Month: May 2010

Gorilla No Threat Glasses

/ Shane / Leave a comment

If you look a gorilla in the eye, the gorilla will take that as a threat. You do not want a gorilla to feel threatened by you. Therefore, you may want to keep a handy pair of Gorilla No-Threat glasses:

“Earlier this month at the Dutch Rotterdam Zoo, an eleven year old male gorilla named Bokito escaped and ran rampant through the Zoo’s food court, injuring a woman when he bit and dragged her some distance. Now, health insurance company FBTO is distributing eye-contact disguising glasses that allow zoo visitors to stare all they like, a behavior that is threatening to most of the great apes.”

Am I the only one that thinks these would be useful in other places besides the zoo (much like the pain cave from yesterday is useful in a variety of circumstances)? Some cultures consider direct eye contact inappropriate. Some cultures consider sleeping during business meetings or lectures inappropriate. And some cultures even consider ogling bikini babes inappropriate. Bikini babes who might feel threatened by your ogling and might be inclined to rip your face off, much like a gorilla. “No, no!” you’d shout, “I’m just staring off into space idly. Something up and to the left caught my eye. No threat! No threat!”

Gorilla No-Threat Glasses…saving lives.

Mother’s day and the splinter

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Evie and I picked out a Mother’s Day present and card for Sara last weekend (Some lovely Pyrex containers for keeping leftovers, in case you were wondering. Nothing says love like BPA-free food), so Evie had to keep the secret for the whole week. She was struggling a little bit, but she managed to do it…at least right up until Saturday night. I felt so bad for her, I was getting out some of the old containers to clean up some leftovers, and Evie was like, “Oh, we’re using the ones we bought for mommy at Target?” Like, she didn’t mean to spill the beans, she was just commenting on what she saw. In fact, I think she thought, “Oh shoot, we already gave them to her and I missed it!” I don’t even know how she remembered what we got; it wasn’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world. I felt bad for her, but it certainly did nothing to diminish the pure glee she had on her face when she gave her mommy the card and gift the next morning. She was jumping up and down, it was really great. As hard as it is to believe, I think that her excitement might have been a gift even better than left over containers.

After a trip to the grocery store, in which Evie, Uncle Nathan and I managed to get all the right things without any help (okay, that sounds funny, but this was a major restocking mission with a $200 price tag!). After dropping Uncle Nathan off at the bus station, we hit up Mother’s Day brunch in the new garden! The food was really good and we got to meet and talk to some extremely nice neighbors. I’m really hoping we can get to know them better. It was a beautiful day and it was really nice to have a place to go outside. As usual, Evie was a big hit, especially with her garden shoes. Afterwards I felt a little guilty, because everybody went to work on the garden, and I just played with Evie. So I felt a little guilty since I was the only adult not doing anything. But Evie and I helped a little bit, stomping down the wood chips on the path.

Evie had some trouble walking on the wood chips in her garden shoes, so it was most likely during one of her many spills that she got the splinter. It wasn’t until much later, after we were home, that she came over and said, “Something is on my finger.” It was a pretty bad one too, and completely inside, without any part sticking out. It took quite a while to dig it out, including using a sewing needle to dig out one end. And through it all, Evie made not one little peep. I was so proud of her! I thought she would get upset as soon as she saw us coming at her with tweezers. She did have one small request though. In order for us to dig out the splinter, she insisted that we make a cave for her out of pillows and blankets, so that she could thrust only her arm out, and the rest of her would be covered. This was very odd, but it was a small request and it seemed to work, so who am I to complain? I tried to keep her talking so she wouldn’t get upset, but I’m not sure even that was necessary.

I’ll have to think about other situations where “making a cave” could help out. Could we make a nap-taking cave? A vegetable-eating cave? Who knows. But a pain cave works for splinters, so that’s what counts.

Why?

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Everybody knows this stage of development. “Why? Why? What? Why?” All day long we get these questions. Evie asks why so much, that it has become a sort of default response to every statement. She says it even when she doesn’t want to know why. We’ve even gotten in the habit of ignoring her first why, because if she really wants to know, she’ll ask again. This saves you from a lot of pointless question answering.

Now lots of times these are questions she really wants to understand, and, of course, lots of times these questions are questions that nobody could ever be able to answer.

Evie: “What time is it?”
Me: “5 o’clock.”
Evie: “Why?”
Me: “…”

She likes to ask things about total strangers like, “What’s that boy’s name?” or “Where is his mommy?” She also asks questions in other strange circumstances. Let me give you some examples.

Evie: “He doesn’t wear a hat.”
Me: “This one doesn’t wear a hat?”
Evie: “Why?”

So, she makes a statement, you repeat it back to her, and she asks you why. Or, another example, she asks you why to something that only she could know:

Me: “You don’t like to eat those ones.”
Evie: “Why?”
Me: “You’d have to ask yourself that.”
Evie: “Why? I was asking myself.”

(Yes, if you ever say ‘you’d have to ask yourself’ she almost always answers this way, out loud)

And lets not forget about “What?” As part of this sort of voracious information gathering, she really hates to miss out on anything, or not understand. If you try having a conversation around her but not include her, you will regret it. She will interrogate you on every aspect she doesn’t understand. Of course, once her questions are satisfied she doesn’t really *care* about the balancing of the check book, but she wants to understand what you are talking about, to be sure she doesn’t care. For example, she frequently asks me what time it is if she sees me looking at my watch, even though the time is essentially meaningless to her.

All in all though, the questions really aren’t as bad as you see on T.V. or whatever. I usually try to answer her as much as I can. And she doesn’t get too frustrated with it, so it’s not that big of a deal. But lets just say there are times where it is a bit trying.

And that’s sort of the point of having a toddler, isn’t it?

Awesome Things

/ Shane / 3 Comments

We’ve all seen sites where you are presented with two options and you click on one or the other to vote for that option. Two favorites around our house are Puppy War and Kitten War, in which you vote for cute puppies or kittens, respectively.

So that’s great for finding the cutest kitten, but what if you wanted to determine the Most Awesomest Thing Ever? Prepare to waste some time. It’s not as easy as you might think, for example, how do you compare “oxygen” to “popcorn chicken”? I mean, oxygen is pretty awesome, but popcorn chicken is popcorn chicken! You can also click on links at the top to see which things have the highest winning percentage or those with the lowest (I’m looking at you Kevin Federline)

In case you need some inspiration on what sort of thing is awesome, also take some time to check out this photo gallery of Barack Obama looking at awesome things, deep in the secret government tech labs.

Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight! Thundercats ho!

Oh man, it must be awesome to be president!

Everybody likes bacon

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Nerds like bacon (periodically):

Jews like bacon:

And I like bacon, so we’re all in agreement.