Tag / Funny Stories

by Greg

The Surface Issue

I have discovered a problem here in the Campbell home. It’s quite prevalent, affecting most members of the household.

Surfaces abhor a vacuum?

I know, I know. That’s not exactly the famous phrase. The slight variation though is definitely true in this home!

Is it that way for you? Do you find that any flat surface in your house is quickly filled up by all sorts of random goodies? The day’s mail, a book or a toy (or three), yesterday’s snack, last week’s underwear…

You get the picture.

EVERY time we clear of a flat surface in an attempt to de-clutter—to create a more simple, more beautiful space—within seconds something has been placed there to start the clutter parade. And it’s quick. It’s like a ultra-strong magnet, drawing anything light enough to be carried to the level of the available surface, and it doesn’t stop until there’s no more surface to be seen.

This used to also happen with our floors, but it seems as we have been diligently eliminating “stuff” from our home, that is happening at least a tad less often.

Surface, Oh Surface

But wherever you go, it’s true you know
That a surface abhor’s a vacuum
Both high and low, to and fro
You’re sure to find a sacked room

For surface you see is just the place that we
Seem to fill our deepest longings
For short or for long, at times with a song
Flat places are just where you store things

I think that might need to be posted on a wall of the Campbell home. Maybe all of them. It accurately describes our condition, our issue: We have a surface issue.

I’d guess any other large family reading this has a similar problem, but please… if you have discovered a solution, some way to keep at least some of your surfaces clutter-free… please explain in the comments below. Email me if it’s too private to share publicly.

Hi, we are the Campbell family, and we have a surface issue.

Now that we’ve admitted it … WE NEED HELP!!!

Maybe we are just doomed to this cluttered surface life forever. Perhaps there is no cure. I mean, right now I can’t seem to find the cause. It’s really just sort of magical! One minute you get it clean the next it’s got a whole new collection of surface cover!

Maybe our surfaces are just cold … they need to cover up?

If you know a way out for us, we’d love to hear it.

For now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go clean off a couple surfaces… 🙂

by Greg

Detective Dad

Sometimes as a Dad, you find yourself in the role of detective. The cases are often thrust upon you quite circumstantially. There may not necessarily be a victim, who comes to you asking for the mystery to be solved. Often, the clues lie before you and it’s up to you, Detective Dad, to solve the unexpected puzzle.

Today was such a day.

This time I found myself sorting through the various clues in reverse order. I had dismissed them previously, as just a normal part of the managed chaos of a home with a two- and a three-year-old. With such folk around it is not uncommon to find a toy here, a puzzle piece there, an article of clothing pretty much anywhere. Very easy to think nothing of such “clues”—missing the fact that they point to a great, unsolved mystery.

The final piece of the puzzle today was the sugar bowl spoon.

As I began to prepare some yerba mate this morning, I opened the sugar bowl to discover that the spoon was coated in sugar. This happens, of course, when the spoon has gotten wet and then is placed once again into the sugar bowl. Being quite fastidiously against this action, I knew instantly that my sugar had been “disturbed”.

A quick recall of (many) past events allowed me to quickly piece together the evidence and reach a(n easy) conclusion. Pieces of evidence like the cars discovered in the hallway… the sugar bowl on the floor, rather than in its proper place—which I had overlooked before, since on occasion in my haste I have left it there, not properly replaced to its comfortable home amongst my various beverage supplies. Everything was pointing convincingly to the obvious culprit.

You see, a while ago Cameron discovered that there was a quite readily available supply of the white stuff just a staircase away. And often, it was completely unguarded! What more could a two-year-old sweet tooth as for???

Now it seems he has gotten a little better at covering his tracks, though. Previously I would find the sugar bowl, lid off, sugary spoon on the carpet, surrounded by piles of white crystalline evidence everywhere. (Plus, stray crystals in and around the various mugs that surround its normal resting place.)

Once—and only once—I found the lidless bowl ON my comfy reading chair, much of the contents all over the cushion, the footsool, and the surrounding floor are.

