What matters is profit; market share and revenue only matter insofar as they lead to making money.

Hays’ comment?

“Isn’t that the point of having a job?”

I think he’s smarter than KL.

Griffin’s no slouch, but because she’s slight of frame and a little shorter than her peers, she’s at a minor disadvantage. Although, I should back up… that was her status as of the end of the last vball season. She has definitely put on some height, and I think she’s definitely built some strength, so I do expect her to perform more consistently this year (muscle memory and all).

But the good (bad?) thing is that she’s a fierce competitor and takes mistakes personally. It’s a tough parenting balance because I want to encourage her to succeed, but I try to temper that with the “it’s just a game” speech.

I do love that she gets excited about her teammates, and she’s encouraging and enthusiastic. She gets fired up when she needs to. Sometimes that’s a liability (technical mistakes and such), but at this age and level of play, those are certainly forgivable. I much prefer seeing the excitement.

Volleyball season runs through the end of the school year and she’s going to have to miss a few games, but she does love it and I love watching her play.

Oh, and Meredith pointed out that we now have some kid-related sports practice every night of the week except Friday. Whee (small price to pay, though, right?).

I am Legend

Cool. But is he old enough? I’d heard that the baddies were more campy than scary so I figured he’d be okay with it. Idea: Let’s watch the free preview… that didn’t go so well… “Um, maybe we shouldn’t watch this.” Actually, I guess it did go well, because he did the responsible thing and wave off (unlike his father). We ended up sticking The Fellowship of the Ring into the DVD player.

Saturday morning, we decided that I am Legend would be more palatable in daylight with a whole day before bedtime. I like Will Smith, but he plays pretty much the same character in all his movies. And I haven’t read Matheson’s book, but my understanding is that there’s a bit of deviation from it, especially around the happy ending of the movie. But that’s not the point….

I remember seeing The Big Red One with my dad when I was like 10 or 11. It was a bit of a father-son moment. It was the point in time where my dad said, “Hey, you’re getting old enough that we can enjoy some of the guy things like war movies together.” It was something I didn’t really realize at the time, but after Hays was born it clicked, and I’ve been waiting almost 10 years for it to happen.

And then on Saturday night, we were once again out and about and decided to catch a discount showing of National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I had taken both kids to see it during its original theatrical release, but for less than a fiver I had blocked out two hours of entertainment. It’s flashier than the original, but the “puzzles” in this one are framed much more obviously as plot devices, which makes them predictable (eye-rolling). Nick Cage is a damn fine actor, but he’s not aging very gracefully. The pancake makeup and (assumed) hairpiece were noticeable. But it’s an entertaining story and Hays enjoyed it — nine-year-olds aren’t nearly as critical of movies.

After the movie (10pm), we went and got burgers and I learned that I’m getting old. Eating a grease bomb at 10:30 at night is a sure path to night-long indigestion and heartburn nowadays. Damn.

[I have removed the iframe that was here and replaced it with a direct link because it was disruptive even to me.]

Heineken Video

Saturday, my dad and grandfather and I got up early and headed out to some land behind their place that we’ve got permission to hunt on. Some others were hunting around the stock tank we normally occupy so we set up around another nearby. I guess by about 8:00 or so that morning, the birds started to fly. Most of them were white-wing dove coming out from roosting in the city overnight and I had quickly limited out on my two ww. I was going to have to keep a close eye on the flyers so as to not drop any more ww that morning, which was difficult because of the angle I was at on the stock tank — they were mostly flying directly over some brush/trees on the far side of the tank about 40 yards away or so and then breaking to my right across a fenceline. If I shot too early, they’d drop into the tank and too late, they’d drop on property I couldn’t get too because of the terrain. I did manage to bag four other mourning dove before we headed back to the house for coffee and breakfast.

That afternoon, Hays expressed a serious interest in going out with us. I hadn’t really expected it at all. My dad brought my old .410 break-over and we had some shells for it, so we let him come with us. Of course, if you’ve ever been hunting with kids who haven’t been out much, you know that you’re not so much hunting as mentoring and tutoring them. We set up in a treeline under some low overhanging cedar with the sun at our backs. After showing Hays how the .410 worked and giving him a quick rundown of the “this gun can kill things, don’t point it at stuff you don’t want to die” speech we were set up. A little while later a couple dove came in from the far right (away) moving to cross in front of us and pass about 20 yards over our left shoulders. Hays cocked and raised the gun and took aim and fired. He didn’t bring any bird down, but the shot was certainly close because of the reaction of the bird. I don’t think he’d pulled the gun in tight against his shoulder as the next few minutes were him overreacting to how it kicked and frogged his bicep. He quickly figured out that drawing the butt of the gun into the shoulder keeps it from doing that!

