Stuff…you know…things…

I was looking over a bunch of pictures of stuff we’ve done/seen/enjoyed lately and I thought it might be fun to show the stuff…you know…the things…

Of course, the other day, I posted our score of grapes which we were planning to turn into jelly…real grape jelly.  We got that done.  Usually Emily and I work pretty hard together on that sort of stuff but for some reason, she did all the grape jelly this time.  She is a jelly-making fool!  I am just a plain old fool.  I was busy watching The Colony, a new show on the Discovery channel (cable is evil but that is a heck of a show…if you are into post-apocalyptic stuff)  while she did all the work.  Yeah…still paying for that.

Let’s see, we have seen lots of butterflies and moths around the house lately.  I don’t know why, but whenever I see turtles or butterflies, I like to make sure they are ok.  I stop and help turtles across the road and I always offer a frown when a butterfly gets tangled up with the car (yeah, I know…it’s not much but what can I say?)  Anyhow, we have had a good crop of butterflies around…and dang they are cool!  I am not sure I had ever seen a luna moth before but it was really cool…so beautiful!

Yeah, I guess snails fall into the same category as turtles too…snails are super cool to watch.  I love to see their antennae disappear into their bodies and I am always amazed at how they can stretch.  They’re a little chewy primitive I guess…like turtles.  I am just amazed at all the stuff that just seems to be everywhere if I look!

9 Comments

warren, August 27th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Nature, Thoughts

Covering one’s hind-end

Last Christmas, Isaac was given a membership to study Taekwondo under Grandmaster S.H. Kang.  He’s done really well and enjoys fighting and learning his forms (routines practitioners do to increase balance, focus, etc).  I have seen him split a number of boards and he is learning how to defend himself very well.

It occurred to me that his teenage years are coming up.  That time is, of course, always full of moody, brooding, hormonal fun.  I suppose many parents lose touch with their kids when they become teenagers.  TKD seems like an easy place where Isaac and I can find common ground so I started taking classes with him a couple of weeks ago.  I figure the exercise will be good and Isaac and I get a chance to talk on the way to and from the training studio.  If we ever find ourselves in a moody teenage fit or a dark alley, I also will have skills to…uh…calm the situation.  Plus, this is really a great chance for each of us (esp as he gets bigger) to be all manly and tough and express frustration in a controlled way.

So, I started taking lessons and I am here to tell you, TKD is a serious cardio workout.  I am not in bad shape but the free-fighting very nearly kills me each night.  It’s just constant exertion and challenging balance maneuvers.  I am certain that those movie scenes where people fight each other for several minutes is bogus (as if we needed evidence!)  Unless you are in great shape, a real fight doesn’t last long without oxygen tanks nearby!

Anyhow, I am learning my stuff and trying to get more flexible.  Isaac insists that I will have to bow to him when he becomes a black belt.  He probably will beat me there since he has 8 months head start, but I remind him that another TKD rule is that kids essentially bow to their parents…this part is going to be interesting!  Anyhow, I am here to tell you that even the stuff I thought looked simple is anything but…but at least I am covering my hind-end defense-wise and getting in better cardio shape so my Emily and the kids can enjoy me even longer!

11 Comments

warren, August 3rd 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Family, Fun, Thoughts

To the river gods

Last weekend we went canoeing with the kids and Emily’s aunt and uncle.  The Little Coal river is near where we all live so it is convenient and really, a pretty great river for canoeing.  Like most of the East, we have been hot and dry for quite awhile so I had pretty low expectations about the quality of the water on the trip.  I grew up in NW PA near the beginning of the Allegheny river.  It is pretty shallow and slow there so I have plenty of experience in carrying a canoe through shallow water.  I didn’t really want to carry a canoe full of my offspring over rocks and downed trees.

We threw our canoes in (actually, the kayak started down the river without us) and headed out.  The water was perfect!  My shallow-water-eyes were just flat out wrong.  There were spots that weren’t deep but in every case, there was a ton of room to navigate the river anywhere we wanted!  The last time we went on this river, the water was raging.  We absolutely could not  get out of the boats (and truth be told, probably shouldn’t have even been in the boats) and our trip down the river was speedy.  This time, we got to really enjoy the river!

There were a few “rapids” that we got to ride.  I wasn’t sure whether the kids would enjoy it but they laughed and Isaac yelled, “Caribou!” at the top of his lungs (yeah, it’s a 4th/5th grade boy thing I think).  We stopped at the end of several of the rapids and walked back up to ride down in the rapids sans boat.  Holy mackerel that was fun!  I had to hold on to the kids the first few times because they were wary, but in no time, they were itching to go on their own…we just had to catch them at the bottom!

