Watch This, if you haven't already.

Wait for it.

Have you played Geoguessr yet?

It's a geographical guessing game that drops you into a location somewhere on Earth, using Google street maps, and lets you try to figure out where you are.  You can navigate up and down the roads, turn around and zoom in to check out your surroundings. You get five chances to guess five different places and then the game ends and you see your score and a  map of your guesses.  Warning, it's addictive.

There seem to be two ways to play: look around a little, check out the trees, the buildings, the language on the signs and take a wild guess whether you're in Norway or Madagascar or New Zealand.

Luck plays into it.  You might really have to guess if you land in a spot like this:

But if there are more details, like landmarks or signs with town or business names, you can use Google in another tab to search and figure out EXACTLY where you are.

I'm told that's cheating, but I don't care.  Here's the best I've done with five lucky scenes with lots of detail and method #2 so far this evening, having discovered the game an hour or two ago::

 

Or you can just be a tourist and wander around and look at things and find out what it looks like in a small town in Poland with wooden gingerbread on old buildings and schoolchildren waiting for a city bus or a strange hostile city in Russia where the concrete buildings are too cold and large and the spaces between too forbidding and exhausting or a coastal village in Mexico where the sea laps on the sand and the wind blows constantly against the palms.  That's fun too.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Fireworks!

Doc Watson/Johnny Gimble

The video says DocWatson and Leo Kottke and that part, the second half, is fine.  No flies on Leo Kottke.  But listen to the fiddle solo by the great Johnny Gimble in "Just a Little Lovin'".  He owns that fiddle. 

Happy Mother's Day!

Jamie is sad that he's so far away on Mother's Day, and that he's stuck in this hat box. 

But he's thinking of all of the Moms in his life today...

So he drew them all a picture:

How to take a prank

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

From all the Murphies

A boy, his firetruck, and his firemen.

Can you find the other fireman and can you tell what he is doing?

A Boy and His Firetruck

A boy and his dog

Ya know what caused it?

Yup. Global Warming.

Doin' the Laundry

No longer a Subaru Owner

Hey everyone

This is my cousin Roe's son Mike Huffner.  Roe's Dad is my Uncle Dick, who is my father's younger brother.  Mike is a senior at Bucknell, a star defensive lacrosse player, headed to medical school at the University of Maryland in the fall.  Dad and I went up to Colgate this afternoon to meet Roe, her husband Bill and my Uncle Dick and watch the Bucknell Bisons hand Colgate its hat 13-8.  It was freezing cold and snowing off and on, but fun.  Pictures below of Mike playing (#34) and of my uncle, his proud grandpa.  Anyway, Mike is a candidate for the NCAA Senior Class Award.  Here's Mike's bio, here's some information about the award, and here's where you can vote for Mike -- as often as you want, once a day until May 13.  Please do!

Another nice shot from Montauk

MLB.TV

We signed up for the premium subscription last weekend and have been watching the Red Sox for the past few nights by plugging a computer into the TV.  So far, so good.  The picture's a little jumpy sometimes, and it's a pain not to be able to use a remote, and the game seems to quit on us at least once each night and needs to be started over.   All the same, the HD feed is pretty darned good on the whole, and it's great to be able to choose between NESN or the other team's broadcast (you know which one Dad likes better) or even the radio, and we were able to watch the archived version of a blacked-out game the other night.  Also, the Red Sox are considerably more gratifying to watch than I would have suspected after all of last fall's mayhem.  So, I guess it's another season of hope and frustration and aggravation and gratification and who knows what else.  To solve the remote problem, we have ordered a Roku 3, which should get here in a week or so.  Slowly but surely, the Murphies are dragged into the 21st century . . .

From Montauk

. . . where Jamie's making tracks toward the ocean.

We need cute pictures today

Anniversaries this week

Four months ago Monday, Grandma Frey.

Five years ago today, Panda.

Two years ago tomorrow, Grandpa Frey.

Once you've looked at this as a rubber ducky . . .

. . . there's no going back.

Blog layout

I know we've had this blog format since 2005 and it's really cutting edge and all, but are there other designs for the blog we can try? I'm wondering if a different format might allow us to post videos from youtube without them getting cropped. I'd try some new settings but I can't find the option anywhere - maybe only certain people can do it?

Ducks everywhere

When I was a kid, I thought the MLB icon was a rubber ducky holding a baseball bat. It's embarrassing how long this confusion persisted. I remember having an epiphany sometime in the late 2000s and realizing it was in fact the silhouette of a batter. Jamie has been enjoying pointing out ducks lately, and yesterday after the Sox game he found another: 

Listen, folks:

On Saturday night from 7 to 8 p.m., Dad and Jenni will be streaming on wrcufm.com with highlights from their most recent appearance with the Local Music Project at the Colgate Inn.  SO worth hearing: just click on the link at the right time, and you won't miss it.  

Coming soon

to a driveway not all that near you . . . 

Jamie reads himself a story . . .

. . . and concentrates on what he considers the most important feature of any good book -- that is, the presence of a tractor.*



*Tractor is his current word for pretty much anything with wheels.

An Acquired Taste?

The youngest cousin, getting older

Pete says she is a typical Frey niece because she likes to sing loudly in public and be the center of attention. Hmm. Should Laura be offended? They may come to this country for a visit in May. Will let you know!

Jamie's Birthday and more

Jame enjoyed his new bath toys (video below). Just some of the many trucks he received for his birthday:

We had some friends over. It was impossible to get them to all stand still long enough for a picture:

 

 Kate made a pretty awesome cake:

Which Jamie promptly devoured:

Video of him enjoying the new trucks:

Bonus video from yesterday's trip to the park:

My new favorite picture

A broken leg in 1954

Here I am, aged 9 or 10 months, with my leg in traction in a Boston hospital, where I'm told I spent a month or two. It looks as if I was having a pretty good time!

Happy 1st Birthday, Jamie!

 

Your family sends kisses.

First Christmas vignette

I just found this, taken (obviously) on Christmas morning, with soundtrack by Dad. It's hard to tell whether Luke or Jamie is having more fun! Catch the little bursts of dancing that Jamie can't resist now and then.

Saturday night at the Palace Theater

 Update -- here's another one: