Max's Second Christmas

Katie and I show our typical ability in trying to get Max to smile for a photo. This was (by far) the best take out of a dozen or so in this series.

Given his clumsy knockdown of the three-block tower at the start, I was shocked at the end of taking this video. Max was just learning how to stack blocks at this time, and I happened to be taking video while watching him build the tallest tower I'd ever seen him build to date.

For Christmas, Max got a set of Duplo blocks, but he preferred playing with the box they came in.

I was enjoined to dress Max in "something festive" for Christmas. The only thing I could find that fit that description was a silvery Halloween costume, which Max enjoyed showing off to everyone. Here, he giggles as he chases aunt Laura around the dining room table.

Max has connived aunts Missy and Tina into playing one of his favorite games. While Max sits on the top step, Missy shovels snow into a pile in front of him. Max then scoops the snow into his lap, turning to Tina when his mittens collect too much snow.

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Can You Cross Your Toes?

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v...

2016 PROGNOSTICATION QUIZ

Entry deadline is 3:30 p.m. CST on Saturday, January 16, 2016 . Send fifteen answers and one tie-break to jmandresen at gmail.com. Anyone with an email address is welcome to enter! 1. Freedom (January) Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many countries it calculates to be free, partly free, or not free. The 2015 report calculated that 89 of the world’s 195 nations were free in 2014. Will freedom advance, stay stagnant, or retreat in this year’s report, covering 2014? Note: the nine worst free countries (with the highest likelihood of being downgraded) are Botswana, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Lesotho, Montenegro, and Peru. The fifteen best partly free countries (with the highest likelihood of being upgraded) are Albania, Bolivia, Ecuador, Georgia, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova, Paraguay, Philippines, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, ...

Rebus Challenge 1

When I was a young tyke, I would write notes to my mother. What made me a little odd for your typical grade-schooler is that I often wrote them in code of one sort or another. Included in this correspondence (and stored for posterity by my mother) was a series of rebus puzzles, which turn out actually to be a combination of rebus and homophone and occasional other literary tricks. I present the first in the rebus series in honor of my mother's birthday, which was yesterday. (My siblings and Katie and I took her out to IHOP for dinner, which my mother chose because she once worked at IHOP as a waitress and wanted to reminisce. We didn't run into any of the people Mom worked with 45 years ago.) Can you figure out my birthday message below? (Click for a larger image.) Favorite part #1: That I drew a picture of a cat with a huge X through it to depict our dead pet Siamese cat, Happy. Favorite part #2: That my map of Asia, while including a disclaimer that it is not to scale, has tw...

J. Michael Andresen

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