At one point, we saw a few cassette tapes in the water.  I suspect that someones house or camp was flooded at some point as no one would just dump old Motley Crue cassettes.  Anyhow, the kids saw them and asked what they were…that’s right, my kids had no idea what a cassette tape was or why people would use them instead of cds or dvds.  That was a bit shocking to me but we had a great conversation about how life was when I was a kid (and that wasn’t super long ago…I can’t imagine if they had the conversation with my 96 year old Grandpa!)  I enjoyed telling them about sleeping in the back of the station wagon on trips and how our legs would burn and stick to the plastic seats…how we didn’t have A/C in the house  or cars and no cell phones or video games.  Abigail asked me, “How did you make it through?”  HA!  And our lives were still pretty easy compared to people before us!

Anyhow, it didn’t take long for Diva…I mean Abigail…to get tired.  She propped back in the kayak and toured the rest of the river “princess style”.  We ate lunch on the river and laughed and had a great time not worrying about a thing.  Our only donation to the river gods was one pair of old sunglasses.  They were easily satisfied with our sacrifice.  I think the river was just what we needed…and I can’t wait to go again!

Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4

You may need to download Quicktime viewer if these videos don’t work for you…

13 Comments

warren, July 9th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Adventure, Family, Fun, Nature, Thoughts, WV

Mushrooms too!

I mentioned that we found a new spot for picking blackberries.  The new spot is into the woods a bit so we have to take a little time to walk to the best berries.  Along the way, we found some great mushrooms…these are chanterelles but there were all different sorts.  We’ve harvested them before but these ones looked especially cool to me.  There were tons of this variety and they were in all conditions and sizes.

There really is a lot of good about walking into the woods.  It seems like most people don’t venture in too far so there is a lot of beautiful stuff that just goes unnoticed.  I know that but I think I had forgotten too.  Sometimes I wonder how much other stuff like this I have forgotten.  It’s funny how day-to-day life buzzes right on by as the really cool stuff of life gets forgotten…

5 Comments

warren, July 8th 2010 | Tags:
Posted in Awesome, Thoughts, WV

The climb

Abigail, Emily and I walked around South Charleston the other day and she wanted to climb “the Mound”.  The Mound is an ancient native burial ground that sits as sort of a focal point of downtown S. Chas.  I had never climbed it before so it seemed like a pretty cool thing to do.  Abigail and I walked to the top by climbing stone steps that wrap around the Mound.  It’s not a huge walk but it has a great view of the area.  I sort of wonder what the people who built the mound must have seen and thought when they were hauling dirt and rock up the mound.

I suppose it looked a lot different (duh) but uncertainty was no doubt a part of their lives as well…especially after losing whomever was buried under that mound.  I guess it’s a part of life and all but I am not sure I am exactly delighted with the craziness that seems to be going on now with Jamaica and North Korea and and BP oil and Greece and the economy in general.  I’ll tell you one thing, I am certain that the time we spent climbing the Mound was time well spent.  I guess the uncertainty that the original builders must have felt and which caused them to build such a monument gave me a sense of certainty in the love I have for my family and the simple times we share together.

The story behind the Mound

Fun with tilt shift from atop the Mound!

3 Comments

warren, May 26th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Adventure, Thoughts, WV

My patents

A long time ago in a land far, far away, I worked on some projects from which some colleagues and I applied for a couple of patents.  We were doing some pretty cool software development and had the opportunity to be officially labelled as  ”inventors”.

The most recent patent was just awarded last week and I have since been inundated with mail from companies ready and willing to help me bring my new invention to market.  Though I am very appreciative of these folks trying to take a cut of whatever money I might make from it, I would prefer that they stop sending me mail.  They say, “hurry, you need to get <insert your invention here> to market as soon as possible!”

The funny thing is that it has taken four and a half years for this most recent patent to be awarded.  I wonder how many things are out there that could be saving lives or cleaning up oil spills, etc that are stuck in the big patent machine.  There are tons of silly patents and mean patents and patents that will have a profound impact on people’s lives.  I can’t imagine patenting human genes (which is quite a scary mess).  Seeds are patented and patent owners may do all sorts of evil enforcing those patents.

