Our fishy friends have nothing to fear from me

Dear weblog,
I enclose this picture of me and a friend, taken 9/9/06.
They say the camera adds pounds. Apparently it has the opposite effect on our piscian citizens.

A mosaic of Aarons

I recommend: _Girl in Landscape_ by Jonathan Lethe

I enjoyed this book, which focused on the alienation of a girl whose mom dies and who travels to an alien planet. The alien planet is rather gentle, the inhabitants are inoffensive....it's the humans who are dangerous. Elements like the giraffe-like "household deer", tiny creatures who climb walls and tend to hide in shadows are charming. There's also a theme of sexual awakening, but handled rather well, I thought. I mean, there's some scary stuff here -- a tough older guy and a young girl...but emotionally the girl holds her own.

Nicknames I've Used For My Son

In my own mind, I'm this stoic, dignified person who would never use sappy pet names for my loved ones. Certainly I've never succumbed to the temptation to call my wife snookums.

Nonetheless, here are the names I've called my son so far:

• Scooby-doo
• Scooby
• Booby-scoo
• Boo
• Bug
• Buddy
• Bud
  

By the time he's 20 I'll be calling him Irene and he'll be subsidizing my therapy.

The best use for a scroll-saw: cutting styrofoam

One of my favorite craft materials this decade is styrofoam. Not the beadboard used for packing material, but the blue or pink styrofoam that you can get from a home store in big sheets.

I started using it because it is used a lot in model railroading to make scenery -- people cut contours with it in layers and then carve it into shape; it's lightweight and strong. But since I acquired some and had it lying around, I often use it for quick projects.

But it was difficult to cut. You can use a hot-wire cutter for it, but that creates fumes. And anyway I don't have one of those. So one day I tried cutting it with my scroll saw. It works great. Granted, it creates a lot of fine dust (wear a mask and have a shopvac handy) but you can cut accurate contours with it.

I've made several crafts with this that turned out well. I'm kind of stuck on the idea of cutting shapes with the foam and then sticking things into it. I cut a big outline of the 48 continental states for a centerpiece for our recent Cub Scout banquet, and had all the scouts in our den make US flags, which they then stuck into the flat shape.

I did someting similar for centerpieces at an STC event a couple of years ago. I cut the shape of the state of Texas, and I made several copies of it, and then I pinned different shapes to them, including some bats to represent Austin in one case.

Foam, of course, provides a lot less resistance than wood, so it's really easy to control what you are doing, and it goes fast. You can quickly mock up shapes for something decorative with this method.

Bounty Hunters' Picnic

Here we see a peaceful picnic on a verdant planet of the Galactic Empire, one far enough off the beaten track to employ bounty hunters. The Rodian bounty hunter Greedo has stopped for a casual meal with his wife, son, and a friend, while a servitor bot waits on them.
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This silly little scene was a long time coming. I had the original idea in 2000....back when I was collecting figures much more heavily. I do like the various Star Wars bounty hunters, so I thought it would be fun to make a Father-Son picnic, with son figures for each bounty hunter. But the only one I got around to was a Greedo-son.

He was an easy figure custom to make: I had a Greedo figure variation with a small head, and I did a head swap on that with an Annakin figure, and then painted the hands to match. Not much to it.

When I found in 2005 that I had an extra piece of model railroad scenery, and Chloe gave me a doll blanket for some reason, and I realized I now had three different Rodians to make a husband/wife/child group, it all sort of came together in a minimum-effort kind of way. So there you go: a much simplified version of the project. I do get a kick, though, of having a whole family...most of the Star Wars characters don't have families that we see. Although there are those Sand People mother figures with their infants in papooses....maybe I can do a Mother's Group Meeting next.

The Kid With Balls

So this past October I was in Taco Bell, eatin' cheap food. It was about 12:45 and there were a bunch of high school kids there. Two groups sat near me: there was one kid with short blond hair; a skinny guy, kinda geeky looking. He was at table by himself, next to my booth.

On the other side of me were six girls, all of them cute and dressed to show it. Clearly these two groups were in utterly separate classes the way things shake out in high school. I may not agree with it, but I would have assumed the girls thought they were out of his league, at any rate.

Now the guy seemed a little off. He asked the girls what time it was. Twice, in fewer than 10 minutes. Then he stood up and went around to their table and asked the girls if they were from Westwood High. Most said they weren't, and looked away; they were snubbing him. One said she was.

So he asked her who she voted for for homecoming. A couple of other things were said, then he left, saying goodbye.

The girls giggled as he left and one said they were mean. I spoke to them a bit. They kind of looked at me; they seemed a little self-conscious at being overheard; they could tell I had been listening. I said something like "The guy was your age, right? He comes up and talks to you. Seems pretty brave to me."

That was what had impressed me. This was a classic group of Mean Girls. Surely he knew they were going to talk about him as soon as he left. Then one of the girls said: "At least he had the balls to come over here."

I said something stupid like "That's what I'm talkin' about," to display how utterly hip I am. But I was glad to hear I wasn't the only one who appreciated the kid's chutzpah. As soon as he gets out of high school, that'll matter a lot more than some youthful awkwardness.

How fast can you make potato soup?

Would you like some potato soup? Would you like it if you could make a bowl for one person in about 10 minutes?

You need: a small potato; celery; spices; salt. Possibly some broth or bouillon. Olive oil.

- Dice a small potato and toss into a microwave-safe bowl, something bigger than your average cereal bowl if possible.
- Add water to cover, then add a little more. If you have some beef or chicken broth handy, you can use that instead.
- Add about a teaspoon of olive oil.
- Stir to separate all the potato pieces & coat them with water. This will help keep them from sticking to each other.
- Add spices and salt to taste. I used a commercial Italian seasoning mix. You could use oregano and garlic powder. Or you could use a bouillion cube or broth seasoning packet.
- Cook for 3 minutes on high. Stir. Repeat.
- Taste a piece of potatoe to verify that they are soft and mostly cooked.
- Add chopped celery. If you have some cooked meat handy, you can add that at this point. For example, some ground beef or ground pork would be nice.
- Cook one more minute

Enjoy!

Baking soda rockets are worth it

I'm always on the lookout for fun little projects to do with the kids....with small investments of time/money/effort. One that paid off was making baking soda rockets.

Ethan and I did this a few years ago. He got the idea from watching the Zoom TV show. We fumbled around a bit because we tried to do it based solely on what he remembered from watching the show...things went a lot better after I downloaded some instructions. Ethan's verbal directions at age 4 were not too clear.

The main thing is finding some way to combine baking soda and vinegar in a bottle. It'll fizz up fast, and if you set things up right, you can shoot a cork out of your bottle.

We tried wrapping some baking soda up in a square of toilet paper, dropping the wad into the neck of a 2-liter bottle, then quickly corking the bottle.

In a few seconds there was a satisfying thunk and the cork shot 30 feet into the air. We laughed and did it again, and again, until we lost the cork in the tall grass.