Rained Out

Jono was very excited to play his first baseball game tonight. He has been practicing for a few weeks now. He had on his new gray shirt (his team is the Electric Eels!) and his black hat and he was ready to go. The whole family was ready to show up and cheer him on... but it rained out. Apparently children with metal bats is considered "dangerous" in lightning storms. Whatev.

Cub Scout Baseball Night

BATTER UP! This evening Jono's Cub Scout den attended a college baseball game between Baylor University and University of Texas at Arlington. With his new-found interest in baseball, Jono had a great time. There were only a couple hundred people in attendance, so we could choose seats right at first base!

This is a fancy picture that I took as the sun was going down. Yes, I know, I'm a pretty amazing photographer.

Behind the park is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Brazos river.

FOUL! This foul ball landed a few seats over from us, and the college students who caught it felt the intense cuteness pressure of Jono in his Cub Scout uniform, so they gave the ball to him! It was the highlight of his night!

By the eighth inning, he was getting restless, so we took a walk down to lonely left field. Man, these fields are big compared to the little league!

At some point in this wonderful evening with my youngest son, I realized something about the game of baseball. I think I like it. Why did it take me 41 years to figure this out, you may ask? I think because my exposure to the game has been limited to little league and one pro team. That team was the Houston Astros in the 1970's when they still played in the Astrodome. Have you ever been to the Astrodome? You sit about a mile away from the players. They are small. You can't tell one from another. You can't hear the crack of the bat or the pop of the ball hitting the catcher's mit. You can't watch the sun go down or feel the wind.

I hear people talk about loving baseball parks, but I could never relate until tonight. A small park is a good thing. It ranks up there with doing something special with your son, or taking home a foul ball.

Oh yes, Baylor won 10 to 7.

May Plans for Honduras

Ten engineering students and a few other folks are planning to take another trip to Honduras next month. We will spend two weeks there upgrading our pico hydro electric system in the rural village called Danta Uno where we worked last summer. Our plan is to replace the Kill-A-Watt meters and fuses with a new electronically resetting circuit breaker. It works like this: if you use too many lights or appliances, the current limit will be exceeded and it will disconnect your house from the power. After 15 seconds it automatically reconnects if you have lessened your load by unplugging something.

We also plan to design and build a distribution grid for a new system in another village where we have some relationships, Pueblo Nuevo. The system there provides lights for a church and a house, plus charges cell phones. We want to expand it to bring power to the 50-60 houses there. We used a GPS receiver to get the latitude and longitude of each home in the village, and then we used Google Earth to design the layout. I will post pictures soon.

Yard Day

I was awakened this morning by a cat clawing deep into my left big toe. Bad Kitty (a.k.a. Henry) crawled under the covers and decided to attack me in my sleep. He ran away when I yelped and kicked, but a few minutes later he came back to sharpen his claws on the side of the bed. So I whacked him with a pillow.

These pictures have nothing to do with my feline alarm clock, but they are pretty. The whole family worked in the yard yesterday; we mowed and edged and swept and planted some new plants. Ryan even came over and got started on the decking of the tree house. I love spring.

To Quote a Starfish...

Around the Orangehouse, we like to quote SpongeBob from time to time. One of my favorites is when SpongeBob's best friend, Patrick Star, says:

"The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma."

Here is a 30 second video of Jono's attempts to say this!