Letting the Kids Decide

For years, we haven't done much painting our of white walls because of one or both of the following reasons:

• They're already white, so there is no need to paint them white.
  
• If we picked out a colour, it would probably be boring or ugly.

This isn't exactly true, since we have done a bit of painting, like the sponge job of the downstairs restroom in Pepto-Bismol pink. But we've still had two of the kids' bedrooms that we hadn't touched with a paintbrush. This changed a few months ago, when we painted the girls' room in a nice purple and pink, with a nice border. I don't know interior decorating, but it looked OK to me.

Since they picked the colours, my son got to select the colours for his room. Not long ago, my wife and son went paint shopping, and came back with a medium green paint, with a blue for trim. The plan is to stencil some planets and stars on the walls in blue after painting the walls green.

Here's an in-progress photo. (No glass of wine is visible.)

Well, it certainly is bold-looking compared to the plain white, or even compared to the purple and pink room. I'll have to post a photo of the completed project.

I've heard it said, probably more than once, "Whenever you paint a room green, you'll be unhappy with the results." Am I unhappy? Well, I'm not painting. (I'd better go help!)

Video Curling Highlights at cbc.ca

At least as I type this, there are video curling highlights at cbc.ca. Check it out, especially if you're not that familiar with curling.

(We're not that good.)

(Temporary) Promotion to Vice

Warning: This post may contain lots of curling-specific words and phrases.

"But first I decided to buy some doughnuts." First, an update on the doughnut situation. For the last two weeks, I stopped by the same place that gave me the free doughnuts. Both times, there was a different cashier, and he charged me 65c for a doughnut, rather than letting me have it for free and telling me to take more. I'm not sure what it is about free food. I'm fortunate to be in a financial situation were I can afford a few dollars for a half dozen doughnuts once a week and not miss the money. But, I'm still hoping for to get some for free. I guess the sociologists or psychologists out there can probably give me an explanation.

At curling tonight (not that I'm bragging) we won 13-3 against the team that we all assume has the best skip on the ice. We got lucky and I'll assume he had an off night. My skip mentioned that our vice skip is going to miss a few of the upcoming games, so he's promoting me to vice for this duration. (Or maybe until I mess up!) He also gave me a bit of advice that seem to help with my delivery. I'm paraphrasing, but it might have went something like this, "Aim for the broom, you idiot!" Whatever it was, that advice helped in the short term.

I had been curling lead or #2, and starting to decide that I like lead better. So, being vice will but the pressure on me to not mess up with a crowded house. I'll also have my opportunities to sweep reduced by a third. Since sweeping is the best workout of curling, and since the doughnuts aren't free anyway, I'll have to take it easy on the doughnuts.

Finally, when it comes to curling, I've been told more than once that I have good form. This, more than anything, surprises me. Those that know me know that I'm not afraid to try new activities. But, I don't tend to have good form or grace or style at anything I do. For example, while I don't golf much (I do make it a point to golf once or twice per decade) my golfing has been compared to someone more than 20 years my senior with a bad back. Those sorts of comparisons are what I'd expect from my particular style in anything. Maybe the people complimenting me are just trying to be nice...

Five Months and One Day

I (L) & C (R)

N-H-Who? We have Arenaball!

Commenting on the cancelled season of the National Hockey League, it's worth mentioning that I went to the local Arenaball game with my 7-year old son tonight. Between the loud rock music and the high-scoring football action, HE UTTERLY LOVED IT.

What does this have to do with the NHL? Absolutely nothing, of course. (That's the point.) My son has never been to an NHL game. Had there been an NHL season, maybe last week we would have went to an NHL game and UTTERLY LOVED that. Maybe he would have become a hockey fan for life. Instead, he had a blast at the football game, and might never care about ice hockey.

Whither Quaker Canyon Camp?

For each of several summers in the mid to late 1970's, I spent a week at Quaker Canyon Camp. QCC was a Christian-based summer camp, and offered such summer camp activities as archery, horseback riding (the memory of which is still painful), and lots of learning about Jesus. Recently, I've been wondering whatever happened to Quaker Canyon Camp, so I googled for the term. It (or its memory) certainly doesn't have much of a web presence. At the time of this writing, only two hits were returned:

1. A Religious Studies professor who mentions he spoke to campers there after he graduated from high school.
2. Someone else asking whatever happened to Quaker Canyon Camp.

(So this page will likely be the third.)

If you have any information regarding the fate or status of Quaker Canyon Camp, please let me know (by leaving a comment). Is it still going? Was it shut down and turned into a strip mine? If so, then when? Thanks.

Historic Time Magazine Covers

Check out http://www.time.com/time/coversearch. You can enter (I think) any date since the beginning of Time and see what was on the cover of the magazine. Use it to see what was important news in the US (at least according to Time magazine). Enter your birth date, or any date you choose.

Selling Krispy Kreme

After a thrilling 7-6 loss in overtime (best skip stone with sweeping) at curling tonight, I stopped at the gas station for a fill-up. I'm usually hungry after curling, and I noticed a Krispy Kreme sign, so I went in to pick up a doughnut. I walked to the counter and the guy said, "Is that all you're getting? It's OK; they're free. You can take some more if you'd like."

