Small Thoughts for Small Minds

Dyson is working on his "computer" under my computer table at the moment. He is the daddy and I am the baby.

He just told me, "Don’t pick your nose in public. It will kill you."

Oh, my….

On Friday last week, I found it necessary to go to Long Beach, CA, this week. As always, I look for the brew pubs…

Only two brew pubs in the Long Beach area, both of which I’ve been to before. But I didn’t want to venture very far from my hotel because I’m a mess with directions and traffic and such. And drinking doesn’t really help that…

So, the first night (Monday) I went to Belmont Brewing Company. It’s got a great location on the beach, overlooking downtown Long Beach and all of the cranes in the Port of Long Beach (and if the air is clear, the Port of Los Angeles, as they are side by side…)

The beers are mediocre, but I’ve got to support the brewpubs when I can…

They had a one-off brew on tap, called something like "Hop Head Red". Kind of one-dimensional and a bit immature. (The Cascades hops were unsupported by sufficient maltiness and it had a bit of a "grainy" taste like a very young beer.) But, not a bad beer for a hop head like myself. I had two. Plus their Full Sail Pale Ale, which is not worth the effort…

But, I sat outside, enjoyed the beautiful weather, a very nice artichoke ravioli and the sunset over downtown Long Beach:

Once I was done with dinner, I had to walk on the beach for a couple of minutes, just to say I did it…

Here’s a picture from the water side as the sun continues to set over the city and the port:

These pictures were taken with my cell phone, so the quality isn’t stunning, but I think the concept is clear…

After our little hike, Dyson got into some serious Men In Black action. (Well, before and after his nap.) He put together his costume and wanted me to take his picture.

So I did.

Keira decided to join in the fun, so she went and got some water pistols and gun-like toys and put on a black dress and sunglasses. She said she was WIB (Woman in Black). (I’m not sure how the clog sandals fit in the theme, though…)

After a bit, she got tired of that and just wanted to "vogue". Check out the ‘tude…

Then she was wandering about outside and came across Seamus and decided he needed some lovin’. She carried him around for awhile, sat with him, wrapped him in a blanket and babied him…

I’m not sure how much he enjoyed it…

On Sunday we hiked up to the Appalachian Trail. (I know I said we would do it on Saturday, but the sky was threatening to get ugly, so we put it off.)

We went up to the Fullhardt Knob shelter. It was approximately 1100 feet up, and a about 5-6 mile round trip. Our little troupers walked the whole way, though Dyson made it clear that he wasn’t happy walking down. (He told Kel, "I won’t tell Daddy if you carry me." when they fell behind Keira and myself.)

This will be mostly a photo post….

Here we are at the start of the hike. All fresh and full of excitement.

At our first break, we’re still going strong…

Keira was on the look out for nature. She asked me to take a picture of this flower (plus bug):

On this particular hike, there are very few grand vistas. This was the best I could find, of the adjacent ridge:

While we were taking a bit of a break, I saw these cool berries:

We spotted a few other flowers, but this isn’t really the best time of year for wild flowers…

Dyson found a rock that reminded him of the Superman symbol, then he decided it was his beard. In his right hand are his stick friend (Sticky) and his pinecone friend (name?). Over the course of the hike, he acquired (and lost) many friends, including several different sticks, rocks, leaves and acorns…

After a break for lunch (and plenty of complaining about not wanting to go any further) we hiked for about five minutes and got to the shelter at the top. We hung out there for about 30 minutes, Keira wrote an entry in the shelter’s log book and Dyson repeatedly jumped from the top of the picnic table, in between sword battles with Kel and myself.

When we headed back down, Keira and I started running. We got a ways ahead of Kel & Dyson, so we stopped and climbed on rocks for a bit.

Dyson saw us and had to climb on the rocks as well. Kel said he was too young and it was too dangerous. He, of course, had a fit. So I agreed he could climb up on one small rock if I was there with him. He was happy…

Dyson really started to get grumpy on the way down, but it was intermittent. Here he decided that he wanted to be the one to carry the back pack. As you might guess, that lasted about two minutes…

Dyson decided this pile of dirt was a horse. Those are his swords he’s swinging about. I think he was Indiana Jones or Zorro…

After this, Dyson went into full bore whiny mode. But, he made it! (And it wasn’t that he didn’t have the strength or energy - when we got home he was bouncing off the walls. For awhile at least, then he fell asleep watching Men In Black.)

Keira was in a fantastic mood on the walk down. (She had gotten pretty bad in the last quarter of the walk up.)

Barley was probably the hardest hit. She’s not in great shape and she’s got that heavy coat. And, yes, we gave her as much water as she would drink at each break…

We are such bad parents…

Dyson hasn’t seen another kid his age since school broke for the summer. Today he was carrying around Kel’s bag of cotton balls saying they were his cotton ball friends. (The kids do "crafts" with the woman we have coming by between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. during weekdays. On Friday, Kel gave them a bag of cotton balls and some other stuff and told them to make stuff with the specified "ingredients". Keira made a little bed out of paper and tape and put faces on a bunch of cotton balls and put them in the bed. Apparently that gave him the idea.) Tonight, Dyson cut a shape out of paper, drew a (somewhat recognizable) person on it and said it was his friend, Barney. Barney and Dyson had popcorn while watching TV. Barney really liked the book that Keira read to them, so I had to read it again.

