22 posts tagged “family”

It is not exactly unusual, but it has rained every day since we got here.  No complaints: the area could use the rain.  But Tuesday we went to Busch Gardens and in the early afternoon it just poured on us.  Today we went inner-tubing in a local park and appear to have beaten the rain this time. We're learning to get all our outdoor stuff done in the morning (when it is cool) and save the indoor stuff until the early afternoon, when it either gets very hot or starts pouring.

When Mrs. WQ runs, she listens to books on her MP3 player.  Well, yesterday she noticed that the USB-USBmini cable that she uses to move stuff onto and off of her player was missing from her purse.  We turned the house upside down looking for it, but it was gone.  So we went to the store to discover that a replacement cable (which was about five and a half feet longer than the original) would be $20.  But a new MP3 player with the short cable and twice as much memory as the old player was $25.  So, WQRob got a new MP3 player, and we're sharing the new cable.

Otherwise, we're all good.  Church was fine, but not very interesting.  I have to say that the one who is having the most fun on vacation is my dog, who has surprised all of us by not running off when he gets outside of the screened-in porch but instead just meanders around, chasing squirrels and watching the lake.  He lackadaisical attitude is at once both inspiring and trouble.  Inspiring in that it reminds me to relax (especially about my anxiety that my dog will run away someday) and troubling in that it indicates also that he is getting along in years.

On a lighter note, I've been cruising around some of the free alt-D&D stuff on the interwebs.  There's loads of "old school D&D" material out there, which I'm mining for good ideas for my own campaign

Last night I ended up being taken to the country club by my father-in-law (along with my wife) to have dinner with some friends, including a retired Dutch admiral who was sporting a red and yellow silk cravat, black shirt, and cream blazer with leather elbow pads.  I'm wearing that to diocesan convention.

Today we went back to the library (in hopes of getting some better books) and I bought some supplies to make the kids marshmallow shooting guns.  There's a blueprint in a book I bought Ammo Grot before the trip.  All those marshmallows rolling around in the dirt reminds me of the strangest part about living here: caterpillar poop.  The area is infested with these little black caterpillars that are all up in the trees.  They munch on the trees and poop everywhere.  We parked our RV under a tree in the driveway and now it looks like it is coated with chocolate jimmies.  Blech.

Since arriving here, the weather has been uncommonly rainy and cool.  It is as if we have brought Ohio with us.  I am refraining from complaining too much, however: I am not a huge fan of overly hot weather and this area continues to be suffering from a lack of rain.  In fact, the lake outside is about four feet below normal, and as been so long that the definition of "normal" may end up being changed.

Otherwise, we all are fairly well.  We went to the local library yesterday to load up on books--the one I purchased for the trip, The Sorensen 4 Incident, turned out to be a complete dud.  Tomorrow we'll take the kids to see a aviary rescue place (they are doing a special show for kids).  As for today?  Well, we may go see a movie, especially if it rains some more.

Yesterday we set out for Florida in Fawkes, our RV, and today we arrived at our destination.  It turned out to be a pretty good trip, with little of the problems we anticipated.  There one was, however, that we did not anticipate.

Dog flatulence.

Our dog has the smelliest farts, and would crack one loose about every hour in the RV.  Aside from that, we managed pretty well, although it was slower going than we figured.  As it got to be about 10:00 PM, we realized that we were barely into Georgia, and that unless we got through Atlanta, we'd be suck in Monday morning traffic.  So we pressed on and ended up spending the night in the parking lot of a 24-hour Target.  That wasn't too bad except the street-sweeping vehicle that went up and down every single aisle in the parking lot.  It made a terrible racket.  The only good part about pressing on until almost midnight was that it made today a fairly quick visit, and we're all settled in, including Milo the dog, who is enjoying chasing skinks out by the pool.

My son came to me this morning and asked "how is it that sometimes you can tell in a movie when someone's bad when they haven't really done anything bad yet?  Like, in the movie Sky High I could tell that the girl was a villain even before she came out and told everyone she was."

"It's a device called 'foreshadowing,' where they give you clues to what is going to happen in the movie in advance.  Also, you know how in a movie the guy and the girl get together?  Well, in Sky High there were two girls that the guy liked, so you kinda could guess that at the end he would end up with one and for some reason not like the other."

A literary critique of Sky High, brought to you by the WQ family...

Also, I had an odd dream that I was in a gaming store (frequent theme) and that there was this new game called Kloog.  It was a wargame where you could play one of three factions: cavemen, prehistoric creatures, or alien invaders.  The interesting part of the game (aside from the genre) was that they didn't have a miniatures produced for the game--you had to convert your own from other companies.  I'm half tempted to cobble some basic rules from Strike Force and give it a go.

Friday I had company come visit in several forms.  The first was a good friend who came to hang out for a bit and watch the kids play baseball.  Then my sister and her son came down to spend the weekend.  My sister took my Dad to the Braves/Reds game on Saturday (Braves lost in OT) while I took my nephew, my kids, my mom and my brother to see Speed Racer.  I have to say, I was a little shocked to discover that the "matinee" in Huber Heights is $7.50 (it's 3:50 in Piqua) and frankly I think I was overcharged.  The movie was set pretty solidly at the grade-school age boy level, and that's about it.  They overused the "pan the face across the screen while the background changes into a flashback" way too much--like every four minutes.  And no, I'm not kidding.
Moreover, a lot of people spent a lot of time looking like other people.  Roger Allam spent most of the movie channeling Tim Curry.  Christina Ricci spent a lot of the movie looking like Rose McGowan, and Emile Hirsch spent most of the time not looking like Leonard DiCapprio, which is his usual modus operandi.
Plot?  Paper thin.  Mostly a lot of CGR cars banging around with Spritle and ChimChim providing the "comic relief" up to and including throwing poo (thankfully the chimp's, who seemed to have the most expressive face of the cast as well).
Afterwards, I took the crew out for ice cream, which definitely helped me put a good spin on it.  When we got home, it was nothing but Hot Wheels track, which is the real payoff.

I think of Memorial Day weekend as being a "2-0-1" weekend, meaning I have two days off (Friday and Saturday), work Sunday, and then have Monday off.
I've got some plans.  Friday I want to get some casting of Hirst Arts molds done.  I've started building another small house--nothing fancy, just something I can build with the molds I already own.  Saturday is Castles & Crusades, and on Monday I've having some friends and my parents over for a barbecue.
At least, that's the plan...

Today my family and I went to the Dayton International Festival, which is essentially a bunch of local ethnic clubs and student groups hosting booths touting their various countries' culture, especially food.  It was a lot of fun, and of course educational.  They even had a program for the kids: each child got a "passport" with pages of each of the countries represented, and on each page was a trivia question that the kids had to ask or answer themselves.

The best moment was when my son, a serious Sinophile even at the age of eight, went to the booth for China.  "Can you name a major landmark located in China?" the woman asked.

"The Yellow River," said my son with a straight face.

The woman was visibly startled and said, "yes, the Yellow River is a major landmark." One whose flooding ended a lot more dynasties than the mongols climbing over the Great Wall, I thought to myself.  Then the woman stamped my son's passport.  "Shien shien," said my son, as the lady's jaw hit the floor.

My daughter had a great time looking at the costumes, and dancing with the Irish dancing group.  I wish there was a group closeby, instead of the cheesy "practice for working a pole at the local gentlemans' club" dancing school here in my area.