A trip to the Boeing Museum of Flight, with Sixth Graders

Today was one of the best days I've had in a long time. Being laid off does have its advantages, number one being that I have time to chaperon my kids off to school events and other things like that. The school had arranged a field trip to the Boeing Museum of Flight, and that was not an opportunity to be missed.

When I got to the school, Yamaraashi-chan was thrilled to see me. "Are you embarrassed because I wore my kilt?"

Y-Chan

"Yeah," she said, but her eyes were alight. "But it's very cool." Apparently, having her dad show up is still better than not. We boarded the school bus and were off. On the bus, the two boys in front of me blared music out of their tinny little cell phone. Behind me, two girls shared earbuds on another cell phone loaded with music. Yamaraashi-chan wanted me to make sure I got a picture of her in her Sooj t-shirt. The boys in the back of the bus moved in uniform, staring out the back window at whatever stimulus caught their attention.

( The Blue Angels Exhibit )

( Spaceflight Exhibit )

( Air Force One and the Concorde )

( Lunch: Yes, I have a Kilt, an Earring, and a Pink Cell Phone )

( Mission to Mars )

Class picture

After that, we finished up with class pictures and boarded the bus home. Yamaraashi-chan sat in the back with her friends, and I sat in the front, hanging out with the other parents.

It was a wonderful day. I spent it with my daughter, and at the Flight Museum, and it just doesn't get much cooler than that.

More photos are at Flickr.

Hooray! Hooray! It's May! It's May!

Mayday Field

As if spending the day with my daughter and her class at the Boeing Flight Museum wasn't enough of a good thing, that evening, like every year, Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I made our way to the Fremont Maypole Festival. There, the city's many and varied pagan communities come together and enjoy a beautiful picnic, a lot of hugging and snuggling, and an openly Pagan celebration of fertility.

Kids playing at the grassy knoll.

Unlike the whole man-in-a-kilt thing being weird with the kids, there were dozens of kilts at the Maypole. Even the women wore utilitkilts. There were dozens of children there too, and the park is big and safe and we generally let them run around without much supervision. The latest fad is elf ears.

We showed up very early, and herne51 showed up shortly thereafter. We were so early, in fact, that we found someone who seemed to know what she was doing and she assured us that, yes, she was with the Arts Council that sponsored this event every year and, yes, we were in the right place. Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I shared grapes and bread and terrible brie, and then Kouryou-chan joined the girls-vs-boys tug of war.

Yamaraashi-chan's mother

Yamaraashi-chan eventually showed up. She accompanied her mother and her newly minted stepfather, who sat on a pair of chairs in the middle of it all and generally sat alone for the entirety of the celebrations. She, on the other hand, joined us mostly because Omaha's coven has a lot of children in it.

The Maypole

The maypole was gorgeous, and like every year took too long, but it has to be big to handle all of the participants. An impromptu brass band got tied up in the middle of it all, and kept playing even as they were so completely wrapped in ribbons they could no longer be seen. It was so much fun. While I switched off with Kouryou-chan, I ran into the_misha, who apparently just recognized me from a random photo. "Where else would you be on a day like today?" he mused. He seemed altogether nifty, and his wife and daughter were delightful.

I flirted with two lovely women, ate a lot of good food, talked a lot of great shop (including, oddly enough, some questions about the overhead of using an API versus using ad-hoc controls in WATIR), had some amazing honey mead, and took photos of the moon. On the way back from using the "comfort station" (what, "bathroom" isn't politically correct anymore?), I heard a young couple walk by and the man said, "What's that? Looks big. Let's go see." We had crashers, of a sort, for this open and public event.

The Maypole, After All

Eventually, night came and so did the chill. We wrapped up and headed home. A good time was very much had by all, and when we got home we crashed hard.

More pictures from the Fremont Maypole 2009 set

Well, what do you call it?

Omaha and I were having a long and involved talk with Yamaraashi-chan about "family." I won't go into the details here; let's just say that sometimes, when she's moody and difficult, she retreats into her own little world and it's hard for us to feel like we're all a family together, especially since both she and Omaha can get on each other's nerves quite effectively. The talk was good; Omaha, Yamaraashi-chan, and I agreed that I needed to do more of the parenting for Yamaraashi-chan and Omaha less, and we'd all need to remind ourselves, regularly, of how to be a family. Stepfamily takes work.

But as we were doing so, Yamaraashi-chan started playing with her cell phone. At first, her excuse was that she'd been lying on it and had taken it out of her pocket, but now she was stealing glances at some IM feed on it. Omaha pointed it out to me and I said, "Give it to me, kid."

She reluctantly handed it over, and as I took it I noticed that the wrap she keeps on it was missing. "Where's the condom?" I blurted.

"The what!?" she said, her eyes getting wide.

"The condom. You know, the rubber protective thing that goes on the outside."

"Do people really call it that?" She was outraged.

"Of course. It's a rubber protective device. What else would you call it?"

"Ewwwwww!" she whined. "I am never using that thing again. That's gross!"