Month: October 2008 Page 1 of 2

My niece, Julia, recently graduated from Dartmouth and now working as a tutor for the children of rich, famous people, is flying down here for the weekend. She speaks Spanish (having lived in Spain, she does not speak the pure Mexican street Spanish like us, but we do not hold that against her) and German (having lived in Germany). She is very good at math, a great pianist, and a star high school and collegiate rugby player. We think all her accomplishments are very cool, but the reason we are excited she is coming has more to do with Kelly’s post here. Both Julia (Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah call her Jula so as not to confuse her with Aunt Julia), and her sister Kylee have been very special cousins to Kelly and Christian when they were small. Julia and Kylee went to great lengths to keep Kelly and Christian entertained at family get-togethers. They listened to them, told them stories, made stuff for them, played games with them, etc., etc. Julia and Kylee will always be greatly adored in our household. We are truly looking forward to this visit.

October 27, 2004 – Carne Asada with Lauro and Dayana (Photo)
October 27, 2004 – Lorena passes the 1st test!

Tomorrow my cousin Julia is coming to visit!!! Cousin Julia is amazing. She’s funner than Jiffy Pop (As fun to make as it is to eat!) or Silly String or knitting or all of that stuff combined!  When I turned 7 she made me a very special book full of crafts, recipes, games and stories.  I still use it, and I’ve always loved it.  When Christian and I were very small, a hoodlum by the name of Mr. Nobody (he was invisible you see) used to haunt Cousin Julia and Cousin Kylee’s house and perform mischievous acts. He was very bad at it though. Always left these construction paper footprints all over the place. If you followed the clues on the footprints, they usually led you to his secret stash of goodies (candy, presents, DVD’s)

So I am highly anticipating her arrival.

Here’s an FYI about Mexico – When greeting females, make sure to kiss them on the cheek. Doesn’t matter if you are a man or woman, boy or girl, you must always kiss Mexican females on the cheek. And it’s not exactly kissing. It’s more like making a kissing sound and touching the side of your face to the side of her face as you shake hands. Christian finds it highly unsanitary, but I think it’s a nice tradition.

Oh, and if you’re a guy meeting another guy, forget about everything I just said. 😀

Some of you might have noticed that Christian has started drawing some of the Betty Blonde comics. He is equal in responsibility with Kelly for the invention of the characters and for many of the ideas for individual strips that have appeared on the web site. While Kelly has drawn the daily strip, Christian has been working on a graphic novel featuring the same characters. The characters in the graphic novel are stylistically different from those in the daily strip in a way that makes them more compatible with the story and Christian’s style. Christian is going to continue work on his graphic novel, but he is also going to start contributing drawings to the daily strip more frequently.

We made an editorial decision last night to keep the character style of the daily strip consistent with the way Kelly has drawn them. Kelly and Christian designed the characters together, so both of them are capable of drawing them the same way. Christian will contribute one or two daily strips per week while Kelly contributes three or four. That will give Christian time to continue work on his graphic novel and still contribute his unique touch to the daily trip. As for his graphic novel, he has filled one full sketch book so far. I think I heard him say he was about a quarter of the way complete.

My contribution has been to manage the mailing list, post the daily comic, and maintain the online archive. My Python program is now able to take the individual panels, accumulate them into a single image with drop shadows, title, byline, and copyright, create a thumbnail, and upload the thumbnail and comic images to the appropriate directories on our web site. My next step will be to add a GUI interface to the program so I do not have to run it from the command line or from the IDE. After that I want to write another program to perform the daily strip posting, email the strip to the mailing list, and update the archive web page.

If you have been keeping track of the weight loss death match you will notice that Lyle is starting to make great progress again while I have made great gains (in weight, not weight loss). Well, I am going to redouble my efforts starting today. The last couple of nights have been fairly pathetic in terms of my gluttonous behavior.

October 25, 2004 – All the crab you can eat
October 26, 2004 – Waiting for test results

After the chaos of our recent trip to Mexico, we are just now starting to get back into the groove. In the evenings, I usually read aloud to the kids while they work on their art (Betty Blonde) and Lorena cooks dinner. This year we are doing it a little different in the past by reading some from both a fiction and a non-fiction book each day. Just before we went on our trip, we finished up The Gammage Cup, a very light fantasy novel, and Understanding the Times, a book on worldviews.

