to each other on the color wheel, they don't offer the contrast that you want. You can get around this by muting colors, making them darker or lighter, things like that. Very useful. I took my new found knowledge with me back to the paint-and-take table, where I painted up another guy too see what I could do with his color scheme. After a little bit of Struggling, I went back to Anne Forrester (the lady that taught the class, and also a Reaper Employee in charge of all their paint, she had a lot of knowledge to share) and she gave me some tips on how to make it better. I also took my frog king-and-queen to her, and she gave some tips on things to work on (higher highlights and darker shadows). Very nice.

I also took a factory tour of Reaper on this day. It was really intriguing. Reaper Brian (the production manager, big honcho at the company) took us around and showed us the process. We got to see their fancy new plastic injection machine, look at how they made molds of figurines by pressing them in rubber disks that looked like tires. Then the cut channels for the metal to flow in and the air to flow out, and then the mold was ready to go. If you make your own mini, you can even contract them out to make molds and cast copies of your mini for you. Not cheap, but pretty cool. Then we got to go back to where they cast the minis. They had hot metal all ready to go, they grabbed a mold (asked for a mini that people liked and Reaper Brian just remembered the mold number off the top of his head) and cast some minis right in front of us. We got to ask questions about the metal, the process, how hot everything got, it was all pretty fantastic to do. And at the end, he gave us some of the minis that he had casted. Very nice of him. I can see why the company has so many fans.

I spent a long time after that just working on my mini, painting him very slowly and taking my time with the color scheme, before it was time for me to go to another class: how not to suck. It's widely billed as one of the best classes on offer, and I happen to agree. It was very comprehensive, straightforward, and was focused on techniques that will help you learn how to become a better painter. It was all very impressive and informative.

Oh, and somewhere during all of this (I think it was the day before) I submitted my guys to the painting competition. The neat thing is that they took pictures using their fancy lightbox (making everything look really cool) and then those pictures got displayed on big TVs overlooking the main floor. I'll admit, I sat there for a while and waited until mine came up so I could take a picture.

Oh, and during all of this, I'm making new friends. Just constantly getting into random, mostly effortless conversations with people that just happen to be sitting across the table from me, or what have you. Everyone was very, very friendly, easy to talk to, and made me feel very welcome...even though most of them actually were there for the first time too. I wrote down a lot of names and forum handles, because there was no way I would have remembered it all.

So after some more random painting (working on lining my miniature, something from the previous class) Reaper Brian and some other people from other gaming companies sat down and just started talking about how the whole kickstarter thing went. It was mostly advice about what works on kickstarter, which wasn't really useful to me, because I'm not planning on starting one, a lot of complaining about kickstarter's website (it does need an overhaul) and a few interesting stories tossed in here and there. I stayed for quite a while, then decided I was done for the day and rolled on home. I got to talk with you for a while, missed you greatly, and then actually took some minis outside and primed them. One of the advantages of the new bones minis is that you don't have to prime them, but the paint still, often, beads up and rolls around, like water off a freshly waxed car. It's hard enough for me to paint when my paint does stay where I put it. Having it move isn't helpful. I let them dry off overnight, and then reorganized my backpack and paints, and then went to sleep.

-N

ReaperCon, Day 1

I'm back from Reapercon!  Well, technically, I have been for a while.  I did some daily write-ups like I do when I'm on vacation so that I can remember things better, and since I have all of them, I thought I'd share them here.  Enjoy!

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I drove up on Wednesday, and on the way up I drove up past this big plume of smoke. They were in the process of closing down the southbound traffic, but the northbound traffic was still going, though I suspect I was probably one of the last few to be allowed through. I saw on the news later that I was probably driving past a burning fertilizer plant that exploded massively. Yikes. The rest of the drive was uneventful, though, except that the bombcast I was listening to kept having to restart. I checked into the hotel and was instantly on the lookout for people that I thought would be at reapercon. I saw a couple where the guy had a star wars figurine on his backpack. My people.

I realized that I forgot pretty much all of my toiletries, but the hotel had free backup toothpaste and toothbrush, and they also had some contact lens solution for sale. I kept my lenses in creamer holders overnight, and then in the morning I got some new cases, so I'm set. But I got up really early in the morning because I didn't want to have to wrestle for breakfast and also because I was *so excited* for the con that I didn't want to miss anything. I got my food, did my shopping, and then found Reaper HQ. It's a warehouse building on a normal road, and when I got there the sign that said 'enter here' was pointing at a closed and locked door. It was also raining, something else I hadn't planned for. But before too long, the rain stopped and the door opened for registration.

I was nervous about meeting people cause I really wanted to, but always have trouble just introducing myself. I needn't have worried, the guy right behind me, who is named Aaron, and goes by Adrift on the forums (you have to have both names) started talking me up, and I spent most of the rest of the day just hanging out near him and meeting people he knew. I've also met several on my own, though, it's really easy to just strike up conversations with people you've never met before.

After taking my time looking around the reaper HQ area, including the break room still dressed up like a pirate pub from last year, the metal bits exchange where you can trade random metal from a HUGE table of random parts, and plenty of paints and minis everywhere, I dropped my stuff off and joined a random RPG that needed some extra players. It was a hacked-together system from a bunch of other RPGs that I've never heard of, but it was easy to pick up, and the guy running it was a LOT of fun, very enthusiastic and very flexible. The setting was far more interesting.

