Year: 2007 Page 11 of 15

Kelly and Christian are enjoying their Spring Break.  Yesterday they went swimming for an hour and a half at the pool in Corvallis, then went over to the Borders Bookstore there.  Kelly used some of her babysitting money to buy the latest Hayley Westenra album, Celtic Treasure.  We are big fans and were not disappointed.  I particularly loved her rendition of Shenandoah.  Kelly let me take the album to work today.  What a daughter!  Today, our cousin Trisha is coming to hang out with us for a day or two give the kids some embroidery lessons.  I hope they have the supplies ready when Trisha arrives.  Maybe Hannah will want to learn, too.

A note to Bryan:  Why don’t you have a couple of donuts today with your coffee.

Yesterday afternoon, Lorena took Kelly down to mall.  While she was gone, our homeschooling friends from Texas called.  Lisa Paek and her kids Elliot and Eliana were visiting the the Larsons.  All of them got together to call so they could sing happy birthday to Kelly.  They talked to Lorena, Kelly, and I about homeschool for about an hour.  What a great group of people.  Both the Paeks and the Larsons have decided they will homeschool for another year.  Both of them are planning to use Sonlight which is the program we use.  I was especially appreciative of Rebeca Larson and Lisa for their conversation with Kelly.

After they talked Kelly told me, “They talked to me just like I was a grownup or something.”

Maybe that is why they are so successful with their kids.  It also makes us miss our friends in Texas.  A lot.

Update:  I gave blood today and found that my blood pressure was pretty good.  That must mean the exercise is working.  The main reason I gave blood, though, was to shed that much more weight for the weight loss competition with Bryan.

Thirteen years ago today, we woke up in our condominium in Boynton Beach, Florida at about 7:30 in the morning.  Lorena let me know that she was ready to have our first baby.  We called the Eversley’s to let them know we would not be in the Sunday morning fellowship meeting and made the forty minute drive over to the hospital at Loxahatchee.  Our only visitors between then and when Kelly arrived were Carlos and Vanessa Bautista our dear friends who now live in the Austin, Texas area.  Lorena went through the delivery naturally (I learned my lesson about that–the wife suffers A LOT through the delivery, then the husband suffers through the rest of his life for not having convinced her to have an epidural!).  Kelly arrived that evening about 8:30.  She had a full head of curly black hair and was absolutely beautiful.  She is just as beautiful today as she turns into a teenager.  One of the things for which we are most grateful about Kelly is her kind and thankful spirit.  Happy Birthday, Kelly!!!

Note:  Please check the progress bars below for the weight loss cage match.  Bryan and I are now TIED!*

    *That being said, I do not expect it to last long.  I fell off the wagon big time this week.

Hey Bryan, does that mean you are now down only eight?  Are we tied?

We went to an absolutely wonderful funeral on Saturday for my Aunt Alma.  I spoke about her in an earlier post.  A lot of our extended family from Dad’s side was there.  We all got together at the Cottage Grove VFW hall after the funeral for a potluck.  I had good talks with my Uncle Richard’s son Ricky, my other cousins, Merle and Gary Carpenter, Dick and Carol Waldo, Uncle Ron, Aunt Fern, and many others.  It was especially good to have good talks with Bonnie Sykes and Tom Hinkle who both had amazing parts in the funeral.  It turns out that Bonnie and Alma had been very good friends.  Alma asked that she have a part in the funeral.  Our elder from our meeting and his wife, Jim and JoAnn Waldo showed up at the funeral along with Mark and Nancy Ramsdell.  Their presence was very greatly appreciated.

We had Kent Williston and Lyle Waldo stay with us for the weekend.  We have been having a very nice time with them.  As we were going to Sunday morning fellowship meeting, our neighbor was pulling out to go fishing.  I made some snippy comment about how it was sad that he was not going to church.  It really is sad, but that evening he brought us a really nice mess of trout that Kent showed us how to clean and we were able to have an absolutely wonderful fish and tamale fry.  For lunch we had Truman and Elinore Weld over and had a nice talk with them.  They surely do not let Elinore’s wheelchair slow them down at all.

On Friday night, Lyle and I ran down to Costco and bought a new monitor and to Staples to buy a cheap wireless card.  We rearranged the computers to put together an old system to run the CNC router we have downstairs.  I was amazed how easy it came up.  I installed Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 and LinuxCNC on the system, hooked it up to the CNC machine and it ran like a charm.  I am going to have to get a new stepper motor for one of the axes, but other than that it worked extremely well. 

