Skypefeast!

I got to Skype with Matt today!!

At last, the stars aligned, and I was able to get my dad, Loretta, and Matt over to Loretta and Matt's place for a somewhat choppy Skype session. We resolved to meet around noon their time, 10 PM my time, and though it connected, it was pretty much unusable. We postponed for a couple hours, and at 2 PM their time, midnight my time, it worked considerably better. It is still not very good quality, but even video that updates once every couple of seconds is fine with me. I can also hear them just fine, but apparently my voice isn't getting through, so I resorted to typing what I wanted to say, and just listening the other way around. Not perfect, but it's a start!

I also got a headset for the XBox in the mail from my brother, and we were able to talk via XBox Live, which is really intended to set up gamers with each other to play games. It just so happens that being able to talk to each other was a valuable enough feature that it is included, and my roommate has an XBox 360 he barely uses now that he's beaten the only 2 games he brought with him.

Caper at Vons Supermarket

This recent story was relayed orally by Matt's Grandpa Frank via skype session. I asked him to put the shenanigans on paper for all to enjoy!!

Matthew is strong for his age. One learns this when trying to pry his hand off something he doesn't want to give up. The grip he musters when climbing things is particularly impressive. Most impressive is his recent Caper at Vons Supermarket.

Matthew and I have a daily patrol involving a number of routes and places that need checking. We now have a coterie of dog friends, shop keepers, joggers, relatives with offices downtown, and those who ooh and ahh over Matt's classic looks and cheerfulness. Our favorite place is the supermarket, because their shelves have a lot of interesting stuff.

So there we were, tooling down aisles looking for some action when the pickle section appeared. I thought I might want some dill pickles, so I parked Matt and his stroller immediately across the aisle near the mayonnaise. Over the years I have developed a number of defensive protocols, one of which led me to place Matt a good 12 inches from the jars of mayonnaise. This put them barely within his reach. In any case they were too large and too heavy for him to get off the shelf. I felt it was safe to turn my back while I scanned the pickle offerings.

I decided against the pickles and turned to the stroller. There was Matthew, about to put his finger in an opened jar of mayonnaise! I reached with all my considerable swiftness for his hand, and got it just before his finger sullied the mayonnaise. He looked up at me with an expression of alarm, and I'm sure he was thinking, 'Get your own jar of mayonnaise.' In restoring the lid to it's rightful position, I noticed that to remove the lid one had to break a fairly thick plastic neck ring. The bottle was heavy, as expected, and the lid quite large in relation to his hand size. I think one really had to be there to appreciate the strength needed to do what Matthew did.

There have been other supermarket adventures. Matthew likes to have items he can stash around himself in the stroller. Hence, we usually get an orange and apple to carry around while we are in the store. The apple quickly gets a battle scarred look, as Matthew leisurely nibbles at the shiny red skin. The other day we got a large acorn squash and a small watermelon at the same time. After a while, Matthew began to feel crowded and he threw the squash out. On picking it up, I noticed a slight split, so we had to buy it. No real problem, as Tita used it to make her legendary 'squash and chicken' dish. I managed to get the watermelon just before it met the same fate.

On another occasion Matthew got hold of two string beans. When we got to the checkout counter, one bean had been badly wounded and the other showed signs of bite marks. The manager graciously did not charge us for these items.

Further additions to Matthew's second year resume' will be reported as they happen.

Thanks, Frank, for this addition to our ever-growing blog!