You! Hey you! Yes you! Please update your bookmarks. I'm changing blog hosts away from livejournal to wordpress instead. Wordpress will let me keep track of visitors to the site. This is the last post here. From now on, please visit http://candlspencer.wordpress.com/ for all your Spencer clan news. I spent a long time making the avatars at the top of the page so I expect everyone to visit soon.

How do you define a good day? I'd have to say that today was a good day. It started out with a nice morning at church. Then we stopped by Subway and got some sub sandwiches and had a picnic in the park. We got have time playing frisbee and kickball in the sun. Max got to swing. It was a beautiful day with the temperature right around 70 and almost no wind. It was just a great time in the park. Then we did some quick errands and back home for chores. I had to mow the lawn again. I love mowing the lawn, it's very calming. It's just fun and it looks so nice and park-like when it's freshly cut.

Then I made dinner grilling chicken thighs and generously coating them in BBQ sauce. We ate dinner out on the deck with a nice fire going in the fire pit. We ate chicken, baked beans and salad. Just a great spring dinner. There weren't even any yellow jackets out today. How cool is that?

Then our neighbors came over and Max got to play with their daughter in the backyard and the rest of us were able to socialize in the backyard. Just a great day. The temperature never got over 75 and it was already 60 when we woke up this morning. The weather is finally at the point where I'd rather be outside than inside. That makes me very happy.

We went to Costco and Winco yesterday to get our monthly groceries. Both stores were out of 20 lb bags of rice. Americans don't even eat rice so this is an excellent example of the herd mentality in action. One Sam's Club in New Jersey with a stupid manager decides to limit the number of bags of rice that can be bought at one time. The media picks up on it and the entire country decides there's a food shortage and they need to get their rice before they can't get it anymore. Now you can't buy rice anywhere. Mind you, it's only 20 lb bags of rice. If you wanted to buy a crate of Minute Rice, you can still do that.

America is not in a food shortage. America is in a media manufactured food panic. There's a difference. The US is a net food exporter. If there was a food shortage, we would just stop exporting. If in retaliation oil imports were cut off, we would start tapping our domestic supplies. Push comes to shove, you cut off airlines and cars from oil and devote all your oil supply to trains and trucks to make sure food can still be moved and tractors can still run. I'd like to see an analysis of how long domestic oil supplies would last if all production went to fertilizers, trains and trucks. I'd bet it's in the centuries.

I can't remember if I've ever mentioned before that Max sure does love Star Wars. Have I? If not, he got some new toys today that he just loves. I thought I'd post a picture of his new toys.



Aren't they cute? Little Darth Vaders and R2-D2s in convenient toddler form. They're more or less solid figures and indestructible. Except for their hands which rotate and seem like they'd break if he played with them with another kid his age. Kids are pretty rough on toys aren't they? His favorite mode of playing with them is to take two figures and slam them against each other. Boy does he have a giant smile the whole time he's doing it too. He always asks who has what color light saber and if some character or another is a Jedi. I wonder if he'll grow out of it or if he'll be a lifetime Star Wars geek like his dad.

I'm excited to break into my new box of books. Twice a year our library has a book sale. I always go in and buy a bunch of books. It seems like a lot of money to plunk down. I think we spent $25 but it got us an entire box full of books. I have to hurry and read Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader before the movie opens on May 14. Who knows, with that movie coming out in mid-May and Indiana Jones on May 22 we might be in the theaters twice over the next few weeks. If we can find time and sitting services.

I'm getting lazy on the blogging. I have no idea why. I suspect that I can only post so many messages where I relate my experiences mowing the lawn and changing oil. This week brought one new project though; we hung a tire swing in the backyard. It was a challenge. Trying to tie a rope on a branch 20 feet in the air using a 16 foot extension ladder was an adventure. We managed to sling the rope over the branch though and get a good knot. Now if we can only figure out how to tie a good knot on the tire. The tire seems obsessed with getting closer and closer to the ground the more you swing on it. I've been tying it about 3 feet off the ground and cinching it up, but then as soon as I jump on to test the knots, it drops 2 feet as the rope stretches and gets really tight around the tire. Any knot advice is appreciated. My next try is going to be to put a big eye bolt through the tire and secure the rope to that. I'm just worried that an eye bolt will put too much stress on the tire and pull through eventually. It pretty much takes an act of congress to get Max off the swing though. He's been out every night since we put it up.



Look at that smile though. How can it not be worth it to risk breaking your neck tying that thing up there?

We're getting a new stereo put in the truck this weekend. I'm excited. I'd be more excited if I actually drove the truck anywhere. It's 10 years old and only has 52,000 miles on it. The stereo is just worn out. Darn Dodge uses non-standard speaker sizes and they put amps on each speaker so it's not easy to replace them. I've been putting it off for two years now because the dealer wanted $200 per door to fix them. Now all the speakers are rattling so we have to fix it but we're just getting a new system. It's a lot cheaper to get a whole new aftermarket stereo and speakers than just have the dealer repair the problem. We're doing our part to stimulate the economy with our stimulus check I guess.

