November 3, 2008

Carving the pumpkin

The kids each got to choose one feature to shape on the pumpkin.

Boo at the Zoo

The Idaho Falls Zoo hosts an event which they call "Boo at the Zoo" on Halloween. The zoo gets decorated for Halloween, local businesses set up booths and games, and the kids get to go around the zoo trick or treating.

My favorite part of the zoo was the tiger exhibit. It seemed that the tigers were much more active than usual. Also, I got a small glimpse of the snow leopard which I had never seen at the zoo before.

David refused to wear any part of his fireman costume that he picked out. Despite that, his cute little smile and "tik ol teet" wound up getting him a him a huge hall of candy. Something kind of funny about Idaho Halloweens is that they are generally so cold that kids need to wear large coats over their costumes. I'm not sure many people noticed he was out of costume. Ty and Dallin were really excited about the martial arts booth. The people were dressed up in karate cloths and had little plastic "boards" for the kids to "break." Given the choice, I think Ty and Dallin would have spent the entire evening there breaking the little plastic board. Natalyn liked a little inflated haunted castle they had there. Jacob slept through most of our visit to the zoo. When he woke it was amusing to watch his face. He was very obviously bedazzled by the lights.

Natalyn loves Jacob.

A couple of Lexie's friends came over for an impromptu surprise Halloween party. The tiger cub is ours.

The kids had a lot of fun playing together.

David was a fireman but he refused to wear his costume.

Natalyn was Dora the Explorer, don't miss the backpack!

Dallin was a Ninja.

Ty was a pirate, he didn't get my hooker jokes and Lexie didn't like them. Naughty me.

Crafts at "Boo at the Zoo".

More crafts at "Boo at the Zoo".

Natalyn Dictation:

We had fun at Boo at the Zoo together. Mom also had fun with us. We got lots of candy, but dad didn't want a bag. All of us had fun at the zoo. What about me? Did I have fun?

Chasing Dreams

On Saturday (Oct. 25) the kids had a rehearsal for their upcoming primary program. I took the opportunity to go for a long run straight east. Running east here is my favorite because I get a view of the Grand Teton. I was disappointed that my knee started hurting as soon as it did because without the knee pain I am sure I could have run a lot farther. I don't want to exacerbate any problems I have in the knee so I am careful to walk after too many consecutive steps of pain. When considering my current venture one of my large motivators was that I wanted to get myself in shape. As I was running, I was mixed with feelings of excitement and frustration. I am sure I am a better runner than I was a year ago. I also know that I am not that much better. The feeling, I suppose, is like seeing something you really, really want in the store and then seeing the price tag you realize how much it is going to take to get it.

My game development has mirrored my running in that even though I have made great progress I am left feeling a little empty when I look at how far forward there is to go. In the end the choice becomes whether one is going to pursue something, or they aren't. Even though the price is higher than I had hoped it might be, I still believe the value of the reward exceeds the cost.

Work

I did some hiring for my game development off guru.com. We got the CD cover for the spelling game back from the artist, Micheal Graham. I think it looks really good. If you are curious you can get a peek at http://www.mindjump.net . Mike is now working on some clean up items for the interior art. We also hired a voice actor Ted Gray and his daughter to do voices. We gave them the first installment of the script yesterday. I am really excited to get their work back I really liked their auditions.

I blew most of my week on a guru.com project I took on. I developed the picture upload, shopping cart and pay pal interface for http://www.wallblazers.com a custom vinyl business. The project wound up stretching out a bit more than I would have liked, in that I was much more rusty with my javascript programming than I realized. It had also been a long time since I had worked with style sheets. In the end I was glad I did it. It was nice to get the cob webs brushed out and I am very excited to learn how the PayPal interface works so that I can write shopping carts now. I am not sure when my work will go live on the site.

Beds are for sleeping, roads are for driving, right dad?

Wednesday (Oct. 29) we got a call from my dad while we were in our marriage and family relations class. The caller ID showed a Wyoming number. When we asked my dad why he wasn't using his phone he wouldn't answer and just said "at least I am able to call you back". Lexie correctly surmised that he had been in a car accident. Details were much slower coming than we would have liked. Little by little things sounded better as EKG, and CAT scan test were coming back without indicating serious problems. I was much to tired to drive to Jackson that night. I was willing to leave at 3 in the morning, but an experiment in seeing how long I could stay awake driving to pick up a person in an accident from falling asleep driving really didn't resonate in my mind as a sound idea.

