Goose the Blog 2.0

"Oh, ha! Sarcasm: The last refuge of sons of bitches!"

2/15/2009

no photos

by John at 2/15/2009 09:15:00 AM

After finishing a huge job at work, I was finally going to take some time and post photos of the kids. But it turns out we have only taken eight pictures since Christmas time and only three with kids. Each of these three has Elias in his underwear, so to save him from future embarrassment I'm not posting those. Instead, here are three of the non-kid pictures: They are photos of a beautiful Lego castle that Graham and I built one morning in January.

DSC_0140
DSC_0139
DSC_0138

Labels: ,

|

4/08/2008

to engineer is human

by John at 4/08/2008 07:19:00 PM

DSC_0014.JPG

This is interesting.

On my way to relax and watch a little TV while the boys played quietly, I saw Elias building a couple of towers out of his bricks and and then attaching the train tracks to the top.

A little while later, he came and asked me for help. I knew just what he wanted to do as he explained to me his plan for building an elevated railway, and I showed him how to put together all the pylons and connect the tracks in a circle. I ended up doing most of the work, actually, because he seemed to have a problem with making all the pylons the same height.

After trying out the train he'd built earlier (you can see the little "Daddies" - that's what he calls them - riding on the train cars), he told me he wanted to make a tunnel for it to go through, so I built that too and put it just where he wanted it.

Wendy thought it looked like the Disney World monorail, which it sort of does.

We were lucky with this in that Graham didn't destroy it right away. Graham always wants to play with whatever Elias is playing with, especially blocks or trains. He loves to stand up next to the train table and throw train cars around and rip up track like Godzilla, or push down and smash whatever Elias builds with his blocks. Elias starts out tolerating this, but get frustrated with Graham quickly: "Get this baby away from me!" if we are lucky, or a push followed by a screaming baby if we are not.

(Click through for more photos)

Labels: , , ,

|

7/19/2007

Action Family!1

by John at 7/19/2007 12:22:00 PM

The year is 2037. Rising sea levels, rapid global climate change, alien invasion, and an energy crisis have led to political and geographic chaos. A world in turmoil calls on the special talents of the few to ease the burdens of the many. But when the few are already busy solving the world's greatest problems, who do you ask to deal with life's petty annoyances?

Meet The B-Team. They may not be the best, but they're the best of the rest.


The Matriarch: Leader of the team, she has more smarts than the rest of the team combined
  • Wields the Power of Hypnosis
  • Always stays cool in a crisis
  • Once aspired to be a Famous Solver of Actuarial Puzzles
  • Whereabouts: B-Team HQ


Pappy: A half-crazy old coot with a short fuse and a knack for finding, and causing, trouble
  • Lost his left hand in a home improvement accident
  • Excels at creative problem solving
  • Can correctly identify poison ivy seven out of ten times
  • Whereabouts: Flame weeding in the backyard


E-chirou: Number one son, a modern day samurai in a world without honor
  • Follows Budo, the path of war
  • Proficient with the daisho, talwar, and cutlass
  • Master of four styles of Monkey Kung Fu: Drunken, Crafty, Stone, and Dropping
  • Whereabouts: Unknown


Major G: Number two son, the greatest North American civilian test pilot in history
  • Weapon of choice is the PP-40W Phased Plasma Assault Cannon
  • Astounding reflexes and manual dexterity
  • Holds advanced degrees in Esperanto and tokamak engineering
  • Whereabouts: Undercover as Assistant (to the) Sanitation Engineer on Lunar L5 Colony.
When all your starting players are sidelined, you call in The B-Team.

The previous characters are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

-----

1. The first three members of the Action Family!2 were created at the LEGO Imagination Center at Downtown Disney in Disney World. For ten dollars, you could create three Lego minifigs from a limited assortment of parts, and put them in a clever plastic holder to wear around your neck. The final member, Major G, was added a few months later from unused Lego parts at B-Team headquarters.

2. The name Action Family! is blatantly stolen from the Chris Elliott comedy, "Action Family," made in 1987 for Cinemax.

Labels: ,

|