We just finished watching "To Kill A Mockingbird" with Gregory Peck. Hard to believe I've made it to 34 without ever seeing that movie or reading the book. I think Peck might have miscast in that movie. He had a bit too much gravity. If that's possible. Plus the ending is quite a downer. Good movie though. I can see why it's required reading in most high schools (not mine though! We had to do King Lear).

We've moved all the furniture in the living room and master bedroom. Well, Lori has. I helped move the couch. Now we finally have a seating area in our bedroom which is nice. I'm writing this post in a comfy chair in the bedroom right now. Wireless networks are great!

Lori had a colonoscopy last week. Everything's normal. It was a challenge because she had to be at the doctor in Tri-Cities at freaking 6:30 in the morning. That was a challenge for all of us getting up early enough to have her there on time. Lori slept all afternoon and I got to nap while Max watched a movie. How he had enough energy to get through that is anybody's guess.

Here's a picture of Maggie. It's just begging for a LOLCat caption.

I got to spend an hour mowing the lawn today. Max helped with his little bubble powered lawn mower. When we fill it with bubble fluid, he says he's filling it with gas. Very cute. From my end, there's nothing quite as satisfying as a freshly cut lawn. It brings a real sense of order to the front of the house. All the grass blades are short and roughly the same length. It's all even and flat. I just love it.

Every time I mow I am reminded of a show I saw on the History Channel about the beginnings of Islamic terrorism. Apparently, The Muslim Brotherhood is an Egyptian proto-terrorism group which formed right after World War II to try to establish a Palestinian state. One of the founders of the group and the man who wrote the group's manifesto was a man named Sayyid Qutb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb#Life_and_public_career

This wikipedia biography doesn't specifically mention this in the section on his time as a student in the United States, but the show on the History Channel did. It seems that one of the things that convinced him that the West was a decadent society that needed to be destroyed is the amount of time and money that Americans spend on their lawns. It makes me giggle in a way, (think about someone scowling each time he drives through a subdivision and seeing all the guys on their riding lawn mowers and thinking, "Nope, it's all gotta go.") but at the same time, he has a point. Think about it, we spend an hour to two hours every single week out there on something that really is completely pointless. Not to mention the fact that you sink at least $100 a year in chemicals into the lawn and the cost of gas and water. We could better spend that time helping the poor or even mowing our elderly neighbor's lawns and helping out. On the other hand, lawns are fun and it's like having a park right outside your door. I wouldn't say that a lawn is a sign of decadence, but it is a sign of misplaced priorities. Think of the aerial photos of Phoenix or Las Vegas. Every house there has a green lawn and at least half the homes have pools. This is in the middle of a desert where all that water has to be diverted out of the Colorado River. There has to be a better way to utilize resources.

I wish I could remember which show it was on the History Channel. I'll come back and link to it if I can remember.

All last week the weekend forecast indicated that we would be getting horribly cold weather this weekend with temperatures below freezing and snow showers. This weekend hasn't turned out like that at all. It's not warm by any stretch, but it's certainly not snowing. I just wish the weather would hurry up and get springy. I'm tired of this constant cold wind that's been blowing more or less non-stop for about 20 years now.

Max had his second soccer game yesterday. He really has turned around on his attitude about soccer. He's really having fun now.



We've been having the most bizarre problem with our phone lately. It acts like it's off the hook but it's not. You pick up the phone and there's no dial tone. If you try to call in, it's a busy signal. However, our DSL connection is still working so I know the phone is basically OK. If you're trying to call us and getting a busy signal, we don't know why. I sent a service request to Qwest but it fixed itself before they came. Good thing too because theywant $80 just to come out.

We went to Wal-Mart yesterday. I hate shopping at Wal-Mart, but sometimes it's the best place to get stuff. In this case, my sister advised us that they often have good deals on movies there. So while we were there we checked out the $5 movie bin. Wow. We picked up a bunch of movies. I had no idea that the bonus edition of Terminator 2 had dropped down to $5. Not bad for a two disc set. Got Airplane!, The Hunt For Red October and an Alfred Hitchcock collection as well. I have a rule when buying movies; if it's not a movie you want to watch over and over again, don't buy it because otherwise you have to store it someplace. However, $5 is not much more than the rental price at Hollywood Video. What's the best solution then? Buy a movie for the same price as renting it? It's hard to justify not doing that.

I just finished reading a book called Last Harvest. It's a great look at how land use planning works. If you have any interest in what I do on a daily basis, that's a good book to check out. On the other hand, because it's a very detailed look at land use planning, it's a little dry and the people in it can be a bit insufferable.

