pumpkins in a wagon
Sunday and another busy weekend draws to its end.
Tonight, after I cleaned out the Halloween workshop (garage) so we can put the cars in again, we packed Keaton into the wagon and all went for a walk down to the market to pick out some pumpkins (funny enough, we didn't actually buy pumpkins while we were up at the real pumpkin patches last weekend - so we did the "city" version instead today). It was a nice trip, and, besides, I've never pulled a wagon through the aisles of a supermarket before.
Saturday I made the final-final (fingers crossed) repairs and adjustments to all the props, and they've all been running fine since. Now if they can just make it to Halloween night and be in good working order so I can entertain some trick-or-treaters, I'll be happy.
As Fall continues to creep up around us slowly here in Northern California, I find myself wishing we'd get a good hard rain. We haven't had rain here in what seems like forever, since our seasons aren't as wide-open as places like my previous home of Central Florida. And, even though we rarely get any worth-mentioning thunder and lightning, I'd gladly take a day stuck inside for a decent thunderstorm. Something about rain, and I'm certain I've written about this before, something about being safe and dry indoors as the rain pours down outside... is very soothing and satisfying to me. So c'mon rain, come get us wet over here... I'm waiting.
While I was cleaning the garage today, I wanted to put a couple ten-foot lengths of conduit up in the rafters for storage. Keaton had come out with me (she absolutely loves spending time with me in while I "work" in the garage, she hovers around me asking me questions about what I'm doing and offering to "help" - I love it), and she was tossing around a little bouncy ball as I picked up. Seeing the unused conduit, I grabbed both lengths near the middle and began to swing them around to position them towards the rafters. I watched as I maneuvered them so I wouldn't hit the hanging florescent lights or the workbench behind me, but as I did I heard aloud "thud" and immediately thought I'd hit the workbench. But, as soon as I heard the impact Keaton began screaming.
In a panic I dropped the pipe and turned to see her bent over clutching her face. Freaking out now (the sound of the pipe hitting something had made me think I hit something really solid, so I knew she had received a good whack), and cursing myself for working with the long and awkward pieces of metal while she was around, I darted over and scooped her up. "Where does it hurt, baby?," I asked, brushing her hair from her face. Oh crap, she was holding her eye... "My eye!," she wailed. Getting more worried, I asked her to open her eye, half expecting the worst. Thankfully, her eye looked fine, and I finally noticed the little red mark on the bridge of her nose - near her eye but not in her eye. After the couple seconds I'd taken to initially check her out, I rushed inside with her still crying to put some ice on the bump.
Turns out that after some ice and comforting, she was just fine; but I ended up feeling like a careless dad again for smacking my own daughter in the face with some metal pipe. It's a good thing the Lord makes babies tough, 'cause they get hurt a lot it seems. I'm just waiting for the first broken bone or stitches... you know it'll happen.
OK folks, gonna stop writing now and read a little. Have a good Monday and I'll talk to you later. Bye.
(Pssst! OMG can you please look at the picture of Job and Keaton Megan posted last night (scroll down, it's the last one.)
halloween ’08 “walk-up”
Good evening beautiful denizens of the interwebs.
Hope your Wednesday was OK; mine was. Some friends invited us over for another debate-watching party tonight, so with no time to get things done after work I snuck out about thirty minutes early at lunchtime and got some finishing work done on the Halloween display. I setup the sound and did final placement and tacking on cables and motion detectors and whatnot.
I'm really happy with the way things turned out. I'm using the prop activation timer as it's supposed to be used instead of just as an afterthought as in 2006, and the rest of the work is just icing at this point. Halloween could be tomorrow and I'd be OK (providing I carved a pumpkin or two with Keaton before nightfall).
And, since I've had at least one person ask me to see a video of the whole house "walk-up" as it'll look to trick-or-treaters, here's something I put together quickly tonight. The only drawback to this video is that I don't yet have the light hooked up to the ceiling dropper - so I had Sharaun hiding out shining a flashlight on it at the right time to simulate. Unfortunately, the flashlight just isn't bright enough and the effect doesn't come through very well in the video. Owell, maybe I'll reshoot it once I hook up the real light (which will be a bit more orange and a lot more bright than what you see here). So, check it out, and, come get some candy... if you're not too skeered!
Anyway, with that last light and a couple handmade glowing Jack-o-lanterns it'll look a lot better... I added it to the Halloween gallery too, y'know, for posterity's sake. Let's move along now.
