Some Blog Site

I have seen some bloggers participating in a day-of-the-week ritual called “Finding Joy Friday“. It involves looking for good things during the day, to help avoid the common human problem of focusing on the negative.

In order to help out all those bloggers, I have posted some links to help them on Finding Joy Friday :

• Yahoo
• White Pages

I haven’t contacted any of the Joys listed there, because I don’t know why I want to find her. Maybe someone else can figure out which one is the right one. Then it wouldn’t be Finding Joy Friday, but Found Joy Friday, or maybe Joy Friday Found (picture it as a headline).

Or… what if it’s like the Incredibles, where the guy doesn’t want to be rescued? Maybe Joy Friday doesn’t want to be found. Maybe she’s in hiding.

“For You, O LORD, have made me glad by what You have done,I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands.”
– Psalm 92:4

While we were waiting for the real movie to start, we saw the preview for “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”. Note to self: don’t forget that the posted times for the movies are before the previews, so fight the urge to arrive early because the posted movie time is early for the movie.

As a fan of the book, I was surprised to see what they did with the movie. Of course, there is not much of a plot to the book, so they had to add something to make the movie long enough. The added element to the movie is the story of how the weather got to be the way it is – all foody and stuff.

Since most of the original movie storylines have been taken, they had to choose from one of the existing situations. The movie producers chose to have the food weather created by … the misunderstood genius, working alone. This option was also chosen for “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”, “Flubber” (the original one, not the remake), “Back to the Future”, etc.

In case you’re wondering, here are the other options that were considered for “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” :

• secret government agency experiment gone wrong
• alien visitors looking to wreak havoc on the planet they are about to invade
• a radioactive spider
• an evil wizard who wants revenge on the boy wizard whose parents he killed years ago
• a grandpa telling a bed-time story to the grandkids

I know that last one is kind of crazy, but maybe they could give it a shot…

“But He replied to them, " When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ " ”
– Matthew 16:2

We tried a craft project to make new crayons out of old crayons.

The intent of the project was to be able to use the bits of crayon that accumulate in the crayon bucket after a length of time. In general, a crayon either breaks (most likely) or get used so much that there is a very short piece of crayon that is hard to hold and therefore hard to use. No one uses it, but no one wants to throw it away because it possibly could be used. Okay, I do know some people who would have no problem tossing them out but they are not blood relatives.

My wife found some directions for the project, and they went a little something like this:

• Take the wrappers off the crayons
• If they are not already tiny, break the crayons into tiny bits
  
• Put them into a muffin tin that has been sprayed with non-stick stuff
  
• Put the whole thing into the over for 10 minutes at 200 degrees.
  
• After it has cooled, put out the brand-new circle crayons
  

The directions were fine, and the result was mostly as expected. But there were some glitches. In order to be helpful to those of you who may be interested in trying this craft, I am providing these hints and tips. Learn from our mistakes.

1. Do not mix types/brands of crayons. We just had a crayon bucket that had crayons from the store, free crayons from restaurants, random crayons that just appeared in the minivan, etc. They were not all made out of the same formulation and they did not all melt at the same rate. Some didn’t even melt at all while others were as liquidy as could be.
2. The kids aren’t strong enough to break them into small enough pieces. Either get some kids with really good hand strength to help, or provide the smaller kids with some tools to help (meat grinder, nutcracker, etc.) Otherwise they will just peel the wrappers and your thumbs will be sore from all the crayon-breaking.
3. The wrappers don’t come off the old crayons very easily. I don’t know of a method to help (maybe soaking them in water first?), but for a lot of the crayons it seemed that the wrappers had fused with the crayon itself. Use only crayons that have already lost their wrappers, or bring a vegetable peeler to help..
4. This project doesn’t produce usable crayons, but it is useful as an art project. The circles that it produced did not draw very well, but they did make interesting designs. Use this project more as a way to fill an afternoon and learn about color design than as a way to make crayons that the kids will use.

“The mountains melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, At the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.”
– Psalm 97:5

I was wandering around some blogs the other day and discovered that I was lost. I had been reading my sister’s blog and followed a link to MckMama’s blog. I had participated in one of MckMama’s Not Me Monday events, and so I was looking at the other participants. Well, not them, but their screen names.  I noticed that they were all female. I felt very out-of-place.

Ah-ha. I saw a guy among the women at MckBlog. “Lazy Phil” it was. So I clicked on the link and it took me to the blog of the “Lazy Philosopher“. Entertaining, but that philosopher happened to be female. I couldn’t find any sort of biography on Lazy Phil, but since Lazy Phil attends a Ladies’ Bible Study, I am assuming she is female.

