Belated Christmas Pictures - round 1

This year for Christmas, I made the kids scarves. I started back in October, while Tara was out of the country.

They were pretty excited about them. Ruth and Lily were excited about theirs, they have been waiting for "Dr. Who scarves"...


Tara and Noel we jealous of the scarves, in the past week I made them scarves as well.

The gingerbread man

Ruth narrated "The Gingerbread Man" at school several weeks ago. Tara got a video of it. I tried uploading several times in the interval, but blogger doesn't appear to want to cooperate properly. Here it is, from Youtube. Take that, Google, you are hosting the thing anyhow.

Anyway, Ruth did a pretty good job...

Zhu Zhu palooza

We had another Zhu Zhu Pet infestation for Christmas this year. After the girls went to bed, we showed them to Noel. As soon as she can sit up by herself, we will put her in the front room with a dozen of them, (I am sure we have more than a dozen...) so she can see them all in action.

Annual Christmas Concert

Emma's Choir

Okay, it's Emma's choir in the background. The video's mostly of Emma. And the paper airplane of the kid right in front of me...

Also, Kate and Mary's choir. Some how they were standing near each other. Only one of the songs, because I didn't have a lot of charge in the camcorder.

There you go. The reign of "blurry pictures by John" may be over. Now you get "shaky videos by John"...

Can someone clue me in?

Tara thinks this comic is funny. I have no idea why...

Neighborhood kids...

Last week, Tara was driving down the street to the kids school for a parent teacher conference. She heard a bang, the window in the van broke. Looks like someone put a BB through the window.



I taped it up with packing tape because it was late afternoon on a Friday, and I didn't want to deal with it right away. It turns out that packing tape does a pretty good job keeping the shattered window in place. I've been ignoring the problem since then. At some point soon, I will have to replace the window. For now, it's a non-stained stained glass window, providing an interesting blind spot in the van. Some of the kids seem to like looking at it.

Who sits in their yard waiting to shot out car windows?

Also, how does Blogger know which way to orient the pictures that are uploaded? Does my phone provide that information, or is Blogger guessing?

My work here is done.

Last Sunday, I spoke to the youth in the ward. I told them that I wanted to tell them about three times in my life that I've been chased. I started to tell them about the time I was a Freshman in High School, our band director switched me from clarinet for baritone sax. I was not a good clarinet player. I ended up being an ok baritone sax player, at least as far as high school standards went...

Anyway, the school's baritone sax had this big case with a loose handle. I was playing with the handle one day early on, and the case was wobbling. I twisted it, the case went sideways, and swiped two football players that had 6 inches and about 25 pounds on me. They were running in the opposite direction down the hall, and ended up tumbling into a heap. They looked up at me, and gave me a dirty look. I panicked, dropped everything I had, and bolted. They gave chase.

About this time in telling the story, the youth figured out I was talking about "chased", not "chaste". They started relaxing and chattering a bit. I asked "what did you think I was talking about?" I thought it was pretty funny.

A couple of days ago, we were all in the car, driving back from Salt Lake. Tara asked the girls what it meant to be "chaste". I looked in the rear view mirror, Kate was looking at me laughing a little.

My work here is done.

Tara's return

Two weeks ago, Tara got home from her trip. Noel and I went out to the airport to get her. (A 12 minute drive - not on the freeway - absolutely fantastic!)

When the plane landed, Noel was looking around, after Tara walked up, I gave Noel to her. After a few seconds Noel looked at her, and gave a look of total surprise. Eyebrows arched, eyes open wide, and mouth in a little 'o'. It lasted only a few seconds, but I've never seen a look like that on a four month old baby before. It was kind of funny.

After we got home, Noel screamed at Tara for over an hour. Just letting her know about her displeasure. She seemed fine the next day.

I am sure the kids are happy Tara came home. They were tired of me, I was just tired, which made things worse. Now if we could only get them to go to sleep at night...

"The agitator turns at midnight"

AKA "A little torque makes the world turn round"

Our washing machine tried breaking down again. This time it was the upper agitator that stopped working. I've noticed lately that it wasn't rotating the clothes all that well. Last week, Kate stuffed the washer full, and the clothes didn't turn around at all. It took several cycles to get the soap all the way out.