One of my best buddies has a daughter whose spending a year studying abroad in Sweden. Before she left, I helped her setup a blog here on the pharaohweb.com servers so she could keep the masses updated with her foreign goings-on and post pictures and do general bloggy stuff. She's been gone now for a few months, and I've enjoyed reading her blog a lot in those times - it's kind of like I'm getting to experience the whole culturally-displaced thing through her (even though she doesn't write nearly enough). Her last entry, however, really made me stop and think. I'm gonna link it now without much setup or commentary and just let you take it in for yourself. Read it by clicking here... heavy stuff for someone I still think of as the eight year old I first met so many years ago.
For real though, I'm straight-up doing a year abroad vicariously through her... since I was too chicken to ever do anything like that when I was younger.
OK folks, it's coming up on 10pm and I need to not be at the computer for a bit.
Goodnight.
sometimes i suck too
Something went wrong with last night's post scheduling, and I didn't notice until midway through the day today that it hadn't auto-posted at midnight as my entries usually do. If you missed it, you can just scroll down - so don't panic. And now, to Tuesday...
You guys know what? I totally got the crank ghost up tonight after work. If you would've asked me yesterday I would've said it might not happen at all this year. See, my new rig was flawed, was tangling the strings and the thing wouldn't work. But then, I got all nuts and made it work. I also managed to set up the motion detector and prop timer for sound and animation and lighting. I didn't, however get it all hooked up or cable-managed. But, good Lord I almost made my self-imposed October 15th deadline for all the old props being up and running. Tomorrow I'll hook things up and take a video of the coordinated triggering I setup for the popper and dropper so you can see it all in action.
Y'know... I get on to Sharaun a lot for being disorganized, unmotivated, and, at times, downright lazy. I know, what a great husband, right? I like to think of myself as a shining example of organization and motivation, never letting myself falter. Every once in a while though, I'll step back and realize I'm a fairly lazy procrastinator in my own right. Take for example the pair of tennis shoes outside our front door right now. They're all dusty and dirty so I stuck them out there to knock together a couple times before bringing back into the shoe rack in our closet. Sounds prudent, right? Yeah, all but for the part where I forgot to mention that I put those shoes out there right after removing them from my feet upon returning from our aborted JMT hike back in the first week of September. So yeah, a month out there on the porch waiting for me to bring them in. That's pretty bad y'all... pretty bad.
Hey guess what?! I actually posted some new pictures to Keaton's gallery! Yeah, I'm for real. Now, even though I'm supposedly covering two months time with this update - I only managed to pull together a measly twenty decent pictures. But, I figure it's better than nothing. You can go check out the new stuff by clicking right here.
Goodnight my friends.
no tengo nada
Sorry for no Monday entry. Sunday I spent the post-praise day working on the Halloween props, and with dinner guests that evening I found not a common moment between me being awake enough to write and me wanting to write.
Anyway, the props are about 80% ready - still some wiring and cable-tacking and fine-tuning to do before everything's perfect. Of course, setting things up wasn't with out issue, and I found myself frustrated and pressured by some imagined deadline. I'll be happy if I get everything dialed in this week, and then can spend some time working on the "new" prop to see if I can get that working before the 31st. I'll let ya know.
I've really got little to post today... but I did want to share a little bit of why our daughter constantly amazes me. And yeah, I guess this is sort of dad doing some bragging... but...
See, she's got this little "music table" toy that sings all sort of songs. It's actually from when she was little, but we keep it around because she still enjoys it and it's good for our friends with cruisin' babies. Anyway, the thing sings counting songs and the alphabet - and does both in English and Spanish according to how a little switch on the side is set. Apparently, Keaton's been practicing her alphabet in Spanish. Check it:
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Better than I could do.
Awww, that's the cutest Spanish alphabet I've ever freakin' heard (that last bit goes something like, "La cancion del ABC y la sabes bein, cantas la tambein"). I love that girl like she was money.
Oh and because I'm so behind in updating Keaton's gallery, Megan posted some new pictures of Keaton (and one hilarious one of yours truly too) - and Bill posted some of Keaton and Jake from our first debate-watching party (yes, we're old) - and Ragan posted some from when they visited. Go check them out here, here and here, respectively. Thanks for doing my work, folks.
Goodnight y'allz.
the sheets and pillow are calling
Hey there Tuesday people.
I'm off again today, taking the corporate sawmill shuttle across the state a ways to work over there for a couple days. More of the "meet and greet" business, with a little effort thrown in to justify the whole thing. So, an evening in a hotel and two days away from the fam... could be worse I suppose.
I'm just dreading the 4:45am rise-and-shine... which means I better get to typing here - I got music and Halloween for you today, not much to write home about.
