... well, not quite. But I'm pumped. This past week I accomplished my first automotive repair: I replaced the alternator on our van, and the spark plugs and wires on our Corolla! Thanks to a couple friends advice, my neighbors socket set, and AutoZone.
*Anyone who is wanting gift ideas: SAE/Metric Socket and wrench set, or something similar.
Wow. Play the song and follow along with the words below.
It is so that my transgressions have born a withered fruit,
The sun has scorched the rising plans;
Alas they have no root, the bleached bones of animals bound by leather strips,
Dance through the air with laughter as i wield this wicked whip,
As you did warn me carpenter, this world has weakened my heart,
So easily i disparage, self-seeking the work of my art,
And there you have come to me at the moment i bathe in my sorrow,
So in love with myself, sought after avoiding tomorrow,
Where do you find the love to offer he who betrays you?
And offer to wash my feet as i offer to disobey you,
Your beauty does bereave me, and how my words do fail,
So faithfully and dutifully i award you with betrayal,
The weak and the down trodden fall on broken legs,
As i walk past a smile i cast, fervor in my stead,
But my bones like plastic, do buckle backward now,
I lay in this field by Judas' bowels and anticipate the plow,
I can not be forgiven; my wages will be paid,
For those more lovely and admirable is least among the saved,
And where would i fit Jesus?
What place is left for me?
The price of atonement is more than i've found to offer up as my plea,
Jesus my heart is all i have to give to you, so weak and so unworthy,
This simply will not do, no alabaster jar, no diamond in the rough,
For your body that was broken, how can this be enough?
By me you were abandoned, by me you were betrayed,
Yet in your arms and in your heart forever i have stayed
Your glory illuminates my life, and no darkness will descend,
for you have loved me forever, and your love will never end
*Yes, that's Reese Roper at the end of the song.
So I've been pretty excited about my bees, and today is their first day flying! They are doing a lot of orientation flights, getting to know where their new home is located. Check out a couple of the shots I took of the bees this morning:
My bees are here! Thursday night I went out with my friend Scott and helped him deliver and hive 30 packages of bees. To give you an idea of what that looks like, we had 90,000 bees in tow behind our vehicle. Our night went really well, and like Scott said, it was a lot of experience packed into a short amount of time. Along with Scott and myself, we also had Scott's father in law along for the experience. We had everything all packed up and ready to go at around 7:30pm, and we got back at around 1:30am, completing 23 hives in six locations. Check out some of the images below from our night.
Our first stop was to pick up the ladies. All 90,000 of them.
After that we headed over to Barbara's and set up her two hives.
Next stop was Lee's farm where he's also starting two new hives.
After that we headed over to Marty's place.
Here's what the bees come in. The metal can is sugar water (feed.)
Then we headed over to Scott's lot.
After that we started 11 more hives at another location for Scott.
Then it was my turn! The end of our night! I didn't take any photos setting up the bees at my place, but here's a photo of them before I left.
It was a very exciting night and I truly enjoyed the experience. I can't wait to start seeing progress with my two hives!
I took Noah with me to pick up a changing table from a friend, but when we got there she didn't end up being home. I decided we would go out and have a special father son date. We got a special drink from Higher Grounds. He chose a hot chocolate with whipped topping over a huge brownie.
We had some good conversation, he's a very smart kid.
After a while, he decided it would be fun to sit outside. It was getting cold, so we didn't stay out too long. He's really an outside kind of guy; He'll be out there any opportunity he gets!
Apparently LOLCAT can also be applied to business conversations. Use liberally.
In other news, check out this sweet papercraft project!
Yesterday was one of those days for me. It started off well. On my way out from work I walked past a DVD laying in the snow, partially covered with frosty ice. I picked it up thinking the owner wasn't going to be coming back for it, and it was a full screen copy of The Bourne Ultimatum! Happy day! I brought it to my car to find that it was dead. I'm guessing the door was partially open, and with our car if the door is open enough to display door ajar on the dash, it will drain the battery. I'm not sure why, but it just does. I got out of the car and started going over in my head what I could do. First I needed to get the hood open, which was currently covered with a nice inch or so of ice.
So I think I'm going to try and bike to VIPs tomorrow morning for our Men's Breakfast. Typically I would just drive, but I though I would ride this time. After Google told me to take Armour to Kinzie, I redirected it to avoid Armour, and then modified it to cut through a park and part of Olivet. I'm thinking it shouldn't be be too hard, as it takes me about 10 minutes to ride to work. And it's going to he 6:30am on a Saturday.
Because I love Google, I created a map for you of the route I'll be riding tomorrow. The red line is the route I'll take, and the blue line is the route Google gave me. You can click on the pins to see what they are.
Today I got a call from Noah, which was similar to one I got last week. He told me:
I pooped in the potty daddy!I couldn't help but express my enthusiasm for our little man. For the last two weeks Noah has been wearing big boy undies and peeing in the potty. He's had his good and bad times, but he is really getting the hang of it. Not only is he excited and actively working towards a diaper free life, Frencesca is excited as well. Just today we put her in her new big girl undies in hopes that she will follow in big brothers footsteps. She loves the cat undies at the moment, and she'll sit in the potty for candy. We're keeping our fingers crossed.
Potty Announcement from David Giove on Vimeo.
I have recently done a few wood projects at home, which I am pretty proud of. Granted I'm not carpenter, I can accomplish a few things when it comes to wood.
