Just before

This is just prior to the picture below. Original.

Back at the feeder

The grackle is the one with the iridescent head, the one flying is a red-winged blackbird. The great variety of blackbirds in Northern Illinois is awfully fun. Grackles fly in large packs and are very smart and efficient at emptying feeders. They also attract a lot of brown-headed cowbirds, which lay their eggs in the grackles nests, and the grackles raise the cowbird babies -- opportunism at its best.

If you look closely at the full-sized original, you can see the grackle has a seed in its mouth.

Mourning Meal

From my parents-in-law's feeder. I love my 30 year-old 200mm zoom and the rapid-fire shutter release!

The full-sized image is here.

Time for a quiz

No hints, can you guess what the item above is? Full sized version here.

St. Baldrick's

Most of you already know what St. Baldrick's is.

For those who need an introduction, every year I participate in a charity event which raises money for childhood cancerresearch. The event is called St. Baldrick's. Shavees, as we're called, volunteer to have our heads shaved for donations from nice people like you all.

From now until March 16th I raise money from everyone I can. And then on the event day I go into downtown Chicago to Fado's Irish Pub at a big, fantastically fun event and my donators can see me get my head shaved, can bid on auction items, and can have a few beers, free bar food and just hang out. We've had an enormous amount of fun the last few years.

The standard donation is $50, but I've been pleased to receivedonations as low as $1 and as high as $1,000. My largest donator gets the added benefit of taking the first swipe at my head with the shaver. Last year I exceeded my goal of $5,000! This year I'm increasing my goal to $7,500.

My employer, Motorola, matched contributions last year, so check with your employer for matching contributions.

For a little background, my cousin Nathan was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma on April 1, 2003. He is now 6 years old and still fighting. You can read about his fight at his website:

My page is located here, you can find a "Donate On-line" button which is secure and about as easy as buying a book from Amazon. It's fully tax deductable and instructions are on-line. You can also print a donation form and use the normal U.S. Post.

If you have any questions, please contact me

Go Bears!

Turn your back on your little Bears fan and look what happens!

Defensive Wizardry

Here's Margot boxing this poor kid out under the boards. In fact she really does play pretty tenacious defense. She doesn't ever look up for the ball, but she's a good defender.

By Request

Okay Jim, you ask, I deliver. Blue tongues, complete with matching Christmas-themed pajamas.

Luna

Margot's new telescope is utterly fantastic. We are having a ton of fun with it, having looked at Saturn and Titan a few nights ago. I tried a photograph through the eyepiece (hand held) last night. The result is better than I expected. You can click on the image to see the full-sized image.

Adler

The family went down to the Adler Planetarium today. Lots of fun. Outside, as an intriguing haze hung over the city, I got a good shot of Beth and the kids. We bought a yearly pass, so we plan to go back for the regular shows, the Friday telescope time, and hopefully for the other fun stuff they do.

:%s/Et/Nat/g

So on my last blog, astute readers will have noted that I wrote "Ethan" when I should have written "Nathan". In my defense I submit that they are of similar age, one is my son and one is my cousin, they have similar names and we even wanted to name Ethan "Nathan" at one point. I also submit this composite photograph...

More from MSKCC

I have never seen the HESS vehicles before. Every year the company issues a toy for Christmas, and in the New York City area at least it is very big. Ethan had a few at the hospital from various years (and got *two* more toward the end of his stay) and I'm not exaggerating when I say 90% of the hospital staff had some memory of collecting them, their brothers or sons collecting them or perhaps just remembred neighborhood boys being excited every year as HESS advertised the new vehicle. They are indeed very, very cool. I believe Nathan has the 2001, 2004, and 2006 models now.

Visting Nathan

I spent the week visiting Nathan and Luke in the hospital. It was really super to see Nathan and to spend some time talking with Luke and giving him a break from time to time. One of the things Nathan and I did while Luke was out of the hospital was build a crayon forest. Here is the forest, and you can see Nathan through the trees!

Get out the vote

I voted for the Bad Astronomer; really I did, and you should, too. I mean if you really hate squids.

what a coincidence

pyxl, it's funny, I actually took that photograph from the time when Ethan was starring for The Little Rascals.

Or that?!?

And the boy turned 5 today. Here he is with his own blue tongue.

What on Earth is that?

Margot had soccer goalie-camp today. The boy and I sat and watched it. After a bit he and I wandered over to the snack counter and I bought him some candy. When the camp was done, Margot wanted a Blue Raspberry candy ring. It did this to her tongue -- she was most excited.

Boy at Run

Ethan and I went out to a local Nature Preserve. It was a great time. We saw birds, frogs, snail shells, pond scum, large flowers and tall grass. He threw rocks, apples, nuts, dirt. He broke sticks and ran and ran and ran. We talked about all sorts of stuff as we walked into a out of deep woods, long, sunny praries and such. We travelled over a mile or two and he never flagged. In the end we had to run back to the car since he could hear pirates coming to get us.

A blossom by any other name...

... would taste as sweet?

On the advice of a friend, and because we planted pumpkins this year, I plucked some pumpkin blossoms and fried them last night.

They were very good. Now let me disclaim at this point that they were bathed in milk and eggs and dredged in crackers and fried in butter, so I suppose it was inevitable that I'd like them.

So I guess fried pumpkin blossoms do indeed have my endorsement, another mild culinary surprise for me. A darned tasty one, to be sure.

well and truly hurled

I have recently begun playing vintage baseball. This is a league that plays baseball by the rules established inteh 19th century (1858 for our league to be exact). the picture above is an amalgam from a set of pictures taken by my friend Kyle who came to the last game. Click on the photo for the larger version.

Fun stuff, and more pictures and links will follow.