Travel Pete's Journal: Basements, Kids & Mental Health

Aarrgggh! Ye Matey!

Apparently Long John Silver's restaurant has come to Denver. I didn't eat there, but I did enjoy the ambiance for a few minutes...

BilFish, Ye Olde Pyrate Ye! Ye even has an earring? Aargghhh!

Child-like update

With Maxwell William Fisher, everything was "The first time we've ever seen our kid do this or that or the other..."

With Liam Robert Fisher everything is "This is the last time we'll ever see our child do this or that or the other..."

Right now? It's the last time we'll ever get to hold his hands and help him stumble walk across the carpet. Yup. Liam sort of fell into standing, if you will, when he found he needed two hands to hold something and had to stand to do it.

A friend posits that some paleo-historians believe tools came before walking, and in fact that same need to use 2 hands at once is why we became homo erectus in the first place.

Fascinating, as my wife would say.

Anyway, he started solidly standing without supports exactly a week ago and we expect he'll be walking in another week or two. And this morning I finally got a picture of him standing.

I'll bet you'd like to see it, huh?

Oh, okay, 1 picture of him...

To grab a refreshing cold can to hold against his gums and budding teeth, Liam needs both hands. To use both hands he needs to stand.

Violá! He stands.

In a week or two he'll need to walk and that'll be that for that.

Bad Dad, Good Dad, Bad-no-Good Dad

So if I told you I took a 2 1/2 hour lunch with my kids at a fast-food place this week would you hold it against me?

Yep, got the kids home all week. Lately, I've had a week every month with no daycare, which means it's up to me to amuse the kiddos even more than normal.

So, Wednesday was what I like to call "2.5 hour lunch day." Even worse? It was a Christian-oriented fast-food place. Chick-Fil-A.

Why 2.5 hours? Well, travel time... plus they have a play area for the kids. And weird buttons that emit animal sounds and, for one button, strange religious platitudes as the kids scramble about.

"If you have your faith, you'll never walk alone."

A little creepy-sounding in general, especially coming out of hidden speakers indoctrinating 3-year-olds who push buttons expecting animal noises.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, maybe taking the kids to McDonald's wouldn't be so bad.

To make up for it, we spent 2 1/2 hours at the Denver Museum of Science & Nature Thursday with the kids' cousins Isabelle & Dylan. That was better. More fun, more educational, more family-oriented, slightly less commercial.

THIS morning I finally broke down and thought I'd take the boys to McD's for the first time in their lives. I had Fuzzy's car today to fix a flat tire, so we had to walk around for a while as that happened. Figured McD's would be fun.

Nope. The Golden McD's doesn't have a play area. So, the kids were saved as I ate a small breakfast and we walked on to a sports park behind, as it happened, Wendy's. Specifically a rollerblade hockey cement outdoor park.

Luckily I had a couple of small bouncy balls for the kids to play with for a while.

So, McDisaster averted for now. Except for me, the McDigestion is working its magic on me. Once every 2 years is about as often as I need to clean the innards with McD's famous laxative effect.

See ya.

2nd Kid Syndrome

No, I'm not talking about the syndrome of accidentally ending up with a 2nd kid ;-)

I was thinking about all the soft, safe, expensive kids' rubber teething toys Max had to play with.

Then I was thinking about the rusty steel shoe horn Liam was chewing on the other morning...

DOH!

Computers are SOOOOO grrr-EAT!

I started with a simple task. At the behest of Grampa Bob and Grandma Peggy, send a few pix files of the kids so they can print them out and scrapbook with them and whatnot.

Easy as pie.

Then I sat down at the computer. 4 weeks later I'm putting the disks in the mail and wondering who I should hate the most for this miserable experience.

Yep. 4 weeks. First it was the optical drive needed to burn the CDs or DVDs. Dead as yesterday's flowers in Colorado's heat wave of 2005.

A week of futzing later I spend a couple hours on the phone with Apple support who runs through everything I already tried. Nothing. So, time to take it in to the Apple Store.

Even worse, suddenly iPhoto stopped importing new photos from our digital camera and is running slow before crashing every 15 minutes. Great. So now I can't even try emailing photos!

Apple store day! 3 hours of tech support later and the pronounce my poor little iMac as DOA.

Okay, we'll need to keep it for a bit.... well, a week actually as we have to order the drive.

DOH!

A week later... no call. I call them. Sure, drive is in, just need to get it up on the blocks and kick the tires. Two days later... no call. I call them. Yep, people ahead of you, this $3,000 toy of yours is gathering dust.

Frustrated conversation mumble mumble

Oh, hey! It's done! Just 11 days later!

I mean, we use this computer for everything. Calendar, address book, email, internet, banking, instant messaging, photography, website work, well, everything! Almost 2 weeks without drove me nearly mad.

Anyway, get it home, drive seems to work fine, time to get pix ready.

Ooops, they didn't fix iPhoto, it's still crashing and not importing.

Luckily, tech friend Niles suggested the common and easy fix of deleting all our iPhoto preferences. Viola! It works like new again.

NOW it's time to pick a few photos out, put them in little virtual albums, and copy them to a CD.

Burn.

Yea! It works. Oh, wait, it burned all the associated files that iPhoto creates for every dang picture, so I only get half the info I want on there, and then it's all organized in so many hierarchical chains down to the day the photo was taken that my Dad will never figure it out.

Back to the drawing board. I'll just dump to a DVD. Nope, I won't. That's not possible, you have to send it to iDVD. Fine, send.

Nope, not so fast!

iDVD opens with an old movie in there and dumps everything in. Okay, fine, I make a new iDVD with all the bells and whistles, slideshows, new menus, areas for videos, all that stuff.

Burn....

Nope, not fast at all. It took something like 8 hours to burn the DVD, and when I woke up this morning, it said burn incomplete.

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

What was missing? The CD-ROM files of all the images so Dad & Peggy could use them to print out pictures. DOH!

Okay, back to CDs... This time I go back into iPhoto, export all the photos to new folders on the desktop, then transfer them to a CD (well, 2 CDs) and FINALLY I've got something to send the Grandparental units.

Phew. Time for a beer. Thank god for computers.