We’ve been twice in the last week, which is surprising to me. But then again, it’s a large playground to them… It’s not like they are going to actually spoil the fun learning anything.

Part of the attraction of the Science museum for me was obviously trying to get the kids interested in Science. That actually wasn’t very difficult. William isn’t showing preferences.. It’s all good. Mary is 5, so therefore EVERYTHING must be answered. If we can get the scientific method involved there, we’ll be ahead of the game.

So, we went for the Winter wonderland exhibit… Which, frankly, was an artificial snow machine (soap suds). Joy. And a Planetarium movie on Ice Worlds.

Color me unimpressed.

MV and W, however, were thrilled. 2 hours later, as we were leaving that afternoon (New Years Eve), it was decided that we would come back.

That turned out to be Saturday. Quicker than anticipated.

At this point, Daddy is reeling from a Camera body that he’s been waiting months for…. and it doesn’t focus. At all. The motors don’t click, nada. Disappointing is not really the word. So we’re taking the old one (which, truth be told, is still a good body. It’s just not … ), because the only place I could get stock on this was from a shop out of New York that I’ve done business with before. So there wasn’t going to be any resolution to this problem this weekend.

I’ve decided to limit myself even more, using a single 50mm prime lens.

Good news, it’s cheap.

Better news, it’s fast, which helps since there isn’t any LIGHT in this place.

Best news, it’s sharp, light, and makes a camera package that I can weave around the center without worry.

The Center of the Adventure Science Museum is a multi-story tower filled with various activities. It’s actually one of my biggest gripes, because it simply hasn’t changed since we first went there several years ago. A refresh would not hurt it one bit.

The kids didn’t care, so long as they could climb to the top!

The other area that seems to be static in time is the Body Quest exhibit. For William, the slide out of the lower intestine, complete with bodily noises was the best ever…

Unless you count the Ambulance.

Mary, who apparently maintains that a flower in the hair is perfectly sanitary in an OR, was intent on surgery. With Ketchup as the main tool, obviously. Apply directly to the retina.

Scattered around the center are various activities, including the ever popular coin eating spiral of death! Every aquarium, museum, and shopping center was one of these, and we have to hit it each time. The Adventure Science center was no different.

Or was it?

Yes, they plugged the hole at the bottom, so you could repeat the coin rolls over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. With Sister’s help, William was quite enthusiastic to do exactly that.

The newest exhibits were relating to the Sudekum Planetarium. The Kids really enjoyed this. 2 liter air pressure Bottle rockets, planet displays, stars, and weightlessness displays were all fun.

If they would only let Mary do them.

She’s big enough! Look!

No, NOT at the feet! Maybe in the summer.

And to close it out…. Jack stayed at home. Doing this.

(taken with the new body, manually focused, but in the dark! 2 stops better than the best the old could do! The replacement should be here this week.)

(No realtime imagery this time)

Although we considered various names, the short list was really down to two.

We have a good tradition of non-standard names (Sample size of one). Kosh, our previous German shepard dog was named form the Vorlon ambassador from Babylon 5. If you don’t understand that sentence, I’m not going to explain it to you now. Suffice to say that explanations seemed to be a continuous thing. So, with that in mind, we immediately hit the video archives for inspiration (shortly after I acquiesced on the acquirement).

Vash – this one is from Trigun – A Cute, utterly lovable character that goes well and far out of his way to prevent anyone from being hurt, even to the point of taking the pain himself. Of course, the other side of this is that it seems that for some strange reason, entire towns and regions are utterly devastated and destroyed whenever his presence is even rumored to be in the area. I thought this would be extremely fitting.

It has everything – Great back story, meaning, Cuteness, short…. Uncommon. I still like this.

And on the other hand we have this rag-tag bunch as well as a decidedly NORMAL name.

We have Jack Skellington – Nightmare before Christmas being the classic at our house for two holidays as well as good general watching.

Jack Sparrow. The Pirate, played by Johnny Depp (Which was probably Jeff’s deciding vote)

Of course, the actor Jack Nicholson, which strangely enough, gives him the FULL name.

Several other names have floated through… Vlad – Remember the sharp little baby teeth?. Meathead – ceremoniously dropped without discussion. Alucard – From the Anime Hellsing, another Vampire that has been known to shift form into a very large dark black dog. Fitting.

However.

Normality has won the day. Vash has been vanquished, Jack has won. Mary has chosen, and it seems that a bop on the nose, and, a stringent evocation – currently, ‘NO JACK’. It will be interesting to determine if his name stays at ‘NO Jack’, or if it makes the eventual shortening to the original expected ‘Jack’.

So, in summary, it would appear that “you just don’t know Jack.” Neither do we, but it appears that we are going to have fun finding out.

It wasn’t a fight.

Good thing too. I lost. And won.

We have a new family member. (assuming no horrific incidents in the next few days)

Details, invariably, to follow. Naming is still up in the preliminary stages.

ANYWAYS…. And then Jeffie comes driving up. 10ish. That’s not right.

Is everything ok?

Well, not really……

And in she comes with an 11 pound ball of fur and teeth. And Droopy eartips. She’s been given an 8 week old male German Shepard dog.

We had an incredible dog, that was with us practically our entire relationship. Jeffie came into my house AROUND THIS TIME of the year 15 some odd years ago, carrying Kosh. And we loved her dearly. She was the absolutely best friend and dog we could have ever asked for. She was the maid of honor at our wedding. (don’t ask me… Maybe Jeff will actually explain with a post. She hasn’t posted in a while. ) and she became super protector for both of the kids. But time and a spinal disease finally caused her to have to leave us, and it’s been a very different year without her. Some of the reduction in ‘hassle’ and certainly DOG HAIR (Kosh could shed more hair in an hour than some dogs do in a life) has been nice. But it’s also been much lonelier without that constant greeting at the door when we came home.

This GUY! is not Kosh. Oh, he reminds. (And you can actually see a picture of MV and Kosh IN his pictures) And oh boy, he’s cute and playful.

And 8 weeks old. Which is most definitely not house broken.

By a LONG shot.

Make that a light year WIDE long shot.

And my, those little puppy teeth are sharp. And Active. Cat 5 cables don’t stand a chance. Power cords should at least prove entertaining.

And HE’s definitely a boy, and he’s got a dominating personality. He did NOT like the Vet doing the physical. There was some snapping at hands during that. Ms. Kosh was as gentle as possible with the kids, and frankly, unless they or Jeff was in danger, would hurt anything more than a Fly. Flies were actually fair game to her. Rabbits too, but she never came close to actually getting those.

Puppy here… Oh, not at all like what we were used to. I can see the 3 year old Human boy grabbing the puppy, and fur and kid skin mixing with blood and flying. And I can definitely see the hugs and kisses immediately afterwards, from both sides. Too Protective?

I took him back this afternoon, after getting his shots and physical, leash, collar and food, before the Kids could see him. I’ve got to think about this, We have to talk about this as a family. I’m not saying ‘No’, but I want to be so sure before I say ‘Yes’, and introduce him to Mary and William. It’s a long commitment, and I want the best for both us, and him. I asked for a few days to discuss and think.

(And until we make up our minds he’s not touching the d0gz.net domain. Kids might see.)

I am so incredibly conflicted.

William isn’t potty trained yet. This guy doesn’t even know when he’s even peeing at this point. It would be a ton of work, and disruption. And Hair.

But then again, I have ALWAYS said that Mary was going to have a BIG Male German Shepard Dog, that was HERs. Not mine, not Jeff’s. Mary’s. So that when she’s Ten and playing outside, anyone that looks at her funny would have a curious feeling of being separated from their trachea. His name would be Guard.

I’m asking for advice. ANYONE. Do we take the puppy?

Do we wait for a little more age on the children? (William being my major concern. Mary is big enough and grown enough to begin to understand. She obviously wouldn’t take care completely of him, but I don’t worry about her jamming her fingers in his Eyes and having the ensuing battle of teeth.)

I don’t think he’s a bad dog. I think he could EASILY be the protector for both of them. He’s 11 pounds at 8 weeks, and looks to me like he’s going quite a long ways to grow. He’ll very obviously be a great dog. But I do so worry about that dominate personality and the different dog that He would be from Kosh. Both kids remember Kosh, and they played well with her. She put up with a LOT from them, and the worse she ever gave back was a licking (which ALWAYS actually did the trick in making them stop. She was a smart dog). I don’t see him being as laid back as her, and I worry about the initial learning curve from the children.