For the convention, they came up with a story about a hell-bound slice of Victorian London hosting a dark carnival of the damned. They came up with factions, too, the Carnival, which are all crazy legions of hell, animal trainers, strong men, that sort of thing. The League, which are traveling adventure-types, out for the forces of good. The street thugs, urchins, cutthroats, dockworkers and other Victorian unsavories. And my faction, the stickmen, which are crazed doctors and their monstrous experiments that are looking for the secret of eternal life. Your faction, both in the RPG events using this world and in the actual convention, gets points for particpating in things, and whoever has the most points at the end of the con, and the end of the RPG stuff, wins. Pretty neat little thing. Anyway, the RPG was great, I got to play a Frankenstein monster, I hit a lot of things very well.

After that I went over to the paint-and-take, where you can pick up random miniatures, paint them, and then take them home. It's very nice, and that's where I got the mimic I sent you a picture of. I painted him for a while, and then got some lunch, all while chatting with random people that were coming and going at the table.

Sonic was there, yes, the drive-through place with the onion rings that you don't really like much anymore. They brought a frier, and some hot plates, and a bunch of food, and they stayed open from lunch all the way through dinner. The food isn't *amazing* or anything, but considering that most Convention food is actively junk, the fact that it's pretty decent is high praise.

Anyway, after some more painting and some more eating, I realized I was a little late for my first class. I considered just skipping it, so as to avoid embarrassment (copping out, as I do) but decided to be bold and walk over. I strolled right in, apologized for being late, and jumped right into class. The guy teaching it was Lazlo Jakusovski. If the name sounds familiar, it's the guy that did the Hot Lead DVDs that I was watching that Todd got for me. He was a good teacher, and seeing his technique was a really big help, it gives me a lot to work on, which is pretty good, actually. I messed up the technique on the example minis they gave us to work on, but I understood why I was messing it up, at least, so I have some hope of improving.

After the class, I went back to the painting table to hang out with some new friends, a sensation that was really quite pleasant. I worked on my mimic some more, and then when everyone was going to head off for dinner, they asked if I wanted to come along, and of course I said yes. We got in a few cars, and I carpooled with Adam and Tanya. Adam really, *really* reminds me of Kevin. You remember Kevin and Clarissa in Albuquerque? Adam has the same long hair, same beard, same nerdy shirts, same warm personality and everything. They were fun to hang out with. Anyway, we drove down to Bjs, which is part of a Brewpub chain that they actually have down in Austin, too. We've never been there, though. Anyway, we got there first, and then I went off to the bathroom. When I came back, everyone had arrive, and they were all standing around a 5-year-old who was playing some dungeon game on his Ipad, and everyone was entranced. My people! (Yes, the dad was there too, he kept his eye on us, but he could tell we were all just really being nerds. Totally harmless.)

We had a great dinner and cracked a lot of jokes, told stories, compared convention plans, and generally had a really nice time. I made a great joke about how scatterbrained Aaron was being when he got hungry, and that became a running joke for the evening. I also saw a tiny baby bunny outside of the window. I guess they just live in the city around here. So cute!

When we were done with Dinner, I drove Tanya and Adam back to the hotel. They said they were going to be up for a while, working on some painting. They also asked if I had some 'Green stuff' (Epoxy modeling putty) and I did, and they were very glad for that. They also asked if I had some superglue, and I had some of that too. In exchange, they let me use their paints. I worked some more on my guy, admired their pieces for the competition, and then got sleepy and decided to call it a day. I got to sleep a little after midnight, and had a great, great day.

-N

He's growing up

I am also not blogging very much, and I also have an excuse. I have a two-year-old. I haven't had him for that long, but you'd be surprised how often that excuse comes in handy. “You look tired.” “Well, I have a two-year-old.” “You want to come out to the game?” “No, I have a two-year-old.” “Noel, can you help us with a project?” “Sorry, two-year-old.” “Noel, could you pass the ketchup?” “TWO YEAR OLD.” It's a magic bullet.

We kept Tyler's actual birthday pretty low-key. We took him out to the ice rink, one of his favorite weekend diversions, met up with Natalie and Brian and grant out there, and had a great time. Brian had taken a class in ice skating when he was in college, and then hadn't been on skates in the intervening 10 years, so I was better than him for, like, two minutes, tops. Grant got accustomed to the skating pretty quickly, and between the myriad of adults, we were able to cycle through skating children enough to give our backs a periodic rest. Tyler is getting to where he can stand on his own two feet, though he doesn't cover much ground, and mommy is never more than a few inches away.

After skating, everyone came over for pizza and ice cream cake. Did you know that Tyler doesn't like pepperoni on his pizza? What kind of kid am I raising? He was also able to blow out his own candles, which, when you remember that there aren't very many of them, isn't as wild an accomplishment as it might sound. We got him some random presents, neat shirts, cool toys, a book or two. Kid stuff. He thought it was all pretty great.

Easter also happened. We hid some eggs around the house, stuffed with random small things and fig newtons. Those were a hit. We also went out to the park for the big neighborhood easter egg hunt. Got some candy there, too, and got to see a fire truck up close.

And, then, of course, there was Disney Land.

