One Dad's Life

Friday Photos - More Missouri Botanical Gardens

I haven't really had time for any photography this week, (except for the giant slug pictures - one of which I published yesterday!) so I did a little digging in the archives and came up with a couple of shots I took at The Missouri Botanical Garden.

The first is a brilliant red rose, so brilliant, in fact, that I decided to go all B & W with it just to be contrary!  The second shot is the most photographed structure of the garden - The Climatron.  This geodesic dome contains a little mini rain forest!

Some day, I will get some better organization and tagging of my photos, which will make putting a collection together here and on flickr just a bit easier!  Right now, they are all organized only by the date they were taken (for the Canon shots) or the date they were downloaded to my computer (for the Nikon Shots).

Both of these pictures were taken with the new Nikon D60 camera.

I just picked up a Nikon SB-600 flash and have a couple of events to try it out on this weekend - a party at our house, and the Japanese Festival at The Missouri Botanical Garden!  I have a lot of reading and experimenting to do before that!  I've recently realized, I don't know anything about flash...so I'm spending a lot of time at the strobist. 

Enjoy the pictures!

 

10 Reasons Why My Post Is Late

I've actually been pretty good at keeping this blog on my self-imposed schedule, but every now and then, of course, things come up.  Fortunately, I'm not being graded on this, but I have thought of 10 reasons (you can call them excuses if that helps!) as to why my post is late.  Feel free to adapt these for your own use!

1. I accidentally tied my shoes together and couldn't reach my computer.
2. Ridiculous early meeting times at work, coupled with late-night teleconferences eats up all my time.
3. Mario Kart (DS, Wii, and Gamecube) plus Guitar Hero III (Wii).
4. Writer's Block! (hate, hate, hate)
5. Twitter.
6. I was distracted by the newt-sized slug on my fence.(click to enlarge)
7. mmmmm.  Bagels.
8. I have a strict rule of getting at least 4 hours of sleep each night.
9. My dog ate the original post.
10. My ghost writer quit!

 

6-year old Quote of the Day

Toilet paper is very important to my youngest daughter, Rachel.  Besides it's normal and more expected use, she uses it to make "casts" for her "broken" arms, leg, foot, head, etc.   She uses it to make blankets for dolls, and in addition she uses it for general decorating.

Since she is always thinking about how things work and how things are made.  I should not have been surprised when she came to me this morning with the following description of where toilet paper comes from.

Rachel: Is it possible to make toilet paper?

Gregg:  Yes. Of course (I say in a groggy 6:30AM voice)  Where do you think it comes from?  It doesn't grow on trees!  (Classic.  Good one Dad)

R: Well, a machine could have made it.

G: That's true.

R: I know how a machine makes toilet paper.

G: How?

R: Well, first it takes two pieces of toilet paper and then it smashes them together and glues them together.  Then another machine comes and pokes the dots in it and then you have toilet paper!

G: Really.

R: Yeah.  I told this to Mom and she said, "You're right!"

G: Hmmm.  Interesting. How do you get the first piece of toilet paper that the machine uses?

R: I don't really know.

Author's Note: When I asked her to repeat this story so I would get it right, she ripped off a section of toilet paper and illustrated all of the steps she had originally told me.  She's always thinking!

Oh. My. Gosh. I've "outed" My Blog!

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

I've accidentally outed "One Dad's Life."  Yep.  I cc'd my boss on an email from one of my personal email accounts, and my auto-signature at the bottom has by blog, Flickr, and twitter addresses in it.  Perhaps he missed it, but I'm going to assume "Bill" -I'm going to call him "Bill", because that's his name - didn't miss the links.  (Sorry Bob Rybarczyk for stealing your line!)

I forgot to delete the links.

My worlds are colliding! Duh!

Originally, I didn't plan on anyone I know, other than my wife, Deb, and Mel, knowing about the blog.  My wife because I have no secrets from her except for my "Super Hero" name a la "Mystery Men", and my friends Deb and Mel because they both had blogs already. Solidarity, sisters!

Pretty soon, my parents learned of the blog and I don't even remember how.  I was a little nervous, but mainly because this whole writing thing probably seemed to come from left field for someone like me.  I mean, come on, I'm an engineer! A boss engineer. We are known for our complete inability to write!  Random capitalization! Ellipses! Parenthesis! Inappropriate apostrophe's! I love all of those things! I was also afraid that I'd just toy around with the blog a bit, and then that would be it.  Another passing hobby in my list of hundreds of hobbies.  (Most of them definitely not passing, BTW!)

