Peter Kupfer's Blog

I’m Dad?

I was renaming some pictures and I had to type Dad in the title of the file and it felt weird. When I read the file name back I though of my Dad and not of myself. I guess I still find it weird to call myself a Dad.

Movie Review: Happy Feet

I just finished watching Happy Feet and I really enjoyed it. The movie seems to be a cross between The Ugly Duckling and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Mumble is a duck whose egg is dropped during incubation. The most important thing in the life of a penguin we learn is to be able to sing in order to find a mate. Mumbles, we learn, lacks the ability to sing well, but he can really cut a rug (this is an old term for dance.) Well, Mumble is shunned from the penguin community all of his life because of his “happy feet” and isn’t allowed to officially graudate from penguin school.

While this is all happening the penguins and other antarctic creatures are going through a fish famine. The leaders of the penguins say that the great “guin” is angered by Mumble slacker ways and his dancing and is punishing them with no fish. Mumbles learns from a large bird and a treachorous encouter with a walrus (or possible a large otter) that “the aliens” (humans) are causing the problem.

After being exiled from the emperor penguins, Mumbles sets off with 5 penguins of a different breed to find the source of the problem and exhonerate his name. The travel a long way until they eventually find a large fleet of fishing boats that are taking the fish.  Mumbles companions are content to turn back now because they have proven the Mumbles is not to blame, but Mumbles actually wants to help fix the problem. So, he jumps into the ocean and starts following one of the boats. He is briefly successly but ultimately ends up trying to chase the boat until he ends up in, what I assume is, Australia.

Here he ends up in a zoo and interacts with aliens. He tries to reason with the aliens, but they don’t seem to understand anything he says. He ends up becoming depressed and hullicinating about his family back home. Eventually one little girl comes up to glass and starts tapping a dancing beat and Mumbles starts to dance. This gets the attention of the whole crowd and Mumbles is ultimately sent back to his home, but he marked with a homing beacon. I’ll leave the rest for you to watch.

The animation in this movie is really good and they weave music and dance into the movie in a really fun way. The voice acting is good especially the role of Noah, the patriarch of the penguins, who is portrayed by Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix.) I would reccomend this movie for anyone who enjoys animated films. Towards the end the movie gets very emotional as Mumbles is temporarily separated from his family and we are not sure what is going to happen. The movie also tells a good story that could open a dialog for parents and children.

Feeding Isaac…

Today was the first night I got to feed Isaac without Gina being anywhere around. It was kind of an exciting thing and we got along pretty well. Tonight Isaac was to finish the pears he had been started on in the morning. At first I grabbed a spoon from the drawer that was a little too deep and held too much food for one mouthful. I scrounged and found one of the flatter spoons that Gina usually uses.

Things started off fine, but Isaac has this tendency to do two things. First he will try to almost help the spoon into his mouth which just causes his hand to be covered in food and second he puts his hand in his mouth and sucks on it after a mouthful. Neither of this is super horrible, but I was thoroughly amused when he did this and ended up with food on his head. (It is located above his left eye if you can’t see it in the picture.)

During the feeding he also tried to help by wiping his mouth off and by being extra cute.

For all the photos please go here.

Movie Review: Dark Knight

  I finally saw The Dark Knight. (I know it hasn’t been out that long, but it seems like everyone has seen this movie already.) I went into this movie expecting it to not live up to the hype that it got and I have to say I was amazed. This movie was fantastic! What I liked the most was the overarching theme about heroes and the distinction between heroes we need and when we need them. I was reminded a lot of Spider-Man 2 and the conflict between responsibility and the power: Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spiderman.

Ultimately, besides the hero theme, I enjoyed the conflicted between vigilanty justice and the police. The movie opens a big debate that will perhaps never be answered. The TV show never really hits on this conflict like I am guessing the comic does. In reality, Batman is the original Jack Bauer. You can tell them whoever wrote this movie loves Batman and understands the character and the world.

The acting in this movie is, as reported, very good. I guess Heath Ledger is a villian, but as I was watching the movie I didn’t fear him like I feared Jack Nicholaus in the original. Maybe it is because Ledger makes The Joker seem human which is really the greatest compliment I could pay him. Christian Bale does a fine job and was pushed further than I thought he would be and he handled it. Morgan Freeman does a quality job as always and brings a nice Q quality to the batman franchise.

Overall this was a powerful movie that really transcends Batman or any time period. The themes are clear, classic and really encourage deep thought.

