Ace and I missed the 2nd Annual Texas Long Distance Shootout boomerang tournament in Houston this year. Ace was not able to defend his junior championship from last year. Hopefully we’ll make it back in 2006.
I’m happy to report that a Boomerang Association of Dallas (BAD) member was the champion. Congratulations, David Hirsch, for throwing 126 meters!
Full results are here on the BAggressive site.
Michelle went to the Canton Trade Days today and came back with some stick furniture made in Arkansas. I knew I shouldn’t have let her go to Canton with a friend who had a pickup. Anyway, Michelle likes it OK, and supposedly it looks rustic.
After our small but fun fireworks experience last year, I decided that I’d get some of my rich city pals to pitch in some dough to buy a huge supply of fireworks for 2005. My plan worked perfectly and we had a blast. We had enough contributions for “The Big Bang” pack and plenty of other stuff. Click the image to go to the gallery and see us in action.
Lots of folks came down from Plano, Richardson, and Allen. We also had relatives from in and out of town (Cedar Hill, anyway) and a few neighbors dropped in too. We decided to have the party on the 3rd, since the 4th was a Monday and like a “school night” for the grownups. People preferred to stay up late Sunday night instead of shooting things off on the 4th proper.
Because our neighborhood is outside the city limits, we weren’t the only ones who had the idea for a large party. For three nights in a row, anyone from the surrounding area could sit outside and a party within a mile or so was going on, offering yet another free show.
My 16 year-old nephew Cameron had already been staying with us for a week and was supposed to go back to Oklahoma to start football camp. After he realized just how many fireworks we were getting, it was easy to convince him to stick around an extra couple of days. He got to light way more than his fair share of the fireworks, which was probably a good thing, since most of the other nuts in charge were imbibing on a steady supply of Miller Lite.
After the fireworks show outside, a spectacular Karaoke show took place inside. Luckily for the bulk of our guests, most of them didn’t stick around for this. For those who did stay, I have blackmail video that I’m saving for when the time is right.
Our across-the-street neighbors had their fireworks party the night of the 4th, and were impressed enough with Cameron’s pyrotechnical know-how to put him in charge of their show. Either that, or they were too lazy to do it themselves.
We had a big bash for my 40th birthday, but also to get some of our North-side pals down to finally see our new new place and enjoy some outdoor activities. We had a fantastic turnout (over 40 folks!), and over my protests of “No one needs to bring gifts”, lots of folks chipped in and got me a fantastic birthday present: An excellent telescope, the SkyQuest XT8 IntelliScope
Michelle insisted I get the projector off of the shelf it was on before we had dozens of people going in and out of the home theater room for my birthday party, so on the night before the party, with the help of my neighbor Leigh, I got the ceiling mount done.
There is a plexiglass plate I cut out in the shape of the projector, and it has three holes drilled in it to match the three mounting holes on the projector. The connecting 5mm bolts are long enough that a wingnut fits above the plexiglass (but below the bolt head) and can be used to raise and lower the projector at that point (See closeup here). With these three adjustment points, I can raise and lower the front, and either side, meaning I can perfectly align the projected image to the screen.
The plexiglass plate is connected to a sheet of plywood using plumbing fixtures: floor flanges and a pipe. The plywood is bolted securely to the ceiling.
You can see that there are still a few finishing touches needed, like routing the cabling through the ceiling, painting the plywood, and maybe painting the metal plumbing, but as of now, the mount is perfectly functional, and the projector is out of danger of being tipped over by a kid bumping into a shelf.
Over the last few weeks we’ve been in the process of building a new “dry lay” patio just off of the back porch. It turned out to be double the expected cost and 10 times the expected physical labor, but since Michelle likes the finished product, it was all worth it. Click here for a construction history photo album.
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After I made all these recent updates, I realized I had never added Thanksgiving or Christmas photos to the gallery. I have done so now, but lots of them are without captions so far.
What a busy weekend! Andrew, Cameron, Derek, and I built a fairly sizable skate ramp over the weekend. We’ve been wanting to do this for a while, and since my Mom was visiting, we were able to use her truck to get all the lumber we needed. This was quite a learning experience and took longer than it should have, but with this job under our belt, the next project will go much faster.
After suffering a work stoppage because of a dead battery in our power driver/drill, we finally finished the ramp late in the evening. To our horror, it started to rain right as the last screw was tightened. That didn’t stop the boys from taking some wet, slick rides. They went back out late that night after it had dried up a bit, but the real breaking-in was the next morning when it was sunny again.
They got brave enough to do some proper “drop-ins” from the 3-foot-high top. This project was tons of work, but it should get tons of use and end up being well worth the effort. Click the image to see a gallery of photos.
Our ramp is a slightly modified version of the plans found here: http://www.slapmagazine.com/new_site/woodshop/quarter/index.shtml
Holly has been playing soccer this season, but I’ve neglected to mention it on the site until now. I can’t keep quiet any longer, because in this Saturday’s game, Holly was named MVP! This is her first season to play, but she has been improving rapidly, particularly on defense. In this game, she didn’t let the other team near the goal for the first 58 minutes of the 60 minute game. Yes, the other team finally scored when the game was almost over, but it was The Twisters’ first tie (and first non-loss). Several of the girls nominated Holly as MVP, and the coach said she would have overridden them and given it to Holly no matter what.
Holly’s Oklahoma grandmother (Mamaw) was visiting us and also got to see Holly’s great performance.
