Cancun

<<40980_1469925381764_1042480091_31250756_159898_n.jpg>> Brian and his
fam just got back from Cancun and by the looks of the cool hats they got
down there, they must have had a blast!

Congratulations Lisa (and Kevin... :)

Latest Sat Image

Aerial View Of the Current State of The Packard Plant

I'm So Happy It's Friday!

Heather Makes The Coolest Birthday Signs...

The Bride

A big congratulations to Lisa on her upcoming wedding on Saturday! And thank you for choosing me as your photographer. I'll do my best to capture you some great moments.

My New Brain

I quickly stepped up to the counter to get my supplies for the game. The others had already departed on the boats and I did not want to miss the starting gun.

 

A woman wearing a white lab coat appeared in the doorway behind the counter and explained to me the procedure that would be required before I would be allowed to participate. She told me that it was safe, despite sounding, admittedly, a little scary. They would put me under a general anesthesia, remove my head by sawing through my neck, remove my brain, and replace it with one more suited to the tournaments. They would save my old brain in a jar for reinstallation at the end of the games.

 

I wondered what the scar would look like.

 

They did the procedure right there at the counter, which I thought was a little strange but not for long, as the stuff they gave me really knocked me out fast. I awoke to a terrible pain in my neck and a supreme headache.

 

The games were fun, I think, but very strange. Large boats with two engines each: one to propel them and the other to power the four vacuum nozzles that the rules specified. And there was a tall slab of foam I had to carry with me, the one that projected a blue light all around to indicate my team affiliation. I wondered if the foam board would still work ok if I broke it in half, since it was most cumbersome and got in the way of the vacuum controls. I snapped it in half and looked around to see if the light still shone blue.

 

It didn't. As a result, I ended up being targeted by the vacuums of both teams. Even the dopes in my own boat with me.

 

After the games had ended my boat pulled into the dock. I saw Brian there, climbing off Red Boat #4. He freaked out a little when he saw my neck, which hurt really bad and oozed some kind of fluid. "Aww Damn!" I think he said. The stitches made it look worse than it probably should have.

 

I noticed that Brian didn't have the same neck scar and asked him how come. He told me that nobody else required any kind of operation to get in the games and that the lab coat woman probably just didn't know what she was talking about.

 

We were heading home when I remembered that the lab still had my birth brain, but I had gotten used to the new one and I really didn't want to submit to that operation again, so I just kept going.

 

***

 

I have a new pillow that sort of gives me a sore neck when I sleep.

For Howard, Retirement Is Sweet

Very Cool Ansel Adam-esque Photo by Howard B

Funny Shaped Lakes

Zach is camping right now with his mom on Burt Lake up north. He said the lake is very shallow for a long ways offshore. I always loved that feature of Silver Lake. And I think Burt Lake sounds like a much better hairstyle than Mullett Lake does.

Maddie and the Ferocious Beast

And speaking of current faves, here is Maddie's

Gossie

This is Brooke's current favorite book. She loves Gossie. On the first page Gossie's head pokes down from the top of the page and Brooke always has to turn the book over to make her right side up.

Every night Brooke needs a Gossie fix.

Seuss

Did you know that the correct pronunciation of this name rhymes with "Choice"?

That must have driven him crazy.

Emblematic 2 X S

The condensed words we use today in texting are not new. Next time you type out "i luv U 2", remember that Victorian poets wrote in this style quite a while B4 we did...ahem...um...before we did. Yes, they did this often and it even had a name: Emblematic Writing.

Fleeting

Summer, once again, blazes by like a passing party train. Soon it will be a Doppler echo in the night. We'll be left with a fall chill in the air and we'll start wearing long pants and sweatshirts and watching leaves fall and we'll be, possible Indian Summer aside, heading for winter.

 

I am always amazed at how quickly we lose summer. I think the time compression is just a byproduct of being very busy. We engage in a whirlwind of events and plans, trips and dinners on the deck. We're just always doing something, usually more than one thing.

 

You can practically hear the kids growing, like bamboo in the rainforest.

 

I want it to slow down, but I know it won't. We're destined to accelerate our way through the second half of our lives as we gaze out the windows at the streaked and blurry world passing quickly by us.

P.S.

The previous comment about dead-beat no-shows does not refer to anyone who reads this blog :) Just one dude in particular :)

Crayons & Paper!

All Smiles!

Another one of my Frankenstein Frittatas!

Coloring with Mommy!

Eleven!

Zachary had a very good birthday. The party was fun, with only a couple of deadbeat no-shows :) The toys more than made up the difference though.

Like all Wilds, she likes to eat limes!

Brooke, bartender in training...she can squeeze a lime perfectly!

Date!

Maddie got to have an ice cream date with Mommy after her fifth night of staying in her own "Big Girl Bed"!!!

Bri

I'll bet my neighbor's yard is a real challenge for the superstitious...

Toxicodendron radicans

Somehow, despite the fact that my entire family helped out in trimming hedges and clearing brush last weekend, only yours truly ended up with a nasty case of Poison Ivy. Of course, I didn't actually notice the green bastards until the telltale rash started to appear days later. Never having had a Poison Ivy run-in before, I was in for a treat! I went out to look today after work and noticed that they're everywhere out there! Our side shrubs are like half Toxi-rads!

I really wish I wouldn't have gone to the bathroom that evening, if you know what I mean.

Wii Plaii

Scallops...Mmmmmm!

Playing "piano"

New Haircut!!

