Pancake Man Strikes Back

While vacationing in Vermont this past week I had some free time to draw another episode of my Pancake Man cartoon, this one with a "back woods" theme. Here is the new cartoon:



Just for kicks, here is my original Pancake Man cartoon, in case there are still any human beings left on the planet who haven't seen it yet:



I wonder what Pancake Man's next adventure is going to be... maybe something in New York City (e.g. Big Apple meets the Big Pancake?). We'll see.

Invasion of the Giant Squid!

Ok, so maybe giant squid are not actually invading Lexington, but I have always wanted to have a blog post with that title :-).

In fact, according to this New York Times article the giant squid are indeed conducting an invasion, however it happens to be over on the other side of the country. We will just have to wait for our own giant squid invasion here on the east coast.

Hello Lexington

We survived out translatlantic flight, and we are now back in the USA, dealing with jet lag, getting the house set up, and getting re-acquainted with our old haunts. I am so busy right now I really don't have any time to blog, but I thought I might as well write a short post just for the heck of it. [NB: I still need to write up a post on our Croatia trip; maybe this weekend]

The kids were surprised by how different the house looked compared to how they remembered it. Both Ethan and Lydia have told me that "the house has shrunk" (hmm, I think other things have been expanding instead). As far as I can tell the house is in decent shape, although of course there are tons of things I need to do to get it all properly set up again.

Here is a picture of Lydia's room less than 24 hours after arrival. That was fast!



While we are looking at pictures of large piles of stuff, here is another one. This is all of the mail that our house-sitter collected for us while we were away (mind you, this is after he threw out all of the "junk mail" as he put it):



A sobering sight. I've been through about a quarter of it-- so far it is all catalogs for stuff we don't need and letters asking for donations of one sort or another. Sigh.

Goodbye Cambridge

This past Wednesday the kids and I said goodbye to our home in Cambridge England and hopped on the plane for the USA-- definitely a bittersweet feeling; there is a lot that we will miss about the UK. The kids made some really good friends and in general we had a year to remember. We also said goodbye temporarily to Amy, who unfortunately has to stay in Cambridge for another month. She had hoped that there would be some "wiggle room" with her working arrangements and that she could leave for the US with us, but it turns out that she has to stay for the entire 12 months. Oh well-- hopefully the time will go quickly.

Fungi

Lydia has a close friend at school whose mum is a mycologist at Cambridge University (how cool is that! mycology is right up there with rocket science or archeology). This past week she organized a big session with the kids in Lydia's year to teach them about fungi. In addition to a day full of fungi-related activities, the kids were each given a mushroom growing kit to bring home.



The kit is basically a big cylinder made of compost and sawdust; they must have been "cooking" already for a while, since when Lydia took possession, it was already starting to sprout (NB: I think I set a record for "Most Heavily Loaded Bike Ride of 2009" while carrying it home-- I had Lydia's games bag and Ethan's games bag in addition to the mushroom stuff).





Lydia has been very enthused about growing mushrooms-- she diligently "watered" the mushrooms every day (you are supposed to mist them with a spray bottle) and fussed over them from time to time, and before long, we had our first crop. She insisted on helping with the preparations, including the picking, washing, and slicing, which she did very carefully. I stir-fried them and served them for dinner this evening-- they were superb. Lydia had a taste of one from the pan, but then at the table declared that "Mushroom growers aren't supposed to eat their own crops, it's against the rules". Hmm. Ethan was overjoyed, since this meant more for him (he is a big mushroom fan).

Cup Runneth

Here is a shot of the trophy that Ethan received for winning the school 800 meter race in his age group a while back:



Very elegant, but somewhat fleeting-- we were able to put it on the mantle for a couple of weeks, then we had to turn it back over to the school. What's more, we had to pay to have his name engraved on the back (which turned out to be ridiculously expensive). Maybe an el-cheapo plastic trophy that he could hold onto would have been better...

Works of Art

Here are some of Lydia's latest creations. First: a duck habitat. The pink container began life as a gift box, then was repurposed as a puppet theater, and now it seems to have taken on a new existence as a sort of diorama.



Next, here is a collaboration by Lydia and Ethan-- she started it, then asked him for help on parts of the face. This is a copy of a D'Aulaire drawing of Helen of Troy, done in pencil:



Finally, here is an oil painting that Lydia did a while back at one of her arts & crafts workshops. She got it out to display to everyone while her grandparents were visiting in May.



Lydia's latest craze is knitting-- she has decided she wants to learn how to knit (this endeavor may be doomed to failure, since neither of her parents have the slightest idea how to start a knitting project).