In a lot of ways, this is just for me to get some of my feelings and doubts out there. But I’ll still ask. Any suggestions?

Turns out… the backlog apparently works differently.

So… A week before Thanksgiving, the scheduler for the area calls Jeff. There has been a cancellation. Can Greg do December?

Emails are sent to me asking this question. Immediately after reading first email, I notice second email, with answer ‘Yes.’

Oh boy.

(There is only SLIGHT liberty taken there…)

So, It’s pull out ALL the archives, load them up, sort them through, remove the duplicates, rebuild the index, throw all that out, because you should have removed the Duplicates BEFORE adding them to Aperture, and Aperture doesn’t like it when 30,000 pictures disappear at a time.

NOW, you can start actually figuring out which 20-25 pictures are actually going to make the cut. I didn’t pull much of anything from before 2003, so Five years. That worked out to be around 150,000 pictures in the archive library (not counting the years 2007-2008).

2007-2008 were easy. I had already been using Aperture to handle all of my Digital asset management, so it was a relatively simple task to pull photos that were already marked well, and choose there.

But, I wanted to get some the earlier stuff as well. Neither Jeff nor I wanted to put recent pictures of the Kids on display. Jeff does work in the Public, and DOES have to tell people NO. Having the kids up there readily identifiable and letting some upset person pull the comparison wasn’t going to happen. Having said that, some of the early pictures of Mary don’t give you a good indication on how she is now, so those became fair game.

It’s not kosher to sell directly from the Library… So we now have a new Domain and face for some of my stuff. GAN Photo is now up and running, with a separate gallery and blog system. Given that it went up a few days before the pictures did, I’m sure that it is going to change and evolve. Some parts of it I like, some… eh. It’s hopefully going to get more updates than this site has over the next month.

Of course, on top simply getting the photo’s selected, I had to re-edit most of them, as the software available today is SO much more powerful and precise than what I was using 5 years ago. I was pretty happy seeing some of the older images pop back into existence and breath. My old D60 Camera did a VERY fine job, given it’s limitations.

Printing was actually the easiest part, aside from the fact that I was producing about 50 feet of 17″ paper to display. My Epson 4000 did eat some roll paper and drink heavily from the ink well. Combining with the Thanksgiving timing, that meant that I was making multiple trips to the local (Nashville Local, not Franklin Local) Pro Photo shop.

Two of the prints are Panoramas. Those, as well as three of my more recent favorites, went on Gatorboard to keep the cost down, and sizes up. The rest were framed and matted in Arab, AL right before (and after) Thanksgiving. My Dad made an incredible find on Ebay of 22×28″ frames, and we spent some significant time cutting the mats and getting everything just right. I thank both Dad and Mom heavily for their help.

The pictures came out wonderfully. I’ve got the exhibit area COVERED with frames, colors and images, and I’m really proud and happy to see it. I regret the Gatorboarded pictures, because we did SO well with the framing, and they just don’t look nearly as good. And Those were the ones that I personally liked the most.

That said, If I had not done them that way, I wouldn’t have had the space or the weight capacity. It does all work out.

I’ll post more at GAN Photo. I’d like to be able to detail some more of the methodology and stories behind each shot that is going up there. I’m going to be busy.

In summary, before edit 1 there were nearly 6,000 frames.

With the initial cut, I deleted the frames that weren’t QUITE there. This included strobes that didn’t fire, focus points being wrong, or not seeing anything worthwhile at all.

That left me with over 4,000 frames.

You wondered why nothing was posted. Choosing from that selection isn’t easy. Tagging that many isn’t easy. And then, once you’ve done that, and you think you have your selections, you actually can start to WORK on them.

Historically, I’ve put these up chronologically. This year, we’ll try grouping them by subject.

Sunrise: As I’ve said earlier, it’s a miracle that these even were taken.

Sunset: What’s stranger, in most cases, I have frames from BOTH sunrise and sunset.

McGuires: Chronicled here, some of these you’ve already seen.

Fudpuckers: Fishing for Alligators. Need I say more?

Crabs: Mary still declares this to be one of her favorite activities. I think the idea of pulling a live crab from the ocean, and putting it in a bucket is her idea of heaven. The child IS weird.

Bird Feeding: The idea is to feed to Gulls so they come closer. THEN, you chase them down. One of these days they are going to get one, and then it’s going to get REAL interesting.

