Mighty Beanz

Every now and then I come across a toy that leads to a minor obsession. So it has been with Mighty Beanz.

Mighty Beanz are small collectible bean-shaped characters. Moulded in plastic, with a printed surface, they contain a ball bearing, so the bean rolls with an irregular flip-flop motion. I had something similar to Mighty Beanz when I was young. The beans I had as a boy were bigger, about the size of a Cadbury's Creme Egg, but worked on the same principle, and as I recall I had maybe four or five of them. I had a wooden race track with three sloped levels that I raced them down, and spent many happy hours doing so.

Here's a handful of Beanz to show you what they're like. The short one in the front is a Mega Bean, a supposedly "Ultra Rare" Bean, though if you buy Beanz in six-packs you always get one of these.

This is a storage case, Series 2. The storage pods are cleverly designed to hold a bean, normal or Mega, with a pop-lock motion, so they are easy to put in and out, and spin round in place to view the name and number on the back.

                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                       
This is a flip track, with a couple of obstacles installed. Now, for under $20 at Toys R Us you can get the flip track with one obstacle, a storage case, and a dozen Beanz including one Mega Bean. You put a bean on the flip track, run it down to the end, and then flip it back to catch it again (all being well) in the wide part held in the palm of your hand. I like this, it develops hand-eye co-ordination, and makes an interesting klik-klak sound as the bean rolls. You can do other tricks with the flip Track too.

So far, so good. This is where the sane purchaser would call it a day. You've got a dozen different Beanz, enough to play several different games (there's a booklet included with some suggestions), and somewhere to store them. If all you wanted was one bean and a flip track, you could spend less than $10.

Unfortunately these are collectible Beanz, and there are more than a dozen different Beanz to collect. If you counted the sockets in the bean case you'd find it held 50 Beanz, but in fact there are 100 Beanz in Series 2 (currently on the shelves in Toys 'R' Us), another 100 in Series 1 (no longer available in the US through most bricks-and-mortar retailers), another 100 in series 3 (available online but I haven't seen them in the toyshops here yet), and in Australia where they originated, they've reached series 5. In fact I've learnt that these are merely the 2010 Beanz, and there were older series around 2002-2003. These older Beanz are very rare now, especially in mint condition.

There are also specials, supernumeraries to each series, so since the 2010 series 2 starts with Bean 117 (they each have their name and number on the back) I surmise that there are 16 specials in Series 1. The specials don't come in the regular 3, or 6, or 10 packs of Beanz, so you're going to have to find them by other means.
If you wanted to collect every different design of bean and special in every 2010 or later series, that'd be 500 Beanz and about 100 specials, plus the storage cases to hold them in. The beans are about 80c each new in packs if you search around, so if you never bought a double you'd still have to spend  around $480 on Beanz, and another $5-15 on each case (prices vary wildly online), so let's call it $600.

                                                                                                                                         
Uh oh, these guys aren't part of a regular series either. They are in Mighty Beanz Machinez packs. You get a vehicle and a Bean, and the Bean rolls over and over as you roll the vehicle along. At least here you know what vehicle and what Bean you will get. In the 3, 6 and 10 packs most of the Beanz are hidden, so you will soon start getting duplicates.

                                                                                                           

Hmm. Beanz Bodz. These are rubbery sheaths that you can pop a Bean into, and make it look like a viking, wizard, rock guitarist, and so on. The Bodz come with Specials too, so if you want the bean from a Bod, you have to buy the Bodz packs, one bean and Two Bodz (one hidden) to a pack.

You may recognise that the Bean on the right is Darth Vader from Star Wars, and that brings me to the next collection dilemma. In addition to the regular Beanz series, and the specials, and the Machinez (maybe 10-15 types so far at $7 a pop), and the Bodz (39 that I know of), there are also licensed Beanz for Star Wars (60 officially in the set but I have Beanz numbered up to 88 already), Star Wars - The Clone Wars (no idea how many), Marvel Superheroes (60 again, supposedly), D C Superheroes (54), and Disney Pixar Cars (54).

So where does it end? Could an individual child collect all the Mighty Beanz? Probably not, unless they had very indugent parents. If you try to buy every Bean in a series new in the shops (and btw I'm not sure that is actually possible), to get the 100th bean you have a 99/100 chance of getting a duplicate, so statistically you'd have to buy 100 Beanz to get that last one, making it very expensive.

As kids, the playground swap might be the way to go, but that presupposes that you have enough friends to swap with, and that they have the bean you want and are willing to trade. As an adult collector that's not possible, so I have to resort to eBay.

On eBay I was able to obtain the entire 2010 Series 1 (with just one missing Bean) for $80, because a father/son combination had managed to get them all, and then the boy's interest waned. I'm now in the process of trying to fill Series 2 and 3, mostly from one seller, who offers Beanz at around $1.25 or so each, but up to $10 for the rarer Mega Beanz. At present, even on eBay, not every Bean I need is listed, but I have high hopes that I'll do it, and it'll work out a lot cheaoper than trying to find the Beanz in the shops.

For me I think it'll end there, for now. I'll have 300 individual designs, plus a lot of special (non-series) Beanz, plus all the ones I bought that were duplicates before I realized I could never complete my collections this way. I may even sell some of my excess Beanz on eBay if I can organise myself to do it.

So why does a 45 year old man want to collect Mighty Beanz? They're shiny and colorful, fun to play with, and one day my son will be old enough to play with them too - and that latter excuse will allow me to buy a lot of toys.

Philips DVD Player

When we moved into our house two years and two days ago, we needed to get two DVD players that were either multi-regional, or could be decoded to make them multi-regional.

DVDs, and Blu-Rays, are theoretically restricted to play in certain regions around the world. This is to prevent free market trade across international boundaries (at least, I can think of no other good reason). However it is possible to ignore these regions, which we needed to do since the bulk of our DVDs are from the UK in region 2, and US machines are programmed to recognise only region 1 disks.

The Philips DVD player Beth chose for the job was one we could "hack" to remove the region restrictions, and for a while it gave good service. However after about a year one of them stopped working, and we were bought a replacement. Then the replacement started playing up, and by experiment we found it was the HDMI connection that wasn't working. HDMI is the one-cable interface that gives the best quality sound and picture, and thus very desireable.

Beth took that player to her craft room, as it could still work with other cables, and we replaced it with a more expensive pre-deregionalized Pioneer DVD player.

Now the other Philips player has started acting up, blacking out the screen and pausing play intermittently. Sometimes it all comes back after a few seconds, sometimes the screen stays black but the souind comes back.  We think this may be due to dust on the laser, and that a good blast with canned air may fix the problem, so we're going to try that, but I have to say I'm disappointed in these machines, and won't be buying Philips anymore. I expect things to last more than a couple of years before going wrong, and I've never had so much trouble with a DVD player before,despite being used for years in a much older and dustier house.

Until we can try the canned air trick we've moved the Pioneer into the family room, and happily it's working fine.

Normal Service May be Resumed, Eventually

It's been a while since my last post, but I have a very good reason. On 23rd March at 12:27am my wife gave birth to our first child, a son, Edward Alexander. It's not been an easy road, we had a couple of miscarriages on the way, so this boy is very prescious to us. He's also my father's first grandson and only the second grandchild, so he carries the responsibility of passing our family name onto future generations.
As you can imagine my time has been, and will be, greatly occupied with the little lad. I have another blog for Edward news, so anyone who wants to is welcome to follow his Ed Ventures at:

http://martin-edventures.blogspot.com/ 

Right now it's mostly daiper change and feeding news, but my wife and I hope to continue relating his progress for many years. The Ed Ventures blog is the prime news source for most of Ed's relatives to find out how he's doing, as his family is spread over the US from coast to coast, and the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile this blog is still live, and I'll be posting things here as they occur to me and I find the time, but I'll be keeping baby news on the Ed Ventures blog as much as I can.

Second Day of Spring.... SNOW DAY!

We awoke unexpectedly to several inches of snow that had fallen silently and stealthily overnight, and indeed was still falling.

My car was outside, and was going to need clearing before I could attempt to drive anywhere.

The trees all around were carrying a great weight of snow, so though they looked pretty the branches were sagging badly. The snow was almost vertical, and with no wind to shake the branches it was all piling on.

Pretty view down across the cul-de-sac, the trash cans left out overnight wearing caps of snow. Aaah.

Around 7:20am Beth headed off for work. Her car having been in the garage overnight needed no clearing, and the snow crunched gaily undertire.

Ugh. I cleared my car wiondows and hood and then tried to put it in the garage so I wouldn't have to clear it a second time, with the snow still falling. In fact I couldn't go forwards up the driveway slope at all until I'd cleared the snow in front of the wheels, and these skidmarks show how my front wheels were dancing around trying to get a grip. Hmmm.

Three inches at 7am had turned to four by eight, measured on our patio table, which is near enough to the house to be slightly shaded from driving snow.

Just before I measured this Beth came back home. She'd spent about 40 minutes slipping about on the roads at 20mph top speed, but with no snow cleared off even the major NW Expressway (the city owns just one snowplow), she wisely turned back as soon as she safely could. I decided to call in as well, as it was just too treacherous to risk a smash. The Manager I spoke to was still stuck at work from the overnight shift, as it was too dangerous to drive home!

Then it was time to check our trees and garden, and shake a few branches to to to ease their snow burden. As I looked out back I noticed our gazebo seemed a but shorter than usual.

Something wrong there. I put up the ladder to discover that the roof had caved in under the weight of snow. I had hoped I might brush it clear, but with the roof girders bent down like an inverted umbrella, that was going to be difficult.

Further investigation showed that the canvas roof had ripped at some of the seams and part of the roof had caved in. I shook down some snow, but the damage was done. We'll have to decide if we can repair this, or if we want to replace the Gazebo.

With the gazebo beyond help, I went round the cul-de-sac knocking snow off the trees to try to save their branches. Our neighbor Darren came out to head off to work, but he has a big 4x4 pickup and a different route, so we watched him slush off and had a chat with another neighbor before taking a turn round the block.

Too late for this tree, this big branch had broken off under the weight of snow. We heard a crack a couple of minutes before we saw this, but we think that was a different tree. Just to the bottom left of the basketball hoop you can see the light patch were the branch broke off.

On Lynbrook, our nearest bigger road, the snow was churned into tracks, but still very treacherous if taken too fast.

To prove our point, a large 4x4 pickup came past at speed and started fishtailing. We didn't get it on video, and luckily there were no other vehicles for him to hit, but he left these tracks.

This tree was split in two by the snow.

At least the children can enjoy snowdays, with most schools closed. These two had a superb snowfort going, and a wheelbarrow full of snowballs. Now all they needed was a target. Time to be elsewhere.

Death of a Cellphone

I've only owned four cellphones in my life, up until Saturday. The first one I bought (a Philips) I bought I passed onto my parents. The second that replaced it I lost (but found some years later packed in a boardgame box, but sadly now useless). The third I still have, but as it's tied to a UK net I had to replace it when I arrived in the USA. Those first three phones were all on the Orange network.

On Beth's advice I got a 1-year prepaid plan with T-Mobile, and a cheap (<$20) phone. The plan got me 1,000 minutes for $100 a 1 year's airtime, which may seem expensive per minute, but as I used only 300 minutes in 2010 and 600 in 2011, I'm still using that original $100 today, after adding a few more dollars once every year to keep the plan active for another 12 months.

As a comparison, there are several unlimited plans for prepaid phones around the $45-55 a month mark, a 2-year contract with any of the main companies typically runs at $60-80 a month, and the cheapest prepaid offering we have at Walmart is a Tracphone for $10, for which you'd need to buy a $20 card every 3 months to have 120 minutes airtime to use in those 3 months. As I average less than 40 minutes a month, even that is more than I currently need. 

Old phone left, new phone right

The phone served me well for a couple of years, with the occasional misbehaviour when the alarm would sound at the wrong time. I use my phone more as a watch and alarm clock than an actual phone, so that alarm malfunction was always a niggle.

On Saturday beth and I went shopping, and the phone failed to ring when she called me. It had been acting up a bit for a few weeks, and I think the circuits fried themselves inadvertantly. The profiles would reset without prompting, and the speaker got very quiet.

Time for a new phone then. Luckily we were already headed near a T-mobile outlet in the Valley River Mall, so I popped in, chose a similar Nokia phone from a selection of four cheap phones (under $50), and the staff were able to port all my details from the old sim card to the new one, so I was able to walk out of the store within ten minutes with a new working phone for under $25.

