t 'n t luoma

This is Ethan bringing me my coat, after he had already brought his momma her coat. He’s a great kid. He also brings us shoes when we are getting dressed. Sometimes he brings them even after we have shoes on, but we cut him some slack because he’s 21 months and cute as a button.

You may recall that on Sunday of this week we looked over the weather for the week ahead. We checked a few different sites and while there was some amount of uncertainly about whether we would get rain on any other day, it was clearly going to rain on Thursday. Every site we looked at agreed that it was going to rain Thursday. The Farmers’ Almanac from 1926 forecasted rain for this Thursday. Not “showers” (as was suggested for other days) not “chance of rain” which was also thrown out there on a couple of other days. RAIN. Simple, direct, clear, unambiguous. That led us to decide early on that we would plan an indoor activity for Thursday, since it was

Therefore, of course, today was the sunniest day that we have had since we arrived.

A member of my extended family has said that if she were married to a weatherman, she wouldn’t tell anyone. I would love to know what other profession you can be wrong that often and still keep your job (not including politics, of course, but we won’t go there). Is there an easier job out there than weatherman? I mean, no one even expects you to be right, and when you are right, people are just right there to say, “Gee they said today was going to be a great day and look!”

Where is the public outcry over the lack of accuracy when it comes to the weather forecast? If we aren’t going to care when they get it wrong, why do we bother listening to them at all? Why don’t we take the money that we were going to spend on salaries for weather(wo)men and allocate them towards re-training of some useful skill like plumbing or drywalling (two professions which there never seem to be enough qualified people to do)?

Instead of employing weatherpeople, all the TV stations could just hire a person who would stand in front of the chart of the weather as it is right now and repeat the information gathered from computers (I’ve always loved that part of the weather report. This is what the temperature is here and here and here and here, and there and there and there and there). Then they can stand in front of the computer-generated re-enactment of what the clouds have looked like for the past 12-24-36-48 hours. Then they will give the forecast for the next 30 days as being “Partly cloudy with a chance of rain.” In fact, the official weather forecast for the entire country will be “partly cloudy with a chance of rain.” In the winter months it will change to “partly cloudy with a chance of rain, possibly mixing with snow and ice, so be careful if you are out on the roads.” (Exception: Nevada and New Mexico’s forecast will be “Partly cloudy with a slight chance of rain.”)

Ok, I feel better now. So back to today... at first, I thought that we had made a giant mistake in going to the zoo yesterday, because now we had this bright and sunny day and wouldn’t that be nice for walking around the zoo?

You might think that, but you would be wrong. Sun != warmth. I know you may think that sunlight equals warmth, especially since the sun is well known for being a flaming ball of gas and fire, but the warmth of the sun can be countered by that sly devil known as The Wind.

The Wind was out in full force today, as a reminder that “temperature” is a meaningless number akin to “gross income.” Temperature does not tell the true story, it is only one small part of the scene. Today may have been sunny and it may have been about the same temperature as the rest of the week, but it felt 10-15° F cooler than the rest of the week.

As we drove into the city today, we wondered what was up with all the traffic. Then we got into the city, and wondered what was up with all the places offering “Event Parking” for $20/day (rather than the $5-$6 we had usually seen). We were unaware that a little thing called March Madness had arrived in the Seattle area. Swarms and droves of basketball groupies invaded our perfectly planned off-peak vacation! How dare they!!

We finally found respectable parking at $7 for a “carpool” rate. They wanted $10 unless you had 3 people in the car. We pulled in and I handed the man $7. He looked at me and then Tracey, then peered in the back window. “What, you got a little guy in there, do you?” “Yup... he counts, right? After all, he’s human.” “Works for me, have a nice day.” (Have I mentioned how nice the folks in Seattle have been? I don‘t know if they have prozac in the drinking water or what, but every service person we have met has been just really pleasant.)