Beach: Yeah, we were at the beach. If it’s not in one of the above catagories, chances are, it’s here.

Everything else: Ok, there were some that didn’t fit. The experiment with the REALLY CHEAP and BAD underwater camera. William telling Papa exactly HOW he needed to make the ice cream. These went into the root folder.

Off to the pond. MaryVic walked and carried the crickets part of the way. No worms this time! We still have my willow stick fishing pool though.

Poppa set her up and she caught a fish 95% of the time.

William watched from the sidelines at first.

He tried to free the crickets and then poked at them with the clippers.

One of Greg’s teeny tiny catches. More than big enough for the kids.

William takes a turn with Daddy.

And catches a fish!

It takes Momma a few tries to catch him a fish in a coordinated effort with Poppa and MaryVic.

The smallest catch of the day.

Let’s do it again!

Why does it take toddlers sooo long to eat!! I know all the news is buzzing about taking your time eating right now but it was just a bowl of cereal, a kiddie bowl. There is no reason for me to be hurrying the kids but you want to get certain things done each day and Argh!! Finally William finished and I could get the kids ready to go for groceries. MaryVic refused to eat the cereal she wanted last time from the grocery store. She waits for William to sign and say ‘all done’ and for me to say we’re moving, ‘I haven’t eaten my cereal!

So we do the grocery store with a side venture to Home Depot where William threw a tantrum. MaryVic had to go to potty. You know your a parent when you don’t have to ask where the restrooms are in Home Depot. Everybody go ‘eeewww…’ as William crawls around on the floor of the ladies restroom. MaryVic held the door so he could crawl out. This is progressing a bit slowly as we are at the very back of Home Depot and there are groceries in the car, albeit in the keep cool bag. I grab William and he protests in loud, kicking, angry toddler independence spirit which echoes stridently in the warehouse of Home Depot. MaryVic winds up carrying our purchases to the register and almost unable to keep with Momma as she tries to get William out of there. He stops instantly at the cash register when I put him down on the floor again.

We pay, leave and go home so I can do a quick unload of the groceries. I know better than to doubt MaryVic’s power of observation but we still disagree about the crackers bought at the store. I grab two packs of the cheese with cracker sticks. No, I want the ones you got at Publix! These are the same. No! I go and look. Sure enough she’s right. I bought the flat crackers with the red stick and cheese. I grab one and tell her that she was right. Usually this results in chortled delight but I guess she’s more focused on getting to the park to eat them today.

At the park we have snack on the train and played in the sandbox. I set the timer on the phone for one hour and told them when it went off, we had to go home for lunch and naps.

The rest of the time was spent in the Tinkerbell’s Castle area of the park.

Last summer we were holding her hands as she crossed the tires.

I didn’t remember to twitter until we were at the park. Daddy knew where we were and stopped by on his lunch break to the kids delight.

Showing off for Daddy on the balance beam.

and she makes it!

William realized Mom wasn’t going to pick him up so he took off.

Crossing the suspension bridge which is now listing to one side.

Daddy went on to get some lunch. MaryVic gave him a huge hug and came back to check on Momma and William. He crawled up Tinkerbell’s Castle and was looking at the slide.

After thinking about it, they opted to keep crawling around on the castle. MaryVic was very sweet and cute as she got down on her hands and knees to crawl after William. She informed me that we were going from smallest to tallest, William to me.

They crawled the castle 3 or 4 times before the timer went off. MaryVic played the chimes while I grabbed William as he tried to make a last minute scramble back to the castle. I had set him down to take these pictures, turned around and he was booking it back into the playground.

We went home, lunch and naps. I tried to talk MaryVic into going back to the park but she wanted to go to the indoor pool. We went there for an hour. Everyone else was outside so we did have it to ourselves. William is enjoying getting into the pool more and more. He did away with the noodle support and water winged it some for the first time. We played throw a floating ball and the kids would race to get it. William was trying to paddle, kick, and wiggle to it. The only problem is he doesn’t like to throw the ball after getting it. It is mine now! Thankfully the game was fun enough that he didn’t fuss when I wrestled it away from him and threw it again.

After pool, the required strawberry bar snack on the way back home.