I am...not a big fan of Disney Land. For the price you pay for the tickets, it seems like there's a surfeit of fun and an overabundance of standing in line. There were some definite highlights, and Tyler is still talking about “Mr Toad Ride.” Recalling how it was “Kinda scary.” and “Flashy lights”. Dumbo, Small world, teacups, all hits, though. Also, instead of heading back to the hotel, Tyler just fell asleep on my shoulder for half an hour while I carried him around. That's the thing you can only really do if you're a dad: that critical combination of comfort, upper body strength, and willingness to put up with a lot of discomfort to get some really good cuddles out of your kid.

Nana and Grandpa were also a lot of fun for Tyler. He got lots of hugs and kisses, many nice pictures, and many many smiles. He was a wonderful model grandson for his elders. He did keep waking up really early, though. Stayed on Texas time. Made it so that we got lots done before his morning nap, though. The second day we went to the Long Beach Aquarium. Tyler got to touch a stingray and see some really pretty birds up close. After that we went to the La Brea Tar pits, which I never did see while I was in LA. But it was pretty great. We also got to see the big squad of people that we started Raytheon working with, most of whom have kids of their own. Some nice family-reunion sized pictures came out of that.

The one tragedy was when Tyler, being a toddler, tripped and smacked his forehead on the chair I was sitting in. It swelled up really spectacularly, but a quick application of ice seemed to do it a lot of good, and the bruise it turned into didn't seem nearly as bad as we thought it was going to be. It's nearly healed up, too.

And in the last bit of Tyler news, some neighbors down the street are moving out, and they asked us if we wanted an extra kid bed. Well the timing worked out great, and after buying a mattress, some spider-man sheets and a Mario Brothers blanket, Tyler is, at this very moment, sleeping in a Big Boy Bed. We also purchased a waterproof mattress cover and a guard rail. Not to keep him from escaping, to keep him from falling out. Kid likes to sleep in corners, and I've definitely found him facing the wrong way in his bed more than once. He's still small enough, for now, that he can sleep sideways in the bed.

The first night in the big boy bed actually went really well. We had been building it up for a while, he got to see us assemble it, and then night came and we put him in bed, tucked him in, and he just waved goodbye and said “goodbye mommy”. Then slept like a log all night. What a good kid.

The only thing I'm up to that is not Tyler-related is REAPERCON! As many of you know, Reaper is a company that makes Miniatures, and I supported a program last year where you preordered a whole bunch of miniatures and got hundres of them for a great price. They're in the process of shipping out now, but last year when I bought into the deal, I decided I should try to see if I actually like painting minatures. I do rather a lot.

The company, named Reaper, has a once-a-year painting convention where there are classes, paints, minatures, board games, and all sorts of fantastic things to do. I have signed up for four classes, amd going to pack up my stuff, and then wednesday evening I drive up to Denton, TX, for 4 days of paining and relaxing, all while Jess takes care of Tyler for me. She's really nice to me.

So, what, is that, 10 paragraphs about Tyler, and one about me? Yeah, that ratio seems about right.

-N

Fall in Austin

For those of you returning after the last blog entry, yes, Jess did make it back just fine. Tyler seemed quite happy to see her, though he wasn't as deliriously beside himself as Jessie would have liked. Perhaps because it was the middle of the night for him. She picked him up to rock in the chair a little bit, then Tyler got out of the chair, walked over to his crib, and pointed at it. He's a really good sleeper.

Last weekend we went camping. It was a little bit spur-of-the-moment, we got invited out by Jessie's boss to spend a camping weekend out with a bunch of people from work and a whole lot of food. Don't get me wrong. We weren't rouging it by any stretch of the imagination. We drove right up to the campsite. There was no way I was carrying Tyler's travel-crib any appreciable distance, to say nothing of all the other stuff we needed to bring.

Early in the week was pretty cold, so we packed for cold nights. We even got a couple of hand warmers to put in the bed with Tyler in case it got really cold. Of course, this turned out not to be a problem, as it was very temperate most of the time, and occasionally even a little too warm. The main downside of the whole trip was that Tyler woke up on Friday night a little after midnight and didn't get back to sleep until about 3:00 AM. He wasn't fussy or anything, just chattery, and we didn't want to wake up nearby campers. After that frustrating spell, though, the rest of the weekend was great.

We were camping with about 8 or so other families, most of whom had kids in high school, though there was a second strata of a few kids still too young for school, so Tyler had some playmates, though he mostly stayed with us and explored. They had some hammocks set up that spent time between getting napped on by grown-ups and getting swung on by pre-teen boys. There were several different full-sized grills in attendance, including a smoker, and someone brought a flat-screen TV and a portable satellite dish to watch the important College Football games on Saturday. I'm just saying we weren't wanting for much. We joined in the food fest in our own small way. I brought hobo pouches for us to eat on Friday that were delish! Saturday we tossed in our hot dogs along with a lot of hamburgers, side dishes, and other random goodies provided by everyone else. It turned into a buffet.

Tyler liked exploring, as you could imagine. He was very interested in us setting up the tent, and then trilled by being allowed to run around inside it. He ran around with some of the younger kids, but his stubby legs couldn't quite keep up. There was a little playground nearby with a see-saw that we got to ride on with Tyler, he really liked that. And we even went on a short hike on Saturday morning, though we did mostly have to carry Tyler around with us. He still liked looking around, and it was great exercise for us. He also needed some alone time, because there's a lot to take in when you're that young, so we spent some time in the tent with him just reading old familiar books before bedtime.