The part that grabs the agitator and turns it had worn down to the point that it was basically useless. Options - fix the washer or replace the washer. I don't have the money right now for the washer I want to replace the current one with, so I explored repair of the washer, likely not for the last time...

Last week, I found a parts website - http://www.repairclinic.com - they made it very easy to find the replacement part. It cost me $10 plus $5 shipping, and the parts came in 5 days, including a public holiday where there was no mail.

While waiting for the part, we did half full loads, so the bottom agitator, which still worked, could move the clothes around in the water. With nine people in the house, laundry piles very fast if you are only doing half loads.


The part came, and I spent a good 45 minutes trying to get the bolt off the agitator, so I could replace the part. I was using a socket and a straight attachment to try to take it off, not a socket wrench. This clearly wasn't working, so I borrowed a long extender from my friend Chad. It took about 30 seconds to get the thing off with the extender and a socket wrench. (Thanks again, Chad!) Proper torque beats brute force any day.

Anyway, the washer works as designed again, even with a full load. Now I can make Emma take that jacket off that she wears every single day...

Halloween

I never got around to posting Halloween pictures from this year. Here they are:

Dr. Who. I had jelly babies in my pocket, and feed them to the kids while we walked around the neighborhood. More than knew what the costume was. (Maybe a dozen.) That exceeded my expectations. I'm thinking about going back to Beaker next year...

Kate was Athena, or Hera, or Artemis, or something. I have forgotten. It was two weeks ago, and I had to fill my head with HPUX information again 10 days ago. There was a buffer overflow, I lost some things.

I thought I would win the prize for "most obscure costume" in the family this year. I was wrong. That prize went to Mary. She was a character in the Young Adult book series she read. I hear it went over good at school, but most of the people whose house we visited didn't really know what she was.

Superman. We had problems with the curl that day.

Dorothy. As far as I know, this year, there wasn't the same confusion regarding Emma's costume as previous years...

Ruth was a princess. Just a princess, she would say.

Lily was a princess. As we went out that night, she started saying "Princess of the World", then "Princess of the Universe". By the end of the night, she had a whole back story ready for anyone who would listen. I think that's why Ruth kept saying "Just a princess"...

Days 13-19: "Mostly a haze"

I never got around to finishing my report of how things went with Tara gone.

I caught the mouse. It was pretty easy. Mice are suckers for peanut butter. Set the trap, leave the house, and blam! - that's it for the mouse. Retrap things, no evidence of mice since...

That last week Tara was gone was kind of interesting. I was staying up very late watching priority registration, and waking up very early to feed the baby and get the kids to school. I got about 4 hours a sleep a night that week. And drank lots of Dr. Pepper. Most of it is a haze. I think I watched way to much "Fresh Beat Band" that week. There may have been an extra helping of "Bad Cop" around the house.

I don't know if homework was done. I am pretty sure the kids ended up where they were supposed to be. They lived through it. Everyone stayed clothed, feed, and healthy. I guess that's something.

After Tara got back, I told her she couldn't do that again until after the kids are all in full day school. It wouldn't have been nearly as hard if Noel wasn't a 4 month old baby...

Days 11&12: "Suddenly past the midway point"

The kids came home yesterday. I took them to lunch on the way home. I put it up for a vote. I should have just picked. I kind of wanted to go to Maria Bonita for nachos, I am sure the big plate of nachos plus something else would have taken care of the whole thing. Maybe two plates of nachos. I don't know. The kids voted for Chuck-A-Rama. Or as Adam calls it "Chuck-A-Grandma". I fear for my Mother when he gets big and strong.

I am tired of Chuck-A-Rama. Overdose for the year, I guess. I'm going to start vetoing it, I think. Try to expand the kids horizons.

I wanted the kids to clean the front room, entryway, and their bedroom. They cleaned nothing. Fantastic. Bad cop will be here tomorrow after school, I think.

Tara liked to use scented candles from time to time. Drown out the scent of 7 kids, I think. I just try to ignore the smells. I have long trained myself to actively not smell stinky diapers, for example. Scented candles I am unable to ignore. If they are too strong, I start choking on the air. This dampens Tara's scented candle parade. Once in a while, I try one to see if I still have problems. It never works, I always end up having to stop the thing.

