The Double Dental Displacement Drama

In a move usually reserved for a punch in the face, L managed to lose not one, but two teeth tonight. Methinks she's worked out some Ponzi scheme with the Tooth Fairy and is starting to see the problems with having to meet an exponentially increasing delivery schedule.  But so far she's keeping up with the demand, and excited to do so.

Anyone know the going Tooth Fairy rate for a double order?

MISSING:  Have you seen us?

L also left the Tooth Fairy a note.  (We established long ago that the Tooth Fairy's name was Dentina Molaris.)

Here's the response she got:

Our Strengths and Fore-Tees

A 100°F+ heatwave across the Southland has not deterred L and N from this week's "keep 'em busy" activity - golf camp!  Everyday this week from 9:00 to 11:00 the kids have set out to the Links at Victoria Park for an intro to the sport. In spite of the heat stroke, or possibly because of it, both kids were very excited about going. I'd get the daily sports report every night when I'd get home from work. L, beaming broadly, related how she took the bronze during a competition on one of the days! (Before I was able to call the PGA, Stacy pulled me aside and told me that only three kids had shown up in her category that day...)

I took the day off today so I got to go see the final camp day and the big wrap-up competition. L was all over the map, but seemed to enjoy herself. N, on the other hand, seemed surprisingly coordinated.  As he played past the area where Stacy and I were seated he got a hole in one on one putt, and a two on the next. "Lucky two! Lucky two!" he kept announcing to anyone who would listen. At least he was encouraging to his teammates.  As he followed one little boy around the green I overheard N's cheerings-on. "That's OK, you've got a lucky two!... Oh, OK, you've got a lucky three!... Don't worry, you've still got a lucky four!... Lucky five, lucky five!... Oh, six..."

Although I expect some changes in the intervening years,
I somehow expect N will look exactly like this when he's 70.

...And the first thing he'll do is buy his Daddy a house!

Ice Ice Babies

Uncle Kyle and Miss Sera were exceedingly brave last week. They volunteered to take the kids ice skating! L had been once before at a friend's birthday party and enjoyed it, but N had never been before and was an untried quantity and therefore a wildcard.

Both Kyle and Sera play hockey. (Yes! Sera plays hockey! Who'da thunk?) So they are quite proficient on the ice, and if needed, could deliver a check or bloody nose if things got out of hand. We went up to the rink at the top of Palos Verdes, shelled out the cold, hard cash, and cast them to the cold, hard ice to, um... sink or swim (metaphorically speaking).

There was much flopping and sprawling. You remember the scene from Bambi, right? L did OK if she could hang on to the side, but N was spending more time chilling his nose than his toes. Things might have gone poorly if Uncle Kyle hadn't come to the rescue with a rented skating seal! That was just the ticket. Even with the seal N still did a fantastic impression of Fred Flintstone reving up the Flinstone-mobile, but happiness and smiling were once again the theme of the day.

Yabba Dabba Doo!!!

I'll bet Uncle Kyle's hockey team never used this move!

Rest stop.

The kids skated for the full two hour window. Eventually the buzzer sounded and the skaters were called in off the ice.  Uncle Kyle grabbed N and took him for a final victory lap around the rink.  The little literalist who is my son was freaking out the entire time; he was convinced he was going to get into big trouble by being on the ice past the buzzer.

It didn't take N long after coming off the ice to find something to distract his attention. It worked for me, since he was perfectly content to "play" the game over and over again without adding a single quarter.

Game Over, dude!

L, however, showed clear signs of skater melancholy, lost in Zamboni dreams.

Of Moose and Maine (Sorry, Steinbeck)

Generally in the world of digital literature the maxim "you get what you pay for" holds true. There are a lot of free e-books out there, but when you veer from the tried and true classics you wander into "read at your own risk" territory - there's usually a reason such offerings didn't make it into the tried and true classic category. But on occasion you find something that, if not earth-shaking or of clear appeal to the masses, is a cute treasure that you appreciate that perhaps no one else ever would.

A few months ago, not really lacking in stuff to read, but hooked on the drug of getting things for free, I did a search for literature having to do with Maine. I found a couple dozen free, sappy-looking romance novels which, to me, weren't worth the price of the download, and I found a handful of old-time novels that looked interesting, or at least quaint and worth sucking in the kilobytes.

• The Pearl of Orr's Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine by Harriet Beecher Stow
• Uncle Terry: A Story of the Maine Coast by Charles Clark Munn
• Camp and Trail: A Story of the Maine Woods by Isabel Hornibrook

I didn't actually expect to read any of them! (What a hilarious thought! Actually reading something I've bought? What kind of book collector is that?) But last month I'd finished up a book and had no idea what to read next, so I poked around my weighty virtual collection and settled, against my better judgment, on Camp and Trail.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.

