Activities committee

The Activities Committee of our church has, to me, always been a vague and amorphous creature, probably because I've never been on one before. So it is delightful to see that our local church ward has a well balanced, very involved, Activities Committee. As Carolyn and I became co-chairs (in name only, Carolyn is really the chair) we immediately had to organize a major party for Christmas. Carolyn has really organized things well in spite of some communications problems. It turns out that for one very active member of the committee we had his email address wrong. He hasn't gotten any of the meeting minutes, often daily notes, or urgent plea.

We've cleared that up but we wonder how many other members of the committee we aren't communicating clearly with. We wondered why Dustin never seemed to answer our email questions. At least for this party, the committee members have been extremely quick to volunteer for assignments and consistently meeting that obligation.

This is the first time I've been so completely "behind the scenes" in the planning, executing, and cleaning up afterward. With some other activities, I've done one or the other but never all. One misses out on the fellowship and conversation that goes on during the activity on the main floor but gets into other conversation and a different level of fellowship around the planning table and in the kitchen/serving areas.

Tomorrow: the Ward Christmas Party 2007!

Karate kids

Okay, it's really Tae Kwon Do, so sue me. In any case it was a delight to be invited to watch Tim and Jake at their Tae Kwon Do lessons. I find that watching people in different situations gives you a better picture of the whole person and it couldn't have been more true with the boys.

Now Jake acted a little hesitantly about hitting the dummies although when he did connect, it was a solid hit.

But what was really fun was hearing him shout answers to the instructor. His "Yes, si!" and "No, sir!" could probably be heard several shops down from the strip mall studio of Mr. Robinson. But most of all, I was impressed with how self-disciplined Jake seemed to be.

Tim was, as expected, also very self disciplined and you could see him trying very hard to do everything exactly as asked, rehearsing in his head the move that his body and feet or arms would have to execute.

Tim wasn't loud. I imagine he's still trying to figure out how to be loud in a context so different from his gymnastics and dancing classes. Be he did answer sharp and correct.

I hope they like it enough to keep going. It looks like it's good for them both.

Jasper's giant eggburger

My working one day a week at the regional center and the desire for some people there to make sure they keep in touch with me has led to an instant tradition: Wednesday lunches out. In addition, most of these lunches are at Jasper's Giant Hamburger, located on Fulton & Hurley. When enough of the group start feeling guilty about their cholesterol intake, the suggest another location like Round Table Pizza but Jasper's almost always wins out.

And, of course, I have developed such a reputation for ordering an Egg Cheeseburger (think steak and eggs) that I don't even get a chance to place my order. The propieter sees me coming and rings up the egg cheeseburger (or eggburger for short). Now, you've got to admit the concoction looks good. I can certainly vouch for it tasting great. And if I only eat one once a week it can't be that bad for me, can it?

Want to know when I've added something?

I was talking to a good friend recently who admitted (to my face) that she hadn't read my blog for several weeks. She said that she meant to (yeah, right) but just kept forgetting to look up the URL. And yes, she said, she knew it would be easier if she just added the URL to her bookmarks or even made an icon for her desktop.

I then suggested she use a notification service. There are a half dozen blogs that I like to keep up with but they don't change daily and I hate reading the blog for 5 minutes before I realize I've read it before. Of course she asked what the name of the service was and I couldn't remember. It wasn't even advertised on my blog.

If you look at the left side of the screen, just under my picture, you'll see that I've corrected the last problem. The service is called blogarithm.com. I highly recommend it.

Tradition..... tradition...

With grinding spices and


mixing them with the meat, and


with the dehydrator going full force,



and with me implementing quality control (I'm eating a piece, not licking it!)

you can tell it's getting close to Christmas. A few weeks ago Carolyn and I put up several pints of pomegranate jelly so by the time I get through with this jerky project we should have plenty of little gifts for friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I'm afraid we've done this so long that some people have come to expect it and have let us know a couple of months ago that they are.

We're glad it's something we can do.

Promoting Pantry Pest traps

Carolyn religiously reads the gardening section of our local paper, the Sacramento Bee, and it shows in her lovely flower beds, bushes, and trees. So when Gardening Columnist Pat Rubin fielded some questions about how to get rid of the brown house moth or its close relatives, Carolyn had an opinion. These moths love to eat anything made out of grain and will eat through thick cardboard or cellophane to get to their meal. Pat quoted Carolyn in her online version of her column the day after receiving Carolyn's email.

Carmichael reader Carolyn Loveridge has this advice: “There are some easy solutions to the problem of little moths that seem to float around in the pantry. If you put all grain products into your freezer for 48 hours when you bring them home from the store, you will eliminate the eggs that become larva. For those moths that are already flying around, buy “The Pantry Pest Trap” by Safer. I keep a trap in my cold cereal cupboard and don’t worry about freezing the cereal. Using these two strategies have eliminated the moth headache."

There are Islamic moderates

Many people are dismayed at the seeming power and ubiquity of Islamic extremists, many of which are also fundamentalists. Sometimes one wonders if indeed there is a requirement in Islam to be extremist because one never seems to hear any other viewpoint. It was thus with surprise and delight I read the following in today's Sacramento Bee. I have met Mr. Azeez as he spoke to a forum of the Renaissance Society I attend every Friday. Very personable and reasonable man as you can see from his letter. He defend Islam well but has no tolerance for extremists.

A teddy bear crisis?

Re "Briton guilty of insulting Islam," Nov. 30: As a Muslim, and someone whose first name is Mohamed, I must admit to how dismayed I feel at the Sudanese government's ruling to imprison a British woman for having "allowed" her students to call a teddy bear "Mohamed."

Aside from the fact that there is nothing wrong with calling a toy Mohamed, or that it was the children that chose the name, not the teacher, I feel particularly disgusted that the Sudanese government would use such an insignificant incident as an instrument to ward off internal pressure and discontent at its failing policies that brought the "food basket of the Arab World" to historical records of poverty. Instead of exerting enough effort to put an end to the Darfur crisis, the Bashir government puts a teacher in jail for allegedly insulting Prophet Mohamed! No one insults the prophet of Islam more than Muslims who systematically fail to uphold his good example! Woe to those who keep giving us a bad name!

- Imam M. A. Azeez, Sacramento

SALAM Islamic Center

Cited from the Sacramento Bee, Sunday, Dec 2, 2007

If at first you don't succeed...

..change the hardware.

You may notice from this picture that our little red Honda Civic fits nicely in the new carport with plenty of room to open and close the gates. But when we tried it with the Dodge van, it was a no go. We could store the van in the carport or close the gates but not both.

Well, Handyman Arnold got busy this morning with a couple of hinges (4 to be exact) from Home Depot and pretty soon...

the gates open out instead of in. Now Carolyn has her choice of which vehicle gets the garage and which one gets the new carport. I love it when a project goes right.
In the process of installing these new hinges, I was not only able to use spring loaded hinges (so you have to hook them open or they'll close on their own) but I also raised the gates so they don't rub on the driveway making it more difficult to open or close them.

Slides, overheads, and pupusas

We've almost come to the end of our Conversational Spanish class. Tonight we had the chapter test on our final chapter and had the homework for that chapter checked and recorded as well. Then we got into the really fun part of the final three sessions - the class presentations.

Each class member is required to develop and present a 5 to 10 minute mini-lecture highlighting some aspect of some Spanish speaking country. Some of the topics covered this evening were Mexican food, Carnival in Mexico, flora and fauna of Costa Rica, El Salvadorian food, Guamanian brown snake, and "universal health care" in Costa Rica. Visual aids and creativity were encouraged. The use of PowerPoint was also encouraged. We saw some very creative uses of PowerPoint. It seems that some people feel so dependent on what slides they have available that they use the compose mode of PowerPoint rather than slide show. One person, feeling a need to project something had some overhead transparencies made of some postcards he had. Luckily there was still an old-fashioned overhead projector in the room along with the more modern computer and projector.

Two of the presenters brought food to demonstrate their topic. Thus, the Salvadorian pupusas and Mexican tamales shown above. The pupusas taste a lot like quesadillas so who cannot like them. I can hardly wait to see what tonight's presentations inspire in next week's presenters.

Christmas in November?

When I was growing up, we heard about and discussed in our family an Uncle and Aunt of ours who supposedly gave each other gift certificates for Christmas. As kids we just couldn't imagine something like that. It seemed so crass and commercial and non-romantic. In the extended family Christmas gift pool, they would give to our family about every 6 or 7 years. We learned really quickly to tell them what we would really like unless we wanted a box of old books or something just as creative.

Now that I'm older (older even than the aunt & uncle were at that time) I can appreciate their position. I am the world's worst reader of hints and gift suggestions. That's probably related to my talent as the worst hint dropper. I can't imagine anyone being able to tell my "Isn't that an interesting item" meaning I find the concept and/or engineering unique or clever from my "Isn't that an interesting item" meaning oh, please, please, please get me that for Christmas so I won't feel guilty buying it for myself.

So Carolyn and I go one better than the gift certificate route. We buy our own gifts . That insures that we get the kind, color, size, and model of whatever it was we were dying to get on Christmas morning. Not only that but I'm bound to actually be in a position of buying something I want when I see it whereas she would have to make another trip and hope that what I saw was still there.

There are two problems to this method. First (and I hesitate to say how often this happens) we buy it, put it away until Christmas and then either forget where it is hidden or forget that we bought it. The second problem is buying it and then wanting to use it right away.

We just purchased an i-Pod for each other. Not wanting to "waste" a full month of warranty before even finding out whether or not they work, we turned them on and connected them in turn to our computer, loaded some tunes and pictures, and played the tunes back and looked at the pictures. They truly are amazing machines. Then, reluctantly, we put them away. There's a real problem in seeing, handling, & playing with your Christmas gift 4 weeks before Christmas.

High-tech fund raising

Good naturedly locking someone up and then letting them go if they could "make bail" has been around some time. Still, it was interesting to see it wrapped in the high tech environment of the Internet with web pages set up for each "victim" and payments processed conveniently through credit cards under the auspices of Verisign.

My brother Mac is currently being "locked up" by the Spanish Fork, Utah branch of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. His bail has been set at $1,800 and judging from the response so far, I think he'll easily make that. His donation web site is at this address: https://www.mdaevent.org/ParticipantInfo.aspx?j=92678434-b3f4-4418-acb4-1f7ffdc5d652

I was also a little thrown by the list of donors available on the website. I'm not ashamed of a donation but I'm not doing it for the publicity either. Do I leave the checkmark on so that Mac will know we're thinking of him or take it off so that it will be a gift from the heart? I finally opted for doing nothing about the check mark which means our names go on the list.

And while I'm on the subject of fundraising, our Spanish instructor told the class last week that her husband had a policy of giving $10 to every agency requesting a donation from him. Some of us thought that was neat. Others thought it was a perfect way to get a stuffed mailbox. What do you think?

Later Thanksgiving projects

Mom feels that the Thanksgiving experience at our house wouldn't be complete without our visitors doing something useful during their stay here. The family members who arrived later thought they had it made since they had missed out on the early projects. Wrong! We asked them to put up the Christmas tree and decorations both inside and outside. And of course we had to have the lawn mowed before we could put up Christmas decorations there.

Thanks go to Steven and Richard for mowing the lawn and setting up the decorations and Christmas villages.


Here is our front lawn and walkway.

And here is the Norman Rockwell village.

The middle-eastern creche.

And finally, the Christmas tree.

This year we included special ornaments for each of the grandchildren. Each one was a jeweled snowflake with the child's picture inside. We had hoped to make it even more special as they would hang it on the tree but realized that they were more interested in knowing how their picture got in there. They weren't getting on the tree.

Newest grandchild

One of the best parts of Thanksgiving where family gathers together is to meet the littlest ones in the clan. This time it was Gavin Loveridge's turn to be oohed and aahed over.

Now six months old he is already starting on solid food because he's much too hungry to be pacified with just his mother's milk. As you can see, he loves his food but tends to wear as much as he eats. The supplement of solid food has extended his sleeping time so that he has recently slept through the night.

Another favorite activity is his bath. Daddy Philip is bathing him here in a tub that just fits the sink. Gavin giggles and laughs when his daddy finds his foot or knee hidden under the water.

When I took the previous picture he looked up as if to say, "Make sure all the pictures are decent so you can show them at family gatherings when I'm sixteen!"

After he's bathed and dressed for bed, Gavin enjoys a little snuggle time with Grandpa. He's attentive enough already that I can read a book to him or play peek a boo.

We took this the next day when he was all dressed to go out and celebrate Thanksgiving or help Grandma decorate the house for Christmas. Love his instructional t-shirt.

Young Artists

As our family gathered from southern California and the coast to our house for Thanksgiving, it soon became evident that we would have to have lots of things to entertain them. We only had 7 of our grandchildren here and one is only 6 months old and very easy to care for. But the other six were more than a handful.

One of the things that we did early on was provide paper, colored pencils, and crayons. A couple of the 5 to 6 year old would spend hours and hours on their drawing projects. For the most part we were able to satisfy their needs with blank copy paper. But then they started asking for pictures to color.

I quickly found three web sites with open outline pictures of characters the kids could relate to that I could recommend for various reasons. There was a fourth site that made new users register and process through more than 12 pages of "vendor selection" before they could apply for membership. Unfortunately I can't find that site now.

Sites for coloring picture (with comments)
1. coloring-book.info/coloring/ lists about 150 characters, each of which has a dozen to as high as 65 coloring book "pages" to print and color. The default borders and good.

2. www.coloring.ws/coloring.html The pages are listed by theme such as seasons, holidays, clowns, flowers, etc. and you don't see thumbnails of the pages until you've gone to the lowest level of the index.

3. disney.go.com/magicartist/coloring/Some kids will like this as it has so many Disneyland characters to choose from. For each character there are 7 coloring pages, one of which you can color on the computer screen and then print out to compare freehand.

First project this Thanksgiving

As I've mentioned in this blog, one of the Thanksgiving traditions we've had or encouraged is for out adult children to work on various projects around the house and yard before, after, and sometimes on Thanksgiving day itself. This year, one of the projects for the day before Thanksgiving was installing a tarp carport at the side of our house.

Now that Carolyn uses the little red Honda Civic so much because the mileage is so good, we kind were of puzzled about where to park it when the weather starts getting colder. It doesn't make sense to have a large garage and still have to scrape the windows on a cold morning. When I mentioned I had seen this 10' x 20' tarp cover with side and end panels at Sam's, Carolyn wanted to see it right away. Even though we didn't know for sure how it would fit, she bought it and brought it home.


Philip and Jenny being the first to arrive were given the task of installing what we had already begun calling the carport. Edward joined us about halfway through and helped with those extra hands just when we needed it.


Fortunately, the pieces were well marked and the whole cover was nicely designed. Someone had put a lot of thought into the construction of this cover.


The frame and infrastructure was very much like the cover we had in our patio area down in Long Beach which really helped us know how to put it together.


In no time at all we had the frame completed and the cover in place.


Then it was just a matter of tying up the straps and bolting down the poles so that the wind won't carry it away.



This is what it looks like from the back yard. The color is so close to our house trim color you'd think we had chosen it.


The end zips open and rolls up so that we can easily go from the back yard to the front.

And, as you can see the little "red rocket" fits rather nicely in her new home. Actually, we haven't decided for sure. We may put the van in the carport and the red rocket in the garage.

Thank you Philip & Ed.

T D A T

The Day After Thanksgiving. It has really become an interesting day. Many companies now consider it a holiday and employees would really balk at having to come back in to work that ONE day. Other companies, mostly retail, see it as Black Friday, the biggest sales day of the year. I don't know if the black refers to the color of the sky when the stores open, the mood of the employees who have to start work at 4:00, or the difference between red ink (loss) and black ink (profit) that a successful sales day could make for a company. All I know is that if you're in retail you DON'T take the day after Thanksgiving off.

Now if you do take the day off, what do you do with your time? A couple of our group made a foray into the stores to buy things the "just couldn't pass up", but most of the group stayed around the house. Those who were old enough helped dress up the house for Christmas.

It may seem a little early but this way we can host the two or three holiday events that we've committed to. If it were left up to Carolyn and me we'd still be putting things in place when the parties were all over.

Besides, the kids get up and down so much more easy than I.

What else do you do?

Play the piano for your own enjoyment or others'.

