It’s amazing to me, although it probably shouldn’t be, how different these two puppies are. Taters is arguably the cuter of the two, but he’s dumb as a post. I think he’s trying to skate through life on his looks. Pouffles is quite a bit smarter. Taters likes sitting on laps. Pouffles likes sitting next to me. I’m sure we’ll find more things like that as time passes.

She launched it yesterday at school.  I didn’t make it there to watch, but when she came home, all of the fins were ripped off of the rocket.   Aurora said that they came off when they launched it with an ‘A’ motor, which disappointed me.  I spent some time wondering out loud if we should have used more glue, a different type of glue, additional struts of material and so forth.  I was trying to console myself with the idea that this was, after all, my first rocket, and I would probably get better in the future.

Then she admitted that she had dropped the rocket prior to launch and broken one of the fins off–but she had taped it back on!  With lots of tape!

I think I have some idea now of why this rocket had a bit of a failure…

(1) One or more of the Tsarina’s excellent sock kits.

(2) I’d like to play with a loom.  Spunky Eclectic has some interesting table-top looms for just a few bucks.

(3) A Golding spindle.  Those ring-weighted spindles look awfully tempting.

(4) A Bosworth spindle.  I just love the way these look and I haven’t ever run into a bad review.

I’ll add to this as time goes by, and maybe even I’ll be able to cross things off the list unless I keep spending all of my money on New Fiber:

I had made it nearly 2 months in between fiber purchases.  That’s, like, a record or something.

Thanks to my wife, who got tickets weeks ago, we went as a family last night to watch this.  I think the only one who wasn’t completely entertained was Elenna, who just couldn’t sit still for the whole 75 minutes.  Hopefully, this is something my children will remember as something cool their parents did.

It also made me wish I had paid more attention in Chemistry back when I took it–in that very same room.

I went a little out of my way to go to lunch today. It’s fun to ride my motorcycle around a bit, The Pie makes the best pizza in Utah, and it’s also fun to ride past the place I lived when I was going to the university. Nostalgia and all that. I had a pepperoni zappi, thanks for asking. It was good. I ate the whole thing.

As I was riding back to the office, I decided to ride back through the Avenues district, which is where I used to live. Pleasant tree-lined avenues with some absolutely fantastic houses and yards. And a traffic jam of some sort as I approached B Street on Third Avenue. I sort of scooted by on the shoulder, just because it looked like someone was playing silly buggers up on B Street.

Yeah, well, the someone was a cop, so I figured it was going to be a while. I noticed another bike parked on the side of the road and the Harley Dude standing on the corner, so I parked my bike next to his and wandered over.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“President is coming,” he says.

“President… ?” I ask.

“President Bush.”

Wow, I gotta keep up on the news.

Turns out, Dubya was headed up to some fundraiser in the Upper Avenues. So I stood there on the corner with Harley Dude and some other guy who came by “to flip him off”. He grinned when he told me this, said it “was his duty.” Then he wondered out loud if he would be arrested for doing so. I said, “Well, it *is* Utah…”

The streets in the Avenues are not very wide, so when the motorcade did finally go by, I figure I was standing about 15 feet from where the President was in his limo. Oh, and that’s a freakin’ huge posse. That’s the way he rolls.

Duty Guy did flip him off as he passed–and then wandered off, clearly pleased with himself. After a few minutes, Traffic Cop pulled the barricades out of the way and we all left.

That’s my story for the day.

Yesterday at church, Rex Checketts reminded me about the kickstand. Last night I tested it out, and yes, that was the problem. I’m still going to take it in tomorrow to the shop, but it will be a lot easier than I had thought. It annoys me that I’ve wasted several perfectly good riding days (and the gasoline) driving the truck into the office. But I took a much more proactive approach to cleaning this up than I had previously, so I guess I’m getting better at that sort of thing.

My GZ250