Road Trip II

This one won't be as significant as the last journey.  We're going to South Dakota for a family reunion.  I don't know how we're related to these people.  I only now it's on my mom's side of the family, and a nice lady sent an invite and there's two catered meals. 

This trip I think we're packing much more.  We only had Quin for a few weeks the first time around, and since then we're much more vulnerable.  It's amazing how forgetting a bottle or a diaper or a certain toy will scar you so deeply.  Now we pack for ten babies. 

Although it's not Q who benefits the most from previous experience.  Paco can never get comfortable in the car so I made this patented Paco Pad.  It gives him more space to lie down and elevates him just enough for Sarah to glare at him from the back.

I also imagine she'll be staring at my head and pining to slap may bald spot.  Because business is slow and we're broke I'd want to smack it too. 

Much appreciation goes out to our son who'll be buying the gas.  I forgot to turn off his automatic savings plan and was thrilled to find his little nest egg in my ING account.  

And now we're off, tired as all get out, as last night our new neighbors stayed up late and taught the entire neighborhood drunken Spanish. 

Vamanos! 

And there was much swearing off camera too

So Quin's weight has dropped off the charts. He's so small he can't be measured. We could mail him for about a dollar. His head, however, is in the 80th percentile. In short, Quin's body = insignificant, Quin's head = his body.

To pay tribute to our little man, I thought I'd show (mostly for his mom) a video showcasing his agility and smarts. What the world should have seen is our son hanging on to patio furniture with one arm, and hugging Paco with the other.

But yesterday I got myself in a hurry to interview some people. I deleted an adorable baby/dog moment, a punishable crime.

What the world will see is the camera pointed in no particular direction while I rub a lapel mic up and down my chest.

It's kind of like that movie Cloverfield. A monster wreaking havoc with brief flashes of innocence and joy.

who shot Quin?

Austen batted her eyes and claimed she knew nothing.  Photo evidence shows she may have had a motive...

 

Quin and the Hare

This bunny is in the "sick bay" recovering from an injury. 

All Creatures Great and Small and Smaller

Yes.  ET. 

it scared the heck out of us when one of the cats turned out to be real. 

let the sun shine in

Nothing gets stuck in your bean like the 5th Dimension.  It was what wormed into my ear and hummed out my head at Aunt Leslie and Uncle Stu's Summer Solstice party.  It was at their place last summer where I worked with several other people hoping for free beer while assembling a huge array of solar panels.  Now they produce so much energy that on many days they give power back to the grid.  Their meter actually spins backwards!

And yesterday we got an entire keg! 

Along with the sixty-panel array, Leslie and Stuart have panels on their roof that heat and recirculate water throughout the house for both heating and hot water needs.     

The party was a good one, an enclave for a mostly progressive crowd that queried the existence of meat in the tapas and drank keg beer out of cups made of corn.  These weren't your new school veggies and greenies, but Boulder's original liberal, the academic kind that in the 70s built geodesic domes, cursed Mork and Mindy, and found success in the growing field of computers.  One IBM could calculate the distance to Denver in just over an hour.  It was a time of great possibility. 

Seriously, here's something Jimmy Carter said in 1979 about the solar panels installed on the White House: 

"A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the Sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil."

Sadly, according to this documentary, after Reagan removed the panels, they eventually did end up in a museum.  (And what's with having the Swiss make this film?  Do we have  dependence on foreign filmmakers, too?) 

Q did well...Aunt Leslie rescues animals (pigs, ducks, rabbits, cats) and has a huge collection of stuffed animals.   

Q Tip O' The Day

Whooo!  Outside voice!

hold up.

What this patio party needs...

is some dog food.