This year’s winning design. We found this design on a halloween mask website and I edited a color picture into black and white and modified the brightness and contrast to make a stencil. The carving ended up not looking a whole lot like the mask but the result was a scary face that looks good. I’m including our past 3 pumpkins. This is our 4th consecutive time winning the competition. My favorite is 2004.
2005
2004
2003
I came across the blog of Scott Adams (Dilbert creator: Link) and he was bragging about all the wonderfully successful things he has done. There was a link to an article about his economic plan which caught my eye. There are 9 points to his plan and here they are.
1. Make a will
2. Pay off your credit cards
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support
4. Fund your 401k to the maximum
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it
7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio
I’ve started a new weight-loss competition that will run from 9/13 – 12/12 and along with this competition I’ve learned enough PHP to create an awesome website to use to track everyone’s weight. Soon I will add a feature to allow anyone to come and create their own competition and invite family and friends. You should check it out and sign up at http://www.thintopia.com
I ran my first 1/2 Marathon today. I finished in 2:09:35. Not too bad for a fat guy. Although, I was in the Clydesdale division and I didn’t place so there are faster fat guys out there. My knees and calves are killing me right now. Enjoy the clip below.
My wife was checking on a pizza in the oven and burned her thumb. A minute later she blacked out and crashed to the floor. She’s okay now, she just has a headache and sore shoulder from the fall. We realized that our lukwerks camera was setup in the kitchen and probably caught the whole thing on video and sure enough it did. She had a fun time watching herself crash. She doesn’t remember it happening nor the few minutes after when I found her laying on the floor.
So I became a homeowner a few months ago and now that Spring has srung I’m discovering that the lawn, once covered in snow, is the home of several thousand dandelions. I used Scotts Turf Buidler Plus 2 a couple of weeks ago and the dandelions are dying but still there. Yesterday was windy and the air was filled with the little seeds (mostly from my neighbor’s lawn). My neighbor has a section of lawn adjacent to my property that is pure dandelions and he hasn’t even mowed it yet! So no matter what I do I’m probably going to have the same problem later on as his weeds spread to my lawn.
Anyway, I decided to start digging some of my dandelions out to prevent them from spreading even more. I spent about an hour and put a very small dent in them. After I was done it looked like I had given Medusa a haircut. Oh the joys of owning a home!