Thursday, July 31, 2008

Dentist


Quinn and Catherine both had dentist appointments today. Everything's good but the dentist already thinks Quinn is going to require braces. The picture above is a left over from the beach trip.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Dr Visits


We got Dobie back from the vet today. When we came home he was looking none too good so he went to the vet on Monday. He must need more fiber in his diet because it turns out he was backed up pretty bad. So the doctors kept him for a couple days and he got to come home today. So tonight when Quinn was telling me how the Dr told Quinn today that he's perfect that I was a bit confused as to why the vet would be telling Quinn that. Turns out I had forgotten that Quinn had his seven year check up today also. He's pretty much average (50th percentile for height and weight), but apparently the doctor described him as perfect. Catherine also got a mini checkup today for the whole going to the bathroom all the time thing. Based on tests they ran they don't think there's anything wrong, they said there could be some mild irritation in that area, but nothing infected. And this morning she went to the bathroom four times before they finally left the house. Once before getting into the car and then three times of getting into the car and suddenly deciding she needed to go to the bathroom. And yet they claim there's nothing wrong with her.


The pictures here are from this past weekend. One of the whole reasons for stopping in Richmond on the way back from the beach was because they had promised Quinn that he could push some lawn mowers around next time he was there. So that meant he really wanted to stop in Richmond on the way home. And that's why we had to stop in Richmond on the way home. The fact that we didn't leave the beach until 9 PM on Friday night and it would have been almost 2 am before we had gotten home if we hadn't stopped in Richmond might have played some small part also. While Quinn was outside pushing the lawn mower (and getting eaten alive my mosquitos) Catherine and I elected to stay bug free indoors. She then proceeded to show off her trumpet playing skills. I don't think she'll be playing for the London Symphony Orchestra anytime soon, but I was impressed that she was actually blow some notes on it.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Platinum Edition


I got this from Pete a while back:
Are you guys going to get an iPhone or two when the new ones come out? Faster Internet access, more usage from the battery, more memory and GPS.

You should create a Statistically Insignificant Musings - Platinum Edition section to your blog (i.e., like Colbert Platinum). Then I could be spared reading stories where you save $100/year by switching your garbage service or lose $1.50 because you and Ginger get the same movie from NetFlix.

I laughed pretty hard at this comment. I'll admit I have a tendency to be a bit, well, frugal at times. Today though Ginger did go out and purchase herself one of the new 3G iPhones. She woke me up at 7:30 to say "You're in charge of the kids" so she could leave to go stand in line at the store before they opened at 8. Even getting there before they opened she was number 35 in line or something like that. Luckily they even had the model she wanted (it's the model no one else wants, the white 16 Gig). The only thing that didn't go according to plan was they couldn't port her existing cell number. Apparently since she has a pay as you go prepaid phone they would have to cancel that prepaid portion to free the number up. This would have meant she would have had to go to the AT&T store, then back to Mac store to get in line again, so she just got a new phone number instead. So if you have her old number, you may want to call her at some point and get her new number. We'll obviously be keeping her older phone for a bit so it'll still work, and there's even talk of me taking over that phone and ditching my Virgin mobile pay as you go phone. But mine is only $.10 a minute whereas Ginger's pay as you go phone is $.25 a minute. Although since I never use my minutes I with the pay as you go you have to keep applying money every couple months to keep the account active I'm not sure the price difference matters that much since I almost never use my phone as it is so I may just splurge (this is platinum edition) and switch to her phone.


She go home a bit after ten and has apparently been playing with it and configuring it through most the day. I noticed she had put a lot of the free apps on it when I got home from work tonight. And she started IM'ing me at work with it mid day, so she obviously got the AIM application working. I would have preferred a GTalk application personally, but I don't know of one of those exists yet. She loaded it up with all her songs a ton of photos, so she's down to only having 6 Gig free. And then tonight I set it up so that it can connect to our wireless network when she's at the house.