After that we were so inspired with our computer that we decided to download the new Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 to install on Lorena’s laptop.  That is the one she uses to talk with her mother in Mexico on Skype.  The new Ubuntu is amazing.  The best thing is that it only took me 15 minutes to get my wireless going this time.  It would have been less, but I had to download a special driver for the wireless chip set in the laptop.  The wireless is fundamentally more pain free than the wireless support in Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10.  If Ubuntu keeps improving at its current rate, Microsoft is going to be in big trouble on the desktop.  For the first time ever, Christian remained engaged for more than five minute with the games that came standard with the distribution.  If an eleven year old boy remains engaged with the games after having spent hours and hours on Civilization IV, Age of Empire, Zoo Tycoon, and the Sim games, Linux is getting a lot closer.  His favorite is Globulation, but there was a great billiards game and I do not know what else.  I would not recommend downloading Feisty for another month or so unless you are game to do a few things from the command line because the Automatix package that automatically loads realplayer, flash, acrobat, some special drivers, skype, and some other stuff will not be available until after the official Feisty release next month.  There are still issues with the distribution, but they certainly seem less onerous than Vista’s issues.  If Ubuntu is not ready for prime time, it is very, very close.

Radioactive Boy Scout – Star in a jar nuclear fusion.

Life can get pretty crazy.  Kelly is going to a 1950’s style sleepover tonight, we are having company for the weekend, spring break starts when school lets out today, we have our fourth funeral in three weeks tomorrow, and it is tax time with all that entails.  In the midst of all that busyness, though, I have lost another pound.  I am averaging four pounds a month.  It would be kind of nice to be losing a little faster, but I hear the fried chicken and biscuits and grave call my name so I regularly fall off the wagon just about every weekend.  I guess I should be thankful for the busyness because when I am busy, it keeps me from eating.  And I guess four pounds per month is a pretty good rate given my lack of self denial.  Christian, why don’t you send me a picture of Kelly in her party outfit so I can post it here to show how stylish she looks?  And Bryan, how much are you down these days?

Weight loss cage match results:

So yesterday evening after Bible Study, Mr. Ramsdell gave us a riddle. It stumped me (but not Christian or Dad) and I wanted to post it up here. Mr. Ramsdell will give us the answer next Wednesday. Meanwhile Dad, could you post up your answer in the comments?

Here is the riddle:

You have six bricks that are all the same size.
One of those bricks is a little bit heavier than the rest.
You also have a balance scale.
You must find out which brick is the heavy one.
But here’s the catch: You may only use the scale TWICE.

So how do you figure it out? Beats me. If you can help, or if you just wanna be cool and post a comment, go ahead, cuz I don’t remember the answer that Dad got. 🙂

And it is a beautiful one…

Lorena finished her last calculus class.  She has one more applied math class and she will be finished forever unless she decides to change her major to particle physics or something like that.  I doubt whether she will do that.  Kelly and Christian are doing great on their math, too.  It is getting harder and harder, but they have a solid base behind them.  There are only three days of school until spring break and the weather has been beautiful.  They still have guitar, piano, and tennis that disrupt their day.  They are working on their next issue of KaktusKids as well as their annual research reports, but all three of them have been going at it hard without a let up since late August.  We have nothing planned for the kids for spring break other than playing outside and, possibly, some swimming.  I looked at the calendar and realized that everyone has been on task so consistently that, if we can keep up that pace after our spring break respite, we can go to visit Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita in Mexico by Memorial Day weekend, beating hay fever season here at Hay Fever Central, Oregon.  Wouldn’t that be awesome.

We have a favorite aunt who died a couple of days ago.  She lived almost her entire life with the results of polio that she contracted when she was very young.  For years, she worked as a secretary.  When she could no longer do that, she went to live with my oldest cousin Carol and her husband Dick.  They have been her wonderful caretakers for what I heard was thirteen years.  The thing I remember about her was that she knitted slippers for all us kids for Christmas several times.  I think she did that for all of her nephews and nieces.  That is an amazing thing because She had nine brothers and sisters and there were lots of nephews and nieces.

One of my favorite memories of Alma was the time I spent a weekend with her at her trailer house in Eugene.  She regularly invited her nephews and nieces to stay with her.  She swam laps at the swimming pool three or four times per week for exercise.  She loved to dive off the diving board.  That memory is an inspirational and joyous one.  She must have been approaching forty at the time.  She had polio.  She did not swim or dive gracefully, but she loved it and I loved her for her joy.  She always had a joke for us kids, too.  The kids in our family reveled in the somewhat scandalous (at the time–it would be nothing, now) joke about the woman with the yellow ribbon around her neck.

Most of all, though, she was a kind and godly woman with a great spirit.  She had the kind of spirit to which all good people aspire.  She is in a better place now.

A car that runs on pressurized air

I saw two articles yesterday that I though were very cool and of general interest.  The first is a zero pollution/very low cost car that runs on compressed air.  It can go a top speed of 68 miles per hour and go around 150 miles on a charge.  The tank can be pressurized in two or three minutes at an adapted gas station or in 3-4 hours via an on board compressor connected to a 220V plug in.  The power plant is not the only very cool technical feature.  Beside all that, it is a very stylish ride and very, very cheap.  It would be very fun to own one.  Check it out here.

