theparkerfamily.org

Month: February 2010

  • belated valentine’s, pt 2

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    we made it to ben’s for lunch, so we are up to five out of the last seven valentine’s days … though this is (obviously) the first for sparklet.

    we actually tried to go yesterday — a saturday at ~5:00pm — but the place was packed out the door. turns out the trick is to go on sunday morning at 11am. apparently, ben’s is pre-hangover food, not post-hangover food … i guess it makes sense when you think it through.

    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    valentine’s at ben’s chili bowl, washington, dc

  • belated valentine’s, pt 1

    for belated valentine’s day — delayed due to that whole Austin/snow thing — sparklet and i chipped in for a photo album that the lady sparkler can keep in her work bag, so that she can gaze longingly at baby whenever she feels the urge.

    the photo album has one photo a week going back to sparklet’s birth … which seemed like such a good idea, that i’ve put the whole thing live as a ‘photo of the week’ tag on the blog.

    next up, we need to make our annual valentine’s pilgrimage to ben’s chili bowl … and the lady sparkler and i are working on a separate album (one of all the guestbook photos we’ve taken so far) to give to sparklet.

  • fire al trautwig

    it’s winter olympics season at the sparkler household, and that means it’s time to get angry and the god-aweful commentary for olympic sports. here are some of my favorites:

    for some, this morning started with agony and shock.

    someone had fallen off the cross-country track.

    these are biathlon fans. they know when to cheer … when the target is hit!

    piercing insight there, friend.

    spillane looks solid for the gold if he can stand up right here. spillane’s got it … america breaks through!

    actually, spillane did *not* get it. in all the jingo-istic excitement, the commentator seems to have missed that a frenchman came in first.

    in the previous three olympics, this man has left with nothing but the memories.

    … nothing besides a gold medal.

    we have a deep russian team. then, the americans. then, the russians … that’s your trilogy.

    russians, americans, russians. yup, that’s three.

    he’s a bit the germaphobe … always taking purell around with him. he doesn’t drink except for the occasional swig of cognac to cleanse his mouth of germs.

    tmi. not quite to the clintonian/jacksonian/woodsian level, but seriously … he can sleep upside down in a hyperbolic chamber, and it’s none of my/our/your business.

    i wish i could just blame NBC as a whole (and i may later) but each one of these linguistic “gems” was said by the same man … NBC olympic commentator al trautwig.

    if the name sounds familiar, it should.

    he is the same #*&%$ who brought you grotesquely over-wrought commentary for NBC’s gymnastics coverage in Beijing (including his 2008 pièce-de-résistance, lamenting “a catastrophe of epic proportions” when Alicia Sacramone fell on a floor routine).

    seriously, NBC … you’ve paid $3.5 billion for the rights to cover the Olympics since 1999, so maybe it’s about time you read the founding principles of the Games:

    The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

    i don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that mr. trautwig’s over-wrought hyperboles are undermining the very games he’s covering.

    exiling trautwig from gymnastics to cross-country/biathalon coverage (while quite the statement about his perceived worth) isn’t enough. the problem is, he doesn’t have the commentary skills to cover little league matches in the Parkersburg, West Virginia.

    if he’s under a contract you can’t get out of, let me suggest you transfer him to KXGN in Glendive, Montana. as a parking attendant.

  • dear kate

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    dear kate,

    well, it’s the last full day of our paternity leave together.

    we’ve spent the morning at the ice skating rink on the National Mall — where we saw an ice skating Nun, and the four foot tall snow drifts that kept you in Texas for so long — and the afternoon at the Natural History museum.

    of course, after spending the last 10 nights sleeping in a flimsy pack-and-play, you’ve been asleep pretty much non-stop for the last 18 hours, so I’m not banking on you remembering much.

    so, just in case you don’t remember our wonderful talk today, I want to thank you again for the last four weeks. i don’t toss out religious imagery much (I’m what your Mom would call a stuffy-bottomed Episcopalian) but our time together has really been a blessing.

    due to your Daddy’s inability to sit still, we’ve done an exhausting metric ton to keep us busy: a week home sick; trips to American Indian and American Art museums; walks around the Georgetown Waterfront and the National Aquarium; not to mention that “bonus” week we had in Austin.

    however, the parts that I have loved the most are the little things in between … like today sitting together at a cafe, making goofy faces on the Metro, watching your face light up at every kind of light source you can imagine.

    part of what made today extra special was that, after carrying you around for much of the day, you started wailing each time I tried to put you down. i am sure that it was just gas, or maybe a diaper rash … but i’m going to pretend that you knew this time together was coming to an end, and wanted to be held just a little bit longer.

    you are just a good-natured baby, and have been incrediably patient with Mommy and Daddy as we’ve been broken-in as parents.

    people told us from the very beginning how babies put everything in perspective, and while Mommy and I smiled and nodded at the advice at the time, the last four months with you have shown this to us in ways words could never explain.

    with that in mind, let me say that we love you in ways that you may never fully understand, at least not until you have a little sparklet of your very own. (and if that’s the case, that’s fine with us.)

    we both know that things will change over the years — we’re guessing you’ll hate mommy at the onset of puberty, and daddy once you start dating — but our love for you will be as constant as the stars you seem to love so much.

    all the love in the world,
    mommy and daddy

  • exodus

    we’re back, and it looks like DC had every bit as much “fun” as we thought while we were gone.

    while we were out, one of our favorite ways of keeping up with the snow was by following darrow montgomery’s photos at washington city paper’s blog. the above photo was taken about 100 feet from our place (for those who know Mount Pleasant, that “open” sign is at Heller’s Bakery) during the height of the second storm.

    i can’t really fathom what it must have been like.

    in the end, our long weekend in Austin for Auntie Nadine’s wedding turned out to be an 11 day journey. and, based on the size of the snow drifts, it seems being “stuck” in 40 degrees-and-rainy Austin was probably the best option.

    still, it’s good to be home.

