TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONS

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A couple times per week, my Uncle Jim composes an email that contains 8-12 political cartoons.  Max loves to look at these emails.  He loves the way the artist draws the letters, the people, the characters.  He reads them and asks me to explain some of them.  The ones he really likes he has me leave on the screen so that he can copy the pictures onto a piece of paper.  His favorite seems to be ‘Mallard Fillmore’ penned by Bruce Tinsley.  Below is Max’s most recent copy.


Here is the original strip :

Kayaking, finally

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Last weekend, Poppa and YaYa came up for a short, almost non-work day.  The drywallers were in the middle of installation (still) and there wasn’t any work to do.  The only work we did was measuring for baseboard, doors, moulding, etc.  Rowdy had joined them for this trip and so in the afternoon, we went to the beach to give Rowdy the experience of the ocean.  He promptly lost his retrieval bone in the surf, so Poppa would throw seaweed out into the surf and Rowdy would dive, swim, run and stumble for it.  Lucy kept Poppa well supplied with washed up seaweed.  When we were walking back, we passed the Carp Boating Center where they rent Kayaks by the hour.  I thought that Max would enjoy a trip in one, and planned to go Sunday after church.

We went to the early service and Max and I headed down to Ash Beach.  As we talked, Max told me that he was a little nervous.  When we walked up, we saw that there was a large group of people standing around, outside the rental place.  We were told that kayaks were not being rented because there was a special event going on.  Pretty disappointing for me, but Max consoled me and told me that it was OK that we didn’t go.  I think he was a bit relieved.  We went home and played Monopoly Jr.  Lucy won.

Yesterday, I decided to try to go again.  We got to the shop at 10:45a, and it was all closed up.  The sign said that rentals were opened at 10:30a, so I was confused.  I was also distressed by the sign that said that rentals were $20/hr for adults, $10/hr for kids.  I had it in my brain that the rental would be $10/hr for me and $5/hr for Max.  I had brought $30 just to be safe, it looked like I was going to need it all.

At 11a, the high-schooler who ran the shop rolled up on his bike and leisurely began to open.  I didn’t say anything about the late opening, but immediately began filling out the paperwork.  I casually asked what the cost would be and he said $15/hr for the both of us.  Hooray!  I was happy to trade 15 minutes of waiting for basically half off the published price.

The guy was very helpful and quickly got us into the water.  Max had to wear a helmet when launching through the surf, but once we got past the surfzone, he took it off and donned his Dodgers cap.  We had been instructed to keep the nose of the kayak perpendicular to the waves and so Max was adamant about keeping it narrow, as he called it.  I tried to turn towards Santa Barbara, but Max started complaining about not being narrow.  So we paddled straight out and straight out and straight out.  The swells were constant and quite fun for us.  We would bounce up and down.  Max would get splashed when the nose dropped into the trough.  Being in the back seat, I didn’t get wet at all.  Max said he wanted to be in the back next time.  It was good to hear that he was interested in a ‘next time’. 

We cruised in after about 45 minutes.  It was *much* faster going towards the beach than away.  We rode the waves into shore and returned the kayak.  It was alot of fun.  During the walk home, Max asked if we could go again tomorrow.  Soon, I’ll be looking on Craigslist for a 2 person kayak of my own.

Yikes, A Spider!

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This morning as I was walking out the door, Lucy stopped me and told me that there was a spider in the doorway to the ‘doghouse’.  I followed her in to see the spider.  She stopped in the middle of her room, got on her hands and knees and put her head near the floor.
I looked at the doorway and saw some old cobwebs in the corner so got close, bent down and peered into the bottom corner.  I didn’t see any spider so I turned to tell Lucy there were only webs and I came within about 3 inches of putting my face into a black widow on her web in the middle of the doorway.  Lucy had been right.  The spider was a couple of inches off the floor, hanging upside down so that its hourglass was very visible.

I took a picture and then squashed the spider with my shoe.

Sorry about the blur.  It didn’t look so blurry on the little screen of my phone…

Bye Bye Beams

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The ceiling of the first floor was kind of confusing.  The plans called for using parallams and 2×12’s to make the floor of the second story.  As I discovered, 2×12 does not mean that the boards are 12 inches wide.  It means that they are anywere from 11 1/4″ to 11 1/2″ wide.  You would think that parallams, being engineered lumber, would actually be the size that they are labeled as.  You would be wrong.  We used several thicknesses of parallams, and they were all supposed to be 12″ wide.  They actually measured out at a consistent 11 7/8″ in width. 

Does any one see the problem? 

If the 2×12’s are attached to the 12″ wide parallams forming a level surface for the top of floor, the bottom of the floor (the ceiling of the first story) is going to be very uneven.  The parallams hung down around 1/2″ below the rest of the ceiling joists.  This does not make for good surface to hang drywall from.

The drywallers ended up butting the drywall up against the beams and then taping / mudding directly on the beams themselves, without any drywall.  You can see the brown beams in the pictures from a previous post.  Here is what the ceilings look like after the extra mud.

 

Max’s Eureka moment

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Last week, when the drywallers put up the first pieces of drywall, some of the ceiling pieces had foot prints on them.  (See pictures in the previous post) Max and Lucy were baffled.  They asked how the workers could walk on the ceiling and the walls.  I told them they must have special boots.

A few days later, on Sunday, as we were looking at the progress, Max told me that he knew how the footprints were on the ceiling.  In a hushed voice, as if to guard state secrets, he said ‘They walk on the pieces when they are on the floor.’  I congratulated him on good thinking. 

I wonder if he had an ‘a-ha!’ moment in the middle of the night when the solution came to him?  Did he sit up in bed and go back to sleep satisfied?