Dog-Boys

Here are the kings of the household practicing their showing their humility.




114 seconds

Piglets' Ears

I am shocked! Over the last few months, I have been downloading, for free from iTunes, The Best of YouTube. A new video comes across every couple of days that some group has decided is really funny or interesting. This morning, I saw the most recent clip and it’s something that I was fascinated by when I was 12. The title is “Piglets react to sounds.” These piglets are all sleeping happily among each other and when someone talks loudly, “Hello!” or “They tried to make me go to rehab,” the piglets ears would flop forward.
I discovered this little tidbit of life after I returned from the St. Louis zoo that I visited on a band trip in the 5th grade. At the zoo, I heard monkeys that would continuously shout, “Whoop! Whoop!” While I was cleaning the farrowing crates of the pigs, I was recreating the sound. I noticed that when I shouted, “Whoop!” the ears of all the sleeping piglets would fly forward once and immediately back a if someone was turning a switch. It was as if the piglets had batteries in their heads that made the ear jump to life for one, quick second. I started to write that the PIGLETS moved their ears, but that is not correct. The ears move by themselves. It is a knee-jerk (or ear-jerk) reaction. The pigs are completely unaware of the motion.
So why am I shocked? I’m shocked and saddened that I didn’t find a way to capitalize on this information before the world figured it out. I guess I’ve been lethargically sitting on the information for 30 years. Now it’s too late. The world knows. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people trying to find piglets so they can see this phenomenon for themselves.

11 March--video for Mama

This is a video I made to send to Maura when she was away on a business trip. The flowers are left over from International Women's Day.



50 seconds

Maxim's Brave spelling -- Nov. 2009

This is something cool from a few months ago. (I just noticed that my settings for this Blogger site had mistakenly been changed so that everything I typed in wasautomatically tranliterated into Hindi. I was able to change it back. :) )

10 November 2008

I want to write something about Maxim and his current event that we saw on the computer today. He brought home an assignment today. He said, “I have homework and you have homework. You have to help me with this.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. It says Dear Parents blah, blah, blah.” He actually said, “blah, blah, blah.” I was afraid it was going to be something ridiculous. He brought his paper upstairs and showed it to me. It said that sometime in the next three days, we have to watch the news and pick out a current events story. We need to answer the basic questions—who, what, where, when, why, and how. I thought that it was a great idea. I told him that we didn’t have TV, but we could watch on the computer.
Three fourths of the available stories were about Obama’s transition. We heard about the impact children have had on the residents of the White House, and the impact the White House has had on children. The one that he chose to write about concerned that selection of a dog for Obama’s daughters. I am most excited by Maxim’s eagerness to write.

Where? North Amaeric, Uoyniti Stats, Shicogo
Who? The Oboma famly
When? 9 Novembr 2008
What? Adoqtingadod into the oboma famly
Why? (We’ll do this one tomorrow.)

Until now, he has been reluctant to use ‘brave’ spelling. He would refuse to write unless he knew how to spell something. I’ve been studying how kids need to simply write. The important thing is for them to get ideas on the paper, not for the format to be correct. I am thrilled by Maxim’s progress.

NPR and the Supreme Court

NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me had a woman from the Supreme Court's journalist core on. She said that Souter is retiring from this coushie job because he is a truly odd bird--more strange than the rest. As evidence, she said that he eats an apple--core and all--everyday for lunch. In addition, they were investigating someone and he didn't know who she was--Anna Nichol Smith. The most damning evidence that he is a weirdo was that he was given a TV that he didn't get around to plugging in.

We don't watch TV. I had to look up Anna on google--I don't think I'd ever seen her picture before, and I eat whole apples sometimes.

Also on the NPR program, it was mentioned that there are no specific qualifications to becoming a SC Justice.

I'll be expecting my call from Obama soon...

Hold my hand, Papa.

Charyn River Bridge campsite. May 2009

20 seconds
I loved Oskar clinging to me as we walked around the mountains/hills.

26 seconds
The Picture Taker trying his hand at video.

Here is our friendly cat:

55 seconds