Nathan Alter:

A school in West Virginia is getting rid of swings because they’re too dangerous (lawsuit-wise).  I suppose playgrounds have gotten rid of seesaws and merry-go-rounds.  (I include links for kids who’ve probably never even seen these…they were awesome!)  I guess swings had to be next.  I predict that a playground in the year 2050 would consist of a series of 2-foot foam domes…each with liability cameras…and some parent will still sue for emotional damage.

Vanessa and I went with our friend to the shooting range yesterday.  I’d never shot a gun before, aside from a BB gun.  I wouldn’t buy a gun, but it was fun to try them out.  We fired a .22 rifle, a WW II Mauser rifle, some kinda large .45 pistol, and a 30-06 rifle with scope.  The little .22 was like a BB gun.  The pistol seemed kinda shaky in the hands to me.  I prolly don’t have very steady hands.  The rifles had huge bang and kick…a surprise every time.  The best part I think was hitting a metal plate 200 yards away through a scope.  I was surprised that you can’t tell if you hit anything because of the kick of the gun.  Our friend said you don’t have to worry about the kick throwing you off because the bullet’s already left the gun at that point.  You usually have to have someone else tell you if you hit the target.

We took a walk in the desert to some volcanic rock hills near our house last night around dark.  I almost stepped on a small rattlesnake.  It slithered away and barely made much noise until it got under a rock and then started rattling.  It didn’t strike at me or anything.  Later on, another another one immediately started rattling and I walked out of the way pretty quickly.  I don’t remember ever seeing a rattler in the wild, but they seem to love warm rocks when the sun’s going down.  We also saw the international space station flying by…looked like a slow flying star or something.

Vanessa’s brother and family have been visiting and I’ve gotten in some time on LittleBigPlanet with the kids and Supreme Commander 2 with da bruvah-in-law.

We figured out how Mia unlocks Vanessa’s cell phone.  She opens the slider keyboard and then closes it.  Brilliant!  I think I got her hooked on cellphones already by putting The Presets – My People on there.  She loves to hold the phone and dance to it.

We ended up camping at Red Canyon in the Manzano mountains last weekend, since Jemez was closed due to fires.  It was  a nice time.  Walmart tents are made mainly to catch the zipper.  I am now an expert at unsticking zippers.  Pull the stuck cloth from the zipper as you pull it back and forth.  It only took us about 2 hours to set up the tent.  Yeah, we’re not handy.  Lessons learned:  Get your tent on level ground, clear the ground of ALL sharp/pointy sticks, pillows are nice.

Mia’s somehow figured out how to unlock Vanessa’s phone…which is quite a feat for a 1-year-old.  We’re not sure how she figured it out, but she’s called someone, tried to sign into AIM, and possibly other stuff.

Well, we’re off to the Jemez area for some camping this weekend.  We’ve actually convinced Vanessa to come along, which is apparently no small feat!

I took a little bike ride in the nearby desert with Sean the other evening.  He learned that riding is sand is hard/impossible.  He fell of his bike and his hand landed on a purple flowery plant with white fuzz all over.  The white fuzz turned out to be extremely fine stickers.  What a mean plant!  Well, it’ll be pretty cool mountain biking out there, assuming we can find some non-sandy trails.

This is kinda how Sean was dressed as he played outside yesterday.   Bike helmet and galoshes.

Ethan and Avram and I went hiking in El Mal Pais Saturday.  It was a 4 hour hike along a cliff that overlooks a sea of volcanic black rock.

It’s the New Mexico version of a lake!  Pretty cool to see.  At the end of the trail is a good view of La Ventana Arch.

Avram has a screw in his foot and my knees start hurting on long hikes.  So, although we kept a fast pace, we were moving like C3PO and R2D2 at the very end.  I guess that would make Ethan Chewbacca.

We went to the library Saturday and the guy who runs the New Mexico Wolf Sanctuary brought in a large arctic wolf. The wolf looked awesome. The safety of bringing a wolf into a group of restless kids? Depends on the wolf, claims the dude. Some people like animals a little too much. This dude calls wolves “boys, girls, and kids.” He also communes with them by sniffing them and other pretty odd stuff. One of them chewed up his leg, but he forgives the wolf. The dude says you can help wolves by using some kinda wolf donation search engine and to stop yer wolf hoarding. My tips for helping wolves would be to use the Wolfram Alpha search engine, not even taking in dogs as pets, and playing more Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Those may not work for you, though.

Sean and I took a 5-mile round-trip bike ride yesterday (with lots o’ breaks). He did well. We stopped off at a playground and walked across the bridge on Tramway and Copper. Getting across the Tramway/Central intersection takes a while. At one intersection there, drivers have to wait so long to turn right there that they feel they have a pedestrian override when they finally get the green arrow. I once had a car honking angrily at me as I crossed when signaled there…so we didn’t use that crossing yesterday. When we got back, Sean told Vanessa, “We took lots of breaks.”