We went out tonight to Chuck E Cheese because I promised Abby that she would be allowed to climb around in tunnels at home after I wouldn't let her do so at the Spy Museum. When we came back, we hunted fireflies in the front yard.
It occurred to me with some new camera skills that I’m aquiring that I could capture the lightning bugs on “film”, and so I set up the camera on an empty Amazon box (where the heck is my tripod?) and pointed it toward the neighbor’s yard. The exposure time was 8-10 seconds and the F setting was 8, whatever that means.
Anyway, the streaks of yellow you see in the pictures are the bugs. I’m not sure to where the junebug is indiginous, but I suppose that they’re a pretty odd sight if you don’t have them locally. Basically, the bugs blink yellow light every few seconds. The bugs are very friendly, and you can get them to land on you quite easily, which is what Berta and Abby were doing behind me as the camera ticked through these photos.
Also, I should mention somewhat about our trip to Chuck E Cheese. Abby crawled through all of the tunnels. It took a while for her to get up the nerve to climb into them, since they were all situated at the top of a difficult climb (for her). Eventually she figured out a way to climb up there, though, because she wanted it badly enough, and she couldn’t be stopped. I had to coerce her to come down the spiral slide to trick her into leaving.
Also of note: There was another couple there with their two kids. I would say that one was slightly younger than Abby, and the other was slightly older than that. They were both very active, and the parents seemed nice enough. It’s times like these in which I lament my ability to be upfront with strangers and make a friend of myself. Maybe we’ll see them next Wednesday night if we all do this again. That would be cool, and I would take it as a sign that I should say something friendly to them.
