The Think Tank

Joel made a time-lapse video of himself working on his Jeep the other day, which inspired me to make one myself.  I was thinking that it would be really neat to set the camera up in the yard and make a film of the Halloween and Christmas transformations, but I got the idea too late for both of those projects, so instead I made a video of putting up the Christmas Village last night.

To do it, I set my camera to take a picture every ten seconds, then used Windows Movie Maker to compile it into the video you see above.  I think it turned out pretty neat.  The only thing that I wish is that we were able to actually get it done that fast!

In case anyone is curious, the video is comprised of 1,754 still images shot over the course of about 5 hours.

We picked up our Christmas trees this weekend.  As always, we picked out and cut trees for a whole group of people, including several friends who would otherwise not have any Christmas Tree at all, Maure’s nursing home, and Aunt Becky picked up two trees for a homeless shelter in Corbett.  The grand total came out to 23 trees.

We  cut all of the trees yesterday morning and then set about manually baling the largest ones so they would in the the Janes’ truck, Judy’s truck (which she loaned us for the occasion), and a U-Haul trailer we rented.  Jane thought we should try baling the trees like you would string up a roast, which sounded like a reasonable idea, but in practice failed miserably.  Next we moved on to the Thigh Master method that I cooked up, where I would straddle the tree and squeeze the branches up so we could bale them, but that also failed.  Finally I noticed that there was a trailer sitting empty which had tall walls made up square steel tubes spaced about two feet apart.  I drug a tree over there, and pulled it partially through the bars, compressing the branches up so we could tie them.  That worked much better.  It was nowhere near as fast or effective as a real baler, but it worked pretty well and allowed us to fit all of the trees into the space we had available.  Plus, it makes getting the trees in the house much, much easier.

After loading the trees up we discovered a small snafu in our plan: Mom had gone with Aunt Becky to her house to prepare lunch, but she inadvertently took the keys to Judy’s truck with her.  Naturally I did not discover this until I went to start the truck.  We called Mom and she and Becky came back, but Corbett  to Estacada is about an hour’s drive, so that pretty much sucked for everyone involved.

After we got the keys, we headed back to Becky’s for a great lunch, then we had to scoot so we could get the trees dropped off here at home and Maure and I could get to the Blazer game.

This was the first year in many that I forgot to bring my camera, so I did not get any pic’s of the cutting.  I did link to some shots of us picking them out, a couple shots of the portion of the trees that are here.  Mom and I will don our Christmas Elf  hats and deliver the trees to their appropriate locations this afternoon.

According to the official countdown clock, we we have 13 days and 3 hours to get the house ready for the Christmas Party.  We’ve made some decent progress so far, but its time to get a crackin’!

Another party has come and gone again.  Mom and I made a very concerted effort to make sure the decorating and cleaning were done well ahead of the event, and we did a pretty good job: we finished the last bit of actual decorating last Monday night, and this week we just had to do the clean up and last minute details.

Because of the ease of the week leading up to it, we were well rested and relaxed for the first time more years than I can remember.  It also gave us the time to visit with our Cousin Dan and his fiancee came for a visit from Montana.  It was doubly awesome to have them here because Dan is a luthier (guitar maker) and some friends of his – who are playing instruments that Dan made – just happened to be in Portland this weekend as well, so the whole lot of them regalled us all with wonderful, live music.  That was fantastic.

As for the rest of the party, it went very well.  Things started a little bit later than usual, with the first guest not arriving until around 3:15 or so, but after that things got moving and the house stayed pretty darn full until after 10pm.

Mike and Becca brought baby Quinn to her first Christmas party, and naturally she made the rounds as well as quite an impression.

Mo and I had to sacrifice our Blazer tickets tonight, but we happily gave them to my cousins Aaron and Sarah, who apparently did a very good job of routing the team on as we put the kibosh on the losing streak, beating the Huston Rockets 89-88 thanks to some last minute heroics from Brandon Roy.  Sadly, though, Oden went down with a fractured patella and is likely out for the rest of the year.

All in all this was one of the most enjoyable parties we’ve had in recent history.  Thanks to everyone who came for making it a wonderful event, and for those of you couldn’t come, please stop by some time during the season and share a Christmas bowl.

As has become my custom, I was much to busy enjoying myself to be bother with taking pictures, so there are no photos from the party itself.  I will try to post pics of the house and decorations in the next few days.

Happy Holidays!!!

It’s that time of year again!  Two weeks ago Mom, Mo, Shannon and myself picked out and tagged 16 Christmas trees for ourselves and several other people.  Mom found a farm out in Oregon City where she got us a really screaming deal.  Normally we get 6-8 trees for ourselves, Maure, and the Janes’ but since we were able to get the trees so cheaply it gave us the ability to pass on the savings to a number of families who would not have been able to have a tree this year.  We got 16 in all.

Today we went and picked them up using the Janes’ truck and delivered them all around town, making several different stops as if we were Christmas elves doing Santa’s work – sans the reindeer of course.

I completely failed in my photographer duties for this year, forgetting my camera for both the tagging day and the cutting day.  I did snap a couple of pics after we got home and started dropping them off everywhere, so I guess that will just have to suffice.