We have a giant Apple Crisp candle that someone gave us for our wedding. We haven't gotten all the way through it yet. I tried to use it this evening. No go.

It's wholly possible that I should have talked to more adults at church today. I was busy changing the baby over and over. She really appreciated the fresh canvas, I guess.

Also, we have a mouse in the house. That's what I get for encouraging the kids to play outside last week. They can't keep a door closed for anything...

The front lawn looks better...

I guess I've given up on the front lawn for the year. I'll work on it some more in the Spring. I hadn't mowed it for more than a month, I was trying to get new grass going, and mowed a couple of days ago. I trimmed it up a bit today.

The lawn looks better, and some new grass came up, but not exactly what I was looking for. I'd like really think, sod like grass. It's not something I will obsess about, at least not obsess any more about for now, but at least it looks nice.

Days 9 & 10: "Silence is Golden"

Wednesday afternoon, I took the kids up to Tara's parents house. This weekend is UEA weekend, meaning no school. It also means that Tara's Mom doesn't have to work. She volunteered to take the kids for a few days. I took her offer.

The house has been fantastically quiet. I have actually really enjoyed it. I slept 10 hours last night. I got two full days of work in. (Plus a little) I cleaned the back room. I mowed the lawn. No one woke me up bright and early in the morning...

I go get the kids tomorrow. It will be fine. I'm thinking about taking care of my "lunch debt" all at once tomorrow...

Days 6-ish - 8ish: "House Arrest"

On Monday morning, we tried going back to work again. Adam wanted to watch "the puppets". What he really meant was "The Muppets". He really liked watching the muppets. I guess some things age really well.

Anyway, for some reason, my laptop would not play the DVD. It worked just fine the time he came to work before. Instead, I turned cartoons one for him. I think it was Curious George and Clifford the Big Red Dog. I have my second monitor under my desk for him, with a blanket laid out. He seems to like it.

Noel did fine, but threw up all over me. Then she leaked through her diaper. Small bursts of time. That's all we can really do at work. I think we could have gone longer if it didn't involve regurgitated baby formula and stinky diapers. I briefly thought about leaving the diaper in Sorrel's office, who was not at work that day, but I resisted the urge. (It wouldn't have been the first time, by the way...)

Anyway, after that, we kind of just stayed home. I have decided to not intrude on nap time, anyway. It makes the wee little tikes a bit crazy by night. Tuesdays and Thursdays involve too many preschools. I could have taken Adam and Noel back to work on Wednesday morning, but we ended up just staying home. It was easier. (I got lazy, I guess.)

It's easier to just stay home. The kids keep busy. If they get bored, I just give them a job. (The kids rarely say they are bored.) I lay them down for naps in the afternoon, and get a couple of free hours before the older kids get home from school.

Maybe we will try to go back to work on Monday morning. Maybe I will take a second shirt just in case Noel targets me again...

Pumpkin time!

Our local grocery store sells what amount to two different sizes of pumpkin this time of year. They sell small ones for 69 cents a pound, and larger ones for 14 cents a pound. If you were looking to spend the least amount on pumpkins for decorations, a party, or whatever, (Say for instance, if you have 7 kids, and they want to decorate pumpkins, for example) you might be tempted to get the smaller pumpkins. You would be wrong.

The small pumpkins are about five pounds each, give or take. The larger ones are 12 to 14 pounds each. The large ones are about the same cost as the smaller ones.


I got the girls pumpkins today, they decorated them tonight after dinner. We used to help them carve pumpkins, but decorating them allows us to let everyone participate, and is tons less messy. The kids don't seem to mind.

A Scarf for Sara

"A Scarf for Sara" Not the latest movie on the Lifetime channel. Not a best selling book somewhere. A scarf. For Sara.


Before Tara left for France, I made her niece Sara a scarf. Tara got there today, and gave it to her. Sounds like it was a hit...

Days 3 & 4: "A measure of normalicy"

Yesterday, we tried to enforce nap time, to keep things normal. This didn't work all that well, since the girls didn't actually take a nap. Adam and Noel took the naps they were supposed to.

