That’s My Boy!

Actually, that’s not my boy. He’s Inkswamp‘s. But my youngest son, John (pictured below) did something this week that made me look for a photo in Flickr representing a boy looking up to and emulating his dad.

My Little Blogger
My Little Blogger

John Aase, as long-time SMUG students know, has a blog. He’s 9. On Monday, he told me, “Daddy, I’m going to write a page on my blog.” “A page?” I asked him. “Don’t you mean a post?” “No Daddy, I’m going to write a page.”

John had previously written this page about the bird’s nest on our porch. His posts and pages tend to be much more concise than mine.

I have to say his latest page just completely melts my heart. Not the subject matter, but the thought that he wants to follow in Dad’s didactic footsteps.

I know most SMUGgles won’t be familiar with Pokemon, but John is quite an expert. So if you wouldn’t mind going to his P.G.A. page and leaving a question to prime his pump, you would be providing great encouragement to a blogger who’s just getting started.

Maybe some of the younger SMUGgles who have gone through a childhood Pokemon stage would know better questions to ask. For others, you could ask simple questions like:

  • How many different kinds of Pokemon are there?
  • Which ones are the most powerful?
  • What’s your favorite one?
  • How do you play Pokemon?

You get the picture.

Beside setting John off on a writing spree, which would be good for his learning about computers and blogging, he would really get a kick out of seeing his daily page views spike.

So if you wouldn’t mind taking a minute to encourage John, I would greatly appreciate it.

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Trouble Outside of Paradise, and the Power of Duct Tape

My son-in-law’s brother is getting married today in Lafayette, Indiana, and I’m producing a wedding video as our gift to the couple, so we turned it into a five-day partial family getaway.

It seems my youngest daughter, Ruth, is “in a relationship” (to use the Facebook lingo), with a young man from Louisville, Kentucky whom she has known through her Bible Bowl competitions. The Kelley family lives 676 miles from Old Main, as we learned on our long but uneventful Thursday drive. And they’re “only” 180 miles from Lafayette, so we left our three youngest children with the Kelleys while we drove up for the rehearsal and Groom’s Dinner yesterday and wedding today. We’ll head back to Louisville early tomorrow morning for church and to spend the day, before returning to Minnesota on Monday.

Note to potential Old Main burglars: Even through we’re away from Austin, you should be aware that our next-door neighbor, Mark May, is a deputy sheriff. He has a gun, and he knows how to use it.

Rick Kelley took Friday morning off so he and April could take Lisa and me out for brunch at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe, a well-known Louisville hangout. We saw a picture of Hillary Clinton inside as one of the high-profile visitors, and there’s a huge wall map near the restrooms on which patrons can place a sticky dot representing their hometown. The whole U.S. is pretty well plastered with dots.

We had a wonderful time with Rick and April, but as we came out to our cars afterward, we saw the damage from a hit-and-run driver:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3Ppz6eOugI]

Apparently someone had pulled out of the alley you see behind that nice police officer, clipped our rear bumper and shoved our Grand Caravan into the Kelleys’ Camry. Thankfully their car wasn’t damaged.

And thanks also to the power of duct tape from a nearby Home Depot,  we were able to get back on the road with at least a temporary fix.

Behold, The Power of Duct Tape
Behold, The Power of Duct Tape

First-Class NWA Experience

I had an interesting experience in my 6:15 a.m. flight on Northwest Airlines (NWA) from Pittsburgh to MSP today. When I had awakened at 6:20 yesterday (without the alarm) after having arrived in Pittsburgh just before midnight (and not getting to sleep until 2:30 because of some remaining work to do, such as this blog post), I hurriedly logged on and checked in for my flight because it was within the 24-hour window, and I knew that frequent-flyer upgrades on NWA are offered in part on a first-come, first-served basis within a given Elite (Platinum, Gold, Silver) category. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?)

It seems I wouldn’t have had to do that, as you’ll see in the video below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI6vsfTuWN0]

Note to self: Fly at ridiculously early times on Saturdays (at least if you’re not starting at a hub city), and you have a lot better chance of getting a First Class upgrade on Northwest Airlines. Even if you’re only Silver Elite.

Bible Bowl 2008

My daughter Ruthie experienced emotions at Bible Bowl 2008 that ranged from despondency to delight, and we who joined her (with her brother and teammate, Joe) for the five days of competition all got to experience those same highs and lows with her. It was quite a dramatic week that started with great difficulty.

I’ll get to the story in a bit, but first here’s a little background. Bible Bowl is a competition similar to the now-defunct College Bowl or Quiz Bowl, but with subject matter taken from selected books of the Bible. This year the text was the Gospel of John as well as his epistles (1 John, 2 John, 3 John) and 1 Peter and 2 Peter. The strongest players have memorized and can recite the entire text (1,178 verses). More demonstration of that in a bit.

Continue reading “Bible Bowl 2008”

Georgia Aquarium

On Monday, before the Bible Bowl competition really started, I got to take my youngest son, John, to the Georgia Aquarium. It’s billed as the largest aquarium in the world.

Here’s some video from that afternoon, in which John (in red and white) got to touch some rays and a hammer head shark:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHhb2kmdaWw]

John is a pretty sentimental little guy; as we walked back to our hotel he got a little bit quiet and thoughtful and when I asked him why he said, “We probably won’t ever see any of those animals again.” When I said we might go to aquariums in some other cities (as we did in Baltimore a few years ago) he replied, “But we won’t see any of those animals that we saw today.”

I guess the bonding from touching these aquatic creatures with two fingers went a little deeper than I thought.

It was a precious afternoon.