Nature Channel

Good grief. I came home tonight and was presented with two incredibly whiny children. Seemed every little thing was setting them off. Worse, they were setting each other off since one would say something that apparently morally outraged the other one to which their only response was to start whining. I'm guessing they need to catch up on some much needed sleep. At least I hope that's all it is. Otherwise an important project at work might just appear that will require me to 'work late' for the rest of the summer.

One thing that's struck me recently is that with the advent of TiVo and DVRs, I'm not sure kids will ever fully grasp the concept of scheduled television programming. Currently they don't look forward to when a program comes on (not that they watch enough TV to know schedules, but still). They just ask to watch something assuming the TiVo somehow has access to whatever they're interested in. I'm guessing it's not just my kids that are like this since I get the impression Loren is also like that from reading between the lines of one of Curt's recent posts. I remember someone (name withheld to protect the innocent) telling me they learned about time because they would always watch Sesame Street after their nap when they were little, and one day they took a longer than normal nap and missed watching Sesame Street and just like the concept of time is learned. I'm guessing my kids will never experience anything like that. I wonder if that means the kids will never really understand time and only know about time shifting. I can see it now, "I'm not late, I'm showing up when it's convenient for me." Speaking of the kids, I've been pretty negligent about taking pictures of them recently, so that's why you're stuck with the nature channel tonight.


This one is a picture of the buds on those trees I was talking about a while ago. The ones that Buddy (a.k.a. the horticulture / dog guy) identified as being "tulip poplar, Liriodendron tulipifera, not really a poplar at all, but more closely related to Magnolias". I managed to get a picture of one when we were in Vienna. But I had to pull down a branch to get the picture, hence it's a bit on the blurry side. I still think it would make for a good picture, just have to get one in better conditions. Doubt that it will be this year though, since the big rain we got a couple of nights ago took out most of the buds.


And which shot do people like better? The color or black and white? I think I'm partial to the color one myself, but I don't know why exactly.