Several times during the day, I thought it was Saturday. Then I remembered it was still Friday, and realized there was a bonus day in the week suddenly. It may have also factored into my not going into work, and not doing any from home as well... I also spent several periods of time thinking about painting either the back room or the kitchen. I decided against it.


Friday night there was a ward activity - a potluck dinner. We got there about 20 minutes late, all the tables were full, and much of the food was gone. We set up a new table, and the kids went through and got food. I held the baby until I realized that she was leaking through her pants again. (We discovered this week that the new kind of diapers we bought last week have containment issues. Noel went through three outfits yesterday...) After the dinner, they had a miniature golf course that the young men built. The kids scattered to go play. After a while, Noel was ready for another diaper change, but we didn't have any more diapers in the backpack. Since we already used the backup outfit, I figured it was time to bail.

Several breakdowns happened at this point, I think mainly do to sleepy children. Emma was upset because Mary took off with her friends and ditched her. Lily was very upset because Ruth ended up with a balloon, and Lily didn't. Sad times.

I thought about tired children for a while, and decided that they needed a darker place to sleep, both during the day, and at night. Tara had some thicker fabric that someone gave her years ago, we found it a couple of weeks ago, and was likely going to be given away at some point. I made blackout curtains, and put them up in the girls room today.




This afternoon, all the girls but Kate went in and laid down in their room for about an hour and a half for naptime. I don't think they actually slept, but they stayed in their rooms. Win for me. Tonight when I came home, you couldn't see their lights were on in their room, either. Win again.

At this point, I think things have calmed down just a little around here. Noel has been slobbering like a maniac lately. I just gave her a frog stuffed animal, and she is busy attacking it, trying to somehow get it into her mouth. I think she is either starting to teeth, or she likes the taste of fabric. I fully expect 'bad cop' to have to show at some point, but it looks like that will not happen today.

Tara made it to France, sounds like her flight went pretty well.

Day 2: "Martial Law"

Last night, the kids stayed up way too late. I had a meeting, Noel was at a babysitter. The kids were in bed. I figured they would be asleep, but I got home at almost 11pm, and the main light in their bedroom was on. Not a good sign. When I went in their room, they had the light off, and 4 of the 5 of them were at the very least pretending to be asleep.

This morning, some of the girls were dragging a bit. Big surprise. I allowed no complaining, just getting ready for school. Off they went.

I spent several hours at work today, having Adam and Lily watch the Muppets. (Adam called them "The Puppets". It's amazing how some things hold up to age...) I thought I had diapers in the diaper bag, but it turned out that I only had one. When Noel polished off the fresh canvas, it was time to go home.

After school, there were still clear signs of extreme fatigue. I didn't allow whining or complaining. I enabled "homework martial Kate" as a deputy to get all homework done and reviewed. Then we orgainized work parties for directed chores, and a search party for missing library books. (7 of 8 located and returned.)

Someone brought us dinner and ice cream for dessert. I made Adam eat a single noodle before he got ice cream. Emma made a fairly convincing acting job at pretending to eat one.

After dinner a curfew was announced. The girls tried to play the 'be crazy in the bedroom' game, but it was quickly and efficiently squelched before it got too far out of control. Now they all appear to be asleep.

Noel spent a bit of time looking around trying to find someone. She can't seem to find the person she was looking for. Strange.

Day 1 (of 21): "Perpetual Motion"

Let me start out by saying right off the bat that I understand I will get no pity from any mothers out there reading this. I'm not really looking for any.

Have I got your attention now? Entries here for the next twenty one days will talk about experiences of me taking care of the kids - some subset of all seven of them - without Tara. For some definition of "taking care of the kids", anyway.

Tara left this morning to spend some time tooling around in the South of France. My only requirement for her trip is that she come back fully rested and relaxed. Tara wants me to take a lot of pictures to post here. Today I got one. (Don't skip ahead, wait for it...)