As I said, that only happened once. 🙂

Another time, the sugar bowl evidence—coated with dampened sugar—hidden around the corner in a narrow storage alcove, well out of view of any who might stumble upon his enjoyment of the “forbidden” treasure.

He’s no dummy. And he sure loves his sugar!

So today, thankfully (I think?) there was only the mess of a wet spoon returned to my sugar bowl. Otherwise all is well. Not sure how much he ate, but the bowl is only half-full now … could he have eaten half?? Hopefully not, for his sake!

When I next speak to Cam, I’ll remind him again that this delight is off limits. Again. Not sure what effect it will have. I’ll just have to keep a vigilant eye towards all those small evidences of crimes against my beverage stand.

And for now… remember to lock the door. 😉

by Greg

Just Sickening

Sickness has invaded the Campbell home once again. We really aren’t sick all that much here, but we have of course had our bouts with various illnesses (illni?) over the years. When they hit us, they tend to stick around and cycle through all the warm bodies here a time or two.

Thankfully this time we’re just dealing with stuffy and/or runny noses. (Only a tiny bit of stomach bug, and that only for poor Emma. Throwing up sick is the worst!) But, yesterday I got my “taste” of it, and lemme tell you, it’s nothing to sneeze at.

(HA! Puns…)

I woke up (or tried to) at around 7:45am and had a massive pressure headache. Yuck! In that no children were yet awake, I tried to get back to sleep. A while later, I was awakened by normal morning commotion, and still didn’t feel that great. After a very slow shower and then just sitting on our bed waiting for the fog to lift, I realized this wasn’t going away any time soon.

I guzzled some daytime cold medicine and hoped that would do it. Nope. After more sitting, head still just aching, I grabbed a pillow and fell asleep sitting up on the couch. Finally just moved back to bed and crashed there for a couple hours.

The rest of the day was sort of blurry. I remember thinking many times that I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing!

And all this from just a “little runny nose”! Ugh.

So, this post will be shortened in order for its writer to get some proper rest.

For your entertainment (seriously… it was a funny read just now, since we’re not in the middle of it) I’d recommend from March of 2009, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up, Folks.

Enjoy!

(And drink your OJ!)

by Greg

City Living… Or Not.

We Campbells live in a thriving rural metropolis.

Nestled on the outer eastern edge of the once-vibrant technology town of Rochester, NY—R.I.P. Kodak—our town is home to nearly seven thousand people of various ilk. This is the place to be if you want to experience cultural, ethnic, religious, and economic diversity. We’ve got it all!

But for some reason, Kirstie decided this week that she wants to live in NYC.

“I am going to live in New York City some day,” she proudly announced to her Mom. “I just really want to live up high in the air, overlooking the city,” she explained to her Dad.

Neither Mom nor Dad can even stand the thought of visiting the Big City, so the expressed hopes and dreams of our seven-soon-to-be-eight year old daughter were (more than) somewhat repulsive to us. “New York City, eh?” we slowly pondered a loving response, “Well, that’s a long time from now, so we’ll see what God has in store when that time comes.”

(We were at least partially, and quite deftly, employing the fine art of deflecting/distracting from/deferring the less than desirable, far-off dreams of young children.)

Fast-forward to bed time.

It was a very windy night. This strangely warm winter has seen a few brief cold spells, and each time they’ve come, they were ushered in by a fierce wind. This night’s wind was particularly powerful—and noisy!

As I was hugging and kissing the girls, tucking each under their warm, fuzzy blankets, I could tell that the wind was very much on their minds. The house was creaking and various scraping noises could be heard on the street outside as sundry items were dragged great distances against their will by the forceful gusts.

“God,” I began, “Please protect this room tonight and its inhabitants from anything that might harm them in this wind.” I started to go into detail about what things God could protect us from, but at the first break in my thoughts I was interrupted.

“Do you think there could be a tornado?” Kirsten asked, with a hint of real concern in her voice.

“No, Kirstie,” I reassured her, “There really aren’t any tornadoes here where we live. It’s pretty crazy, but pretty cool, huh?”

The three girls nodded, and verbally affirmed my mostly rhetorical question.

A moment later, after giving some thought to what I had said, Kirsten asked, “Are there tornadoes in New York City?”

