Snow Day! Dec 19, 2009

These pictures and video were taken around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 19.

Obamateering!

Daughter and I spent yesterday evening volunteering at our local Obama office. The energy in the room was great! Here she is making phone calls, asking folks to volunteer to help turn Virginia blue! I'm so proud of her!

The Mega BPH T-Shirt Design is HERE!

Here is the design for the Mega BPH T-shirt. The shirt will be navy blue with white and red graphics.

T-shirts have been ordered! I will be sending out invoices to folks who ordered shirts. Those of you coming to town will be able to pick up your shirts at the Friday night BPH or at the Main Event itself and pay me then.

Spotted at the Farmers’ Market...

Richard Nixon...

IKEA Wisdom

Yesterday I bought a thermal carafe at IKEA for $4.99. It has a name, of course: Skaffa; and it looks like this:
Now, usually when you bring home an item from IKEA, no matter how complicated an item, its instruction sheet contains absolutely no writing, other than the name of the item. They usually look like this:




Or like this...But the instructions that came with the Skaffa were very different... quite, er... wordy. How wordy? Thirty-nine pages of verbosity. In 18 different languages.

Here is the cover...


Here is the table of contents...


And here is what it says in English...


I guess they couldn't figure out a way to draw a picture that said to use washing-up liquid or that the product fulfills European Standard requirements for keeping drinks hot.

Boodlers in Action

Purple Flowers!

These shade-loving, purple-flowered, creeping plants are already overflowing the pots and providing beautiful small trumpet-shaped blooms. What are they? I never really looked at their name and have thrown out the markers. Any guidance is welcome!

All decked out

My son spent a lot of his childhood in the company of his grandfather. Two peas in a pod. This was taken one day when Papou came to pick up Son of G for a typical day of fun... a stop at Costco for free samples and hot dogs and then to a couple of car dealerships where they'd check out the new models in the showroom.

A Day in the Mountains

Lunch at the Banff Springs Hotel (L to R) TBG, Himself, Yoki and dmd.

The view from our table at lunch.




TBG, Yoki and dmd at the Canmore, AB, visitors' centre.

Pi Day at the Achenblog

This year's Pi Day (3/14) celebration on the Achenblog took on a different twist... folks were asked to tell their favorite pie story. College Parkian compiled the entries and I put them together into a little booklet. Download the booklet and either print two-sided (or "duplex" if you printer so allows) or print out the even pages, flip over and print the odds on the other side.

Either way... a booklet will be born.

Be warned.. the file size is pretty large.. more than 500K. Click here or on the picture to download.

A Grand, Scary Canyon

After driving for three days in the desert, and experiencing vastness I'd never seen or felt before, I really felt like a tiny mote in the universe. This set me up to be nervous around the canyon edge. This is as close as I'd let Son of G get.

Be Careful...

Sirin’s Cookietown

Boodler Sirin sent these pictures along of her Christmas masterpiece...

Sirin (red hair) and Francesca (right) begin plans for Cookietown.


Controversial Graham Cracker townhouses


Cookietown Pond


Cookietown trees


Sirin and son collaborate to build Cookietown
(which he prefers to call "Christmasville")

Dancing Boodler

Charlotte BPH

We had a fun dinner at the Penguin Drive-In last night in Charlotte. Here are Jumper, Slyness and TBG...

TV Land

My son and I found a great deal on an old Magnavox TV from the '50s and had fun cleaning it up, taking out the old (nonworking) tube and screen and replacing it with a new digital 19" TV. Here is what it looked like when we bought it...


After cleaning it up, replacing the fabric covering the speaker area and adding a DVD player, here's what it looks like now...

Fall Splendor

Mr. G and I took an impromptu trip to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia last weekend, not even realizing until we had embarked that it was 25 years ago that we visited there on our very first weekend trip together.


The colors were spectacular. Mr. G decided it looked like we were driving through a cartoon...

Vote Error in ’08

I'm very sad today because someone I never met in person has died. This isn't someone I just read about in the news or online.. but read online. He was one of my "imaginary friends" on the Achenblog: Error Flynn, or Bob Lewis, as his "real" friends and family knew him.

Error came to the Achenblog I think from early on. He was honored as a Guest Kitter last summer and explained how his clever handle was born from an error itself:

My handle was the result of typing 'Error Flynn' instead of 'Errol Flynn,' one of my childhood heroes, and the intrepid Bayou Self pointed out that not only was it an error but it had a sort of rolled off the tongue. That I typed "error" shouldn't be a surprise because as a software developer I type it quite often. In this case it worked out. There are many cases in art and music where a 'mistake' might turn out better than what's planned.

I will miss Error Flynn. I'll miss his posts and I will be sad knowing that he's not in my world anymore.

I'm glad I can go back and read his witty, kind, gruff and insightful posts and in that way I won't really lose him for good.

We've Been South Parked!

dbG's been South Parked...


I'd already been South Parked...