dynamic elf

Apparently there's a pub called Boynton's, which made ukelele think of Sandra Boynton and hippos, and seed me with the line: "One hippo, all alone / Drinks by itself at the end of the bar." Naturally, I had to finish it off, so I present you with the following idle fruits of my afternoon:

One hippo, all alone
Drinks by itself at the end of the bar
Two hippos, eating scones
Sit at a table and watch from afar
Three hippos, underage
Skillfully order a pitcher of Bud
Four hippos, full of rage
Yell about politics after the flood
Five hippos, hipsters all
Order martinis with seven-word names
Six hippos along the wall
Wait for the pool sharks to go down in flames
Seven hippos step out back
Puff on their nicotine, worried they suck
Eight hippos on the mack
Try out Speed Dating and pray for good luck
Nine hippos, out with pals
Spend their whole paychecks but laugh and don't care
Ten hippos cruising for gals
Manage to really look quite debonair

All of the hippos out drinking tonight
Are drunk-dialing friends and feeling all right!
But the hippos' cavorting must finally stop
When, after last call, they're kicked out of the shop.

Ten hippos in their cars
Are willing to take a circuitous route
For nine hippos full of stars
Who all need a ride and are all kinda cute
Eight hippos, dates postponed,
Hope that next week they'll go out for Chinese
Seven hippos, kinda stoned
Stumble home falling in love with the trees
Six hippos lost their shirts
(They all need to practice their English some more)
Five hippos ate desserts
Then got on their fixies and felt all hardcore
Four hippos, kinda blue
Comfort themselves with a heartwarming tale
Three hippos yell, "WOO-HOO!"
Happy that they didn't end up in jail
Two hippos get the nerve
To write down their numbers on coasters, in pen,
For that one hippo they've observed
Who's solo, a cutie, and looks like Sean Penn.

New favorite game: French Toast. One person thinks of an object, and other people guess things that it might be like; the instigator has to make a call about which of the two objects on deck at any given moment the chosen object is more like.

Natalie caught on to this game fairly quickly, though her attention span does not yet allow for lots of playing. It did lead to this wonderful snippet, though:

Me: Is it more like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or like a Phish concert?
D: It is more like a Phish concert.
Natalie: Is it more like that, or like an ORIGAMI FISH concert?
D: ....It is more like an origami fish concert.
Me: Okay, is it more like an origami fish, or --
D: An origami fish CONCERT.
Me: Oh! Is it more like an origami fish concert, or BURNING MAN?
D: It is Burning Man!
Natalie: YAY!

Despite my awful (and frankly kind of debilitating) sunburn, dilletante and I managed to get N on the trail-a-bike on Tuesday and out for our first family bike tour.

Let me say that again, because I've been waiting to for years: FAMILY BIKE TOUR.

It was a little more modest than we'd originally planned, of course. That's how these things go. We had thought it would be fun to take all day Tuesday to bike along the commuter rail down to Providence, get a hotel, and take the train back the next day. After all, on a tandem, D and I have extra power -- more than enough to tow a little girl -- which makes us limited only by her attention span. And that attention span has recently proven itself to be rather long for trips she's motivated to take. It turns out that the promise of spending the night in a hotel with a pool is a strong motivator, so I didn't have any trouble conceiving of her taking four or five two-hour chunks of bike trip.

There were two problems, though: (1) she'd never been on a tagalong bike before, and (2) I had to sleep all morning because of the goddamned sunburn. Also, as it turned out, (3) we were a little bit petrified to take her on the road, despite having thousands and thousands of bike miles under our wise parental belts. OK, and also (4) we had the inevitable mechanical failures and setbacks. Four problems. But! We conquered them, threw some clothes and bathing suits in a little backpack, and set out on our newly-minted 12-mile journey to the end of the Minuteman bike trail.

At first, Natalie was a little frightened. After all, even a slow ride on the back of a tandem is a lot faster than she ever goes on the tricycle in the backyard at preschool. This caused her to shift wildly from side to side which (as you can guess if you've ever captained a tandem) made the handling and steering go from "tricky" to extremely difficult. So we walked up the hill near our house, got back on, and coasted down the other side. By the time we had covered the two-ish miles to Davis Square, mostly by protected bike path, she had learned to relax, try to balance, and just enjoy herself.

Heartened, we kept our curious bike train moving on down the path, and N began to get up enough confidence to start pedaling rather than just riding. Unfortunately, she chose a bad moment to do this, and fell halfway off the bike as we went over two big bumps. Since she only fell halfway, she got her leg stuck against the moving wheel and thereby got a big abrasion on her thigh. Poor bean. We cleaned it off as best we could, patched it up, and cuddled her on the grass in the park behind Alewife. She vowed never to get on the bike again. I asked her to get up just so I could take one picture, which I would then show to dancingwolfgrrl so that she would say "OOH WOW!". N agreed. Here it is:



Once on the bike, she consented to keep going, so go we did. We made a game out of calling bumps: when my front wheel hit a bump, I'd say "Badump!", which would then chain back with D and N each calling "badump!" as their respective wheels went over it. This gave us a game to play and also gave N a bit of warning to hang on. It wasn't long before she was yelling about how happy she was and how wonderful it was to be biking. Too true!

We sailed over the 128 overpass on our bikes, waved at the cars, and turned off the path to check into our "POOL HOTEL". The pool was closed for the night, but she was not fazed; we ran around and ate delivery Thai food and D told her stories at bedtime since we hadn't brought any books. Later, after she was asleep, we lured zsquirrelboy to sit outside the hotel room door and play Chrononauts with us in the hallway until there were noise complaints and we were forced back inside the room. The next day, we had a lazy and wonderful ride back: we stopped in Lexington center for lunch, Arlington center for ice cream, and stopped at a little pond to run around for no reason:



Natalie, being tallish, articulate, and capable, was mistaken for a 5-year-old (she's 3). I could have made the same mistake myself a few times with the way she took to this crazy biking business. We called out bumps, yelped at our echoes under bridges and tunnels, sang songs together, listened to made-up stories, told jokes, collected comments from other bikers, and just generally had a marvelous time.

More, please.

or maple pinocchio... anyway, did you do this when you were kids, or was it just us? I'm still amazed that not everyone knows how to whistle on acorn caps, so maybe my experiences aren't as universal as I always assume they are. :)

Gosh, how on earth did people waste time at work before the internet?

Two things that make me feel better, both set to the same song:

That Sony Bravia ad with the bouncing balls, and its Tango parody ad.

200 liters of Diet Coke and 500+ mentos. It sounds like a bad idea -- and, to be fair, maybe it is -- but it sure is a spectacle. (Requires QuickTime.)

You may have already seen this version of the Boston T map, but if you haven't, you should definitely check it out.