Bonanza! The only question in my mind was, what is the greatest number of free doughnuts I can grab without the guy saying, "That's too many!"? Seriously, I went with a half-dozen, which also added up to one for me tonight and one for all the doughnut eaters tomorrow morning.

(Actually, part of me was thinking, "If they're free, there must be something wrong with them", but it tasted fine.)

However, this was a disappointment as well. Foolish optimist that I am, I bought some stock in Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. at a price much higher than today's. Ever since then, the stock has dropped, and mostly bad news has come from the company. Today, in the news, I even heard the term "bankruptcy" mentioned as one possible future for the company.

So, it's probably not a good investment at this time, unless you like high-risk turnaround plays. Still, when I invest in a company, I am usually slow to sell it; perhaps too slow at times. However, tonight clinched it. I mean, if gas stations are giving away their doughnuts for free, how can I ever expect them to make money? Krispy Kreme, if you're reading this, you might want to do something about it. It's time to sell the doughnuts' stock. It remains to be seen if stopping in for (hopefully) free doughnuts after curling will become a habit.

Actually, the guy at the gas station likely knows that few doughnuts sell after a certain time, and they'd all get thrown out anyway, and maybe they were expired, and maybe he hates to see them go to waste, and he's a nice guy. But a win for the doughnut eater is not a win for the owner of the company that sells the doughnuts.

Below should be the price chart for KKD shares over the past 12 months. As of this writing, the last trade was at $6.06 per share.

The Ax by Donald E. Westlake

(Amazon.com link)
Yet another book report. Didn't I hate to do them when I was in school? How things change. Anyway, The Ax is a new genre for me, being a selection from one of my book clubs. It's listed under "Mysteries and Thrillers", which is one area that I haven't read much of before.

The book is the story of Burke Devore, a line manager at a paper mill who is laid off when his job is outsourced. He's in his early 50's, and is finding the competition fierce for the dwindling number of available jobs in his area of specialty. So, he concocts a plan to reduce the competition: just kill enough of the job-seekers in his particular area, which will leave him the best (and only) man for any job (that just might happen to become) available.

As the story progresses, it becomes a battle against time. Will Burke be able to kill enough people and land a job before he's caught by the police or before his marriage or family falls apart? There are, of course, social commentaries about justness of a society that can toss people like Devore out of his chosen line of employment. Perhaps this is meant to get the reader to sympathize or identify with the protagonist in the story, but I can't say it was effective on me.

One thing I've noticed about books, but I can't really quantify, is how "easy" they are to read. As a self-styled slow reader, with some books, it can seemingly take "forever" for me to get through ten pages. With others, including this one, I can whip through 30 pages before I know it. I'm sure this is mainly due to the author's choice of words and sentence structure. According to a review on the back of the book by the Detroit News and Free Press, "No one can turn a phrase like Westlake." I'm not exactly sure what that is supposed to mean. This is a "page turner" novel that might be described as a "psychological thriller", not a great work of literature. While the writing style did make Devore seem to be an ordinary guy, I certainly don't recall any phrases that stand out as being noteworthy.

As I said, this is a genre that I haven't read much of in the past, and I'll say that I don't have any plans to read much of it in the future. When giving a rating of a book, I am torn between just saying how much I liked it and saying how "good" of a work it may be. Just because I don't care for something doesn't make it garbage. However, in this case, I'll rate the book by how much I liked it. I have to ask myself some questions. Why did I read this? What did I gain by reading it? I certainly didn't enjoy it. It wasn't "educational" in a meaningful sense. While some might consider it to be something one reads for pleasure, I didn't find much pleasure in going along for a ride with a murderer. So, I'm forcing myself to give this book my lowest rating so far: one star out of five.

NFL Team Shirt Day, 2005 Edition

(I had completely forgotten it was NFL Team Shirt Day. She remembered it herself, so don't blame me!)

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

(Amazon.com Link)

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency tells the story of Mma Precious Ramotswe as she establishes the first (and only) female owned and operated private detective agency in all of Botswana. Mma Ramotswe floats from case to case, finding missing and/or cheating husbands, tracking down stolen property, turning down marriage proposals, and doing all of the things that you'd expect from a Botswanan female private eye.

Judging from its high sales figures, the fact that it is first in a series, and the rave reviews over at Amazon, this is a well-liked book. However, I have (at best) mixed feelings about it. On the plus side, I enjoy books that give a good feel for what it is like to live at a certain time or place. This book does do a good job of that, giving the reader a real feel for the day-to-day life of a small businesswoman in present-day Botswana.

Unfortunately, there is not much plot here. Most of the cases are independent "morality plays" (if that is the correct term). Mma Ramotswe uses her superior understanding of human motives, or her superior intellect, or her superior bulk to solve the case and show that lying, cheating, stealing, or leaving your wife and going off to join a religious sect(!) doesn't pay. There were tantalizing hints that there might be some main story-line coming together, but it never really came to fruition.

This isn't a bad book. If you are looking for something to pick up in an airport to read on a flight or something, you can certainly do worse. Plus, for the non-Botswanan among us, the look at life in a new country is certainly a plus. I feel like I'm being picky, but the lack of a plot is holding back my rating. I'll give it two stars out of five, with the caveat that for a two-star book, it's really quite good.