Year: 2007 Page 14 of 15

Christian had a question about the quality of exercise derived from playing sports like football, basketball, racquetball, and those kinds of sports in comparison with roller blading, bicycling, swimming, and running.  He had a book that actually said that the former were better than the latter.  It turns out that book was abysmally wrong.  I went to the Cooper Clinic web site and found this information.  While, as people age, there is a growing need to increase the amount resistance training (weight lifting) in an exercise program, football, basketball, and the like are just not as good for you as running, swimming, and biking.  These leaves out the obvious benefits to your joints of sports biking and swimming added to the fact the both of them are much easier to maintain as lifetime activities than the highly specialized, anaerobic, joint-damaging sports that are so heavily promoted on television and in the government school systems.

Our little company, Quality Corners, sells product to the housing market.  That market is currently going through a significant downturn.  Our sales have grown very steadily over the past five years.  We were worried because they started to level off toward the end of 2006.  Our partner, Ron, decided to go on a sales trip to see what he could stir up.  In making the phone calls to set up the trip, he ran into quite a large company on whom we had never previously called.  On the sales trip, he mostly called on our current customer base in one small part of the country, but found another even larger distributor with whom we had never previously spoken.  When he showed these companies our products, they were very surprised and excited because our pricing, minimum purchase quantities, quality, and lead times are all significantly better than imports from China, Canada, and Chile, our chief competitors.  He also found that our current customers were going to be expanding their business with us, give us an opportunity to bid on some new products, and asked us to develop some very difficult products that they cannot find with anyone else.  Those are exactly the kinds of things we like to hear.  It is amazing what a little sales and marketing will do for a company and Ron is planning two or three additional trips.

The inside of our second building is just about ready now.  Carol has moved into the new office and Ron is waiting for some modifications to the finishing systems to move that over to the factory floor.  The new building is better heated than the old one, so the employees are looking forward to the move, too.  Our goal has been to make Quality Corners a great place to work.  The wages we pay are now higher than similar businesses in the area.  We have added a significant bonus program and made some insurance available to our employees.  We promoted one of our employees to a supervisory role so now everyone is aware that we will make every possible effort to promote people from within our current employee base.  As we grow there will be more and more opportunities.  In addition, we have upgraded our accounting practices this year to more realistically calculate our monthly and quarterly profit and loss.  This will help us manage the business better and even out the quarterly bonuses for the employees.

Grandpa Milo and his friend Del Webber are working hard on a piece of equipment that will allow us to change over much more rapidly on small runs of rosettes and plinth blocks.  The new painting system is coming along nicely.  We have some new products to develop and in a few months we will have to have new and more sophisticated equipment in place to allow us to produce these much more difficult products.  That is exactly how we want to grow the business.

Last night, we had a wonderful time at Christian’s Arrow of Light ceremony as he transitions from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.  If Christian emails me a picture Lorena took of he and I in the kitchen, I will post it here.  Warren’s mother came up and will be staying with us for a few days to be with him after his wreck.  We are looking forward to having her here.

The Arrow of Light
Christian earns Cub Scouting’s highest award

Assuming that anyone that reads this blog reads Kaktus Kids, our bimonthly totally cool magazine, I wanted to give a little teaser on what is coming up in the next issue, Kaktus Kids Feb/March issue. If you scroll down the main blog page a little bit you might come upon a Komix Strip. That masterpiece will be presented in Kaktus Kids next month and we will also have a teaser on an upcoming story that I am writing. Spike the Kaktus will travel to San Antonio Texas and we will have some Valentine’s Day brain teasers in the ‘Fun ‘n’ Games’ section. This is very exciting for us because Kaktus Kids ‘2.2’ will be the second issue that we will have finished on time. It is also the first consecutive issue. We hope that you will enjoy reading Kaktus Kids as much as we enjoyed making it and remember, you can send us stories, pictures, ideas, drawings, jokes, question, comments, poems or chocolate anytime you want! We even have our own e-mail for that! kaktuskids@chapmankids.net!

Last night, I was home alone again for a couple of hours.  Kelly went babysitting, Lorena and Christian went to a Cub Scout meeting, and I stayed home to work out and listen to a debate featuring William Lane Craig.  Tonight, Christian gets his Arrow of Light award at Cub Scouts and on Saturday, I have to fly back down to California.  We are hoping life will slow down a little, but there is probably not that much hope of that until after Easter break with recitals, Kelly’s upcoming birthday, and other events happening one after another.

