What the heck?

I just had a look at the hockey news for the first time in a while. The Stanley cup finals are being led 2-0 by the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. If this tragedy continues, that means that the last three champions of the NHL would be Anaheim Ducks, Carolina Hurricanes, Tampa Bay Lightning.

These are all teams that I hate so passionately that I am glad I no longer live in Canada where I would have to see this.

Come on Ottawa! Get your crap together.


In other news... HP just started selling this smart-phone. I think it is really cool and I am trying to convince my boss that I need one to be more effective in my job. Clearly it would be a fine equipment investment. It is not like they are even all that expensive, but I think it will be a hard sell.

Power Baby Maximum strikes again

Yesterday it was pouring rain all day, so the fun activities were a bit limited. Claudia nevertheless took the little complainer out for a rainy walk to make him happy.

Upon returning home, Claudia went into the kitchen to prepare the morning snack of Banana and a drink. She closed the kitchen gate to make sure little hands were not opening all the cupboards and hurling things floorwards. Then she heard a loud CRACK followed by crying. She turned around and saw that Liam the Power Baby had snapped a bar in the gate. It is a little more visible here:Surely this is a defect in the gate, Liam is a strong guy, but come on... I really hope this is not an indication of what we can expect moving forwards. He is not even two yet and he is already destroying the place.

Does this look like the face of a boy on the rampage?

Garbage Truck

Liam, like many little boys, loves trucks. Construction trucks, farming trucks, and of course garbage trucks. When we vist Augsburg, Liam gets to play with Uncle Bernhard's old garbage truck and that is always a treat.

He likes driving it all over the back garden and filling it with rocks. He has a little garbage truck to play with at home, but this one is nearly as big as he is, and therefore better. A huge truck is clearly more fun than a less huge truck.

Old Technology

I was looking through some of my old photos on the hard drive today and I came across this folder which contained photos from the first digital camera I owned. This camera was purchased for 50 Deutsche Mark at an Aldi grocery store, and time has not been kind to the tech. It was a 640x480 "pen style" camera and used 2 AA batteries. I believe you could hold up to 10 photos in "high quality" mode. I don't think I have any low quality mode photos saved for comparison...

It had no flash, so indoor photos were not so great. But here is a good one of Ryan pretending to be a ski jumper. As you can clearly see, bad lighting was not an ally...
It did slightly better outside, here is Claudia waiting for the train home that day. I think it looks kind of interesting. In a way, I kind of like the really crappy quality of the pictures, they give them that certain early adopter look. Not nearly as many people had digital cameras back in those early days of 2001 or so.
Finally, here is what I would say is a best case scenario. I took this one inside, under good light in our flat. I think it looks pretty darn good for a 22kb file taken with a camera that is way worse than most phones will take now a days. Claudia looks a little orange, but otherwise it is fairly decent.
In a way, I quite like the look of these low low quality images. I think I am inspired to dig out this old camera and take some more horrible photos with it. Or I guess I could just use my phone and get a similar result. I think my phone, which is now also old technology (2.5 years old) is also a 640x480 resolution.

The other new car

The reason we were able to enjoy a "new" car is that Claudia's dad bought himself a nice new BMW 1 series. It is a pretty nice little car, very sporty. Somewhere around 150hp which is a lot when you consider that there is not really all that much car wrapped around that engine.

It is a very dark blue colour, I think it was called "Monaco Blue" and I like it a lot. I think that Franz was showing off a bit for us on our little ride, rocketing along a street with a much slower speed limit. Very daring for the retired police officer.

Liam's great new word

So, this took a lot of teaching Liam has now learned how to say "bum bum" in German which is "Po Po" Not only that, when he says it, he smacks himself on the bum and laughs.

I am not sure I can describe it in any way that does it justice, have a look for yourself.

Detour

One of the great joys we learned upon moving to Entringen was that the main street of the town was going to be closed from March until October. That was an unexpected surprise. On one of Liam's rides down to the bakery, I detoured over to have a look at what was going on. Looks like they ripped up the bridge in the middle of town to rebuild some crap there. It is a gaping chasm at the moment with a tiny trickling stream (The Ammer) through the middle. It is this stream that actually gives our area its name, Ammerbuch.

Rather than the horrible complex detour they have created for us, I am going to suggest that they set up Dukes of Hazzard style ramps on either side of the stream so that we can all jump it. The police station is right in front of this, so we can even have a fat German Boss Hogg type sitting inside, shaking his fist through the window at us.

