Some Blog Site

In my hobby of conjugating non-verbs, I came across the word “browser”. I thought it would be a fun example because I could use various internet browser logos.

So here is my submission for the various forms of the word “browse”: browse, browser, and browsest.

I know, “browsest” isn’t a word, and that’s not how words are conjugated anyway. And there was no ranking criteria either. I would have liked to use the Safari logo, but there were only three forms of the word, so I had to limit it to three browsers. For the internetally-challenged: the logos are Google Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

Continuation of a previous post

Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Hotel

Day 5 began with breakfast in the hotel lobby. My parents took the kids down to breakfast so that my wife and I could sleep longer, which was very nice. Beta stayed in my parents’ room overnight, but Alpha was in our room. Since the rooms were adjoining and since we had to get the baby up and give him to them, we couldn’t really sleep. So we joined them all in the breakfast room.

After breakfast, we were trying to finalize the day’s plans. I showed Alpha and Beta the tourist-brochure stand, with about a hundred different pamphlets about things to do in the area. They both wanted almost all of them, so I had to set a limit on how many they could take. But that kept them occupied in the car.

Museum

Our first, and main, stop for the day was the Museum of Science and Industry. The drive into Chicago from Schaumburg took a bit, maybe an hour or so. Construction was bad in some spots, but it was alright. We drove right to the museum and parked in their underground lot.

The museum is large. I was impressed by the size of the areas, since they have whole airplanes suspended from their ceiling. That was in the industry section.

The science section was equally large. They had a tornado generator that took up most of the height of the room. And they had a Van de Graaf generator to produce huge sparks of lightning. That was suspended way up high, probably so that no one gets electrocuted. It was very noisy, to the point of hurting my ears (which isn’t too hard to do, despite my children’s attempts to deafen me).

And just when I thought the industry and science rooms were large, we visited the U-505 exhibit. A whole submarine was in that room. They had the sub and a bunch of exhibits about WW-II in general, the US effort to capture a German sub, and various aspects about submarine life. The U-505 alone was worth the price of admission. I think the museum knows that, because they charge extra for it.

One of the interesting exhibits was the life-size model of the sub’s kitchen. At first, I thought it was a scale model of the kitchen. But no, it was really that small.

Park

After paying for the parking at the museum and leaving, we drove to the park a couple miles away and parked in the underground garage. Paying for parking seems to be one of the necessary evils of being in Chicago.

It was a hot and foggy day:

We wandered around for a little while, going along a nice little riverwalk/scenic gardens. We went past the amphitheater thingy and found the silver/mirrored giant jellybean. The kids liked looking at that for about two minutes, then they wandered aimlessly while we adults took pictures and stuff. We headed over to the picture fountains, which the kids liked much more than the jellybean, probably because it changed and it involved water. But we were not prepared to let the kids get wet, so we moved on to try to find Buckingham Fountain because it was supposed to be scenic.

We never did make it to the fountain. We went a block or so, then decided that it was too hot and too late in the day and we should just go to dinner. So we payed for parking and left Chicago to go to dinner in Schaumburg.

It took slightly over two hours to drive the 38 miles. Thankfully, most everyone (except for me and Alpha) took a nap on the drive. I say thankfully because that meant the kids weren’t fussing because it took so long. I was not thankful that I didn’t get to take a nap. It wouldn’t have been too bad except for construction on I-290.

Dinner at Rainforest Cafe was a relaxing way to end the day because there were plenty of things to occupy the kids while we waited for our food. Then we had a short drive back to the hotel for bed.

Stay tuned for Day 6, the dramatic finale of our May Break trip recap.

Here are some things said in conversation with Beta recently:

Compound Words

It is fun when kids transpose the parts of compound words. The other one that I have heard is “rollersteam“.

And if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have to go hide my toothbrush.

Half a Conversation

And now we’ve come to the part of the show where I write only one side of the conversation and you must imagine the other side of the conversation as well as the circumstances:

Beta likes to hug Gamma more than Gamma likes to be hugged. I sensed that Gamma was getting frustrated and I tried to rescue him. I forget exactly what Beta said, but he did use the phrase “baby tug-of-war“.

TV Shows

Don’t you just love Beta’s child-like faith? God is in control of everything.

