Sine Capitus

In case any of you are wondering what happened to me, I've been a little more busy recently, so I haven't had time to post when I'm actually in the mood to.

Here's my list of excuses for not posting:

1) The only interesting work I've been doing in the underground city is top-secret, so I can't talk about it. (Ok, it's not interesting and not secret, but I'm not supposed to publicize anything about it yet.)

2) I've been looking for a car.

3) I'm going to Grand Coulee in Washington for a few weeks, so I won't be around.

4) I'll probably be at Hoover Dam for 3 months starting mid-January. sigh. :-C

5) May Day is coming up.

6) July 27th was 4months before Thanksgiving.

7) I'm running out of excuses.

8) Today is the day after I finally got accepted for a credit card. (It's harder to get a credit card if you're male and 23 with no credit history.)

9) I saw more cash than I've ever seen in my life yesterday. Too bad it came from my bank account. (Car)

10) I'm finally to ten excuses.

See? I've been REALLY busy. A whole 10 excuses. :-)

Ok, ok. Maybe if you hang around I can put some cell phone pictures up from Grand Coulee. I think I may have internet access at the hotel, so I may have nothing better to do depending on if we work 12hr days or not.

Vanilla

ery vehemently, Vincent verbalized vowels. Vincent's vernacular vocabulary voiced vocative views. "Vi-deo!" Vincent volunteered vivaciously.

Me have something to post? HA! Is this earth a cube or this post interesting? HAahhhhhh!

Me thinks me'z been a wurk'n too mawch! Tawp in zee moarnin to-uh! Eez'a feyen daye for a ride in zr turain wis Rathbone O'Brain!

Aye! Buht nowe we have the leettle mat'ter oav yoa beel?

Heeler's a leettle moovy my bru'thers made:


(And, no, none of that means anything. :-)

Urad

pon arriving at the Frisco Marina, we found the old "dangerous" playground equipment replaced with new "safe" equipment. For once, "safe" wasn't synonymous with boring. Yes, folks, believe it or not, there is such a thing as a new playground that's fun. It could have had something to do with it being more dangerous than any other playground I've ever been to, but I doubt it... Maybe it had something to do with the playground being designed for kids 12 years and younger? Nah! It was fun WITHOUT having to climb on the roof. I just hope they don't get sewed and take it out very soon.

Here it is... complete with slides that are actually fast, spinney things that make you sick after realizing there's no way to stop once you get going as fast as you can, tons of bars to bump your head on, places to fall off of at great heights, and the noble treadmill of death. (Friction is sometimes a good thing. :-) It also served as a playground for my sister's wild imagination with regards to physics.

As Mark kindly demonstrated, the main tower was pretty high. The climbing wall was one of the only ways to get up. Oh, and yeah... Those bars you slide down are actually fun at 45 degrees with a 12' drop.

The playground contained many odd, twisted ladders, and missing walls on high platforms.

I felt like a kid again!

FREEBEE!

A post without letter! YAHOO!

Why does America get all the boring TV shows? How many variations of "recite information" can we take?

Turnip

his is indeed sad. Steve brought me campaigning and I didn't get elected for president. I have some pictures of the occasion, though!

(BTW, you have to click on the picture below.)

President

Squash

ince I get more comments not posting than I do posting, I've decided to stop posting. Ok, maybe not, but still, silly sisters solicit silly sayings assuming salt is stirred into silly soup.

Radish

accoons may be smart, but they aren't smart enough to play cello! Obviously there's no way they could make it through Popper. Abbey, my friends, has. Congratulations, Abbey! (Popper, for those of you who don't know, is an etude book.)

Quince

uick! Get the door!

Something interesting finally happened! Today, as at least one of you out there obviously knows, is the 6-month anniversary of May Day. Tomorrow marks the six-month anniversary of cleaning up from May Day. Happy anniversary, everyone!

To celebrate such a momentous occasion, an unknown party delivered goods to our house in commemoration of all the fond memories associated with May Day.

The celebration was complete... performed and executed to perfection. Of course, there were the neatly-placed goods:

In the traditional May Day style, no one was to be found:

The mysterious package was puzzling at first... What could it be? A bomb? And what are the two dots? Could they be to indicate which side is up? Wait! They are placed above a depression! Oh, and the color red... Does it signify to some purpose?

When Rebecca, the great detective, opened the package, she deduced the half-cookies were to commemorate May Day's half-birthday:

Thank you, whoever did that! It was most unexpected and appreciated by all those living here.

Peas

ast posts have not been very interesting. Perhaps this will lend some comfort to those who are board.

Here's an example of a boy soprano:


Believe it or not, a lot of boys can sing very well before their voices change. As you can see from the video, boys' voices tend to be much clearer than a girl's voice of the same age. Interesting information? Maybe. Useful? Probably not. Well... Now maybe you'll go buy pieces recorded by all-boy choirs :-)

Okra

- mazing Grace! This is one of those times you don't want to be there.




