Photo Hunters - Beautiful

I've fallen off the blogging wagon!! Work travel and family vacation (with extremely limited Internet access) have prevented any blogging lately... Here are some of my favorite photos of our beautiful family from vacation so far. I'll be back home on Sunday.

WW - Fish Looking at You

Since I got such a great response from my last set of colorful sea life, here are some more gems from our visit to Atlantis Marine World. These are all fish "looking at you".

Ruby Tuesday - The Red Room an the Wynn Hotel

I've been so busy that I've barely had time to breathe, let alone sleep. But I do have a Ruby Tuesday for today! This is the Red Room at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas.  Some high stakes play take place here.

Photo Hunters - Colorful

Here are some colorful creatures that I photographed at Atlantis Marine World this year.





Powder blue tang fish.





Mantis shrimp. This guy kept hiding from me, but he was every color of the rainbow.





Anemone.



These were taken with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, using a 50mm f1.8 lens.

The Naked Nirvana Baby Is Now 17

Image MTV.

Do you remember when Nirvana released the Nevermind album?  Well the baby on the cover art, Spencer Eldon, turned 17 on July 9th. Seventeen!!  He was interviewed by NPR recently and I love this quote:

Life in general isn't quite as "cool" as it was when he jumped naked in the pool in the early '90s, though, he says. These days, his peers are too stuck on the Internet and video games. Ironically, he yearns for the era that gave Kurt Cobain, the lead singer for Nirvana, so much angst.

These days, Elden says, his peers concentrate on "playing Rock Band on Xbox, like, that's not a real band! That's the difference between the '90s and kids nowadays; kids in the '90s would actually go out and make a [real] band!"

My birthday is within two months of Kurt Cobain's, so we were 24 when the Nevermind album was released.  Needless to say, that makes me "wicked" old.  I never much got into the music of Nirvana, although I always loved this album cover.  Here is Spencer recreating the cover when he was 10, as well as a recent shot of him.


Image Rolling Stones


Image Chana Joffe-Walt/NPR.

Thursday Thirteen - Ways My Kids Differ

Sure, my kids have lots in common, in their features, build, and intellect.  But they are also different in remarkable ways.

1. Dova eats fruit, Adam doesn't.  Adam absolutely refuses to go near fruit.  At first I thought it was my fault, but when Dova came along loving just about every fruit imaginable, I realized it was a kid problem not a parenting one.
2. Dova loves all sorts of food, Adam has an extremely limited palate.  Adam's diet can be summed up with chicken nuggets, pizza, ramen noodles and Joe's O's.  Joe's O's is Trader Joe's brand of Cheerios, which is the only brand that he will eat, not even real Cheerios will do.  He eats them dry with his hands like he has since he was six months old and goes through two boxes a week.  Of course, Dova doesn't like them at all.  And yes, he's eating some in the picture above. 
   
3. Adam is extremely mechanical, Dova isn't.  I don't think this is a gender issue, as I am quite mechanical (enough to have a two mechanical engineering degrees).  When people ask me why I think Dova isn't mechanical, I just tell them how she couldn't open doors when she was two.  She would just jiggle jiggle jiggle the knob, but never understand that you need to twist, hold and pull.  She still can't put a cap on a bottle straight.
4. Dova loves to perform, Adam is too shy.  Both kids are shy around strangers, but when it comes to being the center of attention, Dova will stand up straight, smile, and lap it all in.  Adam tries his hardest to avoid attention.  He once won a ride on the Zamboni after a Triple A hockey game and just couldn't get on because he was too uncomfortable.
5. Dova isn't afraid of anything.  She is quite unfazed by scary movies and rides, where Adam easily gets spooked.
6. Adam is extremely sweet, Dova not so much so.  Sometimes I catch her saying mean things like, "Grandma, you're an old lady!"  Yikes, where did this monster come from?
7. Dova is cranky when she wakes up, Adam is fine.  Let's just say that Dova takes after Dad, and Adam after me.
8. Dova can't wait to grow up and Adam wants to stay a kid forever.  Dova is always talking about being a teenager and having boyfriends (yikes!) and even becoming a mom, where Adam just wants to stay young and carefree and play video games.
9. Dova is an old soul and Adam is a young soul.  You can tell that Dova has been here before and knows much more than her four short years.  Adam is much more naive and sometimes lacks empathy for others.
10. Adam is 100% boy and Dova is 100% girl.  Thankfully, they are secure in their own sex but manage to play together quite well.  Adam will join Dova for tea parties and Dova will crash cars with Adam.
    
