When I was in my 20s, I used to love a good house project. Erin and I have tackled some big ones over our 11 years as home owners, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t enjoy them anymore. Today, I spent 5 1/2 hours putting a new cedar roof on the shed. The only redeeming factor was the realization that it would have cost me so much more $$$$ to hire someone else to do it.

Sure, I still enjoy the feeling of accomplishment and the taste of a cold beer after working outside in 90 degree heat, but I’d much rather be doing anything but hammering nails into cedar planks on top of a black roof on the hottest day of the year. Serves me right for putting it off I guess

Sorry for my slackness (is that a word?) but it has been a busy week. Nathan is now officially a 1st grader! He finished Kindergarten on Friday.

Work has been busy and I’m now officially in the dog house because I’ve been neglecting some of the house projects that I’ve been promising to do for months now. So the weekend has started off and I had to go in to the office for a few hours and then work on the sandbox (finishing the retractable roof) and then I picked up the rest of the supplies needed for the shed roof; that’s on tap for tomorrow….

Don’t you wish you were me?

Hope all of you dads out there enjoyed your day as much as I did. Erin and the boys made me an amazing breakfast of eggs and asparagus over portobello mushroom and sausage on the side. In addition to coffe, they whipped up a fruit drink that had white wine in it, so the day was off to a great start
Later in the afternoon we visited Beaver Lake Park and as usual, I brought along the camera and snapped off some shots for you to enjoy. Tonight we’re going to be enjoying prime rib, mixed veggie, potatoes and wine. That’s all for now. Enjoy what’s left of your weekends and I’ll be back on the blog soon.

For the technology challenged (Kate), you can click on the above picture to see the slideshow

I was purusing engadget this morning and found this post, about a kid that modifies his Robosapien. This time around he added a flame thrower feature Here’s a link to the preview video.

Nathan seems to be getting bored of his Robosapien and father’s day is this Sunday. What better way to bond with the kids than to work together turning the Robosapien into a firethrowing ‘bad guy’ as Cole would say?
Believe me?

I decided it was time to put together a quick montage of the boys (mostly because I need a new wallpaper for my monitor). I captured all three of these images this evening while we were attending Ian’s preschool carnival.

This is going to be a short post because it is late, I’m tired, and quite frankly I can’t think of a thing to say. Yeah, I know, imposter on Streams’ blog. Tonight I’ll let the picture talk for me. Hope you like it

I have been procrastinating on selling my Harley for over a year now. When the weather is great in the NW, there is nothing like taking a cruise on a Harley in the foothills of the Cascade mountains.

Then I read this article about Ben Roethlisberger’s motorcycle accident this morning. Presuming he wasn’t driving erratically, it sent me a wake up call and suggests how vulnerable we are when we jump on a bike. It’s not necessarily about how good of a driver you are. Rather, it’s about the other people on the road and how poor they are at driving or their willingness to pay attention to the road.

Anyway, as hard as it is going to be to sell my bike, I’m now sure that it is the right thing to do. It kind of takes some of the joy of riding away when there is that pang of guilt in the back of my mind and I think of my wife and three kids.

Situation: Nathan is invited to a girls birthday party.

Erin is pleased to find out that the little girl loves Barbie and all things pink and frilly. So naturally Erin gets excited thinking (falsely) that she will get to indulge even briefly in shopping for girl things with Nathan.

So they get to the store and Erin talks Nathan into picking out a Barbie doll. She shows him all of the different kinds of Barbie’s. There was Cali Barbie and Mermaid Barbie, Birthday Barbie and probably a million others as well, but which did Nathan choose? Shrek Barbie of course! She even has little ogre horns coming out of her head. Erin pushed hard to get him to change his mind and maybe go with Mermain Barbie, but he stuck to his guns. Good to see my boys being boys.

Sorry Erin. There’s always the chance that one of the boys will give you a grand daughter some day

I thought I’d take advantage of the fact that we have a built in baby sitter for a little while longer, so last night Erin and I jumped on the Harley for an evening cruise. It was a perfect evening for a ride; temps in the 70s and partly sunny.

Half way into the ride, we were out in Carnation Washington. As we rounded a corner we found ourselved on the crest of a hill overlooking a large valley with Carnation Dairy farm (owned by Nestle) framed by the mountains. Overhead there were dark gray clouds with a big hole probably 10 miles wide that let in filtered light from the sunset where all of the rays separated, looking like something out of a movie. It was one of those rare sights where you instinctively grab for your camera, except I didn’t have it along And now re-reading what I wrote, I realize that I can’t do it justice.

Bummer. It was one of those sights that I just want to be able to share and then rub in

Did you see this article about the guy who’s hard drive crashed? He took his PC back to Best Buy and they told him he needed to replace his hard drive which they did for free. He asked for the old one back (lots of personal info on the drive) and they said no because that is against their warranty policy.

The poor guy just got a call from a guy in Chicago who bought his old hard drive (which Best Buy assured him would be destroyed) at a flea market and it still contained his personal data.

Now I remember why I always build and maintain my own PCs. Unbelievable!

Nathan found a butterfly in the back yard yesterday evening, so I grabbed the camera and my macro lens and tried to snap a few shots. Click on the picture to see five shots that I thought were good enough to post.

Hope you are all enjoying what’s left of your weekend.