The Alex and Amelia mysteries

The case of the disappearing bed.

For a hardboiled, seen it all detective, Alex sure did see lots of things he’d not seen before. One would think that, by the age of 4, there would not be that much left, but this old world still had a few surprises in store for the old boy. He could understand his sister, merely 9 months old, was still a new babe, but this flummoxed them both.

Alex’s bed had disappeared.

It was there in the morning when he woke up. He’s pretty sure it was there when he left for school. But, upon his return that afternoon, it was simply gone.

In its place was a new structure, one taller than Alex. He could easily walk underneath it Amelia could not. Not that she was taller than Alex. She simply could not walk. Amelia pondered the structure as well, then tried to fit it inside mouth. It did not fit.

As Alex examined the structure, he discovered  a ladder of sorts, and proceeded to climb up. Amelia watched with both envy and  concern, and made this known with a loud squawking sound. But Alex was an investigator, and this needed to be investigated.

The top of the ladder revealed a site not altogether different from Alex’s old bed! His pillow was there, his blanket was there, but everything else was much bigger. Above all of this was a blue vinyl canopy that felt good to run his hands along.

Amelia squawked for an update, but Alex could not hear her over the sound of the fabric rustling. She proceeded to eat her hand.

After a while, Dad come into the room, or perhaps he’d been there the entire time, it  was hard to tell with this mystery going on, and announced that it was time to go to sleep. He covered Alex in the blanket and left him up in the structure and turned out the light.

Alex began to get worried. Dad had left him in this strange structure…. but… so soft.

Alex awoke the next morning feeling quite refreshed, but still not sure what happened to his bed. Still, this new thing might work.

Case: UNSOLVED

Customize blogger’s layout with labels

Here is a fun little thing I figured out recently. I’ve long been a fan of using labels in blogger to organize posts and make them easier to find. But, you can use the labels to customize the appearance of the blog depending on which one you’ve chosen. It requires a bit of javascript, but it’s not especially difficult. For an example, look to uccburlington.blogspot.com. Notice how the leader text reads differently depending on which label you choose.

The trick with the javascript is to look at the url header for the blog. If it sees a particular label, apply a particular style or block of text.

To add it to blogger, log in and customize the layout:

 

Add a gadget. Specifically an html/javascript gadget.

Now copy in this code:

<script>
    if(window.location.href.indexOf("Announcements") > -1) {
    document.write("<h1>Announcements</h1>");
    }
</script>

The if statement checks the url for the word corresponding to your label (note: It is case sensitive, so Announcement and announcement are different). If it find its, it executes the code below. In this case, it writes the line “Announcements” in an h1 header format. If you are feeling adventurous you can delve into the realm of javascript to dictate styles, colors, and other things as well, but I’ll leave that alone for now.

Lessons in Parenting

This is a short one, but a couple of quick observations. Alex went to two birthday parties last Saturday, during which I learned several things:

1. Sandboxes can make quite a mess.

2. A moonbounce house is worth its weight in gold.

3. It is surprisingly difficult to get chocolate frosting off of a helium balloon with only a dry napkin.

4. Little girls are gifted at losing their hat when you aren’t looking.

5. Pushing a stroller makes you more approachable. People are more likely to jump out of their car to ask for directions.

6. Seriously, moonbounce houses are amazing!