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As you learned from yesterday’s post, I took the kids raspberry picking (this year went much better than last year).

And a week before that, we went blueberry picking.

After having experienced both, I will say, contrary to my longstanding view that raspberries are the best fresh fruit, that if you have your choice you should take kids blueberry picking instead of raspberry picking. Here are some reasons why:

• Blueberry plants are friendly. Blueberry bushes don’t hurt you. Raspberry plants have thorns, which causes children to avoid picking the fruit, leaving you to do all the work.
• Blueberries are sturdier. Kids can easily pick blueberries without squishing them. Grab the berry and pull. Raspberries are too delicate for those with not-so-fine motor skills.
• Blueberries are sturdier. I know I already used that point, but it has another aspect: you can pile the bucket full of blueberries and the berries at the bottom will be just fine. Kids can carry a bucket a lot easier than a shallow tray (“No, don’t tip it!”).
• Blueberries are sturdier. Last one with this heading, I promise. Raspberries almost, almost, collapse under their own weight. Drop a ripe blueberry from the table onto the floor, and it bounces nicely. Drop a ripe raspberry on the floor, and it splats. Now when you get home from your picking and your children want to help you wash and sort the fruit into containers for the fridge, which berry would you rather they handle?
• One vote for blueberries is that they don’t spoil so easily. The raspberries that seemed perfect a picking time were too ripe about an hour later, when I was washing and sorting them. Next time we pick raspberries, I am going to pick the ones that are not quite ripe. That way, they’ll be good when we get home. The blueberries stay good for a week or two at home after picking, but raspberries fade quickly after a couple of days.
• The other vote for blueberries: all the kids like them. Our middle child doesn’t really like raspberries, but he’ll eat a bowl full of blueberries quite readily. Note: If you are in charge of watching him, then don’t actually let him eat a whole bowl of blueberries. It’s not good on the digestive system.
• Oh, and blueberries are cheaper too. Blueberries were $1.60 per pound and raspberries were $3.75 per pound.

And now, some gratuitous close-up shots of fruit, compliments of the macro setting on my camera…

Since this past Saturday was the last weekend in August, I thought it would be good to take the vehicle out for one more spin while the weather was good. I took the kids to the local raspberry-picking farm place.

Here is a picture of my ride, parked on the field at the raspberry farm..

What’s that, the side shot of the Viper doesn’t do it justice? Okay, here’s a better angle of the Viper.

How do I fit two kids in car seats in a Viper? Let’s go back to the first picture and I’ll point it out to you.

There’s my vehicle. I was just taking a picture of my minivan and that pesky Viper was in the way. I hate it when that happens.

I do wonder how much grass the Viper scraped off the field as it was driving through the parking lot. It is just a regular grass field and has to have some bumps larger than the ground clearance of the car.

One of the joys of wireless internet on these newfangled laptoppy thingies is finding a Wi-Fi connection. I normally don’t take my laptop somewhere unless I know there is going to be free Wi-Fi there, unlike my brother who takes his iTouch (okay, iPod Touch, but no one really calls it that) everywhere and has fun seeing if free Wi-Fi exists wherever he is.

I was in a place that I knew had access, and I knew the router had the memorable name of “linksys”. I had my wireless program scan the airwaves and it gave me a list of routers so that I could select linksys.

I had to laugh when I saw the other router named “GET YOUR OWN CONNECTION”. Note: it was encrypted. I’m thinking they shouldn’t have a problem anymore.

The baby is several months old and has been sleeping through the night for a while. It was rough those first two or three months, but we made it and have been enjoying solid night’s sleep every night. Or had been enjoying.

The kids recently coordinated their efforts to interrupt my sleep. Friday night (also known as Saturday morning) it was the middle child around midnight, the oldest around 1 AM, the baby at 5 AM, and the oldest again at 6:15-ish.

Although it was rough, I must say the kids were off their game Friday night. We had a stretch from 1 to 5, a whole 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Back in the day, when those kids were in their prime, we had nights of no more than 2 hours of sleep at a time. I think they may have miscommunicated, and whoever had the 3 AM shift didn’t know it was his turn to wake us.

But I must commend the baby for bringing his A-game. Whereas the other children just needed to be accompanied back to bed, where they quickly fell back to sleep, the baby did not want just company. Nor did he want just to be held. No, he held out until I was carrying him and walking around the house before he stopped crying. When I gave up on that, he refused to go back to sleep until he was fed. Baby 1, parents 0.

I’m sure that, when the kids are older and cannot be roused from bed easily, I will look back on these days with fondness.

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday (which she has since also done).

• My children did not yell “Let’s put on our party hats!” and then run around the house with underwear on their heads.
• My child did not avoid going to sleep, and try to stay up with the adults when we were playing board games in the dining room. And if that child complained that his bed wasn’t comfortable enough and I asked how he would be comfortable, he most certainly did not respond with “by sitting up and playing something“.

And here’s a Not Me to round out this post…

• I did not discover that the baby sits quietly in my lap while I play 1080 Avalanche on the Game Cube (snowboarding video game for those of you who didn’t understand the last half of that sentence). And I definitely did not offer to take the baby when he was fussing around bedtime, because that meant I could get in a few games. (Note to wife: if I did do that, it would be only for the baby’s sake.)

Cash for Clunkers is the economic equivalent of eating sugar when you’re tired.

Sure, the car sales numbers for July and August will be great, but then what happens when the program is canceled on Monday? That’s the problem with government stimulus – it’s a temporary measure. What happens in September, October, November, and December, when all the people who wanted cars this year bought them with the Cash for Clunkers program and there’s no one left to buy cars?

Coming down off the sugar high…

The country needs the economic equivalent of a long-lasting energy bar.

Another point – there are numerous charities that take used cars from you and sell/give them to needy people. You get a tax deduction, and someone who needs a car gets a car. Won’t the charities be hurting for donations this year? I bet they have to restructure their operations because of the reduction in old cars.

Not only will the charities be hurting, but the needy people – the ones who can’t afford a new car – have just witnessed their transportation options being taken away. There were thousands of cars that were perfectly fine and could have helped families with getting to school or jobs, but the government just took all those cars and destroyed them for no good reason.

Okay, there were two reasons the government was doing this Cash for Clunkers thing: stimulate the economy by getting people to buy cars and improve the average gas mileage of the cars in America.

The first point worked, although the lasting effects have yet to be determined.

The second point is why the cars were destroyed. Okay, actually it was just the engines, but effectively that takes out the whole car. That was to prevent cars with low gas mileage from being driven, and that is supposed to combat global warming (and that is another topic for another blog post). Given how little effect that cars have in the global climate, and the fact that gas-fueled cars were just replaced with gas-fueled cars, how much effect will this really have on the environment?

My main question: is that really worth destroying the cars and making life more difficult for poor families? Would it really have hurt that much to distribute the cars to the needy? If you’re a politician who is not convinced of my point, just think of the photo-op and good press that would have got you: here is Senator So-And-So, seen giving a car to a father whose car was repossessed and he needs a car to drive to work so he can afford to feed his children.

Of course, maybe it’s just my innate sense of not being able to throw away things, especially things that are still working. Note to wife: socks with holes in the toe are still considered “working”.  Maybe destroy the cars with the worst gas mileage and give away the clunkers with decent gas mileage.  Surely some sort of compromise could have been effected.

Last note about Cash for Clunkers – I heard a radio news item that referred to the program as being popular. The evidence they gave for the popularity was that it ran out of money quickly. However, they way they said it put a different image in my mind.

I thought that the money could have disappeared quickly due to embezzlement, political favors, or any number of items not related to the purpose of the program. Just because the government spent the money quickly does not mean that it all went to the right people.

I thought it was rather nice of people to take pictures and put them onto Google maps so that I could see places of interest from angles other than what Google itself provides. Then I thought maybe I could return the favor by posting pictures of places that I have been.

So now I am the proud owner of a Panoramio account. Go view my photos. Click on the pictures you like. Leave comments if you want.

These are just scenery pictures – no family members or anything like that. The point is to show other people what they would see if they went to that place on the map.

There, now I have contributed positively to the internet. I am a team player.