Life at Patience Corners

The Trouble-Free Blessing

2012-01-26T16:53:00.001-05:00

Had I kept up with my blog (or my blog, somehow, magically, kept up with me) you'd likely know about the ongoing saga of our car.

Now, some of this trouble, I've brought on myself: I don't like to spend money on cars. My aversion isn't as deep as it used to be; for many years, I rode my bicycle everywhere, and looked down on people who drove. It was a moral superiority born of envy, poverty, two-wheel pride, and a large serving of sour grapes—a conflicted condition, to be sure. Very conflicted.

All the cars I've ever owned, combined, come out to a bit over $5000 — about what I paid for my motorcycle. (Priorities, see?) I nursed my '77 Phoenix along until it was eligible for classic car plates. I loved my station wagon until I started losing a friend a week from frequent rescues. I've had two $1 cars. Two more have been gifts of love and deep generosity. One, I actually paid a whole $500 for. I've never had a car payment.

I'm sure that part of this (ahem) extreme thriftiness is from the culture that I grew up in. One of the enduring images of my father is of him making major repairs on our early '60s Toyota nearly every weekend in Costa Rica. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" was the motto to go by.

Even so, long about September, even I had to admit that our car was on its last legs. This is the car where we kept a rubber mallet under the front seat, to start the car when it would stop and not re-start. It was creeping up on 190,000 miles, and I had a several-thousand-dollar list of repairs that it needed to keep it truly road-worthy. I had a stack of parts that had fallen off of it. Deborah hated the idea of getting a new car, but I knew it was a matter of time before we'd need to replace it, and I couldn't think of how to get much—if any—money out of it, and where I'd find the funds to replace it.

God took care of that.

And that was a brand new tire, too....

It didn't take much—just a guy pulling out of a gas station, at just the right moment; enough to total the car, but leave it driveable for a week; enough to make it a total loss, but not hurt anyone.

Deborah decided not to smile for the picture. I guess I wouldn't, either.

The insurance company offered us 10 times what I had thought I could get for the car (hint: the junkyard offered $200) and set us up with a rental just in time for us to take on vacation. I didn't want to give that car back — a 300 HP Dodge Charger — but I knew I'd have to. I started shopping.

About the best thing I can say about the process was that very few people outright lied to me. Oh, sure, we got the pink-sweater-in-the-passenger-seat ("Oh, I've been driving my daughter around in it. . ." Really, in the seat with the broken seatbelt?) and the car that wouldn't start in the pouring rain (Thanks, God) even though it had run fine the day before. But for the most part, we got honest people who listened to our needs, and then would point to the one car on the lot that met the criteria. Most of them were awful.

Hmm. I don't think I'll buy this one.

Discouraged after chasing one option down as far north as Mishawaka, we walked across the street from Mr. Pinksweater to see the car dealer there. "We don't have anything in the price range," he said, "but I have a friend that works at a lot just down the road. They have cars that might fit what you're looking for."

Did they ever. A whole lot, stretching out, hundreds of cars. All of them in our price range. It was like a revelation, angels singing forth. And there, right where we pulled up to park — "Look, Andy, it's our car!" And it was — nearly identical to the car we'd just lost, but two years newer and with 100,000 fewer miles. We knew it would fit three car seats across the back. We looked around, but we kept coming back to that one. With the purchase price, tax, title, registration, inspection, and a few new tires, we came within $2 of what we'd budgeted.

Yay! New car!

It was perfect. It was a blessing.

We reveled in it for months. We were even, I dare say, a bit smug about it. Then, one night, I got a desperate call from Deborah. Every light on the dashboard was lit up, and flashing like a Christmas tree. The numbers on the gas gauge and climate control jumped wildly, from Full Tank to -45° to 0 mpg and, mysteriously, "c." I talked her home, assuring her that, if the car was still running, she could ignore the antics on the dash. Finally, it settled down into a pattern of displaying the mysterious "c" and running the air conditioning full blast. I welcomed home a very cold Deborah, and told her I'd look into it.

The next day, I looked into it, and, since Deborah needed to go to work, I pulled the fuse for the air conditioning, so that she could drive in relative comfort. Unfortunately, by doing so, I also pulled the fuse that would have alerted her to the fact that the battery wasn't charging. A tow truck ride later, and we had a new alternator, battery, but still some odd behavior on the dash. My mechanic worked on it for hours, tracing one potential problem after another, but the haunted dash persisted. His best estimate for the next step involved pre-authorizing up to eight hours of labor for tracing down wiring faults — a figure echoed by the Cadillac dealership in town. We re-enabled the air conditioning, and stuck in a few blankets.

A few days later, on the way to church, an odd thwapping sound emanated from under the hood. I pulled over and had a look. The serpentine belt was shredding. I got it home, and installed a new one. Once I got it all together, though, I realized what the original problem had been: the new alternator was off by about a quarter of an inch, causing the belt to jump up on the edge. I couldn't adjust the pulley off the shaft, so I gave our mechanic a call. He graciously sent out a tow truck, and, because he couldn't move the pulley either, we went home with yet another new alternator.

Apparently, I groused about it often enough on Twitter/Facebook (I often update my status on Twitter, so that I won't be distracted by the rest of Facebook) that Dad called me up to see if he could have a go at solving the dash problem.

We started out by disconnecting the battery, and then spent the next few hours trying to get the battery connected again.

Stripped threads. On a battery terminal. Aaaaargh.

(We also ran the car out of gas. That's another neat little "feature" of this whole mess — no gas gauge.)

On the way home from that adventure, the whine that had been developing under the hood stopped, and a new dash light came on: the battery was not charging. Thank God for cell phones. My parents followed me halfway home from Valparaiso, until we met up with Paul coming the other way. Once the battery ran out, we'd stop, charge up the battery for 10 minutes, then hit the road again for another 5 miles.

Mere days before, I'd helped Paul pick out a new car from that same dealership. It came with jumper cables.

We kept that up until 2 a.m., when we were finally within striking distance of Warsaw, and we had a recognizable place where we could park it, and call the mechanic. A tow truck ride and yet another alternator later (the auto parts supplier now owes my mechanic several hundred dollars in towing charges) and we're back on the road, driving in style, if not comfort.

In the meanwhile, we're back to hunting and theorizing. Fortunately, our mechanic has the wonderful ability to separate his feelings about the car and the customer ("Andy, I'm starting to hate your car") and has been giving Dad and I feedback on some of our ideas about what to try next. Last time I was in there, he showed me some new software he was trying out. We plugged in the make, model, and year, and drilled down to climate control issues — sure enough, there was the problem, described in perfect detail, down to the lowercase "c" on the dash, along with what other mecahnics had done to fix it. There were six entries on-screen, and they all showed the same thing: replace the body control module (BCM). It would have been a revelation, except for one thing: We'd already tried that.

Oh, look. It's snowing. Inside the car.

We're working with a new theory, now, that it's the PROM (Programmable Read Only Memory) unit that sits between the computer and the rest of the wiring. Of course, they don't make them anymore, so I've been contacting junkyards from all over, trying to find one for a reasonable price. We may get there yet.

So, this car is a blessing. Did anyone say it had to be trouble-free?

Steampunk'n

2011-11-08T22:17:00.005-05:00

Outdoing myself is now an annual thing. The only thing I can say in my defense is, if I had found all my carving tools, it would be even more complicated. I take some comfort in the fact that wild pumpkin carving is now a much more common thing, so I'm not so far out of the ordinary anymore. Yay. Rats.

You may or may not be aware of steampunk, a genre of sci-fi/fantasy (or, more properly now, speculative fiction) commonly set in the steam-powered Victorian England, which has taken on its own unique sense of style — lots of brass, gears, filigree, corsets, and heavy doses of "what if?" I confess my fascination with the visual theme, even if the fiction itself doesn't seem all that magnificent.

Of course, if you can get away with something punny, like crossing "steampunk" and "pumpkin," why, then, the gourds practically carve themselves:

Hey, I didn't take all those mechanical engineering classes for nothi.... OK, OK, I never took any!

This is also the first year that I went out to the shed and broke out the power tools in order to speed up the process. It made all those itty-bitty holes easier, but it feels like some kind of line has been crossed.

I didn't set out to do it this way — but this counter-weighted wheel, with the light, looks like cast iron being poured out. Unintentional, but I like it.

Of course, I wasn't the only one carving, so I tried to leave mine towards the end, and help the kids with theirs first. Aiden chose his theme, and we worked it out on paper. Fiona drew hers, and Deborah helped her carve it. Risanna got to scoop seeds out of hers.

Mine, Paul's Triforce-and-Master-Sword (which more people reconized than I would have thought), Risanna's bear.

Fiona's dragon.

Aiden's (pumpkin) cherry bomb, and Deborah's Nightmare Before Christmas-inspired Jack Skellington.

So, what did you make this year?

...and that's another way to solve the problem!

2011-11-02T09:50:00.010-04:00

Let me get you in on a dirty little secret. It's something I've learned after years of working in publishing and web design.

People don't read.

You might find this an ironic observation, given that I work for an academic publisher, but I tell you it's true, and it's especially true of academics — people don't read.

I have my theories. They may all be wrong, I don't know. But I have them anyway. One is, people don't read because it's too easy. Most literate people can't help but read something; you see it, it registers as a word instantly, and — this is the critical part — then you decide whether or not to pay attention. In our information-rich, give me your attention ~~please~~ society, we're surrounded by words . . . and we ignore most of them.

Don't believe me? Stop and take a look around for a moment. Words, words, words. If your desk looks like mine, I'm willing to bet that, without turning your head, and without counting these words here, you can see around 500–1000 words. You're ignoring all of them (including the ten sticky notes that you wrote and put in prominent places in order to remember things.)

That's just you and me. Enter the academic, stage left, with his nose in a book. He is, obviously, reading. Or is he? My answer is, probably not. Remember the last term paper you wrote? Did you read every source, cover to cover? Of course not. You skimmed it until you found what you were looking for. You noted it, cited it, wrote your paper, you kept moving. The only difference is that the academic has gotten good enough at this to do it for a living. Their term papers get published.

And so we come to the relevant question: how do you alert someone like this to something they aren't expecting?

Case in point: each year, my employer attends and displays at a major conference. We're one of the bigger players in our market (big fish, little pond) and we generally try to get about six booth spaces to display our wares. In order to keep such a space all within easy reach, we typically reserve two sides of an aisle — books to the left, books to the right, and three booths' worth of books across the aisle.

Now, this creates two problems. One is the person who finds the booth staff first, and asks, "Where are the books?" It's easy enough to point out the stacks to them. The second is the person who finds the books first, but doesn't know to look to the other side of the aisle to find the checkout desk. This is harder.

The easy answer is, of course, to put up a sign saying that the checkout is on the other side. But people aren't looking for such signs — they're looking for a cash register (does anyone use these anymore at conferences?) or a person (there are plenty of those around) or . . . what?

Our solution? Make a sign they can't help but read.

Specifically, we made them in Sumerian, Neo-Assyrian (both use cuneiform), Egyptian, and bet-you've-never-heard-of-it Hieroglyphic Luwian. Can you read it? I can't — but we have customers who can. Customers who are quite proud of that ability, actually, and who happily contributed their expertise into making the top halves of each sign.

Why does it work? Well, for the customers that can read it, there's the unexpected, proud rush of being able to use their skills in an everyday setting. For the ones that can't read it, there's what Chip and Dan Heath call a "knowledge gap" that invites them to learn more — and gets them down to the English translation near the bottom.

The added bonus is that it's also marketing: We get it. Our target market is ancient Near Eastern studies; we want people who can read this stuff. There's nothing like showing them that we literally speak their language. Outsiders, at the very least, get a memorable introduction to what we do.

My part in all of this was quite fun. I got to take the handwritten samples (or in the case of the cuneiform, PDF) and either typeset or convert each one into a format I could use.

My biggest barrier was learning to typeset Egyptian, but once I got into it, it was surprisingly easy to do. Having the transliteration below helped a lot.

Next, I wrangled the various pieces out of Photoshop, InDesign, and JSEsh, and got them into Illustrator, where I cleaned up the paths and got them ready to send out to Ponoko. (I don't get paid to promote Ponoko. I promote them anyway. Although if they're reading this. . . .) Most of the programs used for creating these languages aren't at the same level of development as other software (wonder why?) so there was a lot of cleanup involved.

A few weeks later, I got my expected package, and I got an excuse to get crafty.

It's silly, but I love this tag on the boxes. I really do feel this way when I get a package with something I've designed!.

I was a bit concerned about how I was going to get white engraving to show up on white plastic, until someone pointed out that the protective paper they apply to the acrylic forms a perfect, precision mask.

A little masking tape and a spraycan later, and that problem was solved.

All that was left was to wear my fingernails down to stubs peeling off the protective paper and revealing the final product.

Why stop at the "obvious" solution to a problem when you can have this much fun with it?

Several people have now asked who supplied the various texts for this project. Gary Greig (University of Chicago) supplied the Egyptian; Annick Payne (Freie Universität Berlin) contributed the Hieroglyphic Luwian; Simo Parpola (University of Helsinki) sent in the Sumerian; and repeat co-conspirator Bob Whiting (also of the University of Helsinki) gave us the Neo-Assyrian text.

You've got to start somewhere

2011-07-29T19:45:00.004-04:00

We were looking through some pictures on the camera, when we came across a few that neither Deborah nor I remember taking. Looks like Risanna is getting an early start on photography!

Welcome, my dear, to a fascinating, maddening hobby. My your frames be free of camera straps, and your grip be steady and true. It gets better from here.

Fiona Joins the Glasses Club

2011-06-27T10:03:00.003-04:00

Next up, braces? Hmmm.

Fiona's first grade teacher and the school nurse had been after us for a while to get Fiona's eyes checked. It didn't make sense to us, though, because the could obviously see very well at both a distance ("Look Daddy, there's a rabbit on the other side of the field!") and up close ("Look Daddy, this tiny bug has claws like a lobster!") but finally, we gave in and took her. Turns out one eye was doing great — well enough that the other eye was just taking a break and goofing off. So now Fiona has joined that grand Kerr tradition of being bespectacled.

Of course, now we have new problems. Now think, Fiona, do you remember where you took them off...?

Not Complaining

2011-06-18T20:41:00.000-04:00

One, two, three, four. That's the number of large band-aids I see on my abdomen, each tender to the touch, each with a a much deeper echo of unease below it. Comfortable? No, but I'm certainly not in agony, either.

I had hernia surgery Tuesday.

It all seems unreal. That morning, feeling fine, I went into the hospital, where I was shaved, scrubbed, knocked unconscious, inflated with CO₂, stabbed four times (six if you count the IVs), patched with mesh and dissolving screws, and here I am typing like it's no big deal.

In my father's time, you'd have been lucky to be standing upright at the end of the week, not gently sanding the drywall in the back room as I was this afternoon. (My father also assured me I'd still be able to father children afterwards — I hadn't realized that was a even a question, but the surgeon also asked me if I was done having kids — Deborah anticipated the question and told me to say no. All these people know something I don't.)

So even though I'm mostly feeling fine, I'm wondering what hurdles (not literal ones, I hope...) I have to clear to be approved to return to work. Obviously, I can sit at a computer, which is what I do for a living — well, that, and unload trucks, but I think I'm excused from that for a while, given that's what got me into this trouble in the first place. I'm guessing the main criteria will involve insuring that I can survive the drive there and back, and won't burst open if I go over a bump. (Sorry to be graphic. It's a real concern.)

In the meantime, people have supplied me with a surprising number of things that they'd like me to get done while I'm convalescing. I've got two websites that want attention, a two-hour speaking engagement to plan, a room to drywall and paint, and any number of other things. A get-well card from my co-workers came pre-printed with 20 things to do while getting better; they added 8 of their own! But for now, I'm doing a lot of something I've neglected over the past seven years: sleep. It's wonderful stuff. Not sure how I've gone so long while ignoring it.

G'night!

Yeah, that's about right

2011-04-24T13:25:00.005-04:00

Frilly pink dresses, butterfly wings, and an ATV. That's what little girls are made of.

