Simian Farmer

Jurassic vegetarian

Declan's old enough now to have grown into the ability to stun us with his amazing intellectual growth and application of reason.  Tavish has become cuter than his older brother, partly because the baby gets excited when he successfully puts small stuff into bigger stuff, or replaces an object in the same spot he found it.  Plus, he learned how to get off the couch by himself, which most frequently occurs head-first, his body following in some completely unpredictable path.

This was the first Easter we decided to do anything for the boys since one of them at least could appreciate our (i.e., Amy's) efforts to make it special for them.  It was a last-minute affair, so I took both boys out for a quick drive while Amy got the loot ready early Sunday morning.  I returned a movie, mailed a letter, and swung by the drive-thru at Timmy Ho's, where I always get a large coffee, Amy always gets a small iced-cap, and Dex always gets two Tim-Bits.  (Tavish gets left out of the ritual - for now -  mostly because he lacks the perceptive ability to understand what's going on.  Inclusion, generally speaking, is partially dependant on one's ability to piss and moan when excluded.)

We got back home and Dex found a small, empty white bucket sitting on the porch with the instructions to put all the eggs inside.  (There was a handful of chocolate eggs sitting in front of it.)  He excitedly did so and we went back in the house to find more piles of small, chocolate easter eggs sprinkled in obvious but suddenly exciting locations.  There were a number of larger, prize-filled eggs to complement the chocolate haul.

One of these bigger eggs had a cardboard pterodactyl toy that came with its own special bag of water to soak in.  And then it grows stuff on it!  So Amy put it together, set it in the water, and we waited.

We went to my mother's house for Sunday Easter supper and returned home just in time to put the baby to bed.  Dex and I went to check on his cardboard toy before he also went to bed.  We found that the creature had sprouted fluffy, green 'stuff' all over its wings, tail and back.  It crumbled to the touch.  Dusting some of the offending debris off his hands, Declan turned to me and, with a lowered voice, said, "Look Daddy.  A broccoli dinosaur!"

Good Friday

Some pictures and stuff to keep me distracted from all the snow outside on this Easter weekend.

Total randomness!

---

When you feed them spaghetti, best to remove their clothes.

---

I don't know what Dex is teaching Tav in this photo, but they both have a hard time seeing things through the smears of dog snot on the window.

---

Just this morning Amy captured an icicle that stayed on the driveway after I pulled away in Neo (the Matrix) to go shopping with the boys.  The last of the winter stalagmites.

I have vowed not to shovel any more this year no matter how much more falls.  I have ceased to care.

---

Camo pants and socks for hands.  Look out.

---

Falling asleep in his Stove Top Stuffing.  Poor lad.

Sweet reprieve

The best part (and I mean the VERY best part) of my two days in Calgary this week was Monday night as I watched Casino Royale on the 42-inch plasma TV in my hotel room and scarfed down a bacon cheeseburger chased by two bottles of Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale.  I lounged on the bed, food tray balanced on my lap, beer ready to hand on the bed-side table.  The movie was great.  I burped and farted whenever I felt like, and scratched if I itched.

The rest of the two days rather sucked.

I was confined to a room incommodious for a group of mostly engineers toting laptops and reading from binders and snacking on muffins and trying -- desperately, valiantly, futilely trying -- to stay awake.  Somebody neglected to inform the hotel maintenance staff that it was snowing and below freezing outside, because the air conditioning tried to keep pace.

Two days.  12 PowerPoint presentations.  Over 900 total slides.  With 12 hours of official instruction, that's about 1.3 slides a minute, every minute, for six hours a day, for two days.  (We also did some tutorial work on a demo computer program, thereby cutting down on the time we could view slides, so our actual rate of information absorption was probably closer to two slides per minute.)

Today I feel like Andy Dufresne from The Shawshank Redemption after he finally emerged from his 300 yard crawl through the prison sewer and burst forth into the glorious wet freedom of a midnight summer thunderstorm.  He was cooped up in that prison for over two decades, and I spent almost two days in the same rigid banquet seat, the ebb and flow of the monotonous drone of Dr. Whatsisface washing over me until my hair follicles grew numb and my ears revolted, citing irreconcilable differences.  Two days doesn't sound as bad as two decades, and I never had unwelcome intruders assailing my exit-only orifice, but neither did I have a hot poster-girl for a veneer over a tunnel bolstering my hope.  I knew my parole date and time but could do nothing to expedite it.  Thus, the kinship I claim is perhaps more warranted than it appears -- Andy and I both revel in our freedom.

Monday night, after the movie ended and I shared my woes over the phone with my wife, I sank into the bed and continued my journey with the Pequod and Captain Ahab's megalomaniacal pursuit of a white whale.  (It's taken me a very long time to read Moby Dick -I'm only halfway now - though not at all because it fails to engage me; but rather because I've allowed myself to be engaged by lesser pursuits when this one could have been given greater precedence, but wasn't.) Mr. Stubb, Mate of the Pequod, has just successfully killed the first whale of the book, and every little bit of what I read is utterly engaging and masterfully written. 

As I lay there reading, I happened to catch the transit of a nearly full moon across the small gap in the heavy drapes obscuring my view from the second floor.  The white light cast fat shadows on the window screen of the snow flakes falling outside, and I heaved several melancholy sighs at the reminder that April marks the seventh consecutive month with unabated snow on the ground.  I'm more accustomed to four or five months.  Seriously, winter can f--k right off about now.

I nearly got to see the newest member of our small group of real life Superfriends.  James, the best man at my wedding, and his wife welcomed their son, Kelson, on the Ides of March, and I had made plans to toss the little bugger about and make all the appropriate ooh-ings and aah-ings expected of visitors to newborns.  But alas, the little mama is feeling some of the post-partum blues right now, so company is at her discretion.  That's when I decided to do the movie, burger and beer thing.

But now it's mid-week, my first day back at the office.  And tomorrow is the last day of the week, Good Friday curtailing an already shortened work week.  I may no longer be any sort of practising Catholic, but I sure do enjoy observing their holidays!

Disconnected

I'll be away for a couple days the first part of the new week.  I'm heading a few hours south to Calgary for a two-day course on Design and Construction of Earthworks.  (Or: How to Build Stuff Made of Dirt.)

This is a good thing since I come from an educational background of Chemical Engineering and I'm more familiar with how to extract stuff that originally came from dirt into other, more useful, stuff that will eventually (and sort of ironically) end up in a landfill somewhere, thereby completing the cycle.

My work laptop computer is getting a little on the old side (nearly three years) and so is one of the few remaining that doesn't have a built-in wireless card.  Ergo, I can't surf porn sitting in my underwear in my hotel room tonight and Monday night.  I'll have to read a book or something.

Should be a good course though.  I love learning new things.

I highly recommend flu bugs for weight loss.  I've been subdued by something that seems to have taken up residence in my gut for the past couple days.  Thankfully not intense enough to prevent me from sharing a large popcorn with my wife at the movies last night while the boys were with the grandparents.  I'm down over seven pounds so far and may be able to stick it out for a total of 15 or so before it runs its course.  It's the sprints to the bathroom in the middle of learning about silt and water slurries in Calgary that will have me simultaneously distressed and giggling that I'm worried about.

(Note: there really is no April Fool's content in this post.  I am going to Calgary.  And I have an annoying stomach flu.  I briefly contemplated writing something about my vasectomy failing and a third Fraser on the way, but it seemed too trite.  Back on Wednesday.)