Periodically.org

Bios, as in the tiny biographies that magazines give contributors or blogs give their bloggers when you click 'About ...' When not completing his collection of WWII hand grenade pins, Steve can be found volunteering his time with 'Explode This!', an interactive, hands on pyrotechnics demonstration for kids 1-4. Fran takes her obsession with size-exclusion chromatography to pretty daring extremes, but not so much as to interfere with her career, a receptionist at Duluth's 16th highest grossing Century 21 office. Travis enjoys his school marching band, being co-sub-captain of the Junior co-ed cheer squad, and taking all comers in his travelling full-contact "Octagon of Terror" (touring most of Norther Florida's retirement communities), Marilyn's other hobby is sharpening steak knives, often not her own, and usually without anyone knowing. Stamford says his most prized isolated pure virus is a variant of E. Bola he has secured with  patent-pendi...

Another year has passed and that means another torrid and spicy family drama wrapped in the infamous Owl Family Christmas Letter. Maybe not torrid, and perhaps not entirely spicy, but certainly without the more earthy odours familiar to any parent who's kid has switched to solid food. Owl Jr. is now almost two. TWO! His soberness and infinite sadness continue unabated. I do so hope he doesn't reserve that look just for me (however well-founded it may be). He's starting to speak. Not in any way or form that might be recognizable as such, and not in any way that might be measured in relation to others of his age, unless others of his age call everything 'Ma-Ma', 'Da-Da', or “CHOO CHOO”; especially “Choo Choo”. He's very much into locomotives and rail centered conveyances. I suspect it's because we're not allowed to expose them to more interesting and edifying things, like ninjas, robots, ninja robots, and perhaps vikings. He's a happy camper, ...

Owlet has this doodle pad, it works with magnets somehow. You use a magnetic pen and you draw stuff, and when you're done, you erase it with another magnet. Owlet enjoys making sea-monsters and aliens and robots and all sorts of things that I'm sure I had NO hand in putting in her head. We've taken to doing these things collaboratively, each adding a bit more. I used to draw a bit in elementary, jet-packed leopards with flamethrowers, aardvarks with rocket launchers, the usual stuff. Ok, maybe not usual, maybe the product of a war-and-apparently-zoo-obsessed 10 year old, but, no letters to home, so it's all above board. In any case, I enjoy these collaborative efforts: sea monsters look something like the Loch Ness, with added various eye-stalks, claws, flippers, jaws, and tentacles; robots are generally squares with other square like things added on, invariable jet wings, or something of the sort; aliens are more humanoid, lots of antennae, and, well, overlap alot ...

Went to a friend/coworkers place for a Christmas work dinner type thing. Good company, food, and the many, many kids didn't leave lasting scars on each other, so, a success in my book. There was a Secret Santa with all the excitement and bubbling enthusiasm that free loot tends to engender and the kids were relatively happy about what they got, or well-bred enough not to make obvious their bitter disappointment. What was interesting was realizing how far I've come, well, how far anyone comes when they hit adulthood. Doubly so when you have kids and you see how excited they are about the whole thing and its stark contrast to your own mild enthusiasm. For me it's become a thing to endure. Hopefully something I can make memorable for my brood. Christmas magic and all that. Christmas songs, eggnog, turkey, Christmas cookies and what have you. But I'm far beyond being in the moment, the suspended magic of it. Because, well, I have a bloody mortgage don't I? And respo...