An early birthday gift

We were visiting the grandparents last week before they went off on their big adventure to the USA. This opportunity was taken to give Liam his birthday gift a little early.... a new tricycle. Part of my brain was wondering if he was still too small to really enjoy a trike, but this was clearly misguided. He has no concept of peddling yet, but the trike has the handy handle at the back so it is daddy-powered. Liam is of course crazy about it and would ride it without end if I was willing to push it that long. In fact, I was pushing him around a couple of days ago and he fell asleep on the trike. He just started wobbling and then gently slumping forwards and I had to be quick and catch him. Then it was a nice long walk home with Liam on one arm and the bike on the other.
Also that day was the Spanish Formula 1 Grand Prix. Opa Franz is a fan and it looks like he found a comrade with Liam. I thought it was funny to try and pick out which one of them looks more concentrated, hypnotized by the noise cars. Every now and then, Liam points at the TV and yells "AUTO"

The nearly finished house...

Well, our little house is pretty much done. All that is left to do is put on the stone steps (removing the temporary wooden ones) and then finishing the garden. The steps will come next week, but I think it will be a little while until the garden is done.
You may also notice our "new" old car. Claudia's dad just bought a new car, and he very kindly decided to give us his old one. I think it is a 1994 or so BMW 520. Since it is older and has about 190K on it, there was not much resale or trade in value and Claudia's dad did not want to see it go for nothing. He treated this car like another child and it is in perfect shape, so I think he is happy that it will be put to good use and he can still visit it. It certainly adds a bit of convenience to our lives since I can get to work in about 30% of the time it takes with transit...

The Little Pig Boy

Hello there,

I have been away for two days at a work training course called "improving business relationships through better communication." My boss suggested that this course would be good for me since we both agree that I am "lacking in people skills." Not really the nicest quality to be told about yourself, but I was pretty much aware of it. I prefer to think that I am honest with people to the point of cruelty, but when you have to work with Americans, it seems you need to learn how to communicate on their level. Anyway, the point of that is that I have been away from a network connection for a couple of days and did not have an update. Well, I am back now.

What an exciting day we had on Sunday. Liam the little angry man was freaking out around dinner time and refused to eat anything we gave him. He was clearly hungry (and tired) so he was grouchy and hard to deal with. We tried giving him noodles, toast, fruit, drinks... nothing was working.

In frustration we just let him sit in his chair and cry it out, while we got our dinner ready. Then all of a sudden, Pig boy saw what he wanted... butter. He loves butter, licking it off toast, buns, or his fingers. But this time we had left the butter and a spoon within his reach. We decided to watch what happens next.

We let him have his spoonful and then took it away. Nothing like a solid block of animal fat for dinner. mmmmmmmm fat.

Getting very crowded

One of the challenges we had with Liam was getting him to go to bed at night. Every day used to be a horrible screaming ordeal, but then he started calming down when he got a toy in there with him. He would learn that toy by name and then call for it. The problem is, the toys are cumulative, not exchangeable. When he calls Oompa, he wants that bear. Then he calls for Bobby, you do not get to take Oompa out, but add Bobby to the mix.

He is quiet at bedtime now but the bed roster includes:

"Oompa" - his first bear friend
"Bobby" - the bear given by my work colleagues
"Bear Bear Bear" - the Panda from Ikea
"Bear" - the bear from "Laura's Stern" film I got him
"Bagger" - the backhoe that is is constant companion
"Auto" - The Playmobil Fire Truck that is the newest member of the tribe

So now he goes to sleep looking like this:

Short News Day

Today I am waaaaaay busy. Actually work is pretty devastating at the moment, so I am afraid I don't have any time to make a nice post.

So here is Liam eating a pretzel.

I have something more interesting planned for Friday.

The Last update from the Garden

OK, I promise this is the last photos from the Fairy Tale Garden (at least until next visit)

One of the things I like best in the garden is Rapunzel's castle. i think this looks really great. It is super small, and you can go inside, but not all the way to the top tower. Basically you can come out on either the lower or middle balcony, which is still a pretty nice overview of the grounds. The castle is up on a hill, so it is pretty high up on those balconies.
At some point in the walk, Liam had to stop for an apple break. He is generally such a rotten eater, when he is actually asking for food we try to make sure we have something to give him. Sweets do not count, he is always hungry for ice cream or cookies.At the edge of the park is a big playground for the little people, Liam fully wanted to take advantage of this, but most of the attractions were a little too big for him. He really wanted to get on this pirate ship and tried hard to climb up, but he could not quite manage it. The ship was too small for daddy to squeeze in, so I could not take him up. We contented ourselves with running around the bottom, throwing sand at it.

Further into the park

As we progressed through the park, the next attraction was a little hedge maze. Not too difficult to navigate, but Liam still had to stop for an apple break. He is very insistent when it is time to feed the beast.
In the middle of the maze is a neat little pond with two big frogs and a path of stones crossing the middle. The last step of the path has a pressure plate that makes the frogs shoot water at you. On such a hot nice day, there were lots of little kids enjoying getting sprayed. Liam is still a bit too small for these kinds of antics. After the maze came another of Liam's favorite things, stairs. This was a really massive staircase and he wanted to walk down them all himself. Claudia got to help him down the stairs while I got to carry the pram down.
At the bottom of the stairs Liam made a new friend. This was a strange gnome that kept announcing "TWO MINUTES UNTIL THE DOVES VISIT SNOW WHITE..... ONE MINUTE 50 SECONDS UNTIL THE DOVES VISIT SNOW WHITE....Etc." Liam liked the gnome and we were curious so we stood around and when the counter hit zero..... nothing at all happened. But the gnome did reset again to three minutes. I wonder where those doves are...