SpaceX to attempt their second launch of the Falcon 1 spacecraft

Christian is doing his annual research report on rockets and missiles this year.  In conjunction with that we are going to try to watch the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch webcast this afternoon at 4:00 PDT.  We think that it is very cool that there is a commercial venture to create a manned space program.

Update:  Oops.  It looks like the launch is scrubbed for the day.  We will have to wait to see when they are ready to try again.

Cousin Kylee will be playing in a girl’s rugby game this afternoon at the government middle school close to our house.  The kids are looking forward to it very much.  Both of the aunts will be there as well as Cousin Julia who is home from Dartmouth.  I will try to remember to take some pictures.

I know that no one really wants to know the exclusive details of my illustrious birthday party, but so what? This is a blog. You can read whatever you want. It’s a free country. I can’t tell you what to do. Okay. Here goes. My Illustrious Birthday Party (Or IBP for short) is going to be one of those totally cool mystery role-playing parties where everyone comes dressed up as their character and acts like their character throughout the party. My wonderful Aunts are mostly in charge of the whole thing, and they will be the hosts at my IBP. The setting: Modern day Beverley Hills Girl’s Private High School. The weapon: No one was murdered. 🙁 A diamond necklace was stolen. The victim: Jewell Diamond (aka: your’s truly) So every girl has a ‘talent’. Mine is fashion (duh, the important one), and the others are music, journalism, art, equestrianism, and athletics. Aunt Julia, Aunt Jean, or my Cousin Kylee will play the matronly head of the school. Another one of them will play the tough guy (girl) policewoman. After the party is done in a couple of hours, we’ll play games and eat angel-food cake with strawberries and whipped cream, and make a craft or two, and do hair, and eat chocolate covered pretzels (Don’t tell Mom), and run around, and scream, and talk, and blow bubbles, and spike Christian’s hair up (if he’s there), and stuff like that. So now, if you’ve taken the time to read this, you know the exclusive details of my IBP. I know you’re glad you read this.

Last night our friend Spencer and his dad, Mike, came over to mow the lawn.  He was going to come about a week ago, but right before he was supposed to get there, the fertilizer guys came, did their big spring fertilizing pass, and told us not to mow for at least a couple of days.  The grass was already pretty tall when they came the first time, so with the fertilizer and the great weather, the grass was way too tall to mow easily. With the early time change, though, they were able to get a first pass at getting the grass whacked down. The plan is for Spencer to come back on Saturday and re-mow the thing.

Yesterday was the first day the kids got to take their tennis lesson outside.  They loved it.  I think they are having a pretty good time in tennis because they always come home in an upbeat mood.  It was nice enough that all the neighborhood kids got together to play outside for an hour or so before dinner.  I hope it is this nice for spring break.

There is no way to make this unobtrusive so I will just say it an put up the chart.  Bryan is killing me.  He gained a pound on me this week and it is hurting me bad!  My rope-a-dope, trash talking strategy is not working.

Note:  There are a lot of comments below about index cards.  Kelly and Christian have started their annual research reports and are gathering data so they can write the reports.  I will write more about this process as we move along.  This whole process, the things we learn from the investigations, and the end product are all real highlights of our school year.

Here is a poem that I wrote about what I learned in history today. “The Scramble” refers to a period in the late 1800s when most of the European countries were dashing to claim land in the mostly undiscovered continent of Africa. They took the land from the natives there without giving it a thought, though it caused much suffering for many years. They did bring modern devices and ways of life to Africa though. The European countries met together in a peaceful conference to divide up the land in Africa. I don’t think the countries in Africa had their current names at the time period of this poem, but I used the names anyway to make it more ‘rhymeable’. 🙂

“Give me Nigeria!”
“I will take Chad!”
“I’d like Somalia!”
“Wait! Give me a pad!”

“Now gentlemen really,
enough is enough!
If we all want Africa
we musn’t be tough!”

“Raise your hands nicely
Like good girls and boys
and I’ll write down your request
no fistfights or ploys.”

“You first Queen Victoria.
now what do you want?
Nigeria’s quite nice but unbearably hot
Benin is too, but the elephants gaunt.”

“I prefer Mali.”
sniffed the arrogant lady
it’s small, not too hot,
very modest and shady.”

The judge he wrote down
the request in a book
and put on his glasses
to take a good look –

At the court room around him
where monarchs were seated
and all had their hands raised
wishing to be heeded.

The judge called on King Watzizname
from Portugal
and the great man’s huge voice
sounded out through the hall.

“South Africa’d please me,
but ’tis owned by the Dutch
I would like Kenya
if it’d please you, and such.”

So on went the judge
a-writing and asking:
“And what would you like.”
In his power was he basking.

In a couple of hours
(Maybe it was more than that)
the judge had the countries
in his ledger, down pat.

And all went away
most satisfied
but in the great land of Africa
people suffered and cried.

The End!!!

I found a really cool website last night. It looks like it was put together by my cousin Neil’s boy Nick. Great job Nick!