Ginger informed me that throughout the day the kids are now asking when they'll be able to get their own cell phone (I'm thinking once the get out of college). The camera in the iPhone seems to be pretty decent since the above picture was taken with the iPhone. And Ginger was just able to mail the photo straight to me, so that's a nice plus that you don't have to go through and manually pull pictures off the phone.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Hellboy II

Went to see Hellboy II: The Golden Army with Ben Sunday night. Since everyone that was involved in the first Hellboy movie is involved in this one it has the same feel to it (which is good you liked the first one which I did). There are several storylines running through this movie. One is Hellboy's relationship with Liz. The other is Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BRPD) being a secret organization and the reaction when they 'inadvertantly' go public. And then finally there's the main plot of creatures from the mystical underworld out trying to extract revenge on humanity by awakening the indestructible golden army with it's 70 times 70 warriors.

Guillermo del Toro is back as the director of this one and obviously has a feel for the characters as he along with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola were responsible for the storyline. A couple things take some getting used to, Abe is voiced by the actor playing him now (Doug Jones) instead of David Hyde Pierce. If you watched the Hellboy animated shows on Cartoon Network this one won't be as big of a shock since Doug Jones did the voice of Abe in those animated films. The other is somewhat forced inclusion of ectoplasmic Johann Krauss onto the BRPD team. He's another character from the comics and they just sort of introduce him and put him on the team. The weird thing is since everything is potentially so weird in the Hellboy universe having an non corporeal ectoplasmic guy show up with basically no explanation doesn't even seem odd. Overall if you liked the first Hellboy movie you'll probably like this one (I still think I liked the first one better, but this was pretty good).

Saturday, July 26, 2008

The Rest Of Friday


So after a couple hours of packing up the car (to the point where I could barely see out the rear view mirror) and having the kids use the restroom we were finally ready to leave. Then as soon as we started the car Catherine informed us she had to go to the bathroom again. I'm seriously thinking we need to get her checked out for some type of condition or something, because I swear every time we get in the car even if she's just gone to the restroom she decides she has to go again. And then once we do start driving about five minutes into the trip she'll inform us she has to go again.


Unfortunately the rental company drop off was about four miles in the opposite direction we needed to be going to get home, so on the way we made a couple of small pit stops (no pun intended). First one was I stopped near Jockey's Ridge and got a picture of a long tree near the edge the dunes. I've seen that tree each time we passed it this week and always wanted to stop for a picture. Sadly after looking at the pictures I wasn't able to capture the shot I had in my head in any of the pictures.


After that we went a ways past the rental company to the go karts. Since yesterday all Quinn has been talking about was going to do the go karts again. We got there just as a junior race was starting (I'm fairly certain I got a look or two from Ginger about how if we hadn't stopped for pictures of a tree we wouldn't have had to wait on the race). For me it turned out good, since this allowed me to take some pictures of the sunset while they were waiting on the race.


So after waiting through the junior race and two more adult races Quinn and Catherine go to go. This time it was a full group of kids, and true to his word from last time even though Quinn was the first one in line he took the car at the very back (because as he said that way he would be able to pass more people). Catherine was in the next to last car.




Once the race started Quinn was past most of the cars by the end of the first lap. But he just couldn't get past the kid in first. Every time the kid would go wide around a turn as Quinn would start to pass him on the inside the kid would turn into him and bump him back. That's not to say Quinn was entirely the good guy as he almost managed to turn the kid several times on one of the turns (in Quinn's defense the other kid wasn't really hugging the curves and was leaving a decent sized small opening which of course Quinn then tried to squeeze through).


This went on and on for most of the race. Eventually the crowd even got into and I think they were rooting for Quinn, because right before the end of the race Quinn managed to get by him and the crowd cheered (I have to admit that was pretty cool).


Catherine on the other hand was in last for most of the race, but she did a lot better than she did the day before. This time she was only lapped once. She drove a bit faster, but was still taking turns really wide. Luckily for her near the end of the race a couple cars wrecked and Catherine managed to get her lap back and then pass their wreck claiming her "third" place finish (she's the one that decided she came in third, and I wasn't about to contradict her). The whole unedited video of the race is below. It's long at around five minutes, so watch at your own risk. After the race was complete we dropped off the keys, ate at Wendy's, got some gas (the gas was for the car, it wasn't from eating at Wendy's) and finally started heading home.


Friday, July 25, 2008

Too Much To Do!


We did way too much today. Since tomorrow morning is the end of our rental we decided to leave tonight instead and not have to deal with the normal exodus travel that occurs on Saturday mornings in the area. This meant we had to pack everything up. So what did we do? Went down to visit the Bodie Lighthouse, went to the beach and then for good measure we ended up going to the pool also. Then we had to pack and drop off the keys and to top it off Quinn also wanted to go and do the go karts again before we left. That is what you call a full day.






The inside of the lighthouse was open to the public which was new for us. Previously when we had visited the bottom area wasn't open. There isn't that much to do inside since you're not allowed to walk up to the top of this one. This also meant they had a park ranger type person standing outside of the open door constantly which meant getting pictures was significantly tougher. The one time he wasn't there I wasn't in a good position for a wide angle shot and he got back before I could reposition.










We walked along the path to the pond like we did last time, so nothing overly new from that perspective. But this time in addition to the inside of the lighthouse being open so was the gift shop and information area. The kids got some more information on the lighthouse and how it's operated from inside there.


After that we jaunted across the street to Coquina Beach (that's the same beach we went to earlier in the week, but I didn't know it had an official name at that point). And as we pulled up both kids were whining that they didn't want to go to the beach and weren't going to get out of the car. And after saying "I brought the boogie board" and "You can search for shells" suddenly both kids were out of the car lickity split.












Somehow Ginger managed to get boogie board supervising duty and I ended up having walk along the beach with Catherine looking for shells. And there area a ton of shells down there. The problem is Catherine isn't what you would call discriminating in her shell selection. Shells don't have to be perfect, they can even be broken, and a lot of the ones she would select were. Mostly she liked the bigger shells, the condition of the shells seemed to be moot. This meant every five feet Catherine would find a shell, pick it up, hide it behind her back and call me over to "surprise" me with it. And during this time I was off trying to take some pictures, so I would have to walk all the way back to be surprised. I didn't get as many pictures as I wanted, but I think Catherine enjoyed the outing so it all worked out. I did have to eventually end the expedition and head back when sweat was rolling down my face and I ended up getting suntan lotion in my eye which without anything to get it out with left me unable to open my eye for a bit.






It was just prior to high tide, and since the shelf extends so far at this beach there wasn't a good area where Quinn could go out boogie board without being inundated by waves taller than him. And even though he can "technically" swim, I'm not confident in his ability to swim in those conditions. As such he was confined mostly to playing at the edge of the waves trying desperately to use his boogie board as a sand surfing board. Catherine meanwhile was content to simply dig in the sand and stand in the holes as waves came in and wiped away all the digging work she had done.




Once we got home and had some lunch Ginger and the kids went to the pool while I took some last remaining things to the recycling center. Another negative about Kill Devil Hills area is they don't have mandatory recycling or curbside pickup of recycling, you have to cart your recycling to the center yourself. Luckily the recycling center is right by the neighborhood where we were staying. There were some pictures taken at the pool. Several of me on the slide, but those aren't going on the blog because they were less than flattering, more so than normal. After that it was a mad frantic packing session in which in addition packing I had to rearrange the furniture we had moved, move the cable modem back to its previous location (which it hadn't been working at) and pack the car with what seems like way more stuff than we had when we came down. And with that I'll be ending this since after I do that we'll no longer have internet access anymore.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Racing Team Fitz Clan


More rain. This is becoming a theme for the week. So we ended up spending most of the day inside playing the Wii waiting out the rain. And once we did get past the storms we decided to venture out. Today's outing was to the go karts. It was a different one that's a branch of the ones from up in Corolla. Amazingly enough this time Quinn was able to cajole Catherine into doing it by telling her they could be a team. That worked because initially it looked like it was going to be just Quinn out on the track, so he convinced Catherine to join him. He tried to get her to go stand next to the height requirement and I convinced him not to (I'm not positive she would have met the required height). But while they were waiting for the current race to end before they could start he junior race it turned out another kid was going to go also.