11. Adam loves to watch sports and Dova couldn't be bothered.  Adam was fascinated by his first baseball game and Dova was lollygagging everywhere.  She's been lollygagging for years at all of Adam's soccer and hockey games as well.  This sounds like a stereotype, but in terms of Doug and myself, I'm the sports fan. I can't even get him to watch the Olympics with me!
12. Adam has lots of friends and Dova has a select few.  Adam makes friends easily and likes to play with just about anyone, where Dova can be quite selective, to the point of being elitist.  She went to birthday party of a girl she didn't really like, and only perked up when she saw that her best friend was also there.  I can only imagine what junior high will be like for her.
13. OK, I admit that I've run out of differences.  They are both fun, loving children who exhibit many traits of their parents.  We are so grateful that they love each other unconditionally despite their differences.
    

WW - Beach Fun

Dova dances in the water. She looks like she's doing gymnastics.
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Building sand castles.


Watching the waves roll in.


Adam buries his feet in the sand and then jumps out.

PageOnce, The Serious Aggregator

You know how most social networking sites are completely fluff, where you can collect thousands of virtual friends, pretend to hob nob with celebrities, etc? There is one social networking site that is different from the rest, that comes across as a serious networking site, where you would only add your real friends. And that is LinkedIn. It is so serious, I don't even link to it from my blog because I use my real name.

The same goes for web aggregators. There's iGoogle, MSN, My Yahoo! and Netvibes, which attempt to aggregate everything that matter to you on the web.  But that falls flat because the big three (Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo) won't support the each other's email.  And Netvibes is buggy and often slow.  But now there is PageOnce.  PageOnce is the serious net aggregator, much like LinkedIn is the serious social networking site.  Not only do they seamless integrate all your email, and fluffy and serious social networking sites (including LinkedIn), they also aggregate all your serious internet dealings, like utilities, credit cards and banks.  Plus they have a great free iPhone app.  It is easier for me to check my cell minutes on PageOnce's iOnce app than on the AT&T website.

So check out PageOnce, the serious net aggregator.


Click the screenshot to see it large.

Ruby Tuesday - Mission Candles

I don't have a Tuesday Toot or a Silly Monkey Story for this week, so I thought I'd put my first entry in for Ruby Tuesday. Why are there so many Tuesday memes? This photograph was taken at Mission Capistrano in California.

Not Really an Old Lady After All

Before the summer whittles away to nothing, I thought I'd put up my new "old lady" swimsuit from Lands' End.  I was inspired by Mommy's Martini and others that sported new suits this year. What, my picture is too small?  So sorry, gotta slim down somehow. Plus, I swore I would never wear a swimsuit on my blog!

At the beginning of the summer, I thought I lost my old swimsuit, so I had an excuse to buy a new one (the old one showed up a few weeks later).  Being able to go to Sears to try them on was a lot better than guessing from the catalog.  I would never have thought to get a halter top!  The only bottom they had in stock was the old lady skirted one, so I bought it because I've been checking the 41-50 age box way too many times lately. I much prefer the 35-44 range.  It's bad enough being 41, but having to be in the same box with 50-year-olds? *Sigh* No offense, of course.

My first test run with the suit was at the Hilton Garden Inn in greater Toronto.  I took it down the water slide at least 20 times.  All the extra material felt like I still had my clothes on.  It was not very conducive for swimming laps either.

The next time, I wore it to the beach with Dova.  In fact, she took that picture of me before we left.  Doug and Adam had already left for a car show with my point-and-shoot camera, so I handed Dova my five pound DSLR and hoped for the best.  I think she did an excellent job capturing me (when you purposely tilt the camera, it becomes artistic right?)!  At the beach, I taught Dova how to use a boogie board and took on a few waves myself.  Again, the suit was like wearing an albatross around my hips.  And there was so much wet material, it didn't even dry on the hour and a half car ride home.

Finally I wore it to a family gathering at the beach where we just sat around and didn't go in the water.  The skirt?  Was perfect.