My first project was to create some shelves for our DVD and VHS collection (Yes, we still own and frequently use our VHS player.) The purpose was to keep them organized, and to keep them out of reach of the kids. My idea was to create a hanging shelf that would anchor into a stud in the wall close to the ceiling. I made these shelves out of a 6'x3' piece of wood which I drilled holes in the sides for the wire to feed through. You can pretty much look at the pictures to see how they turned out, and how I did it. The pictures say more than I could in describing them anyway. I made two sets of these (only one is pictured) and the second set of shelves definitely came out better than the first.
I also made some shelves for our laundry room, and for the room we call the arm pit. The armpit is where the furnace and water heater is, and where most of our junk goes. The stuff we don't want the kids getting into: Bug spray, tools, cleaning chemicals etc. I didn't really make these shelves to be pretty, but it's not like they are ugly. My main goal was to make shelves, and to make them cheap. You might not be able to tell from the pictures, but this really made these two rooms amazing. It pulled all the stuff we had on the floor onto the shelves.
For those who haven't seen me with long hair, a friend and neighbor of ours took a photo of us at his going away party less than a month ago. I believe this was just about as long as it got before ONU told me it was too long. It was sad to see it go, and I think I would have enjoyed growing it out even longer. One of the things about having long hair that I won't miss is paying to have it cut/dyed. It gets to a certain length where I can't just put the clippers to it, and it costs a ton to get it taken care of by someone who knows what they are doing. I am spoiled with short hair and never paying for a haircut.
Here's a before and after comparison. Just for fun
I folded Kawasaki's Rose today, and I did something that I've been wanting to try for a while: To take some descent photos of the origami that lives on my desk. I have quite a larger collection at home, so this gallery could grow in time. Until then, I uploaded the shots from today for you to see, and hopefully you enjoy them! Click the above panda to view the gallery. (Wordpress account is deleted and photo removed.)
Did you know that many judges are now denying parental rights? That others are refusing to recognize them because they are not explicitly protected in the U.S. Constitution? Have you heard about the UNCRC? Read on my friend...
The UNCRC (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,) is an international convention setting out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of children.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child may be a positive tool for promoting child welfare for those countries that have adopted it. But we believe the text goes too far when it asserts entitlements based on economic, social and cultural rights. ... The human rights-based approach ... poses significant problems as used in this text.All those who have been home-schooled might appreciate the voice of the HSLDA"Bush team signals new U.N. direction" - 2/2/01
Such presumptions subvert the authority of parents to exercise important responsibilities toward their children. Under the UN Convention, parental responsibility exists only in so far as parents are willing to further the independent choices of the child.As far as the current rights of parents being underhanded by judges, read this tragic story about a 17 year old autistic child. If this has at all sparked some interest on your part, you should check out parentalrights.org and read all the issue, the threat, and their proposed solution. It's quite an informative site with a wealth of knowledge. Here is an excerpt from their proposed solution:"Oppose the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child" - 2/1/99
A constitutional amendment will ensure that judges who are currently denying parental rights will be obligated to recognize them. It will ensure that judges who are presently refusing to recognize parental rights because of their lack of explicit protection within the Constitution will instead safeguard parental rights... The judges on the Supreme Court will change over time, but the law will not. If the U.S. Constitution is amended to secure parental rights, the vital child-parent relationship will be effectively shielded from intrusion by the government.ParentalRights.org - "The Solution: A Constitutional Amendment"
I encourage you to sign their petition and join the cause. Tell your friends about the issues involving parental rights!
So I may have been caught leaving the room during a play, and re-entering the room to catch the commercials more often than not. I may have also snickered when someone said, "Anyone who logs on to myspace to watch the ads has got to be a geek." Albeit I do enjoy watching a football game every now and again, I was mainly amused by what happened in between plays on this particular occasion. That being said, here is a selection of my favorite superbowl ads from last night:
Well, there were a few others that were pretty good, but those were the ones that really stick out in my mind right now. You can check out the spots in their entirety at YouTube. The game was pretty amazing as well, (spoken from a non-sports follower.) I would have preferred NE to take the win, and was disappointed with the ending, but life goes on.
Take a look above at the menu bar and you'll notice a brand new section for videos! (This post was imported from my wordpress blog, so disregard this post for the most part.) I am still working out a work flow for editing our adventures together, and in the meantime I am uploading raw videos for all to see. I really enjoyed how Vimeo works, and I like that they have HD playback capability. If you have a slow connection, it might be hard to load up the videos in HD, but there is also a standard definition version that you can watch as well. At the moment I only have a few up there, but I hope to have a bunch more soon.
For those who edit video: My work flow problem hinges upon the fact that our camera encodes video in h.264, and all my Apple software is just old enough to not support that format at all. My option at the moment is to convert each and every video to a format that I can edit, edit them together, and then export yet another file to complete a fully edited product. But I think that just sounds so ridiculously over-complicated for something that should be so simple. So if you have any brilliant suggestions you would like to toss my way, feel free. But that is where I currently stand on this.
I became aware of a site through my aunt Sandra called Let's Say Thanks. Here is the description from their site:
The mission of Let's Say Thanks is to provide a way for individuals across the country to recognize U.S. troops stationed overseas. By submitting a message through this site you have the opportunity to send a free personalized postcard greeting to deployed servicemen and women.
All you have to do is click on your favorite design and either select the message that best expresses your sentiment or draft a personal note. The postcards are then printed on the Xerox iGen3® Digital Production Press and mailed in care packages by military support organization Give2TheTroops®.
It is a great initiative, and I would encourage you to take a minute and send your gratitude to a U.S. soldier currently serving our country. Whether you agree with our current battlefields or not, I'm sure they would love to hear a message of gratitude from us back home.
I just really had to share this. This is hilarious!!
Hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did.
