Monday, May 30, 2005

Grandma's Birthday Bash

Happy Birthday Grandma R!!!

Grandma's birthday is actually on June 1st, but we celebrated it today. We had a cookout and played cards.

Some of Grandma's family


Wow!! She can still blow out the candles!

Many Happy Returns! :)



Thursday, May 26, 2005

Terry had a VERY bad day at work!







Thankfully he was not badly hurt!!

For those who don't know him, Terry is my best friend Kathy's husband, AKA "The Cable Guy!"

Here is the story in Kathy's words.

A careless driver came onto the highway and cut across to the left lane where Terry was driving. The other driver was going at a very slow rate of speed, and this is what happened when Terry swerved to avoid hitting them. Of course the other driver just left apparently oblivious to what had happened. Nobody stopped to help him, but two OKC police officers witnessed it, ( it wasn't their jurisdiction, because the wreck happened in Moore) and came and helped him out of the van.

In reality, I think that the State of Oklahoma is partly to blame for this wreck. This is the only state I have ever driven in where there is a "YIELD" sign at the end of the on ramp, instead of a "MERGE" sign. The whole point of the on ramp seems to be lost on the OK department of transportation. The ramp is there so that drivers entering the freeway can accelerate to match the speed of the traffic on the freeway and "MERGE" smoothly into the flow of traffic. The "YIELD" sign causes people to slow to a near stop and then move slowly (and dangerously) into the fast moving traffic on the freeway. Maybe we should start a letter writing campaign to our legislators.

Thank God for seat belts. Terry has a little bump on his head, some scrapes to his elbow and knee, and some mild whiplash. Otherwise he is OK. He will probably feel like he rolled over in a van in the morning. His cell phone was killed.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

I love you...












I love you.

You are good to me.

I enjoy the person that you are.

You give me new reason to enjoy each day.

You are my listening ear, and my shoulder to cry on.

You understand my humor, and laugh with me!!!!

Because of you, I am finding ME again! :)

As we work together, we gain strength.

You are my light in a dark world.

You are my sweet friend.

I love you.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Arthur's Birthday Present

There was an air show in town this weekend. What better present for Plane Nut Arthur than a ride on a vintage WWII 2 engine airplane? Happy 58th Birthday Arthur!

Arthur was allowed to sit in the co pilot's seat... he even got to wear the headphones! (Not pictured unfortunately.)Taken from outside the plane.



This is the plane!Some pretty scenery... shows some of the houses in the neighborhoods by our house.



John Henry went, too. I think he liked it!! :) Shelby and I stayed safely on the ground, thank you very much.After their flight we all had lunch at the Runway Cafe. The burgers were great! I think Arthur had a great time.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Shelby's science project


This is a "Rube Goldberg" project, designed to use the most difficult means possible to turn off a light bulb.

Shelby designed it, and Shelby and Arthur put it together. Shelby's report on this project is below:

(click on the image to run the project) This is a VIDEO!!!...




WHO IS RUBE GOLDBERG?
Report by Shelby Waller

Rube Goldberg won the Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons. He was also a sculptor and an author.

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (Rube Goldberg) was born in San Francisco. His father was very practical and his father thought that it was necessary that Rube should go to college and become and engineer. Rube ended up going to the University of California Berkeley. After graduation he worked for the City of San Francisco as an engineer. He worked in the Water and Sewers Department.

Rube always was drawing, and after six months convinced his father that he had to work as an artist. He got a job in an office at a San Francisco newspaper. He worked in the sports department. He kept turning in his illustrations and cartoons to his editor, until they finally made it into the newspaper. A wonderful accomplishment, he moved from San Francisco to New York. He began illustrating daily cartoons for the Evening Mail. A founder of the National Cartoonist Society, a political cartoonist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, Rube was a loved national character as well as a radio and television personality during his sixty-year career.

Through his inventions, Rube Goldberg invented hard ways to get easy results. His drawings were elements of man's accommodation for using maximum effort to achieve minimal results. He believed that there were two ways to do things: the simple way and the hard way, and that a surprising number of people preferred doing things the hard way.

Rube’s inventions will withstand time because he gave importance to simple human needs and admired basic human values. He was sometimes hesitating about technology, which added to making his own inventions full of human, plant, and animal parts. While most machines work to make difficult tasks simple, his inventions made simple tasks amazingly complex. Dozens of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups, and rods were put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles, and live animals for simple tasks like squeezing an orange for juice or closing a window in case it should start to rain before one gets home.

Rube's cartoons show absurd machines working in extremely complex and roundabout ways to produce a simple end result; because of this Rube Goldberg has become connected with any bizarre system of achieving a basic task. Rube's inventions are a unique comment on life's complications. They show a humorous diversion into the absurd parodies of the wonders of technology. Rube's funny send-ups of man's ingenuity strike a deep and lasting chord with today's audience through caught in a high-tech revolution are still seeking simplicity.

Hardly a day goes by without The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or some other major media invoking the name Rube Goldberg to describe a wildly complex program, system or set of rules such as our "Rube Goldberg-like tax system". The annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at Purdue University, which is covered widely by the national media, brings Rube's comic inventions to life for millions of fans.

The work of Rube Goldberg continues to connect with both an adult audience well versed in the promise and pitfalls of modern technology (can anyone over 40 program their VCR?) as well as younger fans intrigued by the creativity and possibility of invention.BR>