On a side note, this was kind of interesting:
http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/
I'd be interested to see the winning video :-)

Nance

e ne ne new nee! I DID IT!

Beck and Abb were convinced I couldn't sleep through a gerbil cage containing noisy toys, and I was convinced I could. (I have very selective hearing when I'm asleep.)

A few nights ago, Abb prepared a new batch a gerbils for my enjoyment. She had just adopted a particularly active family of gerbils and decided they needed a squeaky wheel, a glass water bottle, and a large box.

The specimen was brought to the place of testing. The gerbils started performing their acts of noisome kindness -- shredding cardboard, banging the water bottle, and wearing out the already worn out wheel bearings.

True, it did take longer to go to sleep. At one point, I was wondering if all three instruments of noise were really necessary, but determined to prove my sisters wrong, I went to sleep and stayed asleep all night.

Beck and Abb were not amused but thought it great blog material, so here it is! (Thanks, BTW :-)

Mandarin

y, my! Not only does he skip his sister's concert, but he went to Elitches instead... on a Sunday night at that!

Yes, folks. It's true. I am evil. I skipped out on the CYS concert so I could go to Elitches. You want to hear my excuse? Yeah? Yeah? Ok... Here it is! I've been trying to go to Elitches with a guy at church for the past few months and if looked like it was going to work out. My sisters whole-heatedly gave me permission to skip the concert and go to Elitches instead. (Needless to say, I felt guilty, especially when the guy couldn't come after all and I went by myself, but hey, it was free. (Free makes anything ok... Ok, maybe not.)

ANYWAY, when I got there, I found they had a new attraction -- a free spook house... "Huh," I thought to myself. "Is the "family friendly spook house" worth the long line?" I decided to try it out. I'm glad I did. It was so cool because the place seemed to be designed by a bunch of robotic/electronic hobbyists. It was like the robotic hobbyists conventions they have in California in our own back yard. I don't have a clue what was in the actual spook house, but I can tell you they used the same kind of motion detectors I got for *cough* may day, Bimba pneumatic cylinders, fairly descent strobe lights, more expensive smoke machines, etc. It was fun to see what psychological tricks the guys came up with, the way they implemented the robotics, etc. Here's a list of things I thought were cool:

The entrance was a ramp that went through a large tube. The tube had paint splattered all over it and black-lights illuminated it. The tube rotated. Seems kinda dumb. I've seen these things before and thought it a device that might look slightly cool but not worth the effort. I, being in the back of the group, noticed the people ahead of me starting to veer off to the side of the ramp while walking through it. I though, "Oh, brother." and determined to walk through it with no problems... Oh, how wrong I was. No matter what you look at, you unconsciously walk off to the side and hit the rail with great force over and over again. It really feels like the ramp is tipping, but it's fixed. Kind of cool how your brain uses your peripheral vision as a method for balancing. (Basically, you fall over as you try to walk through the thing.)

The strobe lights were cool... Several dark hallways were pitch black between strobe flashes. After walking through a hall with a strobe light for a while, your brain starts to think you're not moving. You honestly feel like you're standing still... You know those dreams you have where you have to get away from something but for some reason, you just cannot run? These hallways gave the same effect. Pretty cool!

There was a short hallway that had a bunch of corrugated drain lines hanging in it. Just like everyone else, I thought, "Oh, brother!" and fought my way through the hoses, wondering why drain lines were supposed to be scary. What they did, though, was divert your attention from the actor standing at the side of the hallway. Fighting your way through the pipes distracted you enough to create a perfect opportunity for an actor to scare you.

Another room was so densely filled with smoke that you couldn't tell where to go. you couldn't see for more than a couple feet in front of you, and after walking for several seconds, you'd start to wonder if you were going to trip on something... Meanwhile, an actor would run around the room, seeming to come out of nowhere. Where Art thou?

Well, I'm tired of typing and if you actually read this, you're probably sick of reading :-)

Lemon

ament! The fun day of pawn shopping is over!

Steve, a very kind friend of mine, spent a great deal of time taking me pawn shopping last Friday. Pawn shops have an exquisitely unique personality, and I enjoyed them immensely. True, you'll see a tile cutter, bike collection, and car audio components at every store, but you'll also see things you've never seen in your life. Whether it's an outrageously high price or an Elvis doll, pawn shops are a barrel of laughs!

(I think work is getting to me. Pawn shopping was really fun, but my writing is getting really bad.)

Here's a couple pictures:

Pawn Shopping

Kumquat

eeled over, dying of laughter! Becky got a that there blog!

http://rjentina.blogspot.com/

Man, I'm getting tired of this blog editor. It keeps messing things up:
It lost my comments on the "Bananas" post unless if you click on it or open the blog in a second window. I have no clue why.

The HTML is kind of messy.

I have to edit each post 3 times before it's very readable with all these pictures...

Formatting randomly changes between edits...

MEH!