Young capitalist of America

This morning, Laura came and got in bed with me. After awhile, she asked if we could play "oil explorer." I've never thought of fossil fuels being kid-friendly.

Gerbil resources

This afternoon, Laura was trying to pack down all the bedding the gerbils have carried to the top level of their cage. I told her not to bother because they'd just unpack it again, thus making it "a waste of gerbil resources."
Do gerbils even consider their resources? All ours seem to do is move bedding around their cage. When they tire of that, they just fling it out the sides of the cage.
Flower did pause long enough this afternoon for Laura to take this photo of her, though. I took a couple of other photos of them, but I decided the little bars make them look too much like rodent convicts.

Window treatment MacGyver

Months ago, I made valances for the kitchen windows. But this one never got hung because I never could find a tension rod that would work. Last night, I finally put it up using curling ribbon and nails (five, to be exact). A strange combination, but so far, it's stayed up.
And yes, for anyone who's wondering, those tin signs above the window feature cows advertising cheese.

Funny cat story of the day

At least Sebastian isn't like this.

A good time waster

Yesterday Kevin called me from work, and during our conversation I started playing Pyramids on Yahoo. I ended up with a score of 229,820, which put me in the top 20 of everyone who plays that blasted game (thousands and thousands of people).
At least it's more fun than doing laundry and grocery shopping.

Stepping back in time

Remember A Very Young Rider, which we constantly checked out of the library years ago? Tonight I came across this article from the Chronicle of the Horse from last year that's an update on what Vivi Malloy is doing now.
For the benefit of those who didn't grow up in our house, it's a nonfiction book from the mid-1970s -- the people wear bellbottoms and everything -- about a girl and her pony and their year on the top-class East Coast horse show circuit.
Other things I discovered tonight (not all in that article):
Her name is spelled Vivien. Somehow I always thought it was Vivian.
Her great-grandfather was one of the founders of Bergdorf Goodman.
Her parents now breed racehorses.
Her sister is married to German show jumper Hans Winkler.

Anonymity 'r' us

Someone who lives in our house (not Laura or I) complained that only registered users could post comments on our blog. So now anyone can. Of course, it'll be pretty easy for me to figure out which ones are his ...

Aspen logs, anyone?

A windstorm tonight claimed our remaining aspen tree. (There were two when we moved in last year, but one of them already was dead and was cut down a few weeks ago.) Not that they provided much shade, but the little woodland ecosystem in the northwest corner of the backyard probably won't be able to take the sun beating down on it.

Identifying butterflies

Tonight when we were leaving for dinner, we saw a butterfly in our front yard. From the research we did when we got home, I think it's a Western tiger swallowtail. The one we saw was more yellow than this, but it did land on the tree in our yard for a few seconds.

Another reason to visit the National Gallery

There's a Henri Rousseau exhibit there now, too. It includes Two Monkeys in the Jungle, as well as some more of his interesting paintings. I've always been intrigued by his choice of colors and tones. If you squint a little, it looks like a real jungle. (This one looks like the jungle of bamboo in Mom and Dad's backyard, but I haven't heard about any monkey sightings there -- yet.)

Great photo

I'm not a huge soccer fan, and I didn't really care whether Italy or France won the World Cup. But since I have been to Rome -- and have a poster-size photo of the Trevi Fountain I took there on our living room wall -- I really liked this Associated Press photo.
I do remember being in Rome and wondering if there were riots going on, only to find out that there was a soccer match going on at the Olympic Stadium and that people really, really, really cared about it. (That was 1993, not a World Cup year.) So I can't even imagine how rowdy it was there this past Sunday. At least the people in this photo are halfway clothed.

A fair day in Fairplay

I had a grand plan for us to go to Fairplay, which is a couple of hours southwest of Denver, yesterday. The plan was on track, despite rain and cooler-than-normal temperatures (illustrated by this photo taken from the car), until we got there and discovered a biker rally was under way. And a women's biker rally at that.










We did go to lunch at the Front Street Cafe -- it was recommended by Sunset magazine and had great chicken fingers, which Laura didn't like -- and visited the South Park City Museum, which is made up of almost 40 pioneer buildings, some of which are in their original locations.
The town got its name during the gold rush, when miners arrived to find all the mining claims in nearby areas were taken. They started their own town, where everyone would have a fair chance at a claim.
Among the museum sights were a primitive hat rack of sorts in the ranger station and a very interesting sign in the train depot. Laura says I have to mention the rocks that were painted with numbers corresponding to the building descriptions, although I don't have any photos of them.