Car re-Licensing in the US

Having had my car almost two years, the time has come to relicense it. In the UK it would currently cost £245 to get a 1 year tax disk for my 2007 Mazda 3, though actually my engine size (2 litres) appears to be a 1.6L in the UK. In the US it cost $86 for 2 years, so $ for £ about 1/6 of the cost.

The process is simple. The DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) sends me a letter reminder that my registration is due (the vehicle registration is equivalent to a UK tax disk), I go online to renew it (takes 5 minutes), and a few days later my new stickers arrive in the mail. All I do is put the 2014 stickers over the 2012 stickers in the bottom right corner of the license plate, and it's done, for the next two years. There is no MOT (for US readers, that's a test that your vehicle is roadworthy, and non-polluting) in our City, and only Portland in all or Oregon requires an emissions test. In case you're wondering about pollution, the air here is the cleanest I've ever known in a city, with mosses and lichens growing on rocks and trees even at the busiest intersections.

I could, if I chose, pay for a new pair of plates and get a new number, background picture, or even make up my own registration plate, but all these options cost extra, so I didn't. Maybe one year I'll get my own special plates, but for now the dollars are more use elsewhere.

For people wondering about gas prices, we are currently paying around $4 per US Gallon here in Eugene, prices varying between $3.88 and $4.19 depending on where you go. We usually fill up at our local Fred Meyer because it's close and we get 3c per gallon off just by having a Fred Meyer loyalty card (which is free). If we spend enough in a month (on anything they sell, not just gas) we get 10c off per gallon. The average UK price in February was £5.11 per US Gallon, though gas (petrol) is sold in litres there, at £1.35 per litre.

Dark and Cold

The clocks went forward this weekend, in the middle of my 3-day 7am shift run. The consequence was that, while on Saturday I drove to work in blazing sunshine, on Sunday and Monday it was still pitch black. Did I get to enjoy the extra hour of daylight in the evenings? Of course not, I was so tired that last night I was in bed by 8pm and fast asleep by 8:30pm. By 8am it's light again though, so I guess anyone not driving to work before 7am is fine, which will include me as I have no more 7am starts scheduled.

 It snowed last night to add to the fun. Here in the valley (about 350ft elevation) we just got a smattering, enough to require scraping the car windows and being careful driving, but up in the mountains there was up to 4 feet of snow in one go. Many schools are closed, or delaying their starts, which makes great fun for working parents. In the US a few snow days are expected every year, and built into the education schedule. In London this amount of snow would cause transport chaos. Odd to remember that on Friday I was sitting out on the patio at lunchtime eating a salad.

I finally get a 2-day weekend, albeit on a Tuesday/Wednesday, my first in over a month, unless you count the time I spent off work with the 'flu on 21st-23rd February. Split weekends have the advantage that you don't have to work so many days straight, but a proper 2-day break is really required to recharge the batteries. I booked off the coming weekend anyway so my boss couldn't schedule me for 7am starts, so Beth and I can enjoy some weekend time together, and maybe have a mutual shopping trip.

Has Spring Sprung?

Only a few days ago we had some snow flurries, and there's more possible this week, with possible settling on the valley floor. Meantime narcissi, crocuses and primroses springing up in our garden and around the neighbourhood, with the daffodils just behind, and the trees are putting out buds. The clocks go forward next Saturday night.

Annual Inventory

On 29th February my WaMart store undertook its annual inventory, and for the first time I was present for much of the day. We'd been building up to this for weeks, counting and recounting stock on the shelves and in the backroom, rearranging the backroom bins, and trying to keep things as neat as possible.

The day itself was very dull. Most of the Electronics staff were in for a full shift, but we were very restricted on what we could. The actual counting is done by an external company, so for the day of the count we were allowed only to serve customers - no zoning (tidying up and returning misplaced stock to the shelves), no working of freight, no picking fresh stock from the backroom, no module setting or anything else. Just customer service. As the count was daytime on a Wednesday, there weren't that many customers to serve, especially with so many staff in.

The count went slowly but smoothly enough, but by the time I left at 10pm it was still in the post-editing stage. I was at work again at 8am the next day, and we were still not allowed to do much, as some wildly variant counts were being re-checked. Initial reports are that our shrink (missing stock, usually stolen) was up slightly on last year, but not terrible. I heard that the Cell Phone center alone had lost about $10,000 of stock, remarkable as the phones are all locked away in cupboards until a customer asks for one, but possibly explained by the sacking late last year of a member of the cell phone department who hadn't been bothering to count the stock properly (which is supposed to occur every day).  Actually with the price of some cellphones exceeding $750 (at shelf value), that loss could be fewer then 20 contract phones.

