This morning I got up early and went with a friend and her dad to the Richmond Rod and Gun Club to take part in the Smallbore Junior Rifle Training Program. After a gun safety program, we learned how to shoot a .22 rimfire rifle at targets 25 yards away. This was my first time shooting a gun, and the instructor said I did well. Even though it was freezing cold and extremely windy, I had lots of fun, and I learned a lot!
Tomorrow we will be turning off our lights and laptops to take part in the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour. Earth Hour asks individuals, businesses, government leaders and others to turn off all non-essential lighting for one hour as a statement of collective concern about climate change. So wherever you are, power-off at 8:30 pm on Saturday March 27. To get a better sense of the magnitude of this global effort, watch the WWF’s video about Earth Hour: www.myearthhour.org/news/media.
There was a giant full moon over the Berkeley hills last night. We set off a sparkler in front of the house to ward off bad luck in the New Year. Peabody didn’t set Nettie on fire, so it looks like it’s working!
St. Nicholas filled our shoes with chocolates and gifts last night. He usually brings a Lego Advent calendar for Peabody and a Playmobil calendar for Nettie. We keep them with the Christmas decorations and set them up around the tree. St. Nick left a note with Nettie’s boot saying there were only Pirate and Police calendars from Playmobil this year. Imagine Santa being arrested for breaking and entering or shanghaied elves burying his sack of toys! We’re a little sad about it, but we have plenty of marzipan pigs and chocolate sardines to help us get over it.
I was happy to see Nettie employing some sophisticated carving techniques with her Totoro pumpkin. With the same gouge I used on R2-D2 and Daruma-San, Nettie shaved Totoro’s belly, eyes and body. The mouth and nose were cut out to make his smile prominent. My globe pumpkin was carved without a template. To create a solid background for the rear of the pumpkin, I didn’t carve most of Asia and Australia. Peabody’s Jack-o’-lantern was original too, a geometric pattern of lines and large dots.
On October first the Derringdos found a pet budgie at Your Basic Bird, our neighborhood pet shop. A budgie (or budgerigar, as it is formally called) is a type of parakeet originally from Australia. They can be taught to talk and sing, but Winston has yet to learn, though he does chirp along with some songs by Great Big Sea and The Who. When we first brought him home he stayed in the corner of the cage shivering, but now he seems to be a little more comfortabe with us. We hope that soon he will think of us as his family.
Last week we were eating lunch and we kept seeing the Cal shuttle buses go by. We remembered it was Cal Day when the University has an open house. Since Cal didn’t do very much advertising this year, it was much quieter. We walked around and went to the Life Sciences Building, where we looked at the stuffed animals, got California Poppy seeds, saw a life timeline that wrapped around the whole courtyard, and looked at a few paintings from Darwin’s trips. In the Life Sciences building students chose an animal and wrote a fact or two about it. We learned that sloths grow algae on their fur as camouflage, and moths live with them and “farm” the algae so it doesn’t grow too much. We checked out the East Asian Library, and went to the room that is usually filled with bug exhibits, but this time was empty except for one exhibit on Bombardier Beetles. We learned how they are used by some groups to argue against evolution. It was very fun and interesting. You can see some more pictures here.
Last week, Peabody and his fellow kindergarteners dug into the muck and observed wildlife at Marina Bay in Richmond. He returned with some shells and small shards of green sea glass. According to Wikipedia, green glass is one of the more common varieties. We’ll be on the lookout for some of the rarer colors in our trips to the beach this spring and summer.
Since my birthday is in the summer and friends are often on trips then, I decided to have a birthday party for my half birthday. The decorations and party boxes had a Chinese New Year theme, because they were the prettiest decorations at the party store (and because it was around the time of Chinese New Year). The goodie bags, or rather, boxes, were made to look like very pretty Chinese take-out boxes. We made commercials for strange objects from around the house, had a wind up horse race (see above) and had a paper bag fashion show. We also learned a game called Chinese Mimes that is like telephone except doing actions instead of speaking. At the end we had Laura Ingalls Wilder’s wedding cake, to also celebrate her birthday! Yum!
Being in Spain this week meant having to watch the Inauguration from my hotel room. It was a little sad being out of the country for the big day. The President gave his acceptance speech a couple hours after my own presentation which was somewhat less historic, but did include a game demonstration. That green-faced Wii in the bottom left of the picture is a developer’s system.
The Europeans I’ve met over the last couple months have been so happy for me as an American. Last month when going through security at Moscow’s airport, the border guard looked at my passport, greeting me with a harsh “Ahh…American.” When I said “Yes, American.” he replied with a hearty “Obama!” I said “Yes, Obama.” He looked at me suspiciously and asked “You vote for Obama?” The guard was ecstatic when I said “yes.” I only wish I had brought some campaign buttons to hand out.