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Beware of Little Green Men
All-boys’ road trip! The Little Green Men are on the move!… Read more
Category: …And Little E Makes 3
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Leaves…ATTACK!
Today on the drive to school, it seemed like every other tree we passed unloaded all of its leaves on us at once. I got Little E giggling by saying “Leaves! ATTACK!” in a silly voice every time this happened.
After I dropped him off at school and went to work, I had a little bit of downtime while waiting patiently for software to install, and doodled this for him on half a sheet of paper. I then folded the paper over and addressed the “outside”…
TO: E
FROM: DAD … Read more
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Waiter, I’d like a breakfast that can ward off evil
Little E was showing me a comic book he wrote and drew today – man, where does he get that? Anyway, he was narrating the whole thing to me, and it got more bizarre, because there was a magical omelet that was sending evil creatures back to the nether world, and man, if the heroine of his story (that’s an interesting choice) lost that omelet, she was in deep trouble, and…
“Buddy?”
“Yeah, dad?”
“How are you spelling omelet? Does it start with an O? As in the breakfast made with eggs?”
“No, dad.”
“Is it an amulet?” (and I spelled it out)
“Yes!” He seemed amazed that I had guessed it.
“Whew,” I said, relieved. “Now the whole story makes sense!”
Although I will admit, an omelet that can ward off evil sounds pretty good right about now.… Read more
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Little C: the first month
“So I hear you’re looking for the baby pictures?”
…
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The two seventh birthdays of Little E
Little E turned 7 on the 19th – wow! Despite numerous suggestions that he was going to get a baby brother for his birthday, I wanted him to have one last big birthday bash all to himself. And so did he – after attending two birthday parties in the same weekend, two weeks prior to his birthday, he suddenly announced that he wanted to have a birthday party too, one that all his friends could attend. Maybe at the park. Maybe the park with the ducks. Which, with two weeks to go, is quite the bold declaration. Attempts to look into reserving the park with the ducks yielded little information, and in any case the forecast for his birthday was looking like an outdoor party might be a bust. I started looking around for possible venues, but it was too close to the actual date; a second birthday party would have to be held a week after the 19th. … Read more
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Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part three: Space (the final frontier)
Having gone to Arkadia Retrocade on Friday night in Fayetteville, followed by a Saturday morning visit to the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma, we headed homeward, but with one more stop planned in Oklahoma City itself (40 minutes east of Weatherford) before returning to Fort Smith.
The second leg of the central Oklahoma space pilgrimage took us to Oklahoma City proper, in a part of town that we might not have visited otherwise but for the presence of a starship. In a rented space next to a roofing repair company in Oklahoma City is one of the only two 360-degree classic Star Trek bridge sets in the United States, replicating – if not improving on – the Enterprise set from the original ’60s series.
Starbase Studios was holding one of its rare open house events. They’re rare because the bridge is a working film set, and exposing it to the public puts it at increased risk of suffering accidental damage. Keeping the entire set fully lit (rather than the usual practice of only lighting those sections needed for a particular spot), and running fans to make the already-warm studio space tolerable for visitors, runs up a considerable electric bill, even for a single day.
We joked en route that the directions to the nondescript studio building sounded like a ransom note – in between lines of the directions I had printed out from the studio’s web site, I was riffing helpful additions like “place the money in an unmarked paper sack inside the newspaper vending machine on the corner; do not look around you, you are being watched.”
The verdict? Totally. worth. it. … Read more
Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part two: Space (race)
With everyone in agreement that the two space-related destinations in central Oklahoma were worth going to, we set out from Fort Smith in the Martins’ vehicle to strike out westward. The kids were surprisingly well behaved for the whole trip; it occasionally got a bit noisy, but since the back set was filled with boys, that’s hardly a surprise.
Our first Saturday destination: the Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford, Oklahoma! And then to the stars. Warning: there are over 50 photos after the jump. … Read more
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Everybody’s geekin’ for the weekend, part one: Space (invaded)
As a rule, we tend not to do weekend getaways and vacations here, and being flat broke is typically the culprit. Last weekend the Mrs. and Little E got to go on a road trip with her parents, though it was more of a business trip 
than anything, without much sightseeing. Early last week I learned that a special event or two was happening out toward Oklahoma City, and started trying to pull a road trip of my own together out of sheer willpower. Sheer willpower, it turns out, doesn’t solve all the issues with my occasionally wonky loaner car. I’m grateful to have it, it gets me to work and back home again, and it’s driven a lot in the past week as I’ve gone to various far-flung work sites. But Oklahoma City? Not so sure it’s up for one continuous 3-4 hour journey. I started trying, far too late, to see if I could land a rental car, but it’s Memorial Day Weekend: they’re all spoken for.
Nathan and Chandra Martin contacted me via Facebook earlier in the week; they were making a rare return to Fort Smith with their kids and wanted me and Little E to show them this arcade that I’ve spent so much time talking about in Fayetteville. The thought honestly hadn’t occurred to me to say “Well hey, wanna go to OKC too?” That’s a bit like showing up at someone’s party and saying “Hey, let’s make this party about me!” As it happens, the thought had occurred to them too, and the whole weekend became a massive singularity of geeking out.
But on Friday night, it all started with keeping all of our kids up way too late at the local arcade. … Read more
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The smell of FEAR
So E has had some mild issues with a few developing phobias, so I looked this up on Youtube to introduce him to the mother of all my childhood phobias, the Federal Systems Thunderbolt civil defense siren, and played it good and LOUD for him while telling him how one of these used to scare that crap and many unspeakable crap byproducts out of me when I was just a little older than him (but not by much), and how I briefly joined the school safety patrol in sixth grade because my mother thought I should stand RIGHT NEXT to the damned thing to get over my fear of the merest of possibilities that it might go off while I’m standing under it or just looking at it. I told him how these were first deployed in 1953 or so – probably right around the time my now-assimilated-by-the-UAFS-Borg elementary school was built – and had another setting – rising and falling tones – which were usually reserved for nuclear attack. Then I told him about growing up during the Cold War. I explained to him that, to be less scared of all of these things, I read about tornadoes and sirens and, yes, even Da Bomb, so I could better judge when it’s time to be really scared.
And there was a long silence.
And then he said “But Dad, none of THAT is SCARY. BUGS ARE.”
I really wish I was him sometimes.
Feast now upon the song of my childhood nightmares!
Next question: who in the flaming f#$& buys a retired tornado siren and PUTS IT RIGHT OUTSIDE THE BACK DOOR? I guarantee you the only reason that glass door doesn’t end up in pieces is because he’s got a heap of blankets stuffed down the horn. These things used to kill any birds that would nest in the horns.… Read more
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Fun and games and games and games and fun
So mom wants to rest, and the boy wants to play… and dad wouldn’t mind getting out of the house for a bit and blow stuff up. Sounds like this is a fever that calls out for less cowbell and more arcade.
… 