When I bought her tickets, I got tickets out of our city airport here. They started commercial passenger flights out of here in June or July of this year through Frontier Airlines. For now, they've got one flight out in the early AM, and one flight in every evening. The flight only goes to Denver. It was well worth the money, from my perspective. (I assume Tara's flight went well.) We got up, drove to the other side of town, a little under 15 minutes, and we were at the airport. Easy. It shaved 90 minutes off the round trip drive to the airport. I am definitely going to try to get my next business trip to go out from this airport. If anyone flies into town, and wants me to pick them up from this airport - not a problem at all.

We got home just in time to pick up all the car pool people for choir. We got to the school about 4 minutes late. (for choir - 1 hour before school actually starts...)

I spent the next 5 hours dealing with the little kids. Noel was ticked off because she was very hungry and very tired, and was having a hard time picking a priority. Lily had preschool. Adam was bored, I guess.

I was cooking eggs for egg salad sandwiches for Lily and Adam, Noel was awake again, and wanted to eat, and Ruth called from the school. She told me that today was 'eat lunch at school with a parent day', it was the only day that it would happen, and she wanted me to come down to the school right away for lunch. For a second I had the idea that maybe I could possible find a babysitter or something, Ruth told me to find someone to watch the other kids, and call her back in the school office, she would be waiting. About 45 seconds after I got off the phone, after looking at the eggs, looking at Ruth, and opening the front door, I decided to call Ruth back. I told her what was going on, and suggested that maybe we could go out to lunch on a different day. I think I committed right there to taking each of the kids individually out to eat while Tara is gone. Ruth came home from school and asked if I was ready to go out to lunch. Not today, Ruth.

After all the little kids were down for a nap, I got about an hour of work in. I'm not sure it was super productive work, but it was something.

Tara's Mom stopped by after school, so I took the opportunity to take all the library books back, and get some milk. I bought 5 gallons of milk on Saturday night, but it was time for 6 more gallons. I'm thinking about getting a cow.

Tara and the girls read a lot of books.

I should have made a couple of trips or something. I think I set my back back a day or so carrying them into the library. Also, there are 8 more books somewhere in this house that need to be returned. 5 have been located. I don't need to work out. I can just take the library books back. Then as a cool down, I buy milk.

I tried to make dinner be leftovers, but it sort of morphed into leftovers and cereal. I'm not sure how that happened. Tomorrow one of Tara's friends is dropping dinner off. On Friday, the ward is having a ward activity - international night, where you bring your favorite international dish. I am strongly thinking about making potato salad. Not German potato salad. Good old fashioned American potato salad. The United States is most definitely a member of the international community. And we have 3 dozen eggs and a bunch of potatoes in the house.

I had a Stake meeting tonight that was supposed to start at 8pm. I had gotten a babysitter for Noel, and took her over there. The meeting started 45 minutes late. And went over an hour long. Noel seemed to be having a good time when I got there. When we got home, the girls had the lights on in their room still. 4 of them were at least pretending to be asleep when I went into their room.

I seem to have been on the go all day long. Which isn't all that different than normal, except I had this possibly deluded idea that I could fit work in while Tara was gone. I think we will try tomorrow. I'm going to make little beds for Lily and Adam under my desk, maybe they will sleep. We'll see.

I also did 4 loads of laundry, and two loads of dishes. All in all, I was busy all day long, and I think we did pretty ok. There was a brief breakdown that involved a one paragraph essay, and proper spelling of words. I think that got resolved, but I'm not sure, and that child was either asleep or acting asleep an hour ago.

At about 10pm, I got an email with the choir director at the school. She was sending it to let us know about a "small issue that they've had and she talked with the choir about today." What was the problem you ask? The kids have been getting there late. Several minutes late, in fact. They only had 1/3 of the choir there on time today. Then she said something that I just have to quote directly:

"...choir begins at 7:30 sharp. After that, the red pencils are put out on the roll and the child is considered tardy."

I think something actually exploded in my head. A tiny little explosion, but I think it was real. My doctor wants to have me do an MRI of my head. It was the 'red pencils' part of it. Tara hasn't yet been gone 24 hours, and I'm already considering making a scene at the school. I almost replied to the email right away, but the filter engaged just in time. I didn't reply to the email. Maybe that means it was an implosion in my head, since nothing violently came out. I'm thinking about going into the school on Monday, getting the kids there on time, and keeping them out in the hall for a few minutes, just so I could watch her whip her little red pencil out...