I didn't need to walk anyway

2011-04-22T21:58:00.004-04:00

When I was a kid, I remember frequently enjoying a ride on my dad's foot. Now, my kids enjoy it, too. This is a bit ridiculous, though:

Three kids, two legs!

I can eventually trudge over to a doorway, and hang on to the jamb while I swing my legs (and their passengers!) to a little tune I made up:

Swing Fiona, back and forth!
Swing Fiona, drop her on the floorth!

Swing Fiona, to and fro!
Swing Fiona, don't let go!

Swing Fiona, up and down!
Swing Fiona, drop her on the ground!

The kids rarely make it through all three verses before they're lying on the ground, laughing their heads off.

Walk? Who needs to walk?

J.A.W.L.S.

2011-04-11T11:12:00.001-04:00

There's an acronym that runs through my head, usually during a hurried commute along the lake's edge, when my eyes are fighting between staying on the road, and wandering off to the horizon. It's a mocking reminder for me to appreciate the things I have, and a lament that I can't stop and appreciate them more.

J.A.W.L.S.

It's usually said with a little sigh, and then perhaps a tired, wry smile. Who am I kidding? It's a fleeting moment, one that's almost hopeless to try to preserve. It's something you have to be there, and enjoy it while it lasts.

When I first got to Winona Lake, I landed my first job — yearbook photographer — while I was standing in line to register for classes. It was a job I took rather seriously (until the second year, when I got distracted by some girl I met on the internet, and eventually married.) I was rarely seen without a camera around my neck.

The first week of classes were done, and I took my Sunday sack supper for a ride through the quiet streets of Winona Lake, until I wound up at Winona Lake park, where several other Gracies had congregated with the same idea.

Tammy, Rachel, Joelle, and Joanna. (One of the great advantages of being yearbook photographer is that someone goes through and identifies all your photos for you.)

Joanna, Carrie (a.k.a. "Cake"), Jon, and Sunny, who is trying to catch ducks with popcorn.

As the sun crept down over the lake, conversation slowed, and someone — Joelle, I think — shushed everyone. "I want to watch this." I turned around at the picnic table to look out across the lake. "What am I watching here?" I asked, bemused. "The sunset," said someone as if it was obvious. It looked perfectly dull as far as sunsets go. "What, they don't have sunsets where you come from?" I joked, still puzzled. "No," said several voices in unison. Apparently, in the hills of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania, you don't get sunsets. The sun disappears behind the hills, and then it's dark. Sunsets were a rare treat for them.

Apparently, out-of-town college students aren't the only ones to be entranced by a Winona Lake sunset. A well known hymn, "Beyond the Sunset," was written not far from where I sat that evening, and a blind man saw it best:

The song "Beyond the Sunset" was born at the dinner table of the Brocks' home one night in 1936. Before dinner, text author Virgil Brock and his composer-wife Blanche watched a very unusual sunset at Winona Lake, Indiana, with a blind guest Horace Burr and his wife, Grace. Burr was Brock's cousin. A large area of the water appeared ablaze with the glory of God, yet there were storm clouds threatening gathered overhead.
Upon return to his home, at dinner, they still talked about the unusual spectacle they had earlier witnessed. What was amazing was what their blind guest excitedly commented, that he had never seen a more beautiful sunset.
The blind Horace's reply was simple and touching: "I see through other people's eyes, and I think I often see more; I see beyond the sunset."
The striking inflection in his blind cousin's voice forcibly deeply moved Brock. He began to write the first few measures of what is now "Beyond the Sunset" at the same time he started singing with his coined words. A spot-on inspiration.
His wife loved it, they went to the piano, and enhanced the first verse. The blind Horace Burr strongly urged that a verse about the storm clouds be added. A third verse was further added. Before dinner ended, all four stanzas had been completed and sang by them.

Words by Virgil P. Brock — Music by Blanche Kerr Brock
© Word Music, Inc

Beyond the sunset, O blissful morning,
When with our Savior heav'n is begun;
Earth's toiling ended, O glorious dawning,
Beyond the sunset when day is done.

Beyond the sunset, no clouds will gather,
No storms will threaten, no fears annoy;
O day of gladness, O day unending,
Beyond the sunset eternal joy!

Beyond the sunset, a hand will guide me
To God the Father whom I adore;
His glorious presence, His words of welcome,
Will be my portion on that fair shore.

Beyond the sunset, O glad reunion,
With our dear loved ones who've gone before;
In that fair homeland we'll know no parting,
Beyond the sunset forever more!

Oddly enough, this wasn't the first time I'd run across this hymn. I first came across it in Germany, while I was looking through an old hymnal for something else entirely. Oh, this is nice, I thought, you can sing this at my funeral. Not so much because it's a nice song (it is) or because it's common at funerals (as I learned later) but because of something I asked God for.

After I die, have my funeral in the late afternoon. Bring a lawn chair. Bring a whole picnic. Don't be formal on my account. Sit out on the grass, or in the sand at the edge of the water, wherever you like, and watch the sunset. I asked God if I could paint it that day. And He said yes. Forget that my body is over there. I'm up here, in the sky, burning down the heavens, whooping my way across the horizon in a roar of oranges and purples. And maybe, if I can manage it, a little bit of green.

It might be spectacular. It might be... just another Winona Lake sunset.

Race Day 2011

2011-04-09T01:10:00.000-04:00

Want to guess what my favorite part of a pinewood derby is? Nope, it's not the thrill of speed. Not the joy of victory. Not the agony of defeat. Not even the cool gadgets timing things down to ten-thousandths of a second.

It's not even the cake. Although that's quite good, too.

Give up?

It's the creativity.

OK, case in point: Normally, if you go to a car race, you'd expect to see people racing cars, right? Not here. On race day in a pinewood derby, your car might be matched up against...

A tank!

A shoe!

A gymnast on a balance beam! A UPS truck!

A rocket-powered pizza delivery wagon! Rocket Barbie, whose pink ship has been hit by a silver meteor! (Seriously. I asked.)

A pirate ship!

....not to mention dragons, of course. But you already knew about that.

CREATIVE WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Write a short story involving a tank, a gymnast, a shoe, a dragon, and your choice of Rocket Barbie, a supersonic delivery guy, and/or a pirate ship. Send it to kerr at kconline dot com. I'll publish the best ones here. You have 10 minutes. Go!

Of course, I enjoyed the racing, too.

We were seeded 12th out of 31 this year, at 4.3262 seconds — a big improvement over last year's performance of 4.5771. Yeah, two tenths of a second is huge in this world.

OK, confession time. After last year's third-from-the-bottom performance, I was secretly quite pleased to find ourselves in the ranks of the "sorta-fast." While I'd let Fiona have free reign over the shape and design of the car, this year the wheels and axles were mine. Oh, the tools I got into. There were pipe cleaners. Files. Drills. Jeweler's rouge. Dad gave me a book of pinecar speed secrets for Christmas, and I used as many of the tips as I had time and tools for. It wasn't so much an overt competition with the other dads (there was enough of that going on without me getting involved, most of it pretty friendly) — it was more to see if I could do it, too. Granted, that's complicated by the fact that one has to compete to see if one measures up....

Wanna know why those other cars were so fast? There'a s dragon behind them! Yeah! You'd run, too!

On the whole though, there was good fun to be had from the start of the track...

At the starting pin.

...to the end of it.

Racers get a prime spot right at the finish line. Remarkably, Fiona is actually in contact with the ground here.

We didn't win any prizes this year. I knew I hadn't done enough rocket science to win on speed, and our car really wasn't a replica of anything. I thought we had a chance on "best of show" (craftsmanship) or creativity, but those passed us by, as well. But all that's OK.

I won my prize two weeks earlier.

Fiona and were out in the shed together, huddled in our jackets, and sanding away happily at our little wedge. "So, Fiona," I asked, "Whose car is this? Yours, or mine?" She looked thoughtful. "It's your car and my car. And the time that we're working on it is, like, special you-and-me time."

What prize could be better?

The Client

2011-04-05T08:20:00.000-04:00

The client.

1 year before deadline: Client starts talking to designer about a project they've got coming up in a year. Designer commits to helping the client achieve her goals. Client and designer discuss concepts leisurely, with no real hurry.

3 months before deadline: Client starts developing concepts and models in earnest.

Left to Right: Fire F, Cactus F, Ice F, Sun F. If you look really hard, you can also see the Dragon F, Bunny F (my favorite), Cat F (Deborah's favorite), and the Frog F.

1 month before deadline: Designer asks client what she has decided on. Client produces design brief, detailing her project.

"This is probably the best Dragon F I've ever made. Make my pine car like this one."

Designer balks, and suggests design alternatives.

Client sticks to her vision.

Designer wonders how in the world he's going to make this.

3 weeks before deadline: Designer gets inspired during a sermon in church. Unbeknownst to the pastor, it's not inspiration concerning the sermon. Designer sketches designs on back of bulletin:

Hey, I could make this thing in layers...

Client approves concept sketch. Production work begins.

Gotta love Ponoko. They make something as complicated as CNC laser cutting and engraving easy as just choosing the right colors for your design.

2 weeks before deadline: Designer presents first proof to the client. Client marks up the master copy with corrections.

She was very adamant that the texture be dots — not scales, not checks, not zigzags, not crosshatching, dots. And the eyebrow has to be straight. Get it right, Daddy!

10 days before deadline: Client approves final proof; files are sent out for production.

Confident that all is well, client and designer turn their attention to producing supporting material.

The car body is painted blue, then covered in painter's tape; the client is given a marker and, after practicing on a separate sheet of paper, makes the design she wants...

which is then cut out, peeled, and painted over...

then cut and peeled again...

to reveal just what the client wanted:

8 days before deadline: Designer, checking daily, starts to wonder what's taking so long. The file has been approved at the plant, but has not entered production yet.

Designer does some digging, and finds that the projected completion date is in two weeks.

Designer panics. Briefly.

Designer assures client that all will be well, even if not everything is together on time. Meantime, designer scrambles to find a local supplier who can work on very short notice.

6 days before deadline: Designer finds a shop that will do the work in a single day. Relief is palpable. Tells shop that production will start as soon as first order is canceled.

Client discovers provision for cancellation fee at first shop. It's more than the job was worth to begin with. Shop agrees to slip this job in, a week ahead of schedule, if Designer will pay the shipping upgrade to get it there on time. The design spends 15 minutes on a laser cutter, and is packaged up and makes the last pickup of the day by less than 5 minutes.

5 days before deadline: Designer discovers that the deadline isn't Saturday. It's Wednesday. The same day the parts are supposed to arrive.

Designer arranges for time off from work on Wednesday.

8 hours before deadline: The parts arrive.

There's something very oddly satisfying about popping out laser-cut parts.

Test fitting. Everything lines up the way it should. Good.

5 hours before deadline: Designer picks up client from school. They spend a leisurely afternoon together, decorating and assembling the final product.

My favorite part? The eyes follow you.

3 hours before deadline: Client leaves for Kids' Club. Designer stays behind to finish putting the project together. Saws, blowtorches (plural, both out of fuel), lead, drills, and very large hammers are used. Carefully, of course.

90 minutes before deadline: Designer packs up the Product carefully in an old shirt and Amazon box, and roars off towards church on his motorcycle, with a small sledgehammer, balls of lead, and a tube of superglue in his backpack.

1 hour before deadline: The final product takes its first trial run on the track. It flies off and breaks a wing. Designer does not swear. He is, after all, in a church gymnasium.

From previous research, Designer knows that superglue will leave a large white area on the acrylic. Appearances matter here.

45 minutes before deadline: Wing is mended with acrylic fingernail glue.

30 minutes before deadline: Weight is added and subtracted, to get the car up to the 5 oz. maximum. The weight of the drops of superglue attaching the weights to the car puts the car over the weight limit. Twice.

5 minutes before deadline: Client cheerfully presents her car for weigh-in. It comes in at 5.00 ounces exactly, and is cleared to race on Saturday. She christens it "Fiona's Fiery F."

U2 on Grace and Karma

2011-02-21T16:39:00.003-05:00

I haven't really kept up on my music collection over the years; I'm still several albums behind on such greats as Vigilantes of Love, Over the Rhine and U2. But I love, love love, reading an interview with Bono (lead singer for U2). He preaches, he meddles, but man, he gets the point across. Go read this. All of it. Would that we could all articulate it so clearly.

Well, what would you do with it?

2011-02-10T21:42:00.005-05:00

Several years ago, I was given a project at work: managing the artwork and printing for a huge, sprawling series of archaeological reports. This being a well-funded expedition, the reports were to be in color. This, and other factors dictated that we have it printed overseas.

I got to design the dustjacket. Now, each printer and bindery has their own way of doing things; one uses thicker cardboard here, one uses a different kind of paper there, and it's no good trying to guess at what the exact dimensions will be. So I wrote a note asking for the dimensions of the soon-to-be book. What I expected was a dozen numbers, or perhaps an Excel worksheet; what I got, express-mailed from Singapore a few days later, was... a book.

724 pages, using the exact paper they'd use for the final product. And every one of them was blank.

They included a sample stamping on the cover that I found amusing. Sure, who wouldn't want a book like this?

So what would you do with it?

It served its initial purpose quite nicely, and then sat on the corner of my desk for several years. I knew what I wanted to do with it. And so, finally, after all this time, I've gotten started: I'm going to practice my chops at drawing in pen and ink. I'm going to fill it up, and work on my skills. So what if it takes me ten years....?

The first drawing. I've had this walnut shell sitting in a little basket, just waiting to be drawn.

One page down, 723 to go.

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

2011-01-29T10:48:00.007-05:00

I said to a guy, “Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?” And the guy said, “Well, it intensifies your personality.” And I said, “Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?” —Bill Cosby

Quentin Coldwater is a talented, bright kid with vast opportunities. He's just not happy about it. Setting out for an ivy-league college interview, he is immersed in magical intrigue and — perhaps more important to Quentin — a glimpse at a manuscript for a previously-unknown sequel to a magical fantasy series about a group of children that go off to the magical land of Fillory. On chasing down this blowing manuscript, he finds himself just in time to take the entrance exam for Brakebills, a magical university. A magical education later, Quentin Coldwater is a talented, bright kid with vast opportunities. He's just not happy about it.

So, what would you do with a magical education, and a virtually limitless slush fund for freshly-minted magicians? Party 'til you drop, apparently. In the midst of the debauchery, a classmate shows up with intriguing news: There really is a Fillory, and he's found a way to get there. So they go. Not all of them return. In the end, Quentin Coldwater is a talented, bright adult with vast opportunities. He's just not happy about it.

Make no mistake: Grossman can write. And, for the first third of the book, that fools you into thinking it's worth reading. The novelty of the approach and the sheer inventiveness throughout lets you excuse some excesses in the characters, lets you call the details "gritty" and refreshing.

Now, I allow a bit more leeway than some do as to what's acceptable to read. I enjoy seeing truth through the eyes of others, and I'm willing to put up with a few things to see that. Some people would be offended at the mere mention of magic. Some people would hurl the book away from themselves should any character take a drink, use foul language, or look at each other in lust. Sinners sin. That's what they do. No need to be surprised by it.

That said, the excesses start piling on heavier and heavier. Time is marked in bottles, and by the midpoint of the book, the characters are pretty much engaged in outright debauchery. I plowed on past these points, thinking "it can't get worse..." and pretty much being wrong, every time. By the end of the book, it's downright gory. I don't mind a little dirt in a good story, but really, must one wallow in it?

It's tempting, at least initially, to compare elements of this story to other greats in the genre. Brakebills = Hogwarts, Fillory = Narnia, and so on. Grossman evidently didn't want to continue any of those traditions for their own sake; fans of Narnia in particular are going to feel like he sullied the tale for no good reason. "Narnia without Aslan" isn't a new literary concept, but the likes of Phillip Pullman attack it directly; in The Magicians, it's more negligent homicide than murder one.

The most pervasive theme throughout the book, however, isn't in the book: it's the intense desire, instilled in the reader, to reach into the pages and slap Quentin & Co. upside the head. Part of the discomfort for me was in identifying with the main character, and realizing that I would have wanted to do the same thing in that situation. Every bad decision that could be made, generally is.

