Mancala

While playing mancala with my youngest son, I realized something: you can only win by an even number. Think about it for a second: for each piece that I get from his side (or vice versa), that's one less for him, one more for me. In other words, a difference of two in the number of pieces that I have compared to him. The next piece is another difference of two. You can only win mancala by a multiple of two difference in final score. Cool: applied math! :)

thoughts...

While I'm sitting here thinking about chili, I thought I might also post a new blog post. Wait, that's a bit redundant... oh well. Here come some random thoughts.

I was thinking the other day about a new sport we should add to the Olympics: motorcycle jousting.

My dad heard on the radio a few weeks ago about an imminent danger that is even worse than global warming. He heard a guy on the radio talking, that the guy had been noticing, over the past few weeks (this was before Dec. 21), that we'd been losing about 2 minutes of sunlight per day. Based on his computer models and calculations, the earth will be completely dark by July. This looming catastrophe, "global darkening," certainly deserves our undivided attention and resources!

Yes, that's ridiculous. To take data over the tail end of a cycle and project catastrophic consequences from it... who ever heard of doing such a thing? Oh, wait, all the global warming pundits who fail to realize we're at the end of the last ice age and of course the earth will be warming as the ice age passes... like it's done for centuries. Silly... and yet, here we are, in the middle of the present global economic situation, with people still trying to push human-induced global warming and remedies for it.

I spent an hour or so out in the backyard with the boys this evening playing "nerf rifle tag." Ok, it's not really "nerf" - it's a Buzz Bee Ruff Stuff Air Blasters Rapid Fire Rifle - quite a long name, but also quite a fun toy. We got four of them at the KB outlet in the Foley Tanger Outlet Mall - it's going out of business, so the $18 toy rifles were $9 each (you can get them on Amazon for about $33...???). You load the foam darts into plastic shells, put the 6 loaded shells into the clip, insert the clip into the rifle, and then cock the rifle (using the lever-action), which loads a shell into the chamber, and pull the trigger to fire. The next lever action ejects the empty shell and loads the next shell. Sometimes it jams... which is lucky if you're firing on the jammee, and unlucky if you're being chased and trying to fire on someone when you're the jammee. So far we've only lost one foam dart. I think I need to check on the refill packs from Buzz Bee toys.

Anyway... much fun. We played as "two hits you're out" - and threw in the "football grenade" - one hit is out - for good measure.

Now I'm sore. And now I'm going to eat some chili or something... happy new year!

Mmm... Krispy Kreme

After driving around looking at Christmas lights, we headed over to Mobile to the 24-hour Krispy Kreme donut shop.. As evidenced by the photo.. To enjoy some nice, hot, fresh donuts. Mmm! Great family tradition!

Noelle, the First - FFF Children's Choir

Just thought I'd share with you all the Faith Family Fellowship Children's Choir presentation of "Noelle, the First." I'll let you try to figure out which kid is mine. :)

Note: the quality of the Google-ized video isn't great, but you can download a better quality version. If you really want a better version, let me know and I'll see what I can do about making a DVD or some kind of higher-quality download version available.

Also note: it's really dark at first, during the musical intro, which is over a minute long (don't recall exactly how long).

Also also note: it's around 50 minutes... but I'm sure you all want to spend an hour watching my kid perform in a Christmas musical, yes? Here you go: