Prometheus

Over the last few weeks Chan-man has been working on his Fire Craft merit badge in Royal Rangers. We will be attending a divisional camp out this weekend and he will be building a fire to demonstrate his new skills so he asked if we could practice a bit at home. Since this was a good excuse to burn stuff, I readily agreed.


We took a walk around the neighborhood to find the right kind of tinder, kindling and fuel that he would need and reviewed what was most likely to burn and why (or why not) to include it.














Here is his progress half-way through his first attempt at the A-Frame / Tepee fire that he will be graded on. Notice the green-colored material in the tinder nest? ....

Here is the completed first attempt .... just prior to lighting. Looks pretty cool doesn't it? I especially liked his use of bark in the tepee. The problems though (that green tinder and a big gap between it and the kindling) meant that this one was literally a non-starter.


















All that was yesterday .... Today he built this one (notice the use of smaller sticks, dried corn husks, ....and if you look real close - dryer lint :-)




















This one was a go!






























The following are a few more pictures of the the A-Frame as it burned out and - of course Chan-man correctly ensuring that the fire was completely out.

Shakamak State Park

Today we made a trip into Linton to get some sand and tools for the brick project. Terre Haute is about as close, but we prefer going to Linton whenever we can to do our shopping. This has nothing to do with Shakamak, but it gives me a chance to tell a fun story:

The 'nice' lady in the Wal-Mart garden center said that they had been out of sand for a few months. When I asked where I might find some in town .... she told me to go to Pope Brothers . When I asked for directions, she asked me in a rather condescending and huffy tone if I was "at all familiar with Linton?" I replied, "Well, I know where the Wal-Mart is ...."

--

Back to Shakamak ...

I took this picture as we crossed a land bridge that separates two of the three lakes in the park. Ironically, this lake shares it's name with my high school in Springfield, MO - Kickapoo. Go ahead and get all those jokes out of your system right now and remember that I marched out in every football game wearing our school colors of brown and yellow (N has pictures)

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We ended up at Shakamak because we heard that they have a 4 mile hiking trail. On our way back from Linton, we saw a sign (and since we are unemployed and carefree) went about 10 miles out of our way to go try it. The next few pictures are from the trail. It reminded me of the the road to Rivendell

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Finally - after our walk we finished the trip home and got our yard work done. Here is a picture of C-Man sweeping some of the sand into the bricks. Because of the late afternoon shadows (and an unfortunately located shed in my neighbor's yard), it looks like a cave troll took the picture. C-man, on the other hand, looks rather tall for his age.

Bricks and Tools

T's Mom and Dad rode their 4-wheelers into down (about 15 miles) yesterday for an unexpected visit. I thought I'd use this time to show off the new (coax / phone / power) surge protectors C-man and I had wired up for the entertainment center and will be putting in the office. For an odd moment, Chandler and I were each doing our own: "Look what I did"

This has been one of my Mr. Handy Man phases the last few days. Since T's dad is a construction site supervisor .... he's not usually very impressed with my projects. So I'll satisfy my need for validation by blogging about them.

Most of today was in the garage organizing everything and building a workbench out of what I'm guessing is an antique 10 x 2 foot piece of barn siding that was laying across the rafters.

I noticed a large number of bricks lying loose around the foundation of the house ... in the garage and (of course) piled up in the yard like some weird installation art thing. Since we all know how much I love installation art, I promptly pulled up all of the blocks and bricks out of the mud to use for the workbench ...... but I was left with a big gap in the grass and a whole bunch of bricks.

These bricks are the same as the ones used on some of the sidewalks (and presumably buildings) downtown Clay City. That's not too surprising since the town used to have one or two brick companies ..... and since downtown is about 2 blocks away. N and C-man got to line them all up on the sidewalk and T enjoyed spraying all the mud off of them.

In the next couple of days I'm planning to put a small brick pad in to fill in the gap and give me a cool place to put my barbecue grill. At last count I've got 60 bricks to use and will be enjoying the math required to figure out the patterns I can use to lay them out.

On the Road Again

As you may have noticed, I've been away from blog-land for a while. I wasn't sure exactly how long that had been until my Dad mentioned that my last post was February 16th ... so I'm a little behind.

I can't blame my blogging tardiness on being downsized from Citibank, but it has certainly had an effect. I had planned to begin posting my first day "off-the-job" but blogging was part of my downtime at work ... I've certainly had downtime lately but not much work to break it up with. In any case, please feel free to join T in what I'm sure will be some semi-sarcastic comments about returning from the witness protection plan etc. etc.

I chose the title of this post - not because I'm back in the employment saddle .... or even in reference to my soon-coming move to Indiana, rather it has more to do with life's direction and our persistent shared delusion that we seem to know where we are going. Before I go any further, I should point out that I do not see myself as Saul of Tarsus for many reasons. For example I am none of the following:

1. An up-and-coming young Pharisee

2. A student of the renowned Gamaliel

3. A persecutor of the followers of Jesus

4. An effective garment storage provider / execution group facilitator

5. ... very good at keeping up with meaningful written correspondence

I've been passing the sign above (or one very similar) for nearly 14 years on trips between Springfield and Kansas City. At first it was to visit some soon to be relatives, then it was to move here, and for the past 5 years, it's been on the way home from a family visit. As I've driven past "the road to Damascus" (just north of the Osceola Cheese Store), it has always given me reason to reflect on where I'm going.

I've gone to places in my life - both spiritually and geographically speaking completely motivated by my own purpose and plan or because it seemed to make sense. Still ... on the way there I find myself somewhat blind and rather unaware of what I'll end up doing in the end.

In every instance, God continues to put me in places that shape me and my family while allowing us to touch the lives of other people. I'm still nervous about this physical move - even though I can see how several doors/windows have been opened and closed to get me to this point.

I've been able to keep N from playing a certain Michael W. Smith song about "packing up the dreams God 's planted" but I've been remembering another one that wasn't quite as popular at the end of summer camp - it seems to fit my mood on the Damascus road better.

--

Here is where the road divides

Here is where we realize

The sculpting of the Father's great design

Through time you've been a friend to me

But time is now the enemy

I wish we didn't have to say goodbye

But I know the road he chose for me

Is not the road he chose for you

So as we chase the dreams were after

Pray for me and I'll pray for you

Pray that we will keep the common ground

Won't you pray for me and I'll pray for you

And one day love will bring us back around again

--

I know my steps are ordered ... I just wish I knew more about the destination and didn't have these scales on my eyes.

THE Burger

C-man has been saying lately that he really wanted a burger.

Ever since McD's came out with a $1 chicken sandwich (which he considers a giant chicken nugget on bread) he's been rather cow-friendly. When we go to a casual dining place, he usually orders a turkey-lurkey, kids breakfast plate, or the ocasional ribblet basket .... so when he started talking about a burger we noticed. After a week of burger requests (and learning the truth that C-man and one of his friends have been seriously discussing resturaunts at recess) even I was was craving a 'big juicy' burger. Chandler was even quick to agree that when he was saying "juicy", he meant greasy.

Even before the kids were out of school, T and I had agreed (via our midafternoon teleconference) that tonight was going to be burger night. I offered to stop by the store and pick up some black angus burgers, buns etc. and cook them up on the grill. The kids were rooting for a dine-in sonic experience .... and were about to prevail, when I commented that if they wanted to go get a flat-griddle-fried burger more than my home made burgers that was "fine".

Those of you that are women know (and I'm still learning this) that anything answered with "fine" is - in fact - not really the best option. In a stroke a brilliance ... and in an attempt to bring Tonya's vote over to my side with the promise of potato-skins ... I suggested that Chili's has good "juicy" burgers. To my surprise, C-man immediately agreed. It turns out that Chili's had gotten good recess reviews for serving corn on the cob even when it was out of season. My kids aren't really the agricultural type and we don't really visit that many farmer's markets, so C-man using the phrase "out of season" again caught our attention.

Our meal was great (though the Blackberry Tea was disapointing). I, myself enjoyed a fantasically huge mushroom-swiss burger cooked medium rare - I didn't even know you could get burger medium rare anymore. There was just enough good "juicy stuff" dropping out of the oversized bun to make my fries really tasty. Most of my recent beef experiences have been of the $1 menu variety, so this has consumed way too much of my thoughts for the rest of evening.

I almost blurted out how much I enjoyed the mushroom-swiss nirvanna tonight at homer's and that I have been slightly worried that I should have picked the cracked peppercorn with bleu cheese instead. Happily, I was able to contain my glee and share it with you here.

Happy Craving.

I Blame the Stiff

T asked me last night if I'd given up on blogging forever. I haven't ... but on the other hand, I really can't express why I haven't been updating the dashboard more often. I hope the flurry of comments some of you recieved today wasn't too annoying (since I commented to posts that were nearly 30 days old).

I had gotten into a relatively good routine of posting twice a week - mainly about the current book that I was listening to. "Stiff" however, seems to have broken my stride. This was one of those micro-histories that I've been so interested in like "Salt: A World History", and "The Utilitarian History of the Pencil". Stiff is subtitled, "The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers". I'll stop right there and point out that unless you want to hear about some truly unpleasant stuff, you shouldn't ask me about the book.

N noticed that I hadn't been talking about my current book at the dinner table. There was both a courteous and pratcial reason for this. Courteously, I know that it is not polite to discuss how decompositon works or how severed heads are used for face-lift practice at the dinner table. From a practical perspective, there aren't to many conversation prompts that lead you from dinner to cadaveric research - unless you take the obvious human dumplings in China road.

