Abulsme.com: Sam

Santa Train 2013

As we did last year, we booked tickets for Alex and the family to the Santa Express run by the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad.

So we all hopped into the car on Monday afternoon and headed out to foothills of Mount Rainier…

Alex and Amy were ready to go…

This was going to be our engine…

And this was the train…

Then we watched the engine couple up to the train… or “buckle up” as Alex and I sometimes say…

As we got on, I noticed there was a second engine at the other end of the train, so right after we got on I headed to that end to get a quick picture…

G’ma Ruth and Alex got settled in at a table.

Amy put on her practiced sullen face.

I ate my popcorn.

(Picture taken by my mom)

Soon the train started, and Alex watched out the window intently while perched on my lap.

(Picture taken by my mom)

Only a few minutes later though, the conductor told us it was our turn for Santa…

And unlike last time, when I unfortunately his stop on the video right before Alex started to talk to Santa, this time I actually did get the whole thing on video…

Unfortunately, unlike last time, it was much noisier, and it was impossible to hear what Alex said to Santa. (Although, Santa said that Alex said “trains”, which of course would be what he would say.) Also of course, it wasn’t his first time with Santa, and it wasn’t nearly as cute. So I am still very sad about stopping the video early last year.

But we quickly moved on.

Through dirty windows we saw some scenery…

Last year, we had power outages and never got to the “destination” of the trip. This time we got to the end, which was a little train museum. We got out to look at some of the stuff…

(Picture taken by my mom)

We saw the engine that had pulled the train last year.

And a diesel engine with caboose.

And another old steam engine.

(Picture taken by Brandy)

We could have hopped inside that engine, but Alex just wanted to look through the window.

There were some old tanker cars too.

And a repair shed.

At that point, we went back into the train…

(Picture taken by my mom)

Right around then, we realized we had lost Brandy! We had no idea where she had gone. One minute she was with us, then the next she was not. We’d hoped she would be waiting for us at our seats, but she was not. For what seemed like hours, but was really only a few minutes, we sat there and wondered where in the world Brandy had gotten to.

As we sat in our seats Alex said, “I think Mommy will be lost FOREVER.”

But, of course, a few minutes before the train was due to head back, Brandy showed up at our seats.

As the train started heading back toward the station, like last time, Alex and I (and Grandma Ruth too this time) went to find one of the spaces at the ends of the cars where there was a waist high door with an open area above so that you could look out without dirty old glass in the way of the view.

Of course, by this time it was dark…

(Picture taken by my mom)

We could see the stuff right by the side of the tracks because of the lights from the train, and it was exciting when we passed level crossings. But of course I wasn’t going to be able to get any good pictures of that with very low light and everything going by quickly.

But Alex and I stayed, with me holding him up so he could see out, for the whole ride back to the station.

(Picture taken by my mom)

And then it was over. We headed back to the car for the two hour drive home, with only a quick break for dinner at an Indian restaurant on the way.

It was a fun time, although very different than last time. Will it become a tradition? Talk to us again next year. :-)

A Man and his Duck

Amy caught me napping the other day, and took this picture… On MY phone. I just found it today!

Backstory: Alex wanted me to watch him play with some stuff he had set up in the hallway, but I told him I was tired. So he got a cushion from a Poang and laid it out on the floor for me to lie down on. And he gave me his duck. I apparently fell asleep in the middle of the hallway with the duck. Amy found me and took the picture. I woke up an hour or two later and moved to the bed, completely unaware that a picture had been taken while I was asleep on the floor… With the duck.

Oops

So, last evening as I do many times each week, I made sure Alex was hanging on to my iPad (which he had been using, as he often does) and I unstrapped him and pulled him out of my car. I completely forgot that the iPad had been low on batteries, so I’d plugged it in. So when I pulled Alex out of the car, since the iPad was plugged in, and iPads don’t have MagSafe like Apple laptops do, the iPad was basically violently yanked out of his hands. From there it of course went flying in a nice arc constrained by the cord, smashed against the side of the car, then onto the asphalt parking lot face down. Alex looked shocked. I said “Oh no!”. Then when I picked it up, of course the whole front face was shattered.

