Reading time

Dena and I have swapped around the bed time routine and I am now enjoy reading to Fiona her favourite books- "The wheels on the bus" and "Baby Beluga"

Taking after her Grandma

Looks like Fiona will take after her Grandma and be someone who just loves wearing hats. This little hat is one that Dena got her and she even wears it around the house.

Hat

The man in the mall

Lego sets were the predominant gift that Alexander received from this friends and family so Dena and I decided not ot get his Lego gift from us until his actual birthday so that there we weren't repeating what he already received.

I hooked up with Dena and Fiona at the Lego store in Valley Faire during my lunch hour and we chose our gift for him. There is an area in the middle of the store where children can sit and build and Fiona loved this.

After we had bought the gift I headed off back to my car leaving Dena and Fiona to it. As I approached my car my mobile rang; it was Dena asking me promptly to come back. She been approached by an old man who asked if he could take pictures of Fiona and the other kids in the Lego store and that he had already taken pictures from the balcony of Fiona in the store. Now this sort of thing is not on in America and Dena told him in no uncertain terms "No". When I got back Dena told all the other mothers in the store what had happened and complained to the store manager, who said he would call security. I don't think he did.

When we got home Dena called the Lego store, the Mall security, the police department and emailed all her friends. In the evening Dena found someone who looked very like the guy on the Megan's Law website who lived a couple of blocks from Mall. On Tuesday she called the police again and the police went and questioned him but his wife vouched for his whereabouts. Was it him, was it some other creep, was it someone who had in all innocence wanted to take a picture of my daughter. I don't know and I hope I never will. Now the Lego store is tainted and Alexander's birthday is tainted with the memory of the man in the mall.

Las Vegas for Kids

Having survived last years party at Golfland (but only just). This year Dena and I decided to keep things simple for us and again hold the party somewhere other than our house. Jungle Island is a kind of Las Vegas for kids, where they play endless slot machines with tokens and if they win they get tickets which are redeemable for gifts that were probably rejects from last years Christmas crackers. I think all the kids had a great time and all we had to do was stand, watch, look disapproving at the appropriate moments and sing happy birthday.

Jungle by name Jungle by nature Alexander and his friends ran riot around the place for 2 hours accosting the parents for tokens, throwing paper cups at the girls and generally being IMHO very badly behaved. I looked hard at them and was reminded just what a jungle the playground really is at that age, this was window onto my sons daily life. As I looked on with my best disapproving look, I smiled inwardly to see that at least Alexander gave as good as he got.

Here is a link for the hard of Flash
http://picasaweb.google.com/RoderickFCrawford/Alexanders7thBirthdayParty

Apple Picking

I took 3 days off this week to try and recharge my batteries and boy do they need it. On the Tues I took the train to Sacramento and back. I spent about 3 hours looking and the very commercialized old town but learnt some stuff about the transcontinental railroad that started out there along with it's precursor the Pony Express.

But it wasn't about being in Sacramento it was about getting there and getting back on the train and watching the world go by. That was what was important.

On the train back I hacked some video off my phone together from our trip to a small apple orchard just of the ocean that we happened to see signposted. We had a great time.

As I expected the jerky, blurry video quality leaves a lot to be desired but in some senses if fits with Fiona's perspective on life at this time.

Here it is:

Apple Picking

What did you give you wife for her birthday?

Answer: An account on my home laptop!


Not quite as lacking in imagination and generosity as you might think though. We are embarking on a new patio and path around the house along with some additional savings plans. Dena's current laptop sucks- the screen is missing certain colors and the whole thing just groans along.

Why do I have a home a laptop and a work laptop- due to the fascist though perhaps correct ruling of ARM's COO. I am not allowed to have legally purchased, legally licensed software on laptop unless ARM bought it. C'est La Vie. So I bought a home laptop for blogging, photo/video editing and music back in January.

Looking at my home laptop usage compared to the insane amount of time I spend on my work laptop I concluded it is underused so I am happy for the Mrs to make use of it.

And what she also got was a license to have Fiona's photos taken by Cindy Gilmour lifestyle photographer who has been with us since we got engaged. Cindy is great but never cheap!

Phone video blogging

I decided to have a go at taking video with the phone on my camera. It looked great on the phone, but of course when I came to put it onto my PC I found that it was in some new fancy 3GPP format that none of my software could import. Luckily I discovered that QuickTime from Apple could transcode it into something that I could edit. I will post some results shortly but I doubt they will be spectacular.