My wife answered that people chose the shows’ times – a little appetizer for the youngster on the free-will/sovereignty discussion perhaps. How much freedom does God give man? Does man really get to choose things in this life? Maybe these people just think that they picked the show times. What about unbelievers who disobey God – does that mean they are thwarting God’s plans? Such heavy topics for a 4-year-old…

My answer would have been “Because God knows that kids should be in bed at night and should not be watching TV.” But that’s with the luxury of hindsight – I don’t know that I would have come up with that one on the spot.

Continuation of a previous post

Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Iargo Springs

There were some springs near the cabin, and we heard that we had to go see them on our trip. So one morning (it was good for us to get out of the cabin in the morning because our kids woke up around 7 or 8 but the teenagers (and some other adults) would sleep until 10 or 11 so we felt bad that we were being noisy and figured we might as well get out of the house and go see something interesting) we headed to the springs.

The first thing we saw when we got to Iargo Springs was a very nice view of the Au Sable river, into which the springs fed:

The next thing we noticed was the stairs going down to the springs and river. There were a lot of stairs, and at the bottom was a nice boardwalk. The boardwalk went in a lot of directions, as there were a couple of springs and a lot of little creeks and waterways flowing from the springs to the main river. The boardwalk was mostly railingless, which was nice because the boys could hop off and explore whenever they wanted.

We went to the springs and the boys put their feet in the water. The main thing to know about spring water, other than it goes well into plastic bottles, is that it is extremely cold. It was a hot day, so the older boys enjoyed dipping their feet in the water, but not for very long. I tried it, and after about 30 seconds my feet were hurting; when I got out of the water the sensation was similar to the pins-and-needles feeling when my foot falls asleep. And when we put Gamma into the water so that he could enjoy the refreshing coolness, he started crying. We took him out. Don’t worry, the creeks were only ankle deep.

Alpha and Beta liked hiking alongside the boardwalk, seeing what branches they could find:

Gamma was more cautious, staying on the boardwalk. Although he did like to climb railings (in the few places where there were railings)

The nice thing about the springs is that there are a lot of trees so it stays cool. The bad thing about the springs is that it stays damp, so the mosquitoes like it there too. The other bad thing is that there are a lot of stairs. After the trip down the stairs, I wondered how many there were. So on the way back up (with Gamma on my back – now that’s a workout) I counted the stairs: 290 (give or take 10).

Conclusion

The rest of the trip included playing in the lake, watching a DVD or two (old-school cartoons mostly – 1950s-ish), and going to the local fireworks display on the 4th. Overall, it was a success.

Continuation of a previous post

Note: Most pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Now that you are familiar with our cabin, let me tell you about some of the things that happened on our trip.

Roasting Hot Dogs

One of the requirements when you go to a cabin is that you must have a fire pit or bonfire and you must roast hot dogs over that fire for at least one meal. We complied, and the kids picked up a new skill: not holding the roasting fork.

They learned that one from the older boys in the group. Laziness is the mother of invention, right? Okay, maybe it wasn’t laziness, since they were complaining that the fire was too hot. But what’s a campfire without something getting singed?

Now I know why the past tense of “sing” is “sang”.

Free Bat Picture

We went to a local monument thing that had a display about bats.

Yes, it is a picture of a free bat. It is also a free picture of a bat.

What makes it a free picture? There’s no copyright!

It does have a copywrite, but my sources say that “copywrite” is not a legal term and has no standing in the courts.

I was going to title this one “Spelling for Lawyers”, in tribute to the site Typography for Lawyers. But I doubt that lawyers wrote that sign. “Spelling for Signmakers” also wouldn’t work, because I doubt the signmaker designed the thing. And “Spelling for Whoever Designed the Sign” is too long for a title. So you got “Free Bat Picture” instead.

Local Hazards

My kids wore sandals (or equivalent footwear) most of the time. One afternoon though, Beta was playing on the deck barefoot.

My wife, to Beta: “What’s stuck to the bottom of your foot?”
Me, after poking the small gooey black glob: “It is sticky…looks like a piece of tar or something.”

Then the black glob moved.

Then I saw that it was alive.

Wife, to one of the older boys who was there: “Hey Andrew, what did you do with that leech you had earlier?”
Andrew: “We just flicked it off my leg. I don’t know where it went.”
Me: “I think we found it.”

We learned that leeches can survive on wooden decks for at least a half hour.