Apparently, I'm not really an old lady going down water slides and boogie boarding, so if I'm apt to actually go in the water, I gotta go with the old suit.  But, if I'm going to sit around and act like an old lady?  The skirt, it is.

Photo Hunters - Dark

There's nothing dark about Las Vegas at night, but I took this shot of the massive dark sky just after dusk. You can even see two airplanes flying by.

The Olympics, Geography, and the Seven-Year-Old

Photo Doug Mills/The New York Times

Adam and I watched part of the spectacular opening ceremonies for the Olympics on the super lucky day of 08.08.08. He was fascinated by all the Chinese drummers, many of them who looked just like him.  Just when I thought I was having an intelligent, educational conversation with him...

Mom:  Athletes from every country in the world come to the Olympics (OK, not true, but close enough).
Adam:  Even from Egypt?
Mom:  Yup.
Adam:  Australia?
Mom:  Yup.
Adam:  Turkey?
Mom:  Yup.
Adam:  The South Pole?
Mom:  No, no one lives at the South Pole.
Adam:  The North Pole?
Mom:  No one lives at the North Pole either.
Adam:  Santa does!
Mom:  Oh yes, you're right.

Foiled by the Santa police!

Angela Needs to Get Away from Her Kids

I was looking into the meme where you Google your name with the word "needs", as in "Angela needs", and I came across this hysterical video. Luckily, I haven't totally flipped out at work and I hope Doug won't resort to this behavior when he returns to the workforce.

I will be at BlogHer Boston!

I missed the big shindig at BlogHer in San Francisco this summer, but really I'm too anti-social to be able to enjoy such an event. I just viewed the awesome photos from the Alltop/Kirtsy party at Guy Kawasaki's house, saw the bathroom at the People's Party, listened to the interviews at 5 Minutes for Mom and read the keynote speaker posts, all from the safety of my computer.  I'm totally not cool enough party like that.

But since I have no previous engagements on October 11, and BlogHer Boston '08 will be less than 30 miles from my house and costs only $100, I really don't have an excuse to avoid it.  I even threw my hat for a panelist spot.  Eek!  Forgot I was INTJ for a second.

So if I survive this, and Blogher '09 is somewhere within driving distance next year, I may just attend next year. Please help my cause by voting for NYC in their poll:


Here are the results so far:

Polls Powered By MicroPoll

WW - Sparklers

I totally failed to capture any decent fireworks photographs this year (mosquitoes, couldn't see the manual focus ring, etc.), but I did get these shots of Adam working the sparklers. I purchased them at Walmart in New Hampshire on a whim, "just because I could". The whole week before the Fourth of July, the traffic sign on Rt.3 from New Hampshire into Massachusetts read "Warning! Fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts". But of course not in "Live Free and Die" New Hampshire. Afterward, I learned from Prevent Blindness America, that sparklers are the second leading cause of firework injuries that require a trip to the emergency room, with most sparkler injuries seen on preschool-age children.  Um, thankfully Adam is wearing glasses, and that's the last box of sparklers that we'll buy. You can see from the trails that the sparks travel quite far.  So much for being wordless this week!

Tuesday Toot - Rock Climbing

This year, Adam nearly made it to the top of the rock climbing wall at Atlantis Marine World. Last year, he made it about half way up.


Dova made a valiant attempt in her first try ever, but this is as far as she got. You'd think with that stance and determination she'd climb right up, but I think the harness weighed her down.  She was actually less than the 45 pounds minimum weight, but was heavy enough to descend while testing it out.  On the playgrounds, she loves to climb everything, so she'll be climbing this wall soon enough.


Last but not least, here's Doug near the top. I, of course, am too chicken to try climbing the wall and prefer to stay behind the camera.

Photo Hunters - Clouds

This cloud looks like New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain. This landmark has since fallen in 2003, but here's a composite picture of it before and after. All the state road signs have his profile on them as well as the New Hampshire quarter and it's a shame that the younger generation will never get to see him in person. As Quentin mentioned in the photo comment, maybe he has risen and become a ghost in the clouds.

Summer Photo Contests

Dova absolutely loves the beach, and I was glad to capture her jumping in the waves. She is always so carefree and enjoys life to the fullest.

This photo is my entry for not one, but two photo contests about summer. Check out them out at 5 Minutes for Mom and Write from Karen.