Do or Do Not.

Just to prove that even though I might loathe our current administration as much as the next pinko liberal hippie, I can find my moments of patriotism, too:

(Most of my Boston-area readers might well recognize the statue, but for those of you in places other: this statue of Ben Franklin stands in front of the Old City Hall on School Street in Boston. Once, matters of great import to the city, the region and likely the country were decided within those walls; now, steaks of great quality and expense are eaten at the Ruth’s Chris Steak House inside.)

One advantage to having to come home from work early to get Terry’s truck fixed: I got this picture.

I sincerely hope that my children grow up to be musically inclined. Terry and I are going to encourage them both as much as we can to play any instruments they find interests them (without pushing music on them if they’re not interested, of course). They’ve got a good shot at having some talent: their mother sings and plays guitar very well, as did her father, and their dad… well, kind of hacks around at a variety of instruments without being all that great at any of them, but sure tries. Kelsey’s got fantastically long fingers which would be great for playing piano or guitar, or, more suiting her nature, the harp; Laurel’s going to be the drummer for some industrial metal band, I’m pretty sure.

You might have wondered just where the Monday Photo has been the last couple of months. (More likely you didn’t notice it was AWOL, but I’ll try not to take it personally.) Well, truth be told, our old camera died in early January. The old Nikon Coolpix 770, the camera we got shortly before Kelsey was born so that we could record her every waking breath, finally shit the bed after four years and tens of thousands photos. We weren’t surprised — neither of us thought the camera would last forever, and we were both impressed it lasted four years [1] — though we were a bit frustrated by being cameraless.

We’d been itching to replace the camera both because Terry and I both are into the amatuer photography thing but also because of the pain of knowing that there are entire weeks of our children’s lives left undocumented. Someday the girls might look back on the mammoth collection of pictures of their childhoods and wonder just what happened during the early months of 2006… and we won’t be able to tell them. The implications are tragic. Clearly, we couldn’t let this cameralessness stand.

So on Friday night, we bopped down to our local Best Buy and got the new camera — we stayed in the Coolpix family, going with the Coolpix 4600. It’s not a sensational camera by any means (in fact, it’s pretty much bottom-of-the-line for the Coolpix family, and that’s saying something), though it’s still a decent upgrade over the old one. With the 512Mb memory card we got for it, we can store almost a thousand pictures on disk (at 1600×1200, which is the highest resolution we usually need) before having to download them off the camera, and it has better video capabilities and more color and lighting options. We know it’s not The Camera — both of us desperately want a digital SLR — but it’s a fine camera and will get us through until we can drop the money necessary to make photography the more serious hobby we both want it to be.

So in celebration of our newcamerahood, I give you the following picture of Laurel. Terry had put some gunk in Laurel’s hair yesterday to try to keep the static electricity in it to a minimum, and then had put her hair in a little topknot to keep it out of her face while we went to Kids Playground (which was an insane amount of fun for both girls). Afterwards we went to Terry’s mom’s house, where Laurel decided she didn’t need to keep her hair restrained any longer. The combination of hair gunk, static electricity, ponytail removal and extrememly active toddler resulted in the following work of beauty:

Look for the Monday Photo to resume tomorrow!

When my mother came to visit us this past week, she brought with her a fairly massive number of old pictures for me to scan, color-correct and clean up as much as I could. A lot of these pictures were of her family, pictures of her mother’s and father’s families, pictures of people whose names I’ve heard but have never met–some of these photos went back as far as 1925. (I might post some of the more interesting ones here eventually.)

But the majority of the pictures, of course, were of me. And very few of them were in any way flattering.

I wasn’t the most graceful or, shall we say, well-groomed of children. To call me awkward would be much akin to calling Courtney Love “a little odd.” Because mothers are rarely accurate judges of such things, mine argued with me about this fact, of course (and believe me, it’s fact, not opinion)–she tried to insist that I wasn’t a tremendous dork, when I know damn well I was. (And yes, I am using the past tense on purpose there. Shut up, you.)

So as proof of my staggering levels of dorkhood, I’m giving you guys something a little bit different for today’s Monday Photo: instead of a picture takenby me, it’s a picture of me. This piece, snapped by my amateur photographer father in the backyard of the house in Florida where I grew up, was likely taken in 1982, when I was 11. I call it “Dork By Poolside.” I hope you enjoy it.

Taken at sunset Friday night after the 11.5 inches of snow we got here that day. Oooh, purty colors.

The Walt Disney Company today revealed that the plot of Toy Story 3–a movie the studio is making without longtime partner Pixar, who produced the first two Toy Story features–would surround the mysterious death of Woody at the hands of a “cereal (toy) killer” and the other toys’ quest for revenge. Speculation has it that Disney’s willing to kill off the beloved cowboy sheriff because Tom Hanks was reluctant to lend his voice talent to the project; given Tim Allen’s career of late, he’s expected to return to the role of Buzz Lightyear. No word on whether Slinky Dog (voiced by Jim Varney, who died in 2000) would also meet his grisly end in the flick.

As some of you might have heard, Terry busted her knee up pretty good about a week-and-a-half ago. She sprained the medial collateral ligament in her right knee; it’s not a serious injury (inasmuch as any knee injury can be considered “not serious”) and should hopefully heal up pretty soon. But for the time being, she’s having to get around on crutches as much as she can.

You can likely imagine that chasing a feisty three-and-a-half-year-old and an even feistier not-quite-two-year-old isn’t easy on crutches.

Luckily for Terry, the girls aren’t quite old enough to have realized what a strategic advantage they have over her while she’s in this condition.

Get well soon, my love!

This here’s Caroline. She’s adorable. That is all.

(Hey, at least it’s not another pic of my kids. Give me a little credit here.)

Happy Halloween, everyone!