At the end of it all, there are quite a number of things one can take away from the book: Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Life without purpose is pretty depressing. No amount of talent makes up for being a jerk. Narnia without Aslan is no better than any other place. Escapist fantasy this isn't — quite the opposite. I'm not sorry I visited this particular world, but I'm not going to be making a return trip.

The Children's Hour by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

2011-01-03T22:19:00.003-05:00

Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, o blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

First day of school

2010-11-13T22:49:00.006-05:00

See? I told you I was behind...

Fiona is off to first grade, and Aiden is off to preschool for the first time.

The traditional picture on the front porch, each in their favorite outfits.

Both schools are in easy walking distance.

I'm amazed that they bothered to put any vegetation in front of this sign before the first day. I assure you, we weren't the only people telling this particular story with cameras.

At the classroom door, it was very easy to see the difference between Fiona's and Aiden's personalities. Fiona got to the doorway, and froze:

Fiona's hesitation at the door was just long enough to capture this perfectly.

Then, she immediately started seeking structure: "Where's my desk? Where do I put my lunch? Where do I put my backpack? Where...." ...is a high, semi-panicky voice.

Mrs. Burgher was unfazed.

As we left, she was immersing herself in the experience as fast as she could.

Then, it was time to walk the two blocks to Aiden's preschool.

And then there were three. Plus Daddy's shadow.

We got to Aiden's classroom, and he walked right in. Right past the teacher. Right to the toys. Adjustment? What's there to adjust to?

Oh, this looks like fun...

Tomorrow, I'll be posting photos from their high school graduations. Hyperbole, yes, but then, consider: Fiona is seven. Somewhere between a third and a half of her time in our nest is already gone. Better enjoy it while it lasts!

Welcome back

2010-11-13T22:45:00.002-05:00

Yes, I know, it's been nearly a month. You can blame Facebook, blame my job, blame my kids, blame my wife, any number of things. Mostly, it boils down to not feeling like I had the free time to write. But tonight, Deborah is out having a "girls' night out," and the kids are in bed (if not necessarily sleeping...) so I'll see what i can do to correct that.

More than we'll ever need

2010-10-23T23:44:00.004-04:00

We did a new thing this year: we adopted some apple trees from a community apple orchard. We paid a small fee (about 20 apples' worth, if you're buying them at the store), did some pruning, and stepped back to let rain and shine do their thing.

In early Fall, we got the call that our apples were ready.

These are organic apples — not the waxed-up, pesticide-soaked supermodels that you'd find at the grocery store. Your first reaction might be that they weren't any good... but oh, they were, they were.

Deborah asked for a basket for her birthday, spcifically for harvesting things.

The kids enthusiastically picked the low-hanging fruit...

...while Risanna munched.

Pretty soon, the allure of a climbable tree plus the lack of low-hanging fruit led to the logical solution.

I lost count at 360 apples. The Zipper proved very handy, as not only could we move things around, but it could drive on the grass, and provided a handy place to climb on to get upper branches.

The apples needed to be cleaned up, but looked great with a little washing...

Beautiful apples.

They did need to be cut up to get the worm holes out. For all the apples we had, this took days.

After several hours of cooking and a trip trough a food mill, we ended up with more than 20 quarts of really good applesauce.

Grief on the Island

2010-09-18T23:45:00.002-04:00

I used to pass by it every morning on my way to work. A hammock, out at the end of the point. It was always up, summer, winter, spring and fall. A really lovely place to sit and watch a sunset, snuggle up. I never climbed into it myself (it's not mine, after all!) but I always appreciated the brilliance of the location and the view.

It's gone now.

Very late last night, the whole end of the Island was swarming with every kind of emergency vehicle, trying to extricate the two college students that had been laying in the hammock when the dead tree the hammock was connected to toppled over on top of them. The girl, Mallori Kastner, was pronounced dead at the scene. The guy, Jeremy Mohr, is apparently paralyzed from the neck down.

The hammock is gone. There's a growing pile of flowers there. The body of the tree is still there, half-rolled off into the water. And there are people, always people. I came across a group that I'm fairly certain included the girl's parents and siblings this afternoon, the mother talking about her daughter's hopes and dreams. I stayed out of the way.

What was I supposed to do?

It's so strange to be in the midst of grief. I came around the point yet again this evening, to find a silver minivan blocking the road, illuminating the wreath and flowers left there in the headlights. They quickly reversed and drove on, and I cursed myself for driving them off. I'd have gladly backed up and taken the other road, to let them sit and look. Rolling up next to them at the stoplight, I zipped down my window and apologized for running them off. They waved it off, but I could see in their eyes that they had other things on their minds. Sorry, silver-minivan-people-from-Illinois. I should let you grieve. My usual route wasn't that important.

What do you do when grief is so close by, but has nothing to do with you? My only connection is that I drive by that hammock every day, that I live just down the block, that I think I saw them snuggling under that tree over there, a few weeks ago, that I used to go to the same college... it's not a connection, really; who am I to intrude on their grief?

So why does it feel wrong to step back and do nothing?

Sapo Verde a Ti

2010-08-19T22:57:00.000-04:00

Hang around us long enough, and you will eventually be here for a birthday. And we Kerrs don't settle for a standard "Happy Birthday" ...we may very well wish you a green frog: Sapo verde to you!

This started when we lived in Costa Rica, where, inexplicably, people preferred to sing "Happy Birthday" in English, or as close to English as they could. (I've encountered this attitude in many places, but a Portuguese friend explained it most succinctly: "When we get to heaven, we will speak in Portuguese. But we will still sing in English." All the good songs are in English. Now you know.) If you're familiar with a Latin American accent, you can start to see how, with some enthusiasm and vague familiarity with the words, happy birthday can start to sound like sapo verde. Green frog to you!

* * *

So Aiden is five now. He spent most of the day jumping around with a five-kilowatt grin on his face, just absolutely delighted to be FIVE. I gave him one present at breakfast (which also seems to be more Kerr family tradition than anything else) and by the time I got home from work, Paul and Martha were also there.

There were presents; there was cake.

There was a fun game of catch in the backyard with Aiden's new foxtail ball.

Wait, where's that ball going?

There was a lot of questionable throwing technique.

There was giggling and laughing until certain birthday persons could no longer stand up.

Much of the rest of the weekend was spent reading the "funny cat book" (Martha gave Aiden a Garfield compendium) to Aiden and Fiona. I'd forgotten how much I'd latched on to that comic when I was about that age. I didn't get half of it, fresh off the plane from Costa Rica (What's this "lasagna" they keep talking about? Wait, it's pronounced how?) but it didn't take long for me to catch on. I'd also forgotten how much physical humor there is in it; the kids think it's hilarious. I guess I've forgotten what it's like to be a kid.

...a kid who understood sapo verde, but not lasagna.

Wonder what our kids will think is perfectly normal?

What Summer Tastes Like

2010-08-14T20:32:00.001-04:00

This is what summer tastes like to me: Zucchini spaghetti. Zucchini and tomatoes from our own garden. Sweet, slick onions. A dash or so of olive oil and parmesan. Ahhh.

A New Look

2010-08-10T23:26:00.004-04:00

So, yes. I had meant to sit down and write a new blog post tonight, while we sweltered here, and Deborah sewed, but the "customize your blog" button caught my eye, and... well, now I'm writing a post about how I didn't write a post.

What do you think of the new look?

UPDATE: OK, so the initial reaction to the shades-o'-blue scheme was rather underwhelming. I shall try again...

UPDATE 2: Can't please nobody. Back to the same-ol' same-old.

Green-Eyed Monster

2010-08-07T10:57:00.001-04:00

I don't know who this guy is, or what kind of plane it is, but he's out there, flying over Warsaw and Winona Lake just about every blue, sunny day, rolling, wheeling, diving, having a great time. He pulled off what sure sounded like a loop right over the backyard yesterday.

It makes me smile every time I see him up there. Frankly... I'm a bit jealous!

For BIG mistakes

2010-08-06T20:02:00.004-04:00

There is a story that has become legend in my family. One afternoon, almost 40 years ago, my sister was supposed to be taking a nap. She got out the crayons instead. She then proceeded to draw a mural on the wall, as high as she could reach, and as long as the bed was wide. (Ah, but she'd "stayed in bed," right?) Given that this was in a rented apartment, this was a problem. You can't just paint over crayon — it acts as a resist — it has to be removed. So my parents picked up an eraser, and for the next several weeks (perhaps even months) my sister would have to sit there, every day, working away at the crayon marks until they were all done.

I have seen this eraser. It's about four inches across, and about eight inches long, and aside from a very worn corner, what stands out most is the print on the side: FOR BIG MISTAKES.

* * *

I've been discovering crayon marks on the walls again. We've got the oldest of our young artists paper-trained, but Risanna has been taking an interest in the arts as well.

Yes, baby! PAPER! Paper is a good place to draw!

The marks on the walls and cabinets remain, though. So today, Deborah brought home an eraser...

Yep! Same thing, 35+ years later!

Isn't it great that such things can continue from generation to generation?

Update on Allan, Part II

2010-08-05T22:19:00.003-04:00

I just got off the phone with Carolyn (my mother-in-law; my mother is also named Carolyn; the poor kids are going to think "Carolyn" and "Grandma" are interchangeable) for an update on Allan. He got home from the hospital on Monday, and is on a slow, steady program to get his strength back. The stent he has in is apparently coated in a medicine that helps dissolve the plaque directly at the site. Nurses are visiting about twice a week to check in on him and work on his rehabilitation, and treadmill tests are scheduled about two weeks out.

Hurrah, he's home!

Update on Allan

2010-08-02T08:50:00.002-04:00

Since I last wrote here, Allan:

is off all medicines but one
no longer has the balloon pump, as his heart can beat on its own
is out of the ICU (Intensive Care Unit)
is pacing up and down the halls (for some reason, reading that made me think, "Yup, that's him." I can imagine a certain amount of muttering as he goes.)

The latest word is that should be going home tomorrow!

More late-night phone calls

2010-07-30T09:44:00.004-04:00

Deborah, Paul and I were sitting around, looking at stuff on the computer, when May called, sounding very flat and small. Allan (my father-in-law; Deborah's, Paul's, and May's father) was in the hospital with chest pains and apparent heart trouble. A little while later, another call came in: he'd had a heart attack, right there in the hospital — they had to revive him twice with the paddles — and was now having emergency surgery. Around midnight, the call went out that he was now out of surgery; they did a balloon angioplasty, put in a stent, and he has some sort of balloon pump to help his much-weakened heart.

And this from a guy who, all the years I've known him, ran everywhere he went, and whose lone vice was peanut butter ("peanut butter goes with anything.")

Please pray for him.

Sisters

2010-07-28T18:47:00.000-04:00

Deborah and May picked up some lovely Indian dresses at the flea market in Shipshewana, and, well, how often do I have the chance to work with two beautiful models?

Shipshewana

2010-07-28T18:32:00.003-04:00

We live, if not precisely in Amish country, very close to it. Just close enough that you don't do double-takes when you see beards and bonnets at Wal-Mart, far enough away that you still do single-takes.

Shipshewana is about an hour north of us on Route 5. Much of the Northern Indiana Amish and Mennonite communities center around Shipshewana. ("Wana" is apparently the important part of the name — it shows up everywhere: Wana Cyclery, Wana Coaches & Buggies, and according to one wag's handmade sign, Wana Beer.)

It's also a site for some amazingly diverse shopping, in the form of the Flea Market, which claims to be the largest in the Midwest (1050 stalls!), and is just as likely a source of Amish peanut butter (Mmmm....) as imported dresses from India. So, a Wednesday or so ago, we went to visit.

The road shoulders are extra-wide around here for a reason.

Our primary mission that day had been the flea market; Deborah and May concentrated on the clothes that you couldn't find anywhere else, and I kept my eye out for unusual equipment and used tools. Deborah and May certainly found what they were after, and I found some gems, too, like glass cutting bits and an army surplus booth that had insulated boots. I'll have to come back for those, but they look perfect for winter motorcycling.

Birds on the roof of the auction barn.

The old-timey goodness factor is in full effect... some of it done for the tourists, surely, much of it quite genuine.

Bicycles were in abundance. For some odd reason, at least half of them were recumbents — I probably saw more people reclining on their bikes in one day than all the years I lived in California.

Regular or premium for your horse today?

I got a good chuckle at the gas station, as bicycles and buggies lined up for gas — not for the horses, but for other equipment. The local Ordnung (community ordinances) doesn't allow cars, but chainsaws and generators are OK.

The advertising is pretty straightforward.

Yep... Neat Stuff!

Now Accepting New Theories

2010-07-22T18:08:00.003-04:00

I give up. I'm out of decent theories about how Mario Kart chooses the winner of a match.

I've got them rear-ended blues

2010-07-17T23:25:00.000-04:00

You'll just have to imagine the blues riffs in the background...

Well I had me a day
and I was driving home
down past the drive-in
the B & K., that's the one

Drivin' a gray car
on a gray rainy day
turnin' folks in front of me
Waitin' for my turn

Oh, I got them rear-ended blues
Guy named Lucky 13
Ran the red
and now I got the blues

Well, they sent me the Po-lice
and they sent me the medicos
Now they're sending me nice letters,
those attorneys-at-low

Well, the next day was awful
and the day after was bad
but I'm feeling better now
it's blues, but ain'cha glad?

Paramedic: Are you numb anywhere? Deborah: Yes! I just came from the dentist!

Oh, I got them rear-ended blues
Guy named Lucky 13
Ran the red
and now I got the blues

Well, I got me a mashed-up Fender
to play this trueful tune
'bout my mashed-up fender
gotta fix it soon

Well I'm still drivin'
down those lonely roads
But I feel sorry for ol' Lucky
he sure had a heavy load

Oh, I got them rear-ended blues
Guy named Lucky 13
Ran the red
and now I got the blues

So. Yeah. Deborah had a blues station playing when I sat down to write this post, and the inspiration was there, so I rolled with it. Should I — as Robert Frost famously put it — say it again in worse words?

Thanks to a doctor friend of ours who was coming to visit anyway, our medical bills thus far have amounted to $13 for an extra-large bottle of ibuprofen. The part that leaves me somewhat nonplussed is the response of (a) the insurance companies, plural — even my own insurance company is falling over themselves to help out, even though they're not on the hook for any of this — and; (b) the sudden influx of mail from personal-injury lawyers. I'm getting stuff from all over the state, and nearly all of them portray insurance companies as thieving scum that need to be battled. I am certain that (a) and (b) are related, but the exact mechanics and history of that relationship are beyond my scope at the moment. I don't plan to take any of this up with any lawyers. If nothing else, "Lucky" seems to have enough trouble in his life — if you're running red lights to try to pick up your kids from your ex-wife on time, your troubles may or may not be self-induced, but they're still problems.

On the whole, though it comes down to this: Deborah isn't hurt, other than a few days of stiffness and pain. The other guy walked away. Cars can be fixed or replaced; people can't. I'm glad it worked out the way it did.

Waiting for Dusk

2010-07-13T17:52:00.004-04:00

My Auspicious Career as an Author

2010-07-12T18:29:00.004-04:00

I got an email this afternoon informing me that a piece I wrote, Shush will be run on the Drabblecast later this week.

My first published story. All 100 words of it. No money (Even at the "good" rate of $0.03 per word, that's... $3), but still, I'm happy about it. One story submitted, one story accepted; that's a pretty good ratio.

They also asked for a bio. Something to read on the show to introduce the author.

A bio? About me? Golly. How do I sum up all the stuff I do, and still come out brief, interesting, and maybe even humble? (I have a lot to be humble about. Take that as you will.) All I knew was that I didn't want to end it, as so many authors do, by telling people that they live in "X" town with a wife and three cats. Clichés aside, I'd need two more cats.

Here's what I came up with:

By day, Andy pushes pixels and corrals commas as a graphic artist and webmaster for Eisenbrauns, an academic publisher specializing in the ancient Near East. Drabblecast listeners may remember Andy and/or Eisenbrauns from Drabblecast #109, with the Babylon Battle of the Bands Bbardle. Or... you might not—go give it a listen. It's a great story, and an awesome song.
By night, Andy is a husband and father, with three children under the age of seven, and says that treehouses are worth every penny and drop of sweat you put into them.
Andy's other published works include You Know You're an MK When..., a book he co-wrote and published with his then-girlfriend (now wife) about the idiosyncracies of life as the children of missionaries. Between the two of them, they've lived in five different countries, but call Winona Lake, Indiana, "home" ...for now.

