Cardboard and Duct Tape

It Floats!

If you have several rolls of duct tape and some appliance boxes, what can you make? How about a boat? Why, of course! Everyone wants a cardboard boat.

This was our boat, dubbed "Speed Queen".

Once again it was time for our annual church retreat and our 2nd annual cardboard boat regatta (a sporting event consisting of a series of boat or yacht races). We had a lot of fun.

The first run on Speed Queen

In case you can't tell, it's a turtle. This was definitely the most creative.

The rules were actually quite simple cardboard, duct tape, and life jackets. The boat coarse was equally simplistic. Go about 50 yards, go around a buoy and row back.

Austin had the fastest boat, but the Speed Queen came in second.

Oh and it gets more interesting if not all boats fair well...

Some more pics from the retreat

It sure was enjoyable to spend the weekend with the church family and even some who called us their church family for a time. :)

The camp has a beautiful lake and a few fish.

Guess who won the archery shoot for the boys?

Bit sunny?

Waiting for the candy scramble? 

Yes this was *after* the archery shoot.

When Mom's away

Boys really shouldn't be left home alone.

They can tend to do things that shouldn't be done... Last week my wife and 4 of my children went south from Monday until Friday. That left me and my 8 year old son home alone...what could go wrong?

So what did we do besides upgrade networks?

Unfortunately I couldn't take the entire week off of work so I let my son use my laptop while I tried to work...I think he played more than his quota of computer games. He did however learn a little of SmallBasic.

First of all we painted Jesse's room.

The Blue Room.

We both agreed with one thing, we missed Mom's cooking...Raman noodles, again. 

Then we did firewood..no that's not my son. :)

By Thursday night we had quite a pile. Thanks Ceegan, Tanner, and Glennie.

Oh we had fun, although we were very happy to have everyone back, safe and sound. I felt like I had a lot of one on one time with my son. We had to share all of life for most of 5 days.

Oh NO! My Computer has ay-der and wanings reports!

Scammers R Us called me

WARNING!: Please do not let these folks connect to your computer! If you receive a call like this DO NOT let them connect to your computer!

Now enough of the warnings. I got a call from the "Windows Technical Department from Microsoft" (sounds better if you read this with a thick accent) this evening and instead of witnessing to them I was feeling mischievous and decided to record the call. It was UN-believable, my computer had ay-ders on it... say what? I was informed that the ay-ders were some sort of virus and the warnings were corruptions. (I was rolling my eyes) Any computer will have at least a few errors and probably quite a few warnings because, well software is not perfect. Most errors are meaningless and most warnings are benign although us techie types go looking through the error log when there are problems. It's kind of like your Service Engine light in your car...if it's running fine, what's the point. :) There's a motorhead somewhere that is going to send me an informative e-mail about Service Engine lights.

Anyway, there were some good lines in the conversation, for example, click on "OK, or continue or other positive command at the bottom of the screen." Really? For some reason they switched callers part way through, not sure if the Event Viewer was too technical for the first one.

I quit when it was time to connect to my computer. I was not familiar with "Show My PC" and so I was quickly Googling it to see what it is. From what I gathered is that "ShowMyPc" is just another wrapped up VNC service although interestingly enough it is a paid for service. They did not seem to offer a "For Free" version. My guess is that if you could figure out the user if you had all the right info. Also from some quick research I figured out they want to charge you to continue protection on your computer...yeah right!

What really needed to happen would have been for me to relate the good news of the Gospel to these fellows...who knows where they were really calling from perhaps from a country that is closed to the Gospel. But I didn't. How many opportunities do I miss?

Redneck Entertainment

Local Entertainment :)

What did you do on Saturday night?

Intruder

It was a cat burglar!

Now I am not particularly fond of cats, in fact we do quite well keeping our distance from each other. Cats belong on dairy farms to police the mice and if they are shed-proof and well-maintained they can live in OTHER people's houses. But as for me and my house...we don't "do" cats. That is probably what made last night so...so...exciting?

Yesterday I received a call from my wife and after we chatted about several miscellaneous issues affecting the household, she asked, "Did you see or smell anything on your sweatshirt last night?". "Uh, no...why?" "Well, I picked up a coat and your fleece that were laying on the floor and some "poop" fell out." "WAT??" 

Location of Initial Sighting

It was in that twilight zone when the children are "almost" ready for bed and the parents finally take a seat and hardly feel like finishing the task of putting the children in bed. Our oldest was banging out Fur Elise on the piano, when suddenly she screamed, "IT'S A CAT!!!" 

I looked up to see a fat, yellow, hairy fur-ball go streaking across the living room. It was easily identified as the neighbor man's cat. "WHAT IS THAT THING DOING IN HERE", I bellowed. "OUT, OUT!"