We decided to head home Saturday night, reasoning that it would be better sleeping for both Tyler and us, and we were just going to pack up and head home in the morning anyway, so we wouldn't be missing a whole lot of campitude. So we put Tyler to bed in his little travel-crib like everything was perfectly normal, then picked his crib up, carried it out of the tent, and packed everything while he slept in his crib next to the car with a blanket tossed over the top. Then we said our goodbyes, woke Tyler up enough to get him in the car seat (and he was an absolute gentleman for the whole ride home) and made our escape back home. Only one night in a sleeping bag and already the bed felt more comfy than I remembered it being before.

I'm super-excited about Seattle. Jess and I have a few things we want to make sure we get to do, though we're keeping the schedule kind-of light so that we don't overwhelm the little one, though he's certain to spend at least a few days in the tender care of Nana and Great-Nana while Jess and I are off doing crazy things like...I dunno...probably learning about history or something.

Oh, and we voted. Got in on the Early voting which was great, because no lines. :) I got to hold Tyler while I made my selections and he watched. He was equally entranced by the touch screen I was using and by all the grandmothers staffing the polling place who kept giving him smiling faces. I think he liked the attention. When we were done, we gave him both of our 'I Voted' stickers and hung out for a while at the playground outside the voting area. He liked that. Yay for Democracy!

-N

Well this is Clearly Unacceptable

Has it really been nearly 6 weeks since I last posted on here? Six weeks? And I'm the one around here who is supposed to be doing updates for a toddler. Six weeks in toddler time is like 3 years in regular person time. Let's get back with the program.

Tyler has been in the toddler classroom for a few weeks now, and is starting to adjust. He had a nice transition, where he spent the last few days in his baby classroom hanging out more and more in the toddler room. He still gets a bit fussy when we leave, but there is a security camera that cycles through the rooms on the way out of the day care place, and on the days when it is pointing at his room, we see that by the time we've reached the lobby, the fussing is pretty much over. He is a big fan of the slide they have in the classroom, and really likes all of his older friends who walk around and do big kid things like singing songs and having circle time and reading stories and doing dances together and stuff. You know, like grown-ups do. The day care has also almost finished up the renovation. I'm most excited to see the new kitchen and new activity room. I'm told it may have computers for technology education. I approve.

Also, we went on vacation. Abandoning all the rest of the siblings who congregated up in Juneau (though we did miss them) we decided to head over to the much warmer (and closer) state of Florida to see the other half of our family. Some of us aren't so lucky to get both halves in the same zip code pretty much ever. It did expose something I didn't know about vacationing with a kid. Most vacations you have a little bit of relax time and a little bit of activity time. It takes work to get over to Europe or to plan hotel visits across a continent, but you do the work and you get a nice memory out of it. But it's also important to have some relaxing time, or you'll just feel more and more stressed out the more you try to do. When you have a kid, though, there's no real relaxing time, and any activity has the focus taken away from the cool event you're trying to do, and put on trying to keep your kid from, let's be honest, killing themselves. We hit the beach in Florida, and I'm glad I went, but you have no idea how excited Tyler was to get himself killed all the way to death in the ocean. When we left Tyler behind with the extended family for a few minutes, we got to enjoy ourselves in the waves, and for those few minutes it felt like a real vacation. But as soon as we got him back up, we're trying to keep him from eating watermelon that has fallen in sand. We were lucky enough to have some grown-up time when we left Tyler with grandma and went out *dancing*, and again when we drove down to do some snorkeling in the Florida keys. We'll put up some pictures eventually, but we have to finish off the underwater camera we bought. Anyway, it was a nice glimpse into the difference between traveling with kids and without them. They are quite different animals.

I changed jobs. I'm still at the same company, but I'm in a different group. The reasons are varied and probably best not discussed here, lest they sound too much like wining...or lest people I work with read this (and why wouldn't they? I good writing!) But I'm really liking my new group. I've been instantly plunged into exciting and important work, and people appreciate what I do. Plus, I get to travel in a few weeks, which is nice because hey, travel! But a bummer that I'll miss Tyler for the week. Yay for video conferencing.

Can I update Tyler's dictionary?

Ah-Oooh has become uh-oh, though he still doesn't know when he's supposed to use it.

We got a 'Wa-Wa' out of him this weekend and are trying to associate it with water.

Cats are now 'Dee-Dee', though he hasn't learned to differentiate between the one that always runs away and the one that gets patiently manhandled until the cat gets treats.

Bah is sometimes 'bath', now.

And Tee means 'teeth', specifically brushing them, often as a precursor to bedtime.

Those are the highlights. I'll try not to take so long before coming back with more stories, but I do keep myself pretty busy these days.

-N

The Case of the Amazing Baby

We've had a few wow moments with Tyler over the past few weeks. For starters, he's started doing crazy stuff when he's on his stomach. He's been able to lift his head for a while, and he's been getting up on his knees and rocking back and forth a lot, which is a pretty normal thing for babies getting ready for crawling, but he's started to get up on all fours and then get up his toes. And then sort of flail his feet around so he's sort of half almost crawling and kinda walking on his toes except his hands never move. He's clearly excited to get moving, but he hasn't yet figured out that the hands need to be involved. Regardless, he's getting a heck of an upper-body workout. More and more of that baby budge is starting to turn into baby muscle!

He's starting to work on his little 'pincer motion' too, where he uses his finger and thumb for delicate tasks. It's clearly a work in progress, but he likes looking at fiddly things and he gets really focused and quiet and goes to work. The thumb and finger still have some coordination to work out between the two but it's really fascinating to watch him work. I caught a glimpse of my future son while he was working with a cute, concentrated face. For some reason I could see a shadow of how he's going to look when he's older. I got a bit of a chill.

We went swimming today, too. Well...it's still not that much swimming, truth be told. He has more fun in the tub. The pool is so new and strange that he spends most of his time, near as I can tell, just trying to figure out where the heck he is. We got some splashy time out of him, but the water was pretty cold, and it isn't a really good idea to keep him out in the sun much, even though we do make him wear a hat and a shirt. Delicate baby skin, you know.

Oh, and I got to take him swimming because I got to stay home today. I took a day off because Aunt Sandlin and Uncle Matt are visiting this week. Tyler has gotten a lot of Aunt time, especially around his cheek area. Matt has gotten to hold him and feed him a few times, too. They're going to spoil that kid rotten, I'm sure.

Tyler has been, as reported, working on Carrots this week. He's getting better, but he's still not a huge fan. Those first few bites are still really rough. We balance it out with some rice or oats, nice and familiar, and eventually he gets into the swing of things. It's way messier, though. We've got peas and sweet potatoes to try next. I imagine it will be much the same story as the carrots. Huge mess, scrunchy face, really cute.

As for me, I've been playing some video games in my spare time, but I think I need to get back into the studio to make some more music. There's a few more songs from Actraiser I'd like to cover, and someone made the excellent suggestion of writing a theme song for our work. I'm thinking of making it a little bit like the old Mickey Mouse Club theme. Very upbeat and saccharine. That could be a fun project.

Jess and I are both slacking on exercise a bit. Jess has a better excuse in that her normal Derby stuff has been interrupted by places loosing their rink time and other valid excuses. I was sick last week, but I missed Judo this week because Sandlin and Jessie told Tyler to be cute so I could stay home. He did, and so I did too. And I ended up making Ice cream too. Came out great, especially with strawberries. Yum.

Sandlin has been spoiling us with food. She made us Carnitas yesterday with so many fixins you'd think we were at a restaurant. Jess says she likes Sandlin's cooking better now. So I'll just have to make sure I fix that quite promptly...somehow. There were Kebabs, too. I grilled them with some corn that came out very well. She's also made us some chicken stock that she also turned into Chicken and Orzo soup, and Chilli, and a few other things too. She's a machine in the kitchen. She bought us some smoked salt that seems really good, but you have to store it extra-tight or it makes the whole pantry smell like a BBQ.

Jess gets back from work soon and then we're going to get some burgers with friends of Sandlin's that live in Austin. More people to meet! Oh, that reminds me. Some neighbors around the corner are either moving in or moving out. Either way, we'll probably have some new neighbors to meet quite soon.

-N

A Baby Vacation

We are so darn lucky. Tyler is just the best little baby. He’s easygoing, calm, easy to put to sleep, slow to fuss, and I’ve figured out all of his little cues for telling us how to stop him crying. It’s either food, diaper, burping (it’s usually this one), or he wants my pinky in his mouth. I’ve never met a fussy Tyler I couldn’t cure. It makes me feel like a freakin’ super-dad.

Recovery continues apace. We’re at home, now, trying to establish some routines. I try things out here and there, like different styles of formula (ready-made, super-easy to use, or the more bulk ‘concentrate’ that, evidently, I was supposed to keep in the fridge. Oops. We learn.) different bottles, different ways to play with Tyler. It’s all a big science experiment.

We went in for the first doctor appointment today, and Tyler is already gaining weight (crap, he is going to be a football player after all.) This also marked our first jaunt out of the house with Tyler, and we were able to be pretty sparse with the diaper bag, at least this time. Tyler is, for the most part, pretty calm in the car, unless the sun gets in his eyes. Clean bill of health for Tyler, also, though oddly enough they measured him at 21 inches, not the previously reported 22. So it looks like the original weight AND height were off. Suspicious...maybe we got someone else's baby! (We did not get someone else's baby.) Tyler also made a habit of protesting loudly whenever we had to undress or unwrap him followed by a nearly immediate calming when given ‘the pinkie’. Tyler doesn’t like pacifiers much, but he LOVES pinkies. Many thanks to dad on that one. I owe you a...power tool of some sort, I guess. That’s the standard currency for Grandpa Preecs, yes?

Oh, by the way, if there are any special requests for titles, get them in now. Bappy, Grams, Ba-ba, uncle, chooma-shoom, whatever you like. I make no promises that Tyler won’t auto-generate a nickname even more cute for you on his own, but we can at least plant a seed if you want.

Mom Jessie is doing pretty well for a woman with a hole in her abdomen. She continues to move better every day, and is taking fewer and fewer painkillers, though I do have to keep on her to not take ‘none’. It’s a good thing we have our little baby timer.

Have I talked about the baby timer already? You know what, I don’t care. I’ll talk about it again anyway. I’m not even going to go bother to check the blog. I’m reckless!

It’s this neat android app called ‘baby esp’. It gives you different timers for how long since baby has either started or stopped feeding, sleeping, playing, diapers, or anything else you want. There’s even a setting for mom and dad that we use to keep track of some prescriptions, pumping times, and sleep times. Not that we really need to keep track of sleep, but there’s just so much data-mining capability in this thing. You can do plots of how much feeding or sleeping, or all sorts of stuff. I’m excited for Tyler to get older just so we can have more entries. It’s neat.

