I was playing with my digital camera the other day and used the "ultra high sequence" feature to get a series of pictures of my umbrella cockatoo, Kaelin, during one of her fits. I suppose it's some kind of mating dance, but it's always entertaining until it gets too loud. I strung the pictures together into a movie with Adobe ImageReady, something I haven't tried before, and despite the fact that the lighting was not good so it's extremely grainy, it's still a funny 2 seconds of video. And it was an interesting experiment just to make the images into a movie. You'll need the Quicktime player installed to see it. Enjoy!
By the way... the ropes on her door are there because she used a homemade lever to pry the bars out. I wrote up that story here: Smart bird uses a lever.
oothless by two Avynn has lost two teeth now. The tooth fairy is very confused, though, because both teeth are AWOL, having been swallowed at lunch! We will need to write the tooth fairy a good note explaining the situation so she can go ahead and pay Avynn a visit.
irst T-Ball Practice Avynn went to his first T-Ball practice yesterday. Being that his father (me) has no athletic skills whatsoever, the poor kid was fairly clueless. That's ok, though - the point is to have fun, and he did have fun. Obviously I will need to practice catching with him. He did smack the ball off the tee a couple of times and that was pretty cool, and he did actually catch the ball about 3 or 4 times out of about 20-30 tries. :D I'm sure after a few practices he'll be about as good as the other kids.
The important thing for me is that he can't say "I didn't get to do ANYTHING fun all weekend long!"
n Mourning Today has been a truly sad day for me. I lost one of my best friends that I've had the pleasure of having in my life for almost 16 years: my pet cockatiel Marty. I have written a memorial to him. He was my sweetheart and very special to me. I miss him.
omments done and new themes To get my mind off recent events, I have been working on this site a good bit. The comments entry pages should be working now as I expected them to, so drop us a line if!
I also added two new themes and revamped another. Check out Golden Flowers and Crazy Lights, the new themes, and the new version of Wildflowers. Since yellow and orange are my least favorite colors, I was suprised at myself that I enjoyed making the Golden Flowers theme, but the picture of those flowers in the field from the Desert Botanical Garden just kept calling to me. I like the way it turned out.
omments Lindsay has coded us a comments thingy! It's not quite finished, but check it out - it's cool. Leave us a comment and let us know you're out there!
nough rain already! We were planning to get out today and do something outdoors... We figured that this weekend would be perfect for seeing all the wildflowers and green that the recent weeks of rain have brought. Of course, it would have to rain today too! Even after living here for more than 3 years, I haven't caught the fascination with rain that everyone else seems to have. Tad is usually spellbound with it, however, but he declared today that he'd had his fill of rain for a while.
We decided to drive over to Fountain Hills for lunch just for the heck of it anyway when the rain seemed like it might clear up a little bit. I caught a few pictures of the lush (by desert standards) green hills close to PeiWei where we ate just before it started pouring again. As much as I'm disintrested in the rain, the green does make me stare at my normally bland surroundings with some genuine wonder. I suppose that's my indication that I'm really Arizonan now: as Tad pointed out, when we moved here, all I could see were the massive amounts of brown, and now, all I notice is any little spot of green.
TADSpot, my blog is now up and running. I'm sure that we'll add new stuff to it as we go, but it's reasonably complete now and functional. Go check it out!
ust what we don't need We heard on CNN this morning that someone has given a tip that the biggest nuclear power plant near here is a possible terrorism target, so now this war is a personal threat to our family. This is exactly the kind of thing that I have been dreading, and, unfortunately, expecting.
Everyone cross your fingers and hope that this is all over soon and civilians on both sides are spared. And of course, the troops too, though at least they are mentally prepared for violence, unlike the rest of us.
Avynn had his first T-Ball game yesterday and it was truly entertaining. All the kids did well, and there were several good plays on both teams. The funniest, however, was a kid that hit the ball so well it went way into the right outfield... By the time the outfielder retrieved and threw the ball, the batter was halfway to second base... The ball landed right on the batter's head before bouncing off and landing close to the pitcher. Fortunately, the batter had on a helmet!! Not sure if he even noticed the ball, but he made it to second safely.
Avynn was introduced as Avynn "Mr. Activity" Donaghe: aptly nicknamed since most of the time, you could tell who he was out on the field by looking for the kid who just couldn't stand still. He made 3 "runs" in the game and actually caught a few when he was fielding. Yay, Cubbies!
Here's a few pictures of the events (Click for larger images):
