Old Guy/Twilight

OK. So Alecia already posted this on her blog, but I thought I should post it also.

Brooklynn had a district swim meet in Leavenworth yesterday (her final meet of the year). It was my first chance to go as all the others were on Wednesday nights when I had Stake meetings. We were there from 7:40 a.m. til 5:00 p.m. and it made for a long day.

I thought this would be a great chance to try and catch up on Alecia's challenge to read the Twilight series that she blogged about on July 11. She wants me to learn about some characteristics to incorporate in my own life that a fictional character by the name of Edward has from this series. I took the challenge and started reading the first of 3 books on the scout camp I attended with Logan.

I didn't get all the way through the 1st book "Twilight", but finished it at home. Now I am reading the 2nd book "New Moon" and am only half through. Mind you, Alecia read all 3 books within a 4 day period of time and I am sure it is frustrating her that I am not reading them all as fast. The books are romance action/adventure novels with a twist. The main characters are vampires and now werewolves. They are a little mushy (really mushy in the 1st book) up to about half way through, and then they get in some good adventure and suspense. So I must admit I am liking them a bit.

Anyway, while reading "New Moon" between swim events, I was walking around in the park with the book. I overhear 2 teenage girls say "Look at the older guy reading the Twilight book. Doesn't he know those are girly books." Well, I didn't know what to take more offense to first, the "girly book" comment or the "old guy" comment. I have never thought of myself as old, but I guess I am starting to look the part to the younger generation.

The "girly book" comment didn't really upset me as like I said earlier, the books are not that bad and there are plenty of mens men that are reading the books. See "Twilight Guys Report" to read more about that.

Now about learning some characteristics to be more like Edward. I am only through one and a half books and I have to say first of all, Alecia is more like the main character, Bella, than she realizes. Second, from what I have read about Edward so far, I don't want to be like him (but am already like him in many ways). What I don't like is he fell in love with Bella because she smelled delicious and he can't do that as it is against his morals. He can read peoples minds to know how to act around them, but he can't read Bella's mind, so he has to read the minds of those she talks to understand her more. Then he abandons Bella "for her safety" but has really left her in more danger than ever before.

A character I wouldn't mind being like more is Jacob. He looks and Bella, studies her and tries to know more about her by her actions, who she really is. If I could do that with Alecia, I think that would be great, and in some ways I am do that already. Jacob also leaves Bella "for her safety", but comes around to wanting to be with her and protect her always.

From what I understand, I am supposed to pay more attention to Edwards character in the 3rd book. So I will have to update my opinions of him as I get to that book.

Disappearing Facial Hair

While Logan & I were at scout camp, I decided that I wanted to grow my beard out. Alecia doesn't like my facial hair (too prickly), so I thought the week we were gone would be a good time to grow it out.

I started 2 days before we left for camp and by the time I got home it looked pretty good. I would trim it up along the neck and down the cheaks to give it a clean look.

I knew once I got home I would have to shave it off sooner or later, but decided to have fun with it for a week.

Each day I would change it up a little bit by shaving more and more off. After we got back I left the beard on from Saturday to Tuesday.

On Wednesday I shaved it down to a goatee with long sideburns. Ryan told me to keep the goatee, but shave the long side burns down.

On Thursday I shaved the side burns but also shaved down the goatee to a long soul patch with a cowboay mustache. I hated this, as it looked aweful. So when I came home from work at lunch I shaved that down to a regular mustache with a smaller soul patch. Didn't like that much either.

On Friday I shaved it all off with the exception of a tiny soul patch. Alecia couldn't keep a straight face when I did this. It was nice to see her smile and hear her laugh so I kept the soul patch for a couple of days.

Sunday I was clean shaven once again and could feel good about looking my best for church.

Alecia did tell me that she liked the beard the best out of all and I have to say that I agree with her. Maybe someday when she doesn't mind the pricklies so much I can grow it back.

Camp Bonaparte

Logan & I just spent a week (July 14,2008 thru July 18, 2008) at Camp Bonaparte for the Boy Scouts. Bonaparte is 20 miles east of Tonasket, WA and 20 miles west of Republic, WA.

I went as an Adult Leader, not the same as a Boy Scout Leader. As we prepared to go, I was not all that excited as I don't find camping to be all that fun. You know with being outside in the hot sun, the bugs, no TV and so on. But as the time got closer, I got more OK with it.

