What the....

So....what are you?

Imagine you're minding your business, walking though a park and suddenly you stumble upon this:

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Taken in (See more photos here)

In the words of "Peasant Dave": a llama worm. Perhaps. Personally, I'd rather it remain a mystery.

Ahhh...

Changes Aloof

Over the next few days, or weeks, you might notice strange things brewing here at "The Todd Pad" since I'm playing with the layout/template. By the way, I hope you like the new name for the blog which, believe it or not, I'll be sticking with from now on since it's got the whole play words with amphibians and lily pads. Funny thing, toads don't live on pads, as far as I know, but I don't think people are going to analyze it that much...unless they read this post!

Regarding the changes, when you choose to start a blog you select from a number of templates, most of which are actually quite attractive. At any time, however, you can go "behind the scenes" and mess with the software code, in this case HTML, and begin customizing the layout. Right now I'm just beginning to toy with the code. Eventually I'd like to use a 100% customized set of code, but until then I'm going to tinker around with this one and see what I can come up with.

Right now I'm sitting in the computer lab here at the University of Redlands. I'm using an iMac and it's quite nice. Sarah's parents just bought one and now we're considering a Mac when we by our next computer. I better get to class!

Spin Cycle

More from the Todd Household

Hello friends and family members! I've gotten a lot of very positive and fun feedback on the blog, so thank you all for stopping in, commenting, and/or sending emails. One of the best things about the internet is the ability to stay in touch with people. Now that google has taken over the world (I just realized my email, blog, and YouTube-all of which I use to create this blog-are owned by google!) it's become a lot easier to share media.

I still need to finish uploading and editing all the photos we took on our recent trip to San Luis Obispo to visit Sarah's brother Jake and his girlfriend Amy, but for now I'll keep posting the camera my mom gave us for Christmas (Canon SD750).

Here's Claire in the bathtub. She loves her baths and if you listen closely, it almost sounds like she says bath:


This video provides a peek at the typical, weekday dinner time routine at the Todd cottage. You'll notice the old fashioned stove which looks almost as old as our home which, by the way, was built in 1959 (the video works despite the fact that there's no preview screen):

JUNO

I originally wanted to post amateur movie reviews on a semi-regular basis here on the blog but I never got around to doing so. Well, I've seen a number of films lately and while I won't provide reviews for all of them, there is one that I think I can recommend without reservation and that's Juno. The plot centers around a teenage girl who is impregnated by her hapless, sweet boyfriend. For those of us who believe strongly that teens should not have sex, the basic situation of the plot raises the eyebrows (or eyebrow depending on...well, you know). I think the film, as a whole, however, portrays this decision as something which brings unneeded complication and tragedy into the lives of the main character, her "friend," and her family. As the plot unfolds, I feel that everything is brought together in a way that demonstrates the emotional sophistication and complexity of this difficult situation in a way that is both realistic and, strangely, entertaining. Indeed, this is a film that can't please people who find themselves too far to the right nor the left, something I personally aspire to in my own political views.

Juno is a film which has some flaws (is there a film that doesn't?) such as contrived dialog and over wrought costuming, not to mention the fact that at times the whole scenario is treated in a crass, vulgar way. These issues, however, are far outweighed by the humor and heartwarming theme. At the core of the story one finds a simple theme about friendship and love and although I don't think many people, especially teenagers, will necessarily walk out of the theater with this in mind, I think it does communicate something more human than most romantic comedies do. Indeed, the few young people I've spoken with about the film came away thinking of it as a sort of Napoleon Dynamite-ish film with silly characters and wacky dialog. Yes, Juno shares some elements with N.D., but it is a very different experience with very different aims. Professional critic Carina Chocano of the L.A. Times wrote, "Juno is hilarious and sweet-tempered, perceptive and surprisingly grounded. It's also a gust of fresh air, perspective-wise." I concur.

To read a plethora of reviews on the film that are far better than mine, CLICK HERE.

PEGGLE!

I kept hearing about this game Peggle which is sort of like a combo between Bust-a-Move and an old pinball machine. If you've ever played Bejeweled or Zuma then you're familiar with the whole put-three-colors-together thing. The game is made by PopCap, a company that's pretty much figured out how to make games with crack cocaine levels of addictiveness. It's primarily pushed on the PC/Mac platform but they've branched to other platforms as well. I just downloaded this for my iPod video for $5 and it was well worth it. This is the first game I've ever purchased from iTunes and it took me a while to figure out how to actually get it from iTunes onto the iPod (the trick is that within the iPod menu in iTunes you have to select "Sync Games" so that iTunes will put the games on the iPod during syncing), but once I got that figured out it was on! In fact, I think the surgeon general should require games of this nature to come with some sort of warning about not installing them on any device after 11PM because I kept saying, "Ok, just one more level!" and "All right, the next time I die..."

You can try a trial version of this for the PC HERE for free. I don't think I'd buy it for my computer necessarily, but if you have an iPod and want something to do while you're riding in the car, waiting, sitting in class, etc. it's perfect.

Injuries Abound

No, we don't beat our children thank you very much, they do it themselves. Ryan and Carter suffered injures in separate incidents. I recently caught up to them and got this short interview:

By the way, in case you don't know, Carter is my son (3), Ryan is my nephew (4), and Ella is my niece (1). Carter once suffered a pretty serious head injury when he was almost two years old so this latest head bump scared us for a second. Fortunately it wasn't serious and he was looking at himself in the mirror after just a few minutes. In fact I think the frozen bag of peas on his head bothered him more than the actual bump.