Some Blog Site

I don’t know how you are during online/call-in meetings where a variety of topics are being discussed, but I try to get other things done while it’s not my topic.

But sometimes I get too involved in the other thing and then I’m not paying attention to the meeting. See point number 3 in this list, for my opinion that most people don’t really multitask.

And then I end up feeling like this:

I suppose this doesn’t make as much sense to people who aren’t familiar with that scene in the Star Wars movie.

We did a few things related to water this past summer. I normally post a vacation recap after our vacation, but I neglected to do so for 2024.
So instead, you’ll get some photos of water-y things we did, both on vacation and not. With things warming up it’s time to think about water rather than snow again.

We did some waterfall and river exploring. This was in Big Falls County Park on the outskirts of Eau Claire, WI. Note that if you’re wondering how to get to Big Falls County Park to visit the falls and go wading, you want the south side – come across on 9 Mile Creek Rd then up N. 130th Ave to the park entrance. Nothing wrong with the north side, but if you want the normal experience use the south side.

Here is what it looks like when you come to the end of the trail and first see the falls.

And then if you go down a level here’s what it looks like.

And this was what I saw looking back up at the falls – the boys testing out the waters.

They worked their way down the falls and were wading through the river. There was a lot of it you could wade through, but there were some spots that required swimming.

That was our stop in Wisconsin. Then we went over to Minnesota, where there are a lot of lakes so we did lake things.

Mainly tubing

and wake surfing. Here’s how one starts wake surfing.

And here’s how it should look just after starting. The wave does settle down and become smoother and then you can stay ahead of the break, if all goes well.

As far as I can tell, the main difference between tubing and wake surfing is that in wake surfing the boat driver is working with you to help you but in tubing the driver is working against you.

Then from Minnesota we went back into Wisconsin but only to pass through to the UP of Michigan. There we got to do some cliff jumping into Lake Superior.

I jumped, although it was not pleasant. It wasn’t that bad, but I don’t need to do it again. I may have needed a few minutes to work myself up to it. My youngest was in the same boat, but once he jumped he liked it and kept jumping.

Then he got the idea in his head that he wanted to swim across the channel, which was basically the open seas of Lake Superior. Here is what it looks like from the POV of the jumping spot.

In fact, that picture is of him and his cousin-in-law reaching the other side.

And here is their swim back. The water is about 8-10 feet deep right next to the cliff, so in the open water like that it’s probably 15-20 feet. The weather was good though so not much of a current for them to fight.

Then from Lake Superior on the north side of the UP we moved to Lake Huron on the south side of the UP. That was a very shallow section so our activites there were more relaxed, like hiking, kayaking, and rowboating.

We did some other water stuff throughout the summer. Here is a trip to Lake Michigan, which was mostly sitting on the sand and wading in the cold water.

And rounding out the travelogue here is our river tubing trip.

This is the end of the whitewater rapids in Ann Arbor, MI. They have a feature there called the Cascades, which is a manmade series of small falls so that kayakers and canoers can bypass the dam on the Huron River.

Those falls are also fun for tubers, as it’s basically a class 0 rapids, or level 1- or whatever is the easiest thing you could do. And if things go bad, all you gotta do is stand up and walk, as it’s about waist deep.

I was hanging streamers the other week for someone’s birthday and I wondered why we always twist streamers when stringing them up.

So I ran one straight, with no twist. And it looked very sad.

That got me thinking about other things that are generally known as bad if unvarying. I came up with three:

• Streamers (the crepe paper party things, not people online)
• Singing a music note
• Long hair

People seem to agree that in each of those, an overlaying frequency is good – a twisting or a vibrato or some curls or waves.

I thought of those three items, then I wondered if I could think of any more. I saw I got two from the sense of sight and one from the sense of hearing. Maybe there could be examples from the other senses?

Sense of smell? No, no examples of a varying scent being more interesting than a straightforward scent. Scents themselves are interesting enough, I suppose.

Sense of taste? Same thing as smell, for this exercise. Too much of one smell or taste would cause it to wane, but generally you switch scents or flavors not make them wavy. I don’t even know how you could make a flavor wavy.

Sense of touch? I do see this happening here. Some examples are a back massage or foot rub doesn’t just press in one place (queue video of Bugs Bunny head massage). Also it is not unusual for people to pat backs when hugging. Why do they do that? In the interesting of promoting this theory, I’d say the answer is because unvarying hugs are not as interesting.

I don’t know what else to do with this realization – sharing it here is about the extent of its usefulness.

This is a guide for how to play the game The Chameleon. This game is simple in concept but after playing it I found that it is difficult to play, in that it’s quite nuanced and you need the whole group of people to have the same level of nuance. You can certainly play regardless, but to play correctly takes some practice. Without that, you can still play and it might be funnier than normal, which might be what you’re looking for. There’s a difference between playing a game right and having fun with it. This game isn’t easy to play right but it is easy to have fun with, if any of that made sense.

1. How do I win?
By blending in well with the others.

2. How do I blend in?
By being able to guess the secret word that everyone but you knows.

3. How does everyone else know the secret word if it is secret?
At the beginning of the round, cards are dealt face down so that everyone gets one card. The front of the card has the secret decoder key, except one card. If you get the one blank card then you are the chameleon. Everyone else gets matching decoder keys so they all know to find the word.

4. How do they find the word?
There is one card that goes face up in the middle of the table and that is the word card. There are different word cards, and it lists the theme and then a bunch of words related to that theme. The secret word is one of those words, and the decoder key tells everyone which specific word it is. Your job as chameleon is to guess which word on your turn it is based on the vague clues that everyone else is giving, and you do that by giving your own vague clue so that no one else would know you’re the chameleon.

5. How do I guess the word if I happen to be the first person to give a clue but I’m the chameleon that round?
That’s a tough one – you’ll just have to guess well and give a clue that’s vague enough to cover some of the bases but not so vague that people know that you don’t know the word. At the end of the round people will vote for who they think the chameleon is, but there’s usually a lot of chatter before that and you’ll get a feeling for how well (or how poorly) you’ve done.

We played it and everyone seemed to have fun, even though my poker face is so bad that people knew I was the chameleon as soon as I was dealt my card.

There, now go play The Chameleon.