Popular Mechanics for Kids

I was trying to explain welding to Hallie the other day when her eyes lit up. “Oh,” she said, “that’s in the ‘Undersea Water Creatures’ video!” She marched over and popped the DVD in and sure enough one of the kids on the show does some underwater welding!

A lot of the kid videos out there are lousy. Either they’re too sugary or just plain dumb. I can stand to watch very few of them. Popular Mechanics for Kids, though, is an exception.
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Happy fall

Doc reminds me that Sunday was the autumnal equinox, making it the first official day of fall.

Goodbye, summer. Hello, cooler weather!

Cecilia

Cecelia
Simon and Garfunkel

Celia, you’re breaking my heart
You’re shaking my confidence daily
Oh, Cecilia, I’m down on my knees
I’m begging you please to come home
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Its a beautiful day

Its a beautiful day. Nothing special is happening other than the special things that always happen while we’re making ourselves too busy to notice.

Take a moment today to stop and appreciate where you are.

Au Revoir, Marcel Marceau

Pretend you’re a comic. Try to get a laugh without telling a raunchy joke.

Ok, try to get a laugh without telling a joke.

Now, try to get a laugh without saying anything at all. For over half a century the master French mime Marcel Marceau did exactly that. Monsieur Marceau passed away Saturday at the age of 84. For generations he defined what it is to be a mime. To be a mime you have to be quick at improvisation and also a keen observer of human behavior. No one did it better than Marcel Marceau.

And, no, there is no report on what his last words were.

Clean cars, clean conscience

We just got through washing our cars and boy do they look great! In spite of the water restrictions we weren’t even sneaky about it. In fact, we were hoping someone would call the water police on us because then we could show how we did it completely with reclaimed rainwater.
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On my reading list: HOAs

I am such a geek when it comes to government. Listen to this: last week the thought actually crossed my mind that writing a book on the power of homeowners associations might be fun. The thought of a homeowners association essentially being a private government intrigues me. If city and county governments derive their power from the state, from where do homeowners associations derive theirs?
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