Distractions

I've been a bit distracted from writing, lately.  The little bundle of joy in my daughter's arms has obviously taken a lot of time and energy.  And the other two haven't helped with that, either.

Worth it, for sure, but it ain't easy.

Duck!

I was recently introduced to the photography-centric webcomic, What the Duck.  I'm currently working my way backwards through the strip archives, and can't believe I didn't know about it before.  Despite being a weekly (well, now it is; it was a daily at one point), it has over 1400 strips, so it's been going for a while.

I must admit, it has me even more pessimistic about being able to make money from photography, but it is pretty funny.  But this strip I found especially funny.  Not because I've ever shown my kids a phone that old before, but because they (my son, especially, who's two) will pick up basically anything camera-ish-sized, hold it in front of their face, and say, "Say 'Cheese'".

(My one complaint about the strip, btw, is that there are no forward- or backward-navigation buttons through the archive.  Very annoying.  And the calendar widget for selection allows clicking on any day, not just a day with a strip.)

Switch to Z

I'm a little behind on my comics reading, and just got to this one.  Having two kids, and a third on the way, it just killed me.  Doonesbury doesn't often have me laughing out loud (laughing in pain at how incisive the sarcasm is is far more common), but this one did.  And the one before it was actually quite touching, as well.

Not-so-tiny wings

We took the kids, last weekend, to the Delaplane Strawberry Festival, which was a lot of fun.  We got to try stilts, took a hay-ride, the kids rode ponies, we saw blacksmiths, saw some farm animals, and ate some good food.

But the highlight of the day for me, was that the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia was there with a hawk (see above), a mixed-breed falcon, a barn owl, and a kestrel.  I hadn't brought lenses in anticipation of this; I'd brought a mid-range zoom and my macro lens.  Happily, my macro is a 150mm, so that did a pretty good job with the birds (not perfect, because it didn't focus as fast as I would have liked, but not bad), taking all the pictures linked (I was particularly happy with the kestrel shots).

As something unexpected, this was very cool.  I wish I'd had a 300mm f/2.8 lens, though.  Those are amazing lenses, and would have been very good for this, I think (a little closer, a little sharper, and blazingly fast focus).  The only concern would be that the ropes around the birds might have gotten in the way with the longer lens.  Maybe I can arrange it another time; need to find out where else the conservancy will be appearing.

Anyway, we had a great time at the festival.  It would have been nice if we could have gone Saturday, instead of Sunday, as they supposedly had antique cars that day, but that wasn't a big deal.

We hear he is a whiz of a wiz...

A friend asked if we wanted to go to the Wizards game tonight; we were in a group with lots of kids, and the older kids got to go down to the court and high-five the wizards as they returned from halftime (this is the best picture I have of her; a security guy was standing between us when the players were going through, and I couldn't move).

I can't say as I was exactly riveted by the game; it was very sloppy on both sides.  But the kids had a really good time, and the Wiz won, so it wasn't a total waste.  And it was a very close game; the biggest lead I noticed, by either side, was seven points.

The only downer was that Bradley Beal hurt himself, and had to be carried off the court.  Unfortunately, I didn't see what happened in the play, and they refused to show a replay (not sure why; everything stopped for a couple of minutes, and the scoreboard screen wasn't even showing anything).

Oh, and the sound effects were too loud a few times; my daughter did get upset at that.  And at the fire that shot up at the very beginning.

Despite that, we had a good time.

Update: It appears that Beal's injury was just a sprained ankle.  Glad to hear it wasn't something more serious.

Back from Travel

My wife and I had a wedding to go to in upstate New York over the weekend, so we made a week-long trip of it, and visited a whole lot of out-of-town friends we hadn't seen in a while.

One we met at Sesame Place, a Sesame Street-themed park near Philadelphia.

It was a lot of fun, and seeing everybody was really great. Some of them, we hadn't even met all of their kids before. As I said, all around cool.

It was a whole lot different traveling with two kids. There really wasn't any time to rest after they were in bed, even. In fact, we got to the friend's place in Manhattan, and I noticed a couple of movies that looked good. Two nights, two movies, right? We didn't get the kids to bed before 10:30; already too late to watch a movie. Oy.

And I can see why I've heard horror stories of cross-country trips by car, with the whole family. The driving itself wasn't that bad for us (we really didn't drive all that long, until the straight-through 500-550 on the way back, yesterday. One of our kids is still pre-vocal, so that cut down on the noise (he mostly slept), so at least we didn't have the "are we there yet?" every five minutes. But we still were unable to make a quick stop anywhere. We stopped four times on the way back, and the shortest of them was 20-30 minutes. Two of them were well over an hour each. Even though we made great time while we were moving, it was still a very long day. I shudder to think how it would have been if we had been less lucky with traffic.

Oh, and the wedding was beautiful; very hot, but beautiful. It was right on the shore of an island on Lake George, so the setting was fantastic.

Now to try to get back to normal life...