Timmerov's Blog
coleman lanterns
i hate coleman lanterns. i can see pretty well in the dark. unless there's a coleman lantern lighting up the trees 100 meters away. then i'm blind. parks should be segregated into areas for people who want to stay up late with their colemans, music players, bonfires, etc. and for people who retire early and arise early. our neighbors were in the coleman camp. in addition to the coleman, they had a portable picnic table, hammock, wagon, bike rack, adult tent, kid tent, food tent, firewood tent, and a massive red and white umbrella. they did put the umbrella on its side so it blocked the coleman from our campsite. that was nice. it also put more useful illumination in their campsite.
mosquitos
apparently it was a bad year for mosquitos in michigan. while there i got one bite in 8 days. apparently it was a good year for mosquitos in big basin. we went camping there for one night and i fed the mosquitos 8 times.
bad knees
decades of wrestling, football, baseball, roller hockey, snowboarding, etc, never touched my knees. squatting for extended periods of time to deal with small children seems to be wearing them out. dang it. i'm gonna need those.
giant ladder
the giant ladder is (oddly enough) a giant sized rope ladder with 4x4's for rungs that are from 4' to 6' apart. it's a teamwork element ascended by two people. i've been trying to solo it for years. the first day there was this 21 year old visitor to camp who schooled us with a pullover maneuver. i couldn't perform it then. but i practiced it on the tot lot. the second day i mastered the pullover but burned myself out getting my fat partner up a few rungs. i balanced on the top rung but missed the stand for the wire. damn. but better than most years. then it rained. on the third day the thing was too slimy for solo work. my partner dan and i made it look easy.
line cutters
there was a long line for the buffet that split into both sides. this was fine. except for the dorkwads that kept coming in the out and cutting in. alisa was hungry and had enough. she started sending people to the end of the line. wwrd? i love that woman.
horse bogeys
lead line is when you set the kid on a horse and lead it around the pen. this time garrett was riding buddy. also known as epona. buddy sneezed and blew horse snot all over my bare legs. this was insanely funny to the little boys.
bullseyes
bennett shot 5 bullseyes. he wasn't doing too well until dad shut up and just let him shoot. or something like that. it's his story. who am i to not let him tell it? it was kinda scary this year. there was another bennett next to us who kept pointing his loaded weapon at us.
inkheart
alisa and bennett are reading inkheart. it's not bad. it sure doesn't feel like it was translated from its original german. turns out the family sharing our cabin at camp michigania was from germany. the brother was currently reading inkheart in english. having already read it in german. they live about 40 km from alisa's relatives. who we visited two years ago. small world.
internet
i paid the $10 for the wireless password at the ed center. yeah i know. i'm a bad person. all i did with it was read mail, news, comics, and jot some notes for this blog. nothing important. i'm a net junky.
baby sweet
the family friends, stuart sweet and his wife, brought baby sweet to camp with them this year. baby sweet barely sleeps through the night but they took her with them in the sailing races anyway. she's stu's luck. i'm telling you this so you get some idea how seriously the 9th weekers take their sailing. alisa and julie still did well in their races even though that's the only sailing they get all year.
flight balance
some things are certain in life: death, taxes, and american eagle overbooking your flight. when we arrived at the check in desk for our flight from chicago to traverse city they were calling for 4 /more/ volunteers to accept overnight accomodations and $250 in travel vouchers. double for frequent fliers. that would be $2,000 for the four of us. now if the offer had gone to $500... anywho, we got on the plane and it was half empty. apparently, they were transporting some heavy (presumably profitable) baggage. they didn't explain what. we could only wonder what heavy things needed to be moved to the middle of nowhere so urgently. anyway, with all this heavy cargo in the only baggage compartment in the back of the plane the flight crew had to balance the plane by moving the largest passengers to the front of the plane, the smallest to the middle, and emptying the back. i was thinking maybe we should have taken the vouchers.
camp michigania
it's that time of year again. we leave tomorrow. bright and early. no new posts for a week. camp michigania historically is a wonderful source of new blog material.
bobcat
the back neighbors are landscaping their yard. they rented a bobcat to scoop up all the concrete, rocks, wood bits, plants, and other detritus from their yard. the boys went over to watch. they asked garrett if he'd like to drive the bobcat. he said, no. he wants to drive a scoop with a backhoe in back and a loader in front. the bobcat is too small for him.
emergency brake
my sister showed up at our house in the yellow bmw sans bumper. apparently, my 13 year old niece drove into a sign. she was in the car when it started moving. she avoided the embankment and the oncoming traffic. she thought the clutch was the brake. so today the boys and i had a little demo about what to do if ever they are in such a situation. turn off the car and pull the emergency brake. of course we /had/ to practice this maneuver by rolling the car down the driveway.
matter of thai
alisa and i celebrated our 12th anniversay by driving around downtown los altos until we found an indian or thai restaurant that looked interesting. what we found was wonderful. we had the calamari salad and the beef mango. YUMMY! pretty menu. nice plates. the only flaw was they didn't ask us about dessert.
catch
i had a catch with bennett. it was fun. he's 6 so his attention span is about 5 seconds. he at least tried to do what i told him. yeah, i know you were taught to throw that way at baseball camp. throw that way at baseball camp. throw dad's way with dad. he's got weight transfer down. he still throws sliders. we'll get to that.
maya
so we bought this $2000 software package for work. all i'm going to use it for is to view 3d files. the manipulation interface isn't as good as blender's. which is free. unfortunately blender loads the files using an interpreted language implemented in an interpreted language. wee.
back pain
too much softball. not enough warm up. back was really tight the next morning. fortunately it was up high so i could mostly ignore it. and walk. alisa gave me a nice massage and worked it all out. mmmm... i love that woman. maybe i should play softball more often. ;->
anniversary
today's our anniversary. i've been married to the most beautiful and talented woman in the world for twelve whole years. would i marry her again? you bet. and again and again and again and again and again and again. happy anniversary darling.
at bat
i'm the lead off batter. garrett called poop and pee break. mom's got him. she's also on deck next. that's what i tell the umpire and the catcher. i joke that i'm gonna hit the ball and just keep on running. i pop one straight up in the air and down the third base line. it had so much spin that when it came back down it sliced right back to the catcher. she was just standing there. catch it! i said. she took a step and stabbed out her glove for the out. okay. i ran off to the bathroom to take over those duties chuckling the whole way.
softball
alisa had an early game. so the boys and i went to watch her play. except they hadn't started yet. alisa came running out, can you play? uh... otherwise we'll forfeit. uh... i don't have a glove or cleats. i'm wearing jeans and a tie-dyed safari hat. uh sure! i can play. so i walk onto left field. it's wet and squishy. no warm up. first pitch is a fly ball to my right. second pitch is a flyball to my left. i catch both. third pitch leaves the park. i didn't catch that. fourth pitch is a grounder through short and third. fifth pitch leaves the park for an automatic out. yes, it's one of those leagues.
baseball
i dropped bennett off at baseball camp. his teachers are all girls. huh. i remember all the teasing that went on when i was a kid about throwing like a girl. huh. guess i'll be making time to have a catch with my son. huh.
no kit
i took the boys to happy hollow on mom's day off. twice. i forgot my wallet the first time. oops. fortunately, one our friends from our dad's group was having a birthday party there. so we got to smash pinatas and eat candy. and it wasn't too gawd awful hot.
