"I think..."

On this day in 1859 Charles Darwin published the book that gave birth to modern biology. Happy 150th!

WWAD? Addendum

Forgot to add.

Got back to Honolulu and told my sad AC/DC story to Blair, an Aussie who by old down under habit refers to the boys as "Accadacca".

I told him that in a weird way I was kinda glad that the concert fell through.

Here's my thinking: when the last notes of "For Those About to Rock" faded at the end of the show I'd have a sinking feeling that this would be my last AC/DC show. A part of my life would be officially over.

That was gonna be rough.

Blair summed it up.

(With Aussie accent) "Listen to yourself man! What do you think Angus would want you to do....? He'd want you to ROCK ! Get over it."

WWAD?

Ok. Enough time has passed I can tell the story.

So back in October Kim and I took Lily and Jake to Disneyland. Coley noticed that AC/DC was playing in Vegas the night after we got in and so he set to sweet talking (successfully) Kim into letting me go.

So we caught a flight to Vegas in the early afternoon and checked into the MGM Grand where the concert was to be held.

Here's what we found:



Concert canceled. Brain was recovering from throat surgery, so the Vegas concert would be rescheduled for next spring. Sigh.

The Joy of Spitfires

A great video.

A middle aged British nerd tries to convince the 13 year olds of today that plastic models are actaully kinda cool.

And uses the same kit that got me back into model building after 30 year...the 1/72 Airfix Spitfire...as blogged waay back here....

Carhole of Scariness, Mk V

We've been at it for five years now and we're (which is to say Dave) getting pretty good at quickly putting up the walls and running the juice for the many lights, fog machines, dimmers, lasers (yes really), and more.

As a result the Lemmonds' now have more Halloween decorations than X-mas.....buwahahahaha.

Old favs are back. Bottomless pit. Black light room. Pictures with the eyes cut out.

But the vortex is new this year. Oh the vortex..must...go... into....the......light.

For 2009 we let the neighborhood teenagers do most of the staffing/acting. Last year our three hour marathon of presentations of our take on Young Frankenstein meant that I didn't get to walk around and go trick or treating with the little ones.



Only a few years left of that, whereas we can go on building haunted houses for far longer....

Muzak 2009

Some strange music experiences over the last few weeks.

Went to a large Asian style supermarket a while ago and I was suddenly an 8th grader again. Planet P. Waitresses. DEVO. And not Whip It....not even Girl You Want. They were playing Through Being Cool? Seemed a little subversive for a commercial environment. Absolutely no mix just the top New Wave hits of 1980-1982.

Had a 20 minute wait for tech support and was listening to the BIZARRE mix on speakerphone while doing other stuff. Elvis. Bob Marley. Sinatra. Dido. Huey Lewis. Radiohead? Granted it was from The Bends, but still. WTF? Who (besides me) would like this mix? I'm actually thinking about just calling to be put on hold.....

Lily and Jake were watching Scooby Doo the other day and I was only partly paying attention...until the chase scene started and the music started up...what? The Ramones? No way!

The Magic Kingdom (and Disney's California Adventure)

Fall Break. Disneyland. Cousins. Grandparents. Fun.


Nothing a few years of therapy won't solve.....



Reunited and it feels so good.


This needs to be an album cover....


Prepare for blast off...

See some more here:

Disneyland 2009

VACATION !

Fall break has arrived and it's time for SoCal with a little side trip for U. Bump and myself (AC/DC in Vegas !).

Time to clear out pictures from the camera so we take a ton at Disneyland this weekend. Here's some that had been hanging around:

Hanging with the Scholly-Bromwells


North Shore shave ice


Ant's eye view


Lily's little friend Candace


Mini-golf

Skating lesson from U. Jacob







Nike Fun Run:



Finish line in sight!

Post race snacks

Squirt Gun Fight !

Locked, cocked


Ready to rock


Target acquired


Attack!


Retreat!

Model geekery:


My first Mustang. I never liked the look of the P-51 but I came around while building this one up. I showed it to Kim when it was about 90% done and she said it looked like a shark....which is cool.



A Corsair for a former Bachelor made on spec. Pappy Boyington's from a photo op in 1943.


A Yak-15 for me w/Italian marble base. Marble was detritus from fine Carrara marble that a sculptor who works at the museum had brought back. Interesting plane - At the close of WWII Russian's took jet engines from captured Me-262's and stuck them on the front of some prop-driven Yak fighters to see what would happen. What happens is that your engine's exhaust melts your tail wheel....replace with all metal tail wheel.

How dorky am I?

...enough to be excited that I finally got all of the state quarters?
...to take a picture of said collection?
...to arrange them roughly geographically?
...to post it on a blog?
...to point out that there are actually 52 quarters there (I didn't know that District and Territories were getting till today)?

Yes. THAT dorky.

Happy (Way) Belated Birthday to Lily

I try to post pics of b-day celebrations pretty quickly but we had a couple of mitigating factors.

1. My trusty old keyboard finally died. Most letters worked fine but the "1 Q A Z alt" diagonal was kaput. So needed to replace otherwise it would have came out "Hppy Birthdy Lily".

Just got a replacement and the a's are flowing.

2. Her final present only was purchased a couple weeks ago and might be her favorite ever.

Ever the creatures of habit, we did for Lily's big day what we did last year. Took her and a gaggle of friends to the Family Fun Fair at Ala Moana.







Here's a couple shots with presents



LEGO House


Mouse House


Poptart and Lily

Swimming excursion

Went swimming over in Kahala the other day with some friends.



Clockwise from left - Julia, Lily, Calvin, Jake, Kim, Zach, Charley, Courtney, Al, Kamaile, and a Hawaiian Monk Seal.

Canstruction 2009

Every year, Group 70, where Kim works, takes part in Canstruction: a fundraiser for the community foodbank. Teams of architects and those studying to be architects build sculptures out of canned (and bagged) food.

Lily, Jake, Kim and I helped out on our teams entry: Spam Musubi. I think ours is especially cool in that the musubi used the actual ingredients for the building materials (that's rice, nori [seaweed], and Spam for the uninitiated)


Spam Musubi


Aloha shirt


Train


A half finished poi pounder


Shave ice

Open For Business !

After 3 years and $20 million we reopened Hawaiian Hall last weekend.

I think there about 7 separate "special" openings - for the staff, for families, for members, for major donors, for the media, for tourism industry types, and then last Saturday, the big one - everybody.


Kim's halau provided the lei and took part in the opening ceremonies of which I saw absolutely nada: too busy running around with a screwdriver / allen wrench / cell phone / worried look.


The inside is now climate controlled (read: it has AC now) and lighting is conservation department approved. Lots of modern works of art by native artists really brings the place alive. Plus now the famous whale has some friends to hang out with now.


Uncle Dano was in charge of dismantling and rebuilding the hale pili. Pretty much everybody in the extended family helped out in one way or another: carrying rocks, building the foundation, gathering pili, lashing posts, or just sitting around and providing moral support.


Here's some people learning about the hale by playing interacting with my touchscreen kiosk. I actually changed some stuff about 3 hours into the opening day since I got to see people getting confused. Works better now. Come check it out....