My patents are not evil and will not ever make me a single cent but I often wonder why some patents are awarded and who in the world thinks it is ok to patent some stuff. I am pretty proud to have been awarded these patents but I can’t imagine being so proud of a bit of work I might do that I would be willing to withhold treatment for someone’s illness because I own a patent on some gene. I cannot imagine forcing third-world farmers to buy my genetically modified seed (or suing them if their seed crosses with someone else’s seed for which I owned a patent).  I just can’t imagine!

I guess I am rambling as usual…of course, maybe if I owned a patent on a gene, I could afford to buy one of the plaques that the aforementioned “take your product to market” companies was selling and I might actually have something to take a picture of so I could do a proper picture-filled post. Until then, I will be content with having my name buried in the records of the US patent office.

By the way, if anyone is interested in tattooing my patent numbers on their bodies, I am willing to sell the rights to the numbers for a small fee…

(oh yeah, none of the pics are my patents…though I wish!)

7 Comments

warren, May 20th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Technology, Thoughts

Confirmed: They are crazy

Yesterday was a good day for Charleston.  You see, the folks from Westboro “baptist” were in town (and will be until Sunday) protesting everything in WV (apparently).  There are Catholic folks and Jewish folks and LGBT folks and Irish folks (and all sorts of other folks) that live here.  That makes WV a target.  Yes, you heard it right…if you are breathing, Westboro “baptist” hates you.  Actually, they hate things that are no longer breathing as well.

By itself, their presence wasn’t great for Charleston or WV, but Charleston’s response showed the greatness of the city and its people.  I suppose 200-300 people came out to tell the haters to go home.  Most folks didn’t hate back, they just asked them to go home.  I think a lot of people in the city sort of bonded together and that is always good for community.

I wonder if they paid the licensing fees to the WVU for using their symbol

I know this is hateful, but it was my favorite sign

I initially participated in a flashmob (that was announced to the media so was less flash-like) to say something like, “you can hate, but we aren’t about that…we’re gonna dance”.  Charleston’s Covenant House, a community action group that helps disadvantaged folks, started the flash mob idea.  At every protest (and there are many) the flashmobbers are going to do the dance (video below).  Some say that we played into their plan of more attention, but I think they are drawing attention to themselves and the media is going to cover that anyhow.  As long as they cover it, these people won’t go away.  So, we decided to try to steal some of their media coverage and we did…and we strengthened community a bit more.

Unbelievable, bringing their kids...

Anyhow, after the flashmob, a ton of people headed to the front side of the capitol and basically tried to surround and hide the Westboro people.  People from here brought signs and posters and flags to hold in front of the hate signs.  People came out in numbers to surround the protesters and their message and, in a non-violent (and mostly non-hateful) way, told them they aren’t wanted here.

Pretty cool video capturing the flashmob as well as the other protesting – some good and a little rougher:

I was proud of Charleston and WV.  While Westboro people spewed hate and exploited their kids, we came together in unity and had a great time showing that diversity is great and fun and to be celebrated!

8 Comments

warren, April 9th 2010 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in Adventure, Awesome, Thoughts, WV

At the Islamic Center

A friend of mine invited me to the Islamic Center in Charleston, WV last weekend.  I had never been to a mosque or been involved with Islamic practices so I was happy to share the time with my friend.  When we arrived, we had a few moments to participate in the evening prayer.  Of course, I did not participate, but I was invited to remove my shoes and sit on the side as the men prayed.  It could have been an uncomfortable thing for a stranger to be in their midst during worship, but the men, once finished praying, almost universally greeted me and shook my hand.  And why not?  In a way, I was surprised at first.  My Muslim friend and I are good pals, but I still had this odd thought in my head that these men would be somehow different than other “regular” men.  I suppose most of that feeling is related to the ongoing battle between our country and extremist terrorists.  These folks at the Islamic Center couldn’t be any more different than the terrorists who claim to be fighting in the name of Islam.  That is an important distinction that I strengthened quite a bit as the evening progressed.

The Imam, Ehteshamul Haque, invited two Muslim speakers, Dr. Jerald Dirks and his wife Debra,  to open a dialog between Christians, Jews and Muslims regarding their shared history.  Dr. Dirks’ talk was entitled “Common Ground Among the Abrahamic Faiths:  The Judeo-Christian and Islamic Traditions”.  There were people of all sorts of religious backgrounds at the meeting including Muslims, Christians, Jews and Ba’hais.