One of the funniest moments of the day was Laura's demand that we play hide-and-seek -- in the car -- and the variations she thought of when Kevin and I grew tired of counting to 10 (and then five and then two). Options for hiding were extremely limited. In fact, this was the only one.

Big George at the National Gallery

First, some background: Laura likes museums, or at least the concept of them. We got You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum -- which is part of Laura's Book Nook on this page -- for her in preparation for our trip to New York in February. Our visit there had its ups and downs, but we were asking a lot of a 4-year-old.
She liked that book so much that I then got her You Can't Take a Balloon into the National Gallery. So now she asks to visit the National Gallery.

For a variety of reasons, she's also developed quite a fascination with Venice. She knows I've been there, and we've read several books about it (including Papa Piccolo, also part of the Book Nook, and Gaspard in Venice, which involves fun with kayaks). Recently, we checked Zoe Sophia's Scrapbook out of the library, and now there's a lot of discussion of the book that has my name and about going to Venice and having a scrapbook. (Zoe Sophia also has a dachsund named Mickey, which is a plus as well.)

So tonight I found myself fantasizing about a trip to Washington, D.C., to go to the National Gallery for "Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting," which is there until Sept. 17. (There's lots of cool stuff about it at
www.nga.gov/exhibitions/ renaissanceinfo.shtm.) I'm sure Laura would lose interest in it pretty quickly, but at the very least, I could tell her about Giorgione being known as Big George. (I guess I should do some research about whether there's also a Little George, as she's bound to ask.)
Perhaps this painting by Big George -- Portrait of a Woman, commonly known as Laura -- would hold her interest a little longer.

My latest journalistic endeavor,

other than headlines that appear in the paper every day, is an interview with Gina Acosta, a copy editor at the Washington Post who just won a Nieman Fellowship. It's the lead item at www.copydesk.org.

Adventures in cathood

Sebastian is -- and I mean this in the most loving, owned-him-for-10-years and lived-in-four-states-with-him way possible -- a horrendously freakish cat.
This morning, he's been rolling around in the muddy, bare patches in the backyard lawn. And his habit of meowing incessantly has become quite irksome.
I was thinking about sending the Little Man Who Lives in the Vents after him, but I figure having a 14-pound cat living in the vents would be even worse.

Another wonder of the Internet

I can't always find what I'm looking for online, but somehow I always manage to find things I wasn't looking for.
Tonight, for example, I came across this (http://www.moabhalfmarathon.org/halfm/results/05_5m_age.htm). It's the results of a road race Amanda and some of her friends went to Moab, Utah, for last March, before Amanda left on her mission and still lived with us.
I'm sure we talked all about it at the time, but Amanda finished 30th in the female 20-24 age group. Her friend Mellissa, whose boingy hair Laura adores, finished 46th in the 25-29 group.

How not to negotiate with your mother

Laura wanted a cupcake for breakfast this morning. When I told her no, she said, "If you let me have a cupcake, I'll let you read me a story."

What do this bear and Jacob's shoe have in common?

It's really not a trick question.
Daniel, Heather, DJ and Jacob came to visit on Friday and left this morning. On Saturday, we all went to the zoo. No children were ever in extreme danger of being eaten by wild animals, but Jacob's shoe did fall into the trench that divides visitors from the grizzly bears. So, the shoe and this bear shared a habitat for a short while, until Daniel was able to track down a zoo employee to retrieve said shoe. (It was the first time he'd worn the shoes, which added to the urgency of getting it back. The guy who pulled it out said people drop things down there all the time, although cameras are more common victims.)

Other excitement included ice cream eating -- Jacob may have eaten more than the rest of us combined, which came as a shock because that's usually Laura's realm -- and lorikeet feeding.




Because we were there late in the day, most of the lorikeets had overeaten and weren't willing to get anywhere near us. (Daniel, who's not visible in the photo, had to lift DJ over his head to the level of lorikeets that were willing to consume the nectar.)


Soon after Daniel and Co. left this morning, Laura aided the escape of the gerbil Flower -- whose cage had been relocated during DJ and Jacob's visit -- and I had to chase her down. That's not an experience I have a desire to repeat anytime soon.

Laughing while crying

John Accola, one of our reporters at work, died unexpectedly last Sunday. Friday night, I went to his funeral. Rob, our business editor, shared this story about John that made everyone laugh. (It's also included in Rob's column in yesterday's paper.)
Rob and John were at a Christmas party a couple of years ago, and they saw Colorado Gov. Bill Owens there. They decided to go over to chat.
John started the exchange by saying, "Bill, you look fantastic. Have you had work done?"
The governor recovered from the shock quickly enough that he stayed and chatted for 20 minutes.