It's Picture Day

On the way to school this morning, I was advising Lily and Jack to put on normal smiles for their pictures, instead of trying to make themselves look like they’d stuck an umbrella into their mouths and opened it.

“I’ll tell you what,” says I. “When they tell you to smile, just think of one of your favorite things.”

“I’m thinking of my favorite thing right now,” Lily said, with a perfectly angelic smile crossing her face. “I’m thinking about puppies.”

“That’s perfect!” I responded, and then asked Jack, “What favorite thing are you going to think about?”

He thought for a moment, and then put on a smile that matched Lily’s in both style and context.

“Aliens,” he said.

Sometimes "Best in the World" Means Just That

Voyage, Holiday World’s mammoth wooden roller coaster, has just earned praise from Amusement Today magazine as “Best Wooden Coaster on The Planet.” After so much exposure to all the bunk about other claims (“Best [fill in any seemingly unimpressive item here] in The World!!”), it’s truly refreshing when something gets recognized for actually having achieved the designation.

Of course, we could debate on the authority of the organization bestowing such award, but for this category, for this particular award, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Holiday World won four Golden Ticket Awards, which are considered the Academy Awards for the amusement park industry. Aside from Voyage, Holiday World was recognized as the Friendliest Park, Cleanest Park, and for having the Best New Water Slide.

[See video of Voyage’s wild ride]

Back to School, Back-out of Marriage

I read with some interest this morning that divorces gather steam as we head into September. According to this ABC News article, the phones at the offices of divorce lawyers begin ringing off the hook in September. The kids are back in school, summer vacations are over, and for many, it’s a trip “back to reality.”

Ok, so statistics are statistics, and they don’t lie. (Though they can very, very often be made to say nearly anything you want. Consider any headline you see that says something like “18% of people believe X”, which also means that the other 82% believe something else.) While the trend is certainly disturbing, even more so (at least to me) was the cavalier attitude of the article. Consider the following direct quotes:

For wealthier families in which one spouse may spend time in a summer home while the other works, the summer can provide a needed respite — and opportunities for what lawyers delicately call “extracurricular activities.”

“People think the rules don’t apply” in the sultry summer months, Hoge said, “but it’s all over when school starts.”

“Extracurricular activities”? The “rules don’t apply in sultry summer months”? Gosh, kinda makes you wonder why these marriages might be in trouble in the first place…

[Read It’s Labor Day, I Want a Divorce]
[Send flowers to your spouse]

Parents of the Year

As you may know, I’m often hard on people for the way that they take care of their kids (or don’t as the case may be.) Normally, these stories involve feeding the kids paste and garbage or locking them in cages, things like that. Today, however, the story is a little different and it’s about… me.

Last Monday, Grace fell down on the front steps. After the initial bout of crying and my advisement to “rub some dirt on it!”, the crying subsided and she seemed fine. That night, however, she didn’t sleep very well. I ended up bringing her upstairs, where she lay next to me, laughing and messing with my ears. After an hour or so it was back to her own room.

The next morning, she complained that her arm hurt. I told her this sometimes happens in the morning when your arm is asleep. She rubbed some dirt on it and was fine. That night, she slept fitfully again. (The mystery deepens!)

The next morning, as she began to climb into her chair for breakfast, she complained that her arm hurt. We (finally) took 30 seconds to look closely at it…

“Hmmm… minor swelling, slightly bruised, tender to touch… what could it be? Crap! Her arm is broken!”

Four hours, three X-rays and two doctor’s offices later, the diagnosis was confirmed and she came home with a pretty pink cast.

That night, I withdrew our application for Parents of the Year.

Chupacabra found in South Texas?

Someone call Fox and Mulder. Phylis Canion, a rancher in South Texas, has a body in her freezer, and it’s the body of a bloodsucker. “[It] opened [the cage] reached in pulled the chicken head out, sucked all the blood out, left the chicken in the cage,” she said.

She thinks the body she has is an example of the elusive, possibly mythical, chupacabra (which means, literally, “goat sucker” in Spanish.) These animals have been spotted several times over the years, and even more often in recent days around this small Texas town. Some experts think this particular animal is a mangy grey fox. For her part, Canion isn’t convinced. She’s sent the specimen off to the University of Texas where DNA tests are currently underway.

New, mysterious, blood-sucking species? Or just a sick fox?

[See the story from KENS-TV]
[Read about the Chupacabra on Wikipedia]
[Read about another, similar find from Elmendorf, Texas]