Too Close For Comfort

Okay, 1956 was a little before her time, but Dara enjoyed this anyway.

Making Stuff

One of the blogs I've started reading is BoingBoing. It's an eclectic collection of techie pointers and comments. From there, I saw a pointer to the National Association of Manufacturers blog aka coolstuffbeingmade.com. This is the kind of thing that could convince Dad to get into the Internet. I don't know how the guy who convinced Missy to visit the plywood factory and us to check out the fish ladder while on vacation could resist a factory tour of Peeps being made or the video that shows how aluminum cans are manufactured. C'mon kids, it'll be fun!!!

F**k 'em If They Can't Take A Joke

You know I enjoy the Onion sometimes. I occasionally listen to the fake presidential radio broadcast, but it's not my favorite part. Apparently, the White House doesn't see the humor.

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28.

But here is the line that even the Onion could not have made up:

Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement."

I guess it is actually getting hard to tell parody from reality when it comes to [censored for the sake of the no politics rule, but still funny nonetheless].

Rambling

I have no particular subject to focus in on here but felt like saying something. Last weekend was bad for Fla. but it gave us a nice opportunity to visit with Mom Dad Missy and Mike it was short but lots of fun. As usual as hunting season begins I find myself overbooked at work so my time seems to be spread thin. I also took on the duties of HBI accounting after some unfortunate guesswork by my former accountant. IRS.com actually has made it easier than I thought it would be and I think I'll be better for the experience. We have Fall Family Weekend next weekend at RMA, its an event they plan for parents teachers and students to get together and check up on one another. It is also timed with the 1st report card so some students are sweating it, Dan is playing it close to the vest so I'm not sure what to expect, his work I see looks very good.

Hot Yalies

We're looking forward to seeing Kyla and Shannon both at Thanksgiving. Here they are all dressed up for a screw. I never thought I'd find myself typing those words.

No Storm Surge

After listening to a voice message that consisted of a minute's worth of Mom and Missy discussing whether to leave me a message (thanks to Cingular's snazzy new voicemail service that leaves you wondering if it's working at all!), I did get a message that no water came into the Naples abode. Great news. Selfishly speaking, it's also good that we won't have to bring our bucket and shovel when we visit soon.

Bad Sign

As Dara noted to me, it's a bad sign when Anderson Cooper is reporting from Naples. I am glad Mom and Dad are not there.

Dude, That's My Leg

I liked the dog story. Here is one about a local surfer encountering a 16 foot white shark. The surfers out here where the water is so cold look amazingly like sea lions, but I suspect they don't taste as good to the shark. The part I liked was this, where she talks about getting back out surfing again:

"Well," Megan said with a smile, "I figure, it's happened once, it won't happen again."

"The odds are the same as they were before this happened," Megan's mother, Mary Halavais said.

"Less likely," Megan replied.

"No, no," Mary said with a chuckle. "She'll be fine."

"Plus," Megan added, "if I get bit twice, it's Guinness Book of World Records."

A War Dog's Faithful Friend

A War Dog's Faithful FriendWith all the animal lovers and animal rescuers in this group I thought this might be of interest. I thought it was a little ironic though that a lawyer would be so compasionate.

Projected Paths

It's amazing what kind of stuff you can find on the Internet these days.

Paris Posting

No, this isn't about Paris Hilton again - it's the real Paris this time. As you guys probably know, I went to Paris at the End of Sept with my friend & neighbor, Claudia. While I've always wanted to see Paris, there were many other places I would have gone first. Having been, I can't wait to go back. It was wonderful! I was afraid Paris would be like an overrated movie where you end up disappointed because it doesn't live up to the hype. Quite the contrary, pictures just don't do it justice. This picture is the Pont Alexandre - the most beautiful bridge in Paris.




















Claudia & I got a personal tour of the Louve & Notre Dame from a friend of a friend that is actually a national tour guide. Thierry was a delight! He was funny, insightful, full of amazing factoids, and knew what to see and how to move through things. The Louve is so overwhelming that you could get stuck in one hall of paintings for the entire day. Notre Dame has so many hidden details that you just can't see them without someone pointing them out. It's just too much to take in. This picture is at the Louvre. The people were wonderful, contrary to popular belief. Have phrase book, will travel. The food and wine definitly lived up to the hype.















Versailles was mind boggling in it's mass and decadance. This picture is barely a 3rd of what you can see from this view. The back is really huge. The fountains and gardens are so beautiful and spectacular. No words can describe. At one point 20,000 people lived in this little "hunting lodge." Just looking at the the ego driven mostrosity made me want to storm the Bastile.




















On Sunday we rode bikes along the Seine and up the Champs-Elysees. We walked for miles & miles & miles and never felt like we entered a bad section of town - though I'm sure there are some. Shopping - well that's a blog posting in its own right but the shortened version was that we had a wonderful time wandering the back streets and shops. Here I am on Sunday on my Tour de Kuzma at the Arc de Triomphe.

