Orienteering

CP learned how to read a compass today. We went to Pioneers Park for the scout orienteering and treasure hunt outing. Sighting the bearing from point to point was no issue for this scout, but counting out the paces for the 1000 feet between waypoints was a challenge. Pioneers Park would be the unltimate place for a real orienteering park like Phoenix has in their Papago Park. Maybe we'll have to look into making our own...

Fly Vise

A couple weeks ago we went to Omaha to visit JP's favorite place - Pottery Barn. We got a new set of dishes. Our old set didn't bother me, but they were driving JP crazy. Something about being old, tired, and childish looking. I don't know if she was talking about me or her old dishes. Once we got the new ones, I then realized that as usual, she was right. We now have grown-up dishes. I miss my old plate with the compartments that keep my food from getting mixed together. I know - it all gets mixed together in your belly after you eat it, but who wants corn in their mashed potatoes?

We stopped at the Omaha Scheel's on the way out of town. It's a lot bigger than the Lincoln store. JP had taken GP there once before, but I had never been. Inside they have a 1945 ferris wheel that we rode. I sat with CP - he was a bit nervous as we left the ground, but by the end of the ride, he was the world's bravest kid.

I bought a fly-tying vise and some materials to make flies: antelope hair, chartruese fuzz, and some thread. I have been wanting to learn how to tie flies for a while and I couldn't pass up a nice vise w/tools for $35. The picture above is my first attempt. I hope it's more impressive to a bluegill than it is to me. I really respect the little chinese women that tie the store-bought flies and I realize that $1.50 per fly is a bargain.

It only hit me the day after that I had been duped by JP: her reason for going to Scheel's was not to ride the ferris wheel, nor buy a fly-vise. Her sole reason was to see if the snow boots she had been watching all season were on clearance. They were and now she has the stylish euro-dream boots she talked about all winter. We may get some snow tonight, so hopefully she will be fired up to shovel the driveway one last time.

Platte River

Last Sunday I took a drive over to the Platte River State Park near Louisville (lew-us-vil) about 50 miles from home. It's a pretty place that reminds me a little of the Palisades in Illinois, but without the cliffs. The Platte filled its channel due to the snowmelt. Usually it's full of sandbars with only one or two small channels. This is probably the narrowest stretch in its wandering through the state. I would love to see what it used to look like before dams & irrigation.

On the way home I passed through the town of Weeping Water. The map showed that it has an historic district as well as some quarries. Quaint little towns always interest me (antique shops), but in this case I was more interested in the Quarries. This part of Nebraska is covered by tens of feet of either mud (glacial till from the Kansan glaciers) or loess, which is basically dust that settled out of the air during the last ice age. There aren't a lot of rocks to look at, so quarries are pretty exciting for me to look at.

The town of Weeping Water is 2 miles from the main highway. The 2 mile stretch is one continuous limestone quarry. Everything in sight is covered with grey limestone mud and dust. The town itself is cute - it's nestled in the steep hills of a little canyon. Some of the old buildings in town were built with the local limestone. This church is a good example. The rust stains are from chunks of iron pyrite in the stone. I never realised it, but the pyrite (iron sulfide) is the result of the stinky hydrogen sulfide put in place by bacteria - the same bacteria that give Florida its yummy well water. I really miss that water.

Spring Rockets

The sun was out and the snow was mostly gone last weekend and the boys were chomping at the bit to do something fun. We still have a bunch of rocket motors sitting around, so we went to the new subdivision that's going in south of us (Wilderness Hills) and shot rockets into the wind. I used to only shoot rockets on calm days, but waiting for a calm day here would be like waiting for ....
Our first launch of CP's Patriot missle on a B6-4 failed to completely deploy the chute and landed hard (but relatively undamaged) less than 10' from the launch facility.

GP gets ready to mash the launch button and send his Mongoose 1000' into the wind. Even with a streamer recovery, it drifted a 10 minute walk into the mud, burrs, and weeds.

Have I ever mentioned that there's an overabundance of mud here? It's pretty much like the red clay in Georgia, but it's brown and fortunately doesn't stain like the red stuff.

My new Nikon is awsome to shoot. I only have a normal lens on it (18-70), but it is sharp enough that I can enlarge little patches for decent looking pictures. There's a bit of grain, but none of the chromatic aberation that my last camera suffered from. In this shot, it was able to lock onto the rocket before the chute fully deployed way up in the sky.

Snow Geese

Everyone knows about the sandhill cranes that pass through Nebraska, but I had never heard of the snow goose migration. They pass by on their way from Texas to the Canadian tundra. I saw a flock passing over that went from horizon to horizon. They were so high I could barely make out the individual geese directly above me. The formation was made up of hundreds of V's that all blended together into a continuous stream that must have been over a hundred miles long.

We have several small lakes around Lincoln that the Geese use as pit stops. When they come in to land, they form a giant corkscrew that begins at cruising altitude and spirals all the way down to the lake. It's difficult to see in this photo - I think you may be able to click on it for a full-size version.

The boys enjoyed the lake. We had a bunch of snow melt, so the water was up and flowing over the siltation dam. There's nothing like splashing in the water. I think we will keep their snow boots out all year for such activities. We hit 80 last week - the ice should be off the lakes soon; I'm ready to go fishing.

Snow Day!