Bonus post - Video Fun

So Liam was doing this for at least 20 minutes yesterday. I am not sure why it is fun, but I enjoyed watching it.

Further into the Garden

There is so much fun stuff in the garden that I will have to take a couple more posts to get through it all. When first entering the garden there is this funny chair in a pool of lily pads and frogs that kids can sit on. Once they are on it, a fountain goes off and the chair floats up into the air. Liam was a little too small for this one, but I am sure we will visit again when he is bigger.
All over the park are these big talking puppet statues. Generally they are telling the story of some fairy tale or other. I think this guy was the tin soldier or something, I did not really pay too much attention, but the kids standing in front were very interested.I think that every children's park includes a mini train ride. This was right next to the boat ride and since we just got off of one ride, Liam wanted to walk around a bit. He did have to take a good long look at the train and say "Choo Choo" a few times though.
This is another of the Fairy Tale puppet houses. Very often they have built these little houses that contain some sort of scene. I think this one was for Cinderella. Liam only liked to stop and look at the ones that had moving animals in them. He is not all that interested in puppets of humans, just robot dogs.

Boat Ride Gangs

We were very amused while waiting in line for the boat ride. Just up ahead of us were some biker-gang looking types. Patch covered vests, hair halfway down the back, big unkempt beards, and tattoos covering the arms right to the wrist.
I am reasonably sure that the tiny blue boat was no real substitute for a harley, but who knows. Maybe after hitting the pinocchio boat ride, they will no longer feel the call of their hogs. Instead they will trade them in for paddle boats and putter around the lakes.I was a little wary of taking pictures of them at first, since bikers are generally not known for their jolly sense of humour and enjoyment of other people having a laugh at them, but after a moment or two I could not resist the urge any longer.In the end I felt reasonably safe. First, because Claudia thought they did not have scary faces, but looked like a more cuddly type of biker, and second by my reasoning that the really scary bikers would not spend their labour day visiting the fairy tale botanical gardens of castle Ludwigsburg.

Into the Fairy Tale Garden

The Fairy Tale Garden is a part of the grounds that is full of attractions for little kids. Lots of animatronic beasties telling stories like rapunzel, Snow White and Pinocchio. The first thing we did in the garden was go on the little Pinocchio boat ride.

Here you can see the queue of boats waiting to embark.
Liam was fairly much hypnotized in the line. He was watching the boats like a hawk. We had to work fairly hard to keep him from wandering off towards them. He kept wanting to jump the queue of people.
Here are Liam and Claudia sitting in the boat, all ready for the big adventure.
We were off, drifting along the little canal, lots to look at and point for Liam. We could see things like the little petting zoo "GOATS" and people playing in the playground and splashing pool "WAZZZER"
All along the ride, we coasted through little houses that showed the various phases of the Pinocchio fairy tale.
The big finale for the ride is when you go through the tunnel that looks like a whale. Inside you see even more of Pinocchio's adventure.
and that was all. Since I have made such a big post already, I will save the motorcycle gang story for tomorrow.

Holiday weekend

Yesterday was Labour day here and it was another sunny wonder. We decided to take Liam over to Ludwigsburg, where there is a really nice castle. On the grounds of the castle is a botanical garden with lots of exotic birds to look at and best of all... a fairy tale garden for kids.

Ludwigsburg is just on the other side of Stuttgart from us, so only about 45 min in the car, we could have even taken the subway from Herrenberg, but it is a REALLY long trip that way since you have to travel the whole line with many many stops on the way. As you can see, it is a wonderful clear day. I will be honest and admit I cranked up the colour saturation in this picture because I thought it looked a bit more cool.
This is a Baroque castle and grounds, so the style is quite elaborate. The town really capitalizes on this style and has a Baroque Christmas Market every year and it seems like there is always some sort of event going on with "Baroque" in the name.
One more photo of the castle and grounds, this time from the rear:

We have been to this place quite a few times and we usually take any visitors here. I know my mother really liked it when she came for a summer visit. Given that much of the sites are floral, it is not the greatest place to go in the colder months.

Here is my wonderful wife Claudia standing in front of a whole whack of flowers. She saw the pictures from today and the first thing she said was "Do you think I need to get some bigger sunglasses? The really big sunglasses are in style right now." Ah, always on the cutting edge of fashion that Claudia. So, if anyone reading this has an opinion about her sunglasses, please feel free to leave a comment.
Tomorrow the action will continue as we enter..... the FAIRY TALE GARDEN.