Category: Fun

Snow day sledding

Today was a snow day for pretty much every school in Southeast Michigan following the biggest snowstorm we’ve had around here in a number of years. Frankly, I thought the snow day thing was very unnecessary, at least in Ypsilanti. Sunday was pretty bad, but by last night, everything seemed pretty much plowed to me. I think what really happened here is that collectively and spontaneously, all of the school districts in the area decided that this was going to be the one and only legitimate chance to get a snow day yet this calendar year and they took it, necessary or not.

Anyway, the unnecessary snow day gave us the chance to go sledding– or rather, for Will, Costas, Rachel, Eli, Celia, and other various kids went sledding while I stood on the side of the hill behind Ypsilanti High School drinking coffee and recording with the trusty FlipVideo camera. Here’s the result:

A good time for one and all; besides the coffee, I (and Will and Costas) enjoyed some excellent hot chocolate afterwards. I even found some marshmallows that weren’t stale.

Thanksgiving roadtrop thoughts, the South Carolina edition

Life is hard for Will, ain't it?

We’re in Columbia, SC to see family on the Wannamaker side of things. A few thoughts this morning:

  • As you can see from the photo above, this hotel is a bit nicer than the place we stayed on the way down in Virginia. There’s an absolutely killer HD TV in this room too, and it’s all been recently redone. Very nice.
  • Oh, and btw, I left the plug for my computer at that hotel. Fortunately, I discovered that the plug for Annette’s computer works fine on this one and the people at this Virginia hotel are going to mail the other plug home. Hopefully.
  • We’re staying in the ‘burbs, which might as well be anywhere, though it’s quite a bit warmer here than it is in Michigan right now.
  • Will and I went scrounging for something for lunch on Thursday and ended up at a nearby Piggly Wiggly. I almost bought a t-shirt with the pig on it, along with a University of South Carolina hat. Their mascot, which is the gamecocks, was abbreviated on this hat as “COCKS” and in big capital letters like that. I had some misgivings about wearing a hat that said “COCKS” in big letters though.
  • Will and Annette and her mom went and did some touristy stuff on Friday while I stayed back at the hotel to get some work done– mission semi-accomplished. I asked at the front desk for advice on someplace to go around here for barbecue and the kids there suggested a place called Sticky Fingers. I found out about this too late, but this is a bit like recommending Applebee’s as a good place to get a great local burger. Obviously, the people at the front desk do not care much for BBQ.
  • Some more family things today and then tomorrow it is the long long drive home, which we’re going to do in one day. It’ll be dark when we start, and it’ll be dark when we finished.

“I Has Sweet Potato” (and other readings)

I stumbled across the popular blog “Dooce” this morning, both as an activity in finding blogs to do research about and as an activity in avoiding other activity (e.g., “work”). I will have to return to the Dooce sooner than later because of the fine finds there. Here are three for now:

Okay, seriously, back to work.

Halloweening 2007

Will as knight, againWill had a trip back to the past this year for Halloween, returning to the knight look. It’s an outfit he got at the recent RenFest, by the way– so I guess it’s a multi-purpose outfit. At least I assume he’ll wear it the next time we head out there.

While I have tended to be a bit of a Halloween grinch in the recent past, I was for some reason in rather good spirits about the whole thing. Maybe it was because it was Will’s last Halloween in elementary school. Here’s a picture of Will’s class in costume after this year’s Halloween parade:

Will's 5th grade class, in costume

His teacher, who we really like, is off to the far right dressed as a monk and holding a bag of chips– a chip monk. Get it?

Will’s school had their annual Halloween parade on the 30th and Annette and I had a chance to be here. Here’s a little movie I made with my Flip video camera of the event, one that only a parent could love:

For this year’s trick and/or treating, Will had over a friend who is in his class, Costas. Here’s Costas, dressed as a pirate with ninja head covering, giving the good knight what he had coming:

Just a flesh wound....

As for the trick and/or treating, a good time was had by one and all. I think I have mentioned this before, but ours is a huge trick and/or treating neighborhood. With the pleasant weather, we had hundreds of kids and “kids” who aren’t so much kids. Andre, Pete, Wendy, and assorted kiddies stopped by, along with various EMU and neighborhood folks. I bought over 15 pounds of candy, and I ran out about a half-hour early. We always have some adults double-dipping on the candy, but this year, the element we hadn’t seen before was some parents driving down the street really slow (and playing really loud music) while their kids went for the candy.

But with these minor things aside, it was good trick and/or treating for all. Will and Costas had a good haul:

Oddly, no one wanted the Butterfinger. Yum, Butterfinger….

Earthquakes celebrate perfect record, sort of

0 and 6! 0 and 6!

Today was the last game for Will’s soccer team the Earthquakes (I guess mine too, since I helped out Jim K. with coaching and kid wrangling), and what a miserable game it was. We had to play the first game (9 am), and that comes mighty early on a Saturday morning. It was in the 40s and rainy and kinda windy. Only sleet could have made it worse. And we lost and lost very very badly, like zip to 10. That caps off an 0-6 season, one where we played two (maybe three) games we really should have won, and three or four games where we just crushed.

But you know what? The kids really didn’t seem to care a whole bunch, and at this age (under 12), I guess that’s a good thing. This isn’t exactly a super-duper competitive league, and the kids all really seemed to get along great. It was a lot of fun working with/hanging out with the kids and with Jim, and I hope I get a chance to pitch in again in the spring. The way I figure it, I have a little more time this year with my “sabbatical lite” schedule at work, and I think Will is right at that age where it’s still “kinda cool” for Dad to be hanging out and one of the coaches.

Incidentally, in the picture above (there’s a bunch more in this flickr set) is the kids goofin’ a bit, holding up the “L is for loser” hand gesture. Good sense of humor, these kids. One of them was talking to Will about how they had this perfect record, that no one had ever lost all of their games like that. Will said “Oh yeah? I haven’t won a game in two years!”

Well, maybe next year….

Scary costume for Halloween

Via boing-boing, I came across this site that has a Senator Larry Craig paper bag mask kit. Basically, it’s a couple PDF files of Craig’s infamous post-bathroom arrest mugshot that you download, print, and paste onto a paper bag. Ingenious, but since I am the one who usually answers the door and passes out candy on Halloween, it might be a little too scary for the kiddies.