Visit the kelpforest....

Angus has been playing a Pokemon Blue emulator he downloaded lately, and thinking of my drawing of Nathan Explosion as a grass-mouse Pokemon, and a little inspiration from this CreepyPasta story, drew me this:



Well, I guess Curse wouldn't be too effective against Nathan, since he's part of the Curse of Dethklok already. Maybe the Ghost better keep his distance! ;)

On the last of school before Winter Break, Angus's core special ed class will be sharing family traditions and having a "Cultural Feast," for which each child is encouraged to bring some type of food, whether from a family tradition or cultural background. Huh. About the only traditional thing I make every year is clam chowder on Xmas Eve - which I actually changed from my mom making oyster stew (I like the flavor of oysters but not necessarily the texture). Last year when we went up to my brother's in his new place in LA, it morphed again into clam dip; he'd made something else, and had us make something my grandparents used to traditionally put out at family gatherings (that and celery sticks with Lawry's Seasoned Salt). I'm not sure how a bunch of seventh graders, some with allergies, and probably others with texture/sensory issues, are going to feel about clams, much less soup that might get kind of messy. Angus suggested calimari - ha! Even better! I can just see some kid's reaction to tentacles.

As far cultural background...um, haggis? Irish whiskey (runsamuck's suggestion)? Can't see those going over real well either. ;p

He did also bring up Hoppin' John, more of a New Year's thing. We've made it a few times, but I wouldn't quite say it's a tradition (and no one in either of our families is even Southern) - we could always make it one though.

So, Angus has decided, on a few viewings of reruns (seen fairly often in this household because my father recently became a fan), that he's soured a bit on Avatar: The Last Airbender because he didn't care for the ending.* Turns out that at 12, he's a total Zutara shipper. He decided to come up with his own solution. After viewing a few Kaput & Zosky episodes on YouTube (to jog his memory - it hasn't been aired in some time), he announced his latest comic book project is an ATLA/Kaput and Zosky crossover.

(Kaput & Zosky being another Nicktoons animation no longer being aired - a French import by way of Canada, I believe - about two bloody-minded bean-shaped aliens who go from planet to planet attempting to conquer them, usually being abysmal failures at it. It has a very simple, stylized art style, which I very much like, but it's very different from ATLA.)

( Spoilers? But who's watching anymore... )

Angus has been digging into all things Invader Zim lately and one of his favorite sites is the Zim Wiki. He's borrowing my phone at present, because I've been trying to figure out how to fix the PC - the both browsers suddenly stopped connecting, although everything else that connects to the internet still works. Grrr.

Anyway, he just brought the phone over to point out a particular caste of Irkens (Zim's species) called Advisors - who provide input to the leaders, the Almighty Tallest. The type specimen's name is Rarl Kove.

And then I had to explain why it made me laugh.

I love Invader Zim, but still haven't seen all of it yet. Or at least don't have the memory Angus does, to remember all the tiny details...Also, despite the number of times I've watched, I only in the last week recognized the voice of Tallest Purple as that of Kevin MacDonald (formerly of Kids in the Hall). Duh; thought I was better at voices than that.

Finally a Zim fan animation I favorited ages ago at DA, but it still makes me laugh.

Avalon wants to be Gaz for the next costume-appropriate holiday....

Sackboy visiting the Aquarium, and was trying to tell species of rockfish from one another (there are about 50 different species on the West Coast). In this pic are, a boccacio (brown), about three black & yellow rockfish, and a couple of canary rockfish (orange stripy), possibly some blue rockfish in the background. Also a strawberry anemone and a couple of sun stars.

Aquarium of the Pacific
Long Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
27 June 2010

( moar )

We went to the beach again to participate in Hands Across the Sand. Apparently the girls next to us were hestitant to hold hands with Angus; they wouldn't grab on until the last second, and then dropped hands and ran up the beach as soon as it appeared to be over. I chatted with the older man next to me who seemed to be from Northern CA and said something about having started one of the first organic farms in the state. He asked about the oil rigs visible a few miles in the distance, and I told him they were pretty much grandfathered from before the ban on drilling. However, the major oil spill we've had here was when I first started at the Department; an oil terminal right about a mile of Newland St. where tankers offloaded to the Edison plant. A captain forgot to take the shallow water and the tides into account and the ship sat on its own anchor. Guess what company it was. >:( The guy shook his head and nodded at Avalon running back and forth among the pier pilings and in and out of the water, then said, "We aren't doing this for ourselves. It's for people like her."

