October 2008 Archives

Today was a big day of trick or treating. Will got early release from elementary school today (it was also the last day of the first marking period), and they had a fall festival (including halloween costume dress up) at the three boys’ daycare. I spent some time in Sean’s and Daniel’s class, where they ate a lot and were a general mess. Unfortunately, by the time I made it to Will’s class, he was done.

Then came time for trick or treating in the neighborhood. Sean and Daniel (if you cannot guess from the pictures above) went as football players, while Will got to dress up as a fireman. (Just like his dad did when he was seven — that picture will have to wait for another day.) The temperature was perfect — no need for jackets, just a long sleeve shirt underneath any of the kids’ outfits.

All 5 of us went out (the bowl of candy went on the stoop for kids to help themselves — of course, it was all gone when we got back). Sean and Daniel pretty much rode in the wagon the whole time and were very good about sitting back and enjoying things. Will actually made the trips to the various houses to get his sack filled up. There’s more than enough candy to go around.

These gas prices are just insane. I actually had the thought to post my thoughts on this (including a slight conspiracy theory) over a week ago (even before James’s post last week, but haven’t had the time to pull all of my thoughts together. But the continued drop in gas prices is driving me to write about it now.

I mean, really — gas prices in Richmond went below $2 yesterday at some gas stations. Is that crazy or what? I cannot remember the last time gas prices were below $2? Does anyone?

Take a look at the price of oil over the last year. Oil prices are about 25% lower than a year ago, and gas prices are about 25% lower than a year ago. (I’m using Richmond prices as my point of reference.) Seems to make sense, right? Well, there should be a delay for refining the oil into gas and then getting it delivered. (I still haven’t found a reliable source for how long that takes on average.) And consider the peak summer prices to now — around $145 per gallon of oil in early- to mid-July to about $60 now, but gas prices have gone from $4.00 per gallon to $2.20 per gallon. That’s about a 45% reduction in gas prices while oil prices have tumbled almost 60%. Those two averages don’t seem to line up!

You’re forgetting that crude oil prices only account for somewhere between 45% and 60% of the overall cost of gas (a 10-percent rise or fall in oil price should yield about a 5- to 6-percent rise or drop in gas prices), with transportation and taxes (both relatively fixed costs) making up the difference. (Here’s an excellent primer on the topic and the trends throughout this decade.) And with this in mind, the reduction from peak in summer to now appears to be more rational than the rapid reduction in the last month.

So, why are we seeing such a strong match in the change in prices this past month? It could be that we were getting gouged over the summer. (It sure felt like it at times.) Or you can just fall back on the old supply-and-demand theory. That could drive these drops because there is excess supply now. But I really don’t sense that people are cutting back on driving that much, resulting in an oversupply situation.

Comparing those two situations, I feel like my first explanation was more likely (gouging in the summer, with the uncertainty of the hurricane season around). However, I was wondering on a drive in to work a couple of weeks ago whether there could be a situation where the suppliers want to reduce the pain on the consumer leading into the election. But that leads to the question — why would they want to do that? I cannot easily answer it, as I start to get myself twisted around on the pros and cons of such a seemingly irrational decision. The best I can do is that if Barack Obama wins, with a Democrat-controlled Congress, you’ll likely see offshore drilling restricted again. (The previous restriction was allowed to expire earlier this month.) That reduces easier drilling opportunities for US oil companies. But at the same time, increased drilling is going to eventually drive down prices for oil across the board, which may make some of these (and other) drilling opportunities less cost-effective. And these explanations are still way too simplistic for what I’m thinking and seeing, but I feel limited by time, space, and my own mental capacity and knowledge to sort through it.

So, why are the prices dropping so much more than expected with the cost of oil? You got me. And if it moves up over the winter to something more in line with oil prices, perhaps there was something going on with driving down gas prices more than expected.

That’s it for my irrational thoughts at the moment. I’ll go back to trying to be rational tomorrow.

As the temperatures cool down, more runners start turning their attention to running/racing a marathon. (No marathons for me this year. I’m only doing a half-marathon in mid-November.) But how would you feel if you ran a marathon and posted the best time, but you didn’t win the race? You don’t think that’s possible? Well, it happened at the Nike’s Women Marathon in San Francisco two Sundays ago. Turns out someone in the regular group (Arien O’Connell) ran 11 minutes faster than the winner in the elite group (which started 20 minutes before the regular marathoners). But because she wasn’t part of the elite group and they didn’t have to adjust their strategy to Arien’s time and effort, Arien wasn’t the winner of the race.