We prepared for the bugs by taking Garlic pills a couple of days before going. I had heard from a co-worker that taking Garlic will prevent more bug bites and ticks. We took the Garlic pills for every meal that whole week. We also stayed prepared by taking a bug spray that had 40% deet. I think the compination worked very well overall as Logan and I came home with a combined total of 3 bites. Other scouts had well over 20 bites and boy were the mosquitos big up there.

As a leader I got to stay in a cabin tent and Logan got to stay with me. We had wooden cots to put our air mattresses on to make it a little more comfortable. We didn't have to go through the extra step of setting up a tent.

The kids had 5 classes each day for merit badges and this kept them busy. I would go to the classes on some days to take pictures and then go either read or play games with another group of leaders (Scott & Marc).

Last year I was able to go with the scouts to camp Fife and didn't like that camp as much as camp Bonaparte. The food was better, but the accomodations were not as nice as Fife. However, when you are camping outside each night to eat inside a nice building doesn't make that big of a difference.

I took a few photos to view below.

Weekend Projects: Shower Head

This weekend was spent preparing for the scout camp coming up this week. Monday thru Thursday, Logan and I will be going to Camp Bonapart (part of the Grand Columbia Boy Scouts camp areas). I am hoping to get some good pictures to be able to post them when we get back.

I was able to fit in one tiny project, that of replacing the shower head in my bathroom. Not a hard project at all. Our old shower head was getting clogged with deposits and I never liked the hose attached to the shower head anyway. Bed, Bath & Beyond had a coupon special for $10 off a purchase and a special on a double shower head that I wanted. So we used it, got it and put it up.

Badger Mountain Fire

What a busy week with work. I have been in the office for most of the week. We just purchased a new advertising order entry system and the company that we bought it from (Brainworks) is here this week doing preliminary fact finding for the install up coming in the next few weeks. So busy I was that I didn't realize how bad a fire was that is brewing across the river.


The Badger Mountain Fire started a few days ago and as I drove home from work today the smoke was just billowing high. Could even see some flames. Badger Mountain is across the river from us and over East Wenatchee.


These pictures are from across the street from my house looking over the tops of the other homes in our neighborhood. My house is the on the left border of each picture.

I went outside tonight after dark to see if I could take some pictures of it and it didn't work, but the night sky was glowing. You could see miles of fire lines just burning. Thank goodness so far it is only burning brush and sage covered hills, but it could reach some homes very easily. We pray that all the fire fighters and citizens helping control this are kept safe and that no homes are destroyed or damaged from this fire.

Go to wenatcheeworld.com to read some stories about the fire and check out some arial photos of the burned area.

Sabbath Day

Today was a week that I was able to stay home and go to church with my family. After sleeping in longer than we should of, I went downstairs to take time to think and ponder. My faith means the world to me as it is my life and my family. Were it not for the gospel of Jesus Christ, I don't know what my life would be like.

I am not a perfect person by any means, and wish I could be more disciplined in many areas of my life. A few that I need to work on are reading the scriptures, reading good books, expanding my gospel knowledge and being in the habit reading the scriptures & praying with my family more often than not.

While I was downstairs Logan and Brooklynn eventually came down. They were just sitting on the couches with me and I decided to read to them the First Presidency message by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf out of this months Ensign. We talked about the article and about our Prophet today, Thomas S. Monson, and prophets from the past. I shared with them them who was the President and Prophet of the Church when I was there age. That was President Spencer W. Kimball.

I have a testimony of gospel, that of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I want my posterity to know of the truthfulness that lies within this church. I am so thankful to have the knowledge & testimony of a living prophet. To know that God communicates with his prophets today as he did in times of old. That God, through a prophet, leads and guides us today in a time when we need it more than ever before.

Weekend Projects: Mine/Not Mine

Weekend projects always involve mowing the lawn and something else at home. This week however Jen & Scott were working on replacing the wood on their deck with composite material similar to TREX Decking.

In talking with Scott yesterday, I got the feeling he really wanted help, but he didn't come right out and ask if I could. So, this morning I called Jen and told her about that and she said he really could use the help. I went over at about Noon and came home about 9:00 p.m. and we only finished about 1/3 of the project.

The hardest part of staring this project was putting the first board under the railing. Notches had to be cut out to go around posts and measured just right. After that the rest of the deck should be pretty easy until we get right up against the house.