In the morning there was a lot of confusion about whether or not we should bring a trailer to bring home the wrecked vehicle. When I first heard that my dad wanted to bring home the wrecked truck I was aghast thinking "Are 7 junked vehicles not enough for the Thornton property, why does he need to bring home another souvenir?". My second thought was one of relief thinking, "Really, if dad hadn't wanted to bring home the junk vehicle we would have to worry about a personality altering concussion, its good he's the same old dad."

My client for the vinyl website needed his things ASAP so I spent the morning pulling some critical bugs out of my code while Mom gathered things to load the truck onto the trailer. After I had the most critical parts of my project delivered, I helped as well. It was almost two o'clock in the afternoon before we were ready to go. At two o'clock mom and dad finally called their insurance adjuster to find that, unlike what they had thought, the truck was covered with comprehensive insurance. The news brought some pause to the plan of the idea of picking up the truck. It just so happened that I was able to slip into parent teacher conference while I waited for my dad to make a decision as to whether or not to bring the trailer.

Ty and Dallin both got similar reports, they are both doing really well in school.

It was past three o'clock in the afternoon before we finally got going. I was relieved that the decision developed into not bringing the trailer. The ride to Jackson was quite nice. It seemed a waste to be in Jackson and not at least get to Jenny Lake. The sun was almost setting by the time we met up with Dad. He was very anxious because at the time of the accident, he had an envelope with $1500 in the truck with which he was planning to buy a tractor, which had not shown up in his things after the accident. We packed stuff as quickly as we could, making a very though investigation of the wrecked truck, pulling all of the inner panels and covers that we could. We still did not have any luck recovering the envelope. Returning to the crash seen, we were able to recover several other items, but had been looking through things for quite a while without finding the envelope. Every little piece of paper was a rise in hope followed by a fall in disappointment. Finally, I ventured up a very steep part of the hill and by flash light found the envelope in an unexpected place, as the other contents of the jockey box were much lower. It was definitely a personal record for most money ever found laying on the ground.

We gathered as much stuff as we could in the dark, dad was glad to see a lot of it still in useable condition. We were home by 9:30 PM, but I was still very exhausted. Dad's accident, of course, brought back some memories of my own accident last March. It is hard to say in a situation like that whether one is lucky or unlucky. For the circumstance Dad was extremely lucky in that he missed several trees, the river, and in general didn't get killed or paralyzed. The statistics are not good for people who take a dive down canyon ravines. He was also lucky in that his financial loss was minimized by the presence of full coverage insurance and finding his cash that had been laying outside all day. Of course, the overriding question is, "was he unlucky to be in the accident at all?" I have concluded that he was a lucky, unlucky person. Results were much better than they could have been.

That's the ravine where dad tanked it, Left of the guard rail the hill makes a 30-50 foot drop into a very steep slope. Dad was lucky not to become a permanent part of one of the trees.

Not everyone gets to walk out of these. Dad was truly lucky.

You voted for the wrong person for president!

I am officially cynical this year. I haven't voted yet, but I think I am going to vote for Ralph Nader, knowing that I too am voting for the wrong person for president. I am not sure I agree with Nader's position regarding unions, and I know I strongly disagree with his opposition to nuclear development. With that said, this year the hot issue with me is the economy and the balance of power. Of the major candidates, Ralph Nader seemed to express the most intelligence on this issue.

Next election I will be old enough to run for president. You can calm down, I am not planning on it. I too would be the wrong person to vote for president. People are so diverse that I don't think it really makes sense to vote for a person anyway. Issues are what concern people. I think it would make a lot more sense to let people choose their top 2 or 2000 issues and then vote on those instead of pigeon holing people into voting for a candidate who shares a position on a leading issue but then has all kinds of garbage behind that in other issues. An election does not give us a spectral reflection of the will of the populous. Honestly, I am not sure the populous knows the will of the populous. I am reasonably certain I don't know my own will and I am very frustrated this year not being more able to get a better reflection of what I think it is through the choice of candidates. I am not quite ready to accept virtual senators and presidents but it really is where I think the answer lies. If there were a way to make an honest computer... Anyway one more shot in the dark, Nader 08! "Fair Tax for America!"