You could really tell it was Catherine's first time. Not only would she not hug the curves like Quinn does she's really really slow. I mean the junior cars aren't exactly fast to begin with, but she was barely moving at times. After a couple laps Ginger and I determined it was because we don't think she couldn't completely reach the gas pedal (at least not easily). Quinn and the other kid ending up lapping Catherine twice. Quinn also seemed to be pulling away from the other kid, but Quinn only passed Catherine. I don't care though, I was just really proud of her for having the courage to go out and do it. And Catherine didn't even care that she didn't do well, she was just excited to be out racing and to be Quinn's team member.








And of course it wouldn't have been me unless I took pictures using the wrong camera settings. The night before I had changed the EV setting to -2 as I was trying to time long timed exposure to try and capture some lightning (it didn't work, the storm wasn't in the direction of the only window I could use that didn't have a screen). So yea, most of the pictures are terrible.


Luckily even though my pictures were crap we have video of the event also. Fair warning, it's really long and I'm guessing for non family members quite boring. So for all the non family members after you've seen about a minute you'll have seen just about everything, but it's worth skipping ahead to 4:50 for the big finale. It should come as no surprise that right after we finished Quinn was ready to do it again, and has been asking to do it again since we went. He claims this time though he wants to start out in last position so he can pass more people.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A Walk On The Beach


Today we got more rain than you could shake a stick at. Well, shake a stick at and stay dry. I guess what I'm saying is you would end up with a wet stick. Dolly apparently continued to push scattered thunderstorms through the area completely drenching us. At least I assume it was Dolly's doing, I haven't really been following the weather other than occasionally peeking at a local radar plot really. The drenching was only for a couple hours in the middle of the afternoon. After that aside from standing water along the streets you wouldn't have been able to tell there had been any rain at all. I will say with the power station (transformers maybe?) literally across the street within throwing distance of our house we've had some really close lightning strikes. Like where everything goes white outside the window and you hear the thunder almost before you see the lightning and all the smoke detectors in the house go off for a bit. Really gives you warm fuzzies all over. The staticy back of the neck hair raising fuzzies anyway.


Luckily the rain didn't start up until Ginger and the kids got back from the water park. Yep, the kids have decided the water park is the best thing about the beach (second best for Quinn, for him the best is getting to go drive go-karts). I skipped out on going today and logged in to do some work instead. The water park isn't that big and there's only so many times I can go down the water slide and not injure myself (while it can accommodate adults, it's really not made for them). That picture above is the kids at the slide that I took from the house while taking a break from work.


After all the rain passed we headed south to Rita's for ice cream. It's funny how driving eight miles to get somewhere down here seems like it takes an eternity and yet back home eight miles is considered nothing. Once we got back from our ice cream run we decided to go take a walk on the beach. Quinn insisted on bringing our beach tennis ball to throw around, which meant more than once I got a bit soaked by waves fetching it out of the ocean from his wild pitches. I wouldn't have minded as much if I hadn't been wearing jean shorts.






As we walked along Quinn was all about walking as fast as possible and playing while Catherine was hanging back and collecting seashells. I don't get it really, she's to the point now where she'll say she doesn't want to go to the beach, but once she's there she doesn't want to leave and just runs around collecting shells. She found a collection of shells someone had left that included a bunch of partially broken conch shells. I was impressed just to see the broken conch shells. In all the times I've been down here I think I can count on one hand the number conch shells I've seen and I don't think I've ever seen a conch shell in anything approaching decent condition. Once everything was said and done Catherine returned with another bucket full of shells (at this point I'm wondering how we're going to have room in the car on the trip home for anything other than shells).












As we were walking along I took pictures for a while, but then Ginger took over the picture taking duties, so this whole last batch of shots are her's (I would even go as far to say her shots are the superior ones). I didn't have time to play around with any of the pictures in Gimp, so the processing on some of them are quick Picasa tweaks (mostly to get rid of the misty quality that was in most of the photos)