When we moved back into our home after our mission time in California, we started finding little plastic animals hidden around the house. Kyra and Hannah had apparently bought a package of them on Amazon, and scattered them about just prior to our return. For weeks, I’d find them atop door frames, in the refrigerator drawer, behind the salt shaker, under the silverware, and on and on. Every day brought new animals and a smile to my face.
Well, that was six months ago and we’ve found most of them. My last discovery, at the end of December, was a little blue brachiosaurus inside the glove I keep stashed in the car in case of emergencies:
Kyra was pretty clever with some of these!
Tonight I found a tiny stegosaurus in the Party House, and it reminded me there are still a few lurking out there.
Then I got to thinking: maybe I could design a kids’ game for Oliver that features these fun little dinosaurs and animals. I already gave him Ofrendas, which is basically Go Fish, and he seemed to enjoy matching the cartoon cards. I gathered all the dinosaurs I’ve found to date…
… and now I’m contemplating how they might make a game suitable for a five-year-old. Ideas are welcome!
Last month Pepper and I were at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Dillon MT and I saw a sign on the wall:
I immediately knew that was the logo I should use for Thought Monkeys! Today, a little bit of graphics work and voila:
Clearly it’s trademark infringement for me to use this screaming sunglassed howler monkey on anything official. So it’ll just be another fun addition to the 23-year-and-counting saga of Thought Monkeys…
Every month or so, it’s time to make a bunch of pizzas and freeze them. Today it was time.
It’s actually a fun process. There’s enough dough to make nine mini-pizzas, which I put into little pans. They get wrapped and frozen, and for the next month I can just grab one from the freezer, pop it into the oven, and in eighteen minutes enjoy a piping hot fresh-baked pizza! Brilliant.
For well over a decade, I’ve been buying this brand of orange juice from Costco. They’ve recently discontinued it, and don’t plan to re-stock it. This is my last can from the freezer.
I love orange juice, This is a blow to my habit, because now I’ll have to buy it at “regular” grocery stores (much more expensive than Costco) and in smaller sizes.
Hmm. Maybe I should plant some orange trees in my orchard…
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally feel like I’m “back in the saddle” of technical work. For many months I’ve been thinking about how to un-retire and do some meaningful software development. Fortunately I have a long-time client (and friend!) who’s willing to engage me in some projects. It isn’t full-time work– far from it– but it’s enough to keep me busy for a few hours here and there. I’m updating and upgrading their web application, using technologies I’ve been immersed in for 25 years while exploring new technologies to make things better, faster, and easier.
Ahh, editing PHP in Vim…
While much of what I’m doing feels so familiar, there are a few twists. First, I have a triple monitor setup with massive 32-inch 2K screens: plenty of real estate for all of my editor windows, test pages, log files, research tabs, and so on. More pixels are almost always better!
Second, I have an amazing lake view out the window as I work, which beats the basement window well view of my old home office. And third, the pace is much more relaxed: no more 50-hour weeks, constantly checking email, or feeling like I always need to be available for clients. I work a few hours a day, taking pizza and gaming breaks or shifting gears for a personal project for a bit.
It feels good to be back in this groove. I always enjoyed my job, and my clients… it was having to work those long hours that became a drag. Now that I can do it more on my terms, I think it’s going to be a Good Thing.
At church, one of my responsibilities is handling the finances for our congregation. As such, I have a (shared) office area for processing funds, managing reports, and so on. For months I’ve told myself I need to take a day to clean out the office, because there are some cabinets that contain books and things I know are outdated and no longer useful. Today was that day.
As I began going through the cabinets, drawers, shelves, and file folders, the weight of history gradually became apparent. I’d already seen the old WordPerfect software manual (I used WordPerfect back in the mid-1990s and it was a great word processor). But then I came across some 3.5″ floppy disks with backups dated 1992:
I was pretty sure we didn’t need these any more. I chucked them into one of the trash bags I was filling.
Deeper in that cabinet was something even older: a set of four 5.25″ floppy disks used to install church financial software!
Sheesh. Into the trash.
I kept going. I went for some more trash bags. The pile was getting bigger. Tucked in the back of a cabinet was a box of paper rolls for adding machines…
Oh, and three adding machines. Because everyone uses those, when we’ve had calculator apps on our phones for at least twenty years. I wondered if they could be used for an interesting hobby project, but decided that a literal mile of adding-machine paper probably wasn’t going to come in handy any time soon. Trash.
Let’s not forget the replacement letter wheel for a Brother typewriter! Sadly, the typewriter was nowhere to be seen.
There were so many things like this: artifacts from thirty and forty years ago, stashed in file drawers or stuffed in a box on the back of a shelf behind twenty massive three-ring binders filled with policy documents with dates in the late 1980s. It was staggering. I think sometimes people are afraid to throw away things because… hey, they might be useful one day! But as I shook my head at each new discovery, I felt like no one would ever miss these things.
At the end of the day, I had at least a dozen trash bags filled with stuff, as well as boxes and binders and assorted things that filled the back of our Honda CR-V. I drove straight from the church to the dump and that was the end of it.
My little archaeology expedition was both shocking and fascinating. And now the office has shelves and cabinets that are completely bare. But maybe in forty years, a few things from today will be tossed out by a future financial clerk, and the cycle will repeat…
When Kari came out to visit a few weeks ago, she forgot to bring some homemade candy. To my surprise and delight, a little box showed up in the mail today… she’d packaged up some turtles and bon bons, and sent them to me!