Lay back on the couch and enjoy a snooze or a good football game.

Help the grandchildren make sugar cookies and decorate them with icing and sprinkles.

And, of course, the ever pressing need to eat the leftovers from the day before.

A Happy Thanksgiving to All

Someone mentioned at our Thanksgiving celebration today that November 22 is the earliest in the year that Thanksgiving can occur in the United States where it is set as the fourth Thursday in November. For me it couldn't have come soon enough as 5 out of our 6 children were able to make it to Sacramento (or already live here) so that we were able to have a grand celebration with 11 adults and 7 grandchildren. There was plenty of food for all as these pictures demonstrate.

A couple of the families had to travel this Thanksgiving morning so we had our dinner late and didn't really plan on doing anything special other than the family get together.

While we put the finishing touches on the dinner, the kids played outside on the newly installed trampoline at Ed & Tiffany's house. And those adults who weren't needed in the kitchen sat around and swapped stories.

We managed to have a good Thanksgiving without any visible hurt feelings or arguments or fighting except the little spats among the children that are expected.

I'll take the next couple of days postings to tell about all the things we managed to put into the day besides sitting around eating.

Another version of hell

The kids have started arriving for Thanksgiving so I'll probably have a lot to write about the next four or five days. However, I may not get around to writing each day when I'd like because my time isn't exactly my own when there's lots of company to entertain and people to socialize with. I appreciate your patience.

I was going to talk about some projects that we've begun and in some cases completed around our house by using all the extra help in town for Thanksgiving. But instead I'm just going to mention a project at Ed & Tiff's house. Carolyn has been wanting them to have a trampoline for a long time and has finally convinced Tiffany that it would be especially good to have on to entertain cousins for Thanksgiving. Thus it came about that we were all surprised when Carolyn announced after our lunch today that she wanted to stop at Sam's Club and wanted Ed to follow us with his truck. The two large boxes in which the trampoline was packed filled Ed's pickup truck bed. I was glad that Philip and Edward were around to lift the boxes.

We decided to undertake the construction of the trampoline right then although at 3:30 the light of day was already beginning to fade and it was completely dark by the time we finished. The instructions were less than perfect and the parts were not easily identifiable. Through the process we discovered better and worse ways to do things that could have easily been included in the instructions. But the worst part of the whole thing for me was knowing how much quicker the job would have gone with just a couple of better wrenches and Phillips head screwdrivers or just some sharper bits. For a person who has the correct tools, it is a special version of hell to have to make do with lesser tools. I get so frustrated when I don't have the right tool for my own home projects that I can imagine how frustrated Edward was that he couldn't offer us better to use. Like he explained, he has lots of screwdrivers but finding the ones he needs when he needs them is a serious problem.

At least I know what kind of things he could use for his birthday.

Oh, the whole project was worth it when Jake said about this Christmas present from his grandma, "I love her so much, I can't forgive her enough! (meaning thank her enough)"

My daemon

Please see the blog entry regarding daemons in "The Golden Compass" then click on this image to comment on my daemon.

Utilitarian

Utilitarian means meeting the direct needs of, useful. I think it should also refer to utility companies such as the telephone company or the water company. Because when they do a job it is strictly utilitarian. It happens less frequently now with all the wireless phones but the cable company still does it. You know, you need an outset that is two walls away from the outside wall where the cable connection to the outside world is. And the company gladly agrees to wire the outlet for you. When he's done you can see every inch of the cable because it is stapled in the most visible corner of the room between the ceiling and walls.

Well, our neighborhood recently converted from unmetered water service to metered water service. Our water meter (see above picture) was installed 15 years ago when the house was built. It was installed in the driveway apron conveniently accessible for the water company and out of our way and out of our sight. When we began metered service, the water district simply had to start reading our pre-installed meter. But our immediate neighbor to the north had to have a meter installed.

We thought something was up when we saw all the pretty graffiti on our street. I guess each of the utility companies comes in before any digging begins and marks their territory with spray paint warning everyone where NOT to did.

But the job the water company did is priceless. The new water meter is smack dab in the middle of the neighbor's front lawn making it almost impossible to hide or camouflage with plantings. I guess they could paint it green. Now if that isn't UTILITARIAN I don't know what is.