Happy birthday dad. I hope it was a good one.

We took my dad for his birthday to Seabar, where he got to enjoy fish with someone for once ((e:paul))

Later we had some cake (an orange cake, his favorite) that I made. And somehow we ended up spending a half hour talking about the purple McDonald's hamburglar. Not sure why. Anyways my brother is hilarious. I wish he would write on here.


The future's so bright, he's wearing shades.

The church next door had their closeout firesale. (e:paul), (e:terry) and I took a stroll over to see what "treasures" were available.

Of course it wouldn't be a church event without parking over the whole lawn.



They sold a lot of junk and religious trinkets, big metal crosses and what not. The coolest thing available were probably the two priest thrones, but they were a cool $3800 for the pair. Most of the furniture seemed to be going fast.

Buffalo rising wrote about the sale as if it were some sort of pillaging of Buffalo's history to out of towners. Really, a lot of it was church junk that was probably out of a catalog, a few nice pieces of wood furniture, and a bunch of old ladies looking to cram a few more things in their house.

This is the biggest spider I've ever seen at our house. (e:mike), what do you think? It's probably an inch an a half and it's been living on the window for a month now.

I never finished writing about Jabe Pond. (e:uchina) came up to visit us and it was a lovely trip. She wrapped us in a magical tarp while we layed in the sun, all the way until night, when we watched the stars and listened to the bros across the pond.

Said tarp

Giving (e:yesthatcasey) a piece of her mind















Head first into networking

Head first into crazy






What an amazing day. I loved how the light looked so tropical when the sun started heading down.

On the last full day, (e:paul) and I hung out on the beach. I decided to use the $60,000 I spent on a civil engineering degree and build a reinforced sand castle, to one up my old minnow resort (e:joe,59355)

Before we started, there was so much soap foam on the beach. How do people not realize that soap doesn't just disappear, especially in a pond like this?



I started by taking some moist sand and forming the first layer, with sticks for reinforcement. Then I took pine needles and laid them on top of the first wall. (I only remember this technique because my old professor Gasparini was obsessed with it - a French engineer came up with a lot of theories building sand castles )




Then I put the second layer on, doubling the height. I realized I should have put a door in, so I tried to carve one out and reinforce a header with some sticks. It's not the greatest, so next time I'll build doors and windows right into it.



Nearby was an abandoned minnow condo project. It's full of dead caterpillars, it really put a damper on the sales.



The last step was decking it out - I asked MFA (e:paul) to decorate it eyetalian style, but the sun was too intense for him.
So I tried my best. You can see the result in his post (e:paul,60206). The castle was named "Schloss Frosch am Meer" or the Frog Castle on the Lake.

Then I took a frog and let him loose in his new castle. He wasn't too happy about it, but at least he was able to escape alive. That's the least an engineer can ask for.