I told Alex it was completely my fault (it was) and that I was very sorry, but it was broken. He immediately started bawling inconsolably. For the next 15 minutes or so. It is “my” iPad, but he uses it all the time and loves it. I told him we would take it in right away and get it fixed or replaced. He was still inconsolable. He was worried that we might lose some of his games. Not just the games themselves, but the saved levels he has been accumulating. For the last month or so he has been carefully building new worlds and train arrangements in Trainz Simulator and saving dozens and dozens of them. I told him I would make sure everything was all backed up and that we wouldn’t lose anything.

Normally I would have been very upset myself about this, but he was so upset I didn’t have time to be upset for myself. So right now I’m going through the process of making sure I have triple redundant backups of the iPad (both on iCloud and a couple copies on my computer) so that Brandy can take it in to the Apple store later today, where it will get swapped out for a new one I am sure. Then when I get home from work I’ll do a restore from the encrypted local backup so that hopefully EVERYTHING will be restore to exactly the current state. (It is now on airplane mode to ensure nothing comes into it to change the state after the backup currently in progress.)

Thank goodness for AppleCare+. This is my second screen smashing incident in just under 12 months though, so I’ve used up my allowance after this time. Next time it gets smashed, the cost to deal with it will be just a TAD more.

Oops.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Just Sprayed All Over the Place

In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan talk about:

Ivan’s Day / Sam’s Night
Bitcoins Again
Christmas Shopping
Delivery Drones / Automated Everything

Recorded on 3 Dec 2013

Length this week – 1:15:33


1-Click Subscribe in iTunes	Download MP3 File
View Podcast in iTunes	View Raw XML Feed

Doctor Day is Here! #SaveTheDay

Excuse me while I geek out for the day.

Donaghy/Minter/Roney Halloween 2013

Alex had been insisting for weeks that he did NOT want to wear any costumes for Halloween, and he did NOT want to Trick or Treat. But we took his old Thomas costume from last year to school with him anyway, and right at the end of school, when I was picking him up, when a teacher asked he finally agreed to put on the costume, and was immediately happy with the positive comments he got.

But that was not the real event. When we got home, Alex went in to play with his trains, but Amy got to work decorating the house. (While I cleared away things that needed to be cleared away.) Amy made a little graveyard:

And I put out a handful of Halloweeny metal things:

And Amy finished up the porch:

But then was the main event…

On the 30th, when we were asking if he was sure he did not want to dress up, and if he was sure he would not want to trick or treat, Alex suddenly remembered something from many many months ago. It may have last been mentioned in the summer, but I’m pretty sure it originated last Halloween. Alex suddenly got very upset, because Mommy had said she would make a train out of his wagon, but she hadn’t done it.

So… that night, Brandy stayed up late with a bit of cardboard, tape, poster board and a utility light we had hanging around… and during the day picked up some appropriate clothes… and…

Alex had kept his reluctance to dress up or trick or treat until the first kids showed up at our door. Then he urgently wanted to get into the conductor’s outfit and get into his new train, and go out into the neighborhood. He was excited and thrilled.

Of course, he spent most of the time hunkered down and hiding a little:

The first few houses he absolutely refused to get out of the train. He had me ring the bells, then peeked out of the train when the people came out with candy. He got lots of complements on the train though, and eventually he worked up the courage to ring the bell himself.

After just a couple more houses though, and maybe a total of 20 minutes trick or treating, Alex was ready to go home. When we got there, it turned out Amy had added more light to our driveway to entice people in.

(Picture by Amy)

Amy had been giving out candy and glow sticks and rings that light up while dressed in her bunny suit:

Right about then, we suddenly had quite a line… more than you can see in this picture. Alex just wanted to sit in his train and watch them come and go.

I had forgotten to wear a costume up to this point, but this was a good time to grab one I’d found in the garage a few hours earlier. Alex fended me off with some of the candy he had acquired.

(Picture by Amy)

At some point Amy handed over candy distributer duties to Alex.

But he was getting chilly, so…

Alex would peek out when new people came by, while letting me distribute the goodies.