If fact I'm surprised the loss wasn't bigger. A couple of weeks ago our door greeters were removed, or at least relocated to spots about 50 yards inside the store, rather than in the atriums where they have been since long before I started. Apparently this is a nationwide initiative enacted from on high, and it is supposed to show the customers, well, something about being valued that makes no sense to me or anyone else I've talked to about the change.

The immediate result is that the greeters are not greeting people anymore. They're also not checking any receipts to ensure stuff in people's carts has been paid for. They're not lining up carts ready for customers' use, or wiping them dry if they've been out in the rain (a likely contingency here in Oregon in the Winter), or collecting and charging the electric shopping carts that are there for people of limited mobility.

Customers are now confused as they come into the store, annoyed there are no dry carts lined up and ready for their use, and confused all over again as they leave the store and try to show their receipt to someone who isn't there. Signage has been added to direct customers to the Customer Service desk for various issues, but it's a rare customer who actually reads the signs, probably because they're too busy trying to control their dripping cart and an armload of children, while not running into other customers who are dawdling in the entryway. The electric carts are now running flat more frequently, as customers who use them and then return them to the atrium rarely bother to plug them in for the next user.

Hopefully the policy will be re-thought and reversed before shrink spirals out of control, and customers get so annoyed by the perceived unfriendliness that they stop shopping at WalMart. Meantime, if you're shopping at WalMart and wondering where the door greeter is, don't worry, they're still there, they're just not able to help you with anything much now.

'Flu

Since Monday I've been stuck in the house with 'flu. I had a short daytime shift on Monday, but felt pretty peculiar before I left, partly because I had to make a huge cardboard bale by myself so I got pretty sweaty. When I got home I took my temperature and it was 99F, and by bedtime it was 102.3F.

I called in sick on Tuesday after a very broken night of mostly non-sleep, slept two long periods during the day, and Wednesday was a day off anyway, after an even worse night during which I moved to my reclining chair downstairs to give Beth a better chance of undisturbed sleep. My temperature and other 'flu symptoms (aching muscles, shivering fits, sweating, cold hands, hot and cold flushes, coughs, massive sneezes, that stuffed-up head feeling, the works) just wouldn't go away.

Wednesday night was slightly better, but by now my nose was so raw inside that it was exquisitely painful just to breathe in and out. My feet were freezing, and I found a water bottle (brough over from the UK) with no cover, for which Beth made me a cover in minutes while I huddled in bed trying to get warm. I called in sick again on Thursday. This is the longest period of sickness that I think I've had since moving to the US, certainly since starting work, and it was getting more than tedious.

On Thursday evening I just couldn't keep warm, and eventually got under a shower at the hottest possible setting, which managed to drive the back chills and shivers away long enough to dry off and jump straight into bed with the hot water bottle and my warmest pajamas.

At around 3:30am I awoke from a dream where I was trapped in a dank room with water beading the walls. Beth was taking a bathroom break, and as I moved to get comfortable I discovered I was soaked in sweat, as were the sheets, pillow, and comforter. As Beth was already awake we were able to change the sheets, my pajamas, and spread out the comforter to air, finishing the night under some spare covers.

I've seen films and TV shows (Little House on the Prairie comes to mind) where the doctor and family gather round a sickbed, waiting for the fever to break (or the patient to expire), and I guess that's what happened last night (the break, not the expire). I'm certainly feeling a ton better this morning, ready (almost eager) to go to my 1pm shift, and not feeling like I'm viewing life through a fog.

Cutting the Cable

After some discussion, we've decided to cut our cable TV, and as of yesterday we have no cable service. We're actually putting it on a 6-month hold, no service and no bills for six months, after which it will resume unless we cut it completely, which we probably will, as the $80 a month charge is too much for what we get.

The cable channels are, as a general rule, dire, and the time we save on goggle-boxing will go into reading, music, chatting, boardgames, cycling, taking walks and other more healthy passtimes.

Meanwhile we still have 13 regular terrestrial channels, HULU for many TV shows we can watch on the internet, plus a wall of DVDs to watch if we feel like screen time. The main problem is not being able to record anything for time-shifting purposes.

