$13 breadmaker

Round bread...

...from the Space Age bread maker.

FIE

This is a picture of Eva after her opponent's blade broke, and the jagged tip punched a hole in her knickers and scratched her leg. While there was a fair amount of blood, it was a just a superficial cut. However, this strengthened her resolve to obtain international competition quality protective gear- and to insist that I do the same. After years of taking the silly risk of fencing in cheap fencing jackets and knickers, I now have 100% FIE approved ballistic nylon puncture resistant equipment. Which is bloody expensive. And this is also why some people say FIE doesn't stand for "Federation Internationale d' Escrime", but rather "Fencing is Expensive".

Florida pictures

Eva just published a photo album with some great pictures of alligators and other, less dangerous, creatures. The wildlife pictures are mostly in the second half of the album.

The amorous couple above are eastern lubber grasshoppers. They're easily among the coolest bugs I've met.

Florida

Just got back from Florida. Why did we go to Florida? The fencing summer nationals were held in Miami Beach. I fenced the men's foil team event, and the men's foil Div II event. Eva didn't fence, as she wasn't a permanent U.S. resident in time to qualify.

I fenced for the "Denver Fencing Center" team, with me, Nathan, and Trevor. Nathan owns and runs Denver Fencing Center, and Trevor's a teenager who fences at the club. We got a bye for the first round, and then went up against the New York Athletic Club in the second. For those of you who fence, you'll know that we got our butts kicked. But it was fun, and we made them work. As for Div. II, I fenced poorly in the pools, got a bad seeding, and lost my first direct elimination bout. But he only beat me 15-10, while he rolled over his next two DEs 15-4 and 15-6, and then went on to tie for third. It's hard to complain about losing to someone like that.

Anyway... Miami Beach is kind of a shit-hole. Run-down, dirty, touristy, expensive. The beaches were disgusting. I imagine it would be a total nightmare during the main tourist season.

But we got out of there nice and quick, and headed down to Florida City, from which we explored the Everglades and the Keys. And that was awesome. The Everglades are, apparently, a unique ecosystem in which tropical and temperate flora and fauna mix. And there are, in fact, crocodiles in the Everglades! I had always thought alligators were the only big lizards in the New World... but I was plain wrong. The American Crocodile is pretty rare, but we even managed to see one (though we didn't get a good picture).

As for alligators, we saw tons and tons of the suckers. Here are a couple of pictures, the second of which is my attempt to earn a Darwin award.



Actually, it's not as dangerous as you might think. When it's not mating season, they're pretty docile. And if he had minded my being that close he would have given me a warning, rather than just coming up and biting off my arm. In fact, a group of Italian tourists came by and decided to demonstrate their machismo by whacking the alligators with sticks and branches. While the gators seemed annoyed, no one got hurt.

I'll be posting a link to the rest of our Florida pictures as soon as Eva has time to put them on her website. There are some nice ones, including some great shots of giant grasshoppers mating...

Update

In case you were wondering, this is what I've been up to lately.

For one, I am no longer married to Eva Koernicke.
My current wife is Eva Heinrich.

Next: My brother and his wife just had a kid. His name is Noah Kai Heinrich. This is what he looks like:




















The new wife and I just got back from Illinois (unfortunately we don't have a porch at this apartment), where we spent most of the time staring at Noah and introducing Eva to Jason and Anna (and vice versa). We didn't have time to get to Champaign-Urbana, but we did manage to be swarmed by cicadas and nearly run over by a woman on a Segway.

Apparently they though it was a good idea to have the Segway rentals in Grant Park at the top of a steep incline, so that folks who've never ridden one before would have a "sink or swim" introduction to 21st century transportation. A couple of elderly ladies sank, so to speak. One spun out of control trying not to hit us, and the other crashed into the curb and fell over backwards. Good times.

The cicadas were extremely cool. Billions of big bugs flying around, crashing into you, landing on you, calling at 90 decibals. It was like an invasion from outer space.

More updates later.

Sven and Lobster Woman at Frozen Dead Guy Days

No less than FIVE people recognized the Son of Svengoolie, even though we were in a little Colorado mountain town a thousand miles from Chicago.

Scary, eh?

As for Lobster Woman, people were too frightened to say anything.

Here are a ton of pictures from the event, including shots of our entry in the coffin race and our dearly departed chicken friend.

armed chimps

That's right, they're making weapons now. We're screwed.