Lately, I've been on this soul music tear - acquiring (through absolutely unquestionably legal channels) tons and tons of vintage 60s and 70s soul records to try and flesh out my collection. In the process, I've found some simply amazing stuff - the cream of which so far has got to be material by one O.V. Wright. Someone I'd never even heard of before, it's hard to believe this guy isn't held in the same esteem as classic performers like Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. His voice is incredible, full of emotion, and his songwriting isn't so serious that you can't get a chuckle here and there. And the music, oh man the music. All the right horns and cymbal crashes in all the right places... this stuff makes you feel.
Anyway, it's just the tip of the iceberg. Some seventy albums into my bender, I realized I've now got too much to appreciate before something new comes along - and I'd better come up for air and actually take in some of what I've grabbed. Soul is a relatively new area for me, so I'm excited to get educated. I know, you're riveted right no. I'll continue to thrill you with the following, I'm sure...
I was thrilled today as I came up with a really neat concept to "soup up" the Halloween prop setup. Right now I've got live power (at 120V AC) running all around the place to power the props. I've long worried about this being unsafe, as a lot of my connections are simple wire-nut jobs and could conceivably be susceptible to shorts (and, less plausible but still a concern, human contact). Today I hit upon a way to move most of the dangerous high-voltage hookups under the safety of the front porch roof enclosure - and wire the props in the yard with low-voltage 12V power.
Additionally, I dreamed up a way to reduce the amount of clutter I have by triggering the coffin "popper" and ceiling "dropper" from the same motion sensor. I know it doesn't sound like much, but to me it means a lot less wiring, a lot cleaner interface between the props, and some cool new features. For instance, both the dropper and the popper can have (timed) associated sounds and targeted lighting now, in addition to the always-on "ambient" soundtrack that was there last year.
What's more, if everything goes right - in addition to springing down on you from its hiding place above with a blood-curdling scream and scary spotlighting, the ceiling dropper will now spray a burst of fog towards you as well. It's probably hard to visualize, so I'll just post a video when I get it working.
Ahem... I'm outta here. With such an early start to tomorrow, the sheets and pillow are calling.
Before I go, I keep meaning to mention that Ben posted his pictures from our abbreviated John Muir Trail hike over at his site. Check them out here.
Goodnight.
the halloween workshop
It's nearing 2pm on this fine windows-open Sunday afternoon.
I just put Keaton down for a nap and Sharaun's away at a baby shower. I put on the new Of Montreal album (which is seriously growing on me, despite my initial skittishness) and decided to write a bit. Now, writing wasn't really my intention (nor has it been for the past week, as you've likely noticed if you're a regular visitor here) - but I had no choice.
See, I had intended to get all the Halloween props down and start doing an assessment of what all needs to be repaired and what materials I'll need to get everything back to working order. But, all the Halloween gear is inside the fake coffin I built so many years ago to hold the pnuematic pop-up coffin dude, and that montrously heavy contraption is tied to the exposed rafters in my garage for storage (serisouly, where else am I going to store a full-size coffin?). Problem is, other than my sneaking fear that the thing is gonna come crashing down randomly one day and wreck a car parked under it or worse smoosh someone as it falls, I can't get the thing down all by my lonesome. It's just too heavy and unwieldy. So, as Halloween prep goes, this morning was a complete loss.
Later in the day though, Sharaun got home and helped me lower the thing from it's hold up in the rafters. After that, I was able to get all the gear down from the various places it's stuffed up into our roof and take a full account of things. And, surprisingly, I'm not as concerned about the work as I was before. Yeah, the rubber masks have all rotted and are tearing - those'll have to be replaced, and I already knew I had to rebiuld the ghost... but everything else is just improvements: rewiring things for low-voltage operation in the name of safety, making cosmetic improvements, improving triggering and timing for the more complex animated props, etc. I know you care dearly about all of this, so I'll leave it at that level of detail and be done with it. But, I'm happy to say that my side of the garage has now been officially transformed into the Halloween workshop; 'tis the season.
Shifting gears then...
Today as I walked in to pick Keaton up from her Sunday School class at church, her teacher turned to me and said, "Keaton had a day today." "Uh oh," I said, recalling how we'd already struggled with her ourselves from the start as well. "Yeah," she continued, "I've never seen her like this. Not only did she have four kicking and screaming on the ground fits, but she bullied every single kid in the class!" "Oh boy," I sighed, looking down at our little angel sitting forlornly on a chair in all her infinite cuteness. As Sharaun slid in beside me her teacher went on, "She pushed Madeline and pinched Matthew and just wouldn't listen." Sharaun, having borne the brunt of Keaton's earlier "No!" and hitting fit, screwed up her face and sternly asked Keaton to apologize, which she did.