Meanwhile, he was in his train under the blanket gorging himself on candy.

It was a good Halloween.

Alex was very wired from all this of course. He was up for many hours. And very active. Finally, at about 1:30 AM, I got him to lie down with me in my office on his Thomas couch and watch a maneuver the Soyuz capsule was doing around the International Space station on NASA-TV. He likes learning about satellites and such, so he was enthralled… but 20 minutes or so of it finally did the trick…

Of course, then I stayed up to do this post. I need to be up in about four hours. Oops.

Hope everyone else had a good Halloween too! Goodnight! :-)

15340.172 Days

As of when this posts at 01:06 UTC on September 16th (6:06 PM on the 15th Pacific, 9:06 PM on the 15th Eastern) I will be exactly 42 years old. As usual, this takes into account leap days, the fact a year is a fractional number of days, etc.

Another year gone by. They seem to pass so quickly these days.

But hey, it is the answer to the question and all. So it should be a good year, right?

Visit with Cousin Holly & Andrew

I have a daughter! (Legally, Finally)

After a few moments of swearing to the fact that we all wanted the adoption to happen, and that I could be a good father, the judge signed the official documentation, and as of about an hour ago, after almost 10 years of it being the case de facto, Amy is now my daughter de jure as well.

I have a daughter! Yay!

Less Eventful 6th (UTC)

The day began with intense lego concentration:

Brandy played with Bananagrams:

Amy was more educational with the letter tiles:

Alex was still all about the Lego though:

Before leaving my office, we needed to take a mugshot:

Then we finally left the office and headed for the traditional trains. Alex saw the monorail:

But first we waited for the Seattle Streecar (previously known as the South Lake Union Trolley”):

Which was ridden with varying levels of interest:

We got off the train to look at a fountain:

If you look carefully, you’ll notice we left Alex’s backpack on the train.

Brandy called to make sure they knew it wasn’t a bomb. Then we made sure to catch the same train to go back, and retrieved the bag from the driver.

Then it was time to eat:

And monorail:

And running with sister at Seattle Center:

And there is the Space Needle!:

(Picture by Amy)

But eventually, kicking and screaming, it is time to start heading home:

One more monorail ride first of course:

And a trip to the bookstore:

Alex of course fell asleep on the car ride home. He almost made it. But not quite. Fell asleep and was sleep eating a rice crispy treat for awhile.

Then I put together my post about the 5th:

Later, once everyone was up again, Alex watched a portal walkthrough video while I got ready for my day:

A couple hours later he was still watching it. He had switched to the iPad, and hadn’t watched straight through, instead watching and re-watching parts he really liked. I’m not sure he has made it all the way through, but I know he has watched the ending a few times, and many of the parts in between. :-) He studies it very intently.

Finally, we headed out to the Apple store, because Amy’s phone had recently been acting up… and as she was getting ready to go to the Apple store for her genius appointment, she dropped the phone magnificently, and smashed its front, back and sides as bad as any smashed iPhone I’ve ever seen in person. So any chance of getting it replaced under warrantee because it was just acting odd went out the window. :-)

Anyway, on the way there, Alex fell asleep in the car…

And thus I spent the last couple hours of the 6th (and another hour or so of the 7th) sitting in the car with a sleeping Alex while Brandy and Amy took care of Amy’s phone and a few other things. Can’t say I was totally thrilled by this time in the car. But I did listen to a few podcasts and read a bit of my twitter and news feeds, so I guess that was OK.

Anyway, thus ended our two days of holiday fun.

Site Controls

Categories

Calendar

Search New Archive

AbulWiki

Other Stuff

Santa Train 2013

A Man and his Duck

Oops

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Just Sprayed All Over the Place

Doctor Day is Here! #SaveTheDay

Donaghy/Minter/Roney Halloween 2013

15340.172 Days

Visit with Cousin Holly & Andrew

I have a daughter! (Legally, Finally)

Less Eventful 6th (UTC)

Twitter Archives

Archives

Site Controls

Categories

Calendar

Search New Archive

AbulWiki

Other Stuff

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Twitter Archives

Archives