Kevin’s Vent

Governer Christie of New Jersey doesn’t hold to the double talk of most politicians, finally a breath of fresh air. My favorite quote “I came here to govern, not worry about getting re-elected”

My friends Telly and Heidi did a lot of climbing before they had kids, and now that I have gear and am excited to go, I’ve pushed, prodded, and begged them to take me climbing and show me the ropes, literally. Today was our second climb at the Chuckwalla trailhead, and they taught me how to lead climb.

In the past, I’ve top roped, which is climbing with a rope that runs through an anchor on the top of the climb. Lead climbing is where you attach to anchors in the rock as you ascend. If you fall while top roping you don’t really fall at all, the rope stretches a little to absorb the impact, and that’s all you move. When you lead climb you fall twice the distance of your last anchor, so if I last attached to an anchor 10 feet below me, I’ll fall 20 feet, plus whatever stretch the rope needs to compensate for the shock. The advantage of lead climbing is you don’t need an alternate route to get to the anchor on top, you just climb up to it instead of climbing around the cliff looking for a hiking route to the top.

I did it and was able to set the rope so everyone else could climb, I didn’t even fall, though I was pretty close to it at one point. I’m slowly building up my endurance, and get a little better each time. Thanks, Telly and Heidi!

picture credits

stump (stmp)

1. n. The part of a tree trunk left protruding from the ground after the tree has fallen or has been felled.
2. v.To traverse (a district or region) making political speeches.

I went stumping with our City Councilman, Gil Almquist today. Now I’ve never been much for politicians, but I got a knock on our door today from Mr Almquist, and he was very convincing:

Hi, I’m Gil Almquist, and I noticed you’ve been working on those two stumps out front, and I have my backhoe, want some help pulling them out?

He proceeded to spend the next hour helping me, a complete stranger, pull two tree stumps out of my yard with his tractor. Then he even disposed of them. He didn’t mention the city council or government at all, I brought that up, he was just being a good neighbor (see Mark 12:31)

Why can’t our other elected officials be more like that?

Vote Gil Almquist in 2011

(Yeah, I used the <marquee> tag on a webpage, I haven’t done that in years)

My nephews totally love all things Star Wars. Well their girl cousins put them to shame yesterday.

I messed up Kathryn’s video, but I’ll post some pictures soon.

The girls’ school had a cake auction last night as a fund raiser. Here’s our entry.

I made most of it, and Meg did the hard part, piping the frosting onto the tombstones. It sold for $65, which I thought was pretty good, but even better a friend from work bought it, so I got to help eat it today too!

Meg also made a batch of scary looking cupcakes that fetched a pretty penny!

Here is a link to a bunch of photos of us working on the Bunk Bed. As we work on it more, I’ll update this photo set.

After spending several hundred dollars on wood and hardware, it was time to cut, sand, nail and glue. 8 Year old Natalyn got a pretty good picture of me at work.

Of course any construction job is union operated and needs proper staffing. Supervision, Cleanup and Transportation are vital.

It took me about 2 weeks of random evenings to cut all the large pieces, sand them, and prime them with a base coat. Then I started assembly in the downstairs bedroom.

Since I was installing lights and electrical outlets in the bed, as well as building shelves and storage bins in the headboard, it took me another two weeks, including Saturdays, to finish assembly.

Of course it’s still not done, it needs to be painted and the hardware attached, which will still take a while, but the main structure is done, and the kids can climb on it, so as far as their concerned it’s good to go. Katie said to me before she went to bed “Daddy, if I get up early in the morning, you’ll find me playing on the Castle Bunk Bed”. I think it’s a hit!

So here are the girls modeling why they need a new bunk bed

Ok, actually the modeling part is making a scale model out of the plans.

I printed the plans onto cardstock, and then Natalyn helped me cut them out and glue them together. I probably didn’t need to do this since I had to have a good picture in my head to draw it in the first place, but I know that some of the family couldn’t quite picture it from the drawing, and it was also a nice quite Sunday activity I could do with my sweet, eldest daughter. Here are some pictures of the Model

Now that we know what it will look like the next step is to do some shopping.

Once we brain stormed what we wanted our bed to look like, it was time to formalize the design on graph paper. In school I took a drafting class and a woodworking class and really enjoyed both. While I don’t remember much, some of the basics came back as I worked on the plan. I started with the front view, the dashed lines are all hidden by the front of the bed, so it looks kind of busy.

You’ll also notice that I’m not including anything fancy like a slide, playhouse, or dresser. I don’t think I’m ready to build something like that yet. It does have shelves for each bunk as well as under-bed storage and a fold out desk.

A more simple view of the front shows the castle without all the hidden “features”

The side and back views are also simple, showing the desk, the climbing holds, and the window.

These drawings don’t look like much, but I spent several hours drawing and erasing trying to get them just right. The scale is 1 square=1 inch

Next I’m going to take these drawings and make a scale model out of them.