It was a long day, but I know Scott really appreciated the help. I was really tired and couldn't wait to get home, get cleaned up and go to bed.

4th of July

Today was the 4th of July. Pretty much a lazy day and that's OK. It all started off by sleeping in, not making any of the kids wake up early or rush out the door to be here or there.

Afternoon came and we met up with our friends, Jen & Scott and Brandon & Tammi and Scott's parents Pat & Chuck, at Lincoln Rock State Park on the Columbia River. Spent most of the afternoon just snacking on food, laying in the shade and riding on Jen & Scott's boat on the river.

Evening came and we all met up again at Jen & Scott's for a barbeque, lit off some small fireworks (our wives broke tradition this year by staying in the house during our personal firework show for the kids, however they were making the traditional carmel popcorn for the major firework show) and then off to Walla Walla Point Park down by the river to watch the big firework show. We arrived at Walla Walla Point Park just as they were starting the fireworks and they lasted about 20 minutes.

On the way back home, Brooklynn asked if anyone else thought the fireworks were lame this year. Deep down I know she enjoyed them, they just went by way too fast for her this year. I certainly enjoyed the firework show and always enjoy being in a smaller town to watch them as getting home is really quick and easy.

Another tradition broken this year was the fact that we didn't take any pictures at all. However, two of Brandon & Tammi's kids were videoing the show with their cell phones. I am hoping to get one of the videos to post here at a later date. The picture of the fireworks above is from the front page of today's Wenatchee World

—

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
~The Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776

Wilfred Sings

Part of a Wenatchee World tradition is the Chairman of the Board (Wilfred) singing to the employees on their birthday's.

My birthday was a few weeks ago and we celebrate birthdays in the advertising department once a month. So today was a celebration for those of us with birthday's in June and July.

Well, Wilfred got smell of the food, came down to eat and sang to each of us.

It's a fun treat and we love to see Wilf do that for all employees. It is also fun to track Wilf down to do this if he doesn't happen to know of someone's birthday.

TVGuardian

We love to watch movies in our home and a few years ago (before High Definition TV's were really popular or should I say while they were really expensive), Alecia and I bought a new DVD player for our regular TV with a new item called TVG Technology or TVGuardian.

This technology was built into the DVD player and didn't cost anything extra to have it. What it does is filter out foul language. And what I mean by filtering out language is the DVD player looks at the Closed Caption on a movie whether it is running or not. It recognizes a bad phrase or word, then mutes the sound on the TV when the phrase or word comes up. You can change levels of filtering and settings and it will pop up a Closed Caption phrase in place of the muted word, or you can choose not to have that happen.

We LOVED this DVD player. The only downside sometimes was if there were mentions of Christ or God in a movie of a religious tone, and not a taking of the name of God in vain, it would mute the sound. We found that we were losing a lot of important dialog (DaVinci Code was the movie we really noticed this on), so we would have to change the level of filtering or turn it off. Anyway, we really got so used to this that when we watched regular TV, we were really shocked at how many bad words are on there since the TVGuardian we had only worked with DVD movies.

Well, our DVD gave up the ghost a year ago or so and when we went to get a new one, they didn't have any DVD players for High Definition TV's with the TVGuardian. In fact it was hard to find any DVD players with TVGuardian. I chose to get a DVD burner/player that had HD Upconvert. We were never really happy with it and really missed the TVG Technology. I researched on the internet for the TVGuardian and found out the company that does this is not making DVD players with this anymore and the technology is changing so fast for players and they can't afford to keep up with the technological advances. They are however hoping to get TVGuardian available with Satellite and Cable company providers. This would mean we could filter regular TV shows.

Whenever I go to the big box stores, I always look at the DVD players to see if they might have some with TVG. Well, I was in Target earlier this week and found one. The technology was a little different as you had to pay an extra fee to activate it. Thought about it and thought "it's worth it." The DVD player even had a HDMI upconverter for my HD TV. I will be selling my RCA DVD Burner/Player and hoping to offset the cost of the new player.

I got it all hooked up, settings are now different, but got it all worked out and watched Vantage Point. Great movie and even better now that we have the TVG back. It caught every word as far as we could tell. I highly recommend buying TVG technology if you ever get the chance, especially if you want to avoid the bad language from the ears of your children.

Below is a YouTube video on how the filter works. If you don't want to hear the bad language example in this, stop the video before it reaches the end as the filter is turned off then to show you the difference.