It's not like I even have anything to fear from people at work knowing about the blog, other than good-natured mockery.  I accidentally let one of my employees know about it (same way, stupid email forwarding), and I told two people about it...in totally different departments from me!  Oh, wait.  I also told my point guy in India about it, too.  But I swore him to secrecy!  (The cat's out of the bag, now, Aprao!)  At least two of them are regular readers.  My employee has never mentioned it to me, though I saw the blog on his screen the day I sent him the email. I have also never bad-mouthed work or anything like that!  The worst I've done is threatened to put a desk in the elevator and put a sign on it saying "Help Desk" or "Information Center" (I don't remember!) and sitting behind it.  Follow the links for the exact wording.  In fact, since I am a "boss", I totally believe that it is completely inappropriate for me to discuss work.  Period. It is my job to be the face of the company, which is something I think I've done rather well since taking this position.  So, I have no worries, there.

Honestly, there is nothing wrong with my job other than it is a job and therefore interferes with "real life."  This is nothing new to anyone at work. They all know that if I was independently wealthy, I would not be there.  No one would.  It's not that kind of job.  There is nothing wrong with my boss, either.  He pings me on things he should ping me on, he always has a plan, and he is just completely competent, which basically means he hasn't risen to his level of incompetence, yet (The Dilbert Principle). This means there is still room for advancement, Bill! I've had him for my boss twice where I work, and was glad to have him for a boss the second time.  So, if you are Bill and reading this, please, please re-read the preceding sentences! I'm sure I have a review coming up!

Well, the blogging thing has completely stuck.  It wasn't just a flash in the pan. I post on every single weekday and have for many months.  I'm actually coming up on the one year anniversary of the blog! I never would have guessed, but I did plan for this possibility, by buying domain names and such.

So why am I so freaked about "outing" the blog?  My readership would likely jump if I did this whole-sale.  My friends would tell their friends who would tell their friends and so on and so on and so on.  Why is admitting you are a blogger seemingly akin to discussing politics, religion, and sexual preferences?  Well, maybe it is only me that is freaked out by this.  There are actually plenty of blogs that discuss all three of those things...at once!

Maybe it is time to "out" the blog.  It is obviously not going away in the near future.  Because of the blog, I've become involved with a great group of people that I didn't know previously who are all interested in doing great things in St. Louis.  I love St. Louis.  It's nice to be hooked up with people who feel the same, and act on these feelings. I've also found an additional, much needed, creative outlet other than music.

My question for the rest of you bloggers is: Have you completely "outed" your blog to the people you know?  How about people at work? How did it work out? If you haven't, why haven't you? 

Oh, and welcome to "One Dad's Life", Bill! There's a new post every weekday morning. Knock yourself out!

"Only Four" Meme

LisaS over at "Clearview" tagged me on the following meme.  Since the past couple of weeks have been SO crazy, it took me all the way until Sunday night just to get through email I'd received by Friday. The timing for post inspiration couldn't have been better!

Four place I go to over and over: Dierbergs, St. Louis Bread Company (Panera outside of the St. Louis home-turf), Missouri Botanical Garden, Forest Park.

Four people who e-mail me (regularly): Hot Momma (my wife, Dianne - and no, it's not a blog name...yet), my parents, Larry,  and recently Mel - as we've worked on a video/photo project together.

Four places I would rather be right now: The whole Disney complex at Disney World,  playing music almost anywhere,  going almost anywhere in a plane (I love to fly!), stay right here in St. Louis! (I love my home and this city!)

Four TV shows/programs that I watch over and over: I'm not much of a TV person but I watch Battle Star Galactica, Stargate Atlantis, and Dr. Who with my equally nerdy, yet beautiful, wife any week they are one. Fortunately, they are never "in season" at the same time! I also watch "The Office" online each week there is a new release. Taking care of "One Dad's Life" and the associated social media pretty much kills any time I previously may have used for TV.

Four things I have for breakfast: bagels, cinnamon rolls at Bread Co., any fruit, and Diet Dr. Pepper.  A certain legendary St. Louis blogger recently called me "hardcore" when I showed up for a morning meeting with this last item. I couldn't have been more proud.

Four animals I like best: cats, dogs (the two standards, I'm guessing), sea lions, the Blue Whale - who everyone overlooks despite it's enormous size!

