Finally, a camping trip where it didn’t rain for once!

/ Shane / 2 Comments

We spent two nights at The Haven, and we had beautiful weather. It was in the 80’s during the day, and down to the 60’s at night. Most importantly, NO RAIN! I don’t know why I’m such a camping rain magnet, but I’m glad my powers were not active for once.

We’re really starting to know our way around the land a little bit. We spent most of the day on Friday carving paths to various things with our new loppers (especially the potty tree). Most importantly, I think we might have found the location for our future tiny house! It’s in a sort of clearer area between a triangle of truly massive pine trees. Well shaded, midway back in the woods, and not too far from a clearing that may serve for fruit trees. Definitely some potential.

Equally importantly, we did find the mythical blueberry bushes towards the back of our property, and they were delicious. We might need to bolster our stock with a few extra bushes next year.

We’re starting to know our way around South Haven a little bit as well. On Saturday morning, we hit up the most excellent farmers’ market, followed by coffee @ Julias. I think this is going to become a Haven tradition (especially considering we all were in need of a real bathroom by Saturday morning!!) Also, strange coincidence, one of the vendors at the farmer’s market was the City Hippie, a family from Evie’s school and a maker of extremely beautiful things. Evie and Ollie did a kids’ activity at the market and colored some canvas bags with fabric markers and stencils, and they both turned out really well. They’re both very proud of their bags and they’ve shown them to everyone they’ve come in contact with since then.

By lunch time, some friends had arrived, and the work portion of our trip was over. Although I don’t think she really realized it at the time, I think that Evie probably had one of the best days of her life. To have friends her age there to play with (who don’t get frustrated with her no matter how bossy she is), to hike with and make up potty stories with, and to hide behind the tent and tell secrets with was about as fun as it gets. We found a dog-friendly beach and all had a great time, even if the water was a little cold and the waves were a little sneaky (some unexpected water in the face a time or two).

Ollie also had a great time with Maya and Elsie (he said his favorite part of the weekend was singing “Twinkle Twinkle” with them), but for his money, he was just happy to play in the sand. All day, every day, nothing but sand. We would no sooner wash his hands or put on his pajamas or whatever, and he’d be back in it again. He had sand everywhere, including what was basically a sand hood over his head and neck, which got pretty disgusting when we were forced to put a layer of vaseline on top of it all. Yuck.

Ollie played in the sand so much he was literally delusional. He shouted in his sleep, “I want to go under the sand!” I thought he must have meant, “I DON’T want to go under the sand,” nightmare style, but he repeated it several times and he definitely wanted to go under the sand. Based on how much sand he had on him, he almost got his wish.

And the best part about The Haven? You can be as LOUD AS YOU WANT:

(I love how Ollie just flinches a lot and looks confused, but still wants to be part of the group.)

Unfortunately, the worst part about The Haven is ticks. We found at least a dozen crawling around at various times, and poor Ollie won the dubious honor of being the first person to have a tick attached to them at The Haven. We checked him pretty thoroughly at bedtime, so it must have crawled up to his head during the night. We handled it pretty quickly and calmly, and Oliver didn’t quite seem to mind, handling it with his usual good-natured nonchalance (“The ladybug bit me!”).

Finally, on the way home, we stopped and picked 7 3/4 pounds of blueberries. Evie in particular did a great job. I was really surprised. The last time she went picking, she did what Ollie did this time, which was basically eat every blueberry that went in her bucket. She was pretty proud of herself, and cried quite a bit when she accidentally spilled her bucket. But she got back to it and ended up picking a full quart by herself!

A great trip and, as always, it makes me want to go back again!

Quote Monday is honestly a sasquatch

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Me: “Oliver, we can’t play the recorder while guests are still sleeping. It’s too loud.”
::time passes::
Oliver, coming back into the kitchen: “I’m having trouble finding a quieter toy.”

At least he’s honest, I’ll give him that.

