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Wednesday 30 March 2005
	Whilst presenting a show (in our eating nook) I hear: Lila: The name of the acrobat that I'm doing is "Freeze dance below the ocean of the Big Girls".
Tuesday 29 March 2005
	Dziadziu and Zofia are heading on a ten-day cruise from San Francisco to Mazatlan, Mexico, aboard the Mercury, of the Celebrity Cruise Line. That's her, peeking over the long building at Pier 35. Here's our crowd, assembled. From left, sister Felicia, cousin Ziggy, Zofia, Isaac, Rose, Dziadziu, and Lila. After a long parting, Dziadziu waves good-bye to us all as Lila and Isaac look on, passes through security, and hurries to catch Zofia. A moment later the heavy door was lowered, forcing others to find one of the other entrances. So we head across the street to a restaurant (since this took longer than we thought and we're rather hungry). I'll post the name if I can remember it. Good veggie and omnivore food. Evidently we started doing a "weird face" contest. Here's Fel & Ziggy's entry. Then Isaac and I weighed in. I think our entry shows us off at our best :-) Here we are, back on Pier 35, watching the Mercury back out the dock and into the night, her lights winking at us until she went under the Golden Gate Bridge.
Monday 28 March 2005
	Except it was taken thirty-five years too late, this Marcel Antonisse photograph could have been me running through Keukenhof, the 32-hectares garden near Amsterdam. So many memories this picture brings back.... Instead, here's the next generation running around our house; some sort of dance / parade / craziness. I love it!
Sunday 27 March 2005
	This Osservatore Romano photo shows Pope John Paul II giving his Easter Sunday blessing from his studio's window at the Vatican today. He was unable to speak, owing to his recent medical woes. I've been there, but looking from San Pietro up to His Holiness. So this is what it looks like in the other direction. Today we are going to visit Rose's sister Mindy, her husband Neil, and the kids, Jessica and Matthew. On the way we stop off to get a replacement 9-inch saucepan (the last one has degraded over the last decade). The kids find collapsable storage bins, which evidently work as a full-body suit. Usually Lila chooses pink and Isaac blue, but today... Hey, here we are! From left, Neil, yours truly, Matthew, Isaac, and Lila. The pizza has just been served. From another viewpoint, from left, Mindy, Isaac, Rose, Lila, Neil, and Matthew. Isaac just loves taking care of the young ones. Here he is entertaining baby Jessica.
Saturday 26 March 2005
	In my spare time I've been editing my Dad's series of Holocaust vignettes: Almost a Schindler Man. It's a bit overwhelming, but I've trying nonetheless. It's challenging, keeping his voice whilst making the text accessible to a worldwide audience (the students who participate in the March of the Living programs). I've decideded to search the historical archives for photographs which add meaning to his stories; not everyone has grown up immersed with lore of the Shoah. More updates as things grind towards completion. Today it was time to visit a playground on Ulloa Street. Isaac borrowed a kid's skateboard - he didn't need it, he was recovering from a blooody nose caused by running into a smaller girl - and rolled all over the place. He was very safe about it, but he had Rose hopping here and there. Here's Lila being the boss of me. She's really pleased that she's shoehorned me into the kid-sized hammock inside the climbing structure. Having asserted her control, she extends her domain by climing into the sky. She's pretty fearless. Where's Isaac? He's wrestling with Tobias on the other side of the playground, Cary and Rose watching nearby.
Thursday 24 March 2005
	A few days ago I was chatting with Gabriel Morales, a Cuban-in-Miami e-friend. He's getting ready to premiere his public blog and I was giving the suggestion that he blog a bit each evening, rather than lose the details of the flow of the day. Whoops! I've been so busy that I've been ignoring my own advice. Fear not, I have a load of photos to be uploaded in the next few days. Sigh. Mea culpa. [Update: I uploaded. Happy?]
Wednesday 23 March 2005
	Time for another play-date. This time it's Lilly's turn to visit. (Her dad and I are working together at the moment.) All good times include jumping up and down on the "humpily bumpily"; our family bed. The sibs pose. Why does my boy look like Huck Finn? Oh yes, that's because I made a mistake and swapped his school pants for play pants of Lila's. He thinks this is pretty funny. Evening falls, and it's time for Shabbos. The candles have been lit (by the kids), the wine and challah consumed. The pasta has been served... ...and to her brother's screaming delight, Lila shows how not to behave at the dinner table :-)
Monday 21 March 2005
	John Z. DeLorean died today. At GM, he created what some consider the first "muscle car" in 1964 by cramming a V-8 engine into a Pontiac Tempest and calling it the GTO, fondly dubbed the "Goat" by auto enthusiasts. The DMC-12, the car with the unpainted stainless steel skin and the gull-wing doors (which you probably know best from the "Back to the Future" movie series starring Michael J. Fox) was his pride and joy. I remember when the federal government impounded the dealership in 1982 and threw a vulcan fence around the dozens of DMC-12s parked nose to tail on every square inche of the lot. (I'm guessing it was Thanksgiving break from B. U.) Oh how I wanted just one of those angular beauties! Well, in memory of Mr. DeLorean, here are two of his cars modified in ways what would have probably given him fits (perhaps fits of mirth).
Saturday 19 March 2005
	Lila's preschool holds a fundraiser auction each year. This year the theme is "the 80s", which for Kieradad meant Flashdance. Rose looks impressed. From David Byrne's "big suit" (Stop Making Sense) to The Bangles-style dancers, I was impressed with how much people remembered and loved the 80s. For me the decade was Boston University and heading out to San Francisco, but that doesn't lend itself well to costuming, so I got an "Anonymous Beef" tee-shirt and polka-dot tie at Goodwill, and made myself a punk mohawk with a coat-hanger and some fabric from the store. It looked like a skunk on my head; hence the "mohawk" tag Rose put upon it. Here's my darling Rose all dolled up. And not a bad dancer either. Way better than I am! Jane came out all right, but I haven't figured out how to dampen the specular reflection from the specs. Sigh.