Another birthday party for Emma.

Around here, we try to only have 'friends' birthday parties at ages 8, 16, 32, and 64. (I suppose we would also have a discussion about one for 128. It is also possible that Tara is owed a 'friends' birthday party...) Other than that, we try to limit it to inviting the family over for each birthday.

Anyway, it's Emma's turn to have a party for friends. Her birthday was over a month ago, we put the thing off until today. She invited a lot of people, and most of them came.

I was the food committee. I came up with mini pudding trifles in little plastic shot glasses. I figured it was a nice little portion for little people. The kids seemed to like them. One of the little boys that came over seemed fascinated by the size of the little cup. He wanted to keep one of his, I gave him a clean one. If he has a drinking problem later in life, it's not my fault.


I also made almost 5 dozen mini cupcakes. Then they got frosted, and the tops were dipped in sprinkles. Also a hit with the party goers.


This is our third friends party. When it started, we let people mill around outside. Who would have figured on 90 degree weather on the last day of September? (Sorry about the focus in this video. Looks like a finger got in the way. I don't claim to be a great photographer/cinematographer...)

Emma wanted to do some carnival games for her party. For some reason, it was surprising to me how low a limbo stick can go when you are dealing with 8 year olds.

The nice thing about a party like this, is after about 30 minutes of play, then opening presents, and a little pizza and cake, and the party is nearly over. I think Emma had a good time.


Next up: Ruth in 2013. Then we have Lily in 2014, Kate in 2015, and Adam in 2016. We live a wild life.

Another little cupcake...

Restaurant Review

Rocky Mountain Wing Shack
Provo, Utah

There's been a place up in American Fork for a few years that makes pretty good wings. They cook them to the crispy side, ala Duff's. If you want hot, you need to order XX Hot, or XXX Hot. You can't just order medium like you do at Duff's and assume they will be hot at all. (They have a XXX Hot challenge. Eat 12 boneless wings in 30 minutes or less. I haven't done it, but it doesn't seem like it would be all that hard.)

I usually get Hot Garlic wings. They aren't super hot, but aren't mild, and have a good flavor to them. They also serve tator tots, if you want them. I really like them. They cook them crispy, and have the right amount of salt on them. In the past, Tom, Drew, and I, or some combination of the three of us, would wander up there and get wings, but it's all the way up there (15 miles or something silly like that), so I don't go that often.

I try to stay within 2 miles of the house, unless food is involved. This week, they opened a "Wing Shack" here in town. It's 4 miles away from the house, but it's much closer than the AF store. It's very much closer than Buffalo. (2000 miles.) It's only 2 miles from my office. I have already been there twice.

Tara discovered another reason to go there Saturday night. She ordered their $2 side salad, and loved it. It had plenty of fresh veggies on it, and had a good, crisp flavor. She liked it much more than side salads she gets in other places around here, that you might pay up to $4-5 for.

They aren't cheap wings, they have a lunch special - 8 wings, tator tots or fries, and a drink, for $9. They have a all day 20 wing deal with tator tots or fries, and two drinks, for $20. They have a 40 wing deal, with lots of tator tots or fries, and two drinks, for $37. That's the one Drew, Tom, and I usually get. Last night, I ate 17 wings and a bunch of tots. I also had 5 wings for lunch on Sunday, and 5 wings for dinner.

I personally would like to see this place stick around. It's nice to have a place to go to get a decent chicken wing, and that's a rarity out here. Everyone in the Springville/Provo/Orem area should check it out.

A lawn update

No new grass yet. Either I am not watering enough, I am not patient enough, or I got ripped off at the store. I will give it another week.


Sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, all the sticks (1x2's) I had roping off the bottom of the lawn got snapped off near the ground. I think some kettlehead must have been walking by, and thought it would be a good idea to kick the things at the ground to snap them off. It's silly really.


I am strongly considering getting a piece of rebar, cutting a channel down the 1x2's, placing the rebar in the middle, and making a 2x2 out of it. Then I would stick it in the middle of the bottom of the lawn, just so whoever it is can come by again, kick the thing, and break their toe. It wouldn't be my fault they broke their toe...

Ruth's a future drummer...

