Monday, October 27, 2008

Noah at Two Months





Noah's been out of the womb for two months now. So far he's seemed to enjoy himself, but boy is he hungry all the time. When he's not trying to get food he seems to be really baffled with the world. Bright lights, sounds, his own hands, etc.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Bran Van Nostalgia

Gosh. I have no Idea why Bran Van didn't become the biggest thing since Beck. Its a shame.

I guess they got fairly popular in EU, since there are a lot of home-made vids from folks in France. I like this one a lot.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

I have the power!

And my first son-justified-but-completely-self-indulgent-purchase is...
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(drumroll please)
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That's right. Castle Grayskull beeiaatches! I found it for $10 including 7(!) Masters of the Universe figures with all their swords, comics, and add-ons. Battle armor He-Man, Skeletor, Man At Arms (aka Waste of Time), Orko, and a bunch of others I can't name.

Notice the laser is still on top? Heck, the trap door even works.

Some history. Before I went to kindergarten my entire play-world involved whatever games I could think of for me, my younger sisters, and other various farm animals. Games like old tree-trunk space-ship adventure, church songs to cows, and twirl a cat in a bucket filled our afternoons. Then, within the first week of starting kindergarten, kids with a TV that got something other than PBS told the rest of us about He-Man, and his daily trials with Skeletor.

And they had lots of toys, magical toys.

I'm sure GI Joe was big at that time too. But that never really interested me. He-Man, after all, was the Master of the Universe, not some rinky-dink planet. Universe is always better in my book.

Back to the toys. Of course as a kid, especially in our little class, you had to have the coolest toys to be the coolest kid in class. Most everyone else had at least heard of He-Man and had a couple of action figures to play in the games. I remember being behind the eight-ball so bad that I brought some toy bird to play along as Sorceress. Someone told me later that Sorceress was a woman. I didn't know that.

I wanted to get Castle Grayskull so bad my Kindergarten year I cut it out of our 1983 JC Penney Christmas catalog and hung it on my wall.

Needless to say, for better or worse, no Grayskull for me that year. Or any other year. It became quickly obvious to me that I wasn't going to be the coolest kid in class. Grayskull probably wouldn't have helped anyway.

Now, 25 years later, Grayskull is mine. I mean Noah's.

...jealous?

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Pumpkin Fields

The Fields Fam went to Anamosa this past weekend to see the 20th annual Jones County Pumpkin Fest. Funny, I didn't know about the previous 19. Like most festivals, this one started with a 5k 'pumpkin run'. Which, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to run. I haven't run once since Noah's been born.
It hurt. Not a good hurt either. The race itself was beautiful. Anamosa's a hilly town, and this 5k hit some pretty decent ones. We even ran next to the Wapsipinicon River for about a mile. It looked very pretty, but (and I'm not kidding here) the Wapsi stunk like pure sewage.

My entire family, sans dad and Hilary, also ran. Mom, being a lightning bolt finished 2nd in her age category. She was very happy. Below is a picture of all the winners of the race, including mother. I didn't even place.


The largest pumpkin in Jones County this year was a respectable 1,400 lbs. Not bad. Last year Jones County had the second largest pumpkin in the world at almost 1,700 lbs. I wonder what they do with those things after the fest.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Magic Money

I was at a conference the last couple of days, so I intentionally payed no attention to the news. Nothing but karst topography and groundwater interactions. What a trip.

...and what a difference a couple of days makes. Listening to radio on the way home, I heard that we got ourselves into a predicament where we drastically need investors from other countries to 'have confidence' in our markets to keep us afloat. The radio talking heads thought that confidence was eroding.

Ya think?

Who would have confidence in a system that gives loans to people based on no money down and no proof of income? A person that believes in 'magic money', that's who. You see, with magic money, the its the money itself that makes value and goods. Much like Dumbledore conjures up entire banquets in Harry Potter with a flick of his wand.