Last week Nathan and I went to CT via Amtrak to visit my mother (who was visiting from WI) and my grandmother.
One of the highlights of the trip for Nathan, aside from the train ride, was helping Yaya load the dishwasher. His jpb was to open and close the racks and close the door. I’m not sure how Yaya is getting on with this now that she doesn’t have Nathan’s help.
Happy Birthday Yaya!
God, it’s nice to have sunshine again. I went kayaking at Millennium Park yesterday, my usual route. The water is super high, and the wind was knocking up 6 inch waves on the water, but the current and the wind pretty much cancelled each other out.
Today Nathan stayed at this grandmother’s, and Lisa and I rented a canoe on the Sudbury River. It was so beautiful - we saw herons, a king fisher, turtles, swallows, and dozens of redwing blackbirds.
We drove back to town and had pizza in the North End, then walked around and marveled at how different the city is the elevated highways torn down. Later a movie at the Dedham theater, and we just ate the cannolis we picked up when we were in town. I’m all sunburned and happy and feeling like summer might just happen.
One of the things I love about Nathan is how dramatic he is. His face is so expressive and being at that great age of 2 his emotions are completely uncensored. One way he chooses to use his talents is when eating foods he finds unpalatable. The little video clip that follows was taken during dinner the other night. I started the filming by saying that this is what dinner looks like when Nathan hasn’t had a nap during the day at which point he promptly perked up and didn’t do anything interesting.
Only this little clip proved to be worth keeping for the sheer drama. Please keep in mind folks that this is a blackberry that he is eating, not a piece of liver or a brussel sprout.
This is what I stare at 8+ hours a day. You can see over engineered way I keep track of my to do list.
From seeing Episode III, I just returned. Now, maybe if you asked me in a few days I’ll be all cool say it was corny, but now my immediate reaction is pretty happy. Definately the best feeling I’ve had froma Star Wars movie since Empire. A lot of was the intellectual thrill of seeing elements of the Episode IV (the original starwars) fall into place. Partly that’s because I saw Star Wars 50 times when i was young, and the repetition of the story was such that I knew it the way some might know the Ramayana - almost as a part of my unconscious.
So if you loved Star Wars, go see it. If you didn’t, don’t waste your time complaining to me about how cheesey this movie was. I liked it.
Tonight as I cooked dinner something I have always feared happened. I heard a pop in the oven and knew immediately that one of my sweet potatoes exploded.
I remember when it happened in the Little House on the Prairie books and someone, I believe it was Albert, got seriously burned. Ever since then I have known the danger of exploding potatoes and always knew it would happen to me one day. I used to prick potatoes like crazy when I was young.
But I’ve always thought of sweet potatoes as different. They always have blemishes on their skin which allow the steam to escape. And if you do prick them then they ooze so much and make a stink.
Well I guess I learned my lesson. Luckily there were no injuries.
P.S. We also learned that exploded sweet potatoes don’t taste nearly as good as non-exploded sweet potatoes. You can see in the photo that it looks really stringy.
I’ve used world66.com to generate map of where I’ve visited in the past. But this morning I went in to generate a list of the places I’d like to visit (or visit again).
Countries Ben wants to visit
Of course there are plenty more I would like to visit, but I tried to be selective.
Nathan got this idea on his own: Use Lisa’s clapotis to tie a baby sling so he could carry his pooh bear around and still have his hands free for some pretend cooking. Lisa had to help him tie on the Pooh bear, of course, but she was pretty impressed by his ingenuity.