She's just getting warmed up here, if you catch her with more energy, she really gets into it...

(Tried to post this last week, but Blogger seems a bit insolent about the video for some reason. Instead, you get YouTube...)

Reseeding the yard

Last Saturday, I decided to over seed the front yard. Our lawn looks ok when it's really long, but it's not so good if you look closely at it. The lawn is not super thick. I've started to get some weeds coming up out of it, and some crab grass. It's starting to get towards Fall here, the really hot is over, so I figured it was a good time.

I mowed the lawn really short. As short as I could get the mower to go.

After I took a thatch rake to the lawn, you could really see how bad things were. Here is the worst patch.

Most of the lawn looks pock marked. If you look very carefully, and stare at it long enough, it starts to look like a greenish version of the face of the moon...

It's kind of hard to see the scope of the thatch that came up out of the lawn, even after mowing super short. Between the mowing and the raking, I overfilled our green yard waste can.

After I got done, I threw seed down on the lawn, and roped the thing off. I figured I needed the rope to keep the mailman off. I think it also keeps the neighbor cat off, but maybe nothing else. When I was putting the 1x2 posts in to hang the rope, I tried to get one in over in the corner of the porch, by the little pine tree in the picture. I was using a rubber mallet to pound it in, and it started bouncing on something. I went and got a sledgehammer, and after one hit, the post shattered into 25 pieces at the bottom of it. At first I thought that I didn't know my own strength, but I started looking, and there was a knot at the bottom of the piece of wood. The rope is tied off to the pine tree.

I should know in a week or so how it went, if we can get the new seed growing before all the leaves fall off the tree. Stay tuned in a week or two for another update.

Also, it is now Tuesday, and my arms are still tired from using the thatch rake. Not something I would want to do for a career... Also, it started pouring down rain while I was trying to finish. That was kind of nice, because I was hot and tired by that point.

New campaign

Today was Municipal Primary Elections here. We had a primary in our City council district. The guy I voted for didn't move on to the general election. I'm not sure I care to vote for either of the two that are left. *Maybe* they will give me a reason in the next 2 months, but I'm not holding my breath. The incumbent decided to not run, which was too bad, because my motto would have been "Vote the bums out!" At least I can still use it in four years... (I don't understand why the City Council has argued with each other so much over the years. Just get along, and get to work!)

Tara and I ran some errands this evening, when we came back, Ruth had started a campaign of his own. She didn't use Twitter or Facebook, and does not have a blog, so she had to resort to putting up posters all over the house:

"I Want My Jacket"

"Ruth's lost Jean Jacket. Jean Jacket Ya"

"Ruth's Lost Jacket"

"I Love My Jacket"

"The Lost Jacket - Tues July 12 2011"
We assume Ruth had help with this one.

"The Lost Jean Jacket"

"My Lost Jean Jacket"

I vaguely remember a jean jacket. I do not know where it is. I don't even know if it would fit Ruth if I were able to find it. If anyone out there knows the location of Ruth's jean jacket, could you let us know? Also, Ruth appears to need a hobby...

Waiting for them to give me a reason to stay...

I am the Committee Chair for our local Scout Troop/Venture Crew. We don't have a Varsity Team. Our BSA district has a monthly roundtable meeting. Last month, the Scoutmaster, Venture Advisor, and I went to the roundtable meeting only to find that the thing had been cancelled for the month. I had even checked the website that day to make sure it was still on their calendar.

Tonight the Scoutmaster and I made it to the meeting, they started the meeting by asking where the roundtable commissioners were. They had gotten new ones in June, and wanted them to come up and lead the meeting. One of the guys went up, said he had no idea what he was doing, and hoped the other guy would show up. The other guy didn't.

They had a few announcements, and started sending people off to the breakout sessions. Our Scoutmaster went to the Scout session. They started to send the Varsity leaders off, and asked the Varsity guy to take the Venture leaders as well, since the regular guy couldn't make it. I didn't really have an interest in going to that breakout, since they were very unlikely to talk about Venture issues.

I went over to the 11 year old scout session, and found that it was headed up by the two leaders from our Stake that are running our New Scout program. I don't like the way that's being run right now, and I definitely don't like the laissez-faire attitude those two have about it and the boys that are there, so I didn't go into that breakout.