    PHOTO: the above photo is courtesy Darrow Montgomery and/or the Washington City Paper. check out the rest of Darrow’s work, and the City Desk blog.

  • out: ladybird johnson wildflower center

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    out: ladybird johnson wildflower center

  • live: opening ceremony for the vancouver winter olympics

    It’s the most wonderful time of the Olympiad, and while I’m not exactly where I thought i would be right now (e.g. marooned in Austin waiting for DC to thaw) I’m still clearing as much of my calendar as i can for the Games. Thank God i had the sense to setup my TiVo before I left for Austin.

    A few thoughts about tonight’s Opening Ceremony:

    5:42 pm Wait, Jim Carrey is Canadian?
    6:13 pm Is Lindsey Voss’ shin the new Dwight Freeney’s ankle?
    6:38 pm Lindsey Jacobellis is never going to live down that awful, showboating mistake from Torino. I hope she gets a gold, just to shut the media up. Seriously, people. She was like 14. People make mistakes.
    6:44 pm Wait, Michael J. Fox is Canadian?
    6:44 pm Wait, Ryan Renolds is Canadian? I’m sensing a theme to my posts so far …
    6:45 pm Wait, Erick McCormack? Kim Cattrall? I feel like the Canadians are an alien species, walking among us … unknown, undetected.
    6:50 pm If I could rip on the new version of “We Are the World” without being a callow, heartless bastard … I would.
    7:02 pm The opening ceremony starts with an video, which (*surprise*) ends with the virtual snowboarder actually *entering* the stadium. Who saw that coming?!?
    7:05 pm This is going to be a long, cheesy night.
    7:07 pm Rocky and Bullwinkle has completely ruined my ability to look at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with a straight face.
    7:08 pm Wait, Canada has a military?
    7:09 pm “O Canada” as a jazz ballad? Thank God there are no fundamentalist, patriotic Canadaians … else there would be rioting in the streets of the Canadian heartland tonight.
    7:18 pm After the dance-inspired welcomes from the Aboriginal nations of Canada, who else was looking for the English tribes to dance in with tea, and the French tribes to dance in with pea soup?
    7:39 pm It might have been the editing, but Georgia didn’t get quite the standing ovation that i was expecting after that horrific accident (the footage of which NBC has now shown three times in the last two hours).
    8:12 pm The U.S. enters, looking not quite as jingoistic as i was expecting. Is this a reflection of the post-Bush humility?
    8:19 pm Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams. Insert your own punchline here.
    8:33 pm Giant spirit bear emerges from the floor. Giant spirit bear is hungry. Giant spirit bear will now eat the dancing gnats before it. Mmmmmmm.
    8:37 pm As screwed up as the United States is, at least we don’t count Sarah MacLachlan as one of our national treasures.
    8:53 pm Tap-dancing, neo-punk wearing fiddle-players with sparklers coming out of their shoes. Now there is a stereotype of Canada that I missed somehow.
    9:12 pm Canada has a beat poet. They found him on YouTube. I wish I was making this stuff up.
    9:15 pm Maybe it’s too soon for perspective, but all the memorials for Nodar Kumaritashvili (the aforementioned Georgian slider) seem really forced. I wish they had found one really poignant way to remember him, instead of sprinkling in lots of superficial attempts.
    9:33 pm Wow. k.d. lang. I didn’t know she was Canadian, but I’m really glad to know she’s not American.
    9:39 pm Hey, i just *knew* Anne Murray would get dragged out before too long. Wayne Gretsky’s got to be next.
    9:58 pm Gretsky. Spoke too soon.
    10:00 pm One of the four pillars of the Olympic cauldron didn’t make it out of the floor, so one of the four torch bearers (Steve Nash) get’s screwed. Shouldn’t one of the other three bearers invited him over to “help” light their pillar? So sad.
    10:07 pm Even worse, Wayne Gretzky gets to light *two* cauldrons? Now I feel REALLY bad for Steve Nash.
    10:09 pm Who thought five minutes of Wayne Gretzky carry a torch on the top of a pickup truck was good television?
    10:15 pm It’s over. It wasn’t great, but at least it didn’t feature thirty-six pickup trucks full of cheerleaders roaring around the stadium.

    PHOTO: Courtesy of Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

  • out: umlauf sculpture garden

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    out: umlauf sculpture garden

  • out: laguna gloria

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    out: laguna gloria

  • found: working the “ab roller”

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