Inessential Stuff

Autumn has settled over Spokane.  The trees are beginning to change.  The wedding season has slowed down.  The good people of Spokane have pulled their fleeces out of their closets.

And soccer has started.

Marcus is playing his first season, the lone boy on a team of six.

They are the Panthers, hold practices twice a week, and have games on Saturdays.

Marcus’ first game was last week.   Here’s a little gallery with some commentary.

(If you have an aversion to photographs of soccer and/or of fiesty little soccer players, you might want to avoid this here blog for a couple months.  Just warning you)

I just noticed several days ago that one of my posts didn’t make the switch with the others from blogspot to my wordpress blog.  So I’ll repost it here.  Out of order, but oh well, here goes:

Marcus received, from his Grandma and Grandpa Brunt, a cool, Finnish-looking woolen sweater. I love it, and, amazingly, he is happy to wear it (he usually eschews clothing that would keep him warm during the winter). When it started to snow the other day, I thought it would be cool to get some pictures of him in his Scandinavian sweater in the snow. My only instructions: 1) please don’t make silly faces, and 2) please stand still. Or, as Ringo used to sing, all he had to do was, “act naturally.” Ummm. You can be the judge of how it went.

Here’s a little gallery of snapshot-y pictures of Marcus at Christmas, plus a few details from a car museum we visited during the holidays.

(Click on the “Play” button at the bottom for a slideshow.)

This little gallery is of an afternoon about a week ago. There is text at the top right of the images.

(It may take a few moments for the first page/image to load)

I’m late posting this. But Marcus had himself a birthday.

At right, Marcus showing typically intense enthusiasm for a Spokane Chiefs Zamboni.

Click here for a tiny sampling of Marcus Birthdays.

Marcus and I spent several days in Seattle, visiting Cousin Akian, Aunt Laura and Uncle MacLeod. I thought he might really enjoy the Space Needle (he was ready to go down after two minutes on top); I also thought the highlight would be going to an Angels game at Safeco Field, perhaps the first baseball game Marcus will remember (he has been to at least 6 others, all in his first year, starting at three months, but I don’t think he’ll remember those). Ends up that for Marcus, the highlight of Seattle–and I think this makes him unique among almost all people who have ever visited the Emerald City–was the Monorail. At any rate, we had loads of fun.

The other day, in an attempt to entertain Marcus, I showed him how to use my back-up camera. He was thrilled. He shot with an equivalent 135 mm lens, so the images are close-up and intentional; he knew what he was aiming for. The camera was heavy for him, so some shots sag a bit, but none have been cropped.

And the results, I think, are quite nice.

So I took Marcus to the park, and I had my camera, and I started to take some pictures. But I was bored. Why? Well, for one, I am to the age, sadly, where swings make me sick. But I was also bored because I already have hundreds and hundreds, nay, thousands and thousands, of pictures of Marcus playing in the park. They mostly look the same, except he gets smaller and smaller as the pictures get older and older. So I decided to “goof around” and try something new. Sometimes it involved sitting very still, as if a tripod. I liked that. Sometimes it involved running madly alongside Marcus, trying to keep up, snapping off pictures. I didn’t like that. But at least the pictures don’t look like all the other “park pictures” I have of the Marcus Man.

(Note: none of the images have been digitally altered to increase or decrease blur. The “Giant Leap” picture is a digital composite.)

My son Marcus can be accurately described as an active, even intense, child. So I thought it would be fun to document his activities for a full day (plus a few hours).  It was also a period of time where I would be his sole care-giver and his exclusive companion.  Good times.

So here are 28 hours with Marcus.

(It also gave me the chance to play around with some camera settings I’d never used before, so if things look a little strange . . . you know why . . . )

The cast: Marcus, Bonnie, Aunt Laura, Uncle MacLeod, Cousin Akian, Grandma and Grandpa Brunt, and me. The location: SoCal. The occasion: Christmas 2006.

Besides the traditional Christmas festivities, we got the kids to a plane museum, train museum, and kids museum. Then Marcus, Bonnie and I hit the road for a marathon 22.5 hour return drive, the highlight of which was stopping at Grass Lake between Weed and Klamath Falls, where Marcus ran like a devil and threw snowballs at his father.

Pictures here.