Wet and Windy

We seem to be getting the edge of the major storms that are dropping snow in Seattle and Portland, and causing authorities in Corvallis, just 50 miles away, to delay or close classes in schools and universities. Here it's just a lot of rain the last two days, nearly an inch yesterday, and 1.38" so far today (at 3pm).

We did have some snow over the weekend, and I had fun driving my RC vehicles around outside the house.

Twelfth Night

Following the madness of pre- and post-Christmas shopping which required longer and harder work hours, I'm now entering a period of relative inactivity, with reduced hours. I'm off four of the next five days, and this comes as a welcome opportunity to recharge my batteries, reorganise my sleeping times, clean and tidy the house a bit, take down and pack away the Christmas decorations, and dispose of the tree.

I also have the opportunity to enjoy some of my Christmas presents. Beth puts a lot of thought into her gifts, and she got me several wonderful (and hard to acquire) books about automobiles, and particularly the history of motoring in America, plus a book entitled "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes", a collection of detective short stories by contemporaries of Conan Doyle, that did not acquire the same eminence as Sherlock Holmes.

My brother Richard sent me a boardgame which is going to take some study to understand but looks a lot of fun. My brother Brian sent me an Amazon voucher, and with it I bought the book of "A History of the World in 100 Objects", a wonderful podcast which I enjoyed listening to in 2011.

Nature and Nutria invading our garden

Yesterday I had the treat of watching this little fellow wandering around our garden for about half an hour. I say little, but an adult nutria (or Coypu is some continents) weighs in at anything up to 20 pounds, the size of a large cat.

After munching on grass for a while, watched from a distance by two of our cats, he found this fallen pear more to his taste and tucked in with relish.

Those orange teeth are natural, and quite capable of giving nasty bite if roused. Fortunately this one was quite docile and didn't seem scared of me at all, as long as I stayed five feet away.

We've recently lost a willow tree down in the creek due to animal activity, and our neighbor blames a beaver, but  these nutrias burrow and undermine the banks too, so much as I enjoy having nature on my doorstep, we may have to take steps to discourage them. The previous owner shored up the bank, and filled in their holes, with cement, and we may eventually have to adopt the same approach. For now though, I'll enjoy the show.

Butte-iful

A week ago my Brother-in-Law Chris and I hiked up Spencer Butte, the biggest Butte (hill) near Eugene, offering spectacular views when the weather is right. We hadn't expected much view when we left the house, as the top was hidden by cloud, but only a few minutes after we left the car park the sun came out, and we were treated to a rare clear winter day.

That's me, celebrating our 3/4 hour hike. Autzen Stadium, home of the Oregon Ducks, is visible down in the valley. The Butte is 2055 ft high.

This group of antennae is visible from most of Eugene, but you don't normally get to look down on it. (I think) the antennae provide radio, TV and cell phone coverage for the valley.

Looking southwest towards the coastal mountain range. Lots of farmland that way and not many townships.

I'm pretty sure these snowy peaks to the southeast are the ones around Crater Lake. The bearing and distance are right anyway.

Chris's camera was much better than mine, and these are all his shots. This is Mount Hood, 11,240 odd feet in height, and another unofficially inactive volcano. The odds of an eruption in the next 30 years are estimated to be 3-7%. If it goes pop I'm going to be up here watching it.   

The sprawl of buildings west of Downtown, centred around West11th Avenue, with the radio masts in the foreground. You can see the mountains from WalMart's parking lot, a sight I enjoy all too frequently.

The smoking chimney behind the masts is just south of our old apartment at Heron Meadows, and used to get odd smells if the wind was from the south. Happy as we were to be in the apartment, we are a lot happier not to be in that apartment now.

How to Ruin Thanksgiving and Annoy People

Last year I worked on Thanskgiving Day morning, then returned for a midnight start to coincide with the official "doors opening" at WalMart for their Black Friday sale, officially called "The Event" at WalMart. I posted about last year's experiences, so you can refer back to that post on 11/30/10 if you wish to refresh your memory.