I'm currently working my way through the three Lord of the Rings movies. I told myself I wouldn't watch them until I read the books. I made it through The Fellowship of the Ring and halfway through The Two Towers before I gave up. Those books are the driest, longest, slowest books I have ever read. Why on earth are they so popular? It might be because I don't like fantasy to start with, but man those books are slow. I've now watched the first two movies and am just starting The Return of the King. The movies really follow the books closely. Ultimately, this means that they are some of the driest, longest and slowest movies I have ever seen. Why were these movies so popular. I'm going to force myself to finish the movies, but it's really a chore. I can't believe that there's a collector's edition that has 12 discs and EXTENDED versions of the movies. How do you make an extended version of a movie that's 3.5 hours long to start with? And there's THREE of them? Lori refuses to even watch them. She says they're too much work to watch. The monsters make it inappropriate for Max. So that means I'm watching these long movies in 10 to 15 minute increments whenever I get a chance. Try watching 10 hours of movies 15 minutes at a time sometime. It's not a lot of fun. Today, I'm trying to watch the movie and write a blog post on my laptop at the same time. Even more distractions.

Wow, I think I got sidetracked there. Have a good week!

This has been the slowest spring I can remember in Hermiston. Usually, we just switch from a high of 50 one day in March to a high of 80 the next day. This spring hasn't been like that at all. It's just been cool and rainy and/or windy for two months now. This weekend brought us by far the best weather this year, with highs around 79 and no wind. Just way too nice of weather to be indoors.

So naturally, we started the weekend indoors. Max is in a peewee soccer league. His experience has been hit and miss so far. He really doesn't like to practice (to the point that we were debating pulling him out of the league) but he really likes the games. Now he keeps talking about how much he loves soccer. I hope he still remembers that he had fun when he has his next game next Saturday. Here's an action shot of him having fun on the soccer floor. (Remember, "action shot" equals "blurry")



After the early morning soccer game, we headed up to McNary Dam for a kid's fishing derby. Apparently "Kid's Fishing Derby" means dads are not allowed to bring their poles. Darn. Oh well, no luck with the fishing anyways. From the turnout though, I'm not surprised. We got there several hours after it started and there were still well over a hundred people lining the banks of both ponds. We ran into friends there who had better luck than us. Double darn!

The nice weather made it way too hard to stay inside. I got to use the new pressure washer to clean off both decks and all the deck furniture. You know you're truly suburban when pressure washing the deck is an exciting activity. But it was! Nyah!

Got to try out the new weedeater too. I accidentally rendered our old battery powered weedeater inoperable so we got a new gas powered one. Fun!

Also got to mix a nice load of steer manure into the garden with our tiller. The garden's all ready for planting now. Tilling is hard work though. My back and arms still hurt after fighting that thing for half an hour.

Obviously, I really like power tools. For that matter, I even got to use my drill to mount a hanger for our weedeater and another for our new bell we got for Christmas.

We made an exciting discovery this weekend too. Namely, how to use a cat as a beast of burden. We needed to run a hose under our deck so we could install some soaker hoses in the garden. How do you run a hose under a deck that's only 12 inches off the ground? Well, you could squiggle through on your belly and get super dirty. The other alternative is to tie a string to a cat's collar, then coax them to run under the deck to get some Spam on the other side. Then, when the show up to get the Spam, grab the string and tie it onto the hose and pull the string back. It worked. It's about time Bart started pulling his weight around here.

Unfortunately, only Saturday and Sunday had nice weather. It's supposed to get really windy and rainy tonight and then the work week will be back in the low 60s and rainy. I think the storms which will blow away the nice weather must be getting closer, our lights keep flickering. I'm guessing somewhere nearby is getting hammered with lightning right now.

Max started playing soccer this weekend. We don't know how he's going to do with it yet though. He felt the practice was too long (at 45 minutes, it's probably not too long). If he gets whiny about soccer we'll have to decide if he'll stick out the season or not. Definitely very suburban for us, driving a minivan to soccer practice.

I think I'm going to abandon the Dr. Drake writing project for now. I just can't decide where I want it to go. My original plan was to have him post on his latest plan for world domination one day, detailing his humongous super weapon. Then the next day he would post a follow-up wondering why his machine failed in a humorous way. Then I shifted to having his plans thwarted by government bureaucracy. However, both of those are pretty much one-joke concepts and not suited for prolonged humor. So I'm going to drop it until I figure out the best way to carry it over a few posts.

I seem to be coming down with a cold. However, no one wants to read about my sicknesses so I won't go into the details here.

Guitar playing continues to improve. I've figured out the classic surf anthem Wipeout. As soon as I figure out a good way to record it on our computer I'll post an mp3 of it here. I can definitely play the entire song except for the solo so I modified the solo to something that I can actually play.

Heh, I remember my first attempt at world domination. I built a weather machine. I started with the best of intentions. I planned to bring rain to desert regions in exchange for a modest payment. Then I realized that I could make more money by blackmailing entire countries to not innundate them with crippling blizzards or hurricanes. Imagine my surprise when the EPA came and confiscated my weather machine because I started construction without filing a federally mandated environmental impact statement. This led directly to the realization that I would need a private army to protect me in the future. Not to mention the fact that I would need to have a secret lair where I could devise my plots without oversight. I still think it was my neighbor, that wily Mrs. Haworth that turned me in. She was always peeking through the slats in the fence that split our properties. An 8 foot cedar fence is not adequate security if you're planning to take over the world.