I saw that a lot of these blogs belonged to a group/website at blogher.com. I wondered “Maybe there’s a bloghim.com too.” Of course the domain is taken, but it is just a landing page that has ads and is of no use to anyone. It’s a shame all the good names are taken and not put to good use. That’s why I have someblogsite.com – the dozens of other names I tried were taken.

Then I followed a link from my sister’s blog to BooMama’s blog. I flipped through and saw a recap of American Idol and there were some other blogs that linked to that post. I saw one belonging to “Scott”, so I followed that one because, having learned from “Phil”, I could not think of any other word whose abbreviation is “Scott”.

It was like being a kid when your parents had company over for dinner, and you are sitting there while they make polite conversation but you’re wondering “Where’s the stuff that I like?” And you’re wearing nice clothes, not your comfortable clothes. It was like someone had come into the room and told you that all the other kids are having fun in the other room and you should go there. Note to self: get a better analogy, one that doesn’t equate women with adults and men with kids.  That tired sitcom formula of man-bad/woman-good needs to end.  Not that this analogy does that explicitly, but someone could incorrectly infer that.  Mine’s just an out-of-placey analogy that doesn’t also involve males and females.

Honey, I Fed The Kids was different, refreshingly so, from those female blogs. That’s blogs by females, not female blogs. I think blogs themselves are neutral. Like Christian blogs. No, the blogs are not going to heaven, so they’re not Christian blogs (thanks Justin). But they are blogs by Christians.

If you’ve watched American Idol this season, then you’ll appreciate this post by Scott. If you’ve ever watched the Muppets, and are aware of the American Idol judges, then you’ll appreciate this post by Scott’s wife.  And I followed a comment from Scott’s blog to the Big Doofus blog, and it was equally entertaining.

There’s really not much of a point to this post, so thanks for reading to the end.

“but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.”
– Acts 10:35

One of the great things about having kids, and having your parents still in the house in which you grew up, is that you get to relive the experiences you had growing up. Preferably they would be only the good experiences, the ones you want to relive.

This past Saturday, my brother had his kids and my kids down by my parents’ pond. He found a garter snake and pointed it out to the children. It was about a foot and a half long, maybe two feet.

I have many memories of chasing and catching garter snakes during springs and summers. I thought I would try to relive my glory days of snake catching. Those days must have been 20-25 years ago. So my brother and I chased it through the grass. The snake must not have had anywhere to go, because he didn’t hide very well and didn’t go very far. I grabbed for him a few times, but my skills were a little rusty. I missed those few times, always hitting just where the tail had just been.

I decided that I needed to aim closer to his head, leading a little bit so that I wouldn’t miss again. But I also wanted both hands free so that I could quickly grab his head once I caught his body. That’s the easiest way to avoid being bitten. I was carrying the infant in one arm, so I handed him over to my brother so that I could have both arms free to catch the snake. Surprisingly, I caught the snake on the next attempt.

It is a lot easier chasing snakes without having to worry about dropping a 2-month-old child.

I held the snake just behind his head. Sure enough, he started twisting his head around, with his mouth open and fangs bared. He tried that only twice and then realized it was futile. But he also was writhing his body. You want to hold the flailing body away from you, at arm’s length, because the snake will usually start emptying his digestive system. And you don’t want that to get all over you.

We took the snake over to the other children, and they were interested for a little bit. They touched it, but no one wanted to hold it. Then it was dinner time, so I let the snake go back in the grass. I assume there’s no license required for catch-and-release for snakes.

“Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?”
– Luke 11:11

One of my favorite magazines is WORLD magazine. They have a mailbag department where they print letters to the editor and they also print one picture in that section. The picture always has someone reading a WORLD magazine, and they usually show people in far-away lands.

I decided to take a picture of someone reading a WORLD magazine, but it was in my own front yard, not in some distant country. So I don’t know if it will even be in the running. In case it doesn’t get printed, here it is.

As you can see, I am going for the humor angle, rather than the normal location angle.

This is several months old, but there’s an emulator that turns your Pocket PC into a Commodore 64. This is only for PocketPC / Windows Mobile devices (PDAs and smartphones). Which means it might be hard to plug in the old joysticks I still have in my basement.

I have nothing but fond memories of the good old C64. Okay, I do still have the C64s themselves. Ahh, the good old days. Back when you had to choose between screen resolution and color depth. But there was still plenty that could be done with the limitations.

But the old computers don’t need to be relegated to the past. You can even play play Guitar Hero on one, well, almost.

So if you know anyone with an iPaq or other Pocket PC, tell them to get the Pocket Commode 64.

“The memory of the righteous is blessed, But the name of the wicked will rot.”
– Proverbs 10:7