American Idol

1. Paula Abdul is insane.
2. Sarah saved Syesha. She voted for her. She actually called (twice) and voted in American Idol.

Montreal, eh?

A couple weeks ago I had to run up to Montreal. The city is nice, though my first impression was that it was grey, industrial, and rather ugly. Then I found the busy streets and the edges of the old town that mix older buildings with new construction. The city is extremely dense, missing the surface lots common in smaller cities.

That density and mix of old and new is potential I see in Cincinnati. The city is already dense as compared to many comparable cities and has a tremendous, large repository of 100 year old architecture on the border of the central business district. The buildings are largely vacant and are beginning to be restored.

Montreal is dissimilar to Cincinnati in that it got over 10 feet of snow this year. That is part of the reason I saw it as a grey wasteland on first glance. As my beloved Madison, WI was attacked for the spring residue of gravel and salt that covers everything each April (link here), Montreal looked much the same.

Part of their issue is the lack of space to put the snow. Here is a picture of the snow still about 8 feet high between two buildings. There was a giant mountain of snow close to 200 feet high and a quarter mile long in an old rail yard. Because of the record snow fall, this year was the first year they had to use it. A local told me that if they don't bulldoze the pile, it is predicted to last until next year. In effect it would be a man made glacier.

I may miss the Wisconsin snow, but I'm glad we don't have glaciers here in Cincinnati.

Fountain square is abloom!

The city is fun in the summer with so much to do. The square is covered with a giant planting of flowers. It is slightly less impressive than Keukenhof was last year, but good for the center of town.

Sarah had book club and went to the Rhythm in Motion class last week so I was home alone with Finn. I saw my options as either stay home and listen to the game or take a walk down to the game. I decided that we'd go to the game. Weekday games are free for military members (active and reserve) as are kids under 3. So, we just strolled on down and watched them lose, twice.

However we did get to see Griffey Jr hit homer number 597. See the video here. Hopefully he'll wait to hit number 600 until they get back from their current road trip.

Until then, there is plenty of other things to do like see the Butterfly show at the Krohn, the Bodies exhibit at the Museum Center, hanging out at Centennial Park, see the horses at Riverdowns, ...

Mister Maestro

A few weeks ago we took a trip up to Wisconsin to visit my family. As always, we took plenty of pictures.

In addition to just seeing family, we stopped into a friend's house too. There, we met Cailin's new little girl, Amalia. It's quite a realization to see a newborn and remember what is was like and how things change so very much in only one year.

We also went to the Vilas Park zoo. Madison has kept the park small and can then keep admission free. I like the zoo and though it doesn't have much, they have been able to modernize in stages to have some very neat exhibits like the otter cage.

Finn got to play on his great-grandparents' piano. He really seems to like it. I've stitched together the videos we took so you can see his entire repertoire. He plays one handed so he can hold his practice golfball at all times.

Summer's here

If Opening Day is the unofficial start of summer, perhaps what I just heard is the official start. The first ice cream truck drove by playing its song. It reminded me of Eddie Murphy's act about the ice cream truck from Delirious. That was funny.

Bonus picture

Because of the recent lack of posts, I will even throw in this bonus picture at no cost to you. Finn decided to help with the laundry. Or, perhaps, he was jealous that mom got to play with the laundry basket instead of him. Either way it made a nice picture.

Our obsession with Weeds

This week's SoTW is the theme from our new obsession, Showtime's series Weeds. The show is of a young widow with two children who turns to selling drugs in her suburb to support her family after her husband dies. The show is funny and comments on tough issues directly (race, drugs, love) and the lighter issues less directly (sprawl, materialism, work).



I love this opening sequence and find it brilliant. We weren't sure what the definition of ticky-tacky is, and neither did the lyricist either since she is credited with coining the term in the OED. Still, the opening sequence is wonderful and we thought, perhaps Agrestic was a new subdivision in West Chester or Mason.

We watch the show as part of our Netflix subscription, which is the greatest thing ever. When we got back from Germany, because of our disgust of Time Warner, we never hooked cable back up, and just use Netflix for all our movies and TV. We highly recommend both Netflix and Weeds.

Special thanks to Showtime for their generous sponsorship of this week's song of the week.

Finn's first haircut

Finn's joined the ranks of those of us who have had a haircut! He was excited when he saw that the event would be at Kids Kuts since they have sch a folksy, yet incorrect, way of spelling.

In this first picture you can see that he was in rather desperate need of a kut. the kurls are nice, but they get all matted, dirty, and unmanageable. Perched on his yellow elephant he was ready to take this on.



Kontrary to the experience being had by the child on the pink chipmunk, Finn seemed unemotional about the experience while it was okkuring. He would look around at the TVs or the screaming kid and the trained kutter would keep up by running around his chair.



Afterward he was happy that he got a balloon, which is still one his favorite things in the world. He still seemed unsold on the idea of the part on his hair. He thought that it made him look too serious. He prefers to look kute.



Once he got home and mom messied up his hair again, he was much more pleased with the kut. It seems that he prefers the way he style his own hair than the way the professionals do it for him. Though it is hardly surprising since he want to to most things for himself now, like eating with a spoon. He hasn't mastered that art, but really, who has?



For those who are keeping track, this event actually happened on April 4th, putting us still over 2 weeks in arrears on posting.

Quite possibly, he is ready for his second kut by now. Or has he already had it but it just isn't posted yet? As everyone knows the second of anything isn't worthy of posting so don't wait around too long for that.

When is the 'W' silent?

In the word 'Two'. Why is it there? Germanic roots.

Opening Day

We are so far behind on posting that this post about the Reds' Opening Day is going up after they have a 6-7 record. They've had some good pitching (the last game being an exception) but their offense has been woeful. Opening Day lead the way for those low-scoring games and also for them losing.


A bunch of us all put our names in for the ticket lottery and Jeff was drawn to be able to get tickets. So Jeff, Angela, Rowan, me, Sarah and Finn all went down to the game. We all had fun and took plenty of pictures. We saw Mr. Redleg, Griffey Jr. and plenty of rainy clouds. Finn appeared to like the crowd the best, although he pointed at almost everything in stadium. His other favorite thing was sitting in his own seat.


Finn is very different than he was at his first baseball game. That was back in DC last year in a stadium they don't even use anymore. Who would have thought that a one year old could say "I remember when the 'Nats used to play in RFK. That place was terrible."

He also was different than he was at Reds games towards the end of last season. He would sit in the stroller and eat and then fall asleep. He is definitely an older boy now who is really seeing and trying to figure out the world around him. For example, he really seemed to be trying to figure out how Edwin Encarnacion threw a routine ground ball into the box seats instead of the first baseman's mitt. I couldn't explain it either.

It is clearly spring in Cincinnati. The Reds are playing and people are already giving up on them less than 10% of the way into the season. Still there is that glimmer of hope for a good season that will keep us going back to the park time and again this year. Go Reds.

The rest of the pictures

With a weekend with relatively few things scheduled, I am taking care of some very overdue business. We have photos from January still in our temporary file waiting to be sorted and filed away. It also gave me some time to share more of our photos that I hadn't gotten too yet.

First on that list is the visit from Memé. More happened than just going to the park. They went to the Children's Museum where there is a lot of great things to do. Finn favorites included the sand table and the aquarium.



They also took a trip up I-75 to Cincinnati's new Ikea that recently opened. Those crafty Swedes keep taking over more and more of our country.

I missed most of the visit since I was off in Oklahoma City for business. I used to complain more about that place, but it is (marginally) better than Texas so I'll accept what it has to offer.

Here are the pictures of the visit.

Seasons change?

The recent spat of warm weather has brought out both the flowers and feelings of summer. This is the great part of spring and summer when the sun warms (not scorches), the flowers blossom (not dead grass), and the streets are full of people (not too stinky yet).



Last week when Memé was visiting, we all went down to Sawyer Point park for a ride on the swings and playground. In the picture above you can see the springtime flowers and the swingtime fun happening the background. Below, you can see that I meant that we all went to play on the playground and not just Finn.



Finn did get to try a new event in the playground decathlon: the solo slide. He was a natural (if the proper technique involved a startled look and a lean backward for stability). However the dismount always ended with a big smile and trying to crawl back up the slide for another go.

The summer fun influenced the choice in Song of the Week. It's the Mungo Jerry classic, Summertime. I hope you enjoy the song and the photo album.

Who Does Finn Look Like?

I'm not totally sure I agree with the results of this (I think Finn looks more like Beach). But thanks to Cailin and Nicolai from Our Amazing Amalia for posting the link (http://www.myheritage.com/). There are lots of cool toys on the site for anyone looking for ways to procrastinate - I've just blown 30 minutes to find out I look 78% like Jessica Biel. OK, I'll go with that!