I went back to the Scout breakout, where our Scoutmaster was. I sat behind him for a minute, and decided that we didn't need two of us in the same session. I ended up bailing on him, which I am sure he appreciated. Next time it happens, I will let him bail.

It would be nice if the District was just a little more organized about it, so that those of us that take the time to be there, when there are other things we could be doing, actually get something out of it. Maybe I just have a bad attitude. Either that, or I'm right...

Book review

Windows Server Administration
Self Paced Training Kit
by Ian McLean and Orin Thomas

I am a Linux Systems guy sitting at a Windows Systems guy's desk. Or something like that. At the beginning of the year, I started working on our Windows systems here at work. I must have been sick the day I made that decision, or something. (And it hasn't stopped me from continuing to work on Linux machines when I can...) My laptop is Linux, I haven't booted into Windows on it in over two years, I think since me, my Dad, and my brothers stopped playing Age of Empires on Saturday mornings...

Anyway, I picked up some Windows books online earlier in the year, and have been reading through them when I have some time. I recently finished this book. It's a training book to get the reader ready to take the MCITP Exam #70-646, the first in a string to become a "Microsoft Certified IT Professional". I'm not sure I am interested in taking the Microsoft certification exams, but this book was good for gaining a broad knowledge of Windows server administration, of all things...

The chapters of the book flow from topic to topic, and at the end of each chapter they include "Labs" of a sort, where they talk you through practising the lesson topic on development machines they have you build early in the book. I didn't do any of the labs. I suppose I would want to go back and do them if I decided to take the exam. The end of the chapters also have multiple choice (sometimes in the form of 'choose all that apply') questions related to the chapter topics, to see if you were paying attention. The questions are also supposed to be of the type you would get asked in the certification exam. In going through the book, I was able to pay attention, I guess, and did fairly well in answering.

The book was good for giving a good overview of the differing types of things you might have to do with a Windows server. I feel like I at least have a good foundational knowledge of what is going on at this point, even if I might not have the in depth knowledge.

The book also comes with a practice exam CD, which I tried installing on a VM I installed on my laptop after I finished the book. I couldn't get the practice exam to come up properly, and didn't bother taking the time to figure out why.

Happy Birthday Kate!

Kate turns twelve tomorrow. I'm not sure how I feel about that. We are dangerously close to have teenagers in the house.

I recently heard from Tara that Kate has been complaining that I never made her a purse. I spent the better part of the last 3 weeks making her one in the evenings after the kids went to bed. It took longer than I expected, because Kate kept coming out of her room all the time. I would have to hide the thing, and wait to make sure that she was really back in her room.


Kate seems to have liked it, and she was plenty surprised by it. Grandma Oaks response? "No one ever made me a purse..."

A "moderate" "one mile" hike

On Friday, my brother came over and asked me and my dad if we wanted to go on a hike up the canyon. Drew made it should like it would be a short hike - 1 mile - and a 'moderate' type of hike, with only a 700 foot incline. Or so the guide he was looking at said...

It was a nice hike, but ended up being a little longer than I bargained for. It looks like from google maps that it was about a 700 foot incline, at least to the spot we were shooting for. (Something called 'Big Springs'. I am assuming the Springs are more impressive in the Spring.) We ended up going past that and up another hill as well. Google maps also indicates that we went about 4 miles in total.

When we got back, I told Grandma Oaks that we hiked to the base of the trail to the fountain of youth, but had to turn back on account of the ninjas. She didn't really believe me.

I survived the hike, and I was able to walk the next day, so I guess that's something. Just be warned, if Drew wants you to go on a short hike, grab the GPS first, and make sure it's not some sort of Death March...

Also, as continued proof that I am a poor picture taker, here are a couple from the hike:

That's my dad next to a tree that has fallen down. The branches of the tree had grown up out of it, becoming trees themselves. They were at least 20 feet tall each, and were just growing out this fallen tree. The picture is completely blurry, it might as well be a picture of Bigfoot... Maybe I will submit it as a sighting.

Another blurry picture I took. This time from the trail. It looks more like an impressionist painting than a picture, maybe I should have it printed out on canvas...