Last night, we read in a book titled Explore Evolution that examines “the current evidence and arguments for and against the key ideas of modern Darwinian theory”. Last night we read some arguments for common descent and the first section on some arguments against it which covered the Cambrian explosion and the “big bloom”. It is a very, very good book. One of our big problems with the non-fiction books is that kids interrupt with interesting questions so often, sometimes we do not make much progress in our reading. I need to be very patient and accommodate more of those kinds of interruptions as they are often the times when both the kids and I learn the most.

We did not read a fiction book last night, but we have a historical novel selected on medieval Poland (I think) that we hope to start tonight. In addition to that, I need to get started on giving the kids some Trigonometry so they will be ready for the ACT. I might just get a book of the basics and some worksheets. I think I might do the same with the writing part of the ACT for Kelly.

October 21, 2008 – Retaking the test
October 22, 2008 – More testing

Most of you know that Grandpa Milo, our friend Ron, and I own a small business in Idaho named Quality Corners. We make moulding accessories which we sell through distribution to big box stores like Lowes and Home Depot. When the housing downturn hit about a year ago, we started losing business pretty rapidly. We were very worried so we started working with our various customers to see if there was anything we could do to increase our business. It turns out many of them had a hard time getting product from China in a timely manner. Product had to be ordered in large quantity to make it worthwhile to ship such a long distance at a reasonable price.

Our customers did not think we could compete, but let us quote the business anyway because it would not hurt and they all generally needed a second source, particularly if that source could deliver in smaller quantities to back fill what they bought in China. It turned out that, with the exception of one line of products that accounted for less than ten percent of the normal order quantities and that was labor intensive, we were significantly cheaper than China, even in large quantities. That allowed us to recover about sixty percent of the reduction in business that we experienced when the building boom died. Now, we have attracted enough new business from new customers, again these are people who previously purchased the products we make from China, to be on target to increase our sales to levels we experienced during the boom.

I do not know if other companies have experienced the same thing as Quality Corners, but suspect they have.  Well run, highly automated, small businesses capable of rapid change can take advantage of opportunities created by tough economic conditions.  No one knows what the future hold, but I am starting to think Grandpa Milo’s statement that he has decided not to participate in this downturn might actually be possible.

October 19, 2004 – Lorena takes her first test
October 20, 2004 – Test results for Lorena

As Dad mentioned, I was feeling especially crafty this weekend.  I have rather strange weekends.  They all have a feeling. I have lazy weekends, baking cookies weekends, organizing weekends, e-mail weekends, crabby weekends, reading weekends, swimming weekends… the list goes on and on. 🙂

So I learned how to use the sewing machine – kind of.  I’m still figuring it out, but I’m pretty sure I have the basics.  After seeing Grandma whip up a skirt in two hours, I’ve been really wanting to learn.  I know it’s not an overnight thing though.  The little pillow that I made is definitely proof that sewing takes lots and lots of practice.  I also took pictures of all my projects and artsy stuff, played with my face paint a little, made two comic strips and re-organized my closet and cleaned my room.  It was quite a productive weekend actually.

Now more seriously…

I’ve been thinking about sarcasm a little bit. I suppose it can be funny and all that, but it seems to me that more often it is cruel and cold.  A few weeks ago I read somewhere that sarcasm is a form of weakness.  That thought has been stuck in my head for a while.  Sarcasm was rather a way of life back in the Northwest.  We still encounter it a bit here in the south, but more infrequently. I for one am glad of the fact.  I guess I could elaborate on this subject, but it’s not worth it.

Have a great Monday!

As part of our recovery from vacation plan, we did nothing too strenuous this past weekend. We went to the bookstore on Saturday morning and to meeting on Sunday morning. After meeting we went to a Southwest cuisine place called Moe’s. Kelly did a crafts weekend. She is pretty inspired about sewing right now. Grandma Conchita is a professional seamstress. She made some dresses and skirts for Lorena and Kelly while they were in Mexico. She gave Kelly some sewing tips, so Kelly got out the sewing machine and a book or two, then went to work on her sewing skills. She showed me her practice project yesterday afternoon. It amazes me that kids can learn to teach themselves stuff by reading, watching, and then trying stuff out for themselves. I taught Kelly and Christian some very basic knitting techniques. Kelly got interested, checked out some books from the library, watched and asked questions of some other people, read some magazines, and is now at level of skill to which I never anticipate arriving. I am sure she has a lot more to learn, but the first leap into something like that is the hardest. She is doing it again with the sewing and I am looking forward to watching the process.

Homeschool starts again today. The kids both organized their materials before they left on vacation so our hope is that they can jump back in full speed. I hope the kids will be able to take at least one CLEP test each before the end of the year, but that might be a little aggressive as we are signed up for the ACT on February 7. I am hoping preparation for the CLEP tests will be good practice for taking the ACT. We are going to do an introduction to some of the math and writing materials on the ACT the kids have not yet covered starting tomorrow. It mostly includes some trigonometry and essay writing for Kelly and trigonometry and geometry for Christian.

Update: I forgot to mention that Lorena and I voted on Saturday. You can vote early in North Carolina. It was nice. I like it a lot better than the mail-in thing they have in Oregon.

October 15, 2004 – Meeting night at the Ramsdells
October 18, 2004 – At home weekend

This morning I got on the scale and saw that I am now down over 40 lbs. from when Bryan and I first started the weight loss death match. I see that Lyle is posting regularly again now and he is headed in the right direction. I think Bryan must have gone on a huge eating binge since he hit his final goal because he has not posted since then and I still owe him dinner for winning the bet. I think I have at least 10 lbs. more to lose before I am at a good weight. As soon as I lose the next ten pounds, I will make a decision about whether I want to lose any more. I want to buy some new clothes that actually fit me at that point. Right now, I only have one pair of pants that fit. I could not even fasten the button on them when I was at my peak.

I am going to take off from work about an hour early this afternoon to pick up my family at the airport. They were supposed to get up at about 3:00 AM this morning to head for the airport at 4:00. It is about an hour drive from Grandpa Lauro’s house. They get into the airport at about 2:30 PM EDT. If they are hungry, I will take them all out to eat. If not we will just head home. Christian said they had some more good pictures for us to put up, so maybe I will do that tomorrow.

October 13, 2004 – A slow night
October 14, 2004 – A better system on a trying day

We received a letter from the North Carolina education bureaucrats at the Department of Non-Public Education (DNPE) just before I went to Mexico. The way it works in North Carolina is that each homeschool has to be ready to set an appointment for one of the bureaucrats to visit the school to check three things for each student. Those three things are 1) Attendance records, 2) immunization records, and 3) nationally normed standardized test scores. The way it is supposed to work is that the bureaucrat sets an appointment to visit each home where they stand on the porch and review the records. That has not worked out so well because so many people in North Carolina have chosen to homeschool their children due to the abysmal state of public education here.

The system has just gotten swamped so the DNPE has started asking the homeschool administrators to go to their offices with the required records. In spite of the fact that they asked us to bring more than is required, they asked nicely, so we will make this accommodation for them this year. Part of what makes it a little more palatable is that the DNPE is not part of the government school establishment, rather it is the department within the government that watches over the different private schools in the state.  If the government school bureaucracy were in charge of this, we would probably be less accommodating.  I have blogged previously about the systemic problems with government school education in North Carolina.  Nationally normed test scores are very low relative to the scores earned by homeschools, many of the schools are year-round schools, many kids get bussed many miles from where they live to perform racial balancing, there are problems with violence and teen pregnancy, etc.

So, the upshot is that we will take our documents into the DNPE in early November.  If it is at all interesting, I will report how it goes.

On another note, many in the company where I work now use RocketDock and Launchy on their Windows computers due to some investigative work performed by NerdHow.  I am hoping NerdHow will take a look at the Gnome Do tool for Linux.  I think it is a Launchy equivalent.