Hmmm…. this is NOT the right kind of strawberry bar. Look it has frosting! NO! You cannot fuss until you have at least tasted it. She gave it a tentative lick and then ate the whole thing.

The only other really memorable moment was last night after dinner when I went to get the ice cream. I cleaned off the table first, taking everyone’s plates. William had been playing with his so he wailed when I took it away. I came back in with the mini-ice cream bowls and he had his head on the table sobbing. ‘William, look what Momma has!’ He lifts the tearful face and it goes long with wide eyes and an ‘ooooo!’ The fit stops instantly. It was such a quick change that both Greg and I laughed out loud. No camera though!

I was in the kitchen Monday morning and heard shrieks which always require investigating. They were watching Cat in the Hat on the computer and William had decided it was more fun to spin MaryVic in the office chair. She was more than glad to let him because hey, a little brother has to be good for something!

And she reaps the benefits of all the upper body strength he developed while in the spica cast.

He enjoyed it as much as her.

It was unusually cold Monday morning but pretty. I took the kids to the library despite the temperature. Here they are playing on the preschool computers in the children’s department before Toddler Time. They had a good time at the storytime about Bugs!

After Toddler Time we went up to Momma’s office where she has some neat things like balls and slinkies.

And oooo… bookmarks!

Bookmark or ball?

Momma needs help. Look at this mess!

Yes, this needs to go.

and it does.

Then there are two helpers and then the shredder gets unplugged!

Monday continued with rounds in the library to visit co-workers, lunch with Daddy and then home for naps. We stayed in the rest of the day although MaryVic campaigned to go to the indoor pool. It is not heated so Momma vetoed pool visits. William did walk in the library a little bit while holding on to Momma and while holding on to Daddy with one hand in the evening! We have him climbing the stairs at bedtime now, all 16 steps.

On Tuesday MaryVic went to school so Momma did some cleaning. First she moved everything into the den and playroom to mop. William watched a show after he tried to climb a chair and get on the coffee table. The subsequent scolding sent him to climb up on the bathroom stool where he perched the whole time I was mopping.

Daddy came home from lunch and left the van. William took his nap and then we were off to get sister.

Everyone was glad to see him out of the cast although he took one look at Ms. Cathy and promptly hid from her, tucking his face into my neck. He perked up and then played spider on Momma while I talked to her. We found MaryVic in her class. Apparently everyone got the memo and all the little girls were in a pink outfits and the only boy was in a blue polo, very cute.

Ms. Cathy gave us a gift from Williams class. She told Greg and I about it weeks ago. She said it took forever to dry. The kids stepped in paint and walked on the paper. The teachers wrote the children’s names next to the footprints at different places on the sheet. A cute idea and it was sweet of them to think of him. I do have to laugh at the irony of it though.

She gave the roll to MaryVic to carry, ‘Can you carry William’s gift to the car?’ or something like that. All I know is William heard his name and started shrieking at the fact sister was touching something of HIS! So William got to carry it to the car. It was long enough that both of them had to hold it in their laps on the way home which William tolerated. He couldn’t wait to get it unrolled. I kept hearing paper noises and finally there was the rip.

We made it home with it mostly intact . MaryVic carried it in via the front door while I unloaded William and he pouted about it. I kept them from destroying it during the unraveling process. William promptly crawled all over it repeatedly. MaryVic crawled around with him too. At first he fussed about that but decided it was more fun to play with her on it.

Just a picture taken while waiting for Daddy to come home so we could all go see the cow!

We had dinner at Chik-Fil-A. The balloon guy was astounded to see William out of his cast. He really is very nice and made a big deal of it. He made William another special balloon with lots of twists. A race car balloon! MaryVic got a balloon wand with which she proceeded to attack the cow. Literally, I had to go get her at least twice and pull her away from cow. Momma, I’m hitting him on the nose! Yes, I saw that and you need to stop or cow is going to start going the other way when he sees you! And he did, unfortunately, so we had William at our table, “Coow! No…Cow!” So no cow high fives for William. Cow took a break right after that and it was time for us to go.

The next couple of days are supposed to be nice so we’ll be shooting for the park, indoor pool and zoo before Friday when it is supposed to rain again. Greg has added Twitter to the web blog. I input where we are which I was doing via Facebook. I’ll be able to input it via Twitter and it will update my Facebook page and the blog page. It seems pretty nifty.