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My car is 10 years old now, so I need to pay more attention to maintenance items. For example, sometimes the oil gets too low between oil changes.

At a recent gas stop, I noticed that the oil was low. I keep a quart of oil in the trunk for such occasions, so I pulled that out and added it to the engine.

The only problem was that I did not have a funnel with me, so I had to aim very carefully when pouring the oil. Alas, I did not aim carefully enough – I spilled some oil on the engine cover.

Normally, I wouldn’t care about that. But the extra oil dripped off the front of the cover and landed on the front of the engine. It landed somewhere in the middle of some tubes and heat shields.

I didn’t think much about that, other than “oops”.

Then the oil started to smoke.

Some flames appeared.
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Last year, we inherited a large play structure from some friends. The only cost was time and effort in that we had to remove it and transport it ourselves. After an afternoon of breaking concrete and sawing extra posts and digging, we had the fort on the trailer and drove it 30 miles to our house. That was slow going, but we got it there.

Arrival

Here is how it arrived.

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Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts is fairly popular. But it’s getting a little stale in that it came out over a year ago. It needs an update.

I took it upon myself to produce some book covers, should she ever decide to write the following books:

A book on sorting flour, entitled One Thousand Sifts

A book on older formats of clip art, entitled One Thousand Gifs

A book on peanut butter, entitled One Thousand Jifs

A book on energy bars, entitled One Thousand Clifs

I thought about her book on elevators, entitled One Thousand Lifts, but I decided to pass on the cover art for that one.

Any other titles?

The phrase “born this way” has the potential to be either inspirational or lazy.

If someone uses the phrase “I was born this way”, pay particular attention to what comes next. Why are they saying they were born that way?

If it’s to excuse their behavior, then it’s lazy.
If it’s to explain their accomplishments, then it’s inspirational.

How were you born?

Helpless and useless.
A burden to society.

But you know what? You don’t stay that way.
You learn, you develop, you become better.
You overcome how you were when you were born.

If you are still how you were when you were born, don’t you think it’s time to grow up?

Now that I have accounts to make and sell T-shirts, I figured I’d create something else.

Green Programming

Make sure your functions and methods are environmentally responsible.

Go buy it at Printfection.

By now, you may have seen the shirt that spoofs the WWF:

Panda bears and folding chairs…

While WWF may mean World Wrestling Federation, and it may mean World Wildlife Fund, it has another meaning:

Words With Friends

So I updated the parody to use the other WWF:

The next step is to combine the three so that the one panda is going to smack the other panda with the tablet instead of a folding chair. I might not get to that right away though.

Until then, go buy the shirt at Zazzle or buy it at Printfection.

Sorry about the Zazzle link. Zazzle did not like the design because it may contain trademark violations. Either they are unfamiliar with parody as an acceptable fair use, or perhaps they want to avoid any possibility of even remotely being near a trademark violation.

Since Beta enjoyed last season’s hockey game so much, we scheduled another one for this year.

This year’s event was not as eventful as last year’s – no overtime, no shootout, no inconsiderate fans – but Beta and I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Traditions

It is our tradition that, during the first intermission, Beta gets a cup of hot chocolate.

I got some overpriced almonds. I think I’ll get something else next year.

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