Heptadecagon

Although nobody has pointed this out to me yet, the past two posts contain no pictures of the wee beasts. This sort of reckless posting puts me dangerously close to alienating my base readership (mom, et cetera). Without delay, I present the basement ! Not long ago, we almost-kinda-sorta finished part of the basement ("A bucket of bleach, some cans of paint, and I'll have this place ship-shape in no time" -- Jacqueline Ogburn from a beloved book ). Many of the kids' toys have taken permanent residence in the basement, but the world-beating toy down there is the inflatable house. Well, it used to be a house. The green and yellow parts that now resemble flaps used to attach to form a roof-like structure. These days it's more like a box, but for simplicity's sake, we'll continue to refer to it as a house. One way to use it is to sit in the house and play (like maybe "playing house," for example), but that mode of operation lacks in both a...

I guess when you're a kid, maybe the best thing about going to visit other kids is the opportunity to play with an entirely new set of toys. On Sunday we went to a party hosted by some new friends who have three young children of their own. Aaron enjoyed the workbench and, as you can see, followed all OSHA regulations and guidelines. However, the big winner of the day, the one toy that the kids were talking about for days and days before the party, was the trampoline. In fact, I think that was the most desired play object for all the kids there. At one point, I counted no fewer than seven children and one adult on the trampoline. (Full disclosure: I was that adult.) Before the kids asked me to hop with them, I managed to get a few pictures. This one is interesting. Like any almost-safe trampoline, there's a safety net. The picture is kind of nice, but all the little hexagons from the netting mess things up. Warning : \begin{geek} I want to try to get rid of them by t...