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Lilo & Stitch, Stripers comeback, virtual post card, Stitch Day, puzzle, taekwondo night, Nate's back from vacation, updates coming soon...

Walk to Mount Rushmore

This is a fun little image I had made.  I've signed up for the next virtual march here, and picked a bit of a patriotic theme.  The image above I had made for my account for this journey because I'm walking the 69 miles to Mount Rushmore.  Here's the racing bib:

I was watching a POV walk around Mount Rushmore, and here we go on another journey!  I've actually been to Mount Rushmore several times.  Famously when I was a kid, I dropped a pair of expensive binoculars immediately after my dad told me not to drop them because they were expensive binoculars.  They still worked, but they just got a little scuffed, and the story lives on.

Tonight Maddie and Mom loaded up the next two chia pets, one of them a Statue of Liberty and the other a hedgehog.  The hedgehog is a new one, a gift for Mom.  She and Maddie covered the areas with seed, and now we wait a few days to see the growth.  The Statue of Liberty will be growing all kinds of greenery just in time for the Semiquincentennial!

And speaking of which, you can see the puzzle that Maddie's been working on today.  She got a lot done on this one.  Like, wow!  This one will be a map of the United States, completely made up from license plates from the various states.  

Here's something else we did that's a little patriotic!  We made some ornaments for the tree using the "I Voted" stickers we recently collected from the last two visits.  We got some wooden disc ornaments that were just the right size, and then Mom got some ribbon for the top.  We have four of these on the tree now, a nice little patriotic decoration to add.  I remember coming out of the library after we voted and talking about how we could make these into ornaments, and here we are!

Maddie's classes upcoming are going to be English, Calculus, Science, and this other intro to Gainesville college class - things are lining up for her and she feels pretty confident about the workload upcoming.  It'll be here before you know it!

Tonight we were watching the Super Mario Galaxy movie, research for work.  It wasn't as good as the first Mario movie, but we still enjoyed it. There might be a message in there - we'll be working on that soon enough.  In the meantime, the other three messages for our "At the Movies" series in July are lined up.  I was working on that today, and a fun semiquincentennial trivia game.  Got a lot done today!

We did our reading tonight, and we're learning more about this mysterious Mr. Nutt.  What kind of creature is he?  And could he be a great football player?  I don't remember what happens next, but it's been fun reading this.  We said our prayers after this, and yes, it was definitely time for bed.

Hydroponic Update

The hydroponics garden is growing well as you can see here.  The lettuce is looking fantastic, getting bigger each day!  All we need to do now is build a boat ride through our house, and it'll be just like The Land pavilion at EPCOT!

Quiet day today.  Maddie went with her friends from high school for a day of fun - they had some coffee at Starbuck's, and they also went over to the Oaks mini-golf and had a great time again.  And yes, that's two trips to the mini-golf for Maddie in the last two weeks.  And once again, Maddie won the game, although this time a little closer with the score.  Speaking of scores...

It's as if the Braves team is completely collapsing, offensively and defensively.  Very difficult to watch, but here we are, the faithful fans watching and wondering what the heck is going on.  We're still in first place, because we had such an astounding start to the season.  But the last few weeks have been really tough.  There are highlights here and there, but we're losing a lot of games and a lot of ground.  Hopefully things can turn around here.

Check out this swag for our upcoming Summer Xtreme!  It's the same logo as 2019, Maddie's last year.  We never finished that video back in 2019, so Josh is working furiously on finishing it up finally - this dormant project with voices recorded seven years ago, animation work done seven years ago... finally released this year.  It'll be great.

Mom got the new dryer today, and we have a windshield getting replaced on the RAV, but if you knock off two big projects, two new bigger projects show up.  In this case, a huge hornet's nest - or something - has developed atop our house, much to our dismay.  We have to do something about that one.  The other issue is the AC in the main floor of the house.  Fortunately, the temperature is not terribly hot at the moment, particularly at night, so we can live with the one thing until we figure out the plan.  As for the hornet's nest, or whatever that monstrosity is up there.

Mom's put out some great decorations for the Semiquincentennial!  Our whole house has hints and flavors of patriotism all about.  It all looks great!

Tonight we read from "Unseen Academicals" and the whole Plush Entourage was there.  It's quite a spectacle gathering them up and herding them back down the hall to Maddie's room.  But after prayers, we did just that and tucked 'em all in, ready for a good night's rest.

Toy Story 5

Summer Xtreme Coffee Meeting!  We were doing a bit of writing this morning at Farmhouse, part of a longstanding tradition of meeting at a coffee shop to get some writing for Summer Xtreme hammered out.

It went well - we've already gotten a lot done previously, but this was all about enhancing it and adding flavor to the existing scripts.  Should be fun in the long run! 