Four beaches I've been to: St. Augustine, FL (the most memorable!), Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Key West.

Four people I'm tagging: Andrea, Kathy G, MP, and Rightmyer Rants.  These are all regular readers I don't think I've tagged before.  I consider memes kind of like a junk mail chain letter that's actually fun, so if you don't want to keep it going, I certainly won't be offended! No pressure.

Have a great day, everyone!

Friday Photos - The St. Louis Zoo

Today's "Friday Photos" post features six (count 'em!) photos from the incredible St. Louis Zoo.   We visited there just a couple of weekends ago, and of course I spent the day taking hundreds of pictures.  Here's a sampling:

You're Looking at the Next Bigfoot "Expert!"

OK, so maybe the title of the post is pushing things a little.  I'm not actually quite sure what kind of qualifications or certifications might be required before I can hang out my shingle.

However, I believe that I have one qualification that many other experts recently in the news apparently don't have:

I can actually identify a rubber gorilla suit without DNA testing!

I know that you are amazed.  So far, everyone I've told this to was amazed.  Of course, so far I have just mentioned this to my cat and it was mainly so she would stop bugging me for food.  She'd been fed, already...I wasn't torturing her or anything! Anyway, I'm assuming she was amazed, because she stopped whining for food immediately.  She was probably thinking of how she could get one of those diamond crusted "princess" collars once the money started rolling in from my new "Bigfoot Expert" career.

You are probably wondering how I know that I could do a better job distinguishing between a rubber suit and an actual fictional forest dweller than the recently news-worthy knuckleheads "Bigfoot Experts" who fell for the ol' rubber gorilla suit trick.

I'll tell you.

This past weekend, I spent some time at Johnnie Brocks Dungeon which happens to be full of all kinds of rubber masks, suits, and other costumes.  Many of them are animal costumes.  Some of these are gorilla suits.

Not once did I run into one of these suits and start screaming like my 6-year old when her sister is bugging her - thinking the rubber suit was a real creature.  Not once.  Well, there was a brief moment with a rubber bat, but it passed quickly. Besides, bats are like rodents with wings.  Most people with a pulse would scream if they were suddenly confronted with a winged rodent.

Still, I'm puzzled by one thing in this week's news.  If you assume that no one was knowingly pulling a fraud, then the "hunters" are complete idiots for mistaking a rubber gorilla suit stuffed full of animal entrails as a fictional woodland creature.  No wonder they are in hiding and can't be found.  If they were pulling a fraud, then they were pretty gutsy stuffing a Halloween costume full of entrails and actually selling it to a "Bigfoot Expert."  Amazing.

Now, getting back to the Bigfoot expert.  Let's assume that he couldn't tell it was real or not seeing it was frozen in a giant block of ice...for preservation, you know.  He was convinced enough that he paid for this thing.  Also amazing.  My problem with his end of the deal is that after spending a lifetime looking for a "real" Bigfoot creature, you'd think he'd have run into any number of hoaxes in the past.

You'd think he'd take one look at this big "creature" embedded in the ice and even if he thought the creature was real, that he'd be able to identify it as a gorilla!

So, I'm making the assumption that since all these people apparently have nothing but time on their hands to bop around the country looking for Bigfoot that there must be some decent money in this whole "Bigfoot Expert" line of work.

I think I'll head back to the costume shop today and resume my studies.

Next week on "One Dad's Life": hunting Bigfoot.

Wordless Wednesday - Mowing the Lawn in the Dark

Yeah, I mowed the lawn in the dark.  It looked good the next day, too!

Photo Credit: 6-year old Rachel...who was supposed to be in bed.  All the light you see is from the camera flash! File is directly from the camera...no editing other than the crop, scaling and watermark.  It was really really dark.

I'm Worried About the Kids - Part 3

In this edition of "I'm Worried About the Kids", I will focus on one single important fact:

My kids do not know how to sleep in their beds.

As I write this, my oldest daughter, Rebecca, is sleeping on the couch...kind of propped up on her hand. I was sitting in my office, which adjoins Rebecca's bedroom, when all of a sudden she jumped out of her bed and literally ran to the couch.  When I went upstairs a short time later, I found her propped up on the couch, sound asleep as you see below.

My youngest daughter is currently sleeping on the back porch.  Yes, you read that right...the back porch. (You may want to click on the picture at right to see more detail) I can't explain that one, either, and I live with the girl. She has created a bed on the floor of our back porch and has slept there the last three nights straight.  On school nights, even.  Aren't we the most excellent parents?  She even has the all-important CD player out there with her.  Music is critical with this one. I think she wants her own room.

