Watched 3 big ships come through Duluth last weekend.

I looked out my bedroom window today and saw that we have 4 new robins in our tree.

Life’s simple pleasures.

I really want to plug a WII into that left field screen!!

Sunday

I spend Sunday nights hanging out with our Youth Group.

Notice how attentive we all are as Dennis, the Youth Pastor speaks.

Monday

Monday nights, I get together with some friends. We usually hit up Champps, but this week we chose another establishment for wings.

Not a bad setting, but the wings were pretty lousy.

You can see, by the picture, that we spend quality time together by… um… texting our wives.

Some of the cutest pictures to show up on my camera show up when the girls “borrow” my camera. Our 5 year old snapped this one.

Our church made it’s way down 15th St. We were at the end of the parade, by design. Our big crew follows the parade and picks up trash. I got a kickout of the “Parade Goers” mentality to that act.

Most people would thank us, pick up their trash and throw it in our bags. It was great!

But I had a number of families who had piled up all their trash on the curb. I would go over to pick it up for them, and they would just sit and watch with their arms crossed. It was almost as though I was as much a part of the entertainment as the clowns in the buggies.

Maybe it was an entitlement attitude, maybe they weren’t really paying attention, maybe it wasn’t their trash. I wasn’t really expecting them to help. It just struck me.
I guess I have a hard time relating to that. I have a tough time with people serving me, I have an even harder time being served while I am watching and doing nothing.

The float, however, looked great. We spend the better part (better being “all”) of the afternoon putting it together. Here is today’s POD of Thing 1, Thing 2 and Thing 3 testing the stage.

The camera was a bit “fritzy” when it first came out of the pool, but I quickly removed the battery and let it sit a few days. Yesterday it seemed to be OK, except for a big drop of water in the lens.

All was well, except that all of my shots had that fuzzy glamor shots look.

After another 24 hours, that seemed to go away, and it appears I don’t need to shell out cash before thing 3 turns 2 on Sunday.

I got it working late tonight, so there isn’t really a shot with which to start this 30 day thing again… so I thought I would put up the shot I took that helped me determine that the camera was OK.

I call it “Study in TV Tray”

Send me $600 in cash and I will send you an 8 1/2 x 11 print (signed and numbered)

Fruit Punch and a white throw rug are not a good mix.

I pulled out the “Great Value” carpet stain lifter, which did a great job of spreading the red into a larger pink blob.

I went to the basement and grabbed the small carpet cleaner.

That really did the trick.

The only problem is that we now have one very clean spot on an somewhat dingy throw rug. So NOW, I have to spend next weekend shampooing the entire rug.

We now have at least on square foot of REALLY clean house!

This morning was my last Sunday School class with my 3rd-6th Graders. Krispy Kremes and Fruit Punch were abundant.

We played a game of “HangMan” with words from our last 6 months of lessons.

In the afternoon, I went downtown with our Youth Pastor and 7 of the greatest teenagers in the world. We made a spaghetti dinner at a family assistance center.

I was finding some good pleasure making dinner in the kitchen, but something smelled a bit odd.

I figured something was left on the burner.

When the time came to dump the noodles into the strainer, we found the source of the odd odor. A good chunk of my noodles we well burnt to the bottom of the pots.

We were able to salvage them well enough to serve. They were actually pretty good.