Amazing event:  It is now exactly two weeks since we bought the first stock pick.  When I checked this morning we were up 6.02% and our comparison S&P 500 value was down 3.02%.  It might be just the timing and the luck of the draw, but it is still cool.  I am writing a program so I can easily post a weekly position graph.  That should be fun.

My old buddy from college and roommate from when I worked in college for several years came to visit us on Saturday.  We  listened to music, talked, and ate the wonderful shrimp, clam chowder, and Caesar salad Lorena made for us.  As usual when he is around, we get to talking, so he did not leave our place until around 11:00 in the evening.  All of us went to bed, but right at midnight I got a phone call.  It was Warren, he said something about a wreck, but he was not very coherent.  I tried to get more, but the most I could get was that he was either at Albany General Hospital or on the way there, so I hopped into the pickup and headed down there.

When I arrived, Dave H. (I mostly just know him as Hog) and another friend from Salem named, Dave (I think) were standing in the Emergency Room hallway.  They told me it was a bad head-on collision and that both cars were totaled.  No one knew anything else about what was going on.  The lady at the desk told us Warren was currently getting a CAT scan.  None of us knew what that might mean, but the lady at the desk told us she would call us as soon as Warren was available to talk to someone.  So the three of us sat there in the waiting room with several others until about 2:00 AM.  Dave H. laid down on some chairs and went to sleep.  The other two of us just sat and talked with each other and an unwashed guy that had a very puffy eye with a cut under it.  He seemed to be drunk, but that might have been his normal condition.  He said he had been hit crossing the street by a police car while he was on his bicycle (with a trailer for his stuff).  From the way he described the event, it sounds like the police already knew him.  He talked incessantly and tried to bum cigarettes from anyone who happened by, but he was a pleasant enough fellow, even enjoyable, under the circumstances.

At around 2:00, a nurse came out and asked for one of us to go back with her to talk to Warren.  Dave H. went back and about a half an hour later, they came out together.  Warren could remember nothing about what happened.  It seems there was a head-on collision of some kind.  We do not know what speed they were going or where they were or any of the circumstances.  Warren was fortunate to have been in a big Tahoe SUV.  It turned out that the other people had no serious injuries either.  Warren was a little scraped up and might have had a slight concussion, but remembers none of the accident.  They told him to stay in bed for a day or two and see how he feels, but that he was probably fine.

The only thing I could think to do when I got to the hospital was wait to see what happened and chat with Warren’s friend.  It did not dawn on me until well after the fact that this was a wonderful opportunity to pray.  Actually, the first time it came to my attention was the next day, when Lorena prayed for Warren.  I knew instantly that I had missed a golden opportunity.  It looks like it turned out OK, but I could have been “Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer” when it was really needed.  That saddens me.  I want to do better, the next time I get the chance.  And now.

When I got home last night, Lorena, Kelly, and Christian were upstairs.  I was talking on the telephone with my friend and business partner, Ron Voorhees.  I came into the house talking on the cellphone and walked into the kitchen.  As I walked and talked, I noticed that there were two half bananas in plastic baggies sitting on the window sill above the sink.  That did not seem particularly unusual because Lorena never eats or drinks a whole …well anything.

We usually have three or four half full cans of soda open in the refrigerator with little plastic baggies over them.  I do not know why there are baggies on them because that certainly does not keep in the fizz, but there they are.  There are also half cookies, sandwiches, apples, and other food items in baggies in the refrigerator, on the kitchen counter, and in the cupboards.  The thing that the rest of us do not understand is why anyone would put the uneaten, used, drunk part of something in a baggy if there is no plan to ever come back and eat the other half later.  Think of it.  We always have three or four half full cans of of soda in the refrigerator.  I am grateful for her self-discipline.  There is no way I could ever just eat or drink half of anything.  Maybe three and a half of something, but never just a half.  I am sure that is why she is thin and I am portly.

So, it was not unusually to see a couple of half bananas, each in its own baggy, sitting on the window sill above the sink.  I opened one of the baggies and ate the half banana.  It was really quite good.  I thought nothing of it.  I was doing my part to avoid wasting food.  Then about four hours later, I am sitting at the computer desk working on the homeschool plan when I hear an anguished cry.