Another Frozen Bozo

I just had to blog this for Steve, perpetual fan of "Frozen Bozo," stories.

Watch Out

An old joke, but it seemed worthwhile warning you, Keith, in view of your experience so far.

Broken Bookshelf

I just thought this was cool. In our house, with more books than shelves, maybe this will appeal to the resident architect. On a semi-related note, Kepler's did open back up, thanks to a bailout from locals and a renegotiation of the rent. I've only bought two books there since.

Deer-1 Keith-0

Saturday was a day I had set aside to Bowhunt. This is an activity I truly love and wish I could spend more time doing. Time always seems to work against me in this though, the season is only 4 weeks long and it takes place during my busiest time of year. The day started off all wrong, 1st I had to switch trucks on a jobsite, as I aproached the highway near my house a big buck jumped out of the woods right in front of me, with no time to react the next thing I heard was the sound of breaking plastic and bending metal, yea I hit him ,but apparantly only hard enough to hurt my truck as the deer was nowhere to be found. The rest of the day followed the 1st part, at least the part about not finding deer. It was a beautifull day to spend in the woods and one of the guys I hunt with killed a 300 pound black bear. I'm hoping to take a day off this week for another excursion as the season ends Saturday.

Some Parents Weekend Pics

I am calling this picture "Dara The Brave". This was taken outside of the Schubert Theater, present home of Spamalot.

Here is Kyla on Mowgli. She rode Mowgli in the polo exhibition the team put on the for parents.

Mother and daughter, taken waiting for Kyla's roommate Lauren to perform in Dwight Chapel. Unfortunately, the timing was a bit mixed up, so we never did get to see Lauren perform. Note the wet jeans. Kyla said it finally stopped raining today!

Two Days in October

I haven't seen this yet, but it's a PBS show that follows the book They Marched Into Sunlight that both Keith and I read and liked so much. From the review in the Chronicle, it seems to follow it very closely.

Happy Birthday Harris Blog!

I've been looking for an excuse to post directly, instead of just commenting all the time, and seeing the Birthday announcements, and a newsy post from Kyla ... and lest I be accused of "lurking" ( I caught that in the birthday cake post! ), I figured I'd leave the skeletons behind in the closet and come on out.

Here's me, Jane and Danny with my Dad at Bennigans before he moved to Florida. Alex is taking the picture.

Alex is eighteen and taking his apprenticeship test tomorrow with the Local Electrician's Union. He's currently working full time and taking a couple of classes (welding and engineering math) at a local community college. Danny's in eighth grade and playing in a soccer tournament this weekend.

We'll be jetting down to Glen Ellyn after the soccer tournament to celebrate my mother on her birthday. Actually, we'll probably go down in the Camry, but for the prices I'm paying lately I think it must be running on jet fuel!

Extreme Blogging

Cyber-Catharsis: Bloggers Use Web Sites as TherapyI thought this might be of interest on the 1 year B-Day of our Blogg. Fortunately for all of us we don't need or use it for these purposes. An occasional post with sports or politics seem a little edgy at times on the Harris blogg, this stuff is over the top.

Ancient Raman

If Garrett were left alone, he would live on Raman noodles. Somehow I knew he would not want to miss this fascinating discovery. I am wondering if maybe this is an ancient ancestor of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Kyla mentioned when we saw her that she was becoming a Pastafarian. Maybe she could come up with some genetic evidence in support of the theory.

Rosie the Robot

One year, in search of providing Dara a gift that she actually asked for, I gave her a Dustbuster for her birthday. For all of you looking for marital tips, here is one: don't give your loved one a Dustbuster. At long last, Dara has turned the tables but still scored points. She got me a Roomba for my birthday. The Roomba is a robot vacuum cleaner, and it works pretty well. It's having a bit of trouble keeping ahead of the hair from three dogs, though. In fact, when we got home on Sunday, Garrett reported that the Roomba had been contemplating suicide. Now that's artificial intelligence.

Drowning in New Haven

I have been exceedingly neglent in my blogging lately due to massive amounts of schoolwork and polo duties so I thought I'd use a procrastination break to catch up. It was really nice to have Mom and Dad both here for Parent's Weekend, even if it did rain the whole time. It hasn't really stopped raining since they left and we're having all sorts of flooding issues up here. It makes getting around to my classes rather unpleasant. I am taking some good classes this semester (even though they're keeping me rather busy): physiological systems, basic concepts of genetic analysis, early modern England (England under the Tudors and Stuarts), and, of course, reasearch.
In addition to classes, polo also takes up an extraordinary amount of time. I'm busy organizing beginners, teaching beginners, exercising horses that have just come back, organizing practices for the varsity and JV, and making sure things generally don't fall apart, all in addition to my own practices! The women's team looks really good this year and our coach is planning on how to get us to national's in the spring. Our first game is Oct 30th against UConn (the current nat'l champs), which will be a tough entry to the season, but should be an exciting game. Our only home game for this semester is in December (I heard that Missy is perhaps looking to come visit... that would be an ideal weekend). We won't be headed down to UVa until next semester, but I would love to see Keith and Kirsty again while I'm down there.
I hope everyone is doing well and that I'll see some of you this year, and maybe a few of you will make it up here for my graduation (how frightening! I'm not ready to leave here...)