Jumping at the chance, I quickly replied, with great conviction in my voice, “Oh yes! There are always tornadoes in New York City. Really bad ones! All the time!!”

“Dad!” Kirstie scolded, in the way only Kirstie can do. Her twinkling eyes looked up and met my big, silly-Dad smile.

I was still smiling at my innocent, yet clever, yet loving jab at my oldest daughter’s earlier proclamation, when the brief silence was interrupted by her younger sister, Julia.

“I am never going to live there!” she said in her very tiny, very matter-of-fact tones.

Caught a bit off guard, I enjoyed a deep belly laugh—we all did!—and then I gave Julia a big hug and said, “That’s my girl!”

If you know Julia, you know that this was perfect is so many ways! She knows what she wants, and she just says it!

I love seeing the personalities of our kids shine through, even at the earliest ages. Julia is a very “black-and-white” person; very matter of fact. And she’s incredibly cute! That response was just quintessential Julia, far beyond what I can relay in a few sentences.

I don’t know if we swayed Kirstie any that night, but we all did have a great laugh. She might still be on a mission to live in the big city. Or not. Time will tell.

But one thing’s for sure: Julia is never gonna live there!

by Greg

Who Me? A VCR Repairman?

Perhaps one of the strangest things I’ve done of late is a bit of repair man work on my office VCR! Who knew I could fix those? 🙂

One of the services I offer as part of my web/graphic design business* is analog-to-digital conversion. So, you bring me your old audio cassette tapes and I’ll convert them to CD, or just any digital audio format you’d like and deliver them back to you electronically. Or, you bring me your analog video in any format and I’ll convert it to a digital format of your choosing (DVD or otherwise). It’s pretty fun, and the projects range from a simple dump of the old-version content (no editing) onto the new-version media, to a full-on, shiny, professional end product.

While in the midst of one such project the past couple weeks, I found multiple issues with this antiquated technology. Fun!

I was converting old VHS-C tapes. That’s where the fun began. First, neither of the two VCRs we use would accept the adapter that the customer provided. My main VCR even refused to eject the cassette for many minutes. (I’m not even sure what made it change its mind… but the cassette finally popped out.)

So, attempting to be resourceful, I called up the owner of the cassettes to be converted and asked for their camera, thinking I could likely dump the data from there. All seemed good when I got the camera. Battery, check. Charger, check. Video out, check. We’re set!

However, working with old technology almost never goes as you’d expect. 🙂

The battery charged overnight, but didn’t hold a charge. At all. No power to the camera at all. So, I tried again. Still a “no go”. Then I noticed a tiny round battery slot on the underside of the camera. It wasn’t clear what this was for, but I figured it couldn’t hurt trying to replace it.

Off to Radio Shack I went!

Thankfully the folks at “The Shack” were quite helpful and I left the store with a new tiny round battery, as well as a new VHS-C cassette adapter as a backup plan. (I was quite glad I remembered to have a backup plan!)

The battery replacement did not work. Still no sign of life from the camera. Time to implement the backup plan!

I popped one of the small VHS-C cassettes in the new adapter, loaded in a fresh battery and slid the whole device into the VCR. I was quite relieved when the VCR accepted it, and loaded the video, ready to play it.

All went smoothly until I rewound the tape.

After successfully loading the video into the computer, and then the tape automatically rewinding once it reached the end, I hit eject, thinking all the techno-trouble was behind me.

Unfortunately, I was very wrong.

At this point, the VCR got even more stubborn than before! It would not only not relinquish the cassette, it kept powering down with every attempt to remove it. (And I was not liking the sounds that were coming from its attempts to dislodge the adapter cassette!)

Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed my screwdriver. (I’ve taken stuff apart before… this couldn’t be that much different, right?)

Thankfully… it actually was a tad easier than working with the insides of the various computers I’ve disassembled, modified, and reassembled.

After removing several parts, and fiddling with many do-hickeys … the cassette came free! I reassembled the VCR—crossed my fingers—and tried to load the next cassette.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that … it worked! And, even more surprisingly, I think it worked better than before!

Who knew I could repair VCRs?

So, it would seem I have found a new calling in life: VCR Repairman. I can’t imagine how much business must be out there just waiting for someone like me to grab it by the horns! There must be so many opportunities to fix these very current, super modern, ubiquitous video devices. Right?

Maybe not. But, if you do need your ancient technology repaired… now you know where to go!

* – Speaking of ancient technology, sorry in advance for the never-updated appearance and condition of my web design website! The saying is true, the cobbler’s family never has shoes! At least I have a website, but, again… sorry. 🙂

by Greg

Project: Backyard Ice Rink (Part 2)

(continued from yesterday’s post)

We had heard that some people do just fine by stitching two sheets together with waterproof tape. I did a bit more research online and found waterproofing repair tape was indeed a real product, and might actually work.

And it might have, had the weather cooperated. And, had the second piece of plastic been at least close to the quality of the first.

Once we had pieced our liner together, we placed the seam and the poorer-quality plastic at the top of the grade, where the least water would be on it. (Unfortunately for us, this meant that it would also take way too long to get ANY water on it, to hold it down.)

Before the water, though, we had to paint!

The boys had the fun idea of painting all the hockey lines on their rink. They even had a name (and logo) for their rink! This was probably the most fun part of the entire project! Sadly, the day we were installing the liner and painting, was a very rainy, wet day. So, not much of their art was left the next morning when we began the “Big Fill”.

And I do mean B-I-G.

Forty-five minutes into the “Big Fill”, I went to check on the progress, and it looked like a heavy rain had collected on our liner. Just a small puddle in the deepest end. Wow! Guess I’ll give it a lot more time!

Four hours later… only about a third of the rink had water in it! Deepest part was at most four inches deep. Holy smokes!

Twenty-four hours later of almost constant water flow (we had to stop it a few times because it was reducing water pressure to other things in our house like dish washer, washing machine and toilet!) it was about 10″ deep at the deepest spot, and about three quarters of the rink was covered. Nice! But really? Still not done???

I must back up one more time and explain what I think is the biggest reason.

The day we were doing the Big Fill, was also a very windy day. VERY windy. Like sustained 30 mph winds.

You’ve gotta be kidding me!

The plastic had already been blown off a few times, so I secured it to the frame with staples. All seemed good except wind can get into very tiny places. (And thin, flimsy plastic—like the Plan B plastic we used—likes to blow around!)

Unfortunately, the slow-rising water, and the high-velocity winds (and the poor-quality plastic) were a major setback for our rink. The wind kept whipping the plastic around, so much so that it tore apart the seem we had created with the waterproof tape. (Guess it’s not windproof.) Now there are very obvious holes in a couple spots in the seem, and being slightly submerged, we can no longer apply the tape (it needs a dry surface).

Our last attempt to make this work is to let the very cold air tonight and tomorrow freeze what’s in there (including some over part of the seem) and perhaps let the ice be enough of a seal as we add more water, little by little? The problem with this plan is that the ice will very likely melt in the next week or so (at least a little) … so, will our crazy ice-seam be enough to hold?

No idea. But we are going to be experts on this by next year! 🙂

  1. Get accurate measurements: angles, board lengths, full rink dimensions
  2. Get one, high-quality sheet of plastic liner!!! (Even MORE than you think you’ll need!)
  3. Only apply paint on dry, warmer days…
  4. Allow about THREE DAYS to fill the rink!!! Preferably NOT windy days!

I’m thinking the lessons are not done just yet … but that’s what we’ve learned so far. I’m pretty sure we’ll get to skate on this rink, even if it hasn’t worked out entirely as planned. And without a doubt, it has been a super fun family project the whole time. Unexpected turns of events and all!

by Greg

Project: Backyard Ice Rink (Part 1)

We’ve got a project underway here at the Campbell home. We’re trying to freeze a large portion of our back yard. (Well, more accurately, a large quantity of water, covering our back yard…)

One thing is for sure: we’ve learned quite a bit of what not to do along the way!

It all started with a slight modification of the original plans.