So we made our way to the Pacific Science Center and selected our IMAX movie Bugs in 3D (more on that later) which came as part of our CityPass (see Day 12 part 1 for more on the CityPass). The remarkable thing about today is that I don’t think I took a single picture of Ethan with his tools! They have been clearly inseparable for the duration of the trip, but today there was a lot to play with, including a water table (no pictures of that, too busy being sure that he didn’t drown other children while splashing... plus new digital camera + water = bad idea, so it stayed in the case).

Not having learned my lesson from yesterday’s trip to the zoo where I even said that it was a good thing that he didn’t find the tractor until the end of the day, I led him to a play helicopter which also had a steering wheel.

Ethan played on that helicopter for at least 45 minutes. Mind you, the only moving part was the steering wheel which went around and around and around, but that was plenty for him.

He enjoyed splashing and throwing toys with wild abandon in the water table. His father refused to let his mother put one of those little plastic bibs on him to keep him from getting wet while playing in water. Kids should get wet. It’s OK that he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty (he’s actually quite fastidious in general. My dad calls him Felix) but if he wants to play in water, let him play. He’s a kid.

By the way I have no idea why I felt so strongly about that. No logical reason whatsoever. I remember a friend from high school joking that he was never going to let his kids wear helmets when they rode their bicycles. “You crack your head open, you suck it up and deal with it. And don’t come crying to me.” Same friend now has two daughters. Will have to call and see how he feels about this parenting technique now. But there is something to the fact that life is dangerous, and while I would never argue against kids wearing bicycle helmets or batting helmets (and I find it bizarre that hockey players objected to being made to wear helmets), there is a sense in which it seems that we are protecting kids from so much that at times I wonder if we aren’t robbing them of some experience of being a carefree kid. That said, I would feel awful if he did manage to hurt himself in some way that we could have prevented... so sure I’ll insist that he wear a helmet when he rides his bike... but let him play in the water table without a little plastic bib to keep him dry.

(For those concerned that he would risk pneumonia and imminent death, fortunately the kid has a smart mother who brought him a change of clothes, because he was completely soaked by the time he was done. But he loved every minute of it.)

Anyway, if you start at the picture of Ethan in the helicopter and imagine him making whirring noises for about 15-20 minutes, that was pretty much a good chunk of his day. It reminded me of the toy that he and Kush were playing with (see day 3, scroll down). I asked Vivek, “How long do you think you could keep yourself entertained with that?” [The toy consisted of two tracks. Put a ball in one track and it goes around and came out. Ethan and Kush played with it nonstop.] “Not long,” he said, “but I wish I could. I’d save a lot of money on wood-working equipment [his grown-up hobby].” Same with the helicopter. I deny any adult to be able to sit there for ⅓ of the time a kid can without being bored to tears. (I’m actually trying to figure out if humans actually have to learn how to be bored as we get older. Kids can get engrossed in something so minor for so long... Are we born with an ability to be easily satisfied only to lose it as we get older?)

Ray Romano talked about this with kids. He saw one of his kids in deep thought one day and asked, “What are you thinking about?” “Candy” was the answer. He said, “Try and think about candy for a few minutes as an adult.... ‘Hrmmm... candy... candy.... candy... candy.... cavities... dentist... drilling.... AAAARRRRGHHH!”

It was not for the lack of things to see or do either. There were dinosaurs, motorized and everything, but Ethan didn’t care much for that. Here you can see Ethan’s response to the dinosaur exhibit (yawn).

We all went to Bugs in 3D, which means that I have now seen more IMAX movies in the past 3 days than I have in the past 3 years. There are TWO Imax theatres at the Science Center, which, frankly, I think is a sign that they need to work on their sharing skills.

Anyway, Bugs in 3D was very cool. First of all, you’ve got bugs, which are always good on a big screen (and this was a really really big screen). Second of all you’ve got 3D, which is a technology which really should be used more often. Third you have irony, because Bugs in 3D was sponsored by Terminix, which is a pest control company. Irony makes almost anything better, so that just made me enjoy it all the more. Actually there was even more irony than that. Due to my wearing glasses underneath the giant 3D goggles, I sometimes found that the picture was a bit more clear if I closed one eye. So 3D looked better when it was fooling what was essentially 1D rather than 2D.