I told N when she asked about my book, that she didn't want to know ..... she responded that there at least had to be something about salt in the book. Saddly, she was right - but I won't get into the details here. I've only had one good opportunity to discuss the book - specifically the new body disposal options that are on the way: "Water Reduction" (aka Liquid Cremation) and Human Composting (aka Freeze-Dried Plant Food).

The good news is that I've moved on to the much more dinner-friendly "King of Torts" by John Grisham. So if anyone wants to debate the impact of pharmacutical malpractice on the legal system .... I can leave the human crash test dummy and landmine impact stories way back in the research section of my brain. Besides .... the History of the ScrewDriver wasn't available on Audiobook.

Pow Wow '06

This past weekend was the first-ever Sectional Pow Wow for the northeastern part of Kansas. For those of you that might not know what a "Pow Wow" is (other than something out of a poorly written TV western) - it is a Royal Rangers campout for multiple outposts to get together, have council fire services and play ranger games. We typically have a statewide district Pow Wow, but it was canceled to allow more folks to attend this year's International Camporama.

Having a sectional event means that more of the boys are likely to meet/play with other guys from their area .... and even better - we didn't have to drive as far.

The Royal Ranger motto: "Ready" was appropriate this weekend as we had a few challenges to overcome. Packing those extra tents came in handy when 2 of the only-used-once tents were wet and moldy out of the bag and couldn't be used. Packing for weather eventualities was also critical since we got rain off and on all Friday night and sporadically through Saturday.

Once the tents were all set up, we got down to the important part - food. This Pow Wow was different from most in that each outpost had to cook their own meals. It was a great excuse for our outpost to buy 2 new stoves, a lantern and a propane tree. Not having to wait for a fire to get going on Saturday morning made breakfast a lot easier. The boys entered our breakfast (Sausage, Eggs, Peppers, Cheese and a Biscuit - with orange juice) into the Iron Skillet competition. Once our submission was in, I got asked to judge. I was happy to suffer through portions of a yummy ham-n-spinach omelet, strawberry French toast, and other less creative items like pop tarts. I got more than my share of breakfast, and our guys won 3rd place .... darn strawberry French toast.

When the boys were mixed into teams for the activities, our outpost hosted a rather fun tug of war game. Two patrols of 8 boys competed at a time starting with all 8 on each side of the rope .... when a patrol won they had to vote out a member of their own team. Notice that I didn't say that the loser lost a player - but the winner. This was neat because some of the teams won so much that they ended up pulling 4 guys against a losing team of 8. The first team to be eliminated won. To get a full picture of what this was like, remember that had been raining all night. Mud Masque Anyone?

Our Council Fire service was really neat. It's amazing how engaged boys can be when someone dressed in full Indian costume shares a devotion by fire light. I think most of the commanders were also wondering if his ankle-length headdress was going to catch some of the sparks that kept popping up from the fire. The praise and worship time (at a meeting shelter 1/2 mile down the path) was fun too. A youth/garage band of former and current Rangers played their electric guitars and yarled into the mic. The boys thought this was a great improvement over our last Pow Wow that featured a video screen in the middle of a field playing vbs songs after the sing along guy canceled.

The neatest part of it all though was that C-man got to go with me. Ranger Kids (K-2) can't go to camping events without a dad and usually aren't able to attend Pow Wows ... but the lower profile nature of a sectional event meant that I was able to bring him along. There were 7 other RKs there, but C-man spent most of his time with the bigger 3rd and 4th graders and seems to have held his own pretty well. He was very dirty by the time he got home, but looking forward to next year when he can go to all of the events.

... and then we went to Denny's (# 100)

Tonight .. errrrrr ... last night ... errrrrr this morning we went to see M.I.3 and RV down at the Boulevard Drive in. We got there early (6:45) because we were sure that everyone would be coming out to see the new movie - we were wrong. After sitting in the empty parking lot for a few minutes, the ticket lady showed up - we paid even though she didn't ask us too. Call us old fashion I guess.

T found a "great, fun game" for us to play called Bunco - It was fun ... and I'll leave it up to you to discover all the sensational fun of this game. I don't think I'm giving too much away when I mention that it comes in a barbie-pink box and includes giant fuzzy dice. If you've ever played Bunco, think of how much fun it would be to play it in a nearly empty parking lot with with a color-blind-dad-to-be that completely missed the barbie-pinkness of the game - but still won.

The movies were good. M.I.3 was predictable yet worth the ride and RV was unexpectedy good - and good for the whole family. That is - if your family is ok with turd jokes and Kristen Chenoweth all but falling out of her top for most of the film. I'll never listen to her Gospel album in quite the same way.

