I don’t know where this poster came from. Maybe a garage sale. But this giant clown face hung in Nicole and Danny’s room at Hancock Circle (as I recall) and terrified Nicole. Not sure if he terrified Danny.

Over the holidays we put out a lot of stuff for some charity that called and arranged for a pick up. We normally do this for the Kidney Foundation. This was someone else. They called the night before to confirm the pick up, and I did not like the way the guy sounded.

After the pick up, Kathy went out and found the clown poster folded up and thrown into the storm drain. If you recall the movie version of Steven King’s IT (the evil clown would peek out of a storm drain) it makes this guy all the more scarier.

Kelly dressed up as an 80’s Punk Rocker and Claire dressed up as “black and white.” She reminded us of Edward Scissorhands. We did not have as many visitors as past, perhaps because of the time change delay and church trick-or-treat parties. Or maybe it was the drought.

Danny worked all day cleaning up the Wrangler so we can put it up for sale. He’s in charge of selling it and gets a commission. We plan on parking it up at the local auto show (Home Depot parking lot.) He and I also posted it on Craigslist.com…

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/car/334406127.html

The listing features a thumbnail from a the Jeep Out Back posting.

The ad composed by DC:

97 Jeep Wrangler Sport (Bulldawg Edition)

Red & Black w/ Factory Bulldawg Detail

106K, Clean, Good Condition

4.0L 5 speed

Great AC & Heater

3 Inch Lifts

32″ x 11.5″ R15 All Terrain Tires (Wide & Stable!)

Half Doors

Steel Horse Black Tubular Bumpers

Carr Step-up Bars, Black Tubular

Dual Front Airbags

AM/FM/Cassette

Soundbar w/ Upgrade Boston Speakers

Alarm (disconnected)

2 Year-Old Best Top

New Universal Joint

New Floor Mats

(We love this car.)

Over a year-and-a-half ago, Claire read about Locks of Love in a book and decided to grow her hair long to help children who lose their hair to cancer treatments. Kelly decided to join in, too. Claire started with the disadvantage of already having short hair, so it took her longer to get enough hair. So while it may seem like she is following in her big sister’s footsteps (hairsteps?) Claire was really the leader on this project.

Of course, we’re just proud when our two girls decide to do anything good together. Both girls look as cute as can be in their short hair and both enjoyed going to a fancy salon to get their free haircuts, but pay attention Grant, Andrew, and Michael! The youngest can lead! (Fiona… maybe you can read this to Michael.)

Photos from January 2, 2007

When we bought Stonegate, we picked up several left overs including a BB gun and an unopened kit for halogen under cabinet lights. The BB gun cleaned up well and works great. But more than once I’ve started to install the lights in the kitchen and stopped. All of the wiring, transformers, dimmer, and connections were just too complicated to knock out quickly.

I pulled everything out over the holidays and decided to tackle it again. It turned out to be a full day job with all of the drilling and wiring, but Kathy is now quite tickled to have under cabinet lights in the kitchen.

A 3-setting dimmer came with the kit. A wire from the dimmer box runs to one of the cabinet hinges. Touching the hinge toggles from off / low / medium / high.

In practice, we now use the lights on low or medium and then often keep the overhead lighting off or lower than we would in the past, so I think we are saving energy, but the kitchen lighting certainly is a lot nicer.

A plus was that Kathy decided to move the under cabinet radio to the planning desk next to the refrigerator. Because it has a light, we now have under cabinet lighting all the way around, and the planning desk is nicer to use, since it is lighted.

(Bob: You would be proud of me on this one.)

Some notes on our Christmas card. The cow came from Kathy’s painting she finished in August. It now hangs in the dining room. The Christmas tree came from the trip Nicole and I took to Jamaica. I used it in a talk I recently gave to 300 middle schoolers at St. John Neumann. The talk was about hope and the Christmas tree on the street in the slums of Kingston was one of several signs of hope.

Claire and Danny both did a good job helping on the assembly line. Kathy recommends using photo corners instead of cutting slits in the card.

Note to self: Lighten up all photos sent to Sam’s Club. They come out darker than what shows on screen. Maybe send a test of several levels of brightness. Try something other than AppleWorks since it has a bug allowing only 1 copy to print at a time.

Over the past several months, the family has watched Kathy’s Cow develop from a white canvas to, based on her announcement Friday, a finished painting. Carol put in a request that we post a photo of it here. It will likely get hung in the dining room, which is a fitting place of honor for beef.

She is considering the rear end of a greyhound dog or two chairs on the beach as her next project. I favor the latter.

Kathy decided we should remove the low brick wall at the end of the driveway. The basketball was putting cracks in it and she thought it was a hazard to playing kids. She has never really liked the wall. I think it was put in place to force water to run down the sidewalk instead of through the back yard, which was a mess, so I ended up taking a piece of the wall out years ago.

One advantage to no longer having the wall at the end of the driveway…

Posted using Fedora (Linux).

Zillow.com (short for zillions of pillows) lets you look up the value (at least based on the last tax assessment) of your neighbor’s house. It also includes satellite photos, including from different angles! These four pictures are from the North / South / East / West views.

In this North view, the Wrangler is backed out to make room for shooting baskets. Looks like Danny and one of his buddies are taking shots. This is a few years old because you can see where the water main was replaced, and it is the old gray roof. There is something on the bench. The pond, with no plants in the winter, stands out because of its black bottom.

In this east view, the red Wrangler is back in its normal place. The white van is in the garage. You can see the green roof of “Fort Charlie” to the left.

In this south view, you can clearly see the porch and deck that Grant built. Fort Charlie is to the left, and the picnic table that I built out of the old deck can be seen bottom left. That’s Danny’s window in the back. Can’t tell if he is in there.

In this West view, both the white van and my green jeep are backed out, which is interesting timing. Must have been cleaning out the garage. You can clearly see the shed that Grant and Scott built in the upper right. That little window is to Kathy and my room. No water main scar in the front yard. The giant oak is in the foreground.

Bin Laden does not appear to be anywhere in these photos. Could we please put our expensive satellites to some use better than photographing our houses?

Kathy and I were walking our furry dogs when she told me, “The vacuum cleaner is not sucking. I think it is broken.” She told me she had tried to see if it was clogged by pushing a coat hanger through the intake. Annoying, given it is only a few years old.

When I got home, I took it down to the workshop and started inspecting. Belt was fine. Motor sounded ok. Suction was very weak. Between the intake and the bag is a tube that you can disconnect from the bottom and add hand attachments (clue: for example an attachment for sweeping wood floors.) I had to unscrew the top to inspect the hose. It was too long to look through, so I tried blowing through it. Blockage. I then used a drain snake to push and push. Pop. Out came a big furry clog. Like Kelly did with her owl pellets, Claire and I dissected the fur fewmet and found a strip of film negatives in the middle. That’s how the clog started. So that’s another advantage to digital cameras. No negatives to block your vacuum cleaner.

Good as new.