Building Drew's Pinewood Derby Car

Drew took part in his first Cub Scout pinewood derby last Saturday. We didn't exactly set any land-speed records with our performance (to say the least), but we had a good time working together on building the car and getting it ready to race.


Tracing the car design


Tracing the car design


I tried to keep my assistance to a minimum (unlike most of the other dads, who appear to have side jobs as NASCAR engineers, but I did help by cutting the block into the desired shape.


Drew sanding it down.


Still sanding


The paint schematic.


Drew working on making the car look good. He really succeeded on this score as our car looked a lot better than it performed.


The track.


Drew and a few of his Cub Scout buddies.


The proud car owner/designer/manufacturer.

Really, Seattle Times? Really?

I would have possibly let this slide if it had appeared in the Seattle P-I, what with the fact that the P-I shuttered their print operation this last week, but this latest occurrence of my pet peeve comes courtesy of The Seattle Times, now Seattle's only daily newspaper. For those of you who may not remember, I have a slight irritation when I see misspelled words or poor grammar in public places (See here, here, and here for examples). The qualification about "public places" is important, as I have no problem with misspelled words in emails, letters, text messages, or other personal form of communication. My hackle is raised (yes, I did just use the word "hackle") when someone who obviously should know better (i.e., journalists) make very noticeable mistakes. But enough background, check out this misspelling that appeared on the front page of yesterday's online version of The Seattle Times (I've drawn a yellow box around the text at issue but click on the photo to see a larger version):

"100,000 in state breating easier"

The tooth fairy visits Seattle

Do you want to see a letter to and from the tooth fairy?
Drew had a tooth pulled the other day and wrote a letter and drew a picture. He also got $5 and a note in return.


Dear tooth fairy,
another tooth is gone! It hurted very bad because the dentist had to pull it out. It is very big and pointy. I hope you take care of it.

Your friend,

/Drew/

Drew Wilson

P.S. My birthday is on the 17th wich is tomorrow. Here's a picture on back.

BYE








To: tooth fairy
From: Drew

A pondering on language from this morning's commute

As the two or three regular readers of my blog know, I am a fan of language and words. I think part of this stems from the fact that I love reading the written word and part from the fact that I spend most of my waking hours either reading or writing (or, perhaps its the other way around: that my love of reading and career choice have root in my love of language). Regardless, here is pondering I had while riding the bus to work:

The "big idea" is that it is very interesting to me how moving one little word around a sentence can have a significant effect on the "flavor" and tone of the phrase. Here is an example, taken from a real-life experience this morning:

-I overheard a woman speaking Russian into her cell phone on my bus this morning.

-I overheard a Russian woman speaking into her cell phone on my bus this morning.

-I overheard a woman speaking into her Russian cell phone on my bus this morning.

-I overheard a woman speaking into her cell phone on my Russian bus this morning.

OK, I know this isn't the most profound, "Deep Thoughts" type of observation, but I found it interesting how different the sentence was just by moving the word "Russian" around. Perhaps you did too?

P.S. For the grammatically obsessed among you, check out Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss.

Adam visits Seattle

In the next day or two I will try to post a recap from the great weekend I had last weekend. My buddy Adam flew from Austin, TX to Seattle for a few days and we jam-packed our time together full of fun experiences. We were also fortunate enough to have our friend Peder drive up from Portland late Saturday just to hang for a few. Instead of posting the many photos from the weekend individually, I went ahead and set up a slideshow. The only bummer about this slideshow is that I can't describe each photo, but I will try to add some details in when I post the recap.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Seen in a Seattle church

I went to a wedding a few weeks back and it was held in this huge old church near UW here in Seattle. The ceremony was very nice, and after it concluded we all went downstairs to the reception. As I walked one of the hallways outside the reception hall, I saw this sign on one of the doors. I had to take a picture because, to me, it seemed a relic of ages past, when nearly everyone smoked and it would not have been a crazy thought to smoke in church. The fact that they had a "no smoking policy" implies that people would have felt comfortable smoking in church in the absence of such a policy.