This year Target, a competing department store right across the main road, have announced a Midnight start on their their sale, and WalMart is starting their sale at 10pm on Thanksgiving Day. This of course means that anyone wishing to shop for a bargain is going to have to cut short their Thanksgiving evening celebrations and get along to the shops. It also means that some staff are working that evening, then returning for more madness on the Friday. I'm lucky this year, I'm working 7 to 4 on the Thursday, setting up for but not involved in the sale, then back for 2pm on the Friday, by which time the red-eyed glaze of bargain-maddened shoppers will have mostly worn off.

The 10pm start is allegedly in response to customer request, but it feels that the sales start earlier each year. Thanksgiving used to be a bookend that kept Christmas from interfering with the rest of the year, but this year sales of Christmas ornaments and Christmas-targeted gifts started before we had celebrated Halloween.

So for most of the WalMart staff, at least at my store, this year is going to be even more unpleasant than last.  I shall be giving thanks that due to a good schedule (and a considerate Manager), I shall be able to have a joyously unhurried Thanksgiving dinner with my wife and neighbors, a full night's sleep, and a relatively quiet shift on Black Friday afternoon. I shall also be giving thanks for three healthy contented cats, generous neighbors who are hosting and feeding us, everything going well with all the projects that Beth and I are working on, and being happy very with my life as a whole.

Halloween 2011

For Halloween 2010 we kept things very simple, but for 2011 now we were fully settled in the house I was determined to do something bigger. My original concept (which I had in 2010 but had not the means to create) was a maze, with spooky things you have to go past, before coming out the other end to a candy reward. The maze concept transformed into a Haunted Castle, when I discovered a folding castle at Toys 'R' Us. I bought two sets of this castle, which formed the frame for my 2011 Halloween experience.

Here's the castle assembled to test for size. It didn't completely fill the garage, but it was good to have some space round the edges anyway. My idea was that kids would go in the front door, wander around a bit spooking themselves, until the found the back door and exited, where I would be sitting (in last year's Grim Reaper costume) with a bowl of candy. Then they would exit the side door to the garage and head back to the street. It didn't quite work that way on the night (I think I got one child to follow correct procedure).

During construction I came up with the idea of filling the castle with dry leaves. Free stage dressing, better than the bare concrete floor, and they added smell, sound  and texture to the experience. We gathered up fallen leaves (which had helpfully already been swept into piles) in a tarpaulin, and it took a lot to cover the floor.

Stage dressing included this ex-trick-or-treater, complete with candy bowl with last year's candy still in it. The bones got somewhat lost in the leaves, and many kids on seeing the candy bowl helped themselves from it. That's OK, Halloween candy lasts forever anyway.

I also had this "ground rising" ghoul, colored lightball (not switched on here), and a few mini-pumpkins to add atmosphere, plus a couple of bats hanging on wires.

I also got a fog machine this year, and attempted to chill the fog to have it hug the ground, with mixed results. The problem with fake fog is that it has to be heated to start with, but then chilled if it is to stay low to the ground as intended. The chilling was attempted with a cooler box full of ice, with the fog blowing through it in a metal tube (with holes spiked in it).

Initial fog tests were encouraging, but the fog soon started rising and drifting. Well, it all added to the atmosphere, and it was definitely worth the $25 or so it cost. I'll be playing around with it to see if I can improve it for next year.

For spooky lighting, in addition to the colored spinning ball at ground level, I had a mirrorball hung from the ceiling, with a green-filtered light shining on it. Ball, light and four different filters (green, red, blue, yellow) all came as a kit. I chose green for ghastly ghostliness.

We had three artificial pumpkins in the front window, survivors from last year, but I wanted to carve my own too. This big pumpkin was remarkably empty inside, so there wasn't too much scraping to do.

Set and ready to go. The hanging ghost caused me a lot of trouble, as it was designed to rise up and down on a fishing line, making creepy howlings, when a sensor was tripped. The first time it rose it stuck at the top, and I had to disassemble it and fix the cogwheel which had broken. The sounds were far too loud, so I stuck tape over the speaker holes which muted it to acceptable levels. In my mind the ghost is the spirit of last year's trick-or-treater, but I don't know of anyone caught that subtlety. I can be vaguely seen in this picture in my grim reaper get up. I got a new mask this year, a Ghostface from the Scream movies, but it was very hot under the extra hood so I soon went back to the old one that only covered the front of my head. It worked well enough. The solid plastic chestplate of bones had a habit of bashing me on the chin, and next year I'll get something more flexible to replace it.

