From the October ’05 issue of Outside Magazine:
I was attempting an unsupported solo trek to the North Pole in 2000. The first day, my sled slipped into the sea and I had to reach into the water to get it. My left hand was gone after that, so I held my stove with my mouth to light it. The steel froze to my lips. Then the tent caught fire. Back home I amputated my mummified fingers with a saw. I’ve still got them.
–Veteran British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes
Now that Tru’s got his scooter schtick down pretty good, he’s looking to upgrade to a bike without training wheels. Today he asked me to take the training wheels off his bike so he could ride a two-wheeler. I complied and we tried it out. He’s actually pretty good, but doesn’t have quite the confidence he needs. That and the fact that his feet don’t reach the ground when he stops. He high-centers on the top bar. Oof.
He and I rode around quite a bit today. Well, I ran and he rode. I alternated between holding his bike seat, holding his sides and holding the handlebars. Every way I “helped” he pretty much did all the work. But whenever I’d let go and let him peddle on his own, he would FREAK OUT. I ended up just kinda lightly holding his handlebars and every once in a while I’d let go, but show him my open hand as I ran beside him. I don’t know if he even noticed…he was pretty focused on peddling and steering. 🙂
I think we’ll probably try to get him a bike with smaller wheels. Something that won’t rack him every time he dismounts…
Tru learned how to ride a two-wheel scooter today. Check it out (3.2mb .mov). In order to keep the file size small-ish, I chopped the framerate down a bit so the vid looks a little choppy. Probably a better way, but I’m still figuring out iMovie.
Anyway Tru’s been kinda working on the scooter for a few days, but today it really clicked in. He was stoked enough about it that he asked if we could go home and get the video camera. Next step: skateboard!
Let’s see, what else…oh yeah, we ordered a poster from Qoop.com and got it today. Look here. And this is the portrait of Tru heading out the door for his first day of preschool yesterday. He did pretty well at preschool, apparently. Only two fights and he won both. I think watching all those kung fu movies is really paying off… 🙂
Alright, after getting Matt’s kick in the pants in the comments of the last (over a month ago) post, I figure I ought to slap something up here. Though, I was just telling Amy at lunch today that I find it really hard to pull together enough creative juices at the end of the day to post to two blogs….forgive me if it gets kinda dusty around here.
The big news with Asher these days is that he’s crawling like crazy and his “pull up” skills are advancing quickly. He can crawl from across the room to the dog in about the time it takes for me to put down a book and save the dog. He can go from flat on his stomach to standing up while holding something in even less time. Today I watched him stand up while pulling sideways on a doorframe. He’s definitely figuring things out.
His latest skill acquisition is waving “bye bye” on command. You can just say bye bye and he’ll start flapping one arm around. Pretty cute.
Amy was fiddling around with iPhoto this evening and whipped up this little slideshow. Complete with “automatic Ken Burns effect.” It’s in .mov format and it’s a hair over 6mb. If you can handle all that, enjoy. It’s pretty cool.
Well, I’m sitting here tapping this out on the new PowerBook. It’s pretty nice. The screen is just huge, which is what I was looking for in a desktop replacement.
My choices for a new work computer were pretty much wide open, but I really wanted to try out the mac. Part of it is just the legend (read: marketing), but also I was intrigued by the so called “intuitive” interface and the general lack of viri and other malicious jive. So far, the interface has been just ok. I’m so used to PC’s that it’s taking me a while to really settle in. Also, my favorite FireFox extension (Tabbrowser extensions) doesn’t quite work in OSX, so I’m having to relearn some stuff with that.
I still have access to Windows 2000 on this machine, too, thanks to Citrix MetaFrame. Pretty nice application and I don’t really notice any slowdown by using it.
I do miss ActiveWords. Especially the on-the-fly misspelling corrections. That’s nice. I also miss the ‘append to text’ trick that I just learned on the PC. Supposedly Quicksilver will do the same trick, but so far I haven’t been able to get it working, despite all the good tutorials that abound on the web.
Speaking of Quicksilver, it’s a real nice app, though it’s beta and has crashed a few times for me. Fortunately it’s smart enough to restart itself after crashing. As far as I’m using it right now, it’s just a simple application launcher. It allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard all the time. It’s invoked, for me, with shift shift, just like ActiveWords. Then it’s just typing in the name of the place you want to go and using the arrow keys to navigate if needed. The thing has some pretty suck documentation, though, so there’s a lot of trial and error in addition to a steep learning curve, all on top of a still unfamiliar interface and keyboard. It’s a little frustrating at times because I really want to get it all tuned up–I can feel that it’s going to be as nice a productivity booster as ActiveWords was, but right now it’s a total time sink.
I’ve also got Microsoft Office installed on the machine. There’s no version of Outlook for macs, but they’ve got a replacement called Entourage, which seems to do enough for me. I can connect via vpn and it’s just like being on the network. At least it will be once the vpn gets working. Should have that resolved tomorrow.
So far my first impression is a little less enthusiastic than I’d anticipated. I totally love the big screen–no regrets there. But the learning curve is a drag to suffer through.
Tru’s temper has been getting a little quick on the draw when he thinks someone is making fun of him. So today we tried working on alternative strategies for when he knows he’s getting mad. His base reaction is to stick his tongue out or spit at someone. That’s bad enough, but his “spider sense” about when people are making fun of him isn’t quite fully developed. Either that or he’s paranoid.
Anyway, I was coaching him on learning to stop when he felt himself getting mad, and then telling the person he’s mad at to “please stop because it’s hurting my feelings”. I told him that I was going to tease him and make him mad and that he had to try to stay calm and ask me to stop.
Instead what I got was, “Please stop or I’ll have to call you underpants head!”
Congrats to Jeff and Mary, they’re getting married!
Date is still uncertain, but probably late September. In Michigan, I guess. Sigh.
Some new Flickr pics are up. Just cleaning up the backlog on the camera… I’ve also got some video that I need to process–should get a few Asher clips up soon. Hopefully this weekend.
Well pretty much done. We did the floor and he’ll be sleeping there tonight. Still gotta trim a bit off the bottom of the doors, but overall it’s looking pretty good.