Dr. Dirks described the shared Old Testament history that is common to Jews, Christians and Muslims including Isaac and Ishmael, Abraham and Sarah and many others.  His goal was not to equate the religions or to say they were really all the same, but to educate folks that all three religions, in their true forms, have many similar teachings, morals and goals (such things as do not commit adultery, do not murder, worship one God, build strong families, etc).  Dr Dirks suggested that there are many areas where the three religions agree and, if people chose to, could work together to make better communities.  All three religions, in their pure forms, can agree that strong families and communities are good.  All three can agree that people should treat one another with respect.  All three can agree that extremist violence has no place in the world.

Dr. Dirks suggested that where the three religions see eye to eye, they should work together to reach common goals.  Of course, the three religions do not see eye to eye on many things, and in those areas, adherents of the three religions should agree to respectfully “do their own thing”.  He never suggested that anyone in any religion should be lukewarm or wishy-washy in regard to their beliefs, but just respectful of other folks.

I still do not know a lot about Islam, but I think I learned that there are plenty of good Muslims out there and many of them want to understand other people and live peacefully, just as I do.   It was inspiring and wonderful to sit in one room with my friend, among Christians, Jews and Muslims and to listen to each other.  I think the world could use a lot more of that…

6 Comments

warren, March 19th 2010 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Thoughts

Sleeping is weird

Sleeping is biological and necessary and all that but it sort of cracks me up how weird we are when we sleep…by “we” I really mean my family.  I sleep entirely normally.  Anyhow, last night I went up to check on the kids and noticed Abigail in one of her crazy sleep poses.  She was a terrible sleeper as a kid but she seems to have turned a corner…most nights she sleeps all night.  Now she just seems to go into “bunker” mode at night.  She still talks in her sleep but it’s usually pretty interesting so I see nothing weird there.  Anyhow, in bunker mode, I think she surely must be protecting herself from Madeline.

Madeline, you see, is a needy cat.  She also sleeps weirdly.  When we first got her, she was very young and sucked her tail every night.   We took her to numerous cat psychics and analysts and, after spending our kids’ college funds on it, they concluded that she was taken from her momma at too young an age so was consoling herself with her tail…sort of like a kitty pacifier.  So, imagine your restless cat who sucks her tail at night waking up in a fit and smacking you in your sleeping  face with a tail full of cat slobber…it’s not pleasant.

Now Isaac is consistent in his sleep weirdness…he sleeps on his stomach under double the blankets that the rest of us use.  I am certain that I would suffocate under the enormous weight of the blankets but he seems to thrive.  It must be 110 degrees under there but he sleeps like that year round.  Actually , I figure that the heat from the blankets works like a kid-greenhouse.  The kid grows like mad and I am convinced that it’s blanket related.  He already wears the same size shoes I wear and he hasn’t even hit puberty yet!

I won’t give details on Emily but let me assure you friends, she is a weird sleeper too.  Now, I can almost guarantee that she is going to get on here and leave a comment saying some untruths about me.  Something like that I snore at night.  It’s simply not true .  That’s Mo (the cat) who snores.  I am a perfect sleeper!

5 Comments

warren, March 4th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Fun, Thoughts

Clipping my toenails

I was messing around the other night on facebook (definitely an evil place) and I was pretty bored…so I updated my status to “gonna clip my toenails”.  A friend suggested that I blog about it and it occurred to me that I have strong opinions about toes…and feet…and actually, ankles too.  You see, I really, really hate feet.  Baby feet are ok but once a person starts to support their own weight on their feet, all bets are off.  Feet turn instantly gross and get worse as time goes on.

I know some people have a “thing” for feet but I truly don’t understand.  Most people have funky, crooked, hairy toes with nasty toenails and crusty heels and stuff growing between said toes (well, maybe most people don’t have all of those, but any one of them disqualifies feet for me).  I did a (very) little bit of looking for pictures of feet that I could use as examples but could not continue.  Please, I beg you, do not search google images for “feet” or “toes”…honestly, it isn’t really safe to search google images for much of anything, but what I found was particularly disturbing.

Anyhow, since I have to clip my own toenails regularly, I have grown accustomed to my own feet and can go on with my day after a trim (and after a good hand washing).  The kids and wife are on their own though.  I can handle belly button lint and ear wax and those little white crunchy things you sometimes cough up from the back of your throat…but toe jam?  The horror!  No chance!  I figure that there must be some traumatic event in my history that made me like this because my brother shares a similar aversion…

Ok, that’s probably a whole lotta too much information, but in the interest of transparency, I thought you should know.

Anybody else share my madness?

12 Comments

warren, February 26th 2010 | Tags:
Posted in Thoughts
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