To which I say - BS. An 11-minute difference cannot be easily made up just because someone was racing in the same group as you. Anyone who has run a marathon for a good time knows you are spent by the end of it. If your first-place finisher only managed a 3:06, I don’t think she was going to average 25 seconds per mile faster if she had to go against Arien. Arien was eventually declared “a” winner and received the same trophy, but it’s not the same. And I think it just shows that starting the elites in a separate category is nonsense, especially when the elites race at a time that is not so elite.

Which takes us to the Chicago Marathon the preceding weekend (where a situation similar to Arien’s occurred in the men’s race — a regular pack racer had the 4th best time, but wasn’t awarded a fourth place finish). In this race, you had someone fall 10 yards from the finish line and struggle to make it across the finish line. He finally got some help, unlike Julie Moss, who lost the 1982 Hawaii Ironman just yards from the finish line after her legs refused to go on.

I love the music background on that clip.

With that, I want to wish my sister Emily good luck this weekend in the New York City Marathon. I think her training has put her on track to set a personal record in the marathon.

Do you live in Virginia? Or New Mexico? (Or maybe Colorado or New Hampshire.) If you do, you may hold in your hands the biggest chance that your one vote might change the course of the election. There’s a one-in-ten-million chance your vote could be decisive. I replicate the image (without permission, but with attribution) below so that you see what the current math looks like that getting an extra vote in any given state could turn the tide. The best return to value appears to be in New Mexico and Virginia.

(from the Red State Blue State Rich State Poor State blog)

Not that you should need this encouragement to vote. Just know that you are going to stand in line for a long time if you haven’t voted absentee. Crowds are going to be high this year — I’m virtually certain of that.

Something else I’m certain of? Virginia will still have a Senator Warner. I was thinking that with the right turnout, maybe he’d break 60% of all votes, but it’s looking like a near sure thing. The state Republicans really blew it by nominating Jim Gilmore. The next question is, will they continue to retrench on those conservative lines or open up the tent more? I’ll be waiting and watching.

No, we’re not talking about the Aerosmith song here. Rather, the James Madison football team (currently ranked #1 in the FCS — nee Division 1-AA) certainly likes late game heroics. They trailed national champion Appalachian State by 21 at halftime, but came back to win. They trailed late against Richmond late in the fourth quarter by 8, but scored a touchdown and tying two-point conversion, stopped Richmond’s drive, then took the ensuing punt back for a winning touchdown with 1 second remaining on the clock.

All of that may be topped by the shocker in Philadelphia this past weekend. Looking at near certain defeat, needing a “short” hail-mary type play, this is what JMU found against Villanova (who had already defeated then-#1 Richmond in Philadelphia earlier this season).

Who knows how this season will end, but James Madison has definitely shown itself to be top-notch (with a never-say-die attitude) this season. I’m sure their alumni (like my brother-in-law Dennis) are enjoying this. Good luck the rest of the way.

I told you I was falling behind on a bunch of postings of pictures and videos. I just have to make a little time each day to pull things together. Today’s posting is a follow-up to the Fall Festival notes I had from two Saturdays ago. I decided to just put it together in a video package, rather than separating the pictures out into a flowing display below the video portion. I think it works alright and isn’t too long.

The moon bounces were obviously the most fun for Will. As I said before, Sean and Daniel weren’t quite as interested. There were other items around the festival that we got to do, but in many ways, it was just cold enough out to not make it too fun. (By comparison, I think it was sunny and in the 70s last year.)

Some light viewing for your weekend. What do you get when you mix a chimpanzee with a Segway scooter on a Japanese game show? Well, besides the fact that we cannot understand a word said or written, you get this:

Pretty impressive.

Last night, Kellie went to see one of the Irish Tenors come perform in Richmond. (Happy birthday, dear, just a little early.) Anthony Kearns (official site and Wikipedia) is her favorite Irish tenor, and he did not disappoint her. I don’t have the details of the concert, but I believe he performed over 2 hours of material (with an intermission) and left her saying that is was the best singing she’s ever heard.

And she also mentioned that he looks an awful like Tim (her brother). When I looked at the pictures on the small camera view screen, I kind of agreed. Looking at the pictures now, I’m not so sure. Here’s a clip of audio from the concert that was taken on the digital Elph.

Last Friday, I posted an entry that linked to an online questionnaire that might help you figure out how well aligned you are to the presidential candidates and their positions. That survey includes the candidates for the 5 best-known, national parties.

Well, it turns out that a sixth candidate has qualified to be voted for in the Commonwealth of Virginia. So if you want to check out the positions of the Constitution Party. (He did get the endorsement of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.)

