Haircut

We've been very busy of late as could be noted from the month delay in posting pictures from the birthday party. Sarah is my barber and it has been far too long since my last haircut.

We had some time yesterday and she was able to cut my hair. We were amazed at the amount of hair that piled up on the floor. It was truly remarkable (so I am remarking about it).

Our one regret is that we didn't take a picture of the pile of hair around me. So to help the rest of the world visualize it, I have included an artist's (my) rendering of the event below.

DC for Business and Pleasure

Last week I had to go to Washington DC for business and Sarah and Finn came with to explore the nation's capitol. I know that you would love to hear me describe the meetings in colorful detail, but I think that I will stick to Finn and Sarah's experience.

We drove out together Tuesday afternoon and came back Friday morning, just making it back into town for the hockey game that evening. The drive was fine with limited complaints from the boy. Like most 1 year old kids, his favorite road food is Wendy's chili and baked potato. Sarah said that her favorite part of the drive was looking the the rear-view mirror and seeing me and Finn asleep. Of course she couldn't take a picture of the back seat while driving, but I can assure you that it something like this artist's (my) rendition.



While I was off at a meeting Sarah took Finn on a tour of all the hot spots. She also brought the camera and took lots of photos.

He liked the amethyst at the Natural History museum. Sarah says that was because he could touch it and it was purple. Personally, I think he admired the regular rhombohedral crystalline lattice structure. His other favorite was the set of lights flashing out words in the art museum. I figured that he just liked the blinking lights, but Sarah claims he appreciated the artistic statement of the transparency and hollowness of words in the modern world's media bombardment and 24-hour news cycle.

That could be, but what he really liked was the big fish at the hotel that he could feed each morning and evening. They would come right up to his feet and open their mouths for fish pellets. Finn saw that the fish liked the pellets so much that he figured they would taste good to him. It turns out they don't.

Train Birthday Extravaganza

Finn's Birthday was an true romp; quite a lively and boisterous event. Having 5 kids in one room is a sure-fire way to have an exciting party. Despite predictions to the contrary, everyone was very well behaved and tears were only short-lived.

The biggest hit at the party was Finn's new firetruck. Like all toys that play music, the song wedged itself in my head and couldn't be extricated. I tried all my familiar techniques to replace a song stuck in my head such as listening to Rihanna's Pon de Replay. Even after the third time through the song, all I could hear in my head was "I'm firefighter Tad...".

Finn had a very regal look to him during the cake presentation. He turned out to be not that into the cake, though he did enjoy smashing the little train cars. Perhaps he likes being like King Kong since he is usually the smallest person around.



The rest of the fun is documented in a photo retrospective.

Big weekend of hockey

The hockey team went up to Strongsville, outside of Cleveland, for a hockey tournament this weekend. We got to stay in the Holiday Inn Select, not because we selected it as the name may imply, but teams in the tournament were required to stay there. It was quite nice and they shared a parking lot with the rink so it was an easy commute to the games.

Finn loved watching the games and playing in the hallways. There are a bunch of players' younger sisters who love to play with the little guy. As a side note, they are also the team's cheerleaders who can effortlessly scream "Let's go Elks" in cadence for 2 hours non-stop. This picture from a couple weeks ago shows Finn watching a game. He pounds on the glass and cheers in a more traditionally male way than the cheerleaders. However, he can't distinguish between applause for or against our team. The result is that when he hears the other team's fans clapping because they just beat us, Finn stands up and joins in.

There were plenty of things not to cheer for in the first couple games. We lost each of he first two games, while out-shooting the other teams in both. More notably, one of my defensemen "accidentally" hit me in the eye with his stick. There was no photograph of the incident so I have posted an artist's (my) rendering of the event below. I am the Bob Ross like person receiving the stick to the eye.

Actually, the stick-in-the-eye was quite accidental. I tried to play it off, but when the swelling became such that I could see my own cheek, I got some ice and held it to my face for the rest of the game.

The results are shown in this picture:

I am fine and the bruising is disappearing. If only I could get a haircut sometime, my looks would return to their normal, outstanding level. This post also shows a trend of mine. I like to post images of my wounds. Stay tuned for more, and if you like them, you can hope that I get hurt again soon.

Premier Xylophonist

We're back with pictures from Christmas

Finally we got around to putting the Christmas pictures together on-line. Enjoy the pictures.

"Walking" down the hall

Finn found our wheeled basket used for bringing things in from the car and decided it would be good to use as a walker. Who are we to stop him?

Britney Spears is one whacked crazy rehab drug user

This post will have nothing to do with the title. I've noticed that I have gotten a bunch of hits through Google searches thanks to Google owning blogger and being prone to self-promotion. The Google tag words seem to be the blog entry's title; I get more click throughs when I have a title that is relevant to current events. For example, the title "Christmas tree fun" brought a bunch of people right before Christmas.

The main objective of this blog has always been for me to make enough money from it to stop working. To drive hits to my site so I can begin selling ad space, I will start to have better titles.

I think I'll go to Toys 'r' Us to see if they will buy ad space. They are clearly dumb enough to make bad decisions. The best example is that they are called Toys 'r' Us. The name is so dumb I can't even write it correctly because keyboards don't have a backward R key. A good second example is here.

So if anyone would like to buy ad space let me know. It'll be cheap on a per view basis since I average 10,000 impressions a day.

Family Portrait

I've been continuing my genealogy search that has been a background activity for the last 10 months with slow progress. Recently a distant cousin from Oregon sent the picture of my Great-Great-Grandfather with his wife and kids. That would make five generations difference between Finn and him.

Genealogy is strange in that someone who is 5 generations removed is only 1/32 of you, but seeing a picture of them makes the connection seem much larger. Connecting with generations further back reveals the story of the family line of which you are a part.

A funny thing about genealogy is that if you can connect back far enough, going farther becomes much easier. A common ancestor born in 1800 has at least 50,000 living members of the current generation sharing part of their genes. That's a lot of people to help do your research.

The other aspect of genealogy that is interesting is that we are a nearly unique and specific mix of histories. French Canadians, Polish immigrants, and Scandinavian farmers came together to create me. Sarah adds in a heavy dose of the British Isles to Finn. If the migration of predecessors were drawn on a map, the result would look like a series of arrows funneling in towards a common goal. From all over Northern Europe people crossed the oceans, moved across the country, and finally ended up in Cincinnati as a smiling little boy.

Whale songs in my sinuses

The family has all been producing mucus at combined volumetric rate roughly equal to output of a Wendy's Frosty machine. Your diet will thank me for that image next time you want to order one. Further, our consumption of tissues may be putting the North American forests in jeopardy due to increases in demand for paper pulp.

There is a benefit that seems to have come from it though. We now have the ability to communicate with whales. Contrary to what people have told me, I do not actually have a blowhole. However, after blowing my nose I can now produce squeals and clicks that are a deadly accurate mimic of whale songs.

We seem to be getting better over the last couple days and our lame superpowers (à la Aquaman) may be coming to an end. For those who have wondered what they would do if they had superpowers for a day, trust me, you mostly nap and sneeze.