Well, his school starts again after Labor Day, so he can get some real friends again…

The Yahoo! Mail spam filter does a pretty good job, so I rarely see the actual contents of the spam I get. This one slipped through:

From: Citibank

Subject: Its time to get back in constraint

Dont be a fool and spare your hard earned dough, by compassionate it away to your area shop

We have supplies for the following

1antiDepresants 2antiInflamatory 3arthritis 4asprin 5bloodPressure 6Gout
7heartBurn 8migraine 9mentalDisorders 10muscleRelaxers 11sleepAids
12influenceLoss 13anxity 14bloodThineer 15diabetes 16digestion 17mensHealth
18womensHealth 19motionsickness 20ulcer & more.

Sports News

He was wounded trying to catch a pass from quarterback Matt Hasselbeck.
The pass was broken up by linebacker Leroy Hill and Stevens fell to the ground
with the force of his influence arrival on his knees.
He hobbled off the domain and was study by guide while deskbound on a cart.
He was far ahead occupied back to the hold room on the cart.

Wow! That’s convincing! The "Sports News" really makes me want to by prescription drugs from some unknown source on the internet! I’ve got to stop compassionate it away now! I’m glad Citibank is looking out for me, even though I don’t have any accounts with them! I am so back in constraint!!

Yesterday we got Men In Black 2. Dyson has seen it a half dozen times since.

He IS Agent D*…

*The main characters in the Men In Black movies, played by Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, are Agent K and Agent J (respectively). So, of course, Dyson wanted to be Agent D. Ya know… D for Dyson….

I’m embarrassed to admit that I voluntarily wore that tie at one time. I have no idea why I kept it all of these years, but now it’s Dyson’s. (It was the closest thing I had to black…) Kel bought the sunglasses for him after taking Keira to her violin lessons. The rest of his outfit was from some kind of formal occasion more than a year ago. Obviously he’s grown some since…

Barley, despite her size, is a lap dog at heart. Even if the lap in question is pint-sized…

Keira keeps telling us that she wants a pet of her own. I’ve repeatedly told her that until she can consistently take care of our existing pets, she can’t get another. She’s finally showing some affection for Barley and the cats. If she can feed the dog and cats daily, we might consider a hamster or some such.

Actually, I think we need to take the responsibility of feeding Barley away from Kel’s dad. His mind is slipping a bit too far. This past year, there’s been many occasions where Barley only eats half her food, and yet she hasn’t lost any weight. The vet keeps telling us to put her on a diet. I’ve told Kel’s dad exactly how much to feed her and yet she doesn’t lose weight. We think we’ve found the reason. One day, Kel said that her dad mentioned three times that he had to go feed Barley. She gently reminded him that he had already done so. Perhaps this is a somewhat regular occurrence. Poor Barley - I take her back out to the garage and try to get her to finish her food, and she’s thinking, "C’mon, Doug, this is my third bowl! I can’t eat one more kibble!"

Keira asked me if she could help me make labels for my beer. Since I had just bottled the remainder of my mead, that seemed a good place to start. She asked me what mead was, and I explained that it is made from honey and that the Vikings used to drink it. She asked what Vikings looked like, so we did a Google image search and found a few stereotypical images. She took it from there….

Based on her drawing, the "brand name" seemed obvious…

I rarely put any of my beer in bottles, so my labels are limited to the tap handles on my draft system. In the past, I’ve been pretty inconsistent in creating labels. But, since Kel kept asking which beer was at which tap, and since I was printing the labels for the mead bottles, I went ahead and made some tap handle labels. (I guess it would show it better if I took pictures of the tap handles…)

I made an IPA using a single hop variety, Santiam, to get a real feel for the flavors and aromas of that hop. I got a bit carried away with the bittering hops, so I did a Google image search on "bitter beer face". I was actually looking for this very guy (or a guy in a similar "pose")…

I knew that the Aztecs used cocoa, so I did a search on "Aztec chocolate" and learned that they used to have a drink called xoco lall that used both cocoa and vanilla. Seemed perfect for a chocolate vanilla stout. And it might even be true….

Finally, the previously mentioned (All but the) Kitchen Sink pale ale…

McDonald’s has a campaign going for their "snack wrap" talking about the importance of a mid-afternoon snack.

Yeah.

Sure, American’s are, for the most part, not getting enough to eat.

No, most of us aren’t overweight from eating massive portions of nutrient-deficient junk for lunch.

Yep, we need to visit McDonald’s between lunch and quitting time or we’ll make poor personal or social decisions.

Okay….

Whenever I tuck Dyson in to bed, I have to come up with positive thoughts about the following day. Something to look forward to…

Tonight, I was talking to him about going for a hike tomorrow after Keira’s violin lesson. (We live close to the Appalachian Trail, so we’ll go up a spur to the trail and come back.) To put it in context for him, I told him that we’d go hunting in the forest, that we’d hunt bunnies. (He had watched Tristan & Isolde a few weeks ago, which started with one of the characters returning from a hunt with two rabbits…)

So, he looked up at me and said, "We’ll be ninjas fighting bunnies!"

Yep.

ROBIN:  Would it help to confuse it if we run away more?
ARTHUR:  Oh, shut up and go and change your armor.
GALAHAD:  Let us taunt it!  It may become so cross that it will make a mistake.