Suitable Parent

I've finally become a suitable parent and bought the kids a swing set. Unfortunately, two pieces (the tarp and the rock wall) are on back order, but swings, slide and monkey bars are ready to be abused!

Meanwhile In My Backyard

Deep in the depths of the woods, down the treacherous cliff and across the piles of rocks appears a new kind of creature.... Flat Boy! A 2 dimensional copy of my son found here with the real 3-D version in my son's "thinking spot."











My son's kindergarten class is doing a project which involves a "flat" version of each student having adventures with friends and family members and documenting them with photos and a journal.

April Showers Bring May...... Bears?

An interesting guest appeared in the north woods today.... my father took these pictures from his deck (no, not using a zoom lens). The routine is:

1) Bear comes looking for food.

2) Dad goes out on the deck and yells at the bear.

3a) Bear runs away.
OR
3b) Bear attempts to climb on the deck to yell back.

Actually, the muddy paw prints and claw marks on the deck supports are a little creepy....

What Strange Creatures We Are...

My apologies for the long delay since my last post. While I have several inspirational and engaging topics to write about, I simply haven't had the time to put them on paper (or, on the screen, in this case). Writing is not something I can "multitask" with as I can with other activities such as playing Sudoku. Yes, I can play Sudoku and watch a movie, have a conversation, or do anything else that doesn't require my hands. Strange, isn't it? I can't express myself without total concentration, but I can solve basic logic and pattern puzzles without much effort at all. Speaking of Sudoku, note the new record.... (yes, of course, the "evil" level does take longer).

In a strange twist of events, I dug out a Rubik's cube I received as a promotional item from Microsoft. Talk about frustration, I used to be able to solve a cube in a few minutes while holding a conversation. Not anymore (hence the atrophied mind reference above). To make matters worse, this isn't just a six sided cube with solid colors. They went and put logos on each side (MSN, X-Box, Windows, etc.) so now in addition to getting all same colored pieces on one side, you have to have them aligned in such a way to make the correct logo. Intuitively, this doesn't sound difficult because they would have to line up to make the adjacent logos correct... or so I thought. No, after a couple hours I am left with a cube that would be solved if each side was a solid color but instead I have 4 correct logos and two logos in which the center piece is rotated 90 degrees. If there are any cubers reading this with a suggested algorithm to rotate the center piece only on two adjacent sides (one clockwise, one counterclockwise), leave me a comment!