Did I succeed? Dunno. You tell me.

It's a Tree! It's a House! It's a... Treehouse!

2010-07-07T15:25:00.001-04:00

July 5, 2010. No, it's not, as rumored, the date Doc and Marty go forward to in Back to the Future II (That'd be October 21, 2015; we still have a few years to find out if we get hoverboards.) Around here, July 5, 2010 was Treehouse Day.

It was one of those ideas that was ready to happen. When Paul asked me my plans for the day off, I admitted the only thing I'd thought of was that it might be a good day to build the treehouse. Turns out that he was calling to suggest the same thing. I've been making plans and accumulating pieces for several years, but everything came together this time.

One of the remarkable things about this project was how little I spent on it. On the actual building day, my total came to $8.05, which included four medium-sized bolts and a chocolate bar I bought to appease Deborah. Nearly everything else was provided by one means or another: old shipping pallets from work, extra 2x4s from other projects, the ladder I'd built for our bed when Deborah was pregnant, and — perhaps most amazing of all — an entire pier's worth of heavy-duty treated lumber that washed ashore during the big flood of '09 which no one would claim, and no one would take away. We're talking twelve-foot 2x10s. The kids' wagon got a real workout that day, bringing that back. It's been sitting under my carport for more than a year, ready and waiting.

Laying out the pieces.

I've been planning this treehouse for a very long time, but when it came down to it, the pieces and the tree itself all pointed to something very different. I knew the general principles of how I wanted to build it, but the specifics suggested themselves as I went along: the width of the pallets, the angle of the branches, the height of the ladder, the amount of good wood on this board. The design I ended up with was much simpler than what I'd set out to create, but left plenty of room for expansion.

Good help is invaluable with a project like this.

I had the morning to myself, oddly enough — observed holiday or not, the kids still had swimming lessons, piano lessons, lunch, and nap time, which meant I had a chance to work on it without interruption until early evening. This was excellent, especially since the early stages involved a lot of shifting pieces around and staring off into the distance as I contemplated how things would work together! Paul showed up in the early afternoon, and that made things go much more smoothly. He confirmed my math, helped me thread pallets onto 2x4s, braced boards, measured, and asked his usual insightful questions.

When there's only one of you, you have to get a bit creative if you want to hold a board in place and screw it on. I wound up using a lot of clamps and straps until Paul showed up and lent me a hand.

A good treehouse design takes into account the fact that you are not just building a house, you are building it with a tree — a beautiful, amazing, living thing. Trees grow, and sway in the wind. They get sick if not cared for. They don't appreciate having their circulation cut off any more than you do. When it came down to it, I used the absolute minimum attachment points I could — three — made them rock-solid, and made them so that they could move and grow with the tree.

I used spacing blocks and a flexible design to leave the tree room to grow. I removed the blocks, and I can also back the bolt out later as the tree grows.

I blanched when it came to actually putting the bolts into the tree (these weren't tiny nail-holes!) but all the research I'd done said that this was the best way to maintain both the strength of the tree and the treehouse. I felt awful drilling into the solid walnut (a poem on the experience is here) but the tree had already started to heal by the time I ratcheted each bolt into place. You have to work quickly with healthy trees, as they start sealing themselves around the intrusion right away!

Implements of construction. I wish I'd stuck something in here for size reference; the bolts are about as thick as my fingers (and I have thick fingers!) and weigh nearly a pound each.

Getting everything to work together was an interesting challenge — I didn't have a good reference point to measure from, the terrain sloped a bit, and the trapezoidal frame was playing tricks with my eyes. I finally had to use my level at both ends of the main boards, and across the diagonals, until everything read out as level... and then hoped that nothing shifted while I was drilling the holes for the bolts!

Squaring things up. Golly, it doesn't look right at all...

...but the level says it's right on, all the way around. Trust your tools, trust your tools.

If Daddy can't play on it, can't nobody play on it. That's not selfishness, that's safety! Even with the temporary uprights held on by clamps, the cross-beams support me quite nicely. I jumped up and down on this thing before I let the kids come up!

Perhaps my proudest moment came when I finally had all the uprights in place. Paul and I had both done the math, and came up with the same answer as to where to cut the boards, but I was still apprehensive that we had left some value out of our calculations.... nope. Perfectly level. For someone who struggles with math as much as I do, this was a victory.

Putting on the finishing touches. The upper railing/table/bench came pre-carpeted — originally to protect a boat, but now to protect little ones.

I was screwing down the final boards when the kids came out, still a bit bleary-eyed from their naps, and bemused by the transformation that had happened in the back yard since they had last seen it. They climbed aboard in awe and wonder.

All this happened while we were napping?

OK, we'll let mommy up, too.

Paul had anticipated Treehouse Day well in advance, and had a present for the occasion waiting in his car. What does a tree fort lookout need? Why, a pair of binoculars, of course!

Close your eyes and hold out your hands....

I see you!
(This is my favorite picture of the day. Love the lighting and the expressions.)

The rest of the evening was clean-up. I still need to seal and stain some of the boards, but I'm not terribly worried about it. The nice thing about how I made it is that all the supports are treated wood; the flooring is completely (and easily) replaceable with a new set of pallets.

All this, and friends, too! Ava, from two doors down, became the first guest in the new treehouse.

So this is Stage I. There's more in the works — we need a pulley and basket, some windows, a hose-phone, and there's still that large crate lurking on my trailer, underneath a tarp, promising all kinds of potential. For now, though, it feels wonderful to have this up, and to hear the kids' excited voices. It makes so much work so very much worthwhile!

Denizens of the Not-So-Deep

2010-06-27T17:46:00.007-04:00

I only went into the store for fish food. Really. But Aiden and I saw this little guy in one of the tanks, we and didn't resist.

The Hammers cobalt blue lobster is technically a crayfish. Non-technically, they're also a lot of fun.

I don't think I've ever seen the kids so excited abut anything in the fishtank before. Fiona draws pictures of it. Aiden points it out to anyone who comes in the door. The location and migrations of the lobster are announced regularly throughout the day.

We did have a bit of an adventure with him about a week after we got him — Deborah found some blue shell pieces in the tank, and briefly worried that he had died, but it turns out that he had just molted, and was hiding out in one of the decorative hollow bricks I keep in the tank. Thing is, he got in when his shell was soft. And while he was in there, his shell hardened.... and out was not an option. After more than a day, and much coaxing, it was evident that he wasn't going to get out on his own. So, very gently, I took the brick he was in, and a hammer, and started tapping gently and persistently. You can tell when a piece of ceramic is broken by listening to the sound change: click, click, click, click, thunk! Once I heard that, I gently pulled apart on the brick, and it came apart in two neat halves, freeing the lobster. Remarkably, the brick went back together, minus a crossbar, and is a cozy hidey-hole for the lobster once again. And he can get out of it now, too!

Click, click, click... again.

2010-06-26T23:55:00.000-04:00

We gather here on this august occasion (but it's still June!) to mourn the passing of Canon Powershot A95. A95 lived a good long life as far as cheap digital cameras go, taking tens of thousands of pictures, yet succumbed to congestive CCD failure in the end, just like its elder brother, A70. Bought used at the beginning of 2008, A95 served faithfully up until the very end, when it started consistently producing images like this one:

My cute stripedy little girls...

A95 was preceded in death by A70 and a nameless $20 camera from Radio Shack. It is survived, oddly enough, by just about every film camera I've ever owned.

* * *

So I'm camera shopping again.

During the outage, I reached, once again, for my 25-year-old Pentax SLR. I keep forgetting how much I really like this camera — I'd gotten so used to the almost infinite depth of field provided by ultra-short focal length digitals, and have been pleasantly surprised to discover selective blurring and soft focus once again. There's even something to be said for the stumpy little 50mm lens — if you want to zoom out, start running. If you want to get closer, get closer. It's hard to argue with the quality of the photos it takes:

...and yet, in just three days, I spent a quarter of the cost of a new camera on processing alone. That's not including the film! It's just not a sustainable habit for me. I take too many pictures.

Deborah has been agitating for me to get a new camera sooner than later, so I finally caved and got her what she wanted: a Nikon L22, very similar to the L20 I gave Paul for Christmas. (She wanted hers in lime green, though. 'Twasn't an option.) And, I made an interesting distinction: This was to be her camera. I'll use it in the meantime, too (even though the lack of manual overrides drives me crazy) but it's a stopgap until I get something that suits me and my abilities.

Yikes!

2010-06-18T22:27:00.005-04:00

Back when I lived in California, and Spain, and Germany, I used to read books where characters stood around, talking about the weather. I thought this was exceedingly odd behavior, but now that I live in the Midwest, I understand completely.

Now, it's a regular staple of conversation: "Well, the weather radio said we were under a severe thunderstorm watch, but it sure doesn't look like it now, does it?" "Yeah, I wish the storm would show up and cool us off..."

Beware of what you wish for.

The storm blew in as we were sitting down to supper, and it blew in hard. The sky got darker and darker, and then the winds picked up dramatically. I heard a swish and a thump among the sounds of trees roaring in the wind.

Fiona was very concerned that all manner of things would blow away, including the decorative wind sock (with good reason; I fished it out of the mulberry tree...) to her bicycle (which I thought much less likely, but I humored her anyway.) When I was taking her bike around to the shed, I saw this:

Er, yeah. That's a good chunk of our northeast tree, broken off from about 30 feet up, and mashed right through my neighbor's porch. Amazingly, no one was hurt (various people had gotten inside just 30 seconds earlier) and the branch missed the main part of the house. I'd have trouble getting my arms around that branch.

Chris and Ryan plotting on how to make the front door usable again.

Well, at least the roots held...

Down the block, there were more limbs, and even an entire tree down. This one split about 25 feet up — that was not a small tree.

No one was hurt, that we know about... and we've got plenty to talk about now.

Matchey-matchey

2010-06-16T00:05:00.002-04:00

The annual Spring Art Fair came to town, and Deborah availed herself of the opportunity to get the girls some handmade dresses. Aren't they cute together?

I have a strange, sudden desire for watermelon....

Thirteen

2010-06-11T17:31:00.002-04:00

Our thirteenth anniversary was on Monday. (We actually have two anniversaries: May 27th, when we got legally married here in the States, and June 7th, when we had the wedding down in Ecuador — but the first also corresponds to Deborah's birthday, so we tend to celebrate the second date as our anniversary.)

So, how do you celebrate thirteen years? By going out and doing all the unlucky things you can think of!

We opened umbrellas indoors.

We didn't actually break this mirror; it came broken with the house. Does that imbue bad luck onto the old owners, or us? Either way, the seven years have worn off by now....

We spilled some salt...

LOTS of salt...

....and threw some over our shoulders.

We stepped on cracks (sorry, Mom!)

We picked up coins — thirteen cents! — that were tail-side-up (Have you heard of this? This is a new one on me.)

Walked under ladders...

...and laughed at the gods. Or something above us, anyway.

We had an orange cat cross our path...

...but that probably wasn't unlucky enough, so we drove around in the Zipper, looking for black cats, but didn't find any. So we settled for a shot at 13th street.

So, we had plenty of fun, and no resultant bad luck.*

Thirteen years? Luck has nothing to do with it!

*Admittedly, we did have one spot of bad luck that evening: unbeknownst to us, Fiona and Aiden were playing with the branch trimmers: Aiden holding twigs, and Fiona working the clippers. Aiden lost a bit of his thumb and got a trip to the emergency room out of the deal. Luckily, Paul was here and could watch the other kids while we took him, and his thumb is healing up nicely. Besides, this all happened before we started doing unlucky things.

The View from behind the Pulpit

2010-06-01T22:19:00.000-04:00

You don't often see me in church. Oh, I'm there often enough — you just don't see me. Half the time, I'm closeted away in the A/V room, running lights, camera, and various bits of recording equipment. It's not a job for those seeking glamor an attention, and that suits me just fine. Running A/V equipment is a lot like typesetting — people really only notice if you mess it up. Do it right, and you're invisible; people notice what you're there to make look good.

I'd reckon that less than half of the church even knows that there's a small room off to the left of the stage. Most of the time, the only evidence that there's anything there are the two one-way windows set into the wall. Those little windows are my eyes to the world. If Katie is scheduled to play an offertory, and I don't know who Katie is, or what instrument she plays, I can peek out to see if someone is sitting at the piano, is on-stage, or hiding off in the wings with a violin tucked under her chin.

Working back there has given me a slightly different perspective on church services. Some of the common elements of a service have spiritual significance; plenty more are there just to keep things running smoothly. I've been in churches where the pastor acted as MC, calling people forward to do their things. The place we've been going for the last 12 years has an Order of Service — half-sheets of paper given out to everyone who'll be participating. When it's your turn, you go up and do what you're going to do. It also let me know if I need to dim the lights, lower the screen, or pan the camera over to a different part of the stage. One church I used to attend always asked the congregation to stand and sing as the offering plate was being passed, partly, I think, to make it easier to get wallets out of pants pockets. It might be tempting to see it all as a performance, but as often as I see it that way, I see times when what happens diverges from what's on my OoS, and it's definitely something wonderful that We didn't put together, and We needed to hear, or see.

How do you participate in corporate worship if you're not sitting amongst the body? I probably sound faintly ridiculous, singing along with my headphones on, the music pulsing softly through the walls. I find it's just as easy to contemplate the sermon while lying on the floor as it is to do it in a pew. As I burn the DVDs for the shut-ins that can't make it to church, I wonder what they do. Do they sing along, too? Do they fast-forward the announcements, or do they want to know what's going on in church? Do they take notes on the sermon, or just listen to it while they wash dishes?

What does church look like when no one knows you're there?

The House Is Still Standing

2010-05-17T14:29:00.003-04:00

It's Day 3 of "Andy Stays Home with the Kids." For all my joking that I'm slowly coming unglued, I'm really not. I'm even enjoying it.

On Saturday, we dropped Deborah off at the airport, and, after asking around, learned of a mini-parking lot at the end of the runway where we could watch the airplanes take off and land. Fort Wayne International (what, they have one flight a week from Canada?) isn't the busiest airport, so we just got to see Deborah's plane leave.

Sunday, we made it to church, and I did my stint in the recording booth. Apparently someone explained our situation in Sunday school, because lots of people were going out of their way to stop, say hi, and see how it was going.

Today, I got everyone up and dressed (I remembered the Risanna's shoes this time!) and got the whole crew over to the piano teacher's house for an early lesson. The lesson was a new experience for me; Mrs Popenfoose took the time to explain what I should be watching for as Fiona practices. Fiona's doing really well. Obviously she gets her musical talent from Deborah!

So far, things are going smoothly. Sure, the baby is sick, and won't eat or drink much — especially frustrating, given that I put twice as much work into her food — but we're dealing with it OK, I think. Every bite is a victory. I'm not sure I can say the same for the rest of our meals. I can cook; I can cook well; it's just obviously not a part of my everyday routine. So far, I've only succumbed to the "make it quick" temptation twice — frozen pizza and mac 'n' cheese — but at least I added some tuna, tomatoes, and chives to the macaroni, which turns it into something edible, rather than just a glaringly orange heap of cheap carbohydrates. Tonight, I'm going to strive for some real food. Gallo pinto, perhaps.

I'm learning to combine trips wherever possible. I'm not going to bundle everyone into the car for a trip to the local Redbox (ice cream floats and a movie have been the norm once the kids are in bed) but I do make a note that it can be combined with a trip to the library, or somesuch. A lot more planning ahead than I'm used to.

Lastly, I think I've been hard on single parents. Raising kids alone isn't an easy thing, and up until yesterday, I would have characterized it as, if not a selfish choice, then at the very least an uninformed one. Then, as I was strolling across the parking lot at Lowe's, I realized: It must have been really bad, if this was the better choice. For all of you saying "Duh!" right now, I'm sorry. I'll walk a mile in your shoes, but my feet stink, OK?