“Who ate my banana!?!!“

Kelly came stomping up the stairs and, with a fierce look on her face, accused me emphatically, “Dad, you ate my banana.”

I said, “Which banana?” but I really knew exactly which banana she was talking about.

“The banana on the window sill!”  Now she was almost crying.

“Oh, that banana.  Yes, I ate the banana.  Why?”

“That was the banana for my experiment.  It could have had iodine on it and you could be dead.  Now I have to start over.”

“Did it have iodine on it?”

“No, but that is not the point.  The experiment called for me to put yeast on it.”

“So I ate a banana that had yeast on it?  It tasted good.”

“No, you ate the control banana.  It did not have anything on it.”

I was relieved and, quite magnanimously, gave her a couple of extra days to do the experiment.  You would think she might be grateful, but I think she is still mad.  I do not know what she is mad about.  I am the one who could be dead.  After I apologized, we had a nice talk about how it would be nice to carefully label things as experiments if they are edible, in a baggy, and a dad with no self control around food is in the house.

My buddy, Bryan Joyce, dropped us a email yesterday about a website that has a bunch of free books on it.  It is a very cool website that has a whole bunch of books available for free.  I was perusing the books when I found one that I think will be perfect for reading aloud with the kids.  It is Horatio Alger’s The Cash Boy.  They had gotten The Cash Boy from Project Gutenberg, but had it in a much nicer format.  Project Gutenberg has a whole bunch more of his books, so if we like it we can keep reading them.  I have always wanted to read one of those rags to riches, poor boy makes good stories for which Mr. Alger is so famous.  There are lots of great books at Project Gutenberg and I think we are going to try to start reading some aloud in Spanish after the kids have had one more year of Rosetta Stone.  We will have to do it in the summer, because they are pretty loaded up with reading already.  Thanks Bryan!

As most of you know, I have gotten quite portly (I like that word) over the last several years.  Actually I think it is quite a good look for me along with the baldness and reading glasses, but one side of our family, Grandpa Milo, tends toward high blood pressure.  I got mine checked at the dentist the other day and they said it was good, but I got it into my head that I should start making some preventive efforts to make sure it stays OK.  I started last Friday and have done thirty minutes on the elliptical machine for five days in a row.  The plan is to take today off and then keep doing five or six days per week until my weight comes down.  I am shooting for about forty-eight pounds.

The problem is that thirty minutes on the elliptical machine is mind numbingly BORING.  I thought there was no way I was ever going to get around that, but being over fifty has tempered my desire to blast so hard on the machine that my breathing drowns out anything I might want to hear.  It is unimaginably nice to realize that I derive better health benefits from doing a slow, fat-burning workout out than one where I hammer-it-hard and be sore for a week (or two months now that I have aged a little). The bigger benefit to this approach is that I can actually listen to something while I am working out. So, three days during the week, I had Kelly and Christian sit on the couch beside the exercise machine and read me one of the read-aloud books on our homeschool schedule. It is something we have to do anyway and it makes the workout exponentially less boring.

For the two days, so far, when the kids were not there to read aloud, I have listened to an MP3 lecture on philosophy and theology over the internet. They were interesting, but I am rapidly going to run out of good lectures that are the right length.  My thought is to spin up an idea my friend, Al Rizos gave me the last time he and his family were up here. There is a company that sells entire courses of lectures called The Teaching Company. The courses are full length semester long courses, generally given by well respected professors. There are some exceptions. The course on the Historical Jesus is presented by a guy named Bart Ehrman who is definitely an agenda driven scholar, but many of the courses are not about subjects about which people have huge agendas. I think I will just have to be careful about what I buy. I am thinking about getting their course called Between the Rivers: The History of Ancient Mesopotamia to use as listening material for my workouts. I will keep you posted on how this all goes.

Dayanita in August of 2005

Dayanita is quite a wonderful cousin. She is the same age as Christian and she is very sweet and kind. Dayanita is an extremely talented artist as is her father, Uncle Laurin. She is very good with the littler children and she is always patient with her little brother, Laurincito. Sadly, her 27 year old parrot died a few days ago. That was very sad for her because I think that she has had him all of her life. But she did get a new cat recently and I’m sure that she is having fun with him. I hope to see my cousin soon, I haven’s seen Dayanita in more than a year and I’m sure that she has grown a lot! Her eleventh birthday was about a month or two ago and I wish I could have been there to see her. They sent us pictures though. She had a cake, presents, and a piñata. Now that’s one thing that we usually don’t have here. A piñata. Isn’t that sad? I’m afraid I’ll have to go down to Mexico to visit my cousins if I am to play with one (a piñata). Yes, Dayanita is a wonderful cousin and friend. I hope that I will be able to see her soon!

