andrew.mogendorff.com

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

A couple of my friends went to visit the Creation Museum in Kentucky last week. I think they thought it was kind of funny, although I only saw them briefly and didn’t really get the chance to talk it through with them - I think that also the fault may have been with me because this kind of nonsense just gets me really mad. Then today I saw a link to a piece on the museum: Creation Nation in n+1 magazine. The museum seems like everything you would expect, and more.

We probably won’t need these for Dara - she seems to have a fair bit more hair than Toby did at her age. Even at 17 months old he was fairly bald, which lead us to take matters into our own hands:

That’s actually fur from our cat, but I don’t think Toby was impressed.

Now, however someone has come up with a solution: baby toupees:

From Talking Points Memo: Obama Struggling with Older Women. Can’t he be done for assault? Maybe it’s like mudfighting or something. Are younger women easier to fight?

We got back from vacation on Thursday night and I got the pictures together here. A whopping 4 pages - hope you like them. I’m continuing to be very pleased with my new camera!

Back in town after vacation and hiatus and time off all together. We got back to Minneapolis yesterday early evening and were wowed by how beautiful our front garden looked - lilies and everything in bloom - and how many weeds we have to wrastle to the ground this weekend. The kids were fantastically well behaved on the plane (several people told us, so it’s unbiased reporting) and apart from us being woken up by a massive thunderstorm last night, they did pretty well getting home and going to sleep. Dara being almost 10 months is physically compelled to sit or stand up at every single opportunity - we had several rounds of putting her in her bed, only to turn away and find that she had popped up and was sleepily holding on to the bars of her crib, even though she could hardly keep her eyes open.

Emma found a piece of paper from a couple of weeks ago - a small project Toby had done for Fathers’ Day. It’s titled “My Special Daddy” and is a series of questions for the kids. I’ll put Toby’s responses in italics:

My Daddy is the most wonderful Daddy in the world!

He is as handsome as a Bottle
He is as strong as a weightlifter
He can lift 10 lbs, and is 11 feet tall.
His favorite food is tomato soup
His favorite activity is bringing me a snack
When Daddy was little, he used to play a lot
I think my Daddy looks funny when he is in his bath robe
But I know he is really mad when I don’t listen
I wish my Daddy would feed me Oatmeal Squares with me every day
I would not trade my Daddy for my toys.

We are off to England tomorrow for a well deserved break plus to drink good beer, eat fish and chips and also show the kids off to family. Really looking forward to it.

However first I have to get through my least favorite activity in the world - packing. I’m actually pretty good at it, especially with all the travel I did in the last few years for work, but I still loathe doing it. Unpacking is totally fine, and I don’t know why it’s such a deal but there we are. And once I get started it only takes a few minutes but I end up stalling by cleaning, complaining and writing meandering blog posts.

I’m getting over a Friday the 13th-type disappointment - Holland played France in Euro 2008 and by all accounts it was an amazing match. But! I unwittingly found the outcome (not the score though) based on the Facebook statuses of each of my brothers. And! Even worse - our TiVo only recorded the first 10 minutes of the match. Grrr!! It’s being repeated next week so I’ve set it up to record that - looking forward to it.

Aaaanyway, for those paying attention to some of my blog you’ll remember that I was (probably somewhat over-)obsessed with the recent Democratic primary election. Now I see that the whole thing can be summarized (by Slate.com) in just over 8 minutes. Enjoy:

Tonight Dara finally got the hang of crawling forwards. I say finally - she is still a week away from being nine months old, but it has been a long project and a lot of work for her as she has learned how to flop over from a sitting position, then spin around, and for the last few weeks has been able to scoot backwards. This new skill has been in her head the whole time as she has been trying to grab toys and also go after Toby. I think a lot of this coming weekend is going to be spent chasing after her, tidying Toby’s toys and re-installing the baby gates. Our lives are about to change again.

Next steps for Dara: learning to talk, answering back, learning to drive, dating. Our little girl is growing up fast.

Part 325 in a series in which I report on an internet phenomenon from over a year ago.

I saw a blog post today which had the “Dramatic Prairie Dog” video - controversy rages on the YouTubes about whether it’s a prairie dog, a hamster or a chipmunk (note: it’s not a chipmunk). The original video is pretty funny in my opinion, and I like some of the remixes here too - enjoy:

Original:

Darth:

Curses: