Stout and the Bee

Kelly told us all week how Stout was protecting her from bees. If bees came near her, she could call Stout and he would jump, bark, and snap at the bees to chase them away. Since I’ve never been able to get Stout interested in chasing away roaches, I wasn’t sure why he was deciding to chase bees, but Stout and Kelly have a special relationship.

Kelly sent me this amazing photo on Friday. I’m including two sizes. The left is screen size and the right is high resolution.

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I asked her if she has used photoshop, and she said no, that it was a real shot. I later noticed how she had made all but Stout and the bee black and white. Kelly admitted she had used Photoshop to do that. I hadn’t even noticed it at first, but it really made the bee and Stout stand out. She then said she had made the bee a little bigger.

“Well that’s using Photoshop,” I told Kelly. She thought I meant had she taken two pictures and merged them. She meant the photo was real. Enhancing photos is just something she does with almost every photo she takes. That’s normal.

I showed this photo to some of our designers at work. They were impressed. The whole idea that kids have grown up enhancing photos on the fly is something new. It used to take chemicals and dark rooms to do what Kelly did with this photo… and forget making the bee bigger.

I think it was a great shot, enhancements and all. I hope there is some money in her future with this kind of creativity.

300 Hurdle Win at County

Kathy did a good job snapping photos of Claire racing the 300 JV hurdles at the county meet at Mill Creek. Claire did an even better job winning it.

After the Saturday prelims that narrowed the field from 32 down to the top 8, Claire knew she would have some stiff competition. For the Monday finals, I was glad to see she was in lane 4, because that meant 4 girls (lanes 4 – 8) would line up staggered ahead of her and 3 would line up behind her. In a 300, there is only one bend, and the girls are staggered about 10 feet apart to allow for the advantage the inner lanes have over the outer. I think it helps Claire to have some competition to catch.

In the prelim race, Claire just shot down the first straight away and passed all of the girls ahead of her before the bend, finishing with a big lead, even though she took the last stretch slower than her start. In the finals, she started strong and finished strong. You can see by the time she came around the bend, which is about 2/3 of the race, she had a good lead.

See the whole sequence here.

Way to go Claire!

Telephone Cord Tie

In Mom’s move, she and I went through a lot of old files to determine what needed to be shredded or kept. I figured any tax files older than 10 years were not needed. The box below holds old tax records and check registers, both sources for The Histories.

Several files were bound with decayed rubber bands. But the files wrapped with telephone cords were secure. (Zoom in and see center file.)

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I also found this vintage John H. Harland company check register.

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We’ve been counted.

Some of the tea-party members of the family held a dinner debate over completing the 2010 Census. Discussion included Clark Howard’s opinion…

Ten years ago, Clark got a long-form Census packet with intrusive questions. He filled in the first portion about the headcount and left everything else blank before sending it back in…and, no, he was not arrested!

And Japanese internment camps…

Japanese Americans have long suspected that the Census Bureau played a prominent role in the roundup and relocation of 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry to detention camps in the interior.

2010-census-form.pngI filled out the form, answering all questions. I figure marketers who are trying to get our money know a lot more about us. The government, who needs to know how to allocate congressional representation and federal funds needs to know how many of us are living where (at a minimum.) Race, gender, and age also help given how much these statistics influence policies like universal health care.

I felt a bit bad that I could not count Nicole because she worked outside the country. Those who work outside the country are not to be counted. Odd, since they can vote and pay taxes.

Claire Leads in JV County Prelims

Claire took first out of 32 girls for the JV County prelims in 100 and 300 hurdles. Finals are Monday.

For the 300 hurdles you can see Claire take off from the 4th position and take the lead before the turn. She says she likes to start off fast. You can also hear her teammates shout as she rounds the bend. (Please excuse the Blackberry quality video.)

Here she just beats the girl in green in the 100 hurdles.

The Pigeon Has Flown The Coop

Grant left a voicemail for me this afternoon while I was in a meeting. Knowing mom was moving today, I went ahead and listened as the others in the room talked. They had called earlier in the week wanting to know how to start the lawnmower, so this call may have been critical, too.

Grant’s message was slow and carefully spoken:

THE PIGEON HAS FLOWN THE COOP. (Repeat.)

THE PIGEON HAS FLOWN THE COOP.

Secret code! I repeated the message so those in the room could hear the secret message. Heather immediately asked, “Did he find your knife?” That cracked me up. No one else understood, so I had to explain.