I don’t recall ever having seen a leech in real life. Movies, yes. Pictures, yes. Real life, now yes. I told Beta that a leech is just a bug that’s like a mosquito; he seemed satisfied with that explanation.

Alpha was interested in watching, and Beta had no choice in the matter, so the three of use watched the leech’s reaction as my wife poured salt on it. The leech was quite animated for a few seconds, then it stopped moving. It didn’t let go of Beta’s foot; I had to peel/pry it off still.

At least it didn’t bleed once it came off – unlike Andrew’s leg which kept bleeding and bleeding after he removed the leech without killing it first. And after I removed the leech, I tossed it into the shrubbery where people do not walk.

Alas, I was not a good blogger and did not run and get my camera to document the leech. So you do not get any photos of the leech. It was only as big as a three grains of rice (cooked), and the whole ordeal took about one minute (from discovery to being pronounced clean), so you’re not missing much.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of the Up North series, coming next week.

We interrupt the saga of our trip to Wisconsin/Chicago for the saga of our trip up north.

Click on a picture for a larger version.

For the 4th of July extended weekend, we travelled a few hours north to a cabin. A friend of ours invited us, and a few other people, to the family lakefront property. It is surrounded by a national forest, so there was no cell phone reception for me, nor was there any internet. And, although it had electricity and plumbing, it did not have air conditioning. No air, and it was in the 90s on the days we were there. And we slept in the upstairs bedrooms – where all the heat went when it rose.

We saw a few things while we were at the cabin:

a bald eagle, drifting through the sky (because he was on vacation too):

a sunset, over the lake (as they are meant to be):

and a squirrel, in the cabin (as they are not meant to be):

For those of you concerned for the squirrel’s welfare, considering that he is perched above an operating ceiling fan in this photo: you’re too late. No, the fan didn’t get him – something else did. I don’t know what exactly did him in, but he is taxidermied and that is his permanent pose on the ceiling of the cabin.

There’s also an owl perched on a rafter, several deer on the walls, a wolverine on a platform, and a jackelope on the wall. My main regret about the weekend is that I forgot to get a picture of the jackelope.

As I mentioned in the post about visiting the Lego store, we saw a 4-D movie.

Needing to attract tourists to visit, the Lego store had to do better than just a 3-D movie. Everyone has those nowadays. To stand above the crowd, you need to have more D than the other places. So the Lego store advertised their 4-D movie.

Being ignorant in the ways of movie technology, I (and the rest of the family) did not know what made the extra D until after we sat through the movie. It was, as you know if you read last week’s post, falling snow.

That got me thinking what the Ds actually are. I know it stands for Dimension, but what are the dimensions?

• A normal movie is considered 2-D, because the screen has width and height.
• A 3-D movie adds depth to the visual aspect.

So far all the Ds are limited to the sense of sight.

• A 4-D movie adds the sense of touch – falling snow, misting water, blowing wind, etc.

But if one of the five senses counts as a dimension, why hasn’t anyone counted sound? Back when movies went from silent to talkies, they should have marketed that as 3-D, right?

And then stereo sound should count as 2-D by itself. Add that 2-D to the visual 2-D and you should get 4-D.

• So what people today are calling 3-D movies are really 5-D.
• And the 4-D movies are 6-D.
• Add in another sense, like smell, and we’re up to 7-D movies.

So we’ve covered sight, hearing, touch, and smell.

• All that’s left is taste. If someone can figure that out, we get 8-D movies.
• But we have two nostrils, so in theory we should be able to get stereo smells. And that would take us to 9-D movies.

But wait! Sound isn’t just 2-D. That stereo stuff is old news (AKA olds). Kids these days have 3-D sound, which is best experienced with headphones. Hey, the theater gives you 3-D glasses, why not 3-D headphones?

• So upping the sound from 2-D to 3-D brings the total to 10-D.
• And, again in theory, if two eyes can observe 3-D sights and two ears can hear 3-D sounds, why can’t two nostrils smell 3-D scents? Woohoo! 11-D!

I am trying to think what a 3-D smell would smell like, but I am having a brainblock on that one. Maybe it’s the holiday weekend. If anyone figures that out, let me know please.

So, for you advertisers and marketers out there who are trying to promote your tourist attraction: your theoretical maximum for a movie is 11-D. I expect some race between competitors to get there.

Or maybe the razors will reach 11 blades first.