I finally got the video uploaded this morning, so here we go…

OK, these aren’t what I had originally intended to pull together, but I discovered some video that Kellie had taken last Wednesday when scanning through Picasa. And while I was previewing the video, I discovered that Picasa version 3 now has the ability to mash together video clips with simple transitions and other features and then automatically upload the resulting composite video directly to YouTube. So what you see below is an attempt to make this happen.

I will say this — the upload feature in Picasa is extremely slow. I could have uploaded it much faster directly through the YouTube site.

The pictures are just a couple of shots of some cool cats, trying out their new sunglasses. They’re definitely too cool for me.

YouTube went down as I was finishing loading a video, so my other planned posting is going to have to wait. In it’s place, I give you this…

College football gave us some bizarre situations this past weekend. First, Iowa State really cranked up the smoke machine for their entrance to the game. (Look for #83 at around the 10 second mark.)

Then there was this penalty flag thrown during the Virginia Tech/Boston College game.

Lastly, I cannot say I’ve ever seen or contemplated an umpire getting this involved in a play (during the South Carolina/Louisiana State game).

Now, seriously, what was in the drinking water at stadiums this weekend?

Man, I’m behind on getting pictures together on several recent events. However, I will pass on this — Daniel is now capable of going down one step without holding on. I caught him this morning taking a single step down from our eating area to the family room. He did very well with it, under control and no lurch or awkward move to keep balance at the bottom. Very smooth.

Unfortunately, I had no idea this was going to happen, so there was no video. And I never did catch him trying to do it again. Oh well — maybe next time.

Will did some more biking today. He was moving so fast at times that I had to run to keep up with him. He still has the training wheels, but he definitely understands how to brake now, even on downhills (no more putting the feet down).

And Sean has a new game he introduced me to today. I like to sing to them (on occasion), particularly something like a march (John Phillips Sousa’s The Stars and Stripes Forever is a good one). Tonight, he started pointing at me and saying “Stop.” I figured out what he was saying, so I’d stop whatever note I was on (good experience from having been in band before). Then he’d give the sign language for “More,” expecting me to continue singing (which I would). He (and Daniel) though this was funny. But I’d always try to start with the next note from when I stopped. It’s actually kind of fun (in a crazy kind of way).

Or perhaps I’m just too tired.

I don’t have enough time to pull together the pictures and videos from today’s main activity — getting cold outside in the wind and damp air. Oh wait, that wasn’t the original purpose. Today was Will’s school’s annual Fall Festival. We had a good time (the full brood went), but it was not great weather — overcast, windy (from the north), and damp (the rain ended overnight).

We enjoyed it. Will’s favorite stuff was the moon bounce, but he painted a pumpkin. We even tried out Sean and Daniel in the moon bounce (when only a couple of other 2- and 3-year olds were in it), and Sean (normally Mr. No-Fear) wanted nothing to do with it and immediately crawled out. Daniel, however, was content to crawl to the side, near a corner, and just sit there as the other kids caused a little movement in the bounce so that he’d go up and down.

And do you remember my note yesterday about the local Boy Scout council and how they were recruiting for the Cub Scouts. Well, the school pack had a table at the festival, and I stopped by to find out more about the pack. They start them in first grade now, believe it or not. I got a promotional DVD from the pack (which includes a groovy music video, which I was able to find at this Pack website), and we’ll sit down with Will to see if he’s interested. I had no idea yesterday’s idea would lead to this today, but those are the coincidences of life.

I was also going through one of my backups of the old, dead computer and found my old bookmarks. One of the bookmarks was for a full catalog of the Real Men of Genius radio commercials. Many of them are brilliant. Hopefully, they can give you a few laughs when you get around to them.

More on the dead hard drive later…

Today is a non-family news day. I just have a few links I want to dump out there for people to consider/ponder.

For those of us who have been in Scouting before, you’re probably aware that Scouting is becoming less popular as an extracurricular activity. I was a Cub Scout (and ultimately an Eagle Scout)), and my (and Kellie’s) hope is that Will wants to do Cub Scouting) starting next year. The local council has recently launched a new recruiting campaign tied to less refined characteristics of young boys. In some ways, it’s at odds with how you think of Scouts (A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful…), but at the same time, isn’t this what growing up as a boy should be about?

In no way, shape or form do I expect to ever step up to this weight class — of food eating. Ponder it for a minute. I think this is more calories than Michael Phelps eats in a day.

