Talk about a great day. The Newport Aquarium in Newport, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati, is amazing. It’s a great medium-sized aquarium with some really wonderful exhibits. Sharks, rays, turtles, frogs, penguins, lorikeets. An aquarium with penguins and lorikeets! Wow!
There was so much to do Liam could barely focus on one exhibit before racing to the next. But I think if he had to choose, shark petting would be his favorite exhibit. Shark petting? Let me say that again. SHARK PETTING! I’m telling you man, these aquarium folk are nuts. I mean, how many fingers should you lose before you decide this particular exhibit may not be the best of ideas? But boy did he love it. Danger is, after all, his middle name.
Afterwards we waited in line for a balloon animal from a guy who looked a lot like Mark Twain. His appearance was apt, as he told stories about the animals as he created them. This guy could make amazingly intricate creations from a little latex and air. I saw a seal bouncing a ball on its nose, a palm tree home to a monkey eating a banana. He even made a seagull with a fish in its mouth. Like, inside the balloon mouth. All of that amazing talent and what does Liam want? A butterfly. I mean, it was a great butterfly and all but come on, kid, lets challenge the guy. At least ask for a space butterfly with rocket ship and cosmic death ray. Not just a plain ol’ Lepidoptera Rhopalocera. (Yeah, I looked that one up. Sue me.) Whatever makes you happy, son. Check out the set on the Pictures page from our adventure.

…I hear banjo music.
Today was a fun day. I can’t imagine a much better time than paddling the Elkhorn Creek with your beautiful wife, your best buddy from high school and his wife. 4 people, 2 canoes, and the open air. Yessir. Not much better. Well, maybe if the creek had WATER in it! No rain in 3 weeks had caused the creek to drop from its already low summer state an additional 7 inches last week. That made for a lot of portaging and scraped knees, but it was still a great trip, one we’ll definitely repeat once the water level rises. Even got a couple t-shirts before we left.
Jump on over to the Pictures page for a few pics from the trip. Tomorrow’s adventure: taking Liam to the Newport Aquarium! Stay tuned.

Now this is awesome. Eye-Fi. It’s a 2GB SD card for your digital camera with built-in 802.11g wi-fi. It will automatically upload your pics to any one of dozens of supported services. Flickr, Smugmug, Wal-Mart. You name it, this things supports it. Best part is, it’s all automatic. You never have to take the card out of the camera. Zip. Zoom. Gone. Plus, it even works in a CF adapter for those of us whose DSLR’s are livin’ in the stone age. At $100, you just can’t beat it. I mean, I’ve still got Christmas pics on our 1GB CF. With the Eye-Fi, they’d be online AS I WAS SHOOTING THEM! Definitely going on my want list.

Ooh, I just thought of another great use. Family members who just can’t get the hang of online photo galleries. Shooting, copying, resizing, uploading. With the Eye-Fi, you could preconfig it for their home wi-fi network, pop it in their point-and-shoot and Boom! Internet magic. Wicked! You know, my father-in-law’s birthday is coming up.

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Liam and I had some fun playing in the snow today. He sure loved having Daddy pull him around the neighborhood yards all afternoon. And he got to make his first ever snowman, albeit a teency weency one. The pics are on the photo site. And I finally got around to uploading last Christmas and his birthday. Enjoy.

Off into the sunset… If that’s not just a picture of the perfect Sunday drive, I don’t know what is. We took Liam to the park yesterday, where he met up with peeps Carter and Jackson for a drive in their pimped out Escalade. Sorry for the photo quality, I took these with my cell phone.The whole series is here.

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