Last week was a busy one. A few highlights:

• A Day with Liam: On Tuesday, Liam and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, which we both quite liked, though Liam hid his eyes at a few strategic moments. We then moved on to Chuck E. Cheese’s for an overpriced but tasty lunch, followed by a trip to Mazak Music, our local musician’s emporium, and a good long swim in the river to work the pizza off. I got hit with a migraine, so wrapped things up a bit early, but we had a great time anyway.
• Blue Man Group: My friend David Barnard won a couple of tickets to see Blue Man Group on their tour for their new album, The Complex. David had never seen the Boys in Blue before, so it was lots of fun to get to introduce him to one of my favorite acts. While I enjoyed the show a great deal, I’d have to say that I actually dug their stage show in Vegas more. While I like their music, the most characteristic thing about the group is their on-stage techno-shenanigans, which the rock show format leaves less room for. That said, there were some delightful visual tricks in this show too, which made the “How did they do that?!?!” game as much fun as ever.
• Camelot: Kathy and I went down to see my cousin Tanya in a production of Camelot on Friday night. Though it’s a musical theater staple, I’d never seen it before, and was excited to get to fill that gap in my cultural education. The show launches from T.H. White’s version of the Arthurian legend, with much of the whimsy in that telling making the transition to stage intact. We quite enjoyed the show, as well as a bite afterward at the Liberty Bar (another worthwhile discovery!) with Tanya and the lawyer-by-day/thespian-by-night who played Sir Pellinore. It was a super evening out!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m moving from programming our account management system at work to programming on the game server team. As a result, I’m having to cram a lot of C++ into my brain in a short time. It’s engaging but exhausting work. I couldn’t, however, ask for a better guide than Accelerated C++, the book that was recommended me by Tim Keating, our team lead. I had expected C++ to be largely a matter of learning another syntax for object-oriented programming, but there’s quite a lot more to it than that, as it turns out. Anyway, I’m having fun fleshing out my resume and learning something new, not to mention tackling a job I would certainly have been rejected for had I applied through the usual channels!

• I took Maggie to the San Antonio Zoo, for a ride on the Brackenridge Eagle, to the office of Mom McMains, and to see Spy Kids 3D (which didn’t make a lick of sense) for her day with Daddy.
• Emily’s home from her four-week New York trip. We’re glad she’s back! It’s great to have the full family again.
• Abigail’s birthday party was yesterday. In spite of sporadic illness on her part and looming thunderstorms, all the portents cleared and we had a spectacularly good time. Thanks to all who attended and helped make it a wonderful occasion!
• As a token of thanks for helping to set up her website, Celeste gave us a beautifully done print of Vanity and another of Dragon. We’re looking forward to finding a good spot in the house for them. She and Adam are off to Arizona for Harley Davidson mechanic school in a couple of weeks.

We’re not quite sure how it happened, but Liam recently got himself into some poison ivy. He’s not as agonizingly itchy as I would have expected, but has broken into some horrid looking rashes. The doctor’s hooked him up with the good anti-itch stuff now, and we’re making sure he wears socks on his afflicted feet as much as possible so as not to share the blight with his siblings. They’ve also recommended that we soap-and-water his shoes, though I think that may have been just because they’re smelly. You never can tell with those doctors!

We’ve finally got air conditioning out in my converted garage office and the other rooms on that end of the house. After Sears damaged our living room with their initial install and then ignored our cries for help, both phoned and written, for 9 months, we told them to get lost and to take their system with them. Ironically, the company they contracted to do the removal, Austin Air Duct, turned out to be quite competent and helpful. We solicited a bid from them, along with several other local contractors, and eventually decided that we liked them best and had them do the installation.

The job ended up being a fair bit more involved than they had expected, due to the shoddy work the original Sears crew had done, but they called in the necessary extra people and got the job done finished up anyway at the originally bid price. The new installation looks much nicer, runs quieter and best of all, actually cools the place off. (The old installation always struggled a bit.) We paid a bit extra to have some extra returns put in, which means that I can seal the inside doors to my office for soundproofing and not impact the airflow.

All in all, I’m very pleased with the new system, and would heartily recommend Austin Air Duct to anyone in the area.

On Tuesday I took the day off work to spend with Abigail. We started the festivities at Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, a groovy drive-through zoo, where we got to feed a variety of deer, buffalo, zebras, llamas, sheep, antelope, goats, etc. from the window of our car. The highlight for Abby was when a zebra started chewing on the top of her door, leaving a great puddle of zebra slobber behind. Helpful hint: you get to spend more time with the animals if you drive a car without enough coolant, as you’ll have to pull off to the side and turn off the engine regularly to keep from overheating.

We went on from there to Chuck E. Cheese — the very one, in fact, that I used to go to as a kid, and to which we kidnapped Chris for his 17th birthday. (Aside: We handcuffed and blindfolded him and drove around in circles along the way, and yet he still guessed our destination. Obviously the brain structures which are responsible for figuring out how to get from point A to point B and which I lack were given to him instead.) I don’t remember if this is standard for pizzas there, but ours was a hyper-garlicky affair that I quite enjoyed.

After pizza, we moved on to the Riverwalk, where we took the narrated river cruise through the downtown area. Having grown up in San Antonio, the Riverwalk is one of my favorite places to go without any particular goal in mind. It’s always lovely and fun to wander around exploring. On this trip, we had the added pleasure of running into Ross’s mother at her gift shop. We stayed and visited for about an hour, having a great conversation between interruptions from people wanting to buy lottery tickets and other items. She was very kind to Abigail, and regaled her with a few nifty items from the shop to take home with her. (One of which, a small star pendent with flashing red and blue lights, quickly lost favor with me when Abigail discovered that it would give Daddy quite a start to hold it up in the rear-view mirror.)

Finally, we went over to Barry’s for Siegfried, the third opera in the ring cycle. I wasn’t sure how Abby would do with something that long, but with me whispering paraphrases of the text in her ear, she loved it, and said she wanted to come back for Götterdämmerung .

We spent some time down in San Antonio this weekend, enjoying a long-overdue Father’s Day lunch with Dad McMains and some time visiting Mom McMains and her five new dachshund puppies. One of our projects for the summer has been getting Maggie swimming, and while at Mom’s, she finally got the hang of it enough to keep her head above water reliably. I expected her to get discouraged after getting a snootful of water a couple of times, but she just made a horrid retching sound, then whipped around and swam right back where she had come from.

Then on Sunday, I noticed Maggie going around to each of the doors that opened into the front room where I was sitting and quietly closing them. Now, the only time that Maggie is quiet is when she’s up to something, so I suspected she was trying to get away with some behavior she knew was illicit. Sure enough, when I checked on her a few minutes later, she had snuck a bag of dried cranberries into her room and was chowing down. (She hid her face in her pillow when she heard me coming, presumably on the theory that if she couldn’t see me, I couldn’t see her.)

Since Maggie’s likely to be the last of our kiddos, it’s a bittersweet time: knowing on one hand that we’re not going to have to deal with diapers anymore, or going through toilet training, but also that we won’t be hearing a first word or watching a fist step again. Wayne Watson expresses it well in his song Watercolor Ponies:

But Baby, what will we do
When it comes back to me and you?
They look a little less like little [ones] every day.
Oh the pleasure of watching the children growing
Is mixed with the bitter cup of knowing
The watercolor ponies will one day ride away.

Many of you will remember my friend Barry, who was beset with cancer and had been going through chemotherapy in the first part of the year. Mercifully, his chemo treatments have now concluded; he’s in good health, and is dealing cheerfully with the only aftereffects of his ordeal: some leftover fluid in the lungs from the bleo, and the need to get regular checkups, probably for the rest of his life.

Now, if you knew Barry, you’d realize that there’s only one way to celebrate his renewed vitality that would seem appropriate to him after such an ordeal: enjoying The Ring of the Nibelung in the company of friends. Barry’s the biggest Wagner fan I’ve ever known, and considers the Ring to be one of the high points of western civilization. I’ve found my own interest rekindled recently when reading a biography of The Inklings, the society that revolved around C.S. Lewis, and whose members included Charles Williams and J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Lord of the Rings draws on the German legends that make up the plot of Wagner’s Ring.

I’ve never seen The Ring, nor even any of its component operas. But for the next seven days, I’ll be keeping a somewhat insane schedule, working in Austin during the days, watching the operas with Barry and friends in San Antonio as evening approaches. Goodwife Kathy has graciously offered to do the necessary child care to enable me this intensive soak in this sea of culture. (She’ll be coming along for this evening’s introductions to the leitmotifs.)

Now I’m off to see if I can find a recording of Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the Wabbit!” to play loudly on the stereo as a drive…

I ordered a passel of new Pennywhistles from The Whistle Shop last week. I’m pretty excited to get the order for a couple of reasons:

1. Clarke Natural: this whistle is probably the modern whistle that’s most like the traditional instruments. It has a conical bore, which gives it a more mellow sound than the Susato whistles I favor for general purpose playing, and has a wooden fipple which is supposed to give it an even nicer, mellower sound. I’ve not owned a conical bore whistle before, and will be glad to have one in my arsenal.
2. The Meg: Clarke has taken their Sweetone design and contracted with a far east manufacturing company to crank these purportedly quite good whistles out for a mere $3.00 each. I ordered several of these, one for keeping and a bunch for giving away so as to spread the whistle addiction a bit farther.

The order’s due in Thursday. I’ll post on whether these live up to expectations once I’ve had a chance to mess about with them a bit.

This Friday, Emily left for a four week stint with our relatives in New York. Her absence leaves a noticeable void in our family — not only because we have to remember to count to three instead of four when we’re tallying little heads (we’ve actually taken to borrowing a kid from a friend so as to make this easier for us), but also because of her unique gifts and contributions to the texture of our family life.

On Tuesday I took her for a day-long trip to Fiesta Texas, the Six Flags theme park in San Antonio. We had planned on a Tuesday so that crowds would be light, and the weather cooperated as well; though we got rained on a bit in the morning, the sky was generally more menacing than it was actually stormy. As a result, we never spent more than 10 minutes in line for anything, and several of the ride operators offered us the chance to stay on rides once our first go-round was complete.

Unfortunately, the trip has made it abundantly clear to me that I have become that most sad of creatures: a former roller coaster fan. Though I still have a tremendous appreciation of the engineering and design that goes into these enormous thrill rides, I find actually riding them to be less and less appealing as time goes on. My stomach has gotten weaker over time, and I find myself more often tottering off of the trains trying to regain my equilibrium than exulting in the fantastic experience.

Emily, however, has picked up the slack for me. She rode every one of the big coasters in the park (with the exception of the Rattler, which was closed when we got to the head of the line for lightning — imaginary as far as we could tell) and loved them without fail. She also got a big kick out of the spinny carnival rides which nauseated me simply to watch. (The thing that finally did me in Tuesday was The Frisbee: a giant spinning disk that swings on the end of a huge arm, providing for its riders all the fun I would imagine a Martini enjoys as it’s being mixed.)

So the torch is passed to another generation, and I’m sitting with my laptop, enjoying the vicarious thrill of Roller Coaster Tycoon.