An older woman up on the pier looked down disgustedly and yelled, "DRILL, DRILL, DRILL!"

Hands Across the Sand
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
26 June 2010

( civic duties )

To tell the truth, I copied down the mylife_onceaday scavenger hunt list at the beginning of the month, but have suffered travel, stress, Flickr account expiring, lack of computer access (read one computer and 4-5 people wanting to use it) and lack of motivation to keep track of it. Hell with it, let's just say I'm a lazy ass. Given that I did take pics without the list in mind I thought I'd at least go through my April photos and see if any matched up with the prompts.

Angus and I went for a walk downtown; given that I've lived here since being younger than he is, there are a LOT of childhood memories here. The tree above, more horizontal than vertical, is one of several like it I used to climb regularly when my Girl Scout troop had day camp (called Camp Puk-Wudgie) for a week each summer. We'd spend Thursday night in a tent in the park - one time we were kept awake all night by a screech owl in a nearby palm tree.

Ostensibly we were looking for a geocache in the tree, but there were so many people with dogs around we gave up.

Farquar Park
Huntington Beach CA
Canon EOS 1000D
2 April 2009

( other memories, I can't decide... )

14. childhood memory ☺
30. hands ☺
6. damage ☺

Wow. This is a fantastic set of blog posts I've been reading in stages over the past week or so. Today, the author was kind enough to make a post with links to all the connected pieces in one place (oh yeah, that's called a Table Of Contents, right). My brother had asked me for stuff to read to help him understand Angus a bit better, and while I've been meaning to sit down and make up a list, I think this is a great place to start. I would encourage reading even if you don't think you know anyone autistic, because chances are, you do, and you (or even they) don't know it.

http://momnos.blogspot.com/2010/03/toast-to-inclusion-autism-education-in.html
(Series of posts linked to in this post is what you want to read)

Angus is not exactly like Bud; he's a couple of years older and fairly good at talking - although he does use some scripts and echolalia, he's not dependent on them. He's in a regular classroom for subjects he's good at (so far, science, social studies and computer lab), and in core classroom for subjects he's not so good at (language arts and math). He's now in middle school where classes in different periods are arranged like this anyway, so he's actually had a headstart on getting used to that. He's had an aide for four hours a day to keep him on track, but his latest IEP plans for aide time to be faded to about half that. He's not on any medication. However, there are quite a few similarities - he gets anxious and frustrated easily, gets very anxious when he realizes an adult he knows is not in view, does not deal easily with sudden changes -i.e. family changing their minds on what movie they're going to watch. He hums a lot (so do I). Loud environments stress him, although he's getting better at that. He definitely needs the movement breaks; we call it gallumphing and he's done it almost since he started walking; the spinny thing is fun, too (hell, I used to do that when I was a kid). His shoes wear out in front first, because he still tends to walk more on his toes. We have never made a big deal out of his issues, which are fairly mild compared to some; he's just Angus to us and quite frankly we had to have them pointed out to us to realize he had them. However, with people who get impatient with him, maybe this will help. I wish I had been creative enough to come up with something like this. I also wish everyone could have the kinds of teachers Bud's seem to be.

Six tigers; Angus (1998), me (1962), and my dad, Robert (1926) were all born in the year of the Tiger, plus two toys and our newest little tiger, Scooter. 

( And the last of my Feb. scavenger hunt... )

And I'll be back for the next scavenger hunt, because this one is done!

3. Tiger ☺
13. A kiss ☺
28. Something you want to spend your tax return on ☺
8. A sign of jealousy ☺
18. Self portrait at work ☺
22. The cover of a book with the word "home" in the title ☺
9. Laughter ☺
7. An object you always have with you ☺

Oh dear, I meant to keep up better on the scavenger hunt thingies. Here are a good 50 toes, and maybe a finger and front paw or two...

( moar... )

25. Bare feet ☺
6. Something that helps you start the day ☺
10. Contents of your friend's wallet ☺
20. Game ☺
27. Birthday Candles ☺