Some Blog Site

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

We watched Space Chimps last weekend. We got it from the library, as we have found it easiest to rent/borrow movies from the library than from any other movie places. I hadn’t heard of Space Chimps before, but my wife said that Dove liked it. It was rated G, so I figured it should be okay for the 3- and 5-year-old to watch.

It was almost okay for the kids to watch. There was not much objectionable in the movie, unless your children object to giant carnivorous flowers and vines that try to eat the protagonists. And there’s some bully behavior, which you definitely don’t want your kids to learn. But, of course, everything works out fine by the end of the movie.

But until the kids were sure that everything was going to be okay, the dangerous parts of the movie had the kids moving from their own chairs to my lap, then from my lap to the couch behind me (next to mom). The many-toothed, large-mouthed plants were just the start. It was the long-fanged cave monster, chasing the heroes through the cave, that most affected the kids. But if you stop a movie at the scary part, I think that’s worse than continuing to watch it. If you stop it when they (or you) are scared, you are left with only your imagination. The damage has been done, assuming that it is only a scary part of an otherwise decent movie, and the best way to mitigate the damage is to finish the story.

Of course they make it through the cave okay, and of course the friendly aliens who were dipped into freezing liquid by the bully alien are just covered in a frozen shell instead of being frozen solid. I would not introduce the youngsters to liquid nitrogen after watching Space Chimps, as they may have the mistaken impression that if they get frozen by it they could just break out of it with no ill effects.

At the end of the movie, the kids were laughing and were able to tell me their favorite parts. Their favorite parts of any movie are always the slapstick parts. In this case, it was a chimp falling down on a treadmill.

Jeff Daniels voices the bully Zartog and does a fine job. I had seen his name in the credits and was trying to figure out which character he was, but I could not. Patrick Warburton, on the other hand, is much easier to tell. Maybe his voice is too distinctive, or maybe he gets typecast into these roles. If you know what Patrick Warburton sounds like (especially in other animated films – I’m thinking Bee Movie) then you’ll have no problem figuring out which character is his.

There were enough jokes and stuff aimed at the parents of the kids watching the movie. So it is entertaining for all. I did laugh out loud at a couple of parts, or at least chuckle heartily. Here was my favorite bit (might not be exactly right, but the general idea is there):

Two chimps, Ham and Titan, are in a spaceship heading back to Earth.
Ham, protesting: “But I’m not an astronaut.”
Titan: “Are you wearing aluminum clothes?”
H: “Yes.”
T: “Are you in outer space?”
H: “Yes.”
T: “Are you David Bowie?”
H; “No.”
T: “Then you’re an astronaut!”

“But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.'”
– Isaiah 14:13

Christmas is a happy time.  One of our night-time rituals is reading books at bedtime.  I’ll tell the kids to pick one or two books each for me to read to them.  The other night, what “book” am I brought?  The most recent Lego catalog.  So we read each page, skipping the detailed descriptions but hitting all the names of sets and minifigures.  I am sure the kids dreamt well that night.

Then today we got a new Lego catalog in the mail. There is a new series in the Lego world: Power Miners. This series has the premise that geological disturbances are being caused by some new form of mineral, and the Power Miners must thwart this threat! It seems to have taken a while, but the concept of Tiberium has crept into places other than Command and Conquer. There is even a harvester set. Rogue crystals are headed to a toy near you.