What the spaceport??? Fresh off the heels of a dramatic reunion, the newest member of the gang has been seriously wounded! This crew just can’t catch a break. Did Buzz make another attempt to fly again just like in Toy Story? We’ll never know – the sole witness to the incident can only say four words (Dada, cookie, balloon, and NO!), so getting to the bottom of this one is highly unlikely.
No time to waste! It’s off to see Old Wise One, master healer…
Well, it’s been one week since I started my Knits for Nerds: Doctor Who scarf knitting project. According to my estimates, it is 18% complete. Here’s what I learned thus far:
So far, so good. No major mistakes or hangups. My daughter likes to click the clicker for me, which is really cute, but now I have to watch she doesn’t run off with it. She wants to knit, too, but I told her she’s still too young. Really, I just don’t want to get schooled by a four-year old. Of course, I do want to include her as much as possible, so instead we picked out three colors of yarn to make a friendship bracelet. After some instruction from daddy, she made me proud by weaving the rest of it herself. I thought she would lose interest, but she could see it coming together and became excited.
My wife and I were shopping for Christmas presents for our kids when we came across the only completely vacant shelf in an otherwise well stocked store. The empty space was for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) toys, and they were completely wiped out! I knew the Ninja Turtles were making a comeback with a brand new cartoon series, but I had no idea that they had already become so popular. Turtle power is back!
The TMNT toy line was the only franchise for which I absolutely had to have every single action figure that was available. Yes, I fully admit, l still played with them when I think other kids my age had probably moved on to bigger and better things, however, I played Ninja Turtles like a boss!
I put my toys through the mill doing all sorts of nutty things with them, but there was one brilliant moment in particular that stands out. I had discovered that if I jammed a yardstick into the hinge behind the lid of our old top-loading washer, it tripped the switch that allowed the washer to run with the lid wide open. From that point on, my turtle antics were launched into epic new territory. Mikey, Donny, Leo, and Raph now had an interactive setting for their adventures. One day they would be trapped by Shredder in a liquid deathtrap seething with bubbly toxic foam (green food coloring and Tide), and the next day they would do battle with the foot clan while surfing the raging white water rapids. Of course, being amphibious, the boys in green always had the advantage.
When the normal wash cycles got monotonous, I could up the ante by manipulating the washer dial to create instant waterfalls and other special effects. The scene would inevitably crescendo to a dramatic finish as I deviously rotated the dial to spin cycle, upon which the green gang would be introduced to the swirling vortex of death!
Obviously, for safety reasons, it’s for the best that my son can’t use our own energy-efficient, side loading washer, complete with child locks, to play like I did in our old family washer. But I do hope he has the same creative spirit as I did at that age, before the lure of digital toys, when you had no choice but to be imaginative in play.
On the way out of the toy store, my wife asked me, ” What makes you think our son will even like Ninja Turtles?” And to that, I say, show me a boy (or Dad) who doesn’t! Cowabunga, dude!
Just a dancing ostrich recorded on a family trip to a local wildlife park. I think he liked us.
The other day I was pulling out some christmas decorations in the basement, and when I leaned on an old lamp, the base of it just completely broke apart and I nearly went headlong over it. Don’t worry, I escaped unscathed and live to tell the story. I was about to take it out to the trash when I realized I may be able to salvage some parts. I’ve been wanting to build my kids homemade robots for some time now, but I never seem to have enough materials lying around to work with. Even though the lamp is a good start, I’m still going to need a lot more parts, so I’m dedicating a box in the basement for random robot parts, and whenever I come across something I think may be useful, I’ll just toss in the box. Hopefully, I’ll look in that box someday after amassing enough random roboty junk, and I’ll be struck with inspiration to build the perfect robots for my kids. Better than Wall-E and Number 5! (Notice that I set the bar much lower than R2D2 and 3CPO, ’cause they’re the best!)
We stopped in to see Santa during his visit at the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) museum in Hershey. He ditched his usual sleigh for the day. Check out his new ride:
My kids must have sensed something was off when Santa arrived in an old convertible, without Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer gang, because today neither of them would sit on his lap, and usually they fight over who gets to go first.
It was my first time in the AACA museum, and unfortunately, with all the hubbub around Santa, I ended up having to rush through all of the exhibits. I’ll definitely be going back to more throughly explore the entire museum. If nothing else, I need to get another look at the 1920 Ford Model A “Car-Toon” Truck. The entire car is detailed with thousands of cartoons, comic book characters, and movie personalities, using brush and airbrush techniques. It’s fun and quite amazing to stare at it for a few moments and then begin to focus in on all of the dozens of characters. I only had a minute to see it, although I could easily have spent an hour or so soaking it all in.
Click here to find more images of the Car-Toon truck. What famous personalities or fictional characters can you spot? Go ahead and list them in the comments. I call Spock!
Bonus question: What is the make of Santa’s car?
He’s arrived! Mr. Fox’s long and treacherous journey across the U.S. has come to an end, and now the old gang is together once again. May the adventures begin!