When we first thought we’d attempt to make an ice rink in our back yard, we thought we’d follow my brother-in-law’s simple rectangular model. But then, being one to investigate online, I found a post with (very loose) instructions for setting up more of an oval rink, so pucks won’t get trapped as easily in the corners. It looked straightforward enough. All you do is add another board, cut in two, on the corners. Easy!

First mistake. 🙂

We determined the amount of wood needed. Even divided it up in the 2 x 8, 2 x 10, and 2 x 12s, according to where they would be placed in relation to the grade of the land. (Which, is probably a tad too steep for an ice rink!) We had it all nicely planned out, and even laid out.

And that’s when I discovered I hadn’t really though far enough ahead…

See, not only did we not account for the different angles needed (two boards cut to make a “corner” of an oval are not cut at 45º angles… it’s true! They’re not!) we—or rather, I?—did not remember that the length of the boards was also an important factor!

So that meant breaking out old algebraic formulas (and some very handy angle calculators on the internets…) to figure out that we needed cuts of 22.5º to but up against the long flat boards, and cuts of 11.25º in the middle of the two cut boards. Nice! The fun part there was trying to set the saw to an angle of 11.25º!

Once we had cut all the boards, we had to fit them all together. Sadly, we did not measure the length of the angled boards very meticulously. What we did was just push the boards out as far as the angled boards “forced” us to go. (This will come into play just a bit later in the story. Stay tuned.) Once we had made our oval based upon that, we discovered that we had about an 8-to-10″ gap left! HA! NOT what we were expecting, but we knew we could fix it later.

Now all we needed was to get the plastic liner.

A few calls to various local hardware stores (and a trip to big-box Lowe’s) revealed that this was not actually an easy part of the process. Not many places have a plastic sheet big enough to fill a rink area of approximately 24′ x 32′. My brother-in-law had gotten a piece big enough for his rink last year at a local store in Buffalo, so I figured I’d give them a call. Bingo! They had it, I purchased it right there on the phone, planning to either make the trip all the way over there, or meet brother-in-law in the middle somewhere.

The biggest issue we were facing at this point, early December, was that the weather was NOT cooperating! No sign of freezing temperatures anywhere in the near future!

This meant that we didn’t make getting that plastic liner a priority. And that would turn into several snafus later down the line.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s the next spot things went south. (Why is the south equal to “bad”?)

Being the generous sort (and quick with numbers), my brother-in-law had a proposal. Once he used what he needed for his rink, the remaining liner would be enough (according to our stated dimensions) for our smaller rink! This is quite generous because the plastic we bought ran just slightly over $100, and that was the cheapest option out there!

I hesitated slightly—no, more than slightly—because I wondered if the dimensions of his rink were wrong, or the plastic might be cut wrong, or we might have the wrong dimensions… so many things could possibly go wrong here, and we’d be out of luck as the place we got our liner would be out of stock by the time we figured it out. But, after much thought, I decided to go with the generous offer, since it sure seemed that we’d have more than enough.

ALWAYS trust your gut. Always.

Once we got the plastic upon a post-Christmas visit with family in Buffalo, we were eager to get it installed in our rink. We had to wait a day, due to inclement weather. (That was slightly encouraging though, as we knew the cold was on its way!)

Two days post acquisition of the liner remnants, the boys and I headed out to Lowe’s to get another board and the remaining stakes needed for the frame. (Unfortunately, it took us three trips to correctly acquire all we needed!)

We cut the board, placed it, and hammered in the remaining stakes. Now it was time to lay out the plastic liner! Whoohoo!

But, huh… is that really going to fit???

Though that small piece of plastic, well-rolled, did surprise us with its coverage area, we were definitely short. By probably about three feet on either side, length-wise.

“I knew it!!” were the only words I could say. I knew this would happen… I should have trusted my gut!

Now, before you go blaming my brother-in-law, read on.

Since it was clearly short, I wanted to know if he had been shorted on what he purchased, or, well, just what in the world went wrong. We broke out the measuring tape and walked it off. “Huh. Look at that…” 40.5 feet long? Weird. Measured the width. 28.5″ wide. Strange!

We had forgotten to measure again, once we resized the frame according to the angled/cut boards (as I mentioned earlier).