It's not one I would recommend too broadly.  Not that it was obscene or violent or anything unsavory, but it would be of limited appeal to most. I enjoyed it because it was a story of a group of young men camping and hunting around Moosehead Lake, Mount Katahdin and Millinocket, Maine, an area very close to where my parents live; places I've been to and even camped in. It takes place in 1890-something, and has the style and tone of its generation.  The men are way more emotional and the language way more stilted and eloquent than such a story would be today.  The characters are more noble and high-minded than they would be in a post-modern retelling. I have a hard time imagining any real Maine hunters or farmers sounding quite that principled and altruistic, or at least that vocal about it.  It was like Charles Dickens channeling the Hardy Boys.  And Hornibrook's attempt to transliterate the iconic Maine accent results in something I didn't recognize, which made me wonder if she had ever really heard it, or was just making it up based on the accounts of others.  But for all that, it was charming.  There were moose and bears and endless miles of trees and lake, and while it seemed to brush over the mosquitoes and deer flies and other nuisances of the great outdoors, it nevertheless resonated with what I know and love about Maine. Would I recommend it broadly? No. But would I be secretly pleased if someone picked it up and read it anyway? - as they say in Maine, "a-yah!"

To Infinity and Beyond!

Last week I got a tip-off from a co-worker. Sea Launch, a mobile ocean-going launch platform partially developed by Boeing, was conducting final testing on a fully integrated satellite and launch vehicle down in Long Beach Harbor, its home port. The Sea Launch platform would be heading out soon to launch the spacecraft, and was conducting some final testing before heading out. It was a rare opportunity to see the launch vehicle (a.k.a. rocket) and satellite mated and erected in launch configuration. The following day they would once again lower the assembly and return it to its stowed configuration within the Sea Launch hanger in prep for the voyage southwest. I coordinated the evening with Stacy and I managed to get home early enough to pile everyone in the car and head to the port. It was amazing how close we were able to get. We parked on the warf right next to the moored launch platform. Being so close gave you a much greater appreciation for just how big these things are!

The launch platform with the command ship.

Sea Launch uses a converted oil rig to launch satellites from the equator, which is the ideal place to launch a geosynchronous satellite. The oil rig platform Ocean Odyssey and its associated command ship Sea Launch Commander are based in Long Beach, but when conducting a launch mission, travel out to the equator just south of Hawaii. There have been dozens of launches over the 10+ years its been in service. (Some more successful than others.)

Massive columns of the converted oil derrick.

There was lots of other "cool" stuff to be seen at the harbor.

The kids got a big kick out of seeing a "real satellite" though you couldn't see much of it tucked away inside its faring at the rocket tip. But just knowing it was there was good enough, evidently. After the viewing we grabbed a quick dinner in Long Beach, but before heading back home over the Vincent Thomas bridge, we pulled off into the port a second time for a sunset viewing of the assembly. Pretty cool!

Long Beach Harbor by night.

The Sequoia Sequestration - Day 4

Our final day was a day free of ambition. Our only real objective was to get everything we took out of the car, back into it. But even that was a lazy goal as we didn't have to leave the campsite till noon. That allowed me, the Forest Führer, another opportunity to subject the oppressed masses to a grueling death march through a beautiful meadow and pristine woodland. Sehr böse! But that assumed the dispirited oppressees actually woke up before noon - not necessarily a bankable proposition.

ZZZZZZZZ!

But eventually the hike was underway...

L points out that not all Sequoias are Giant!

Back to camp we started our dreary pack up. "We" may not be the most appropriate word, as L and N immediately disappeared over to Nick and Bella's campsite. Stacy would have helped, but as per her natural waif-magnetism, she was called into service to aid and assist every lost or distressed child in the campground. I looked up at one point to find her wheeling a toddler bike up the hill to return it to its owner who evidently fled weeping after an unexpected tumble.

But soon enough the car was stuffed to the gills with our possession, much more fragrant now than on the initial journey. Stacy loaded up on Dramamine, we put Nick and Bella up for adoption with their parents, and we hit the trail, stopping 5 miles down the road to hit the park visitor center and stock up on kitsch and postcards. Within a half an hour we were slaloming our way down the mountain, the kids making "ooooh" sounds on the curves to the left and "aaahhh" sounds on the curves to the right, all the while with Stacy in the passenger seat groaning feebly, slumped over like a tranquilized grizzly bear. The ride was otherwise uneventful and long before I was emotionally prepared to deal with it we were in the thick of this:

But home, when we found it, was heavenly, and the seventh heaven was the shower in the master bathroom. As we each passed beneath its silvery cascade a fairly significant portion of the Sierra Nevadas made its way down the drain and into Santa Monica Bay.

Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot! N has something to show Mr. Allard!