Of course, after church she was a perfect little girl for me when Sharaun was away. I sometimes think she acts out more for Sharaun than she does me, maybe because she's got more to prove to her since she's with her all day long or whatever. Y'know, asserting her authority most to the one who's the authority for most of the day, or something. It sometimes makes me feel bad, because there are instances where she flips like a switch and instantly behaves better for me if Sharaun's removed from the situation... but then again I also figure this is just the beginning of her wrapping me around her little finger so she can exploit me later in life. Nah... I'm just playin'. But I dunno y'allz... this girl can flex some bad, straight-up bad.
OK, whatever. Goodnight.
I ain’t about hard
Hi! What up? Shut up. I don't care. Nah, I'm just kidding... what's going down? Nothing? Yeah... me neither.
It's Monday though, and it was an uncharacteristically Fallish day for California. Just when it should be one-hundred degrees plus it cools down and even gets chilly at night. I loved it, although when I woke up and felt the lingering chill of night it made me feel like I'm behind on designing this year's Halloween props. Well, more accurately fixing all the props that broke two years ago... which was a couple of the major ones. I guess the cooler weather makes my brain think Fall, and Fall means it's time to get working on Halloween.
Each year I build one new prop, and I usually allow myself one "large" purchase along with it. One year it was a massive fog machine, the kind clubs use. One year I bought a nice drill to aide in construction, another year a jigsaw. One year a twenty gallon air compressor. This year, I'm not sure. I know I need to rebuild the flying crank ghost, because she literally wound herself to death last year, and I need to make some adjustments to the ceiling dropper too (which, despite never getting a full teaser video, actually came out pretty well in the end). So, I think I'm gonna start working on those soon. The crank ghost rebuild could take time, depending on whether or not I choose to do an "industrial strength" one or go with the cheapie I built last time (which looked great, but ultimately only lasted four seasons). I'm thinking this time I do it right with angle-iron and a heavier-duty motor.
Thinking about it, I don't think the changes to this year's props will actually demand that much time... maybe a couple weeks to get things right. The most difficult part will be fixing the ceiling dropper's triggering mechanism and audio synchronization issues. If I figure I can do that with relative ease, then I may actually have enough time to engineer a totally new item. And, I've had an idea in my head now for over a year that I'd love to make happen: A glowing half-corpse/ghost that travels in a large loop in the air around our yard, as if floating along. I imagine a torso and head, with a ragged end at the midsection and outstretched arms, flying around the yard overhead. I know, a lofty concept. But, I've sketched it out several times and think it can be done with just one drive motor and two or three clever pulley stanchions. We'll see...
Anyway, enough about Halloween, eh? I just get excited... it's been my favorite holiday ever since I was a little kid and all. Let's move on.
Today at work was busy. In fact, work's been getting busier all the time lately - a change from the few months of relative "down" time I had. My program is sputtering along at half-choke, throttling up towards 100% which should happen sometime in January. Then it's balls-out for a good two years again before the cycle begins anew. Things at the sawmill go like that, where a project lasts about three years or so, and then resets. I've been through five now, some in parallel, obviously, and I feel like I'm getting better every time around. I guess I've made up my mind that I'm gonna stick around this job. I like it enough, I'm good enough at it, and it pays well... so, why leave? It all fits nicely into my "why change?" style. Change is hard y'all, and I ain't about hard (well, most of the time, anyway).
Before I go, I wanted to tip my bloggers hat to a longtime friend of mine who's recently started writing online. I read, with tears poised in puddles just inside my eyelids, glistening in little shivering lumps of surface tension, waiting for one small motion to send them streaming, the first two parts (one here, two here) of her multi-part entry, "I Killed My Parents." All the years I've known you, Sheila, and I've never asked you about your folks. I'm not that guy, the one who asks, even if you set me up for the question... I'll likely balk until you're ready to tell me outright. I'm glad I finally know the story, thanks for telling me (and everyone else). Can't wait to read the rest. And, oh yeah, we love you.
So, that a sappy enough ending for ya? Hope so, 'cause I'm outta stuff to write. I think it's a respectable entry, no? Yeah, let's call it a wrap.
Oh hey wait, look, Megan used Keaton as the subject of a Photoshop tutorial. That's an interesting kind of exposure, eh? And, maybe it'll get you "we want new pictures!" hounds off my back for a few hours. (I swear they're coming, for reals... soon even.)
Goodnight friends. Until tomorrow.
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