Pinewood Derby Results

The race was last week, but just now finally getting a chance to post the results. It was a chilling couple of hours of racing! Reuben was in the first three heats of the day and took each race by gigantic margins. So big that the judges inspected his car. Spinnings his wheels, looking it over, and passing it around. Unfortunately in the next round he got beat 2 out of 3 and was out. I think all the handling misaligned his wheels some or more sinister was some kind of sabotage. I would say it was an anti-semitic conspiracy, but its a Jewish Cub Scout troop; so that makes it somewhat unlikely. Anyway Reuben was happy with his result.

Jacob's car also did well. In his first round he took 1 out of the 3 heats. he didn't advance but had a good showing. They both won awards. Reuben won best contrasting paint job. Jacob won best stripes. :-)

Jacob's car is silver with orange lightning bolt. Reuben's is silver in the back with the "fire" along the side.

Political Frustration

Ezra Klein has a great column in the Washington Post today. I have lately been blaming the Democrats for not adequately explaining the health reform bill causing its potential demise. They should be explaining it as being the fiscally conservative and financially responsible course of action. Instead all you hear about is a $900 billion health reform bill. When in fact it will reduce the debt long term. Unfortunately our budget estimates are limited to 10 year projections. Health care is a 25 year problem and thus can't be explained easily. If it can't be explained in a 30 second sound bite forget it!

Instead of blaming the Democrats, maybe its just that the majority of the populace just is not capable of understanding the dilemma being faced. This is more or Mr. Klein's point that America just doesn't get it. His basic premise is that the majority of the population cannot understand complex economic policies.
"The administration's first year was premised on two very difficult, very counterintuitive and very important economic arguments. The first was that the deficit problem is a function of health-care spending. The second was that the government's role in a recession is to spend, and to spend hard. The rhetoric and policy of the past week were proof that Americans have not been convinced."

Instead of retreating to the sound bite, I hope Obama keeps talking and explaining. And if it goes down, at least it goes down with the truth.

Snow Outside... Play Inside!

Basement has been cleaned up, so time for some playing down there.
Trains:


And the menagerie of Hess trucks:

Windows and Doors Installed

Progress continues. Too cold to do the brickwork today, but everything else continues.

Back from California

Had a good but busy trip. I was out there for engineering meetings with a company in LA, but also split time at a conference up near Point Magu Naval base. The first day of the conference was held at the Ronald Reagan Library. Quite impressive.

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Life is GOOD

Saturday contruction

We left the house about 9:30 this morning and the workers were just arriving. By the time we got home at 1:30pm, we had a second floor! Laundry room, bathroom, hallway, and bedroom were framed. Then in the back the sunroom now has walls and rafters. The nice big window openings are going to be nice.

Framing Begins!

After a pause in the work due to weather and transitioning from the concrete work to the framing, a lot of progress was made today. We have a garage!!!
You can now tell that it will be really nice and big (for a single car garage). The windows will look great and the back door will be nice and wide.

My Basketball Coaching Debut

Brutal. Another game we were blanked. At least this time we had 5 or
6 shots at the hoop; most from Reuben. The team is still learning a
lot and is playing kids that have played one or more years of
organized basketball. The large majority of our team is playing for
the first time. Reuben and Jacob are playing really well. Reuben is
cutting and trying to get open. He also had a fast break, but
couldn't convert. Jacob was playing point guard dribbling up several
times and passing off. He had one shot that got close. I can't wait
for our first basket. I was stepping in to assist in coaching as the
real coach had a family emergency.

Pinewood Derby Cars Taking Shape

Next Sunday is our troop's race. The kids cars are taking shape. Last week sanded and put on a base paint. Today we detailed it. Our pack's rule for 1st graders is now sawing or drilling, so we were left to just sand in order to shape the cars. Reuben and Jacob had bold plans of what wood to sand away. I'd advised them to minimize it because it was a lot of work, but no they were pretty adamant on their designs... That is until they started sanding :-) Quickly we decided to rethink things and concentrate on rounding the corners on the front! Pretty quick we all thought that was good enough!
Unfortunately I think we are going to be about 0.1-0.2 oz too heavy. So I will need to sand off some more from the bottom to make the weight of a 5oz. max.




In other news, the amaryllis flower sent from my parents has bloomed today! Pretty amazing flower to watch grow over the last few weeks.

Lego Night

Kids are loving Lego night at their school.  Them and 200 hundred of their closest friends.

It's Disgusting...

So my experiment with growing a beard is over. After about 10 days of growing a beard, I shaved it off this weekend! It wasn't because of all the ribbing I took at work; "time for grecian formula", "fuzzy", "that dirt on your face?". It wasn't that it was real itchy and felt like sleeping on straw scratching your face. It wasn't even Faith telling me it was disgusting over dinner :-) The real reason was no one wanted to kiss me goodnight anymore! So off with the beard, probably never to return.

Construction Update - Main Concrete Work Complete

The major concrete work is complete and it looks pretty good. A few little issues to be worked, but for the most part I'm happy. I still need to look it over in some good light. Now onto framing...

Go Patriots!

Kids day at GMU Patriot Center for the Men's basketball game versus Old Dominion University. For each adult, one free kid. So for us 2/3 free ain't bad. And, since the boys just started in a basketball league I thought it would be good to see a real game. Everyone liked it and really got into rooting for our team (George Mason). And in the end, GMU handily defeated ODU 71-55.

Yearly Weight Update... Disappointing :-(

I wanted to avoid this, but this year I end 5 lbs higher than I began. Thinking about it over the course of the year, I came up with lots of excuses as to why. But really I just let it get away from me, discipline-wise. I kept my daily weigh-in but excused the slowly growing numbers. I peaked up about 7 or 8 lbs last month. Over the last few weeks I've worked it back down to 5 lbs. One thing I see helping is setting some intermediate goals. So my new goal is drop these 5 lbs by my birthday in April.

Skiing: The Movie

Took YouTube forever to process this movie. Not sure why; maybe busy with the holidays. Anyway, here are some video moments of the kids' skiing lesson. Sorry for the shaky camera work for the first 2/3 of the movie. I was on the lift line ultra zoomed to the bunny hill.

To do List

Finally a chance to get some things off my to do list.  This section of dry wall got ruined from a leak in grout inside shower. Last we I caulked over grout with some clear silicone. And confirmed that it stopped leaked.  Then yesterday I started spackling over joint tape.  Had about a half inch deep strip to fill.  Took most of the day to dry.  Today added another coat to smooth.  Will sand in about a hour and then paint.  Found old paint can in basement and still looks good. 

In the meantime may go to Sears and get my yearly replacement HEPA filters.  Got to get mentally prepared to spend the $200 all together for the three units.  Crazy but I think does help Reuben's allergies.