October 11, 2004 – Anniversary weekend
October 12, 2004 – Today was another regular day

I got home last night about ten minutes early.  Troy picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at my car.  I stopped off at Harris-Teeter to pick up some shaving creme and razors.  I forgot that I was not supposed to put those things in my carry-on bag and they got thrown out at the airport on the way to Mexico.  We were also out of kitty litter so I got some of that, too.  I was pretty worried about how I was doing with the weight loss death match, but I only gained a little over a pound while I was down there.  We did not have a scale down there so I had no way of knowing how much I weighed.  I like to use the same scale every time anyway to have consistency and keep myself honest.  Now my seven day running average is over 35 pounds lost.  I am glad to see that Lyle is starting to take it off again.  He posted a couple of times.  I do not think Bryan has posted again since he made his target weight, so he can count this as harassment and a reminder that we are going to keep posting our weight even AFTER we make weight.

On another note, an old childhood friend of Lorena from their neighborhood in Monterrey did a search for different members of Lorena’s family on the web and found this blog.  She sent a marvelous email with a bunch of pictures of their time growing up together.  I have posted a couple of those below.  After they exchanged emails, they all talked on the phone.  Paty lives in Chetumal in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, not to far from Cancun.  It was all quite emotional.  Lorena and Lynn have spoken often of Paty and her mother Leydi who was a good friend of Conchita.

Lorena’s neighborhood friends 1

Lorena’s neighborhood friends 2

October 7, 2004 – Not enough time (Photos)
October 8, 2004 – Politics and rockets

Things have been just lovely here in Monterrey. On Thursday, my uncle Lynn took us sightseeing around Monterrey. Some of the places that we went to:
Lynnsito’s kindergarten:
We said hi and ate some veggies, because it was nutrition day.
A stone-sculpture shop:
We took pictures in front of a bunch of silly statues. That was the most memorable part of the day.
The best taco restaurant I’ve ever been to
By far. They gave you tortillas with white cheese and a ton of meat and a coke in a glass bottle, then you went to the salsa bar, which was a thing unto itself.
A fancy shopping center with a bunch of designer stores
We looked around, and gaped at the price tags.
Another fancy shopping center
We took pictures in front of Ferraris and tried out some Nokia products at this awesome lounge that they had.
A swimming pool, where we took lessons with Lynnsito and Marlito:
The Mexican swim team there was way better than our YMCA swimteam. It’s like comparing peanut brittle to gummy worms. Even the swim lessons that we took were tough.
Then Dad arrived…

Saturday evening we went to the wedding. Before the ceremony, the workers had a Gospel meeting, which I thought was really cool. If I ever get married, I think that would be a nice thing to request.

I met lots of relatives and friends that I already knew, but forgot about. I re-acquainted myself with my cousins. I met some completely new people. I signed Betty Blonde’s name in the wedding book for her. In all, I had a very nice time.

There is a very a beautiful rock formation right on the edge of Monterrey we visited last night.  I have a busy social schedule today, so I might not be able to post much until Wednesday morning, but I will try to post something, however small.

A taste of what we enjoyed on the wedding.  This is Valeria, Jorge and Mari’s three year old daughter.  She looked quite stunning at the wedding.

This morning we slept in until about 9:00 or so, then went with Tio Lauro to see the new house he built for his family in Santiago, Nuevo Leon, just close enough to Monterrey to benefit from very good infrastructure. It is a beautiful house in a beautiful small town with a traditional plaza. It was a very relaxing morning and a great chance to get caught up a little with Laurin. He travels all over South and Central America in his job with Oracle. We are going to look around the area where they live to see if we can find a piece of retirement property. These are a few pictures we took while we were there. The house is truly a work of art both in its layout and the beauty of its workmanship. The top picture is of a butterfly that landed on the hood of the car while we were there.  You can see a little of the marvelous indirect lighting in the house in the second picture.  The third is of a papaya tree growing in the back yard.  The last picture is of Laurin and I talking.

