You know, I think I've been here before.
Yes it's that time of year again, when the family from Austin buys their season pass to Sea World. We were pretty lucky this time as it was the first weekend and it was neither hot nor crowded. For a family with a pregnant mom and a dad with a thrown back, it was a blessing. (Wha? Back?) Yeah, I'll get to that. And it's the same Sea World I remember from, oh, last year. It's great that LMA and Mrs. A love it so much. They can't get enough of it. And frankly, to them, to feed a dolphin is worth the price of admission. I could use a few more roller coasters and some free time to play video games, cuz a man can only look at fish for so long. I guess that's why they have the Beer School. (mmm, beerilicious)
So how did you throw your back out Mr. A? Well I'm glad you asked. Mrs. A had a bad BAD headache the other day and was out for the count for half the weekend. The other half she spent in a worn out, post medicated haze, which is normal usually after these bouts with one exception; we were at Best Buy.
Yeah, that's what I said. True it matters little, our acquisition of things and stuff. Yes I believe he who dies with the most things is just dead. I also believe that High Definition is better than regular TV. So all you minimalists and academics can get bent, right?
Anyway, the point of the story, and a word to the wise, is that the first purchase involved a non-widescreen HDTV. What this means is let's say you have a 27" tube TV. You guy buy a 32" HDTV thinking "Heck yeah, buddy. Got me some MAD screen size, yo!" Well yo would be incorrect. Had I done some due diligence, I would have realized that an HDTV will not show a screen like a normal TV, so if you get a HD cable box or converter to go with it, what happens is you end up with a viewing area of 22 inches. So while the silver casing and flat screen were nice, they weren't the bliss I had anticipated. Back to the store it went. But not before stupid Mr. A decides to be macho and throw his back out lifting the thing by himself to get it back into the box.
Gah!
Got a new one, a widescreen this time, and got it home and set up without incident. We had to get a new thing to put it on, and in the process we can't get the VCR to work and there's no closed captioning for TV, but there is for DVDs, but the picture is amazing dammit! *sigh* With all that doesn't work and a wounded lumbar to boot, it brings up the saying, "This is why we can't have nice things."
The 76th Annual Zilker Park Kite Festival was this last weekend and Lil Miss Austin and daddy made the trek together on this one. This would be our first forray into the wild without mommy on an adventure that was more than getting coffee and donuts to bring back home. To be honest, I was a little worried. I mean, I think I'm a good dad, but I also think The Force is real. I can be considered absent minded and forgetful, so the notion of spending more than 2 hours in a crowd of several thousand people had me a little anxious. Would I lose her in the mob? Would she get trampled in a mad dash for a free t-shirt that was flung from a mascot driven 4x4? Would she take a bad hop on the moon bounce and snap a little femur? Not to mention the fact that we had to walk 10 minutes down a street with no sidewalk to get there. I was a wreck.
That was, until we got there. There's something about LMA when you're one on one with her, a sort of serenity, that she doesn't exhibit when around groups or even just the three of us. While we were out there she was calm, non-combative and kind of cool to have around. We waited in a long line for roasted corn and she passed the time drawing in the dirt. We sat in our portable chairs and drank juice and soda and water and just chilled out. Got a face painting, saw a puppet show, then went home. I mean, it was cool, but in a way that I can't really describe. It's like finding out your parents are cool or a coworker you thought was a jerk is cool. LMA isn't a jerk or anything, but it's a realization that opens the door between the Day to Day Care Room and the Fun Deck. I had a great time, and I think she did too.
Some Random Pictures
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