Sad Jacket

I noticed this jacket in my mudroom. It was crying, looking sad and forlorn. I wonder where it belongs, because it doesn't match up with any of the nine people at my house.



So sad.

Corpse Flower Power!

There is an old saying that comes to mind at a time like this: "All botany is local." Never has the adage been proven more true than now, when a Titan arum (known to the scientific community as Amorphophallus titanum, and to laypeople as the "Corpse Flower") is blooming less than a mile from my house.



An event like this doesn't happen often (as in, never before in Minnesota), so we just had to bring our seven kids along to view the big ol' plant.



This is not the petal, because this is not the flower.



We decided that the smell of the plant was most similar to dead fish. It didn't agree with Josiah.



Jonny didn't care much for it either. I now understand why they put the plant in Nobel Hall - the stink doesn't make much of a difference there. In pure, clean, pristine places like Olin Hall or Old Main, it would have been a problem.



This is looking down the bloom. Here you can see the pestle, which means that the yellow part near the bottom is the mortar.



The smell was so bad that the children needed to run away from it as fast as they could.



And, to not appear to be ageist, I brought along some really, really old people to look at the flower. For some reason they were offended by the term "Corpse Flower".

It will probably be national news tomorrow...

... so check out the Corpse Flower just starting to bloom tonight.

http://www.gustavus.edu/academics/bio/titanarum/

In my own backyard, even!

SeaWorld, Day 1

After spending a number of hours at the Midway, we weren't sure what to do with the rest of our day. Thankfully we had purchased these nifty tickets which allowed us to go to SeaWorld, the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park as often as we wanted to for five days. So dropping by SeaWorld at the end of the day didn't set us back anything.

We managed to see the dolphin show and the Shamu show on Monday afternoon. One thing about SeaWorld is that the production value for their exhibits and shows is fantastic. Everything looks new, clean and cool. The backgrounds for all the shows were very well done. Here's where the dolphin show was.



The dolphins say "Hi", which is nice of them. Not that I had any fish to toss them.



Maybe I'm just odd, but I thoroughly enjoy taking pictures of shows like this. You know the animals are going to jump out of the water, but you're never exactly sure where, so you do your best to aim and focus the camera, and the CLICK! at the right time. And then, once you've taken the picture, you're sitting outside in the bright sun so you can't get a good view of the image on the little LCD display, so you have to wait until you get home and get the files on the computer to see what you got.

Like I said, maybe I'm odd.



Every once in a while I get the focus and aim correct.



I like this picture. I got the timing just right, with the dolphin just going over the rope, but it's completely off center. I could have cropped it for you, but that seems like cheating somehow.



This was some kind of goofy looking whale. Not sure why it was even in the dolphin show, especially since the dolphins continually made fun of him.



After the dolphin show we went to the Shamu show. It was extremely high quality production. I mean, look at that video screen!



The theme of this Shamu show was "Believe." After the show, the two main words Michelle and I used to describe it was "cheesy" and "shameless." For some reason, seeing whales jump in a tank wasn't enough to make me realize that I could do whatever I wanted to.



And don't even get us started about the boy who carves a piece of wood into a whale tail (which - amazingly! - you can buy attached to a stuffed Shamu whale). But, despite all that, Shamu is cool.



And the video screens! I would love to have four gigantic video screens, each of which can move and rotate independently of the others. Not sure where they'd go in my house, but still.



One thing we didn't like about the show is that we didn't get to know anything about the whales. As far as we know, they're all Shamu's. We don't know how big they are, or how old they are, or if they have any interesting likes and dislikes.



But still, they're very, very cool.



Michelle was actually able to do the audience participation in the show. Here is a picture of what she got to do.

USS Midway

We visited the USS Midway in San Diego. It was definitely one of the best things we saw. It doesn't exactly play as well in pictures as it does in person, though. Anyway, here is Kelson in an ejection seat.



While it looks like Eli, Koleman and Grandma are paying close attention to the audio tour, they are actually listening to the latest single by Mos Def. (My mom loves Mos Def.)



Milena really wants to fly an airplane.



Here is some random plane on the flight deck. I think it's an X-23 MacDougal, but I could be wrong.



Another plane, this one in front of San Diego.



Here is a picture of Grandma Karen, Michelle and the kids, waving to me. Trust me, they're in the picture.



That's the tallest part of the carrier. They call it "The Tall Part."



San Diego, as it would look from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the bay.

San Diego Interlude

Thanks to the generosity of Uncle Jon and Aunt Steph, we have a webcam. And it even works! Look at these cute boys



It does neat things, too.



Now we just need somebody to talk to!



The Bismarck cousins will get their webcam set up shortly, we hope, so we can have 8 kids jabbering back and forth at each other, which should be extremely productive. But very, very funny.



I'm sure there are other people out there with a webcam. Grandpa Gary?



Milena was having fun shopping with Mom, so she missed out on this bit of fun.



I did have a video conference with Brent in San Diego, but he doesn't have a webcam, so it was a bit one sided.



Here is what Eli will look like in about three years.



And look, the happiest cyborg you've ever seen!



Let me know if you want to have a video chat with some cool kids! They're itching to talk to somebody.