Photo Post #2 Squirrel Fishing

Alright last time I tried to do the photo post blogger kept messing up and didn't load all of the pictures which is why I only had 5 photos last time. I will see if I can exceed 5 photos this time. I pick up the adventure shortly after Matt and I finished with the pykrete. We decided to go fishing and all we needed was some line. We decided that yarn would make good line since what we intended to fish for was SQUIRRELS! So this first photo has to do with us getting yarn.

Yep. This is me in the Bay Centre standing in front of the fishing supply store. They were very nice.

This photo is of me showing off our fishing gear. Yeah that is a bag of unsalted roasted peanuts and the bag at my foot is from LewisCraft and it does have yarn and an utility knife in it.

It is hard to tell because the photo is so small but Matt has the biggest smile on his face ever. he caught the first squirrel. It actually isn't this particular squirrel but this is the first one that we got a photo of. By the end of the day we realized that it was a lot easier to catch the black squirrels than the grey squirrels. The only grey squirrel we caught was Matt's first one so we have no proof.

This is Matt's squirrel, Matt was about 40 cm from the little guy when he took this photo. The squirrel eventually did chew through the string and take the nut.

Here the squirrel realizes that instead of going for a single nut he could go for the whole bag. We quickly rushed in to save our stash of nuts. Take that Chip. Later Dale showed up and tried to steal our unguarded bag as well but we also saved teh nuts from him. Unlike Donald Duck though we did throw a couple of nuts to the squirrels as "rewards" for being good test subjects. (That and they are so cute how can you say no to them?)

Once again I have hit upon the magic limit of 5 photos. I will leave you hanging a bit and finish the photo adventure sometime this weekend. For now enjoy what is here.

Photo Post #1 Pykrete

So the long awaited post has arrived. The way I think I want to run this post is I will present the photo and then explain a little about it. Enjoy.

This first picture here is me with a block of pykrete. What is pykrete you ask? Why only the secret weapon that was going to win the second world war! That is before the a-bomb was invented and before long range bombers were built. In other words it is a cool idea that was abandoned as having no useful purpose. In reality its useful purpose is to entertain Chris and Matt and keep them out of Maryanne's hair for a while (and in it for a while when filling small garbage cans with water and sawdust in the laundry room)


This is me at Beacon Hill park here in Victoria trying to melt the pykrete. I'm using the creme brulee torch that we got as a wedding present. Conclusion - pykrete doesn't so much melt as smolder, it is soaked, frozen sawdust after all. Also it melts/smolders a lot slower then just regular clean ice.

We next decided to try and cut it in half. this is Matt sawing pykrete in the middle of Beacon Hill park. We found that it doesn't chip like ice does when you try and cut it. Instead it cuts just like wood. Really dense hardwood that is. After a long time of cutting we got tired bored and decided that we really should go squirrel fishing.

This is the last moment that we spent with the pykrete. We sawed off a corner and decided to abandon it at the park. As is traditional in Victoria when you don't want something leave it outside with free written on it and it will vanish. We thought that we would try to see if anyone would take it. Nobody did to our knowledge.

Well That concludes the pykrete segment of the adventure. More to follow.

Inner Monologue

Okay so I know that you come to the site to see what fun stuff Chris has going on and that I still owe all of you (especially Matt) photos of the squirrel fishing and all of that. However that isn't what is on my mind at the moment. What is on my mind is the question of what is success? And secondly should we strive for it?

The reason I have been asking these questions is this week I started work. What I do is call people in the evening hours and try to convice them to fill in a survey for the BC government. It is putting food on the table and is paying the bills and it is even somewhat interesting but it isn't where or how I want to end up. I haven't yet reached the conclusion of what I consider success but I have reached some points that I consider my basic axioms of success and I hope to build from there.

Axiom of Success #1 - Do not make things that are completely outside of your control a condition for your success. (example - Saying that I am successful only if it is sunny outside is going to lead to dissapointment because I cannot control the weather. . . yet.)

Axiom of Success #2 - Success in one area of life does not mean success in all areas of your life. (example - All right so I beat Civ III on deity level, that does not mean anything in any other part of my life.)

Axiom of Success #3 - Success is individualistic, mine looks different than yours. (example - You may say that you need to get a book published to be successful I might say you need to wlak on the moon.)

And that is about as far as I got. Well sort of. I have figured out what basic success would entail for me in the categories of physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, and relationships (family and friend oriented ones) . Those were the easy ones. the question that I am wrestling with is about career success. What do I feel that I need to accomplish in order to consider myself successful in my career. Or can I know that right now? I think of Mr. Holland's Opus where he always considered himself to be teaching temporarily but still giving it his all and at the end realizing that his life's work has been a success.

To help us along the way let's look at what different views of success have been throughout my life.

Kindergarten - Grow up to be a Saskatchewan roughrider.

Grade 3 - Be a civil engineer and design cool structures and bridges and stuff like that. In the mean time teach everyone else around me about this and get them to love and understand it.

Grade 6 - Grow up to be a nuclear engineer (physicist) and design/discover cold fusion. In the mean time teach everyone else around me about this and get them to love and understand it.

Grade 10 - Grow up to be an areonautical engineer and design rockets and satellites. In the mean time teach everyone else around me about this and get them to love and understand it.

Grade 12- Grow up to be a chemical engineer and chemicals that will help the world. In the mean time teach everyone else around me about this and get them to love and understand it.

Year off - Study education and teach others how to love and enjoy science.

1st year University - grow up to teach in a small town school inspiring kids to try this with science and to have fun with the subject.

4th Year University and 1st year teaching - Find a school that I like and redesign their entire science program from scratch focusing on activity based learning with scalable activities that can be approached on multiple levels to target teh high and low end students at teh same time. Also be on top of my evaluation and have a built in self evaluation for my classes so that they improve every year. By my 5th - 10th year teaching be an officially recognized Mastery Level teacher.

Now - ? Now a teaching related job would be awesome. I miss teaching so much. But I no longer know what I would consider success. For instance if I found a career out here as a park naturalist and got to design educational hikes and public education programs I would be using my degree and I would have a good job but would I consider myself successful? I don't know.

So that rambling helped clear the mind abit but i still don't know why God brought me out here and i still don't know what I would consider successful. But as I figure stuff out I will keep everyone posted. Oh and I promise that before Sunday night there will be squirrel fishing photos on this blog.

Chris out.

Chris in Lego

So I normally don't get caught up in memes but this one is a very Chris like meme. Below I present you with two lego versions of myself. One was created be me and the other by Maryanne. She thought it would be funny to have you guys all pick which you think is more like me. Oh and if you want to be able to make a lego person just visit this site.

First Chris as seen by Chris.

Chris as seen by Maryanne

So there are your choices folks go ahead and pick.

After a long absence.

Wow has a lot every changed in this world of ours since I killed my last blog at the end of June. I know it was a cruel thing to do but my situation was changing so much and it just wasn't going to adequately describe me anymore. So I have this new one now. This new site will tell the story of my side of the adventures, trails, and tribulations that I go through while living in this strange new land that is Victoria with a strange new person (Maryanne). The last question to answer before I get started is why did I take so long to start again? The simple answer is I didn't want to use a template but have my own design. Yeah I know that I used a template, but I warn you now that the site will be changing over the next while as I find time in between other things to change it.

So what can you expect in the next while? Well there are the tales of squirrel fishing, Mount Doug and sappy pant bottoms to tell. But that is for another post.