A Whiter Shade of Pale

Recently I was reading an article in Wired Magazine about Crowd Accelerated Innovation, written by the curator of the TED. It was a very interesting article, but what the heck were these TED videos? I googled it and found their website at www.ted.com and...have you heard of this? It's awesome! Short lectures on "ideas worth spreading", and this runs the gambit from Technology to Entertainment to Development (TED). Ok, so it's been around since the 80's and I'm just getting on board, but still, I watched 3 videos and I was hooked.

Then my arch nemesis website had to go and ruin everything.

No no, not my arch nemesis. It's something that entertains me to no end but also cuts me deep every time I read it. That's right, I'm talking about Stuff White People Like. It's like this damned blog follows me around, taking notes on my life, and then proceeds to satirize my very existence in front of God and everyone. Yes! I like camping! I drive a Prius! I want to learn a foreign language! I like picking my own fruit! And, so help me, I like the TED Conference.

"...Due to the broad audience watching the talks, TED speakers generally take very complex ideas and boil them down into a simple engaging presentation. So when a white person finds out that you have a PhD and visits and attempts to engage you in a conversation about String Theory, you should know that all of their understanding comes from a twenty-minute talk they listened to while running on a treadmill..."

I wasn't on a treadmill. But still.

Journey to the Center of Chaos

My sister has a new blog! And did I mention she's pregnant? With TWINS?!?
http://cmdkennedy.blogspot.com/

At least she's got a little niece to practice on, but . . . I'm trying to figure out how this works with two.

Hot Tub Time Machine

It's like Holly woke up one morning and realized, "OMG. There's stuff you guys! Stuff everywhere! I want to look at all the stuff rightnowontheceilingbehindmeIdon't haveenougheeeeyes!". Her day to day development is so fascinating to watch. It seems like just yesterday she was a bobble-head and now she's sitting up on her own and bending over to pick up toys off the ground. I know all kids progress at their own pace and you're not supposed to take the month-to-month development books very seriously, but still it's fun to go down the list of "should/may be able to's" and check things off. Yes, she's passing toys from hand to hand! She's raking for objects with her fingers! And check this out: until this morning she had very minimal interested in putting weight on her feet. That was, until our neighbor dropped off their out-grown bouncy chair thing. Some kind of light bulb went off in that cute little head of hers when she realized that bouncing is its own reward.


To add to the fun, since yesterday was such a nice, crisp calm day we decided to take advantage of a little family hot tub time. We've done this once or twice before but Holly was too young (floppy) to appreciate the awesomeness. Geared with splashy arms and kicky feet this time around we had a much better adventure.


She was tentative at first but really started to enjoy the feeling of buoyancy and the water moving against her skin.


We decided to have some fun with the recent grabby-grabby-shove-in-my-mouth obsession too.


Every day keeps getting better and better with our little monkey child. Pray for snow so we can all go sledding!