I left my red pocket knife hidden at the airport a few weeks ago on the way to a management meeting in Orlando. (This is about the fourth or fifth time I’ve forgotten to leave the knife in my car, so I hide it.) Mom and Carol were driving back to Atlanta from Lakeland and called me at the Orlando meeting to find out if I wanted to drive up with them on Saturday instead of flying back Friday. I said sure, so they picked me up for an overnight stay.

The rest of the managers, including Heather, were flying back that Friday afternoon. I asked her to retrieve my knife. She was nervous about getting arrested. I told her I would have our best lawyers take care of her if anything happened. (I also explained it is not illegal to have a knife in the airport. You just can’t take it past security.)

I was worried about the knife, because the great hiding place I’ve usually used was not available. Under renovation. So I quickly found a spot that was not very good. I drew Heather a map to the hiding place near baggage claim and asked her to call me if she found it. Since she was nervous about the whole thing, I told her to just call me and leave me a secret message. “RED IS OK” or “RED IS GONE.”

She told this story to our president as they went through the airport. He couldn’t believe I was making her “retrieve a weapon,” just adding to the tension (and fun.)

So that’s why Heather responded to Grant’s secret message.

And then I had to also explain that “THE PIGEON” was my mom, and that my brother was helping her move today. So mom’s in Athens. Big day!

P.S.

Heather called me a from the airport a few weeks ago and, alas, said “RED IS GONE.” Hearing this story, Ted gave me a new pocket knife.

Thanks Ted! Thanks for trying Heather!

Need to find a new hiding place.

Big Snowman

I think this is the biggest snowman I’ve ever helped build. Claire did most of the work by making the bottom snow boulder. It took Kathy, Claire, and I to get the second snow boulder on top of the first. (Alas, Danny was in Athens.) We had to reinforce the bottom and mid joints to keep the boulders from rolling.

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You can see where all of the 3″ of snow would be lifted off the grass as Claire rolled the ball around. Thanks for getting us out to play in the snow Claire!

Happy yappH 01-11-10

Driving Kelly and Claire to school this morning, I noticed the date on the VW dash: 01-11-10. I said, “That’s an odd looking date.”

Kelly looked at it and said, “Hey, that’s a palindrome! Same forwards as backwards.” She then quickly calculated that 01-02-2010 was another one that just happened. I had a hard time visualizing it as quickly as the girls were able to. (I need a VW dashboard crutch.) But she is right.

I then asked, “Do palindromes involves letters and words only, or do they include numbers?” Without Google in the car, we could not answer the question, but sure enough, there are palindromic numbers. Cool.

And in seeing the spelling, is Sarah Palindromic?

Brown Bag Cootie Catcher (Fortune Teller)

Brown Bag Marketing is an Atlanta marketing agency run by a group of zany creative types who sent out a very creative, interactive holiday card this season. It created quite the buzz at work for those lucky enough to be found on their mail list. (Turns out intern Danny helped post the associated educational video.)

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When I saw the card, the name “cootie catcher” came to mind because this is the folded paper toy my dad would create when we were kids. If you search the web for cootie catcher, what you will find is many elaborate variations of decorative “fortune tellers.” Many call them cootie catchers, but it is very hard to find out why. It goes back to the much more simple but much more magical toy my dad made.

My dad’s trick was to show you an empty cootie catcher in his hand, use it to pick all over your hair, shoulders, and arms, and then show you it was filled with cooties. They looked like little spiders to me. Now I realize this is all a joke about having lice or fleas and probably dates back to a time of the black plague. He would tell you to blow them away, quickly switching back to the empty catcher. (I’ve got to make a video of this….)

Brown Bag’s holiday card was in the vain of the much more colorful and decorate fortune tellers. (Can you tell this is a girl vs. boy thing.) In this case, you choose a word — Bag, Brown, Peace, Love — and sequence the fortune teller for the number of letters in the word. Then you pick a number, sequence that number, and finally pick a number, fold open that flap, and reveal your fortune hidden under the number.

In our household there was a debate about the Brown Bag Snowman….

When trying to follow the instructions for the game, we wondered if you were allowed to pick the snowman instead of a number. Would that be cheating? We did see a very nice fortune under the snowman. We wondered what Brown Bag Marketing was up to with this design.

Not until I scanned in the fortune teller, did I see the numbers as a series like a clock. Of course! The bag-snowman is the number 8! Mystery solved.

So a little confusion for we simple minded clients, but not nearly the confusion the Brown Bag Bomb Box created in New York City. More on that in my next post….

Great job Brown Baggers! Thanks for the card!!!!