After saying goodnight to the plethora of OPAG folks that showed up at the drive-in ... we got the ol' minivan about halfway home before we all realized we were hungry. I think this is the first time the kids had ever been to a resturaunt after 10 pm. They seemed to enjoy it at first as we told them about how we used to do this sort of thing before they were born .... but by the time we all started yawning (and noticing the type of clientel Denny's has at 1 in the morning) we were happy to be on our way all too soon.

On the good side though, maybe the kids will sleep in tomorrow.

3 Drops, 4 Misses, 2 Errors (# 97)

C-Man and I got rear-ended on the way back home from a Ranger event this weekend. My van is a bit of a mess, but overall we have felt very blessed that no one was hurt. We stopped at a yellow light that was turning red on Shawnee Mission Parkway ... the guy behind us was apparently convinced that he was going to make it through it.

I'd been telling myself and everyone else that I was doing fine ... until this morning. I wasn't as sore as I expected and I felt fine driving to church - but I dropped 3 sticks during the worship service. It's not like I've never dropped a stick before; but never more than 1 in a day, and usually when I'm playing a lot harder. The drops were most likely caused by misses .... sort of the drummers equivelant of an air-ball. I was pretty rattled ... in fact I lost my place in the rhythm twice.

I don't think it's a physical problem - everything seems to be working fine and I played normally during the "warm up/sound check" just 15 minutes before. I guess I'm just jittery.

Dark Chocolate

I made the rounds with N and C-Man last night as part of the annual Samhain festival. Like any good druid trying to keep the evil spirits away from my house; I walked far and wide carrying an increasingly stuffed jack-o-lantern accompanied by a paper-faced skeleton and a Cyndi Lauper look-alike. We muttered ritualistic greetings and proudly received compliments on our scary costumes.

I myself, chose the top half of a used gorilla suit. Accessorized with a grass skirt and a coconut bra, I'm sure that any evil spirit that might have sought to assail me on this dread night, fled in terror back to Hell or Omaha depending on their particular level of nastiness. The coconut bra came in handy for storing the popcorn balls we picked up on Beverly avenue. They were bigger than anything else we came across and would have sent us home through the bonfires with a prematurely full bucket had I not recognized the storage opportunity.

The large variety of edible gifts given to the wanderers at Samhain never ceases to amaze me. Some, like the popcorn balls mentioned above are a wistful reminder of years gone by when I would terrorize all the residents of my little neighborhood as a clown ... or worst of all, a Jewish priest with a complete ephod. I think I was a mummy once - back in my Egyptian phase. Today, the candy is so much more impersonal. I would trade it all for a good ol' caramel apple (no razor blade for me - thanks).

Now the skeleton is tucked in his bed, and Cyndi has all of her makeup off (almost). Me and the Mrs have settled down for a long falls night of picking through the goodies the little ones are allergic too. One part of the modern festival seems to have heard the cry of my heart .. or at least my taste buds. Dark Chocolate. You have to really dig through the bucket to get past the unimaginative plain Hershey bars and the ubiquitous Milky Ways to find them ... Dark Kit Kats, Dark Reses, bless me .... Dark M&Ms!

Garage Sales

For some unknown reason, my family loves Garage Sales. It doesn't matter if they are big Charity fundraisers, multi-family moving sales, or just an open garage with the some price tags. If you are planning to throw it away; chances are someone in my family will buy it. I should be clear - when I say family, I don't mean just my wife; all of us love it the kids, me, everyone.

For this reason, my house if filled with, among other things, tables that would be "fabulous" after just a little bit of refinishing. Notice that I didn't say that they had been refinished - just that they were in the house. Every year, my wife volunteers to work at a charity garage sale .. usually a great source of more junk. Sometimes I think it might be easier to just to make a large donation and skip the actual sale then to have to load it all up in and find a place for it in the house.

We recently had "BIG TRASH DAY" in my neighborhood. This is the one day of the year that you can leave whatever you want at the curb to be hauled off. Appliances, furniture, electronics, large boxes of keepsakes, lumber, carpet bicycles, lawnmowers etc. can all be found. Apparently, this is very appealing to all the "sale-ers" like me because they turn out by the hundreds in their pick-up trucks .. some pulling trailers. They paw through the piles finding un-imagined treasures then drive down the next street.

I personally disposed of all my large boxes that I usually save to pack with, a working TV, yard toys, an office chair, a swing set, 4 dining room chairs, and a Sump-Pump decorated for the holidays - sorry darwin. So after moving it all out from the basement, where it had been waiting for the "BIG" day, we settled in front of the living room window to watch the fun. I was excited to see that some of the vehicles had spotlights this year; but disappointed that no one took my old TV.

My basement seems empty with all of the stuff gone; but I have a whole year to fill it back up. Imagine my surprise when my wife called to tell me that she had been to a garage sale today - I'm not sure what she bought (although I bet darwin knows). All I do know is that she spent $25 and none of it was for me.

- fundi