Thursday was my first snow day ever at work. When I got up, I knew it was snowing because of the bright pink streetlight glow outside. I looked out the bedroom window and could see nothing. I looked out the front window and saw the same thing. Hmmm, the windows are frosted over, I thought. I opened the front door and still saw nothing but pink haze - the storm door must also be frosted over. When I opened the storm door I still saw the pink haze, but this time it was flying by at 30 mph. I could barely make out the neighbor's house across the street. Cool! SNOW DAY!!!

I checked the TV and saw that every school in eastern Nebraska was closed. I tried shovelling the driveway, but quit after a while and decided to wait for daylight. I jumped in the car and drove around for a few miles. In town with streetlights I could make out where the road should be, but as soon as the stretlights ended the road disappeared entirely. In places with no trees, it was an even sea of snow with no signs of where the road was hiding. It was like following a 4x4 trail onto slickrock - one minute it's there and the next you're out in the middle of nowhere without a clue about which way to go.

The boys were excited about not having to go to school. After breakfast we braved the wind and went out to play in the snow. Our little snowblower was at its limit. We had 8-10" of heavy wet snow in the driveway. The snowblower couldn't quite throw more than 1/2 the width of the driveway, so I had to clear a small patch and then blow onto that patch and then into the yard. It took over an hour to do the driveway.

We had a great suprise day off together. The boys played in the snow, played legos, played video games, played dinosaurs, etc. JP kept me busy with the new kitchen table light. I took advantage of the free time and organized my music library.

I called into work - I was the only one in the lab that didn't make it in. About 1/2 of engineering did not make it either. My boss made it in and declared that we did not recognize acts of God days - only vacation days. I changed my voice mail and took a much needed vacation day.

Today I went in and found that Beatrice had only received maybe 2" and most of it had melted. When I came home this evening, however, things had changed. The wind was blowing a steady 35 mph out of the northwest and it had started snowing. The road northbound was not too bad until I got close to Lincoln. The poor fools going south had the misfortune of catching all the snow as it blew in from Wyoming. Their lanes were snow & ice covered and were starting to back up towards Lincoln as more and more people tried to go four-wheeling in the median or ditch with their sedans. I hit an icy patch and started to do a slow rotation as I fumbled with my camera trying to take a picture of a semi that hit the same icy patch a few minutes earlier. I dropped the camera and slammed the 4x4 lever and was able to point my truck the same direction that it was moving. Now I'm enjoying my nice warm slippers and catching up on this blog thing. I'm glad tomorrow is Saturday - it's a total blizzard outside again.

Next Blog: Nebraska, Snow, & Roads

Cabin Fever means Home Fixup

We have the bug for fixing up the house and cannot wait for the ground to thaw, so we figured we'd work on the inside. JP hates the nice oak frames we have around all the bathroom mirrors. We tore out the one in the master bath a few months ago and now we have painted the downstairs frame to look like cheap oak should: white. JP also hated the kitchen table light with a passion and finally broke down and bought a new one. I stayed home Thursday due to not being able to see the house across the street so I put up the new light.

UNL Girls Basketball

Tuesday night we went to see the Big Red girls basketball team squash the Colorado Buffaloes. JP got a set of tickets from the old guy @ Hy-Vee that bags the groceries. He always has a sucker (or two) for GP when they go. We had a good time at the game. GP was really into it, but CP was focused on the other kids running around the top of the arena bleachers. I told him that they were the Husker orphans - kids that were left to live in the arena because their parents were tired of them not paying attention. They lived off of leftover popcorn and drinks after each basketball game. This deterred him for about half a second.

Dinos & Disasters

Last weekend (and also the one before that) we went to Morrill Hall for their annual Dinos & Disasters weekend. They had 25+ exhibits discussing dinosaurs and natural disasters. The boys spent a few hours touching and doing hands-on things. In the photo, CP is standing in the middle of a masking tape mososaur. A couple geologists were scraping the actual vertebrae out of a chunk of rock at the end of the hallway. I'm ready to get out and go fossil hunting!! All we need is for a global catastrophe to break us out of the ice age we are in now. I am ready for spring, warm breezes, and fishing.

The weekend before Dinos & Disasters we explored the museum and watched the planetarium show (a full hour discussing Pluto's planetary status). I used to love planetarium shows when I was a kid, but I must have grown out of it. The boys really enjoy them, but I have a hard time with the shoestring budget productions. I guess I got spoiled by going to too many laser shows at Bishop Planetarium in high school.

First Tooth

GP Lost his first tooth the other day. He was very excited. Of course, the tooth fairy paid him a visit and exchanged his tooth for cold hard cash.

Legos aren't just for kids

I bought the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit for teaching the guys @ work some programming concepts. For $250 it's a cheap corporate training aid. It's also way cool. I brought it home last weekend to see what it could do. It has three servo motors with position feedback encoders, a touch sensor, sound level sensor, ultrasonic rangefinder, and a light/color meter. After building the demo robot, I turned my attention to building something really useful... A CD labeler! Servo #1 rotates the CD (clamped in place by the tire), servo #2 moves the pen in and out, and servo #3 picks up the pen so you don't have to write in cursive. The controller is programmed in a kiddie version of LabView - the same software we use @ work to program our test rigs. It's scarry to imagine what tomorrow's engineers will be able to do after growing up with stuff like this.