Trip to Wrigley

Today we decided to go to Wrigley Field for the Road to Wrigley minor league game between the Kane County Cougars and the Peoria Chiefs. We chose to go to this game because Ryne Sandburg rocks and he is the manger of the Chiefs and becayse for the ticket price of $10 you can’t find a cheaper way into Wrigley Field. We went down with the Glinkas and decided for and extra $25 per person we should go on the tour or Wrigley Field Before the game.

We drove down to the Cumberland Blue Line Station and took the el down to the Addison station and got off and took the bus the rest of the way in. I tend to prefer taking the CTA over Metra because you have a lot more options in terms of times. When you take Metra, if you are leaving at night the trains only run at like 9:30, 10:30, & 11:30 and so if you miss one you are stuck for another hour. Also, during the week, the CTA is almost always cheaper and just as fast.

So, we were able to get Isaac on his first el and first bus ride in one trip.

When we first gt off of the train we weren’t sure which way to take the bus, but luckily there was a sign.

We arrived at the field 15 minutes late, luckily the Cubs seemed to expect this and they had enough tour groups to handle the late crowds. The tour was pretty nice. It included a historical overview of the park and then we walked around to various location starting with going on the field. This was a good chance to take Isaac on the field and get a shot of us together standing on the field.

Next on the tour we made our way up to the press box. On the way, we stopped in the sky boxes and learned more about the field and the history of the Cubs. At this time, Isaac let us know that he needed a diaper change. Well, there were no changing tables in site, so we decided that we should change him on one of the tables in the patio arrow in the upper deck. After that we went up to the press box and got to see where Ronnie and Pat sit when they do their broadcasts.

We went out and sat in the bleachers and got a close up look at the scoreboard and then the tour was over. Overall, the tour was nice. I was disspointed because it was a gameday we were not allowed in the clubhouse or in the dugouts.

After the tour we traveled over to Harry Carey’s for dinner. The meal was nice. The highlight of that part of the trip was that we got to see Ernie Banks. I wouldn’t have none him if I had seen him, but people started to saying, “Look there’s Ernie Banks,” so I took his picture.

After dinner we wandered around the neighborhood and then headed into the game. We had decent seats in the right field bleachers under the upper deck. You could the see the field fine but you couldn’t see the sky or where the fly balls went. There were TVs there and I thought they would play the game on the field there, but the actually played the Cubs game which was nice (even though I had my walkman to listen anyway.)

One of the side hopes of the trip was to see Ryne Sandburg, my boy hood hero, and get his autograph. Unfortunately, he was busy with his friends at National City and the line to get near him for the brief time he was available was very long.

However, while walking down to see him, we were stopped by a CBS 2 reported who asked if she could video tape Isaac and inteview me, which she did. We were then on the 10 o’clock news which was probably the highlight of the trip.

The game itself was pretty boring, it is single A baseball after all, and the Chiefs attempted to keep all of the atmosphere of a minor league game at Wrigley. I can appreciate the attempt, but some of the antics didn’t seem to really carry over. For instance the T-Shirt toss only included the first 50 rows so half of the crowd was left out (even though they had a T-Shirt cannon before the game.) Some of the mascot antics were amusing. They had these neat bobble head type guys there and some crazy green guy that break danced with the 3rd base umpire and stole the 3rd baseman’s glove and threw it in the stands. Once the Cub had their game in hand, we decided to head home.

The trip home was somewhat exciting. We took the red line to the blue line back to Cumberland which took longer than the bus, but is pretty normal. Once we got in the car the madness started! Our route home should have taken 48 minutes to get home but due to some misadventures, the actual trip should have taken 1 hour and 59 minutes but probably actually took closer to 2 and a half hours.

I think the problem was two-fold. First we failed to stay on 294 right off the bat. I tried to follow the signs, but apparently I missed. So, we ended up taking 90 really far west out by Huntley/St. Charles. Somewhere around here, I said, “I think we made a mistake.” We tried using the map, but we weren’t sure what to do, so I just started going North. According to Google, pretty much every choice we made after that was the least efficient. We worked our way north and east trying to find diagonal roads when we probably should have just gone on straight north and east roads

Anyway, we ended up in Barrington Hills at some point where there were some amazing houses along the Fox River. We were trying to follow Algonquin Rd and then prarie road, but prarie road seems to not exist and there was a detour that we didn’t think we needed to follow. So, we drove past the Road Close sign. Gina said, “What will happen if we go past the sign.” I said, “Well, nothing will happen, but part of the road might be missing.” Sure enough the road really was closed. So, we turned around and their was a hand written sign on the back of the road closed sign that said, “Duh, it really is.” We felt kind of stupid.