The Waterseller of Seville
by Diego Velazquez

If you follow this blog, you know that during the summer, Kelly, Christian, and I sit down together for a half an hour to an hour each night to draw.  We have been going through Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad.  (That reminds me, I need to ask our friend, Dellas if he is still working through his book–maybe the kids can Instant Message him.)  It is funny how, even though we are going through exactly the same material, we have our own distinctive styles.  I got a clue to how that happened last night in a brief discussion with Kelly.  Most of the night I was home alone because Lorena had her Calculus class, Kelly went babysitting, and later on, Lorena took Christian to his Cub Scout meeting.  When Kelly got home, we were sitting around talking.  The conversation turned to her cartoons and her illustrated letters.

She said, “Do you know the lines I draw on the cheeks of my characters?  I draw them like that because that is the way Robert McCloskey draws them.”

In our opinion, for what it’s worth, Robert McCloskey is the premier illustrator of children’s books ever.  Our favorites are his illustrations in the Homer Price books that he both wrote and illustrated and the Henry Reed books that he illustrated for Keith Robertson.  We read every one of those books we could get our hands on.  We even bought three or four out of print books.

We read those books because they were fun.  The incredible illustrations in them are part of what makes them so fun.  Kelly would like to write stories in that same vein.  McCloskey’s influence on both her drawing and writing styles is a super way to develop her skills.  In the next few days, we are going to post a short story her that she is writing for her homeschool.  I am looking forward to both the story and the illustrations; she will not let me see it until it is finished.

We have talked about art a lot more since we began our drawing sessions than before.  Now and again we go to Elmer’s Pancake house in Albany on Saturday mornings.  They have tons of Norman Rockwell paintings.  Last year, Kelly read a book name I, Juan de Pareja.  It was about a slave who worked with Diego Velazquez.  When we looked at Velazquez work, we noticed that there were some amazing similarities between his work and that of Rockwell.  Really, letting the masters influence your work is a wonderful thing.

Kelly writes letters to a good number of her friends. The main ones to whom she writes are Brooke, Blair, and Ethne in Texas, but she has written to several others here in Oregon, her cousins in Mexico, and even girls in New Hampshire and Ecuador. She loves to write for the sake of writing, but she also very much loves to receive letters in return. She has received two in the last couple of months that are of particular note. The first came from May Gatan. After hearing her at Saginaw convention, Kelly was motivated to write her a note over in Hong Kong. May returned a stunningly impressive and inspirational letter.

Then, at a New Year’s get-together up in Newberg, Kelly rekindled and acquaintance with a sweet nine year old girl named Katie whose mother is from a large family in Fairbanks, Alaska. Kelly asked her if she would like to exchange letters. Katie, who is a quiet girl agreed and wrote the first letter. It was an incredible letter, especially for a nine year old. It was well written, but the thing thing that made it so special was the creative idea she had. She suggested that, as a means to keep things interesting, that each time they write a letter, they send some new paper doll clothes that they make. What a great idea! Kelly loved it. Actually, the whole family loved it.

Here is an illustrated letter that Kelly sent to two of her friends in Texas:

I blew it pretty bad yesterday evening.  It really was a wonderful evening.  We did all the normal homeschool stuff, played a couple of dummy hands of Rook, then sat down to eat dinner.  Lorena cooked up some steaks on the grill which we ate with white rice and a nice salad with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and soy sauce dressing.  It was wonderful, but half way through dinner my cell phone rang.  I saw that it was Grandma Sarah.

I said, “Hi Mom.”

She said, “Hello”, then she just waited.

I said “What’s up?”

She said, “It’s my birthday!”

Boy did I feel rotten.  The whole family sang an impromptu  “Happy Birthday” to her around the table, but it really was not enough.  Calling your mother on her birthday is not an optional thing.  We had planned earlier to get together on Saturday to take Grandma Sarah and Lorena to Red Lobster with Dad because Lorena’s birthday is on the fourteenth and Grandma Sarah’s is on the eighteenth, but that really, really, really is not enough.