Lastly, are you still on the fence on who to vote for in the upcoming US presidential election? Or just curious about how well you match up with the positions of the various candidates? Well Glassbooth attempts to help you quantify the level of similarity between what you think is most important (and what you believe, on a simplistic 5-point rating level) and what all 5 major candidates’ positions are. Don’t use this as your only source of decison-making, but it will be thought-provoking if you see a candidate you never thought was right for you might be more right than you think.

I’ll post my results on the 5 candidates closer to election time. Anyone willing to post their results in the comments is always welcome.

Today did not involve anything extraordinary. We had another church fundraiser at Noodles & Company. But we remembered to take our camera with us this time, and we got the video of Sean eating his bean sprouts. (He ate them all again this time, just like the time we first discovered his love of them in late June.)

And while I’m too late for the Olympics, I found this amusing little gymnastics routine to be — what? Inspiring? Confusing? Over-the-top? Any way you look at it, that is still some good skill to be able to do a non-standard routine like that.

OK, so it’s almost a month later. So sue us! In reality, they couldn’t fit us in in September, and once the October books opened up, many of those time slots for annual checkups quickly filled up. But here we are, and Will continues to blow through the physical barriers:

Height & Weight (5 years): 45.25”, 42 pounds

Height & Weight (6 years): 49.5” (+4.25”), 57 pounds (+15 pounds)

Yes, that’s a huge jump. But I think it also reflects about 14 months of growth, as his 5-year checkup was done in August (for a kindergarten physical) and this most recent one is in October. But from a percentile stand point (on the graph), he’s gone from under 95% at age 5 to well over 95% at age 6 on height; the weight is now up to 95% at age 6 (not sure where the weight was at age 5, but much lower).

As for Daniel and his ear infection, he still had a midgrade fever today, so we had to keep him home today. With Will’s checkup today, that meant a lot of juggling of schedules (including both Kellie and I being out of the office at the same time for a short period). He seems to be doing better this evening (temps been down all day), but we’ll see how things are in the morning.

Changing gears off the family, this one made me go - What??? Sometimes, I wonder why people go through with these things. Are they really that self-important? There is a Nebraska state senator who is trying to sue God in court. It got thrown out of court for the most mundane of reasons.

…the kids start getting sick. Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be? So Daniel is the first of the kids to get sick. He has an ear infection (with a fever initially), so he’s been home the past two days. Kellie and I have been splitting time with covering him.

We were able to get a last minute checkup with the ENT today to check on the status of his ear tubes and ear drums, as we knew that both tubes were out. The testing showed that both ear drums are fully healed now, which of course makes his current ear infection a bit more challenging (i.e., no easy drainage). The guidance is to monitor how many more infections he gets (if at all — knock knock) to figure out if more tubes need to go in.

So, what does Daniel do to keep himself occupied? There’s a little TV, some resting and eating, a lot of reading and playing with Matchbox cars. Oh, and there’s this (to the right): reading Sports Illustrated, for the football. (That’s what he’s really interested in reading — seriously.) And no, I haven’t shown him the swimsuit issue yet.

Today isn’t a big day in history. There’s just this bit about some guy named Chris finding an island he called San Salvador. And 96 years ago, Rice University held its opening ceremonies to launch a new institution of higher learning in the then hinterlands of Houston.

I guess someone else got to do the heavy lifting. I, at least, am the beneficiary of these two events. Everyone got to relax today — Kellie headed back to the Folk Festival to see Dale Watson again — and now I just need to figure out how the Skins lost to the Rams today.

Lunch gave us an opportunity to take a few shots of the kids. Not sure why the focus was slightly off on these photos, but I tried to touch them up a little. Sean’s hair gel is courtesy of fish sticks (in case you’re looking for something with exceptional hold).

We caught Sean in all of his glory . Will is also in the video, but this is really about Sean showing off what he can do on the swing set. This was actually the first time he has ever tried hanging from the trapeze bars. And later, after the video was done, Sean actually climbed up the ladder on the big slide without any help. He just figured it out for himself, now that he knew where the steps were.

That’s Sean — Mr. Dangerous.

And if you’re wondering where Daniel is, he’s still taking his nap. The Richmond Folk Festival apparently was a bit much for him.

We did get out to the Richmond Folk Festival, and I’ll be honest — we had a great time. The weather was perfect (mid-70s, a light breeze, mostly sunny). Will still talks about how much fun he had, so I think we’ll want to go back next year.

We actually parked by 11:30am and found a spot just a couple blocks from the festival area (down on Brown’s Island and the Tredegar museum area). We were there before any of the acts started at noon, and we also beat the crowds. Things were definitely getting more crowded by the time we left at 2pm. (The kids needed to get some rest.)