So, no one is using their bedroom. Have you ever heard of such a thing?

Naturally, I blame my wife Dianne.  She almost always ends up sleeping somewhere else in the house by morning.  It must be genetic. She, however, blames me. This doesn't make any sense.  According to her, it either has something to do with me snoring (which I apparently got from my Dad...I would sometimes be woken up as a child from his snoring) or the fact the she might move and in so doing, freak me out so much that I sit bolt upright in bed muttering incomprehensible things.  Apparently, I'm horrified at being disturbed. Yet, I manage to stay in my own bed.  You don't see me sleeping on top of the dining room table just because Dianne startled me in the middle of the night, do you? Clearly, I'm the normal one, unlike the rest of my family. They are nuts.  Clearly.

Initially, and by initially I mean the period of all of time up until now, I didn't really care where they slept...as long as they actually slept and they didn't bother me. But then I started thinking of the implications.  My oldest daughter will be in college in 6 years.  That's not too far off.

What if she can't sleep in her bed in college?  College kids do mean things involving shaving cream, sharpies, and buckets of warm water to anyone caught sleeping in a common area.  Poor Rebecca.  She's doomed! I feel for the kid, but as she's nearly a teenager, I'm not sure we'll be able to change this habit. Maybe we should just get her used to the eventual abuse by drawing on her face while she sleeps right now! Isn't our job as parents to prepare our kids for living on their own? Shouldn't we prepare them for the future? Surely, we are excellent parents, right?

Rachel is all our own fault. Even as a baby, she didn't want to sleep in her crib.  She would be sleeping peacefully until she realized she was in the crib and then she'd stay awake unhappily the rest of the night.  So we let her sleep on the living room floor.  That's right, we let an infant who could not even walk sleep on the living room floor.  Again, aren't we the most excellent parents ever? Yes, we are!

So, right now (I write these posts the night before they are published), with the couch and the porch taken, I'm wondering where Dianne will show up in the morning.  I'm putting my bet on the top bunk in the kids room. 

It's currently vacant.

Dear Internet People, I May Need Your Help!

Last Wednesday's post about "Purging", where I indicated that I have trouble getting rid of certain objects, has taught me a couple of things.

1. The Internet denizens in general, led by my mom (I had no idea she had such influence!) is now convinced that I cannot get rid of anything and that some day I will need to be shoveled out of my home by firemen in oxygen masks who will later mention on the news that they have never seen anything like this, and isn't it odd that I had so many cats.
2. The Internet loves to help!

Point number two is the important one here, if you are taking any kind of notes, or trying to diagram the super long run-on sentence in point number one.  Forget point number one, it won't be on the test.  It's just there as filler to make point number two look like it belongs to an important list.

Here's what I'm concerned about:

I can't seem to keep the little leather laces tied on my fake moccasin slippers. Do I need to repeat Kindergarten?

At least that is how I presented the problem on Twitter last night.  I tend to type goofy things like that on Twitter when I should be writing for "One Dad's Life."  The problem is, the statement is true!  I am presently (as I write this on Sunday night) wearing the fake moccasin slippers and they are untied.   I'm not so much worried about the repeating Kindergarten part.  I know it will never happen because school budgets are tight and they would have to make special furniture for me.  Those little chairs are just so precious, though!

What worries me is that I can't keep the slippers tied.  I used to know how to do this, too.  The entire first year I owned the slippers, they weren't untied even once.  But even this is just a symptom of what really worries me.  There's more.

On more than one occasion, I have somehow messed up the programming on my VCR (yes, I still have a VCR...and get this, my TV even has a picture TUBE! I'm all retro when it comes to TV.) I have mocked people for less!

Could these things be symptoms of early onset senility?  Is it time for me to have my kids start helping me out with these simple tasks?

Help me out here, people of The Internet!  I know you want to!  Oh, and don't be alarmed if I don't remember your name...I think my short term to long term memory transfer mechanism is screwed up by the whole early onset senility thing, too.  As evidence, I totally can't remember a photo shoot my wife did at the Missouri Botanical Gardens with the kids.  When I see the pictures, I remember all about it, but if she asks me to transfer the pictures from my computer to hers, I have no idea what she's talking about.

Oh, and I can't keep my slippers tied.  I should tell you about that sometime.