Me: “A sasquatch is like a hairy man.”
Sara: “A cross between a bear and a man.”
Evie: “Are you a sasquatch daddy?”

Sara: “A tick was crawling on Ollie.”
Ollie, excited: “A ladybug was crawling on me!”
Sara: “He likes to take the optimistic view.”

Elsie: “Let’s make sand cakes for our mommies!”
Evie: “Yeah! Let’s make them poisonous!”

The Tick

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Ah, my friends. Let me tell you about the greatest show in the history of the universe: The Tick.

(Just to be quite clear, I’m talking about the original cartoon from the early ’90’s, not the live action television show from 2001. The live action show had moments of brilliance, but nowhere near the level of the cartoon.)

What to say about The Tick? I love it so much that I don’t even know where to start. I feel like any words I put down here are not going to really capture the essence of the show. Of all the times that I’ve tried to tell someone about the show, or explain a particularly funny scene, it just always seems to fall flat. But you could say that about a lot of things I try to write about, so once more unto the breach as it were.

I guess I’ll just start with this picture of me in my Tick costume from 2002:

I have enjoyed a lot of shows over the years, but none more than The Tick. It only lasted 3 seasons, and it has been off the air for almost 16 years now, but I can still recall nearly every episode. Basically, they all went like this: some ridiculous super villain shows up, the tick bumbles his way through, relying on exuberance more than intelligence, until his semi-reluctant sidekick Arthur comes up with a legitimate plan to save the day, with or without the help of a ridiculous cast of super heroes that inhabit “The City”, after which The Tick wrapped up (?) the whole episode with an absurd and strangely worded “moral lesson”, like the ending to some kind of surreal episode of Full House.

Something like, “When a nice clean brain tumbles into the dirty street to lay among the discarded wrappers and spat-out gum wads of wickedness, you can’t just pick it up and wash it off with soap and water; you have to think it clean from the inside out.” Or “Let your journey into hugeness teach us all a lesson. Absolute power is a sticky wicket. And, Arthur, chum, you were the stickiest. Don’t you get it, good friend? Some of the best things come in small packages. But large things can’t. Unless they’re inflatable, or require some assembly, or unless they’re hearts. Yes, giant, juicy, loving hearts. As big as the moon, but much, much warmer. ”

The Tick was a parody of superheros and comic books, two things which I love. The best thing about it were the characters. They weren’t anything like the prototypical comic book heroes and villains we knew and loved. They were weak, they were stupid, they were arrogant, they were cowardly. Their powers were lame and their schemes and plans were even lamer. The heroes often did more harm to The City than the villains (such as the Tick, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, breaking off chunks of stone and decorative moldings with his clumsy bulk).

There were heroes such as Bi-Polar Bear (“This looks like a job for Bi-Polar Bear… but I just cant seem to get out of bed.”), the Caped Chameleon (“Can’t…do….plaid”), Baby Boomerangutuang (A combination baby boomer / boomerang throwing orangutan), or Sarcastro (a Castro look-alike who fights crime with the “razor sharp sting of sarcasm”) who engaged in battles with villains like the Deadly Bulb (a.k.a. “pigleg”, who happens to have a pig for a leg, so he became a super villain to keep people from noticing that), Stalingrad (he’s not actually evil, just a graduate student who happens to look like Joseph Stalin, which is enough to qualify him as a villain) and, my all time favorite, The Evil Midnight Bomber (What Bombs at Midnight!)

The Tick himself was a fantastic character. He was stone stupid, but had an endless enthusiasm that kept him going when all the other heroes fell by the wayside. Stupidity and child-like exuberance are a great recipe for a character, a la Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin.

I could throw great quotes at you, or episode synopses, but none of those could make you love The Tick the way you aught to. Do yourself a favor and spend some time on youtube watching some clips. Or start with the quick compilation below:

Sara shares a moment with a fugative

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Sara heard some yelling from outside, but didn’t think too much of it. Still, she was mildly curious, so as she was going downstairs she peered out one of the windows to see what was going on. Our basement has those little half windows up at head level, so when Sara looked out she was eye level with a man on the ground with a police officer on top of him. For several long moments they made direct eye contact, not more than ten feet apart.