Now what?!?!

Sadly, it was unlikely that the 30′ x 100′ plastic we had purchased previously and returned were still available, so we went with Plan B: tape!

(Yes… tape.)

… to be continued tomorrow!

by Greg

Clocks

Sometimes in life, you just have to take the bad with the good.

I’ve always loved the “fall back” Sunday, where you get an hour of your life back. Who couldn’t use an extra hour!? Either another hour of sleep in the morning, or really, whatever suits your fancy!

The extra hour was always especially helpful when we were regularly working Sunday mornings, doing music for churches around the country. Sometimes that was quite early, and/or after a gig the night before… and sometimes that was in a different city or state! So an extra hour was a very welcome gift. We loved ending Daylight Savings Time!!

But it does seem that every good things has a bad side, too, no?

In the spring, when you lose an hour (the bad), it’s at least very easy to just bump all the clocks up one hour. All you need to do is click the “hour” button once (the good).

In the fall when you gain an hour (the good), depending on the clock, you may be able to do 60 minutes backwards, or, you may have to go 23 hours backwards. That’s 23x more button clicking! (The bad.)

The best part is, one of my wife’s favorite things is to have a clock in every room. (Some rooms have more than one.) So… 23x more clicking … times many clocks…

Well, let’s just say I’m super glad I have an extra hour. 😉

by Greg

Facebook Is Trying To Help

Facebook EventsThis morning when I brought up Facebook to check on a couple things (no, I do not have a Farmville farm or anything else like that…) I saw the list to the left at the top right of the page.

I had to smile as I thought of the stereotypical guy who can’t remember his own anniversary … and I think that might be what my own anniversary is doing in the list of upcoming events. (Believe it or not, I actually already knew that my anniversary is this Monday…) 😉 I wonder if this event (your own anniversary) is also shown for a woman’s Facebook account? I’ll have to check out Jen’s account…

Facebook is pretty handy for “remembering” friends’ birthdays, but then, if you just see it on Facebook, is it really remembering? (No… it’s not.)

The fact that my anniversary was on the list of upcoming important dates was both humorous and slightly sad as it’s one more thing that we are not using our own brains to do anymore. The more we “improve” technology it seems the less we actually use our own brains (or bodies). We can’t get anywhere without using a GPS, we can’t know anything without Google, and we also have no idea where our food comes from. (But that’s for another post.)

So thanks, Facebook. I know you’re trying to help, but maybe we need it to say something like, “Do you know what’s coming up in a week or so?” 🙂 (And maybe we just need to “unplug” in general… but again, that’s for another post…)

by Greg

The Perfect Temperature

Several things are broken on our trusty family minivan. Some more important than others (like our gas gauge) and some we can do without (our rear windshield wiper, and air conditioning) and then tons of little things, mostly electrical.

Including the temperature gauge in the little computer/data center.

At times, it will tell us that it’s 20ºF outside when it’s really 80ºF or 90ºF! Gives us a good laugh any time we see it!

So tonight, the thermometer was showing 24ºF, and we all laughed at the thought of the air temperature being 24ºF on September 30th (and with our windows down, no less!)

And then I smiled a little as I thought of the crisp feel of the air when it really is 24ºF. It’s been a long time since we’ve felt that, but it’s coming again relatively soon. I can’t wait!

I said to the kids, “You know… I think my favorite temperature is the 20s. I love it when it’s in the 20s!”

Ian chimed in, “Yeah, the snow is really crunchy…”

“Right,” I continued, “That’s why it’s so great. It’s cold enough to really be cold!”

Then I remembered that I actually do like temperatures in the 50s, too. (60ºF is OK… but not anything much past six-zero.) The 50s are nice because it’s still nice and cool, but warm enough to be outside and do outside things (like play football, go for a walk, read a book, etc…)

So I guess I realized tonight that the perfect temps are the 20s, and the 50s. Everything else is either too hot… or not cold enough. (The 10s and 0s are also great, but they are not really bearable for long enough to actually enjoy…)

Fall is here! 50s are great! Bring on winter and the 20s!!!