This Is What Hugh Does When He's Not At The Zoo

Tool

"Since I started drinking at 30 it's been Jameson on the rocks, though the Jameson ad campaigns on the subway have made me think maybe I should switch, since those ads clearly convey that if you drink Jameson you're an asshole or a corporate tool. Or perhaps I'm being dense and this was the way I was supposed to discover I'm an asshole and a corporate tool." - Ira Glass

Wolverines

So not only do we get Harold (or Kumar perhaps), but Hugh Jackman has now been to see his Wolverine peeps at the Detroit Zoo. Seems he's here filming some movie called "Real Steel".

With these motion picture tax breaks we have in Michigan, our zoo now has more stars than M-31!

Happy Friday!

In Living Color

Ever wonder what all those ancient Greek statues looked like back in the day? They're all white now, but it's been assumed for quite a while that they were originally painted. Well, now a new technique has been developed using ultraviolet light to determine the patterns and colors on long-since faded statuary and bring it back to life, so to speak. Here's one example of how Greek art looked when it was new...

...really tacky, it turns out. I think I like them better in bleached white.

Check out the 2012 Taurus Police interceptor...

I'm Still Not Used To The CPAP Mask

I often wake up and think I'm being strangled.

Sharp

I finally got one of these. A couple of my trusty German blades were getting dangerously unable to hold an edge. This fixed them right up. Now, I can split hairs.

Z: One Louder

Nigel Tufnel: "The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and..."

Marty DiBergi: "Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?"

Nigel: "Exactly."

Marty: "Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?"

Nigel: "Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?"

Marty: "I don't know."

Nigel: "Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?"

Marty: "Put it up to eleven."

Nigel: "Eleven. Exactly. One louder."

Marty: "Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"

Nigel: [pause] "These go to eleven."

---

Where does the time go? Mere moments ago, or so it seems, I was astounded that my new baby boy weighed in at 10 lbs 2.5 ounces and now here we are, eleven years later, and he's north of ninety pounds, on the edge of teenagerhood!

Z, I've loved watching you grow up over the years, and I'm excited to see where this crazy life takes you next. Or should I say, where YOU take IT!

Happy Birthday Z, you're getting better (and louder) by the year :)

Soy Pls

I love text paging. Something about it is so efficient and crisp and clean, despite the raping we get from the phone companies for the privilege of engaging in it. Sometimes I think that if it wasn't for text paging, I might never get to talk to my wife. Heather can't use email or make calls at work so we often text back and forth when we get a spare minute. We even have one of those new "Text Free" apps that works on the iPads now to expand our areas of coverage.

 

We also use texting for more mundane and practical purposes. For instance, every evening our bedtime routine has HB putting Brooke down and me reading to Maddie and getting her to sleep. We often spend hours doing this in separate rooms twenty feet apart.

 

Most nights Brooke sucks down her bottle like a carwash vacuum cleaner and asks for "More Bubba, Pleesh". But she's almost sleeping so Heather doesn't want to do anything to wake her up again. What to do? Our solution is that Heather texts me:

 

"soy pls"

 

or, if she's in a frisky mood:

 

"soy me!"

 

And I get up and go downstairs and get the soy milk, bring it upstairs, do a quick mid-air re-fuel of Brooke's bottle, and put it back. This minimizes the disturbance to the almost-asleep little blonde chick.

 

Problem solved!

Cool Sharkboat!

Packard in 3D

Some awesome fellow UrbExer has modeled the entire Packard Plant in 3D in Google Earth! I saw that Google Maps has a new sat image up that shows the plant in it's up-to-date condition, and sure enough, Google Earth has the 3D version. Very cool.

My Next Geeky Tee-Fury Shirt!

Maddie Drew Me A Smiley Face!

Explosion At The Daycare

The lice situation exploded into a full-blown drama last week. We got calls every day to come get Madison and finally on Friday, after taking two days off work to pick nits, I exploded.

 

I unleashed a rant on the poor unsuspecting daycare workers that must have had them stinging for quite a while because they reported it to the owner who told us she's discounting our tuition for the week and she personally came over last night and spent an hour or so going through Madison's hair to make sure she looked good for Monday! Attention achieved.

 

I am constantly reminded that the reason people explode and yell and carry-on loudly sometimes at businesses is precisely because it gets results. If I had written a strongly worded email they wouldn't have done a thing.

 

And I have the added benefit of having the daycare workers fear me. I'm not the quiet dad anymore, I'm that guy who might just be capable of anything. And that's not a bad rep to have sometimes.

 

It the risk of blowing my own horn (where did that saying come from exactly, isn't one supposed to blow one's own horn, as opposed to the saliva-soaked horn lying on the table?) I used to be really good at baseball and I remember the feeling I'd get the first time I came up to bat in front of a new team and I'd smack the ball over the left field fence and after that everyone would run out far to the fence when I came up. It's not often in life we get to feel like that. My daycare explosion, it gave me that feeling.

 

I need to do that more often.

Stopping To Smell The Dandelions

More Bubbles

My Bubbles

Brooke's New Favorite Food..."Kepups"

Nitpicking

Yeah, we're still at it. I hope we got them all.

LC Penney

Madison has that scourge of modern society: lice. We found out this morning thanks to the ever-vigilant Lice Police at her daycare. So she's on her way for treatment. I guess everyone in the house has to be examined now (except me of course:)

 

The lice will be cured by treatment, but now we have to find out how to get that penny out of her hair.

Why Not?

Heather and I want to have another baby just so we can use this cool Pampers pregnancy progress iPad app!

(Just kidding...It is cool though)

The Horror

I got another good dose of Brooke's fear of donkeys last night. We read one of her books that has a donkey in it (among many other, scarier-to-me animals) and she kept turning the page back to the donkey and saying "Eeee Awww!! Eeee Awww!!" with a wild terrified look on her face, eyes bulging and head shaking.

 

It's like a horror movie that scares you but you can't look away.

Beta-Carotene on Legs

In Time Out