Bones On Paper

A colorful piece of construction paper was in our kitchen. Kelly had glued bones to it. She had dissected an owl pellet. Pellets are spit up and out by owls.

BonesOnPaper.jpg

I’m not sure what the scientific notations in this photo mean. Kelly will have to explain:

10G keal kcal vole herbivore

1,000 keal kcal grass producer

Spring Opens With Wins

Kelly and Danny both opened their seasons with wins today.

Kelly played forward for her soccer team. The three forwards did a lot of passing, enabling each girl to score one goal. Final score was 3 – 1. Kelly was surprised her goal went in. She reported that it stayed on the ground and kind of curved in. Bend it like Kelly.

Danny took the mound to open Brookwood’s season. Brookwood went ahead early by 2 in the first inning. His first inning pitching was four up, three down, with one strike out and a great pick-off at first. The second and third innings had a little more excitement, with the other team getting 3 runs on Brookwood’s 4. His fourth inning was short. A one pitch grounder to the first guy. A one pitch pop to the second. And a two pitch pop out to the third for a total of 4 pitches. The fifth inning was his last, which included a visit from the coach, but he pulled off a three strike-out inning, allowing only one guy on.

The closers did a good job, and the game ended 5 to 3, with Danny recording the win.

Tybee Is Like A Fine Woman

(The latest find for The Colonel’s War Chest.)

Location: Georgia, United States

Nasty George found Colonel Smut’s War Chest (Traditional Cache) at 2/26/2005

Log Date: 2/26/2005

Superb hiding place! Great cache in a great place. I will be returning to Tybee in the near future. All of the other beaches like Daytona, Myrtle, PC, etc. have lost their soul. Tybee is like a fine woman, “a little on the trashy side”.

Susan and Barbie

Well Susan is certainly the hero of the hour (weekend, week, month?) here at Stonegate. In honor of MCC’s 10th birthday, Susan gave her a very special box full of antique barbie clothes, barbies, accessories, and even a wig! These were Susan’s when she was a little girl, and Kelly and Claire have been playing with them continuously this weekend, repeatedly telling me how special these are. Kelly emphasized how Susan gave these to Mary Claire for her to share (with Kelly.) The two girls have done a marvelous job sharing.

Kelly is also very happy that Mary Claire got her own pool cue and is allowed to play pool now at Grandaddy’s, because now she has someone who will play pool with her.

Happy Birthday Claire! Thank you Susan! And I’ll caution the girls to not let immoral, modern Barbie behavior spill over to these special Barbies.

Kathy Reporting In from Jamaica

Kathy called tonight from Jamaica to report that she and Danny had made it through their first day working for Missionaries of the Poor. She said she had an easy day visiting with the elderly women of The Lord’s Place where the women wanted to talk, sing, dance, and laugh at their photos on the digital camera. Father Raymond also kept her laughing.

Danny, Casey, and Dillon (the three young guys) were all assigned duty in Bethlehem House (a.k.a. the combat zone.) This is where the young boys live, and Danny had to help with shower duty. Kathy laughed as she related the story where Danny picked up one boy, and one of the brothers cautioned to not pick him up, but to put him in a wheelchair. Danny said, “It’s ok, I can pick him up.” (Danny looks twice as big as many of the brothers.) He suddenly smelled why the brothers were cautioning him, and he realized too late that he had a smelly mess on his shirt.

In the afternoon, the three guys got to go on a “Biscuit Run.” They went in a truck with one of the brothers to pick up surplus cookies at a factory. They road through the slums of Kingston handing out free “biscuits” to all takers. Danny tried to use cookie crumbs to rub out the stain on his shirt. Didn’t help much. He says he will bring an extra shirt tomorrow, just in case.

Kelly, Claire, and I were all relieved to hear Kathy was doing well.

Ice Ice Baby

I was in Las Vegas Friday morning to give a presentation to our operations group when there was a stir because flights were being cancelled to Atlanta. The word was any flight arriving after 8 pm was cancelled. I was scheduled to land at 10:55 pm connecting through Dallas. I pictured myself sleeping in the Dallas airport over the weekend.

I went ahead and gave the presentation then headed for the airport. While many flights were cancelled, Delta and our travel department told me that it did not appear my flight was cancelled. Sure enough, I landed in Atlanta about 11 pm.

My car was covered with a sheet of ice. I had to warm it up for 15 minutes before I could scrape it off. The radio said several sections of 285, 75, and 20 were already closed. I drove slowly on 285, I-20 east, and then north on Scenic Highway to Snellville. The farther east I got, the less icy the roads were. It took me an hour and half to get home.

On Saturday the girls had a great time throwing snowballs, eating icicles, and sledding. Photos: Claire, Kelly, and Clyde with the Icy Jeep. Kelly, Claire, and some neighbor friends sliding down the BIG HILL. They went so fast, they shot all the way across the cul-de-sac to the Pink’s driveway.

Icy Jeep Sledding The BIG HILL

Now playing: Across The Lines by Tracy Chapman

Modernize Me

modernizeme.pngDanny started playing with GarageBand which is music mixing software that came with our iMac a year ago. We had looked at it a year ago, but we did not understand what to do with it. Over the holidays, Danny made some amazing discoveries, and suddenly he was combining instruments, loops, and tweaking notes and phrases to create compositions that rival the best of cheesy television music. Some of his tracks could have been in any of the Beverly Hills Cop movies.

Then Kelly got in the act and started applying her more formal music training. Click here to listen to her first published composition: Modernize Me. Click on the picture to see just 10 seconds of Kelly’s composition in GarageBand.

I think Danny and Kelly are working on putting together an entire CD. Advanced orders can be placed here.

Doo The Math

An actual conversation when five of us drove home from celebrating Nicole’s Dean’s List achievement. (Pizza and iPod.)

Jeb: “Kelly, did you go on poop patrol?”

Kelly: “Yes. I picked up 18 poops.”

Jeb: “That’s not divisible by four.” (I pay a quarter per, so I like it when the number is divisible by four.)

Kelly: “No, so that’s $4.50.”

Jeb: “I’ll give you $5.00 and you can give me fifty cents.”

Kelly: “OK… you know I’ve noticed every time we do poop patrol, it always is an even number.”

Jeb: “That’s interesting. I think you are right.”

(Pause.)

Kathy: “Well we do have two dogs.”

(Much laughter.)

Congratulations to Nicole!

Chat Home for Money

In the old days we would write home for money, and Mom and Dad would send a check. That’s now replaced with instant messaging and instant web-based funds transfer. Our last installment at UGA:

NDCasksDadforMoney.jpg

Not sure why she is using Grandad’s photo for her chat ICON. Something she and Danny were up to. I suppose it is an honor.