That's all for now. I'm going to go hunt down some recipes...

Early Morning Phone calls

2010-05-13T17:43:00.001-04:00

6 a.m. phone calls are rarely good news. When you've been expecting it, it's really only necessary for the phone to ring for you to know what's happened. I was up already, feeding a grumpy Risanna when the call came through that Grandma Renaud had died.

The second call came in at 8:30, just after I'd finished passing the news along to Deborah—sleep is precious in this house; you don't wake anyone unless you have to. We now had a date and time for the funeral, and all the "what if" conversations we'd been having over the last few days swung into action.

By late afternoon, I'd dropped two weeks' pay on plane tickets for Deborah to fly up to New Hampshire. Paul would be driving up, and picking up May and her belongings on the way. (In this sense, the timing was perfect: May just finished her 2-year term at YWAM, and would have needed to pack up and return home then anyway.)

It feels good to be doing something, to have a plan in place. I'm still working out what I'm going to be doing Saturday through Tuesday, given that I'll be home with the kids, and, in the absence of the usual kid-watchers, unable to work. There's still things like Fiona's school, choir practice, and piano lessons, but the rest of the time is wide-open, which means that I'll be going nuts unless I figure out a plan, both for the daytime, and when I'm the lone conscious soul in the house. Anyone with kids in the Warsaw area up for a play date? Anyone want to come over for a game night or a movie after the kids are in bed? The more the merrier....

* * *

My little bit of whining here also makes me realize how much I respect I have for the grandmother Deborah whose funeral Deborah is going to. An orphan since a very young age, a widow for some fifty years, she still managed to raise five kids. In her 80s, she was the go-to person in her area if you wanted a nanny to take care of triplets and quadruplets. Sheesh, what kind of wuss am I, to dread a whole weekend unsupported?

95 Years is a Good Long Time

2010-05-08T18:45:00.008-04:00

Great Grammy: Alice Renaud, with Fiona and Aiden in December 2007.

My grandmother-in-law is in the hospital, and the relatives are starting to gather at my in-law's house in New Hampshire. It doesn't look like she's going to be repeating her role in the town parade in June as the town's oldest living citizen.

It's strange to be standing around, talking with Deborah about plans for when she's gone. Who would go, who would stay, who would drive, or fly, and with whom.

There's a lot going through my head right now. Little of it lends itself to words.

Screeeee...Crash! ...yum, yum, yum.

2010-05-07T14:48:00.000-04:00

One of our favorite daily reads around here is Cake Wrecks ("When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.") Deborah is so much a fan that, while her mother (being an erstwhile pro cake decorator herself) was here, they made a Cake Wreck of their own.

We think the pink cake was at fault.

I've heard of fender-benders, but fondant-benders?

Actually, it wasn't just Deborah and her mother; most of us, including Paul, got into the act, staying up well past midnight. It was fun. (My contribution? I used my mad color-matching skilzz to turn what threatened to be an orange-and-pink cake into a pink-and-dark-pink cake, and then also matched the fondant to that same color. Oh, and I twirled some fondant strips around pencils.)

The police cake has yet to arrive on the scene. Think the insurance cake will cover us?

* * *

Often lampooned on Cake Wrecks is the subject of spelling. (How many ways ARE there of mis-spelling "Birthday"? You'd be amazed.) Fortunately, they don't take the over-used Grammar Nazi approach, but try to be funny, instead. (I define "Grammar Nazi" as anyone who would rather correct your wording than respond to the substance of what you've said. I've known many.)

But what do you do when you know you're writing for someone whose grammar skills vastly outstrip your own? What if your intended recipient is a renowned editrix and and proofreader for an academic publisher? Well, if you're my friend/co-worker Amy, you get a cake with three deliberate mistakes...

...and a tube of red frosting to make corrections:

Amy found nine!

(You can read the full thing over here. Thanks for sharing the photos, Amy!)

The best part of these "wrecks," though, is this: No matter how it was decorated, you get to eat the evidence. Yum!

Uncommon Talents

2010-05-04T14:52:00.000-04:00

I was doling out snacks one afternoon, and I started reading the recipe on this box of crackers:

Most of us, I think, can divide things in half, or in quarters, without too much difficulty. Many of us can do thirds and sixths. But this is the first time I've ever seen directions calling for eighteen equal pieces. I worked out a way to do it, but it took me a minute or two. Good thing they didn't call for 29 equal sections...

The Whole Tooth, and Nothing But the Tooth

2010-05-03T14:25:00.002-04:00

Fiona, with one front tooth:

See? It's loose!

Fiona, with no front teeth:

I think it swallowed.

Fiona, with... hey, wait a minute....

OK, I couldn't resist. (Not that I tried...) These are actually marshmallow bunny teeth that the kids got in an Easter basket.

What's the going rate for the Tooth Fairy these days?

Hello again

2010-05-02T23:39:00.003-04:00

Long time no post, eh? Truth is that this is very much a photo-driven blog; if I haven't taken a picture of it, chances are, I won't remember to write about it. I only finally got the last of my March pictures off the camera a few days ago; I'm downloading today's as I write — only a hundred or so to go. (Yeah, I took 113 pictures today alone. Back when I used film, this was an expensive proposition!)

So: More soon. I'm catching up!

Unbeatable?

2010-04-10T14:18:00.001-04:00

I guess I'll have to fry or boil them, then.

Race Day

2010-04-04T22:17:00.001-04:00

You'd have thought it was Christmas, the way the kids were bouncing out of their skins the night before. Fiona wanted to race, and (more importantly!) get her car back after having turned it in on Wednesday. Aiden was just jazzed about the whole thing in general. Cars and racing? What could possibly be better?

Can you imagine what his face is going to look like when he actually gets to build a car of his own and race it?

The setup was impressive: a four-lane aluminum track on loan from a local cub scout troop. From the top of the release gate to the finish line was some 60 feet, and there were another 30 feet after that to let the cars coast to a stop — and a padded back wall for the cars that were still going strong after that! It took up most of the gym.

Optical triggers kept track of times down to one ten-thousandth of a second.

There was a lot of emphasis on fairness, even at the expense of excitement. Once the cars had been seeded on the bracket in a single-pass time trial, sets of three cars were raced, three times, alternating tracks in case one lane was faster than the others. Best average time advanced to the next round.

I got a kick out of the way each car was announced. I hadn't realized each car needed a name; Fiona named ours on the spot at check-in. To my great delight, Mr. Sibert drew out "Zooom!" as he announced ours. Some cars were "built by" and some were "owned by" which may have been a commentary on how much work a parent had put into a car, but I think it was just a slip of the tongue.

Time trials for seeding on the bracket. 4.5771 seconds was our official time.

This was one place were I thought a computer could have helped out immensely — sorting times for 35 cars? A spreadsheet can do that in a snap. Averaging times for three different passes? Instantaneous. Instead, they had someone at a table, scribbling like mad. Rather than make everyone wait, they had a brief intermission.

While they tabulated the time trial results, they had Matchbox races for the younger kids, including a large tub of cars for anyone who hadn't brought their own.

The bracket seeded, everyone reconvened — no small task for 50 adults and equal number of small children. After a short presentation, it was race time.

My friend Jeff Strietzel gave a nice presentation of the Gospel using the "wordless book" made out of race flags.

Fiona's bracket was one of the first to race. She hopped down into her spot to watch.

Racers get to be front-and-center when their car races.

How'd we do, speed-wise? A LOT better than I thought we would, actually. WAY better. Wanna know my secret? I'll tell you. Gather 'round. Shhhhh. I'm going to share with you my number one speed tip for Pine Car Derbies. This is very important:

Don't super-glue the wheels to the car.

Yeah. You wouldn't have thought of that, would you? It makes a huge difference, I can tell you.

OK, in all fairness, I thought I was only gluing the axles to the car, but the glue flowed and dripped down into the wheels when I wasn't watching. I discovered the problem about midnight the evening before we were supposed to turn the cars in, and it took me until 2 a.m. to free the wheels and find suitable replacements for the hubcaps I'd lost in the process. It occurred to me sometime while I was doing speed runs with the car on the belt sander that it was a good thing I hadn't waited until the following afternoon, as I'd originally planned.

The results were still predictable, though:

(Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlqqm4ktq10)

Yeah. Third slowest overall. The only two that were slower got encouraging taps from the judge so that they'd actually make it to the finish line.

Our poor Corvette limped over the line, in several cases parking right on it.

But all was not lost; there were still other categories besides overall speed. I smiled encouragingly at Fiona when they called out her name among a dozen others to come to the front.

To my surprise, we didn't place at all for "Best Replica." That had been the category I had been working towards in my mind. Several people later told me that almost none of the fathers agree with the judging in this category — last year, apparently, a perfect model of a Shelby Cobra (it was amazing; I saw it) was passed over in favor of a rough-hewn pickup truck. People were indignant on our behalf, which I found amusing.

The next category up was "Best in Show" which they explained as being for craftsmanship. And, in third place... Fiona Kerr!

Fiona enjoyed the novelty of being on the podium by herself, if only until they called the second-place winner.

Ta-dah!

I was proud of Fiona for her design and painting work, and we all had a very good time. Maybe next year, we'll compete for speed, too!

The Starting Block

2010-03-28T18:03:00.012-04:00

Back in college, I was given a large block of balsa wood as a birthday present. I couldn't decide what to carve out out it, so I made a little sign that said "Potential" and set it on my desk where I could see it. I think the reminder did more for getting me through my classes than anything I could have made out of it.

In a Pine Car Derby, everyone gets either a wedge or a block of pine. You have to use it in your car; you can't substitute another piece of wood. You can add to it, you can subtract from it, but you have to use the block that came in your kit.

I put a fair amount of effort and creativity into Fiona's car, so it was a real treat to get to race day. A big part of the fun is getting to see what everyone else came up with. Given that everyone starts with virtually the same block of wood, the creativity is amazing.

Moooooooo. Come to think of it, this isn't all that unusual. I've seen a local limo with this theme, complete with fiberglass cow on top...

Wiiiiiiiiiii!

If it looks like that front wheel is floating in the air — it is. Having only three wheels on the track is apparently a common speed trick, and this fire engine definitely was speedy. Hmmm. Three wheels. I'm envisioning a motorcycle with sidecar for next year....

This is the car that won the races. The wheels are the standard wheels that come with the kit, but they've been turned on a lathe to get the lenticular shape, and polished with a molybdenum-graphite blend, which gives it a characteristic silver color.

Did I mention this was at church? In addition to the Golden Rule here, there was an entry named, "Faith, Hope, and Praise" which somehow reminds me of the buses in Latin America with Bible verses painted all over them.

One other observation on this golden rule(r): with weight placement being so crucial, it helps to have a design that has an obvious front and rear. Several such designs got run both ways down the track by unaware officials.

Coooool. I think the "engines" here are actually bullet tips. Weight and style!

Cheese Whiz!

Fast food. This meals-on-wheels entry got one of the top honors in the "Originality" category. It was fast, too!

Next up: Let's Go Racing!

Progression in Pine (Or, What I've been doing instead of blogging for the last two weeks)

2010-03-26T14:23:00.011-04:00

Fiona's first-ever Pine Car Derby is tomorrow. That fact sunk in rather forcefully about two weeks ago — I have to build her car! So I went and retrieved the kit I had out in the shed: 1 block of pine, 2 axles, 4 wheels, 5 hubcaps, 1 sheet of vague instructions.

I've heard about dads who go all out with their kids' cars, and so I was very conscious about this being a Fiona-directed operation. I'm not quite comfortable turning her loose with a bandsaw just yet, so the heavy cutting and shaping stayed with me this year. But I still had to make what she wanted.

A: So, Fiona, what kind of car do you want?

F: A RACE car! I want it black, with yellow and orange and red flames all along it and a big gold number 6 on the sides and a big gold 6 on the back.

Okeydokey. A race car could mean just about any number of shapes, so I pulled up a keyboard and ran a few pictures past Fiona. This one was "cool!":

A '69 Corvette convertible. Riiiight. No pressure. 2 weeks...

You have to use the block that comes in the kit. The axle slots are in fixed spots, and the wheel s sit outside the block, so we needed to add more wood to get the right look.

The center block is what comes with the kit. I took advantage of the fact that I had to add to the sides by cutting out the shape of the seats now, rather than having to dig out the wood when the sides would be in the way.

Now, we need to shape the sides...

Fiona got her first experience with spray paint by putting on the primer.

A bit more shaping, a few more details, a little less finger. Ow.

A fresh coat of white primer, some blue painter's tape, and an X-acto knife.

A tricky transfer...

I almost stopped right here, because I thought this looked so cool. But I reminded myself that it's Not My Car, and went ahead to the next step...

...a nice coat of black metalflake paint. Once again, I was SO tempted to stop right there. It had such a nice "batmobile" vibe.

The masking tape made ghost flames. Cooooooool. But, it's Not My Car, so the tape had to come off.

Ready for the final details.

I coached Fiona on painting smooth edges and blending colors.

Purple seats? Well, OK.

I snuck in a few details, and fashioned a windshield out of a Juicy Juice bottle.

Fiona did a great job with those flames.

The finished product!

Tomorrow... race day!

Because I Can't

2010-03-25T23:55:00.001-04:00

Music is not one of my talents. Yes, this might seem odd coming from a guy who has five guitars, but it's largely true: I have very little talent for music. I've got a tin ear, can't read music to save my life, and Deborah has been so baffled by my sense of rhythm over the years that she doesn't even comment on it anymore.

So why am I doing this?

I publicly committed myself to playing an offertory with Paul. Why? Because cello and bass sound so cool together? Yes, but also, because it's the only way I'll get better.

I'm not normally one to sit down and practice every day, just for the sake of practice itself. I need a reason. I am told that mountain climbers will occasionally put themselves into positions where the only way they can go is up. "When the only way you can go is up," I read, "you jolly well go up."

Same deal: I volunteer for public performances precisely because I'm bad at it. It might take me a month, I might have to painstakingly figure out each note, and practice until my fingers bleed, but I will get it. I will play.

And, in the end, play I did.

I forgot to bring the camera to record our final performance together, which in many respects is just as well. The fact that I made it through a difficult piece (well, an easy piece I'd made difficult by trying to play two parts at once!) will have to be the reward — learning, stretching, climbing that mountain, not because it's there, not because I can — but because I can't.

Cookie Love

2010-03-10T21:14:00.002-05:00

We were still working through our stash of Halloween candy when Deborah bought candy canes for Christmas. I groaned: We're given enough sweets, and we go through them so slowly, that I figured I'd be finding dessicated, sticky canes at the bottom of the candy bowl next Halloween. I was still occasionally pointing this out around Valentine's day when Deborah told me she had plans for those candy canes.

Well. I can complain no longer.

Deborah sealed the candy canes in bags, and let the kids go at them with hammers. Then, she took her already-excellent dark chocolate cookies — the ones that burn delightfully with unexpected cayenne, and instead of decorating them in the usual way, mixed the candy cane fragments into frosting, and made sandwich cookies together with the kids.

Did I say I complained? Let me go back and strike out all mention of my complaining. Deborah can buy all the candy canes she wants at Christmas. These were good. Dangerously good.

Fiona made this one especially for me. I melted.

It got me thinking about the nature of love, as well. The more I looked at this cookie, the more I realized how much had gone into it. How many analogies for love could I find in this one cookie?

I came up with a bunch: Love is ...generous and overflowing; dark, and surprising (particularly when red pepper is mixed in!); drawn from the past, and applied to the present; giving good things despite whining... but in the end, I kept coming back to one that defined it all:

Love is inexpertly applied, with great enthusiasm.

Wait, I thought I had seven more years...

2010-03-06T11:10:00.000-05:00

...but Fiona seems ready to be a teenager already:

OK, so the 'do was for "Crazy Hair Night" at church, but the expression wasn't prompted!

That's How We Roll

2010-03-05T15:24:00.003-05:00

As I found them

2010-02-28T14:15:00.000-05:00

Often, as I'm walking through the house, I'll come across something the kids have been playing with, and have left to go do something else. Most of the time, the kids aren't there to explain what it was, so one just has to wonder what they were playing when they made these creations...