After that we went back and followed the detour after driving on some spooky streets (which were even more spooky since we had recently passed through Sleepy Hollow, IL). We found route 14 finally (I wasn’t sure if we were ever going to get of Barrington Hills) and then we made it home and watched the 10 o’clock news replayed at 1:35.

In all, it was a great day and I will remember it for a long time.

New Couch

I spent a lot of the day watching the Golden Girls to relive Estelle Getty’s humor. I didn’t know she was actually a year younger than Bea Arthur, crazy! That was a fun show, even though I wouldn’t think that I am an anywhere near their target demographic.

The new couch arrived today (at least part of it.) It has a chaise lounge on one end, a love seat in the middle, and it will have a “cuddler” on the other end. They didn’t have the correct configuration in stock, so the last piece will have to come later. Isaac insisted on sitting on it first. He look soooo small on it even though he is growing very fast. I actually just held him for a while tonight after he fell asleep because I didn’t want to put him down.

House Projects…

The last week has been full of many exciting house projects.

First several shelves have been installed in the house. We purchased these floating shelves from Home Depot. They are nice and they look good because there is no extra visible hardware. We wanted black shelves (and we kind of thought we were buying black ones) but they ended up being espresso.We hung two in the living room and two in Isaac’s room.

I finally fixed the garage door. It was trying to go a little too far when it closes and would reopen. I change the range of the door and now it works.

I have been spraying the lawn with Spurge Power (a post emergent herbicide) in order to kill the clovers that are growing out there. It seems to slowly be working, so hopefully the clovers will be gone soon. They seemed to be taking over the yard.

Lastly, the most important project was adding a cat door to the back screen door. This is so that Belle can go in and out without Gina or I opening the door. I ended up installing it in a bad spot. I put it in a location to cover where Gina burned the screen door when we pulled up the asbestos tile, but I should have put it by the handle so that we could crack the glass door to let the cat in and out in the winter. Jenny Glinka trained her in how to use her door and we greatly appreciate it.

The Ice Bowl

Today Isaac and I watched the Ice Bowl. This was the NFL Championship game of 1967. The temperature was -15 degrees and it was a nail biter. Some of the players were interviewed during the game they had frostbite after the game because they refused to wear gloves and one guy says his hands still hurt when it is cold out. Those football players were hardcore and crazy.  (As a side note, I have really enjoyed the NFL network programming which was kind of a surprise.)

Isaac seemed to enjoy the game. He would raise his arms as if to cheer every now and then. I would like to think he knew when to cheer, but since he would often raise his arms at weird times, I have to assume that he wasn’t. Isaac did however fall asleep in his swing today, which is rare. I put him in there when he was kind of fussing and he fell asleep in like 5 minutes. They say this works for the same reason as the swaddling. The rocking is the natural motion the womb makes and it makes the kid feel at home so to speak.

Babies and Their Car Seats

For babies it seems that the car seat is a sweet, sweet, drug. Not the bad kind of drug like cocaine, but the good kind of drug like valium or ambien. When Isaac is in his car seat he sleeps a lot more than not. Especially if said car seat is in a car or in his stroller. I have learned that this makes sense from a biological standpoint because babies like to feel comforted and they actually prefer the closed in spaces similar to a cat. They say this reminds them of the womb.

Anyway, Isaac really enjoys his car seat. I prepared a montage of him in it from yesterday when we were at Uno’s.

Another neat thing happened at church on Saturday. Isaac realized his pacifier was falling out of his mouth and pushed it back in himself. This may not seem like much, but the fact that he can actually control his motion is pretty cool!

I also got to give Isaac a bath for the second time this weekend, usually Gina does this. It is kind of exciting to play with him in the water and he looks so adorable in his towel afterward.

Isaac’s First Cold

Isaac is working through his first cold right now. He is a little more fussy than normal, which is too bad because it tends to mean that he gets less sleep when he really needs more. He is doing a better job eating consistently though so that is good. You can see here that he is quite unhappy.

In some ways he is still very small. Like when when I put him in his crib, he seems so slight. But when I hold him or put him in his car seat he seems huge! Gina referred to him as her little meatball the other day.

Today we had the football golf outing/fund raiser. It was a nice time outside. The biggest thing I missed while I was doing the Summer School Principal things for my internship was being outside everyday. It has been a nice summer for it so far. This last week has been rough in terms of humidity, but at least I am not in pads.

In addition, I am still loving texting and in particularly updating my Facebook status whenever I want. I now have found that I can reply to my friends’ status on my cell. I find that this really helps me stay in touch.