I’ve started reading to Tyler. We’re starting with ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’, which is nice because I haven’t read it either. I’m working on voices. Voices are important. We’re a chapter and a half in already. He seems to really like just listening to my voice, as long as he’s not gassy, which happens unfortunately often.

Tyler has been getting up every 1.5 hours at night to feed. I didn’t realize until today’s doctor’s appointment that this was as dire a problem as it actually seems to be. I get a couple of hours of sleep before evening hits, proper, and I can stay up for hours. Then Jess relieves me after a while and we alternate as the mood strikes us. As long as one of us takes charge, we can get some pretty decent sleep, just not contiguously. Like I said, Tyler is a pretty great baby. We’re supposed to be making him sleep more (read: eat less) at night, though, and be more awake during the day, so we’ve been advised to s---t---r---e---t---c---h out the time between feedings, which probably means listening to Tyler complain for a while. Never all that pleasant to hear, but at least he doesn’t have the lung power to knock out the serious dBs...yet.

So yeah, it’s all going very well, so far. Yay!

-N

Europe Part 22: Home!

Almost done! So! On our last day, we had breakfast in the hotel which was a bit overpriced but worth it just because it meant I got to have Jessie stop and eat something in the morning. If we had to ‘look’ for somewhere to eat we wouldn’t have stopped moving until we were at the gate. Anyway, it was walk, metro, metro, metro all the way to the airport. I was actually really impressed that we were able to get all the way from Paris, back inside our house in Austin, *all without ever stepping outside*. I messed up the airport metro tickets a bit, but I wasn’t the only one, clearly. So we just sort of slipped out with other people at the exit turnstiles.

Once we found our gate, we spent a lot of time shopping at the duty free store, mostly getting chocolate. We still have some of it, in fact. Good stuff. The plane ride across the ocean wasn’t too bad, actually. We had the middle seats, three of them, to ourselves, so first I took a nap on Jessie’s lap then she returned the favor. She even played with my beard and my bald head while I rested, which always feels really nice. She’s a great wife.

Oh, and two more adventures. Before customs in Dallas, where we landed, I was using the bathroom and saw someone leave their passport by the sink. Well I picked it up, found the guy by his face in the passport, and gave him his papers back. He was quite relieved, and I felt good.

Then, while resting at the gate in Dallas, Jess was reorganizing our backpacks for the flight. When it was time for us to board, I looked around our seats to check for anything left behind, and it turns out it was a good thing I did. We nearly left the CAMERA. I gave Jessie very stern looks for that, you can be sure. Very stern.

Past that, not much to report. Flights are never that exciting, at least you generally hope they’re not. Then we got home, relaxed, and spent the next several days trying to get over jetlag and the next several weeks blogging about it.

And that was Europe.

Europe Part 21: Paris, again

Paris made a bad first impression, and Rome a bad last one. Given how early our flight was, and how busy airports can get around flight time, we actually ended up waking up for our flight at 3:45 in the morning. Yowza. We managed to get checked out okay, but the walk from the hotel to the Train station to look for a Taxi was a little overwhelming. All dark, we counted:

-Two prostitutes of indeterminate gender
-A rat
-A bunch of 5 or 6 young guys trying to pickpocket a sleeping homeless guy

All in the space of the three minute walk. That’s a pretty high density of sleaze. And the crazy didn’t stop when we got into the taxi. The streets were pretty much empty and the guy drove like the cops were on our tail. I started to count how many red lights the guy would run, but I stopped counting after reaching “all of them.” It was a quick trip, though. Unfortunately, all that efficiency meant we got to the airport 3 hours before our flight. A little excessive, but at least it meant we had time to write. And the airport had a cat, too, just hanging out. He liked attention.

Our flight was pretty normal, we got checked in, waited, and flew right up to paris with a whole bunch of Italian people. They applauded when we landed; I’m not sure if that’s normal. Then we took a bus into Paris proper. We navigated the metro to the Champs d’Elise, the area near which we were hoping to find a hotel. Our first several attempts got us nowhere, all the rooms were booked. We were starting to get nervous when we finally made it to one of the placed we had found on hostels.com that had spare rooms, or at least it did a few weeks ago when we checked. Lucky us, they did have a room available for us. Cheers! Plus, it was cheaper and the room much better than the other place we had been planning to stay. But more on that later. We ditched our heavy backpacks and strolled around Paris a little bit more. Our first stop was the Rodan Museum. We took the metro and when we exited we were in the middle of...something. We’re still not sure what. There were a whole bunch of African-Amer, uh, I mean African-french guys, all standing around while some people played rhythmic music and some other guys asked for donations. We walked along the street and eventually we got past the black guys and then past the Riot Cops. No idea what was going on, but if I had to guess, I suspect it was a planned demonstration for...uh...something. I doubt the riot cops really needed to be there except in case everything went bonkers. Everyone was way too laid back to riot.


What was the name of this statue again...?