This is my first update on my Doctor Who scarf project. It turns out that you can’t just sit down for the very first time and expect to start knitting. I’m not sure who gave me that idea, but whoever it was, they were grossly misinformed. Like most things, there is a learning curve involved. You have to practice first and acquire an adequate base skill level, figuring out what works, making mistakes, fixing mistakes, all while struggling to develop a natural rhythm and the necessary muscle memory. I learned this lesson right off the bat.
First attempt – Lumpy Space Princess?
That being said, I am currently a knitter in training, working on my craft with intensity whenever I can grab a few spare minutes. You could equate such training to Rocky Balboa prepping for his mammoth fight against Ivan Drago, except that I am actually Russian…so, flip it. Never mind, it was a bad analogy anyway.
I started on size 10.5 needles and after a few failed attempts, I actually started to become fairly comfortable.
See, getting much better!
I just moved to the suggested size 8 needles as indicated in the book.
Size 8. That hole is intentional. It serves to anchor the piece.
I’d like to actually start knitting by December 1st, a nice and neat date. I’ll need a little more practice with the size 8 chopsticks (sounds better than needles, eh?), then I’ll need to figure out how in the world to change colors on the fly. Yikes, better get back to training…
My wife and I don’t spend too much on Christmas decorations since we’ve already inherited a ton of stuff from our families. One thing that neither of us had, however, was a real advent calendar that our kids could grow up with. We finally bit the bullet and invested in an extremely nice wooden one from Byers’ Choice (the “Christmas House” model). The artwork is gorgeous and it has many compartments of varying size to conceal candy or other tiny treasures.
As a child, I inadvertently sabotaged my own Advent calendar tradition. The chocolates in those cheap cardboard calendars that my parents bought every year weren’t individually wrapped, so by mid-December, they too tasted like cheap cardboard. That’s all good if you actually like your chocolate to have notes of cotton and chalk while maintaining the texture of old sawdust, but I was a tad picky. In an effort to work the system, I adapted to the situation I was given by gorging myself on the entire calendar on the very first day it was presented to me…and that was the demise of yet another family tradition. My new calendar, however, has a failsafe – I actually control the contents! “Look kids, Snickers bars, hoorah!” Or, “What? You don’t want to brush your teeth tonight? That’s ok honey bear. Now, let’s see what’s behind door number four. Oh my, a sample size bar of wild orchid scented soap!”
Even though I’ve seen some really cool new advent calendars on the market (Lego has some sweet ones – why didn’t they make them when I was a kid?), I am quite happy with our one-time investment of a family keepsake, and I fully welcome the challenge of finding fun candy and gifts to fill it with. Although, it’s not too late to snatch up one of those Lego Star Wars Advent calendars all for myself.
I’d love to hear any advent calendar anecdotes of your own!
While shopping the other day, my wife and I allowed each of our kids to choose an ornament for our Christmas tree. Today, after a grueling haul up from the basement and a few choice words getting it all together and lit, the kids finally got to hang their ornaments on the tree. My son had chosen a Buzz Lightyear, a solid pick, while my daughter chose a Cinderella shoe. Yep, a shoe. Well, a slipper actually. I desperately tried to steer her towards a nice My Little Pony but she wouldn’t budge. She truly does not comprehend the gravity of making such a selection.
You see, when I was growing up, decorating the Christmas tree signaled the beginning of a fantastic but fleeting season of adventure with some of my favorite friends. I didn’t have many toys growing up, but fortunately, my grandmother was a sucker for collectibles, and each year she would send us several Hallmark ornaments. Some of these ornaments would provide me with my main source of entertainment between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Please remember that I was an only child, so I had to amuse myself one way or another. My favorite two ornaments (toys) were Mr. Fox and Kermit the Frog, and both were on skis. We went on all sorts of adventures together; Foiling train heists, skiing the deadliest of slopes, and rescuing damsels in distress was all in a days work for this dynamic duo. Somewhere along the line though, Mr. Fox was lost, never to be found again. Initially it was a crushing blow, but as I grew older, I eventually lost interest in toys anyway, just like Andy did in Toy Story 3.
Anyway, once the kids were all tucked in bed, I mused on the idea of what their Christmas tree memories would look like. My son has already broken in Buzz, so I’m certain that Mr. Lightyear will be accepted into the sacred brotherhood of ornaments, amidst the likes of Kermit and Old Wise One (my dad’s favorite childhood ornament, passed down first to me, and now to my own kids), to set out on new adventures.
Old Wise One
Then, just as I do every year, I thought about that original team-up of Mr. Fox and Kermit, and how they did everything together, much like Buzz and Woody. At that moment, after all these years, I sat myself down at the computer and Googled “Hallmark 1980s Skiing Fox,” and within a second there he was! Just a few minutes later I had purchased a 1983 Hallmark Skiing Fox ornament on eBay, almost assuredly for less than what my Grandma paid in 1983. THIS is why the internet is amazing! A Christmas miracle has transpired! Now, for the first time in twenty-some years, the old gang will be together again, this time with a new recruit: The one and only Buzz Lightyear, space ranger. And, let us not forget, a Cinderella shoe.
Secret Dad Society 