Brian A. Thomas .com

I mentioned in the Christmas list post, that Ari loves Thomas the Tank Engine.
The other day we went to a local shop in North Canton, called Toys and Trains. There they had a Thomas the Tank Engine Table top (basically a piece of plywood with a landscape painted onto it and placed in a Thomas themed table) and a wooden track train set. Beyond Thomas the Tank Engine, there are a few other compatible systems (and a few Thomas systems, such as the Blue Track, that isn’t compatible) that also work with the wooden track system. Anyhow, Ari loved his time playing with it, and clearly would easily spend a great deal of time with it. On the rare occasions we watch the show, Ari loves it, but as it requires us to go to PBS Sprout On Demand, we don’t watch it too much. The other day on the Disney channel they were showing The Polar Express and Ari watched it a couple times through and ask all the time “Where’s the choo choo train?” If the people were in the train I would tell him they were in the train, but he didn’t seem to believe me, as he would say “No, their not in the train, their in the living room” or something like that before asking again where the train was. I have to say, while the story of the movie was serviceable, I didn’t care for the animation. Something seemed horribly off, no other way to describe it. Search the Internet for the trailer and you’ll see what I mean. I think it is partly that the face doesn’t move as expected when they talk, and since they went for a more realistic style of animation, I think perhaps that is it, I can’t tell for sure.
Meanwhile I also saw one of my programming teachers at the school the other day at the train store. His name escapes me right now unfortunately. He told the owner, manager, or whomever she was, that I was one of the best he had. I felt kind of proud.

Tags: Ari Update