The Cuneiform Invasion

It's rather nice to have your work in popular demand. After the success of the Enuma Elish cuneiform mug last year, a number of people have requested the same design as a T-shirt. Well, now you can. Get 'em here if you want 'em!

In the meantime, meet my two new co-workers, Amy and Jon, both editors, who started on Monday. I don't think anyone told them modeling was part of the job description, but they got the hang of it pretty quickly.

I suppose that's an occupational hazard, working in the same room as me. Now, to find someone to model the cuneiform Onesie for me...

New Neighbors

After having the small house next door sit empty for quite some time, we're getting new neighbors, Rich and Ruth. It looks like it's going to be a summer home for their extended family, including their adult children.

They've been doing a lot of work cleaning up the long-neglected yard, and wound up taking out a dying tree. To our great surprise, you can actually see the lake from our house now!

Unamerican

Deborah came across these the other night, as she was getting out her button-maker to use at our church's Spanish VBS. These are old, old, old. Back then, we weren't terribly enchanted with America and it's customs (Deborah especially) and these made perfect sense.

Unamerican. How well do you think these would fly these days? Literally trying to fly with one of these on your shirt would almost certainly get you pulled aside for questioning. Aside from the opinion and it's implications, I don't think people these days are so much in the habit of wearing their hearts on their shirt sleeves (or bumpers) as was more common years ago. These days, you'd pin your political statement to your blog rather than your shirt.

The Headphones, the Vacuum, and the Heritage of Making Things Work

My headphones at work met an early demise last week at in the jaws of a vacuum cleaner. The cleaning lady left a nice note offering to replace them, but balked when she learned of the cost — not pocket change, for sure. (When you wear headphones as much as I do, it starts to make sense to buy a nice pair, and these were the nicest pair to date.)

Growing up as I did, though, one gets the idea that anything can be repaired, with enough patience and ingenuity. So I tried, and it required plenty of both — there were wires broken all over the place, and it was arguably the toughest soldering job I've taken on.

Itty-bitty. The circuit board is for the noise-canceling feature that I've grown rather fond of.

In the end, I succeeded, though. I think. They're definitly not going to survive another trip through a sweeper, but they work. I'm the grandson, son, and son-in-law of electrical engineers, all of whom had a reputation for being able to fix just about anything — It's in my genes. It's in my family. I had to try!

Bubbles!

What do you do when someone gives you a 100 oz. jug of bubble solution? Well, you use it, of course!

Deborah works the big bubble wand, which was producing two- to five-foot bubbles this day. (Humidity and temperature make a big difference in bubble-blowing. Deborah says she tried this at the water's edge a few winters ago, and the bubbles bounced on for ages through the mist across the surface of the ice.)

Deborah and Fiona sit together, blowing bubbles.

Deborah blows some bubbles for Aiden.

Aiden tries. He could hold the bubble wand in the right place, or he could blow, but he couldn't quite get the hang of doing both at the same time yet. He was delighted to finally get some bubbles of his own!

Do not disturb what?

We found this sign on either side of the other end of the bike trail that goes through the woods. What I wonder is... what is it that I am not supposed to disturb? There aren't any houses for several hundred feet in any given direction. Maybe there are some ducks living in the grass. Who knows.

Bottle Rocket

I was coming across the bridge on my way home, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone running the stop sign just ahead of me. I cranked the bike to the right, and the other guy swerved left, so we were running parallel to each other down the street. I looked over, ready to give him a piece of my mind about running the stop sign, but my ire was repaced with wonder, as two things began to sink in:

1. I was riding beside a beer cooler; and
2. the beer cooler was keeping up.

He veered off to my neighbor's house, and I hopped off my motorcycle and went to investigate.

It wasn't my imagination. It was a beer cooler. But the owner (whose name slips my mind at the moment; he lives on the next block over...) had fitted a 10 HP engine and wheels, along with steering that reminded me quite a bit of a fold-up scooter. Braking were a step above Flintsone-style, with steel plates that rubbed against the tires.

Of course, I had to ride it. It was frighteningly fast (wheelies aren't out of the question) and almost impossible to steer. But, I had to admit, it was cool. He says future plans include a real cooler under the hood, and drag-racing wheelie bars.

Quilting

While I read out loud, Deborah works on her quilt. The whole center section is done; now she's working on the border. This is a quilt where Deborah and her mother each made a full set of blocks, and then traded half of them, producing two-of-a-kind quilts. A few blocks of interest:

Elephants in a jar. I refer to this as "wildlife preserves," but Deborah is thoroughly sick of that joke by now. So I'm going to stop using it. It's just so tempting, though...

Deborah and I made these together. Deborah made paper snowflakes, and ironed them flat; I took an airbrush loaded with bleach and sprayed the cloth, using the snowflake as a resist. Then I passed it back to Deborah, who was waiting with an iron — it was the fastest way we found to stop the bleach from spreading too far. She then quilted with the pattern of the snowflake, making it stand out even more.

Kitties. The eyes are made of buttons.