Honey, Go Fetch Fluffy From the Car, Wouldja?

Man, the Stucky's in South Boston, Virginia sure has some strict (if bizarre) rules... So, after buying a goldfish from the guy at the kiosk out front I went in and used the facilities.

I came out to discover they carried Zotz, a candy I have not seen in a very long time, and I have never seen it sold locally.

I bought them all, and they are as awesome as I remember them being when I was a kid.

Ahh! They're All Just Pins!

Originally, I planned on writing an in-depth article of the construction of a new play table for our son’s room.  As I was sorting out the paragraph layout in my head, though, it occurred to me that fifteen hundred words on how to slap together nine pieces of lumber is probably not the best use of anyone’s time. 

The next time I am commissioned to build a table, I will take step-by step pics and throw them on Snapguide or similar.  BTW, if you have never checked out Snapguide, do check it out.  They have some pretty cool stuff there.  I especially like the "how-to" on making a silver ring out of a quarter...

Anyway, instead of a wall of text, here are the bullets followed by some pics.  Ahh!  It’s just a table!  

• The wood is aspen.  It is light, soft, and tough to uniformly stain.  I will use a gel stain or simply it paint next time.
• I won’t use varnish anymore. It dries quickly but takes about a million years to outgas completely.
• The cost of the wood was $40 and the table took a little less than two person-hours to create.  It would have been closer to one hour but I had to double-up the thickness of the legs to ensure they would be strong enough for the task.

That’s about it.  The final product is square and sturdy and currently holds a Lego Death Star and a jigsaw puzzle in the boy’s room.

Things to Remember

The model of a dugout canoe, the doorbell, and the homemade kite.

A small rubber turtle.

Learning to add.

Learning that “left” and “right” stay “left” and “right”, even when you turn around.

The lighthouse jigsaw puzzle.

Getting caught in a summer shower playing street hockey.

Bowling my first 400 set.

Learning that salt water is bad for you.

Getting my tonsils taken out, cracking my noggin on the fold-out bed, and falling down the basement stairs.

The 1976 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.

A huge pile of 45’s.

My orange bike and my Big Wheel that got stolen.

Shooting down the model airplanes with ping pong balls when it was time to move out of the apartment.

My jackknife and my baseball mitt.

A Reid’s milkshake.

The salute and “going to war”.

The car.

The plane crash.

Beach sand.

Catching a sunfish and an eel.

The puppet show at one grandma’s house and chicken wings at the other’s.

Cutting down our own Christmas tree.

A million, billion crows.

Homemade candy and spaghetti sauce.

Mystery parsley.

Thank you.  Happy Trails, Old Man.

Questionable Marketing, This Might Be, Hmm?

Sure.  Why not?  Let's learn diction from Yoda.  I eagerly look forward to the sequel "Guidelines in Gentlemen's Comportment" by Chewbacca...

I am not sure how they can make this claim except this must be the most exciting Q.A. department to work at, ever!  Also, I can't speak to the implied instantly-cauterized-amputations aspect of the toy.  All I can tell you for sure is that it stings like hell when you are rapped in the knuckles with this thing.

Lots of Puzzle Hints

You know, it has been a very long time since I have posted anything about the unsolved puzzles on my Secret Puzzle Page in the sidebar.  It’s been so long, in fact, I am in danger of forgetting what it was I encrypted and how.

Let’s fix that.

Here are some hints, encoded using ROT-13, one for each puzzle still unsolved. If you want to see the other hints, too, go to the Secret Puzzle Hints Page in the sidebar. If you have a guess, leave a comment on the Puzzle Page or send me an email.  Remember to include the encryption scheme with your answer, please.

Pallet Table Puzzle Hint 3 [Posted 02/05/13]: Ybbx sbe pbzzba qrabzvangbef.

Desk Puzzle Hint 3 [Posted 02/05/13]: Gur svefg jbeq unf gjb yrggref.

New Desk Puzzle Hint 5 [Posted 02/05/13]: Lbhe genafyngvbaf jvyy or enaqbz, cevznevyl.

Art Table Puzzle Hint 3 [Posted 02/05/13]: Whfg mreb’f, bar’f, naq gjb’f... Vg'f onfvp. 

Chessboard Puzzle Hint 3[Posted 02/05/13]: Guvf fubhyq or rnfl nf pnxr.

Anagram Puzzle Hint 3[Posted 02/05/13]: Nabgure guerr-yrggre jbeq sbe nethzrag vf...?

Good Luck!

Some Sort of Clip Show Post

Forgive the “writing this on the bus on the way into school” feel of this post.  Trying to bang this out during Super Bowl commercials, you see.

I Think I’m Blind... - A friend of mine was raving about being able to score some legit moonshine, so I asked him to get me some (I had no idea it was, like, $24 a jar... I owe you one, dude).  I won’t go into the history and flavor of it since he is waaaayy more capable of writing reviews of that sort, but what I will get into is how hard it is to pour this stuff out of a mason jar.  Based on several experiments the following methods have been considered and rejected:

• Pour like you would anything else, then use sponge or rag to sop up the 85% spillage you have.  Squeeze rag or sponge into glass.
• Use turkey baster to transfer liquid.
• Pour it into a large serving tray or baking pan then transfer to glass.
• Freeze the liquid solid, transfer to glass, wait, drink.

I decided in the end to just drink it out of the jar with a curly straw.  I thisnf theat is okk bed0acue is wokrdkma me 99sjdja mmee ddddddddjdjdjdjdd five dollars? geddoudahere...

Solar Power  The wife bought me a ReVIVE Solar ReStore XL 4000mAh External Battery Pack (plus two extra solar panels) for my routine Geocaching outings.  I put it through it’s paces charging and discharging and I would have to say works great.  My only wish is that it would charge itself and a plugged-in device simultaneously.  Some negative reviews out there complain about how slowly it charges.  They are wrong for lots of reasons, most of which seem to revolve around a misunderstanding of the definition of “direct sunlight” and the fact that the item doesn’t possess magical powers.  It works as advertised, which is just super.

Three Recent Quickie Projects -

Assembled a store-bought baseball display case but I replaced the baseball holder with a disk-shaped shelf and dowel standoff.  I hot-glued a bath toy to the shelf.  Click here to find out why this toy in particular was chosen.  It took me two years to figure out what to do with it, but now I have a constant reminder of a hilarious episode in our then-two-year-old’s life.

Finally finished this corkboard for my brother-in-law’s new desk.  The glue for the standoff is drying as I type this.  I think it will work out for him.

Built a shelf for my wife’s printer stand.  I built the stand a while back (the unstained one in the image in the link) out of “scrap” I had left over from building the desk I am currently at. 

Rain Rain Just Take My Wallet and Go Away - At 2AM Thursday morning, 50 mph winds with 70 mph gusts gave us a sample of what it was like to deal with Hurricane Isabel a while back.  As with Hurricane Sandy, we were glad we made the decision to get rid of the trees in the backyard when we did.  Other than a sleepless couple of hours and an absolutely terrifying 15 minutes, nothing happened aside from the high winds and heavy rain.  I took the lone branch that fell from a poplar tree to the dump today.

Geo-Junk Clock Update - I now have 223 caches under my belt and I have gathered some more stuff.  Here are the latest “before” and “after” pictures for the Geo-Junk Clock Project.  

 

Well, gotta go finish watching the super-close game.  More later.