DIRECTIONS
If you do not have a Flickr/Yahoo account:

• Click here to create a free Flickr/Yahoo Account.
• At this point, I still have to mark you as a friend or family. You can either do a “People Search” for me (Tarobot) or you can send me an email with your Flickr screen name and I will find and add you.
• If you found me (Tarobot), send me a friend request and I will mark you as friend or family.

If you do have a Flickr/Yahoo account:

• After logging in to Flickr, either do a “People Search” for me (Tarobot) or send me an email with your Flickr screen name and I will find and add you.
• When you find me (Tarobot), send me a friend request and I will mark you as friend or family.

For now, we are leaving the blog and Youtube videos open as they have been. We’re sorry for making you jump through hoops just to look at her photos but there are some creepy people out there who don’t need any help.

We’re obviously excited that she can perform this new acrobatic feat but we are also saddened because it marks the end of being able to leave her in one place. No more quick diaper refilling while she’s on the changing table. No more running to the other room to grab the phone. I was watching her while making coffee (step by step) and by the time I was finished, she was halfway across the living room floor with a proud smile on her face. Time to start thinking about what needs to be put away as more mobility is sure to follow.

 
Meanwhile, on the TV…
 

Kelly and I have been able to fit in some movie watching thanks to our AppleTV. Without the near instant movie rentals it provides, we wouldn’t be able to fit anything but bad tv shows between the time we put Sophie down and Kelly goes to bed.
Well, the other night we rented the 2007 Beowulf movie. This is another one of the recent crop of 3D animated movies featuring extremely realistic faces that cause Hollywood reporters to turn into Chicken Little. “Actors will be replaced with computers! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

It is a beautiful movie with many moments where you forgot that what you were watching wasn’t real, however, the plot was not so realistically rendered. The script writers really wanted to make something of substance but fell short. I guess it didn’t help that I had watched Blade Runner the night before. Blade Runner is a film that is full of such uncompromising excellence, a proper review would required me writing it in City-Speak. (Those of you who understood that last sentence should read it as an invitation to meet me at a nearby coffee shop for hours of intellectual yet geeky discourse.)

Beowulf was, for its time, an extraordinarily thorough collection of oral histories recanting the epic adventures of an Anglo-Saxon super-hero. On the contrary, the 2007 Beowulf film is just a big budget retelling of a fight between noisy neighbors who settle their differences by fighting and sleeping with each other. Grendel, who is supposed to be a physically overwhelming and frightening monster, is reduced to a cross between Resident Evil’s “Nemesis” and “Corky” from Life Goes On, Grendel’s mother is pretty much Angelina Jolie in gold paint, and Beowulf goes from olden-times super hero to flawed-for-no-reason braggart.
I won’t bore you with any more details but, just in case you were still interested in seeing this film, I thought I would end with a list of alternate movie titles.

Unofficial Beowulf Alternate Movie Titles

• Beowulf: Tis no Polar Express
• Beowulf: The biggest video game cut-scene since Final Fantasy
• Beowulf: Look who’s sleeping with Grendel’s mother now!
• Beowulf: The village common sense forgot.
• Beowulf: The block-party that just won’t stop!
• Beowulf: Yeah, our animators imagine Angelina Jolie naked too.
• Beowulf: Who’s left to keep repopulating this place?
• Beowulf: The hair that wouldn’t move

About a month ago, two and one-little piggies were running about Florida on a series of conferences for work. When those were all over, the two and one-little piggies happily cried “wee-wee-wee” all the way home only to find that their AC was broken. It would huff, and it would puff, but like the big bad wolf, it was only full of hot air.
The home warranty company was called and a local repair service was speedily dispatched to discover the problem was a bad compressor which required must be unspeedily ordered. Five to seven days later, the repair service arrived with a compressor made of straw.
It didn’t fit and the big-bad wolf blew no AC down.
Five to seven days later, they brought one made of sticks.
It didn’t fit and the big-bad wolf blew no AC down.

This sad tale continued for about a month with the two and one-little piggies arguing, the companies passing blame, and the Florida temperature rising. To avoid being fried like so much bacon, the two and one-little piggies became transient, staying with family and friends until a solution could be reached.

Finally, the companies realized they were trying to save a wolf that had long gone extinct and so hired a hunter to put the old thing out of its misery and replace him with a wonderfully new creature. The man arrived bearing a gift of shiny metal, copper and a digital thermostat that didn’t have a 10° margin of error.
The unit was installed, cold air flowed through the ducts, and the two and one-little piggies slept soundly with dreams of life returning to normal.

The End

A big thank you to the friends and family who provided cool places for us to escape to. Apologies to those of you who we’ve neglected during this ordeal.

Obviously, the photos and videos we post are the most popular but recording, preparing, and posting them is currently too time consuming for us to include in every update. Don’t worry though. We will still do our best to put up videos and photos as much as we can.

The feedback we need is about our written content.
1. What subjects are you most interested in reading about? (Sophie’s life stages, Sophie’s milestones, our daily life, Greg’s attempts at humorous writing, etc.)

2. What subjects are you least interested in reading about? (Sophie’s life stages, Sophie’s milestones, our daily life, Greg’s attempts at humorous writing, etc.)

3. Is there something we have not written about that you would like us to?

4. Is it easy to find things on the blog? If not, what is the most confusing thing I should try to fix?

5. I have spent considerable time behind the scenes to improve the font spacing, size, and coloring for this blog. Is there anything that is still not easy to read?

Thanks in advance for your help. Kelly and I want this blog to be a fun and pleasurable part of your day. You can submit feedback via commenting to this post or by sending me an email. tarobot at gmail.com

Your Score: Pure Geek

39 % Nerd, 69% Geek, 21% Dork

For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

Greg scored better than half in Geek, earning him the title of: Pure Geek.

“It’s not that you’re a school junkie, like the nerd, and you don’t really stand out in a crowd, like the dork, you just have some interests that aren’t quite mainstream. Perhaps it’s anime, perhaps it’s computers, perhaps it’s bottlecaps, perhaps it’s all of those and more. Your interests take you to events and gatherings that are filled with people you find unusual and beyond-the-pale, but you don’t quite consider yourself “of that crowd.” Instead, you consider yourself to be fairly normal.

Which, you are.

Congratulations! You’re are the one on the RIGHT!”
Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test