All my bags are packed and I’m ready to go…

My buddy from work, John S., is going to drop me off at the airport this afternoon to fly down to Monterrey through Atlanta. I am excited to see everyone down there. I have BIG plans for this trip, most of which have to do with red meat, fresh corn tortillas, and salsa. Speaking of food, it is great that LYLE IS BACK IN THE FIGHT, posting his weight, and starting to come down again after all his travels. The up side of his job is that involves a LOT of eating and good food. The down side is that it is wildly difficult to stay on a systematic weight loss program. I will try to post observations and photos while I am in Mexico. I will only be there for a few days, but plan to enjoy them immensely.

Monterrey is beautiful city with a population of just under four million people. While it is not a typical tourist destination, it is a fabulous place to visit. The purpose of this trip is to hang out with the family and attend a wedding. Hopefully, though, we will be able to visit one or two museums or other attractions. The photo below is of El Cerro de La Silla (Saddle Mountain). Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita live right at the base of the mountain on the right hand side of the image. I will see if we can make arrangements to go into the center of the city one day and maybe go to Allende to see Grandma Conchita’s father, Grandpa Jose one other day.

Cerro de la Silla – Monterrey, Mexico

October 5, 2004 – Writing program
October 6, 2004 – Vice Presidential Debate (Photos)

Lazy days here in Monterrey…
 
Today we went to the local mall.  It’s two minutes away from the house, literally.  We had fun there… it’s actually a surprisingly familiar place!!!  It’s interesting to see how much I remember from previous visits.

Anyway, nothing too special happened there.  It’s identical to most small American malls except they have more taco places at the food court and everything’s in pesos. 

Observations at home:

It’s dangerous to poke your fingers into a parrot cage.
Eating 6 tamarind candies at once is not good for your stomach.
When it rains, it pours.
Never, ever let grandpa start talking about watches, music of any kind, or famous opera singers.
Chicken a la king MUST have some Tabasco, or else it’s too ‘desabrido’
Starving pit bulls do roam free along the streets
Calamine lotion, bug spray, Vick’s vapor rub (say veek-vahpoh-roob very quickly) and hand sanitizer do nothing to prevent mosquito bites.

There’s more, but I must be off to meeting.
Sorry this is so short!!! 🙁

I talked to the Lorena and the kids in Mexico last night while I was washing clothes and doing a chores around the house. As is always the case when we visit Mexico the weekends are crazy with barbecues, visits to Allende, site-seeing, shopping, etc. Then, during the week, all the Mexicans have to go to work and to school, so we go from 5000 miles per hour down to about 2 miles per hour. That is where the kids are now. They might be getting a little bored. So, Kelly is planning to do a bunch of Betty Blonde comics so we will have enough for next week and beyond. She is also going to write one or two blog posts. Christian is working on installing Xubuntu on an old, piece or trash computer for his Tio Lynn. I think he is going to write about that for NerdHow. By the way, did you notice that today’s Betty Blonde was written by Christian. Lorena, of course, has many hours of important conversation with her mother planned. Really, that is the one thing that does not change whether it is the weekend or mid-week.

October 1, 2004 – Worker visit
October 4, 2004 – Busy weekend

You can click on the pictures to see them larger.

Some of the many beautiful mountains
seen when flying into Monterrey

Tacos from the awesome little outdoor
restaurant around the corner from
Grandpa Lauro and Grandma Conchita’s house

Eating tacos with cousins Lynncito and Marloncito
both very cute and very sweet natured

Parque Santa Lucia –
Cousin Marquitos takes everyone to the newly
developed river walk in the center of Monterrey

Parque Santa Lucia –
A tour boat in the river along the river walk

Parque Santa Lucia –
A beautiful new sculpture of the
Monterrey ‘M’ made by Saddleback Mountain

Parque Santa Lucia –
Kelly, Lorena, Grandma Conchita, and Christian

Grandpa Lauro (demonstrating his trademark smiley face)
and Grandma Conchita

Three of four generations
Christian, Grandpa Lauro (smiling again),
Great Grandma Rosenda and Kelly

September 29, 2004 – Lorena starts intermediate algebra
September 30, 2004 – The ski trip is a GO!