Viv discovered my longboard today. My buddy Scott and I used to tear all around Seattle on these things. Big hills with good bars at the bottom along with excellent bus service make for great, though dangerous, skateboarding. Anyway, Viv is already showing a superior aptitude for it.



Warming up.


She needs to get that left foot a bit more forward. The right foot looks more or less ok, but I'd recommend having it perpendicular to the board since it looks like she's planning on diving into a hard right turn. We'll work on that. She also needs to get that torso twisted to line up with the lengthwise axis of the board to be able to lean into stuff. Not bad for a first try though.


This a pretty good demonstration of an advanced technique. At high speed she'd want to drop that right knee onto the board while kicking the right foot out to the back of the board. That way, when you go into a really hard, fast turn you can grab the nose of the board with your outside hand to pull up while using your inside hand to skim the ground (of course, she forgot her gloves in this shot).

News

Well, Alice, Viv and I have something new to report:



It looks like this one will be making an appearance sometime around June 9 of next year, if all goes well. Both mom and baby #2 are doing well. Also, we don't know if it's a boy or girl since I know somebody is going to ask. I tried to post the less sci-fi looking 2-d ultrasound as well, but was having problems with the blog handling the photo for some reasons.

Aquarium update

It turns out that setting up a healthy aquarium with live plants is a hell of a lot more work than one would expect. After getting a parasite introduced from some fish we got at Petco I had to spend the better part of a week medicating the tank and we lost the two Platys from Petco in the process. In case you can't tell, I'm not too hip on Petco at this point. At any rate, I've found a great little locally owned place and after some advice from the owner our aquatic pets seem to be doing quite well. We currently have two guppies, two black harlequin barbs, three platys and a plecostumus that are all happy and healthy. The two guppies are from the original group that broke in the tank for us and have since been named Tony Thunder and The Iguana in honor of their toughness. Viv seems quite delighted with the whole thing.


That's Tony Thunder (blue and red streaks in fins) and The Iguana (all yellow) near the top right in the tank.

Willful Viv

After putting her to bed tonight I walked by a few minutes later and found that she had stood up, turned her light on and was proceeding to happily play with toys in her crib.

Ball

video link

just click above to download the video

Thanksgiving

We had a big Thanksgiving spread at Moot and Tomio's today. The food was great but Viv was far more interested in exploring the backyard.

I had some video to upload with this blog, but it didn't come out correctly- I'll put up another post with it in a sec when I sort it out.

pictures

here's a handful of pictures from yesterday- I'll try and get some Thanksgiving pictures up later today

x-mas presents

I took the day off from the lab to work on one of Viv's x-mas presents. I'm putting together a sandbox for her, hopefully it'll be finished this weekend.

ok, ok

So, my dad called me up to complain about the lack of recent posts tonight (pics actually, he could give a rat's ass about my witty commentary). To appease him I've dumped a handful of pictures up to the page.

I'm still strongly considering putting in a full time linux server to handle the blog locally as well as giving everyone who has a login/password access to all of Viv's pics- currently around 5500+. If anyone is interested in this service the donation of an old pc (and a big hard drive) would be greatly appreciated :)

Sunday

Viv has been a bit rough on us this week sleepwise. We're not sure if she's teething or what, but it seems like she's been keeping us up about half the night lately. Here's a pic of one of those rare times when she's actually falling asleep.



We've also got a late fall crop of tomatoes coming in now that it's cooled off a bit.

2nd Mirliton Fest

We took Viv to her second Mirliton Fest in Bywater yesterday. She's just recently started to dance (or more accurately, bob) along to music.




This is Viv's favorite game of running like crazy until I catch her.

Grumble

I've been having a lot of problems getting pictures up to the server recently. I'm considering switching to a static i.p. and setting up a linux server with wordpress to handle the blog from here at home. It'll also let me give access to all of Viv's pics to everyone who has an account. Maybe I'll switch out around x-mas time.

Anyway, here's some Halloween pics and one of the aquarium.