Rocky's Babies

Here's Daisy and Rocky's latest featuring Rocky's current favorite song.




You can go to Marci's blog for the details on why Rocky picked the names that she did.

How Daisy combats writer's block

I have about ten blog posts swimming around my head, and I don't have the time for any of them right now, so this isn't officially a post, it's just a reminder that Daisy is ridiculously cute, especially when she's not doing anything (which is all the time).



Daisy got her shots today and slept most of the day. So now when she should be asleep, she keeps herself busy by destroying an innocent piece of paper. She's probably noticed that every time her dad isn't paying attention to her, it's because he's reading something for school. Therefore, she has taken it upon herself to destroy all the paper in the house so that there is not anything competing for her attention. Sound logic, if you ask me.

Paul the prognosticating octopus or why I love soccer, Pt. 1

Well it's been over four months since I've posted (even though I did write a post the other day, but I couldn't get the video to work and I never published it; I'll try to get it put up in a few days) and there's been plenty of stuff that I've wanted to write about, and hopefully I'll get to them before I go back to teaching. The main reason I haven't written despite not studying and not teaching is that we've been absorbed in Spain's amazing run to the World Cup finals.
I consider myself a huge soccer fan, but the truth of the matter is, I don't really pay that much attention to it most of the time. But then, every four years, the greatest sporting event in the world takes place (note: not the Olympics) and I live and breathe soccer for a month straight. In four years I'll probably have some real responsibilities/something resembling a career, so I'm pretty sure that I'll never be able to follow the World Cup so closely again. Luckily for me, Spain has had their best World Cup tournament ever, so it's been perfect that we've been able to support "La furia roja" so much.
I love soccer because it is so much more than a game or a sport. There are some people here in the US for whom football or basketball stops being a game and becomes a way of life, but it's never on the global scale that soccer is life for billions of people around the world. The World Cup is able to freeze entire continents in its tracks and make whole countries hold their breath at the same time. The craziness that is soccer is also able to create national heroes/villains in the most unlikely of places. In Germany for example, there is an octopus names Paul that correctly picked all of Germany's games as they steamrolled their way through the tournament, and he/she/it quickly became a celebrity in the fatherland. Before the last semifinal though, it picked Spain to beat Germany, and it was easily swept underneath the carpet because Germany was also supposed to pound Spain. But a beautiful header from Carles Puyol ensured that Paul kept a perfect record and sent Spain to their first ever World Cup final.

Announcing...

After much hoopla and brouhaha, it is my great pleasure to announce the arrival of Daisy!!!!! She was so eager to see this big world that she had heard all about, and for that reason, she rushed through that whole labor thing so fast that the doctor hardly had time to get into the room to catch her on the way out. Not only is she the most beautiful I've ever seen, but in a paradox that would knock Confucius on his back, she is beautiful and she looks like the squinty old guy on Big Trouble in Little China, as evidenced by this picture:


You should go to Marci's blog here to see the rest of the pictures and videos that we put up.

¡Guau, Guau! ¡Cra, Cra! ¡Miau, Miau!

Here's Rocky's latest foray into multimedia. She wanted to take a more active approach to contributing to my class. The chapter we just began is about the environment and nature, so she decided to just whip up this little instructional video of animal sounds in Spanish. She knows a few more animals with their corresponding onomatopoeias than she shows off here, but she was having trouble finding the motivation to perform.



For the record, frogs in Spanish don't say rib-bit, they say cra.

Forbidden doughnut, ummmmmmmmmmm

** Spoiler alert** This post involves scrumdiddlyumptious doughnuts that helped us announce a surprise that should not be a surprise to anyone that reads this blog because it's been a few weeks since the bomb was dropped. But, just in case you didn't get the memo, consider yourself warned for the proverbial un-bagged cat.
On our way home from Eugene, we stopped in Portland at the world famous Voodoo Doughnuts and picked up two dozen for our families. Voodoo Doughnuts are famous for their doughnuts that have eclectic (to say the least) toppings and flavors. They all have special names, but I don't know what they are, so all the pastry purists out there will have to excuse my crude descriptions.

They have the pentagram doughnut because it's made out of devil's food cake mix.



The Fruit Loops doughnut that isn't as good as I thought it would be, probably because by the time I tried it, the Fruit Loops were a little soggy.



The marshmallow doughnuts that have marshmallow cream, topped by grape, strawberry or pineapple drink mix.



They even have a maple bar with bacon on top that I've heard is bangarang. Probably their most famous doughnut though is a voodoo doll doughnut that has raspberry jelly in the middle for blood. We had the doughnut artistes put extra jelly in a voodoo doll so that it would look pregnant, and then they wrote "It's a girl"...Because Marci is...And it's a girl



Surprise!

In honor of the chairman

Rocky is getting really good at her animal sounds, but there's still a few issues to sort out. According to her, all cows and cats are inherently communist, because of instead of saying moo and meow respectively, they both say mao.
I'll post a video of the phenomenon when I get it on film.

Part II: I posted this earlier today, and I was planning on posting a video of Rocky performing animal sounds when I got home. Instead of the confused cat and cow sounds, I got Rocky's adaptation of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands". She came up with the sound effects all on her own, and so then I changed the wording to go along with her interpretation.