And here's the final picture of Shrek Chia for the 2026 run.  We've done this a few times now, but it has run its course and besides, it's time for some new Chia pets.  We officially have four now, and one of the others is a patriotic one - a Statue of Liberty.  The final one is new, a hedgehog that I got for Mom.  We'll set those up this week.  And speaking of vegetation...

Our hydroponic lettuce is doing really well, growing pretty quickly.  The arugula didn't really work out - those are to the back and right there in those pods.  But the other plants are coming along nicely!  It's exciting to see the progress each day.  

We had work at the office today - after the coffee meeting of course - and that's where we decided some movies for our "At the Movies" series, amongst some other things related to Summer Xtreme.   Oh, and the Forward Conference too.  We just might use this one stinger I made up to play before the "Rock, Paper Scissors" tie breaker.

I was doing some other soundtrack things too, but I'll pick up on that later.  For now, it was time to head off to do some other research and watch the movie we're going to see at Summer Xtreme this year.  That's right, it was time for "Toy Story 5."

I had my Pizza Planet gear on, and we were ready to go!  As shared on this blog so long ago, the first movie Maddie saw in theaters was "Toy Story 3" way back in 2010.  And amazingly, the last time we did the "Summer Xtreme Unleashed" theme was in 2019, and the movie we saw that year was Toy Story 4!

As for "Toy Story 5," the movie was fun, more of a focus on Jessie than others, and that's not such a bad thing.  It's just that the core group has gotten lost in things, and I'm sentimental towards that gang - and I get it that some of those classic voices have passed on.  But there are a lot of new toys gathered up with each release, and it was like an avalanche of toy characters here.  Again, it was a fun movie, and we all agreed it was a step up from "Toy Story 4," certainly.  But nothing may ever top the original three.  For now, it's just great to spend time with these toy friends once more - it was nice.  One final note:  the closing credits song grabs a bit of the melody of Amy Grant's "Father's Eyes."  Those of us that grew up with that song can't unhear it! 

We got home and watched a bit of the Braves game before going to bed.  They lost again, but there's a lot of learning going on, and we're still six games ahead in our division, so there's plenty of time to get things addressed.  I believe a second wind is on the way!

Anyway, we read some tonight about Mr. Nutt and the game "Foot-the-ball" in the Discworld, and afterwards, we said our prayers.  Time to get some sleep!

National Onion Rings Day

Maddie has been accepted to Gainesville University of North Georgia, or GUNG maybe?  One could say she's "GUNG HO," which here in the US means she's enthusiastic, eager or energetic.  In China, where the phrase originated, it means she's simply "industrial cooperative."  Regardless, she's at GUNG, and not DUNG quite yet, which beyond being an acronym for Dahlonega University of North Georgia, has an entirely other meaning.

Anyway, she's excited about that, and today we decided to drop by with a few more questions, specifically some directed at financial aid.

How funny that their entire office was decorated - at one point completely overboard, I might add - for Star Wars.  There were Star Wars items all over the place like Christmas decorations.

We talked for a while and Maddie's got some forms to fill out and so on, but we're moving forward.  I even asked about finishing up a few classes myself, something I'll have to see another advisor about soon enough.  Maybe.  

Anyway, while we were out, we were sure to drop by a few locations - we got lunch at Zaxby's which does not serve onion rings, by the way.  Desperate for onion rings, we went across the street afterwards to Burger King, and yes, there we got ourselves a few orders of onion rings.  And why this obsession with onion rings?  

Today is National Onion Rings Day!  We made sure to stop and celebrate this important, landmark holiday with some proper onion rings.  We were almost as obsessive as the Onion Ringwraiths!  

Tonight Maddie had taekwondo, and the Edges are back from their holiday - no, not National Onion Ring Day.  They're back from vacation, and they're well-rested.  Maddie drove us over there to taekwondo, and while we were there, the rain just suddenly started pounding the area.  It was a super heavy downpour.  And then, just as suddenly, it was gone.  We've been seeing a lot of deer in the area on the way home.  We got back, and I had a walk to finish:

That's right, I finished the Mt. Everest climb today, and I did so while watching another guy ski down Mt. Everest.  This one was more recent that the Japanese team's effort in the 1970's, and I'm not sure how much of the mountain was actually skied down, but the idea was that basically he climbed to the top and went to the bottom entirely on skis.  One may ask the very important question:  why?  I have no idea.  Anyway, it's been great education and a great theme climbing upwards in the Himalayas, learning about the surrounding mountains, the culture the process of climbing up Everest with sherpas and so forth.  I've always been fascinated by this climb, and the idea of the beautiful desolation up in a place where you can be away from everyone else.  The lack of oxygen part is probably one big reason why.  And the cold.  It takes a special type of person to do this sort of climb, that much is certain.  I was just happy to do it all virtually.