I can't help but wonder... is he breathing fire? Is it a speech bubble, and he's warning the other dinosaurs about the coming comet?

I'm not sure about this one, either, but I'm sure it would make a pretty good children's story.

Fiona wants to know....

2010-02-27T08:56:00.003-05:00

...what this symbol means:

She found it on the lid to a jar of applesauce. She said I could look it up on the internet (the source of all answers, obviously!) but I haven't had any luck so far. Maybe you know?

Being Amazing

2010-02-23T18:10:00.000-05:00

Deborah and I watched Julie & Julia the other night. If you haven't seen it, do: It's a very sweet, funny movie, and very well worth your time. For those who haven't seen it, it's the parallel stories of a bored diplomat's wife in Paris (Julia Child) who learns French cooking as something to keep her occupied, and a frustrated writer/government secretary (Julie Powell) who decides to work through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, and blog about the process.

In both lives, separated by many decades, there's the question, What should I do with myself? and the relatively straightforward answer, What do you want to do? What are you good at? Each attacks the challenge with gusto.

It's a question that hits close to home, for nearly everyone, but also here. Deborah, especially, has been vacillating on the question of what to do with herself. My weak admonition — usually on my way out the door — is "Be amazing."

Of course, that gets interpreted in various ways. I leave it open-ended: washing all the dishes is amazing; so is calling up friends to organize a get-together, trying new recipes, teaching Fiona to play the piano. They all count. The stuff that doesn't count? It's the stuff that fills up most of our time in between planned activities — little games, Facebook, idle clicking through channels, blogging (no!), things that don't advance the cause of anything. Now, don't get me wrong — we all need down time. But we need up time, too. How many of us while away the hours and never go do something amazing? I know I'm guilty.

Be amazing.

I wish it were that easy.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
Ecclesiastes 9:10

Wild Irises

2010-02-09T18:04:00.002-05:00

Love should grow up like a wild iris in the fields,
unexpected, after a terrible storm, opening a purple
mouth to the rain, with not a thought to the future,
ignorant of the grass and the graveyard of leaves
around, forgetting its own beginning.
Love should grow like a wild iris
but does not.

Love more often is to be found in kitchens at the dinner hour,
tired out and hungry, lingers over tables in houses where
the walls record movements, while the cook is probably angry,
and the ingredients of the meal are budgeted, while
a child cries feed me now and her mother not quite
hysterical says over and over, wait just a bit, just a bit,
love should grow up in the fields like a wild iris
but never does
really startle anyone, was to be expected, was to be
predicted, is almost absurd, goes on from day to day, not quite
blindly, gets taken to the cleaners every fall, sings old
songs over and over, and falls on the same piece of rug that
never gets tacked down, gives up, wants to hide, is not
brave, knows too much, is not like an
iris growing wild but more like
staring into space
in the street
not quite sure
which door it was, annoyed about the sidewalk being
slippery, trying all the doors, thinking
if love wished the world to be well, it would be well.

Love should
grow up like a wild iris, but doesn't, it comes from
the midst of everything else, sees like the iris
of an eye, when the light is right,
feels in blindness and when there is nothing else is
tender, blinks, and opens
face up to the skies.

— Susan Griffin

I, Spooner

2010-01-26T21:07:00.006-05:00

Every now and then, it's my job to tell you something odd and interesting about myself. So, today, I tell you this: I love Spoonerisms.

Spoonerisms (so named for Reverend William Archibald Spooner, 1844–1930, who exemplified the quirk) occur when one transposes the initial sounds of a group of words, sometimes forming new ones, (e.g., sly gap --> guy slap.) My favorites are the ones that add new meaning or commentary to the original.

The thing is, I'm doing this constantly. As I'm shopping, I reach for a packet of bound grief at the meat display. When Deborah requests that I be on dish duty, I ponder whether I should wash dishes or dash wishes. Some of them even make it out of my head, like telling a giggling Fiona that we should have named her "Sue Tilley."

Over the years, I've been mentally gathering material for a story where one of the main characters talks in nothing but Spoonerisms, and, at the end, says something completely normal, which, no one realizes until it's almost too late, was another Spoonerism, setting the scene for the final climactic actiony bit. (The setting is, of course, a greasy spoon...er.)

So, that's one quirky thing that's always going on in my head. What's going on in yours?

Things Promised: A Dream

2010-01-18T23:47:00.001-05:00

I wrote down this dream about three years ago, a few days before New Year's in 2006. It was raw then, and it's still a bit raw now. I still think about this, years later...

I had a dream last night.

I dreamed that I was in a beautiful glass corner office, with sunlight streaming in to a pile of small, wire-bound books on my desk, some of them as small as a few inches across. I was talking on the phone with a woman, and whatever easygoing charm I could muster was not working in this client relationship. I had missed a deadline, apparently, largely because I had paid no attention to the job, agreeing to do it, with the idea that I could easily pull it off "In my spare time."

Her words stung.

"I don't know how you do this. Your references all give you far more credit than you earned. They all say things like, he did a good job, except for that incident with the blue paint, or that bit with the skylight; how was that involved in what you were designing, anyway?"

Her voice trailed away as I picked up two of the other receivers that had been sitting on my desk, and I tried listening to them at the same time. One was a man who had obviously been talking for some time, under the impression that I had been listening, and had just realized five seconds before I picked up that I wasn't, and I had no clue. What had I promised him, anyway? The phone cords snaked about my desk, wrapped around my wrists as I went from one to the other.

"Look," said the woman's voice, "I'm trying to help you here. You've obviously got talent, but it's going to be taken away if you don't use it." The little green book stared out at me: Things Promised. I had to write them all down. I had to do them. I had to not forget them.

I awoke, wracked with the burden of many things I had said I would do, but didn't. How many things had I promised? How many little jobs had God brought me, and I had botched, because I thought I had more time than I did? Could I even list them all? Were those things going to be taken away now, and given to someone else?

Mentally, I took that little green book, and began to write...

New Year's Eve

2010-01-10T19:58:00.001-05:00

Something sparkly...

...something bubbly...

...something unexpected:

(If you can't see it, the video is here.)

I totally wasn't expecting Risanna to take her first steps right then, but she did — Paul and I were playing with her while Deborah was on the phone with Abby, and she just stood up, let go of Paul's hands, and walked over to me. We were both stunned, and called Deborah over. Paul took the video a few minutes later with his new camera.

Resolutions, introspection, political analysis, prestidigitation, predilections, prognostication, and predictions? Not really my style.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Santa Exposed

2009-12-30T22:30:00.004-05:00

Much has been made about the physics of Santa Claus, often calculating his requisite speed in Mach numbers normally reserved for experimental aircraft. I'm told these calculations are a regular exercise at engineering colleges. All these theories are brought to naught, however, by the lack of plausible answers to one question frequently asked by children:

What does he do at the houses with no fireplace?

Ours is such a house. If anyone managed to get down our chimney, they'd end up in our harvest-orange Chrysler furnace. (Yes, Chrysler made furnaces, too, about as well as they made cars.) Houses with fireplaces are now, I believe, the exception, rather than the norm.

So what does he do?

I have an answer: he goes through the attic. Not only that, but, as you'll see in this photographic evidence gathered a week before Christmas, the presents are already there.

This is troubling data, indeed. The presents are already there? A week in advance? Wrapped, and assembled neatly by the attic stairs? One can come to only two conclusions: either Santa visited early, and dropped off the presents, but didn't distribute them (rather unlikely from an efficiency standpoint) OR... Santa has outsourced delivery. Consider that systems are already in place for the timely delivery of packages to individual homes; Santa could simply send gifts by the truckload to major shipping hubs.

The gedankenexperiment ("thought experiment") prompts further questioning: What if Santa wasn't stuffing all the stockings in person, either? The so-called "Santa's Helper" theory would have us believe that local agents carry out the "last mile" of distribution, and we must reluctantly admit that it has merit.

So, then, does Santa distribute presents at all? Actually, this distributed distribution system makes the traditional delivery possible: Santa, in his old age, can still make several hundred, perhaps thousand, deliveries in person. One might theorize as to the how these recipients are chosen; perhaps only those on the "nice" list receive a visit from the old gent himself; perhaps visits are chosen for their high profile, or likeliness to be seen "in the act" by people that will perpetuate the Santa Claus mythos. This reduces the necessary speed of such an arrangement to a much more believable level, and gets around the problem of the reindeer burning up upon re-entry.

Whatever the case, these revelations neither confirm nor deny the existence of Santa Claus, but we believe make the theory much, much more plausible.

A Little Something I've Been Working On

2009-12-26T12:23:00.004-05:00

I've been working on this for a while now, and now that everyone can see it, I'll mention it here. As of this morning, there's a brand-new design for the Town of Winona Lake website — finally! I've been working on this for months, and we're finally down to the place where it could go public.

I had previously declared myself done with freelancing, but when the opportunity came up to update the town website, I made an exception. I'd groused about the old design for so many years that I figured I should put my talent where my mouth was, and do something about it — for now, it's just a new design and improved navigation; in the coming weeks and months, I'm aiming to help improve the content, as well.

I love my little town, and I'm happy it now has a website I can direct people to with a grin!

Comments, critiques, and bug reports are all welcome.

Just something that made me smile

2009-12-24T14:23:00.001-05:00

Edited to add: A number of people have mentioned that they either can't see the video (in which case, go here) and an amazing number didn't realize that this is done with shadow puppets — you know, making shapes with your hands in front of a light. Those bunny ears are fingers.

Beautiful Things

2009-12-24T12:09:00.003-05:00

I came in to work yesterday morning to find a surprisingly heavy envelope on my desk. Turns out it's from my friend and co-worker Amy, who has been joyously hammering her way back into being an artist again.

Aren't those just the coolest bookmarks ever? I love 'em!

Story of the Night: The Magic Bunny

2009-12-17T09:40:00.001-05:00

I tell my kids stories every night before bed, nearly always based on a two topics that they request. (When I get three kids making requests — that's going to get really tricky.) I forget what they requested for the night I told this story, but this is the story they got. Deborah says it's the same plot as a Pixar short. Pooh. I wasn't thinking of that when I told the story, and Deborah likes my version better, anyway. So there.

The Magic Bunny

Once upon a time, there was a magician, and he lived in the circus and he loved to go out and do tricks in front of the audience, and make them laugh, and make them cry in astonishment.

But the magician wasn't magic.

His hat wasn't magic. His wand wasn't magic. The thing that was magic was his bunny!

Truth is, it was the bunny doing all the tricks. The magician would reach in his hat and pull out a bunny and the audience would applaud. He could make it appear out of thin air or show up in a balloon. Or pull it out of his coat sleeves. But the magician got tired of not really doing the tricks and he got lazy. The last straw came when he forgot to buy carrots for the bunny.

The magician went out on stage and he flashed his biggest smile and waved his shiny wand and his shiny hat around. He wiggled his fingers dramatically and plunged it into his hat. SNAP! A rat trap snapped aorund his fingers. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! The magician hopped around holding his hand in pain and grinned sheepishly at the audience as if to say, "Now that shouldn't have happened." The audience howled with laughter. The magician, with some apprehension, wiggled his fingers again and stuck them in his hat again. Eeeeeewww! He just stuck his hand into a pile of dirty underpants! As he pulled them out, the audience said "Eww!" too and they laughed and laughed and laughed. The magician was very downhearted but he tried to put his best face on it. He grinned painfully at the audience and very carefully stuck just one finger into the hat. The rabbit bit him on the finger. The magician was so discrouraged and sad that he ran off the stage.

"What are you doing?" roared the magician. And the rabbit said, "I'm the one doing all the tricks! Why don't you take care of me and spend time with me any more? You even forgot to feed me today!" The magician realized he was right, and he was very sad and sorry.

The magician walked out on stage carrying his hat, carrying his wand and carrying his rabbit. He put the rabbit down on the little table and he said, "My lovely audience! I would like to show you the real secret of my magic. It's not my hat! It's not my wand! It's not my special sleeves!" — the audience gasped — "It's my bunny!" And with that he gave the wand to the rabbit, and put his top hat on the rabbit, and the bunny wiggled his nose, and the magician disappeared! The audience leaped to their feet. They applauded and they whooped and hollered. They threw money and roses. And the curtain came down on what had been the best show ever.

The End.

Then Aiden asked, "Where did the magician go?"
The storyteller said, "The rabbit sent him to the store to buy carrots."

Training Up Your Children in the Way that They Should Go

2009-12-16T22:30:00.001-05:00

I'm blogging just like like Daddy!

Shift-option-command... rats, now I can't reach the other key I need!

Digging It

2009-12-15T00:05:00.000-05:00

Over the last week or so, they've been dredging out the canal. Apparently, the silt was getting so deep that the island was threatening to turn back into a peninsula!

This, of course, has been deeply fascinating to both Fiona and Aiden — not just one digger, but two! And dump trucks! Almost every time I've gone to drop off or pick up Fiona at school, we'll just stop for a while either on the bridge, or somewhere close to where they're working, and just watch. I would have thought mainly Aiden would be interested, but Fiona has been every bit as entranced. How often do you get to see these things, right on your very own block?

Friends in Need, in Deed, and in General

2009-12-14T14:16:00.003-05:00

This morning, one of my oldest, dearest friends is taking her daughter in for another round of surgery. Little Lia just turned one. Her diaphragm is half paralyzed, she has a compromised immune system, and yet, miracle, by miracle, day after day, she's one now. I'm staring out my back window into the gray afternoon, thinking about her.

* * *

It's on days like this that I realize how much I suck at being a friend. Yes, I'm entertaining. I can tell stories and jokes, and be interesting. Sympathy? Fail. Knowing what to say? Fail. Knowing when to shut up? Well, you get the picture.

I'm not even entirely sure how to be friends with someone. All my efforts seem to have the reverse effect — and the people I am friends with, seem to be so in spite of me. I remember Deborah asking me how one becomes friends a while back, and I really didn't have a good answer. She also told me a tale of her, back in junior high or high school, having decided to be friends with someone... by following them around until they gave in and were friends back! Sure, it's not the greatest method, but then... what is?

* * *

A number of years ago, I used to get comments on my annual reviews at work that I was "prickly." I've never completely figured this out. I'm aware of one co-worker who is utterly terrified of me. Nonsense. I'm a big teddy bear. (Who, granted, wears black, rides a motorcycle, and shaves once a week whether he needs it or not. Perhaps her mother warned her about such guys.) But it's not the first time I've gotten comments like that. One friend in high school used to tell me that all I had to do was walk into the room to weird people out. How can I be friends with you if I'm somehow broadcasting from across the room that I won't? It'd be nice to know what the heck I'm doing, so that I can stop doing it.

I count myself amazed and fortunate for the friends I do have. They're amazing people. all of them. It still leaves me wondering, though.

How do you become friends with someone?

Risanna! (by Deborah)

2009-12-13T22:42:00.005-05:00

We didn't send out lots of pictures of Risanna like we did with the other kids. So here is a post just for you — Risanna pictures!

What a smiley playful girl! She loves to play with Mommy.

Another picture from June- sleeping despite the heat, or maybe because of it.

Teaching the girls to bang nails at the fourth of July. (Aiden got to bang nails too, but he and Andy were much faster at making their project then the girls.)

And here she is again, our happy girl. She loves to play with toys!

Another cute picture.

Risanna made it to the top of the mountain along with me. This was fairly near the top- I recognize the wrap style I was using.

A historic moment in the life of Risanna. Not that she'll remember it.

Risanna and our saintly cat. Having a Daddy nearby helps. Look how excited she is!

No, don't worry, it's only plastic corn. She's practicing for when she's old enough to actually try it.

Risanna tries to find out why her sister is so enthralled with duckies.

Risanna helps fold the laundry.

Risanna is one! She doesn't really know what to do with her presents. We eventually show her how to open them.

And don't forget the birthday cake. It was her first time to eat cake. She caught on right away.

Playing with her brother.

She LOVES "touchy-feely" books. She tries to feel the pages of every book to see if it feels any different.

Hopefully that covers the Risanna picture deficit!

The Long Way Home (AKA Vacation, Part 7)

2009-12-12T15:57:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: Yeah, we realize this is almost four months after the fact. It's still a story that deserves telling.

