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The Monday Morning Epistle |
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8 Oct 2007 |
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When I was 12, I would stop at the model railway shop and agonize over how to spend the $2 of pocket money I had saved. At 45, I drove for an hour to visit the largest model railroading store in the U.S.—which conveniently happens to be in Denver—then agonized over how to spend several hundred dollars of wifely-approved discretionary budget. Ironically, while I certainly arrived home with more stuff this time, the levels of agony were about the same! My boss/friend/fellow train nut JR joined me for the all-day ‘guys only’ trip, and after spending the entire morning at Caboose Hobbies, we continued on to the Colorado Railroad Museum in nearby Golden. Since it was the first Friday of the month, the museum staff were busily firing up steam locomotives and moving freight cars around with a small diesel switcher, so we spent all afternoon happily playing with “1:1 scale” trains. Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to round two of the ‘Grand Bedroom Swap’, as we assembled Garion's new bed and moved all of his stuff into what used to be Jacob's room. We also primed and painted Jacob's new bedroom in the color of his choice; Home Depot calls the color “Lion's Mane”, but is could also be described as either ‘butterscotch’ or ‘baby poop brown’, depending on the audience. Once the second coat was dry, we helped Jacob arrange his new full-size bed and furniture to suit his taste. Alex also contributed to the effort by reluctantly agreeing to purge his room of unwanted stuff…which promptly ended up stacked in untidy piles outside his bedroom door. The only thing left now—other than have Alex do something with the piles of crap in the hallway—is for me to install a wireless network connection so that both kid computers can be moved up into their bedrooms. Both boys were thrilled at the decision, right up until I mentioned that the Internet connection would also automatically shut off between 10 pm and 6 am. (One of the many joys of a dedicated Linux firewall…) Mary got stuck with the painting Sunday morning, as I was outside a Wal-Mart all morning, handing out Tootsie Rolls on behalf of the Knights of Columbus, but everyone hustled to finish our chores by midday. Immediately after lunch, we dropped Monkey-Boy at a friend's house and hurried downtown to the Pikes Peak Center to see Bill Cosby live on stage. “Dr. Cosby” may have just turned 70, but he is still one of the legends of stand-up comedy, and we spent two hours laughing uproariously at his anecdotes and rubber-faced expressions. While the first 90 minutes were new material—laugh out loud observations about contemporary news items and social issues—Cosby finished with his classic spiel about visiting the dentist. Within seconds, our whole family was silently lip-synching parts of the dialogue right along with him…as was the gentleman sitting to my right! KidBit: While at dinner, we were talking about Jason Lewis, the Brit who just completed a 13-year trip around the world using only human-powered methods of transportation. When I mentioned that he was arrested in Tibet for not having a visa, Jacob interjected with surprise “They put him in jail for not having a credit card?” 
PotW: Jacob needed pictures of his relatives for a school project, so we took digital photos of pictures hanging on our wall. This portrait of my mother in her wedding gown turned out much better than I expected.
2007.10.18-09:20 |