To make matters worse, after we sang, she said, “That was nice.  Did you know I had to call all of my kids?  No one called me.”

Grandma Sarah is a very gracious woman, but we really went too far (or not far enough?) this time.  Lorena is usually the champion at remembering her birthday, because their birthdays are so close to each other and she truly loves Grandma Sarah.  I cannot image what went wrong.

DO NOT FORGET TO CALL YOUR MOTHER ON HER BIRTHDAY!!!!

P.S.  I got a nice comment from a lady, Lois, who has read our blog.  I mainly keep this blog so that once a year I can print it out to add our scrapbook so we can give some context to our pictures.  I have no idea who reads this, but it was a pleasure to get the note.  If anyone else out there wants to let us know they read this, we would love hearing from you.  The first time you leave a comment, I have to approve it (to defeat the spam), then you can post freely whenever you like!

We are more than halfway through our third year of homeschool now and a few new things are just beginning to dawn on me.  I have known that we were getting more efficient at doing the homeschool and we are even a little bit behind right now.  Kelly has is a little bit behind in some math and vocabulary corrections as well as some Spanish assignments and Science experiments.  Christian has a bunch of history and science corrections.  This “behindness”, though, is a function of the fact that I have been away on business trips and we are still recovering from the holidays.  To offset the behindness, both Kelly and Christian have finished their grammar books that I had planned for them to be doing for the whole year.  Christian has finished the really hard Singapore math and has moved on to the more tractable Teaching Textbooks.  Kelly has finished her Writing Apprentice.  Both of the kids just have one more chapter left in their vocabulary books.  The only area in which we are a lagging is Spelling Power, but we should catch up rapidly with the extra time.

I was thinking that it might have been a good idea to have backed off a little on some of the material to not finish so soon in the school year, but on reflection, I think this has turned out quite well.  I have adjusted the plan to give the kids a little bit of a breather through the end of January.  I will order new vocabulary, writing, and grammar materials for mid-February and March.  We will take it a little slower on the writing and grammar as the kids will really be working on next years material.  Then after we return from our Spring Break vacation, we will jump into the annual research reports.

The big new understanding that I had in thinking about this is that I really never planned for improved efficiency in doing homeschool.  Maybe some of this has to do with the maturing of the kids, too.  They can handle more as the get older, but next year, maybe I will try to figure out how to use this increased efficiency to do a second special project on the order of the the research reports, but in the first half of the year.

Last night it was nice to just stay home with the family for the evening with nothing much to do other than homeschool.  We read Whatever Happened to Penny Candy, did our Spelling Power, ate dinner together around the kitchen island, corrected the other homework, and then went to bed.  I went to bed early last night because I have been getting up so early for work and had a very late night the night before.  One of the gifts we received this year was deck of “Rook” cards.  When Kelly was babysitting at Greg and Alexa’s house, Christian and I started learning how to play two man Rook.  It was a lot of fun.  It will take several sessions, but I think that is going to be our next “listening to classical music” project.  We will have to play a three person game because I do not think we can convince Lorena that she wants to play.  It will be fun, though, and when we have Rook playing company, we will be all set for a foursome.  I think Kelly and Christian will enjoy it.

Christian finished his first set of rocks with his rock polishing set.  The came out awesome!  I will take a picture of the key chain he made me and put it up here.  We need to get some more good rocks and polishing sand so he can keep going.

I heard something yesterday at our Special Meeting in Salem.  Many who spoke hit me where I live.  It all comes down to the fact that it is more difficult to win back the confidence of friends who have lost it than to just not do things that would lose that confidence in the first place.  It was very, very good to see old friends and receive lots of correction–I needed that.  But I am especially thankful for what our friend Dellas said.  When he just entered the ministry, he asked his uncle Don who worked as a missionary in Korea for many, many years what advise he would give to a young minister.  Don told him to keep the fire alive and to have fun, that is, to really enjoy his service to God.  I think the choice to have joy in my service has been lacking.  When that is coupled with a lack of humility in fitting in to where God has put me and a lack of kindness in dealing with those above and below me, it has made for a pretty miserable side trip in my walk in this life.  I am very, very thankful for correction and the kindness of God in the way he gives it.