One Year Old

It was a year and 347 posts ago that we started the blog. Not bad. That may be more conversations than the Harris family has recorded in a single year since the 1960's. I thought maybe some of you might appreciate this custom made birthday cake. You see, I was surfing around for a birthday cake picture when I found this one. It seems little Johnny died right before the party, so I got a discount on it. Whenever I tell that story about Ken and Sharon bringing poor dead Johnny's recycled cake to Keith one year, it never fails to impress people with the classiness of our family.

Thanks to everyone who posted, commented, and lurked!

Back Again

From NY and the Yale Parents Weekend.

The shows we saw in NY were all quite different. Depending on your taste, you could probably have chosen any one of them as your favorite. Talentwise all three were great. A Light in the Piazza had non-memorable music and a story line that made it a bit hard to warm up to. Billed as a mother and daughter on a trip to Italy, daughter discovers romance with hot Italian boy, it also involved the daughter being -- as they put it -- "special," since she was kicked in the head by a pony at her 10th birthday party. Jeez. Spamalot was, well, Monty Python. Pretty much the Holy Grail movie brought to stage. Same gags (and Dara has the "I'm not dead yet" T-shirt to prove it), so it had that same appeal. Neither of us is the type to go gaga over Monty Python -- you might know the type, the ones who recite it to you and expect you to laugh with them. Are you laughing at the "I'm not dead yet" reference -- see? Still, very well done and very funny. Tim Curry and David Hyde-Pierce (from Frasier) were great, and it also had the spaceship pilot from Serenity. Dara hung around afterward and got some autographs. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels was, I thought, the best. It was kind of a traditional musical. Very funny. John Lithgow and a number of other recognizable faces were all really terrific. In between musicals, we hung out in Central Park and Greenwich Village a bit, and we ate at Serendipity.

We got to Yale at around 2AM after a wild taxi ride to Grand Central and a 1 1/2 hr train trip. Lots of pretty laid back time with Kyla, which was really nice. Saturday was the big polo exhibition, with mixed boys and girls teams (because the girls would whip the boys' asses if it was girls v. boys!) playing a couple of chukkers, with refreshments and socializing in between. A lot of this is for the new players' parents to see what it's about, and coach Jimmy put on a great show using the students to demo the various shots, etc. Since Kyla is captain of the women's team, she was very happy it turned out well. We shopped a bit and ate various nice places, and we saw one (and almost two) of Kyla's roommate's acapella performances. It poured rain on Friday and Saturday, yow! Good thing the polo was indoors. Kyla looked great but has a very action packed schedule this semester. ("I don't have time to read the blog, Dad!" she said when she heard about AJ and Ursula's move to PA.) We had to leave the hotel at around 3:40AM Eastern time this morning to get the bus down to JFK and then out. Garrett seems to have survived, although once again he came up sick during Parents Weekend. Everyone is recovering.

Green with a Slight Chance of Yellow

In case you guys were getting tired of this being hurricane central.

NY and Parents Weekend

In spite of that last exchange, Dara and I are still together and heading for NY tomorrow morning before going on to New Haven and our last Parents Weekend. We're looking forward to seeing Kyla!!! Along the way we're going to see Spamalot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and A Light in the Piazza. I may even blog some on the trip, we'll see.

Birthday Blogging

As we get older, Dara seems to relish even more the 5 weeks between the day I celebrate my birthday and the day she turns the same age. Witness the exclamation point on this rather cruel cake. This morning we met Dara's brother Rob in downtown SF on the waterfront. His b'day is October 1st, so we have an excuse to get together. It was a fog-free classic warm and calm October day in San Francisco. The Giants had their last home game today (a fun fact picked up from Rob!). People were streaming in on the ferry and other modes of transport to the ball park down here on the waterfront, modeled after Camden Yards in Baltimore. The second picture is a sculpture called Cupid's Arrow that is down on the waterfront. The entire area down there is really humming these days, ever since the freeway was ruined in the '89 earthquake and things were rebuilt without the freeway.

Serenity

Since we had such a large response here to the news of the death of Star Trek's Scotty, I thought I'd mention that the new Firefly spinoff movie, Serenity, was pretty darned good in a Star Trek kind of way. Dara and Kyla were big fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so they got sucked into Firefly when Buffy creator, Joss Weedon, did that. Good story, campy moments, good vs. evil, wild-west-in-space feeling, not too heavy on the special effects -- it's all there if it's your cup of tea.