Anyway, Rodan museum. It was a really neat place because of its focus. We got to see a lot of really neat statues, including the famous ‘thinker’ and ‘Portal to Hell’ as well as a bunch of other really interesting pieces and a lot of history. Especially after so much classical and neoclassical artwork it was sort of a relief to get to something more modern. There were a couple of other artists there, too. One of Rodan’s contemporaries who had done some really neat sculpture in a very similar style, and another guy who did crazy actual-modern stuff in steel. He had the Mr. Clean logo on a metal gate. He also put tattoos on pigs. That kind of modern. I remember him mostly for his brochure, which, summarized, said: “The artist is so cool, the artist is so out there. You can’t even begin to understand how smart the artist is.” Cool steel structures, though.


My celebrity look-alike.

After completely burning Jess out in the museum (though she did let me sit and read some stuff that I found intriguing) we got some lunch at the museum cafe. Real food. We had been subsisting off of cookies and other backpack-munchies for pretty much the entire morning. Getting some protein seemed like a good idea.

After that we went back to the Champs d’Elise for a bit. It’s a big, fancy street with L’Arc D’Triumph at one end (neat, but under construction) and a whole lot of stores along the way. If we had been into fashion we clearly would have *completely flipped out*. But we’re not, so we just window shopped, mostly. The one really neat thing, though, is that the street also houses car companies, at least showrooms where they show off prototype cars and all sorts of fancy vehicles. We took a lot of pictures. Matt would have been pleased. One of the highlights was a camera-and-TV system that would video you holding a card up to the screen and would then superimpose a 3-d car onto the video feed on the camera, like you were holding it in your hands. Neat effect.


I'd drive that.

Then back to our hotel, where we entered the *smallest elevator in all of europe.* Capacity: 3 people. Or two with backpacks. The room itself, though, was magnificent! We had a balcony that looked out onto the street, a TV that worked, our own bathroom, and even a *TUB*. Such luxury after three weeks in hostels! Jess went right to work taking a nice long back while I stared out the window for a while, wrote, and caught up on some world news. I had been pretty much cut off for the whole time we were over there.


How's that for a view?

We played some more rummy, talked for a while, and took a stroll out later in the evening when I wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet. Most stores were closed, but we did find a market with some munchie-foods to take on the plane with us. And then Jess layed on my chest and we went to sleep.

-N

Europe Part 20: Random bits of Rome

We woke up a little bit early this day to prepare for our crazy-early departure from Rome by Plane the next day. We were planning to hit up some Roman Museums and other random sights today, but the museum didn’t open for a while so instead we started the day at a nice cafe down the street where I ordered a cappuccino. Actual coffee. It was not bad, really. The milk and a little sugar really mellowed it out. We had some pastries, too. I felt very continental. I still don’t like coffee very much, though.

We did a few more morning things like printing out boarding passes and the like, and eventually the museum opened up and we were one of the first people in. The national museums have several branches in Rome, we went to the best one first, affectionately nicknamed, by Jessie, the marble head museum, for obvious reasons. The highlights were definitely all the busts of all sorts of people and the very detailed and interesting descriptions below. They had some larger statues, too, including a couple of huge bronze statues with intriguing histories and structure. The upstairs had slightly less interesting mosaics and frescoes, but the downstairs had the single most impressive coin collections I’d ever seen. Coins from every era from ancient Rome on to modern Italy and the Euro. They also had them mounted under glass with a neat motorized magnifying glass to check them out better. Very cool.


I am very concerned about these coins.

After the museum we were *starving* so we ate at a couple of different places. I wanted to eat at a Donner Kebab place, I’d seen them around and I was curious. I still don’t know what kind of meat it was, but it was pretty good. Then we swung by a Trattoria to get some pizza by the square. It was hyper-greasy, but we saved some of the meat and crust and went back to our hostel for a bit to feed the kitties. Once we started throwing meat for them they got really excited and all four of them came over. We tried to give a little to each, but ‘bold kitty’ got the most. May have been pregnant, it’s hard to tell, and rude to assume.


That's 'bold kitty' in the front. Slightly bold kitty behind, white kitty, and scaredy cat way in the back.

Then we took the metro up to Piazza del Populo, another famous square that, on this day, was being taken over for the anniversary festivities of the Italian Police. They had all their sexiest cop cars out, including a Ferrari and one helicopter on the ground and another circling in the air. We didn’t spend too much time there before deciding to head up to a nearby park, with a gorgeous panoramic view of the city. We relaxed in the park for a bit before wandering along random roads for a bit and, eventually, stumbling upon the Spanish Steps.

Historically significant, the steps are mostly a meeting place for tourists and locals alike. Lots of people sat on the steps, hawkers strolling between them all. When we walked down the steps a trio of guys ran by us carrying wares in white cloths. Jess called it: those were the guys selling fake Coach Bags and other knockoff stuff, and there were cops approaching. I just assumed it was skeezy, I didn’t know it was illegal, too.


Resting, but resting *historically*.

We sat on the steps and rested for a while, then wandered through some more streets. We got more gelato, a guy in front of his store let me know he had some fresh noodles and slapped me on the shoulder, which was fun, and I found my souvenir at a garden store. They had a whole bunch of terra cotta and stone figures, like angels and cherubs and other such things inspired by old roman ruins. I got a little vase with a lid that had been decorated with the sort of details and cherubs that I’d been seeing all over Europe. Evocative, cheap, and a container. Even better, not made out of plastic. Good find.