A couple more birds did fly in that afternoon, but very few. At one point I did drop a bird out at about 30-40 yards and was having a helluva time finding it in the thigh-high scrub that was pretty green from this Summer’s rains. Then Hays, with his eagle-eyes managed to walk right out to it and say, “Well, duh, dad! Here it is.” Thanks to him, I did manage to bring the one dove I shot that afternoon back to the house.

The next morning (Sunday, September 2) we went out again and set up around the tank we had originally wanted to get around. The birds just weren’t flying, so after maybe a half-hour or so, Hays and I headed out across a big patch of sunflowers and set up in a treeline waiting for the birds to fly in to feed. None ever came. I think we might have seen a grand total of a dozen birds on Sunday morning. It was pretty disappointing, but I had a lot of fun nonetheless, since I was out with my grandpa, dad, and my son.

I had a lot of fun, and so did Hays. He’s enjoyed telling his friends at school that he got to go hunting and on Monday (Labor Day) we stopped in at Cabela’s and he got to look at some different shotguns, including a nice 870 Wingmaster Youth Model. It was still just a little big for him, but they make an even smaller one with a barrel just shy of 19". I might try to find a shop around town that has one in stock to see how it handles for him. I think it’s time to track down a good hunter’s safety course to get both him and Griffin into. Even though she doesn’t want to do any hunting, she’s still interested in shooting skeet and clays with us whenever we do. I’m looking forward to that and even Meredith has expressed a strong interest in getting involved. Not that she’s ever been opposed to it, she’s just not as gung-ho about the whole thing as I am, I guess. Anyway, there’s still quite a bit of dove season left, so I certainly hope we get to go out at least a couple more times. Otherwise the seven birds I’ve brought down this year are going to amortize out to about $20 each!

Griffin took a bit of a spill today at camp. She’s doing fine now, but she was rather excited earlier. I hope she comes home with all her limbs tomorrow.

I have to tell you how very cool it is to see all these children desperately clamoring to get their copy of a 759-page book. My daughter’s a voracious reader, so it’s not unusual to see her lugging around some hefty tome. But some of the people with whom we interacted last night? The ones with the hicksville drawl? Reeking of cigarettes? Many of them I never would have suspected of ANY kind of reading, educational, for pleasure, or otherwise. Really — some of those people were clearly from East Yeehaaville. But I’m just tickled freakin’ pink to see them reading something other than National Enquirer.

Anyway, my daughter has her copy, which was one of the first 20 or 30 sold at that store, and she screamed with delight when she got it. On the trip home, the girls used flashlights to read in the back of the car. We dropped off her friend, and then Griff stayed up who-knows-how-late reading (I checked on her at 5 a.m. and found her asleep on top of the book, with the light on). Then she was up bright and early this morning reading some more, taking a break only for a quick bagel for breakfast.

Griff came somewhat late to the Harry Potter party. She was in kindergarten or first grade when the first book came out, and initially I set out to read it to her at bedtime. Her active imagination quickly put that to a stop, as I do not particularly enjoy being awakened in the middle of the night by a terrified, screaming child who’s been having nightmares about Harry Potter bad guys. So, our copies of the HP books languished for a while, and it wasn’t until 5th grade that she decided she was ready to dive in and finally read them, long after many of her friends had. Like everyone else, she was totally drawn in, and quickly plowed her way through the first six books. Then she went back and re-read a couple of her favorites. Ever since, she’s been breathlessly awaiting book seven, even marking its release date on her calendar months ago, and making me promise to take her to the release party.

So last night I filled my parental duty, and took her to get the book that she’s been so desperately waiting for. She even dressed up in a Griffyndor costume, and she took part in the “Snape: Friend or Foe?” debate, the costume contest, and the trivia contest. She and her friend ran around, acted silly, and generally had a fabulous time. Me? I just wanted to find a chair. (At one point, I went and sat in the kids section on a low little bench, with my knees up next to my ears. And at my age, contortions like that have the potential to be fatal. But by that point, I would have happily parked my ass on a bed of nails, if it meant I could take my weight off my feet for a while.)

But now I’ve made my daughter happy, and I get to watch her delight as the final chapters in the Harry Potter saga unfold before her. How cool is that?

More photos are at Flickr.

Anyway, I had a giant rubberband lying around. It came from one of those cheap balsa planes with the wind-up propeller. The gun was some new thing Hays picked up recently (just as I have to buy my own guns, so does he). Anyway, here’s the mod, cocked. The band is looped through the plunger and wrapped over the barrel. It adds a good 20 feet to the range and significant accuracy (and down-right uncomfortable at point-blank).

Some guys I used to work with would frequently decend upon our development team unleashing Nerf assaults and we got pretty good at defending ourselves, but I wish I’d known about things like this — an arms race of sorts with Nerf tech (it got to be a rather expensive hobby).