Christmas Day, part one

Well, we made it. Christmas Day. I got through the work week, Kim got all the packages mailed off, we got everything assembled and wrapped and packaged and baked. We managed to get it all done, and still had time to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica on Christmas Eve. It was all busier than we wanted it to be, but less hectic than it might have been. We're slowly getting the "life spedometer" down where we'd like it to be. The trick is keeping it there for any length of time.

Samuel woke us at 0630 today -- not too bad. He didn't manage to spot Santa last night like he'd planned, even when Santa came into his room to put some treats in the small stocking we hang there. He took in in stride, though. Said he, "Even if I had remembered (to stay awake), it was too cold to poke my head out of the blankets to see him anyway." Spoken like a kid who reaches for a jacket when the mercury drops below 75 degrees.

Samuel also had some Christmas morning preparations to do. He had prepared some handmade gifts for the others in the family. Always alert to the overarching themes of the season, he observed, "I've got three gifts to give. Hey, I'm a wise man!" Indeed.

Benjamin got up around 0700 an retrieved from his stocking some candy and a small truck. The latter item proved to be the first of a fleet of trucks that came from under the tree. There are some counties with fewer trucks than my youngest son has. He certainly knows what he likes.

We had (and are still having) a wonderful Christmas. The best part was hanging around as a family for the past few days. Will post more later tonight, with some additional pictures.

Oh man, Bobby

Benjamin's favorite character right now is Bob the Builder. For reasons he keeps to himself, Benjamin calls him "Bobby". This week Benjamin learned a new expression, which we captured in this very brief audio clip.

The Need for Speed

After discovering that his friends in the neighborhood had taken off their training wheels, Samuel recently made a decision. It was time to ride. I took his training wheels off that night and worked with him for about 15 minutes. The next day, Kim started to work with him again. After she had taken 10 steps running alongside and holding the bike steady, Samuel said, "Let go mom, I've got it." And that was that.

The one-armed fist pump

Benjamin watched the Blue Man Group video...and learned. Here he demonstrates the Rock Concert Movement #2: The One-Armed Fist Pump. If you listen closely, you can hear the music in the background.

Halloween 2006

Unlike last year, we had excellent weather for this year's Halloween.

After toying with the idea of being Spiderman this year, Samuel settled on his favorite Star Wars character -- Darth Maul. He spent a lot of time planning the costume with Mommy, and even more time "breaking it in". He pretty much wanted to wear it every day the last two weeks of Halloween. The big day was the first time we did the makeup -- I think Mommy did a very nice freehand.



The neighbor boys also chose Star Wars costumes, making for a heavily-themed trio.


This was Benjamin's first trick-or-treat, since the rain kept him indoors last year. He selected his costume through a rigorous process of sitting still while we put it on him. Unexpectedly, he did not immediately try to take it off. In fact, he had a great time going up to front doors and getting candy in his pumpkin. Big brother took Benjamin under his wing and showed him the ropes.

Check out the whole album here:

Halloween 2006

Blue Man Group !!!

Last night we got a babysitter for the boys and trekked to Houston to take in Blue Man Group's How to Be a Megastar 2.0 show. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

We got to the Toyota Center in on time, but got stuck in horrible traffic routing and had to wait a long time to park after we missed a turn. Grrr. Luckily, we got to our seats just as Tracy Bonham started her brief opening set. The auditorium was packed, but the crowd was good-natured. We looked around for our next-door neighbors, who were also at the show, but we didn't know where they were sitting. Tough to pick out two people from a group of thousands. Bonham's set lasted about 20 minutes, then there was a short intermission.

Then the Blue Man Group came on.

We had been to Blue Man's show, Tubes, in Boston several years ago and we have two Blue Man CD's, so we knew a bit about what to expect. For those who aren't familiar with the group, they are based around the character called the Blue Man, a silent, somewhat childlike fellow who likes to make music using a wide variety of custom-made instruments (PVC pipe figures heavily into many of them). There are three Blue Men in each show, and they are backed by an on-stage band. For this show, the band was based around creating BIG sound -- three drummers, four guitarists, two singers, plus the Blue Men. During the loud sections, of which there were many, their show can best be described as a wall of sound coming at you. Awesome.

Interactivity and comedy are also big parts of the show. The "story" of this show was that the Blue Men saw an infomercial for a course called "How to Be a Megastar", which they ordered (using a credit card from an audience member). The show was then based on the audio and video track of the course, teaching the Blue Men how to become Megastars and prompting the audience to participate in the standard Rock Concert Movements. These ranged from Rock Concert Movement #1 (the Basic Head Bob) to Rock Concert Movement # 78 (the Fake Ending). Between Blue Man songs, the giant screen and booming voice also taught the audience about interesting bits of rock concert trivia. My favorite was the story of Floppie the Banjo Clown, which you can check out here.

It's a tough concert to describe -- it's easier to go to this page and watch the two short videos. The second video is a great overview of what the show was like.

If you like music and humor, I can't recommend this concert enough. If the Blue Man Group comes to your area -- GO!

Lake Livingston Trip

Last weekend we took a 4-day camping trip to Lake Livingston State Park. We camped there earlier this year, and discovered that we really like the park. It's not a very long drive (less than 2 hours from the house), and there is lots to do. We schlepped the bikes up there, and had a great time riding around on the bike trails. It's a great, wooded site on a giant lake. There are great hiking trails, a nature boardwalk, bike trails and lots of places for the boys to play.
We went with our neighbors the Hillarys, who also like to camp. We parked our tiny camper in site 93 and had a great time.
Pictures? Well if you insist....

Lake Livingston, Sept. 2006

Sep 30, 2006 - 76 Photos

.01 Seconds of Fame

Recently I had a teeny tiny taste of faux-fame in one of the most low-key ways possible. Still, I'm oddly proud.

I like to play the online version of Magic, the collectible card game. Since my brother Tim and I discovered the cardboard version of the game years ago, it has grown into a big business for the publisher -- pro tournaments, global sales, and a website with thousands of readers.

One of the columnists on the Magic website plays Magic Online to gather material for his columns. One night a few weeks ago, he happened to drop into a pick-up game with me. The next week, I found that I made it into his column.
You'll find me just above the half-way point, in Game 3. My online handle is MadDocPants (it's a long story, but not a very interesting one). I won the game we played -- quite convincingly as I recall. It was mostly due to luck of the draw, but at least my luck came through at the right moment.

It just goes to show that if you work half-heartedly at a somewhat pointless fringe hobby, you might just end up mentioned in an obscure online column that doesn't even use your real name. Kids - stay in school!

Great free stuff, part 1

One of the things I find the coolest right now is all the free software and services I get can on the Web. Some of the tools I find most useful don't cost anything. Here are some of my favorites:

Picasa is the great photo organizing program that everybody is using. Now that it has been updated with Picasa Web Albums, it's ridiculously easy to share photos with everyone. And it's free.

Google also makes available the excellent Google Desktop. I'm not a fan of having weather reports, sports, and stocks on the desktop, so I disable that stuff. Instead, I use the desktop search feature on my computer at work. I can find any one of the zillions of documents, emails, articles, presentations, etc. that are scattered around in there. I constantly amaze my coworkers even though they know how I do it.

Video conferencing and chat has also become free and easy. Google Talk is ridiculously cool, the talk is higher quality than my phone, and when you add the free Festoon plug-in you can do video conferencing for free (saving me the monthly conferencing fees!) I'm experimenting with SightSpeed, which only offers one-to-one video conferencing but has excellent video quality and very low lag time between sound and picture. Did I mention it's all free?

Serif software offers older versions of their products as free downloads in hopes that you will love them and want the new ones. I use the free version of Serif PagePlus SE for all my desktop publishing needs, and it works like a charm.

Screen capture is something I do a lot of at work. I use ScreenPrint Gold which allows me to take screenshots of any part of the screen and save them in a wide variety of formats. Again, the trial version is free. (This one I plan to buy.)

Wikipedia for quick information, Google Scholar for literature searches, Dictionary.Com for spelling and pronunciation reference. Crazy. And after you get done with all that work, you can zip over to 4games.com to wind down with a little gaming foolishness.

Got a good freebie? Let me know about it!

Photoshop goofing

I'm making yet another attempt to increase my Photoshop skills. I'm still not any good, but at least my feeble skills work to amuse my son.

Return of the Blog

Today (hopefully) marks the return of fairly regular updates to the Team Mast blog. The latest news regarding the boys: Samuel has started kindergarten, and Benjamin has started to talk. Samuel is having a great time. The hours are pretty long, but he has been doing well. He is in the same class as his buddy Zach from across the street. We took him to school and got him settled into his classroom on the first day of school. Here are some pictures from the big day.

Benjamin's talking is a little harder to post, especially since I didn't think to record him while he was still awake. New words pour out of him every day, albeit with his own special brand of pronunciation. Tonight while reading an I Spy book we got "fork". No way to predict.