We made our way back to Piazza de la Republica and this time went into a nearby Church: Santa Maria degli Angeli. Very big, like St. Peters, but much less busy, the silence was nice. We wandered around in there looking at the decorations and the borderline-insulting display about Galileo that was doing its best to assure everyone of the compatibility between science and faith. The church had some huge arches, big paintings, and a lot of neat stuff to look at, including some sort of star chart on the floor. We couldn’t really figure out what it represented.


This is one of my favorite pictures from the entire vacation.

We exited and wandered into one of the other national museums, but a much less impressive one. They had a lot of random stone fragments and, oddly enough, a tree that had been, presumably, planted by Michaelangelo but had been so damaged that only a few tendrils actually led into the ground. Weird. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but we did see another cat.

We rested back at the hostel for a bit then went out for a nice dinner, a big fancy affair for our last night in Rome and the beginning of our journey back home. We found a place down the street that had some nice set menus and sat down for a many-course meal. I had the fish meal, of course, and Jess had regular pasta and stuff, but between all the bread, pasta, salad, and dessert, and house wine, we felt very well fed and like we had capped off the city quite well. Cheers!


That was a really good dinner.

We came back to the hostel after that, relaxed and played rummy for a bit (Tie!) packed up our stuff, showered, and did our best to get to sleep before our preposterously early wake-up call the next day.

-N

Europe Part 19: Really big church

Today, we visited the Vatican. Does this count as another country? We woke up and after a little bit of work getting our reservation ticket sorted out and figuring out where the museum actually was, we ended up at the Vatican Museum at Precisely 9:00, right when our reservation was. As it turns out, we got to skip the entire line (significant, I assure you) and were one of the first people in the museum.

The layout of the museum is mostly linear, though there are detours to all sorts of interesting collections. Most people won’t see them, though, because they just want to head right off to the Sistine Chapel. We took our time. We went through a lot of areas and saw massive collections of all sorts. The collections of roman statues were particularly impressive, they had big famous figures like emperors and little sculptures of kids and rich families. A lot to take in. Also big collection of animal statues, from the exotic to the mundane.


Muscle statue!

The tapestries were another highlight. Rivaling some of the big paintings in the Louvre for size, they spanned the entire hall from floor to ceiling. And when you got up close, you could see some very impressive details in the stitching. Then we got to one of the other ‘things to see in the Vatican museum’, the Raphael Rooms. Very detailed and complex, and very full of people. It went for room after room. Pictures do it better justice than words, though.


Raphael Rooms: Now that's how you paint a wall.

Next up was the ‘modern art’ area, which most people passed because the Chapel was *so close*. We went, though, and I’m glad we did. There were a lot of neat pieces, including some by Dali and a few others that looked really nice. Then it was time for The Sistine Chapel.

Which was pretty uninspiring. Sure, it was neat to see *the* frescoes, but honestly everything else was way to distracting. All the people mulling about and taking pictures while curators repeated every 10 seconds “no pictures please be quiet” over and over and over again. Then the speakers came on and blasted “QUIET PLEASE” in 5 languages which would keep people silent for all of 10 seconds. It was a mess, and it wasn’t even as busy as it was when Jess saw it. At least we weren’t shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone.

The rest of the museum was pretty nice, too. I liked seeing some of the church artifacts: crazy old chalices and host-holders with ridiculous detail. The gift shop was fairly interesting, too. Aside from the normal bits and pieces, they also had replicas of the seals that old popes used to seal correspondence. If I was into seals, or popes, I might have gotten one. We passed the “Early Christian art” display because it was just a whole lot more Marble and we were getting pretty tired. So, MANY hours after entering, we left.

After a cafeteria lunch, we headed over to St. Peters basilica. There was a GIGANTIC line in front, and we were initially concerned, but it moved quite quickly and we got in with no worries. The church has a lot to see inside, though some of it was blocked. There was another famous ‘Mary and Jesus’ statue by Micaelangelo, this time with Jesus just down off the cross.


You could fit several significant other churches *inside* this thing if you wanted.

Then there were Mosaics, copies of famous paintings made with tiny, tiny pieces of glass. But the hall was generally dominated by these Preposterous statues, in marble, of old Popes or brothers or cardinals or something. It’s honestly a little off-putting, these brooding old men looking down on you with grumpy faces and condemning eyes. “How dare you enter my house, you sinner.” The altar, which is also huge, by the way, has a statue of St. Peter that you’re supposed to be able to kiss his foot. I’m not sure if they still let you do it, because it’s blocked off, but so many people have that his foot has been worn down to a nubbin.

After that we walked back through the catacombs which let us get a look at where, presumably, St. Peters original remains are housed, right underneath the altar. Pope Paul was interred down there too, still receiving flowers and prayers. After that we considered climbing to the very tip-top of the cathedral, but decided to pass. We shopped around a little bit for a Chalice, and we did find a store that would let us look at them, but after all that...churchitude...I was pretty burned out on holiness. It’s not accidental that I don’t go to church anymore, and I found the whole experience kind of upsetting, especially when I learned where all the money to build that church came from. Anyway, I decided to skip the cups.


Jess resting afterwords in the square out in front.

We got dinner at a restaurant where I tried Spaghetti Carbonara. Which, as it turns out, isn’t my favorite. Glad I tried it, though. We took the Metro back to our hostel in rush hour traffic, but nothing like as bad as Rush hour metro in Japan, so we managed. Back at the hostel, we planned out our next day a little, relaxed while it poured rain outside, and I gave Jessie a foot massage. I like being the best husband in the world.

-N