Happy Birthday Again, Cheryl!

Surely there is nothing more fun than having a second birthday party!

OK, yesterday's wasn't really a birthday party exclusively for Cheryl.  It was really a delayed Christmas party. Which isn't fair to Cheryl, since her birthday is so close to Christmas (the day after!).  So we decided to surprise her with her very own birthday party. One day late. Which goes along with our family theme of "Procrastination Rules!".

I don't normally like surprises, but in this case, I made an exception.  Because it's fun to surprise someone with love and fun and joy every so often. Keeps things from getting boring. And - believe me - I can be the most boring person on the planet when I want to.

So with a lot of help from the family, I found a convenient excuse to get Cheryl out of the house (we went shopping down at the mall) until such a time as it was "safe" to come back, at which time we walked into the house and -

"Surprise!!"

Happy Birthday, Cheryl!

(Again)

Happy Birthday, Cheryl!

Today is Cheryl's birthday!  Let's celebrate by giving gifts! First, let's give a bunch of stuff to Kelly!
 

That was fun! Now let's give a bunch of flying videos to Shane!

(There were a bunch of other gifts given out, too, but I didn't get any good pictures of those...)

After all the gifts are given, it's time for fun & games ... and surfing the net.

Texas Trip - Part 3

Waking up in a strange house is usually a disconcerting experience, but in this case, it was heavenly.  The little (?) apartment above the shop was warm, quiet, cozy and comfortable.  It was a struggle to get out of that bed.  Which may explain why I was so late getting down for breakfast.

The kids slept in a bit.  Mostly.  Dad was up early, as usual.  After an hour or two - or three? - of puttering around with breakfast, we ended up around the table looking at something on the Internet.  That seems to be the modern way of things, these days.  Networking with the world through the laptops / iPods / iPads / i Phones. Not a lot of conversations, normally, but we made do.  As you can tell, we had a wonderful time.  What were we looking at?  (Probably cat videos.)

Not sure what Mary was talking about here, but she inserted her patented air-quotes to whatever it was. She's going to be a professor some day. Or a politician.  An honest politician, of course.

Shane asked me at one point if I wanted to go over to Dallas for a while to visit a flight simulator. He's applying for an FAA position and wanted to re-familiarize himself with a particular aircraft.  Sure. Twist my arm to see if I want to go to an airport and hang out near a simulator.  (Didn't take much twisting at all, as you can imagine.)

So we went.  Drove all the way from Abilene to Dallas, hung out at the FBO yakking with the instructors, then went outside to sit in a dual Cessna Citation to stare at the controls and pretend we were flying.  Then it was time to go back inside to the simulator where a real instructor took him through a simulated flight test to prepare for the real thing.

Then we drove all the way back to Abilene.

Then I got sick.

All night long.

Ick.

Texas Trip - Part 2

We made it to the Preston's on Saturday night after a not-quite-so-long day of driving. We had been hoping to get there early enough to enjoy some relaxation time, time for the cousins to hang out, time for the adults to recover.  And we did.  There was still light in the sky when we drove into town. The roads were a bit snowy, the driving a bit treacherous, the neighborhood road signs a bit cryptic. So there was a definite sense of relief when we saw Judy and Rebekah standing in the Preston driveway waving us in.

It was nice to sit and chat and eat and just hang out, catching up on all the life that has been going on over in Kansas since the last time we had a chance to see them. It was also nice to curl up with a good book from Shane and read quietly about glider pilots in World War 2 before my eyes got so heavy I couldn't keep them open.

The kids had fun with the cousins, there was good food and good books to read, and it was nice knowing we didn't have to rush off in the morning to spend hours and hours on the road.  Instead, we got up at a reasonable hour, had a bit of breakfast, then got all gussied up and went to church, then came home to have a nice lunch before rushing off in the afternoon to spend hours and hours on the (icy) road on the way to Grandma & Grandpa Meyer's house.

The road from Derby to Wichita Falls was icy. The vegetation on the side of the road was shimmering like diamonds, coated with ice. 

There were lots of cars and trucks along the side of the road, victims of the slippery conditions. We drove very carefully and didn't have any difficulty. The kids napped, listened to the audiobook we were (still) listening to, and sat quietly thinking deep thoughts.

The sunset was gorgeous!

We arrived in Abilene late in the evening. It was so nice to finally get there.

Texas Trip - Part 1

We had originally planned on leaving early on Saturday morning and driving all day to get to the Preston's house, but the weather forecast was calling for icy conditions so we jumped the gun and left Friday afternoon instead. Cheryl found us a nice motel about halfway along near Springfield, Illinois, which made for a pleasant, not-nearly-so-long-as-we-expected trip of only six or seven hours. Tolerable. Especially with a good audio book to listen to.

The kids went with Cheryl to the library at one point during the week and picked up several audio books; they chose "The Pathfinder" by Orson Scott Card to start with. Orson Scott Card used to be one of my favorite authors back when he wrote "Ender's Game" as a short story (mid 80's), but then when he lengthened it into a book and then a trilogy, with subsequent plot complications and philosophical mumbo-jumbo, I lost interest. I still look at his website occasionally, but only to get riled up at his pretentiousness. He fancies himself as a food and music connisseur, which he may be; but his tone rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway - we had a quiet, uneventful ride out and stopped at our lovely little motel which was out in the middle of nowhere and barely populated by any other guests. A nice Indian couple apparently run it. The weather is getting bad and the parking lot was icy, which doesn't bode well for travel tomorrow. Likely we'll run into a lot of ice on the road.

But for now, a little shut-eye and a bit of complimentary continental breakfast in the morning, and we'll be on our way again.

Post-Play Cleanup

As the set designer and prop builder for the middle school play (My Son Pinocchio), I spent a lot of time in my shop during the months of October and November trying out some prototype designs and generally making a mess of what had been (mostly) a neat, orderly room.

In the flurry of activity preceding dress rehearsal week, it was impossible to keep things neat and tidy because there was no time to put things away.

During the final two or three days preceding (and including) Opening Night, things got really crazy. Saws spinning, sawdust flying, fasteners tightened/un-tightened/discarded, paint fumes filling the air.

It was chaos.

Shop - Before

Bench - Before

But now that it is all over (whew!) it's time to clean up the shop.

First up, the floor has got to be cleared off. There's all this 'extra' lumber from the prototypes that were built (and subsequently un-built). There is no place to stack the lumber down here on the main floor, so it has to go up in the loft. That's my main lumber storage area.

Any of the pieces that are useful in their new form - the box frames, for example - will be left as they are. The others are just lumber (even though they have screw holes and pencil marks and paint on them) that can be stacked for the next project.

Next comes the bench, where most of the work was done. Lots of scrap pieces on there, along with a lot of sawdust. And tools. I can't really do much with the tools, yet, since there isn't a place to put them. Too many tools, not enough tool cabinets. So they can just sit there for awhile.

After the tools are moved out of the way, the little brush is used to sweep the sawdust into the bin where it will be stored for later use. (It works great as extra traction on snow.)

Shop - After

Bench - After

After it's all done, it's time to relax for all of five minutes -- because now we're off on our Texas Adventure!

Birds of Winter

The birds of winter are back.

The snow came earlier than I had expected this year, but we've had it easy these last few years and it is about time we got back to the normal Michigan winters where the snow comes in November and doesn't leave til April (or May).

Those first few years, we did a lot of shoveling in a vain attempt to keep some semblance of normality in our day-to-day travels. Keeping the driveway clear so we didn't slip and fall on our duffs.  Even bought one of those fancy-dancy "snow-blowers" (although technically it's a "snow-thrower") so we could keep up with the Joneses. But they aren't quite as useful as we had hoped.  For one, they're extremely loud. And the 2-cycle engines are horribly inefficient. And they put out horrid exhaust fumes. And they can only be used on fresh powdery snow at temperatures below freezing. You can try to use them on packed or wet snow, but you're just asking for trouble. They really aren't built for handling anything heavier (or firmer) than powder. Leastways our cheap Home Depot special isn't.

Now we take it as it comes. Manually. Shoveling a bit here and a bit here, throwing sand out to give us some extra traction. Avoiding salt if we can (because of the rapid oxidation of car metal in the presence of salts). Wearing good boots. And avoiding unnecessary travel.

So we spend our days mostly sitting in the nice warm family room and looking through the windows at the birds out in the trees as they try to locate something to eat in the desolate landscape. The trees still have a lot of fruit on them from the autumn. But that won't last long. Another couple of weeks and the squirrels and birds will have the trees emptied of nearly everything. Then the deer will come along and nibble on the lower branches.