The frightened animal ran one way then another as 5 children and a dad attempted to shoo it...somewhere. I eventually cornered it in the laundry where it crouched and began hissing at me but rather than turning toward the door to freedom, it turned and went back through the kitchen and down a ancient pet door that I should have closed up eons ago.

"Good", I thought at least it's not in the house now we just shoo it out the back door. Ha, no such luck. First it hid in the "dark" part of the basement. Then it attempted to run back up the stairs to the house. "AHHH! NO NO not up THERE!" I found a stick and managed to get it to stop climbing the stairs. It would not go back down or jump, it just clung to the steps for dear life and growled at me.

Oh dear.

Finally, I coaxed it to jump off the step (not far for a cat). It then hurriedly scampered...UNDER the landing and crouched in the corner.

Eva's final hideout.

Now what...

I know, I will go get the owner. I duly instructed the children to make sure it doesn't go back up the stairs into the house. Anything but that.

Knock, Knock. 

"Bill, your cat is in my house!" 

"My CAT!" (He has around a dozen) 

"Yes your cat"

"Is she alive?" (Huh? Very much so, but probably on the brink of a heart attack.)

"Could you come help get her out she is hiding and won't come out?"

"Oh my, yes, I thought she was dead or somebody killed her, she has been missing for a couple days."

"REALLY!" (Days???? poop on the floor??? WAT?? This animal has been living in my house for a couple days!!)

Oh I should mention my neighbor is approximately 85 years old with a current occupation as a mason (note: currently).

Together we carefully trudged around the house to the basement entrance with many admonitions to "watch your step". I showed him where the hideout was located. "Oh, my" he exclaimed, "EVA, EVA, come EVA!" But Eva would not budge, nope, not an inch. Now what are we going to do, perhaps shoo all the children away. Food, that's it! So Mr. Neighbor trudged carefully back to his house and got some yummy (yucky) cat food and a broom. (Not to sweep the basement)

Meantime I decided it would be good to occupy the children with going to bed perhaps peace and quiet and Mr. Neighbor alone would persuade "Eva" to surrender peacefully.

The alleged burglar

Now I should interject here that wild imaginations run rampant as cats in our house. "Wouldn't it have been funny if that cat had went upstairs and climbed into bed with someone?" Several of them thought they would have nightmares just from the thought...Brent did cry during the night...hmm. Personally, I am not sure who would have had the heart attack, me or the cat. Since the cat is smaller, I believe it would have been greatly injured in the ensuing brawl.

Now there's got to be a moral here somewhere....Wait for it.

When the cat was safely home, I stepped outside to speak with Mr. Neighbor. "You know Tony, I prayed for that cat. I thought it was dead or someone killed it. God sure answers prayers in mysterious ways!"

Yes, Mr Neighbor, He certainly does...

Huh??

AM or PM?

The other night I was attempting to explain to my son why his alarm went off at midnight.

"That's because it was set for midnight", I explained.
"Nuh-uh!"
(sigh)
"Yes, see it is set for 12 AM"
"But that's not midnight!"
(oh we have AM and PM confused)
"Yes 12 AM is midnight and 12 PM is lunchtime" (that is, of course, if you typically eat at noon like a 7 year old might)
"Huh?!??! No Way"
"Yeah-huh, that's the way it is."

Reluctantly he accepted my explanation and we fixed the alarm so that we don't need to hear "Beep, Beep" at midnight (whether that is AM or PM).

Europe is different?

Today I had a case of "deja vu" with a tech support person from the Netherlands. I was helping him (or he was helping me) schedule a task on a customer's computer and we were discussing when we would like the task to run. I wasn't certain if this client left his computer run all night so I suggested that he set it for noon because he may be out of the office but the computer would most likely be running. To my amusement the cursor changed the time to 12:00 AM.

"Uh, how about we set it for noon."
"Yes that would be 12:00 AM"
"Uh, no, that is midnight"
"No that would be 12:00 PM"
"This is funny, I just had this conversation with my 7 year old" (hopefully he wasn't offended)

By now I am starting to second guess myself, so I quickly muted my phone and ask my co-worker, "Hey, noon is 12 PM, correct?"
"Yes"
Whew!

"Yes, we want to set the time to 12 PM"

By now Mr. Netherlands was starting to see the problem, "Over here we use military time, it's so much easier. Midnight is 00 and noon is 12."
"Ha Ha yeah that would be easier", I laughed.
"And you don't use kilometers, kilos, or liters either. That just blows my mind."
(Oh boy) "Yes we are just crazy Americans."
(mute button, mute button, where is that mute button??)

He was a good sport and we successfully setup the scheduled task to run at noon. I never gave it a thought that Europe doesn't use AM and PM. Guess I learned something new today.

~T