It was our third day driving home. The first day had been spent driving like mad through some of the country's best roads and scenery in order to get to Howe Caverns before the last tour of the day. We din't make it; near the end, we decided to spend the night there, and go on the first tour in the morning. (Too bad we hadn't decided to do that to begin with — it would have taken a lot of stress out of the driving.) The second day, after a tour of the caverns and a boat ride on an underground lake, we made it to our hotel in the middle of Pennsylvania.

Not the sort of weather you look forward to for a long, long ride.

The third day started out wet and gray. After wearing out the kids a bit in the hotel pool, we loaded up and headed out. I wore my rainsuit right out of the hotel — I knew it was wet, and was just going to get wetter.

It rained. Hard. For hours. Aside from the direct rain, there was the great clouds of water kicked up by every other vehicle on the road. I avoided the trucks as much as I could, but that's not easy on an interstate.

Somewhere around the third hour, I stopped to call Deborah and arrange to meet for lunch. For the fun of it, I even updated my Facebook status. My gloves made little squishy noises while I was texting.

Is making the long soggy slog home. 100 miles in the rain and counting.
3:19 PM Jul 29th from txt

The bike stuttered and stumbled the whole time I was stopped. The engine thumped slower and slower, and finally died before I was done. (I'm not a speedy texter.) I fired it back up and kept going, but the exhaust smelled rich with unburned gas. Something wasn't right — the usual snap and acceleration was gone. I could get up to highway speeds, but just barely. As long as I kept moving, I was OK, but by the time I got to the town where we'd arranged to meet, I had to restart the bike every time I came to a stop.

I stood there in the pouring rain, puzzling this over while I waited for the others to catch up. Nothing was visibly wrong...

Lunch was warm and filling, but desultory. I was shivering and soaked despite my rain gear, and everyone else was fairly subdued. I spent a good while in the bathroom abusing their hot-air hand dryer, and that helped me feel a bit better.

The bike wasn't feeling any better for the hour's rest, though. If anything, it was worse. I could barely keep it going. I took the next exit.

Is attempting a roadside repair. I theorize the engine is choking from all the water in the air.
4:59 PM Jul 29th from txt

I found a beautiful spot: an abandoned gas station, one with a roof to keep the rain off, and no one around so that I could spread out my tools and gear. I got off the bike, and started running through my diagnostics in my head — what does an engine need to run? It needs...

fuel (obviously, from the smell, there was fuel);
air (questionable; the exhaust smelled rich; which is usually a sign of too much fuel or too little air, and it seemed reasonable that the air filter could have gotten waterlogged);
spark (the electrics seemed fine)
momentum (the starter turned the engine over fast enough to start, so that wasn't the problem); and
compression (I had no way to test it, but I didn't have any reason to doubt that it was fine, either)

...so it must be the air, I figured. Everything else was running fine. Or the spark, said a voice in the back of my head. I discounted that; I had lights, and the engine would turn over — there was plenty of electrical power for spark.

Motorcycles are different from cars. The open architecture makes some things are far easier — I can change my oil filter just by reaching down and twisting it off — but the need to package things compactly makes other bits much more difficult. Accessing the air filter is a good example: Remove the rear seat (to get access to the tools), remove the battery vent panels (to get access to the front seat bolts), remove the front seat (to allow the tank to swing up), raise the tank (to get access to the airbox), and then you can have a look at the air filter, which is bolted firmly to the airbox.

The bonus find of the day was an abandoned gas station, right off the interstate — a nice, big covered place where I could spread out my tools and work out of the rain!

Oddly enough, the filter was dry. I removed it anyway and stuffed it into the saddlebag, figuring the engine could breathe more freely without it, perhaps balancing out the rich mixture. I fired it up. The bike snarled like an angry tiger without the quieting filter, and I revved it a few times just to hear the sporting, wild roar. The exhaust popped and crackled like an overly lean mixture, but it still smelled like gas, like it would with an overly rich mixture — how was that combination even possible? I even peered into the airbox to see if something had gotten lodged in there, but I could see straight into both carburetors as it ran. I could even see a spark arcing through the carb for the front cylinder. Odd.

I shrugged and put the bike back together, sans filter. It was worth a try, and I set out again. The ragged sports-car like rasp was fun for a few miles, but it quickly became apparent that I really hadn't fixed anything. I could barely do the speed limit, and starting the bike required slipping the clutch like I was starting in third or fourth. I pulled in at the next rest stop and conceded defeat. Perhaps a local shop would still be open, and could help me figure this out.

Except that there weren't any local shops. I tried texting Google to find a nearby motorcycle shop; my query returned no results. I asked around if there were towns or shops nearby. Nope, 30 miles from nowhere. The rest area maps confirmed that. What now? Figuring I had friends all over, I texted Twitter and Facebook:

I'm stuck at a rest stop on I80 in PA 29 miles from the Ohio border. Text 260 249 0834 if you can help.
6:12 PM Jul 29th from txt

I sat around, waiting for a response. I put the air filter back in, just for something to do. I called Paul and Deborah and appraised them of my status. I walked among the trucks, trying to think of what I could be missing.

No solutions came. I was stuck. I was going to have to call a tow truck, or something.

My mind railed against that. All my life, I've been served well by the attitude that it will all work out somehow. Call it faith, misplaced optimism, dangerous ingenuity — whatever it is, I've almost always been able to get out of enormous scrapes without hiring expensive outside assistance.

I prowled among the canyons of idling diesels, looking for trailer space. One friendly fellow was hauling a refrigeration unit, and had plenty of space, and said he was heading for Indiana — great! — but it turns out he meant Indiana, PA. I sat there, defeated in the waning light, reflecting on the fact that I knew for a fact that there was a trailer — my own trailer! — heading exactly where I wanted to go, scarcely 50 miles away — but that there was no way I could get the bike on it.

And I prayed.

And I felt like God was telling me to give it another try. That was scary, because I knew I was a long way from anywhere right then. I got back on the bike, started it, and tried to get it to go. Stall. Try. Stall. Try. Stall. I chuckled morosely to myself that it was acting like it had all the power and torque of Strawberry, my old 250cc Honda. And it hit me: I knew how to ride a 250. A 650cc twin with only one cylinder would be a 325; pshaw, that was power to spare! Grimacing at my daring, I revved the engine high, slipped the clutch ever so slowly, and rolled back onto the highway.

Is running on faith. Gulp.
7:11 PM Jul 29th from txt

I can't say exactly why that made all the difference; perhaps it was that I'd made this very trip on a 250 all those years ago, and knew it could be done. Perhaps it was that I knew I could accept revving the engine twice as high as I normally would to get the power I needed. Perhaps it was because I knew not to expect more than the speed limit. Perhaps, like Ezekiel, the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God. I don't know. I plowed on.

Then the light started blinking.

Back in January of 2008, we'd had a bit of flooding around our house, which resulted in the bike tipping over into some water. The bike was mostly fine, but the tachometer got soaked and the fuel level sensor went out. I eventually got the tachometer dried out enough that I could get it to work with some gentle tapping at startup, but I didn't bother getting the fuel gauge fixed for more than a year. All the fuel level gauge really did was work a light. About 150 miles into a tank, a light would start blinking. That would mean I had a gallon left. A single gallon normally gets me 40-60 miles. If I let that go for too long and let it get down to about a third of a gallon, then the light would turn solid — the "get gas now, dummy" setting. If you reset the tripmeter every time you got gas, you could pretty safely get by without the warning light. I'd finally gotten it fixed just before the trip.

And there it was, blinking. Huh. The tripmeter scarcely had a hundred miles on it. I'd expected the efficiency to be poorer, but not that much. I got gas early, and slipped through the cloverleaves off 80 towards Akron. A text from Deborah said that the rain had finally let up.

In the middle of Akron, the light started blinking again. 80 miles on the tripmeter. I peeled an eye for the next gas station sign. Mere minutes later, the light stopped blinking and went solid. I thought about what would happen if I ran out of gas in the middle of this awful traffic, and took the next exit. It was a city — surely there would be gas stations just off the major exits...

I was wrong. I found myself in what most would consider the Bad Part of Town, without an on-ramp or a gas station anywhere in sight. I squirted up and down side roads, panic starting to set in. Finally, I got directions from a fellow who was taking out the trash, and found a small, run-down gas station a long ways down a residential street. I'm certain I saw at least one drug deal while I was filling up.

Good for gas again, I set out to get back onto the highway. I rode back to where I'd gotten off, but the only on-ramp I found went East, and I wanted West. I followed a sign for the West route, and found another on-ramp for the highway going East. Frustrated, I wound up back at the gas station, where the both owner and the security guard said I had the right idea about my overall route to Indiana, but neither of them could remember how to go West on that highway, even though they remembered that the entrance was in a rather different place than the eastbound on-ramp. Even a local cop directed me towards the wrong entrance. Nearly blind with frustration in the darkening twilight, I roared onto the highway going East. I found another highway, merged onto it, and took the first exit. An underpass later, I was back on the highway, headed back to where I'd come. I grinned with frustrated satisfaction as I came across what I was looking for: an exit to go WEST. Exactly what I'd wanted an hour ago!

Finally away from Akron, and back out onto the open road, I felt free to have my nervous breakdown. Deborah sympathized with me and encouraged me over the phone. I was finally nearing the last major route change — the next one would put me on 30, all the way to home. It was supper time, and I felt I could sure use the break. I found a Denny's just outside of Mansfield and collapsed into a booth to dry out, decompress, and recharge. I even started to see the humor in it all.

Is limping across Ohio on a single cylinder. 80 Miles max between gas stops. It's an adventure, right?
10:46 PM Jul 29th from txt

Still life with coffee. Can you see the condensation built up on the inside of my cell phone?

The only other motorcyclist and I recognized each other instantly upon entering. He was driving his new rig back home; apparently they manufacture these somewhere in Indiana. Maybe when my hair is gray and my balance isn't as good...

The check came, and I gathered my stuff to go pay. The hostess ran my card several times, each time with a darkening look on her face. She disappeared. A moment later, the manager came out. He tried running the card, too, without success. I offered my MK List Visa, which I knew had money on it, but that one was refused, as well. The manager left with my card. I started wondering if the next person I'd see about the matter would be a police officer. A long while later, the manager came back out, and said that everything was fine, but that he'd called, and my bank was having some trouble with their computers. I apologized for my bank, and tipped generously. I saddled up, and went across the street to fill up at the Jetson-esque gas station. My card worked just fine there. Odd.

By this point, my text messages had made it to Facebook, and I was having to stop every mile or so to answer incoming messages of help, support, and suggestions. My parents had friends in Mansfield, and I knew I wasn't too far away from my friend Nathan in Galion, even if none of them knew I was coming. It was getting late, and I bounced the idea of "calling it a night" off of Deborah. She was just about home by that point, and was not happy about the idea of waiting even longer to see me. She wanted me there. I was still at the other end of Ohio. I sighed and promised to try.

Thank God gas stations try to compete with each other. I'm not sure what compels owners to build across the street from each other, but it worked to my advantage. When one gas station would decline my card, there was usually one across the street that would take it. I was stopping as often as I could, every 50 miles or so, not knowing when the next station might be. The towns get to be few and far between once you get west of the middle of Ohio.

My luck ran out in Upper Sandusky, OH. There were two gas stations across from each other, but neither of them would accept either of my cards. I thought ruefully of the one real credit card I had, the one I'd had gotten "for emergencies," safely tucked away in my safe at home. I headed inside to see if there was something that could be done.

Not much, it turned out. One account was frozen, and the other wasn't accepting transactions. No, she couldn't force the transaction. No, she wouldn't take a check. I rifled through my wallet and pants for cash. Not even enough for a single gallon. I turned away in defeat, figuring I had to call the bank, when I heard the cashier call to me. "Where are you going?" I told her. She looked at me a bit sourly, her tired eyes appraising me. "I'm putting ten bucks on pump number four. That should get you far enough that you can call someone to come get you." I thanked her profusely. "Pay it forward, OK?"

I was rolling again.

Western Ohio is a very empty place. Western Ohio at three in the morning is an extremely empty place. I droned on, flattening myself out on the gas tank, trying to get ever last yard out of every drop of gas that I could. Streetlights came and went. I saw signs for towns, but not the towns themselves.

Blink, blink, blink. 20 miles to the next town. I might make it.

20 miles later, I came not to a town, but to a crossroads that led to a town. Blink, blink, blink. How far was the next town? Should I try and find this one, or try to find the next one? Maybe it would just be a crossroads, too. Blink, blink, blink. I turned and fired off into the dark, hoping the town wasn't far.

It was a lot farther than I'd hoped. Blink, blink, blink. I rolled up to a gas station. Closed. Blink, blink, blink. I rolled up to another gas station. Closed. I thought they invented "Pay at the Pump" for situations like this. It should be something you can leave on at night, for weary, desperate travelers. Blink, blink, solid. The fuel light burned into my consciousness like a slow flame spreading across a scrap of parchment.

I'm not sure how I wound up at the police station garage, but the officer there was clearly not used to people walking in on him. His eyes burned into me as he held his paperwork in his surgical-gloved hands. His demeanor made it clear that I was not his problem, but he at least pointed me to an all-night gas station not more than a mile away, but only once I told him that I'd already tried the town's other two stations. I'm not sure who was more creeped-out by whom.

I almost cried with relief to see that it was a Marathon station. I knew I could get gas there. My card had worked at every one I'd tried. Marathon earned my loyalty that morning.

I never thought I'd be so glad to see this sign!

I scarcely recognized Fort Wayne without all the traffic. I was less than hour from home, but my consciousness was fading fast. I waggled my head, sang songs to myself in my helmet (very loud, repetitive ones, I'm afraid), did deep knee bends... but it was no good. I found another Marathon station and invested in one of those awful energy drinks, and, for reasons I cannot now explain, an old army ammo can. Something about it being waterproof.

The Red Bull was already fading when I finally pulled into the carport at home. I grabbed my bags off the bike and stumbled into the house shedding helmet, boots, and clothes. With my last shred of consciousness, I pulled out my cell phone, and texted five characters:

Home!
5:45 AM Jul 30th from txt

* * *

Several days later, I'd woken up and recovered enough to start thinking about the motorcycle again.

After a few hours of dorking around, checking for cracks in wiring insulation and the like, I walked over to a computer, and typed in "rain SV650." Behold. Entire on-line forums, discussing my exact make and model of motorcycle, who had also lost a cylinder in heavy rain, and what to do about it.

Pyramid Plastics out of the UK makes this nifty "Fenda Extenda." This will be one of my winter projects.

It turns out that the SV has a relatively short front fender. In a normal rainy ride, this isn't a problem; in a several-hour downpour, the shortened front fender allows enough water to spray up, force its way through the radiator, past two sets of seals, and fill up the spark plug well on the front cylinder, shorting out the spark. They realize that even this is possible, so they include a small drain hole to make sure it doesn't do this. It was crusted over with road grime. I took a small straw and poked at the drain hole, which emptied a surprising amount of fluid onto the carpet in my shed.

I fired it up. It ran.

The Helpful Blogging Community

2009-12-08T23:39:00.003-05:00

I get a chuckle out of the little coincidences that show up in my blog sidebar from time to time...

A Little Christmas Cheer

2009-12-07T01:01:00.002-05:00

Just for you, a live-on-location recording of "Jingle Bells" with Miss Fiona Kerr, accompanied by Deborah. It puts a smile on my face; it might put one on yours, too. :-)

I thought you'd never ask!

2009-12-02T00:07:00.004-05:00

Once in a while, someone asks you to do the very thing that you want to do, to use that otherwise utterly useless skill in some amazing way... and you didn't even have to offer.

It was just such an evening. Fiona came over to me and held up an old pan that had been relegated to "toy" use. "Daddy, would you make me a wooden spoon? It needs to be about this long, and about this wide, and you can make it so it can scoop things."

Well.... yeah!

A piece of an old 2x4, the rasp of a bandsaw, the whir and flutter of the lathe, and the whine of a Dremel, and I had it:

OK, so it turned out more like an ice cream scoop than a spoon, but I like it. That was fun.

Now Deborah wants me to make her some spoons, too...

Mafalda

2009-11-28T22:24:00.001-05:00

One of the things Mom did on her most recent trip to Spain was to task her local bookshop owner with what turned out to be a 2½ month project: Complete the 10-book collections of Mafalda for both of my sisters and me. Even though they're now out of print, she came through.

Now, if you've never heard of Mafalda, you probably speak English. The comic strip is best known in Europe and Latin America, and features a precocious, political 6-year-old named Mafalda, and her friends. Think Calvin and Hobbes without the tiger, set in Vietnam-era Argentina, with a bit of "Peanuts" mixed in. Mafalda was everywhere when I lived in Costa Rica, a ubiquity similar to Garfield in the U.S. in the 80s. The last book was published before I was even born, but it's a comforting link to the past, and a thorough workout for my Spanish, especially that rare, rusty vos conjugation.

It's a good thing we got several books at once, though... otherwise I might still be waiting to read them!

Look! It's the return of the two-headed gigglequilt!

The Thanksgiving Double Triple Reunion

2009-11-27T23:02:00.008-05:00

Thanksgiving here was an occasion for a very rare occurrence: not just one three-sibling reunion, but two! On Wednesday, my sisters drove down from Canada and rode up from Texas on the train, joining all of us at my parent's house in Valparaiso.

Becky, Sharon, Andy.

While all that was happening, a similar three-sibling reunion was happening in Winona Lake, where May flew in from Pennsylvania to spend a few days with us, as well.

Deborah, Paul, May. (Remaining sister Sara not shown.)

On Thursday, we all got together in Valpraiso for the feast.

Yum. Fabulous food, on Mom's these-do-NOT-go-in-the dishwasher good china. Deborah had the idea of making place names; pilgrim hats and bonnets for the Indiana family, and Indian feather headdresses for the out-of-staters. (I argued that it should be the other way around, but the practicalities of making only four pilgrim hats won out.) I supplied the calligraphy at the last minute; I am waaaay out of practice.

Once we were too stuffed to walk, we took time out for other things.

Photos of all the cousins together...
In no particular order: Joshua, Jonathan, Josiah, Javier, Joél, Fiona, Aiden, and Risanna. Yes, we bucked the trend my sisters set of naming all the kids beginning with J.

It was fun to see cousins from all three families doing things together.

Games galore...

Silly stories with Grandpa.

We had much to be thankful for!

Logo Analysis

2009-11-27T20:51:00.000-05:00

I've seen these trucks trundling about Winona Lake on many occasions, but I haven't always had by camera with me. It's a mowing company, and there's a lot to say for this logo:

Let's analyze this logo for a minute:

It has immediate impact. It's a commanding presence. Bold, daring.
It's describable. It's not some vague, swooshy thing. You can tell that this is a guy jauntily pushing a lawnmower.
It's simple. It's not trying to tell you the guy's whole outlook on the world — there's one idea.
It's memorable. I can't think of any other companies with this shape or design. It stands out.
It's timeless. This logo will still effectively communicate in 50 years, unless we're somehow mowing the lawn with space-based lasers or something.
It's versatile. This logo will be effective even if you...

Use only one color
Blow it up to the size of a billboard (which they did; it looked just like the truck here)
Shrink it to the size of a postage stamp
Print it in reverse (ie. light logo on dark background or vice-versa)

It describes what the business does. This isn't strictly necessary (IBM's logo doesn't show computers, nor does McDonald's logo show a hamburger, for instance) but in this case, it's a plus.

So, kudos to this company for great logo design.

There's just one problem.

Who are they?

And, how do you contact them?

Summer

2009-11-12T21:46:00.013-05:00

Here Comes

Here comes summer,
Here comes summer,
Chirping robin, budding rose.
Here comes summer,
Here comes summer,
Gentle showers, summer clothes
Here comes summer,
Here comes summer —
Whoosh — shiver — there it goes.

— Shel Silverstein

Summer.

Running...

Hiding...

Picking strawberries...

...and enjoying them.

Peeking...

Laughing...

Enjoying old treats...

...and trying new ones.

(It's a deep-fried Twinkie. I'd never had one before. I didn't find it as impressive as some do, but it was still a worthwhile experience.)

Bed racing...

Dragon riding...

Discovering the strange...

(We had a hard time identifying this one. Turns out it's not one creature, but about 50: one Tomato Hornworm caterpillar — bane of gardeners everywhere, and 50 or so parasitic wasp larvae — bane of tomato hornworms everywhere.)

...and beautiful.

Seeing nature up close...

...and far away.

(That's Jupiter and four of its moons. You may have to just take my word on it. My astrophotography skills obviously aren't the best!)

Getting the ball into the basket...

...and trying to get the basket under the ball.

Bouncing...

Splashing...

(Happy little sigh) See you next year, Summer. It's been good.

Honk, honk

2009-11-05T15:29:00.003-05:00

Hey, man, let's go out cruising and pick up chicks! We can take my car!

If imagination is the art of combining things that you normally wouldn't think of combining, then my kids have imagination in spades!

Come, Sit a Spell

2009-10-30T23:23:00.002-04:00

I was late again this morning. Had to go back for the camera. (One of these days, I ought to invest in a camera I can have with me all the time...)

It took a while to get this photo to come out as I actually saw it, but it was well worth the effort. Don't you just want to sit down here with someone in silence and listen to the falling leaves together?

A Foggy Mirror

2009-10-30T13:44:00.001-04:00

If/when I ever move (the "if" there is a sign of something deep and disturbing to my former globe-trotting self) one of the things I'm going to miss is my daily commute to work. Five left turns, most of them within view of the lake. It's amazing how much variety there is in those 1.6 miles.

On the first cold snap in fall, I pretty much just assume that I'm going to get to work a little later than usual. The lake billows with clouds, and there's no hope for me but to go back around the block and fetch my camera.

Photos from two separate mornings:

Yes, this is scarcely a hundred feet from my front door. No, it's not Photoshopped. I do wish the bird had flown just a little bit closer, though. Then it would have been perfect.

At first, I wasn't sure what I was seeing as it floated out of the mist. After a minute, it became more obvious. It's hard to imagine a better morning for a nice paddle around the lake.

Pumpkins!

2009-10-24T10:13:00.004-04:00

The Grace College Mu Kappa chapter invited us over for a bonfire and pumpkin carving. They invite us to quite a number of activities, but this is one that I don't miss if I can help it. It's fun to connect with recently-landed MKs, enjoy new fireside recipes, and, of course, carve pumpkins.

I'll give you a minute to figure it out.
Give up?
It's a gastropod with an iPod. OK, stop looking at me that way. You already knew I was a geek...

Fiona drew her design before we even left the house, and Deborah transferred it onto her pumpkin. Aiden's pumpkin is the result of his constantly changing the specs of what he wanted while we were carving. The third eye was the icing on the cake.

In related news, the third time was a charm, and I finally was able to make a harvest in my pumpkin patch of... one pumpkin! Now most people would be disappointed to have planted three years running and only get one fruit, but I'm excited to have finally gotten ONE! Maybe I'll do even better next year...

Thar she be. What shall I carve on this one?

A hundred! And then some!

2009-10-19T14:35:00.000-04:00

Sometime this last week, I sent my one hundredth Eisenbrauns book cover to press. I suspected I was getting close to that mark, so I sat down witht he website to figure it out. It took a little bit of doing to determine, as I excluded the books that had been reprinted (and thus, sent to press again), books that a previous designer had started, and I finished (there are my book covers), covers I did for other publishers (these are Eisenbrauns book covers), and covers for books that haven't gone to press yet.

So. Wanna see?

This one was fun (well, technically, these two, since it's a two-volume set, with different colors) once I got a hang of what the editors wanted. That's the challenge: I've produced plenty of covers that I dearly loved, but that the editors, well, didn't. One learns to shrug and keep trying. It's also one of the few instances where a major typo made it onto the cover... in the title, no less. I now have someone else proofread my covers before I send them to press!

The artwork isn't mine, but the rest of the cover was.

These are, in fact, two separate books. They just look identical. Honest!

I've had this idea for cover type bouncing around my head for years. I finally got to use it on this cover, which sets the style for the rest of the series.

In academic circles, when an esteemed scholar or professor approaches the end of his/her career, you'll often see what's called a Festschrift, literally, a "party-writing," where colleagues and students will write articles in honor of said scholar. One hopes there are other, less cerebral celebrations involved, as well, but I wouldn't know. I just design the book covers. In this case, we have three volumes of articles by Nadav Na'aman, and a Festschrift for the same. Obviously, I figured all of them should have a common visual theme.

This is, if I'm not mistaken, one of the first covers I ever did.

The editor didn't appreciate my attempts to liven up the series design (left), so I had to go back to the original color scheme on the next volume (right).

The background on this one is a piece of soapstone that's been run through a bandsaw. I love the texture!

Sometime, I really ought to write up the process of bringing this cover into being. It would be... illuminating.

For many years, I was limited to two inks, for cost reasons. This series uses only two colors — orange, and blue. You wouldn't know by looking at it.

Oddly enough, this is one of my favorite covers. I'm not sure why.

One of the first instances where I created my own artwork for the cover, rather than using someone else's drawing or photograph.

A lot of people tell me this is their favorite cover. I like it too. The part I'm proudest of is that I managed to convey the idea of the Chaoskampf Theory (order-land arising from the chaos-sea) using only two colors and one repeated shape.

I found a guy on-line, Sven Geier, who does these amazing fractals, and lets anyone use them. This one fit the book amazingly well.

I had fun masking all those branches on the Tree of Life. I spent hours on that one...

Another cover people have told me they really like. Apparently, I do seascapes well.

One of my first "major" covers, in cloth and paperback. Those Persian warriors have since shown up in many. many places. One year, I suggested we make full-size cutouts of these guys, and have a place where you could put your head and poses as them. It was rejected because they thought people would actually do it...

From this river to that one...

...and these scholar to those kings.

I later asked what the provided graphic of pottery and plants had to do with the subject. I don't recall that anyone knew.

I had fun with this one, representing the "degrading social order" in the ancient near east in as close as I've ever gotten to "grunge" on an academic book cover.

An early favorite, and the first use (that I know of) of stock photography on Eisencovers.

Some things are Sacred. Some, doubly so.

Some people say this one's boring. Me? I love the type.

You can direct traffic with this cover.

The author (in good humor) complained that more people were complimenting him on the cover than on the book. Sorry, Tryggve! I'll make 'em uglier next time.

For once, it was appropriate to break out the funky typewriter fonts!

I put so much into this one. I created this beautiful epicrystallograph of a leaf I found in the yard, and then made up the word "Epicystallograph" (Greek, "writing against the glass") because "putting it on the scanner" just didn't communicate what I wanted. As people have since pointed out, making up words doesn't necessarily communicate, either. But, I still hold out some hope for my little neologism. I wished I could have used a metallic purple ink on this one — it would have given the leaf a sort of ethereal sheen — but I found out at the last minute that there's a heavy surcharge for using metallic inks. Bummer. I still love the way it came out, even if my vision was grander.

Here's another one where I really ought to write up the process of creation. I think the part that took the cake was when the editors insisted that, despite all the time I'd spent removing the text, they could definitely tell that it was from the gret Isaiah scroll from Qumran, and that they'd really prefer to have a section from the Pentateuch on there. Hence the addition of the fragment by the title...

Part of this cover involved a trip to the hardware store, and a puzzled clerk wondering what good three feet of rope was, and why I didn't want the ends dipped so that they wouldn't come apart.

Whew!

There's also a bunch where I frankly no longer remember if I did them or not:

...and a bunch I did for other publishers:

...as well as a bunch of catalog covers and such, but I'm not counting those categories here.

Looking over this list, I'm not sure what to think. This represents ten years of a small part of my life, and in retrospect, I can't honestly say if it's well-spent, mis-spent, or just... spent. While it has some lasting value (in the sense that it's been a way to keep a roof over our heads, and food on the table) there's nothing about any of this work that would outlast one good fire. In spite of that, I have to admit: I enjoyed it.

On to the next hundred!

Power from the Sea

2009-10-04T09:15:00.000-04:00

As I was standing around fixing things — on average, I fix a toy per day; the washing machine makes a good workbench — Aiden brought his dinosaur flashlight to me.

"Daddy, can you fix my dinosaur flashlight?"

It's a wonderful flashlight; it roars when you turn it on, and it's constructed in such a way that a kid can't disassemble it — a fact that has occasionally made it the only working flashlight in the house. It just needed new batteries, but I didn't have any in the right size.

"I'm sorry Aiden, I don't have what I need to fix your flashlight right now."
"What do you need?"
"Two C-cells."
"There's some in the fishtank."
"There are batteries in the fishtank?" I prepared to panic.
"No," said Aiden, with exasperated patience, "there are seashells."

He was so sure he was being helpful, I hated to tell him that I just needed batteries!

Art that Speaks to You

2009-10-03T19:26:00.003-04:00

Sometimes, you're just walking/riding/driving along, and art just calls out to you, by name. Sometimes, quite literally:

This guy obviously subscribes to the "If you can't make it good, make it big" theory.

Seriously. All that, on one train. And I didn't even look at the other side.

Deborah and I, with a certain amount of seriousness, describe graffiti on trains as "authentic urban art, direct from the nation's urban cultural epicenters, in a free traveling exhibit." Some of these guys have talent. I stood and looked at this one for quite a while:

Can you see the skate ramps?

And this one caught my attention, as well:

The amazing thing here is, along with his excellent use of color and shading (with a spray can!) the guy signed his name. Obviously, Mr. Jennigs either isn't worried about being prosecuted for his work, or he (rightly) wants credit for what he's done.

When was the last time you stopped and took a look at the art spoiling your town?

Throw Towel Here

2009-09-24T22:10:00.005-04:00

I've started this message four times now, each time with a different intention — putting this blog on hiatus, quitting everything, rebooting life, running away — just to say something, or to say why I haven't said anything, to to rail against the need to say anything.

I'm not doing well. I feel an acute lack of time, energy, and creativity. It's no help as I'm heading into the most intense time of the year at work, with demands for daily manic creativity.

And now, I'm going to tell you something strange about myself.

I can tell roughly how bad off I am by the song that runs unbidden through my head each morning. As I am now, it's Third Day's King of Glory:

Who is this King of Glory that pursues me with his love
And haunts me with each hearing of His softly spoken words
My conscience, a reminder of forgiveness that I need
Who is this King of Glory who offers it to me

Who is this King of angels, O blessed Prince of Peace
Revealing things of Heaven and all its mysteries
My spirit's ever longing for His grace in which to stand
Who is this King of glory, Son of God and son of man

His name is Jesus, precious Jesus
The Lord Almighty, the King of my heart
The King of glory

...which isn't a bad song, not by any stretch of the imagination. (Video here, if you're curious.) It's just played in a way that sounds like a deep breath of longing, and restoration that is so desperately needed. And it is.

When things are truly awful, Leslie Phillips starts running through my head. Now, I normally wouldn't admit to even knowing anything about '80s Christian pop (*shudder*) but somehow this song still sticks with me:

I open my eyes to the sound of morning news
And wish for ten more minutes left to sleep
and as I get into the shower the thoughts of facing one more day
Overwhelm me and I begin to weep
And I've never felt like I've needed Your help, so bad

Bridge 1:*
And every day I look to you
To be the strength of my life
You're the hope I hold onto
Be the strength of my life

Chorus:
Be the strength of my life
Strength of my life Be the strength of my life today
Be the strength of my life Strength of my life
Be the strength of my life today

* It's been 25 years since I've heard this, any my mind has simplified it a bit by deleting a few verses. If you can stand the sound of a 1985 camcorder ported to YouTube, you can get an idea of what the song sounded like here.

What I find remarkable is the unbidden nature of it, its consistency, and the fact that it's usually just what I need. And what I need, apparently, is to be drawn back to Jesus — who is this King of Glory, pursuing me with His love.

How nice, a niece!

2009-09-04T15:11:00.003-04:00

Talia Naomi Gove, born August 19, 2009. 6 lbs., 8 oz., 18", and my first niece to go along with my seven nephews. I guess that makes me 12.5% more avuncular!