Sesame Street favorites

Corrie and I spent this morning watching our favorite clips from Sesame Street on hulu.com. Here are some of my favorites:

-lady bug picnic




-making crayons



-David disco skates



-Orange singing Carmen-this one kind of freaked me out but I still liked it



-and this one flat out gave me nightmares

Kooky Spooks!

Corrie and I were trying to remember what these plastic Halloween costumes with an inflatable head on top of your own head were called. I could only remember kids wearing them for one year, possibly two, back in 1980 or 1981. Thanks to Google and Corrie somehow remembering what they were called, here they are:


I'm sure there are tons of blog posts like this one where people are recounting these outfits. There are also a few still in their packaging for sale on Ebay, of course!

Duck, duck, duck . . .

Corrie and I attended the Avoca annual Quack-off duck races yesterday. For those who aren't familiar with the race, this was the 29th annual running of the ducks, and every year you can bring a duck to race or rent a duck to race. The point to the race is simple-get your duck past the finish line first, and you can clap your hands, make noise, etc. etc. to encourage your duck's speediness, but you can't touch it.

Proceeds benefit the local fire department. I was glad that we decided not to participate this year but to just spectate, because it had to be a long day for the participants. Registration happened in the morning, then the heats of duck races (3-4 ducks per heat) began around 1:00. I have no idea how many first round heats there were-we left around 3:30 or so and they were on heat 60 something. The winner of each of those initial rounds goes on to participate in the next set of heats, so it must've lasted all day and into the night.

The warm weather probably drew a larger crowd this year. The other thing going on is a lot of drinking. I have no problem with that, although I'm getting to an age where people in their early 20s who aren't managing their liquor consumption very well get on my nerves. Overall it was a great time. It's not every day that you hear someone say over a loud speaker, "if you rented your duck and you did not win your heat, you need to return your duck to the trailer. Please return your ducks."

Here are some photos and video from the day:

This is the view of the start line. There were 4 lanes.


Here's the end of a heat-it looks like 2 different people think they won. I'm not sure what the official call was. It was very interesting to watch so many ducks stop short of that orange line.


Here's a winner being interviewed after their heat. Note the duck necklaces. Duck flair and costumes were everywhere.


Here's a picture of the crowd as we were leaving. A duck race draws a lot of people!

I took a few short videos. This is a typical heat-a winner sails through, then the other ducks get in a traffic jam.



I'm very glad we attended, and I bet we'll go again next year. I'm still not sure I want the pressure of racing a duck, however.

Anyone up for a game of spoons?

I used to think that spoons was a game the Corwin family made up, but since growing up and talking to others, it sounds like this is not a unique activity to my family. (If you aren't familiar with it, the point is to collect four of a kind in your hand, after which you can grab a spoon. Then everyone else can grab a spoon. There's always one less spoon than players, so whoever doesn't get a spoon is out. You keep doing that until you have one winner.)

This year, my sister, her husband, our dad, and I made the trek down to the sticks outside of Auburn, Kansas, to my Aunt Susan's house for a great Thanksgiving dinner. I remember first playing spoons at my grandma Corwin's house back in the 80s, and we're still playing it everytime we visit.

Since I kept getting eliminated early in the game, I had some time to take photos and camera videos. Here's a good one where the little one almost blurts out what cards my cousin Andy is looking for. He'll need more training before he's ready to play.

And here's a shot of my sister after taking the last spoon and defeating our Aunt Barb. Aunt Barb had been the spoons champion, but my sister is giving her a good run for her money these days.

This could've really topped off some kid's bug collection

Saturday morning as Corrie is going about his regular business of getting the smoker fired up for some barbecued ribs, he came across this creature: (or this creature came upon Corrie.)


Unfortunately for you all, I don't think this picture does the spider justice. He was the largest and furriest live spider Corrie and I had ever seen. Can anyone tell what species it might be? I really hope it wasn't someone's lost pet because we're not going to be able to return it now.

Tornado Tips You Can't get from Ken Siemek

The Midwest has been hit hard with tornadic weather the past three weeks in a row. Here's a picture my mom sent me of last week's storm moving into Omaha:


Awhile back, I ran across a list of tornado tips my dad and I, along with my friend, Monica, came up with in 1989 during a tornado warning. They're on the first and only used page of a notebook labeled "science":

my tips:

1. Go rent a video camera.
2. Take a walk.
3. Call the tv station and complain about the programming.
4. If things look really bad, go to the farthest video store and rent all those tapes you haven't seen yet. (ha! how dated is that? Renting videos back then was a novelty to us.)
5. Whatever you do, don't listen to the weatherman.
6. Stay in your basement a half hour less than what the weatherman says.

and from my dad:

-climb on top of your roof for a better look
-If you don't hear sirens honk your car horn until the battery runs down. (comment from Monica: explodingly gnarly idea!!)
-calmly make a trip to Bakers for emergency supplies (our Bakers at 72nd and Blondo is now closed-it makes me sad)
-call Aunty Emm

and from Monica, who I think added these tips the following day at school:

-order out 4 pizza.
-Invite your friends over and sit on the front porch eating triscuits and cheese spread and when you're done, go to the disco. And then to the dentist!

and one update from my sister from this past weekend:
-continue waiting tables at M's because no one told you there was a tornado warning.

What does cashmere smell like?

Whatever it smells like, I guess I will be smelling like it for 24 hours at a time, 7 days a week. Because I had a coupon, I bought Lady Speedstick 24/7 "pure cashmere". Seemed odd to me.

Leo the Lion is back!

It was a slow news day in Lincoln yesterday. Here's the lead story in the Lincoln Journal Star's local section from Wednesday's edition:

http://journalstar.com/articles/2008/04/29/news/local/doc48179e28e63e8936413794.txt

There are about 10 comments following the online version talking about how great Leo the paper-eating lion is.

You can also listen to the story of the voice behind Leo here.

Twitter Yourself Right out of Jail

Even though I created a twitter account a few months ago, so far I hadn't had a burning desire to twitter, but maybe I need to keep it in mind. From cnn.com, man twitters himself out of jail:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

EZ Reader!

Check out Morgan Freeman on the Electric Company! Forget "No Child Left Behind", kids need this kind of stuff in their lives!

One of the many things I love

I love a lot of things, especially quirky things. One of my favorite things that I see on a regular basis in my neighborhood is an older gentleman driving a maroon sedan with the back window full of stuffed animal tigers. (As opposed to live tigers.) I think he must only live a few blocks away, so it makes sense that I see him around here, but when we're across town and we see him driving by, it makes me hoot and holler. I don't know exactly what it is, there is just something funny about someone driving around in a car like that. When I say full of stuffed animal tigers, I mean full of stuffed animal tigers.