But in the time that we were there, we were able to catch parts of 3 shows, all of which were excellent:

• San Jose Taiko (Japanese ritual drumming)
• Dale Watson (honky tonk country)
• Líadan (Irish)

As we wandered around between stages, we overheard a couple of other acts — a bluegrass and a Persian percussion act stand out. There were many more performances which we didn’t get to stick around to see that I would have enjoyed, but we have kids now. I think Kellie really wants to go back to see Dale Watson tomorrow afternoon. We’ll see — though he did mention that he comes through Richmond a couple times a year. He was very good.

Here are some quick pix and video from the three performances that we did catch. (My apologies on the quality, as everything was taken with a small digital camera at a distance at max optical zoom.) Maybe you can join us for the festival next year.

Been offline for a couple of days, trying out a few things with the blog and continuing the computer recovery process. But I got some photos from Dena earlier this week on Nicholas’s 2-month birthday. And I can also provide you a photo of 6-week old Nicholas. He certainly is growing up — 13 pounds and 24.5 inches. As a comparison, Daniel was 12 pounds and 22.5 inches at 2 months. Of course, he was also 5 weeks premature (versus Nicholas being on-time). But that’s still a healthy baby. Congrats, Dena and Dennis.

As for this weekend, it’s hopefully going to be a touch relaxing. We are planning on visiting the Richmond Folk Festival downtown tomorrow. I think the kids will enjoy hearing the different music and maybe want to get a little exercise in.

We won’t mention the significance of this birthday. We know how you like it low key and everything, so nothing fancy this time. We hope you’ve enjoyed your day, particularly the cake and ice cream and anything else you try. (Golf game scheduled today, maybe?)

Also, Will typed the following note for Grampa on his birthday:

Grampa………happy………birthday………chaa………chaa………..chaa………….chaa

Lou………..la……..la………haaa……..yah……….oww

I think it will make more sense once I get the video for Will’s birthday party finished. Here’s a shot of Grampa with Will about a week before his first birthday (after we had abandoned Richmond because of Hurricane Isabel).

I’m suffering a little because of the loss of about 9 months of photos to find something with Sean and Daniel. So while the first pic above is a repeat (because I like it), I’ll close out with repeat of the shot of 3 generations of Frees. Looks like we need a more recent one. Happy birthday, Dad!

OK, I still don’t have the State Fair slides done. (Gotta work with Kellie on figuring out what the pictures represent in some cases.) Busy day of a long run, a run to drop off recycling, shopping, and yardwork. But I did catch a quick video on the cellphone this evening before Sean’s and Daniel’s bath time. I thought you might enjoy it. (Converting it from the 3GPPS format is a bear. I finally found a decent converter.) The video is actually at double-speed, as the cellphone only takes 15 frames per second, but most videos are 30 frames per second. The boys do not run around like they are part of the Incredibles family.

And congrats to Emily for breaking 1:45 in a half-marathon today. She’s 4 weeks out from the NYC Marathon — looks like she’s rounding into form nicely.

You know, I should think before I post. (Or not post late at night.) The big news with Sean and Daniel is that they are learning their colors. It’s still hard to tell if they’re just guessing right or actually recognize them most of the time. I’d say they are right about 75% of the time, whether they’re being shown an object for the first time or if they are seeing the object again. (That’s why I’m not sure it’s memorization, as they’ll see the same object again but will sometimes say a different color.) Still, it’s kind of cool to see them trying to process colors. And they do usually understand if we ask them, “What color is this?”

Now, for something completely different (to waste time over the weekend) — a World War I flying ace game, where you shoot things down and drop bombs. It’s actually kind of cool, and reminds me of a game like it I used to play a long time ago. But I cannot remember what that game was called. (Maybe someone else remembers.) This is definitely a souped up version.

(I should have enough time tomorrow to get the State Fair pictures and video finished.)

Not a whole lot going on for us right now, though we are in the home stretch for 2008. (I cannot believe it is October already.) I don’t have time right now to post the photos and video (the vice presidential debate is coming on momentarily), but Will and Kellie went to the Virginia State Fair this afternoon.

I believe this is the last time it will be at Richmond International Raceway complex. The State Fair will be at a new complex in Caroline County (near I-95, between Fredericksburg and Richmond) in 2009. I don’t know if we will go next year, but Will will probably want to do it again. I just looked at a map and realized that the new site is right near Kings Dominion and only about 20 minutes from the house, so it’s not too far away. And we’ve got back roads from our house to get in and out and avoid the highway access to the site. So yeah — we might go next year after all. (And maybe with Sean and Daniel, too.)