My Blog

Merry Christmas!!!

This Halloween was my first as an only child! This year, instead of putting on an ordinary costume at the last minute because my whole family has been so busy helping my sisters make theirs, I spent four or five hours on my own costume. For Halloween this year I went to a party at my church for the kids who go to the youth group weekly. The idea was to dress up as a character from your favorite movie or TV show. So after finding out about it at the last minute I decided on dressing as Indiana Jones.

I already had the hat, shirt, boots and satchel. So I went shopping and bought brown pants, but I couldn’t find a good whip so I decided to make one. Problem is we couldn’t find anything to make a whip out of. Monday morning (the day of the party) I began work on a Gaffer’s tape whip.

It took about five hours to finish and you could argue that I wasted the whole day on it but I am proud of my first hand made Halloween costume. Sadly my bull whip was too realistic because everyone I talked to at the party thought it was real and were therefore less impressed than I was hoping they would be. I lost the contest to Snow White’s evil stepmother but the prize wasn’t that important.

Then on Halloween night we went out to Chipotle and had three dollar burrito bowls because we were in costume (dad had gone to work as the Farmer in the Dell so mom dressed as the farmer’s wife).

All in all it was a very interesting Halloween.

Here’s a vimeo of me reading my story, “For Every Time, A Season,” from Time-Traveled Tales at Waterline Studios last month.  http://vimeo.com/78667228

Last month I went go-karting after work with some of the guys from the office at Orlando Kart Center. Luckily my GoPro that I’d loaned out was waiting on my desk when I got to work that morning and a couple of the helmets they use had GoPro mounts on them so I was able to record the action. Highlights from our 3 10-minute races can be found on Vimeo.

— Rich

This summer I had a “real” job as an intern in the IT department at CHEP. CHEP is the company that owns those blue wooden pallets you see at Costco and Wal~Mart and a lot of stores use their plastic produce containers as well. They lease them to companies around the world so that producers can put things on them, and retailers can display the items on the pallets and then send them back to CHEP storage locations to be sent out again to other companies. As part of my job I am learned about the software that keeps track of where all the pallets are in the global system.

While I don’t think I should go into the specifics of what exactly I was working on (proprietary software and techniques and all) I spent my 10 weeks at a desk, on a computer, being helpful to my team. I made friends with the other IT Interns on different teams who all started at the same time I did, and really learned about working in an office environment, something I had only 2 weeks of experience from England doing.

I am really glad to have had this opportunity, and now I hope to be more confident going into the job force for “real” once I graduate next May. For now, I have a few more classes to finish up (along with some fun ones to fill up my time so I can have “full time credit status”) and some part time jobs at the college. It should turn out to be a good last year.

In preparation for my first summer job and my first year at college, I did something that was long overdue: I got my first haircut.

Now it’s not like I was trying not to cut my hair, I just never bothered. And after seventeen and a half years, it was pretty long. Years ago I started to wear it only in one or two braids because otherwise I got too hot and tended to get caught on doorknobs.

The first thirty inches were donated to Locks of Love (which made the haircut free, which means I still have not spent any money on haircuts, though I’ve probably made up for that in shampoo).

It has been quite the change: I have to get used to not sitting on it, it getting in my face when I lean forward and the fact that I can re-do it any time I want in less than thirty seconds and in a wide variety of hairstyles.

I’m happy with how my haircut turned out, but I wonder if it will take seventeen years to get that long again.

Yay! Finally managed to get an iPhone 5 to replace my aging work BlackBerry!

Boo! Rumors are flying around the internet today that the new iPhone will be announced in less than a month!

Guess who finally got an iPhone today?

Not me!

Mom had picked up a cheap phone about 6 months back from Walmart to replace her fairly new flip phone (still under contract) that had somehow stopped working. When I recently discovered that her replacement phone didn’t have Bluetooth and pointed out to her that meant that her Zomm was as useful as a paperweight she renewed her on-again off-again desire for a new phone.

Since she wanted something that she could take and send pictures with, Chris had lamented several times that Mom needed a smartphone, she has been using Dad’s iPad for the last 9 months, and a friend from church had recently shown her their new iPhone (and I’d been told that several times), I figured I had no choice but to help her get an iPhone. Two hours at the AT&T store this afternoon and she is the proud owner of a new white iPhone 4S (with AppleCare+).

So, if you call Mom on her cell and she doesn’t answer, it is possible that she doesn’t remember how to answer the new phone, so leave a message. She may eventually remember how to play the message, and then will just need to remember how to make a call. On second thought, maybe you should just email her instead for the next week or so…

Happy Anniversary!

One year ago I came to live with the Bingles. At first I was a little sad not being with all my brothers and sisters anymore, but I really love my new sisters and my new mom and dad! They are always calling me “good girl” and “buddy” and “honey” and “sweetie” and telling me that they love me! I really like it here! They even try to play “wrestle” with me sometimes but do not like it when I bite.

I have even trained my new family to give me food when I do little cute things for them! You know, simple things like sitting down, waving a paw at them, lying down, folding my paws, rolling over, backing up, standing on my hind legs, doing somersaults, and even bumping their hands with my nose! People are silly!

My four favorite things, besides eating of course, are chewing ice cubes, playing “keep away” with my kong, swimming in the pool, and catching frisbees in the back yard! My family really seems to like doing those things with me, too! Well, except chewing ice cubes. They are usually eating something different or trying to do something that they do not want me to help with when they give me an ice cube.

During the day, dad goes to a place they call “work” and I stay home with mom and my sisters while my sisters do school on the computers upstairs. Sometimes I sit with them while they are doing school. That is where I learned how to type! They usually tell me “no” when I try to type things, so it has taken me months to type this when they are not looking.

On the days that dad does not go to work, we sometimes ride in the van to visit grandma and grandpa. Riding in the van always makes me sleepy, but when we get off the fast road I wake up and get real excited because I know that I am going to get to see grandma and grandpa real soon!

I have even taken a really long van ride to see my sister Ashley and visit my other grandma and grandpa. Riding that far in the van was hard, but it was worth it because I got to run around in something my family called “snow”! It is kinda like rain but not as wet and it is cold like ice cubes! It even tasted kinda like ice cubes, but not nearly as crunchy.

Ashley is visiting us for a few days and I have heard my family talk about possibly going swimming! I have not gotten to go swimming for months! What was that? They want to go to the store to get me a new kong to celebrate me living with them for a year? Gotta go!

Gypsy