Blue Skies

BLUFFING: Today dawned with beautiful blue skies and we were all itching to get out in it. We decided to head west a mile or so, to Magnolia Bluff, and bike/jog along the sidewalk there.

As we rode/ran, I suggested to CJ to try to pick out as many different kinds of vessels as he could on the Sound. We saw sailboats, a barge, a tug boat, ferries, and container ships - a pretty good assortment.

At one point we stopped to allow Annabelle to catch up and CJ cracked me up by reading this manhole cover as "Dr. Ain." (And yes, he knew it was supposed to say "drain," he was just having some fun.)
There are several spots along the bluff with rolling swaths of grass and park benches. One urban oasis had thousands of wildflowers. Annabelle was thrilled by the fact that most of them were some shade of pink.

As we were in the homestrech, I noticed a container ship out on the sound, motoring its way to the port. I suggested CJ try to race it to the parking lot. We won. :) (I'm no gazelle, but I'm glad to know that at my advanced age, I'm still faster than a heavily loaded container ship.)
And here, for your viewing pleasure, is Kirby looking ridiculous in her pink racing harness. Guess whose idea/insistence it was to buy a pink one?

MONSTER MATINEE: At lunchtime I turned on the TV in hopes of finding something "On Demand" that was educational and entertaining for the kids to watch.

Um, we wound up watching a "Godzilla" cartoon.

Oh how I loved watching "Godzilla" movies when I was a kid - every Saturday on KATU's "Monster Matinee."

This 2010 version was nothing like those. First of all, Godzilla didn't look all that much like a dinosaur, which is a real problem. And I won't even waste your time commenting on the cast of characters and the 'plot.'

The kids were interested in it for all of two minutes.

PENCIL PUSHER: This afternoon Neighbor Bob caught Christian in the alley and gave him this small black roll of fabric. Christian brought it in the house, unfurled it and whoa! It was about a million (give or take) pencils of all kids of designs/colors.

Apparently it was, once upon a time, some pencil salesman's kit, which he would unfurl and impress clients with, showing the vast array of different types of pencils they could have imprinted with their names.

It will be a long, long time before the MPA student body has to go scrounging around for a pencil!

THE HEAT IS ON: It's supposed to get to the mid 90s later this week. We didn't wait for the scorching temperatures to drag the Slip-n-Slide out for its inaugural run this summer. CJ was reminded on his first trip down the plastic alley that he has a scrape on his knee. Ouch!

Other than that, it was all good times!

ASTRAL ART: Our friends at NASA have announced the winners of the 2010 Life and Work on the Moon Art and Design Contest. The contest included everything from lunar and Martian architecture to original music to poetry short stories, paintings, freehand drawings, and more. Here's a clip of the overall winner's work. It's an animation called "Moon Shot" by Dalton Mills, a high school student in Wisconsin. Impressive!

TIED UP IN KNOTTS: I did something tonight we rarely do. I put the kids to bed with a movie. My rationale was that we have a stack of DVDs that are due back to the library that I've already renewed a couple of times. It's now or never time.

So what's their bedtime story? "The Incredible Mr. Limpett" (1964) starring Don Knotts as a wimpy guy (duh) that can't get into the military to help WWII, so in an incredible turn of events, he turns into a fish. It's really, really weird and for whatever reason, I recall really liking it when I was a kid.

CeeJ and Bee are well over an hour into it as I type and they are very into it. In fact, CJ has bolted his bed a few times because the suspense has been too much for him (including one point where he was afraid Mr. Limpet was going to be a fish out of water). We'll see if the movie is compelling enough to keep 'em awake until the very end. (BTW, apparently there is a new version of the movie in the works. ...)