“Shane,” she said, “uh…you might want to come here and see this.”

I wonder what he was thinking as he stared into Sara’s eyes? Was he silently pleading for help? Was he feeling remorse from some crime? Was he ashamed to be seen in such an awkward position? Did he feel contempt to see someone who hadn’t had to deal with the kinds of things he’s had to deal with in his life peeking out from behind the curtains?

After he was handcuffed and taken away, scores of plain clothes police officers in bullet proof vests loitered about in front of our condo, more arriving every minute. I wasn’t sure why they were all still there until a canine unit arrived. When the dog came out of the car, it went nuts. Quickly the officers retrieved something from the alley (Drugs? A gun?), after which all of the officers packed up and left.

A little exciting, no doubt, but it turns out this was just the beginning.

As we were driving to the store later, we saw this:

(Picture courtesy the excellent Eric Allix Rogers)

“Do you think this has anything to do with our fugitive?” I asked. It’s not every day that you see a car up over the sidewalk and crashed into an elementary school. What are the odds that it was unrelated to our earlier close encounter?

Well, when you have questions like these, there is only one place to turn: the Internet. Unfortunately, I didn’t turn up much. However, I did stumble upon something I hadn’t even considered: all of this happened while the Farmers’ Market was going on! The car crash pictured above is mere feet from the market, and the street is as crowded during the market as it ever is. It is extremely lucky that nobody was standing there at the time of the crash (I myself spend some time standing on that spot on the way to and from the market).

So what happened? I had to resort to witness interrogation to get what little information I could.

This silver car tried to evade the police. It sped east on 61st Street, leaving a trail of smoke behind – and a large number of police in hot pursuit. It attempted to turn right on Dorchester at speed, narrowly missing plowing into the 61st Street Farmer’s Market and crumpling into the fence by Carnegie School. The driver fled on foot while police apprehended an injured passenger. No other cars or people were injured, amazingly.

That’s right, an honest to goodness high speed police chase which almost ended in extreme disaster for the farmers’ market!

(Picture courtesy farmers’ market shopper Eric Allix Rogers)

At least two people told me that they were forced to drive for cover from the out of control vehicle, so some of the details are a little scarce. Did the fugitive try to run down the alley or down the street? We’re not sure:

I was busy running in the opposite direction in case the car plowed straight into the market.

I was also told that the chase started west of Washington park, closer to 55th and King, which means that there must be a lot more people who saw this (and that makes sense anyway, since you don’t pick up a police escort as depicted above without a little running room).

I pride myself on my Internet detective skills, so it is absolutely killing me that I can’t find any more information about who the guy was or what prompted the chase. Why isn’t this all over the news? A high speed police chase, followed by a crash into an elementary school of all things, a foot race, a flying tackle and arrest, and a canine unit finding evidence hastily discarded into an alley, with dozens of shaken up farmers’ market witnesses to boot! Surely that has to be a bigger story than, “A milestone for Maggie the orangutan at Brookfield Zoo” or “Police see lit cigarette as loaded weapon in statewide drought“, right?

Nobody knows nothin’?

A note from the past!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The lovely folks at FutureMe have delivered a note from the distant past! Ah, it’s like opening a time capsule. What could the me from the past have had to say to my lovely wife?

The following is an e-mail from the past, composed 3 years ago, on July 16, 2009. It is being delivered from the past through FutureMe.org

Subject: How’s the flying car?

Dear FutureSara,
What’s it like in the FUTURE!?!
I hope we didn’t get divorced…AWKWARD!

::whew:: Thank god we didn’t get divorced. I’m going to have to keep sending these things, that way we’ll never get divorced, just to avoid the awkwardness.

Thank you, PastMe for taking the time to inscribe these ever-so-important words, and thank you FutureMe.org for delivering them!