Moving on, we read tonight after watching a few Clone Wars episodes.  The Braves game was late, so we didn't catch all of it, but it's okay as they're in this offensive skid lately, not collectively hitting the ball anywhere near as well as they were earlier in the season.  Hopefully they can shake themselves free once more.  They're still in first place by a decent margin, but they're not making it easy on themselves.

We read, and then said our prayers tonight, and after that, it was time for some sleep.

Fathers Day

  

Father's Day!  Maddie and Mom left this nice little surprise for me this morning at the dining room table.  Grogu looks great there with the ball cap on, and that was just a hint of what was to come!

I got some incredible merch!  I got a new Braves shirt and a ball cap, but then on top of that there was a Stripers hat and a Stripers shirt too!  I also got some Stripers baseball cards, which are pretty cool because there's several that have players who have been playing for the Braves a few times.  Pretty neat! 

Maddie was here to take these pictures above, and more of course.  She shared those on the church site.  We had another great service today at KidPak, with great worship and a skit dedicated to the memory verse - the kind of activity where you have these big ol' cards up there to turn around and try and get into the right order.

After church, we went over to spend some time with Ye-Ye, my dad - he and Mom are having a quiet afternoon today, but we dropped by to give a few gifts and spend some time there. 

We watched the Braves today, but they lost another game here.  At least they won the series against the Brewers, but there's something off about the team the last few weeks.  Ebbs and flows - and hopefully some lessons learned along the way.  There's at least always fun in some of these games, even if not on the field.  Today's fun was Rowdy Tellez hitting a home run late. 

Tonight we watched some more Clone Wars and then it was time for some more reading.  Then prayers, then a good night's sleep.

Rally Caps

Mom and I were watching the game this afternoon and it was looking dire so we put on those rally caps!  For those of you not in the know, with baseball there's a tradition that takes place when your team is behind, you put on your baseball cap either inside out or in some odd or unusual position.  So yeah, Mom and I did that because we needed to score two runs in the bottom of the ninth today - and sure enough, it seemed to work!  Matt Olson got a single, and right after that Ozzie Albies got a two-run walk-off home run to win the game.  We saw a lot of rally caps while watching the game, and we joined in with some rally cap power - and sure enough, the Braves won big today, all thanks to us.  Okay, the talent of the actual players probably had something to do with it...

 

Maddie was over at Nate's today, all day - they were hanging out and finishing up that big Star Wars puzzle they started a few days ago.  Nate's going on vacation with his family next week, heading over to Hilton Head, which sounds nice.

Mom and I had a nice breakfast on the back deck this morning, the weather so nice and perfect out there.  She served it all on this skillet for a really, really pleasant meal together.  Coffee, good food, a beautiful wife, and the songs of all those birds in the woods nearby.  We have so many!  We keep the feeder stocked and there have been a lot of visitors, and a lot of fledglings too - baby robins, baby bluebirds, baby titmouse, and a baby mockingbird too.  Lots of birds and songs.

Mom and I cleaned up the front porch today, and had plans on getting it pressure washed a bit.  And here's where I introduce my bone-head moment of the month.  So I saw an ad for a product that was really well-produced, and for some reason I didn't do any research.  I saw a video about a product by a company called Aquoxis. 

Because what you see on videos is all true, right?  Answer:  no.  Of course not.  So we got this "pressure washer" device by a company called Aquoxis.  We hooked it up to the hose, thinking at least we can get a little of the grime and dust off the front porch.  And right about that time I realized I should have instead bought one of these:

This is that Time Machine from Napoleon Dynamite the one that Uncle Rico sends money off to buy.  It's just about as effective as the Aquoxis Pressure Washer, as both have about as much value.  In fact, at this point I wish I got the Time Machine instead.  Yes, Uncle Rico was just throwing away his money.  And that's what we did with this Aquoxis product, because it didn't do anything from the commercial.  It was about as effective as our current garden hose.  So yeah, the bottom line here is:  stop and research. 

Fortunately, we had a real pressure washer at the house, and we used that to clean up the front porch.  I spent a good long time out there getting all the corners and dirty places, all that mold, webs, and piled up dust.  The front porch looks sparkly now.  I even used the pressure washer to make an American flag on the sidewalk!

Okay, don't be too critical.  I was being spontaneous and did my best with a pressure washer.  Not my chosen medium!

Anyway, it was a relaxing day.  Tonight Mom and I watched this old movie "Sneakers," and afterwards, we read a bit more from "Unseen Academicals."  The Plush Entourage made its way like a herd, moving back to Maddie's room to get tucked in for a good night's rest.  We've got KidPak tomorrow morning - time to get some rest!