Alex and Kaitlyn recently bought a townhome, and they were very excited to finally be able to host Christmas. It’s one of those rites of passage as an adult: finally having a place with enough room to invite your family over, rather than having to go to Mom and Dad’s place to celebrate the holiday season. It was great to have everyone together (again!) and we enjoyed a few days relaxing and playing.
William is about a month old now, but he’s still so small. Zack– who’s not really a baby person– spent a surprising amount of time with the little guy on his chest. There’s something about holding a sleeping baby.
We swung by Tara and Trent’s place for an exciting game night. It included Secret Hitler and Catch Phrase, both of which involve a lot of yelling. With this crowd it was a lot of fun.
On Christmas Eve Kaitlyn prepared her family’s traditional “Bethlehem Dinner”, which is a cool reminder of what it might have been like two millennia ago. We ate flatbread, chicken, cheeses, and grapes by candlelight.
Later that evening, it was time for The Presentations. This was Hannah’s idea: a few weeks earlier, she’d proposed that all of us make short 5-10 minute presentations about anything, and then have someone else present them. I thought it should be something educational, so I put together a handful of slides about the Great Emu War. Kyra drew the lucky straw and presented it. She did a great job, remaining serious and professional even though she had no idea what slide would come up next.
After that, Alex was able to present “The Science of Eye Contact”, which Kyra had written. It was actually quite informative, discussing how humans react to eye contact. However, her slides all featured gigantic horrific AI-generated eyeballs.
Things took a turn when Zack presented Alex’s topic, “The Art of Sacred Pooping”. It claimed to be “An Exhaustively Researched Report” but not surprisingly it was full of inside jokes (like the title itself) and plenty of scatological humor.
We finished with me presenting Zack’s deck, “Understanding Jeff: Meeting the Real Me” which turned out to be a scathing (but frankly hilarious) mockery of me. Where’s the respect in kids these days?
It was a riot, and will probably become a weird family tradition.
It will shock no one to learn that we played a lot of board games together. We even had a round of Wingspan with the highest scores I’ve ever seen.
The weather was freakishly warm, and we went on long walks every day in the 65-degree weather. Oliver loved riding his bike along the sidewalks in their little neighborhood.
When Christmas Day dawned, Oliver was naturally the most excited. He did an admirable job of holding back from tearing into his presents, waiting over two hours for everyone to be up and ready. It’s fun seeing how excited kids are about gifts. I don’t think he was prepared for the custom shower curtain I made for him, though:
I took a photo of him in a car at a carnival, added an outdoor background, and printed it in six-by-six-foot glory. It’s hanging in his bathroom now.
Oliver adores his Uncle Zack, probably because he’s like the crazy funny uncle who does things like make weird gang signs in photos.
Yeah, it was a hoot to be together. Merry Christmas to all.
We have a Party House, so we figure we should host plenty of parties. It’s been tradition to have a white elephant party every December (dating back a couple of decades to Colorado, although we didn’t host those). The beauty of it: the party is actually very easy to host. Invite a bunch of people and ask them to bring food and a couple of odd gifts. All we have to provide is the venue.
We missed last year because we were in shorts in the desert, and many of our friends have been asking for months (I’m not kidding) whether we’ll bring back our white elephant party. Of course we will. It turned out to be a smashing success, with over forty people– a new record!– in attendance.
As usual, there were plenty of gag gifts and a lot of horse trading. The “good” gifts– the ones you’d actually be able to use or at least put in your home without complete embarrassment– were frequently stolen. After Tom lost the famous lobster serving bowl, he grabbed a “snacklebox” of treats:
Here comes Jamie in an attempt to grab a head massager from Tom (who’s quite bald). Tom had a lot of things stolen from him tonight.
It’s always an adventure to open one of these gifts, not knowing if it’ll be something useful or something completely useless. Cam ended up with some sort of necklace (that was actually quite nice, and quickly given to his wife):
My favorite item of the evening was a shrunken braying donkey head. It was special in a way that only white-elephant gifts can be:
Much to Pepper’s chagrin, I stole it on my turn, but had it stolen later. Bummer.
This was Brian’s first time at our party (his family moved here a few months ago) and he wasn’t prepared for the return of the Cosmo Shower Curtain.
Jon had taken this gem home two years ago, and told me he’d literally been saving it on a shelf for these two years just so he could bring it back and get rid of it.
I loved that Kim and Kelly showed up dressed to the nines. He was in a full tuxedo, and she was in a glamorous cocktail dress.
They’d been at the annual black-tie Governor’s Ball, hosted by none other than the governor of Montana, and they left early to come to our party. Yeah, that’s how good it is. Take that, Governor Gianforte!
It was only a few weeks ago when we were in Missouri enjoying time with Mom, Dad, and Kari. As it happened, Kari had already planned a December trip to Kalispell to hang out with her good friend, so naturally she dropped in for a few days. It was awesome to just have some time together. We talked, played games, enjoyed Rosa’s pizza (of course), and went on a few outdoor excursions. After our recent snowfall, everything was cold and icy… and pretty.
We showed her Yellow Bay, which is one of our favorite summer hangouts. Of course Yellow Bay looks very different in December!
The only other time she’s visited was also winter (two years ago), so one of these days we hope she can make it up in the summer to enjoy the real beauty of Montana. Regardless, it’s great to have her with us.