If that wasn’t enough, you also get to see a praying mantis totally bite the head off of another bug that it had stalked and killed. There was also a dramatic build up between the life of the praying mantis and the life of a butterfly nee caterpillar which culminated at the end of the movie. I won’t give away the ending, but if you get a chance to see it, by all means check it out. There’s also a very tastefully done seduction scene with a male and female praying mantis. As if dating and courting weren’t stressful enough, the male praying mantis has to be careful or the female may bite his head off, and we aren’t talking metaphorically either. (I wonder if that made it into Sex and the City?)

Afterwards we also went to a very cool exhibit on combustion. Anytime there is a demonstration of stuff being set on fire or blown up, I’ll be there.

At one point the presenter blew up 3 balloons, one filled with helium, one filled with hydrogen, and one filled with hydrogen and oxygen. We were actually a little afraid of Ethan’s response to this, given his deep and abiding love of all things balloons. Tracey was imagining out loud a future conversation Ethan would have with a doctor, “It all started when my parents brought me to this place where they just blew up 3 perfectly good balloons for no reason....”

In case you were wondering, helium is inert and does nothing when exposed to flame. The hydrogen balloon, however, produced a very satisfying “BOOM!” which actually sent a little shock/soundwave through the air, as did the hybrid hydrogen/oxygen balloon. She also lit some sort of metal powder on fire, but I can’t remember what it was called, probably because I was staring right at it when she lit it, rather than looking only out of the corner of my eye as she had cleary suggested to us several times. She also made us promise not to try this at home, but I totally think I could handle it and it would make a great party trick. Will have to look up the name of that metal on the Internet and see if I can order some.... after all, the spots in front of my eyes are almost gone now, and it’s only been 12 hours since the presentation... How bad could it be if it didn’t leave permanent damage?

Oh, by the way, most of the pictures you have seen were taken by me, because when I gave Tracey the camera for a few minutes, she came back and told me she had taken a picture of fossilized poop. I thought she was kidding. Make that “hoped” she was kidding. She wasn’t. She found this highly amusing. I find it highly amusing to share it with people.

After the exhibit Tracey went to the planetarium where they talked about a bunch of stuff about stars. She tried to explain it all to me but nothing really stuck except wondering how she could be 31 and not have known that the North Star doesn’t move. Anyway, while she was there, Ethan and I went back to the play area and back to the helicopter.

I finally moved him to another area to see if he would play with anything else (thus potentially contributing to his development of a shorter attention span). He spotted the slide, which I did not think would be a big deal, considering that he only went down by himself for the first time two weeks ago at the Monterery Aquarium.

He surprised me again by spending the next 30 minutes going down the slide, up the stairs, down the slide, up the stairs. And after landing at the bottom, he would giggle and laugh and run in his little wobbly boy way to the steps.

Do you see that ring at the bottom of the slide (which was there to keep kids clear of the bottom of the slide, I guess)? In 5,273 times down the slide, Ethan tripped over that ring when trying to get back to the steps 5,270 times, and giggled his head off while he was doing it. At first he was trying to step over it, but when he found out it was too high for him to get over quickly, he just started throwing himself over it like a giant body slam

Oh, and this threesome of really cute girls came over to slide with him for awhile and all had great fun. Sometimes a father’s pride just overwhelms you :-D

Tonight we went to a fund-raising dinner for PAWS which was really interesting. Highlight was Roger Fouts keynote address and an auction where a finger-painting by an ape (I think) which had been kept in a cage in an area mall. After several minutes of intense bidding, it sold for $5,000. I wonder if they would be interested in any of Ethan’s early work?

Judy had arranged not only for us to attend, but also setup a baby sitter, so we had an adult night out on the town. We returned home to a report that while Ethan had chanted “mom mom mom” for some time after we left, he had been quite the charmer, as usual, and had conked out around his usual bedtime.

Speaking of bedtime, it is well past mine.

Night all.