Finally set up and everything running. I had to keep adjusting the hanging ghost who insisted on turning to face the wrong way, and used a remote control tucked into my glove to puff extra fog when it got too thin. I dropped the remote in the leaves a couple of times, which was fun to try to find with a mask on. I also had ghostly noises playing from a CD I bought (and edited out the annoying or inappropriate sounds before putting the tracks on my mp3 player), so the visitor got the full range of senses.

One stage dressing I had intended for inside the castle was a big hairy spider, but in a flash of genius (that's mine used for this year) I decided to strap it to one of our RC trucks with elastic bands. Beth drove this round the circle of our road throughout the evening, to great effect. The truck has headlights, which worked well to draw attention before people realised it was actually a spider.

The full ensemble, RC spider, jack'o'lantern, castle, Ghost, Mirrorball, old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. The lights to either side of the garage door are only 4 watts each, and the lantern has just one tealight inside, so you can see that the camera has adjusted for poor lighting and made this scene much brighter than it appeared to the human eye.

Curious heads peering into the Haunted Castle. We had around 50 children visit, most with an adult or teenage chaparone, and the word "awesome" was used several times, if I may say so without appearing boastful. I was inside or behind the castle much of the time so didn't get to hear all the comments, but Beth as Front of House Manager had a few chats with parents and visitors. In addition to working the spider and encouraging people to go in, she was also handing out glowsticks to any children who were too scared to enter the castle alone or without company. We had maybe three or four who wouldn't brave the Castle even with a glowstick, and got their candy at the Castle Gates instead. It's as well that the castle was under cover, as we had a smattering of rain during the evening, with a consequent dropoff of visitors until it stopped. This also enabled me to close the garage door and leave packing away until today. 

Altogether a fun evening was had by all, over a period of two to three hours between dusk and 8:30pm. I probably spent $250 on new stuff this year, but apart from fog liquid, candy, and ice, it'll alll last for years to come, and I'll add a new thing ot two each year to keep things fresh.  

Jury Duty... not

I received a letter recently summoning me to attend Jury Duty at the local Circuit Court. Unfortunately I am ineligible to serve as I am not a US Citizen.

The standard forms included, confirming eligibility to serve (where I fail on the first count), claims for travel costs, a one-day bus pass should one not have a car etc., did not anticipate that a recipient could possibly not be a Citizen. They allowed for excusion from duty for age and infirmity, or for reasons of having been involved in a crime, but not on the first and most telling point, not being a citizen.

I tried calling the phone number on the forms, but no luck, it was an automated line with no way to talk to a human or leave a message. I had the option of faxing a form in, but I haven't used a fax machine for ten years when email attachments made them almost obsolete. The final try was mailing back the form with my objection written in the "other reasons for not serving that you may wish us to take into account" box, where I wrote "I am not a US Citizen. I am a Permanent Resident, and unfortunately not qualified to serve as a Juror" or something to that effect.

Yesterday I received the response letter confirming that as a non-Citizen I am excused duty.

I'm wondering what database they chose my name from, as anywhere where I officially exist, it should be pretty clear that I am an non-Citizen. Beth suggested the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) provide data, as most adults in the State would have a driving license, and that is quite possible.

My suggestion for an improvement in local Government efficiency is to use the Register of Electors (or whatever the equivalent form is called), though Beth pointed out that some people do not bother registering to vote, while they would still want to be able to drive a car. Should non-voters get to stand on a jury? I suspect that people who so not exercise their Democratic right to vote would not make the best jury members anyway.

Whatever, until I qualify as a Citizen (in another year or so) and take the test and oath, I will not be turning up at a courthouse to pass judgement on my fellow Eugenians.

Change of Season

October heralded a distinct change of Season, with the temperature dropping and proper rain, our first decent precipitation since sometime in mid-June. We had over half an inch yesterday, and though I was at work through most of it, it was lovely to hear the rain on the roof when I was back home.

The dropping temperature has made a single layer, t-shirt or polo shirt, just too little except at work where the temperature is regulated. At home I'm adding a button-down shirt or hoodie as an extra layer, though with the buttons or zip open for now. We haven't had to use the heating system yet since Spring, we'd rather add layers of clothes.

The cats are spending more time indoors, though Elbie has caught two mice in three days, and brought them in for me, and Ghost, not to be outdone, brought a mouse into the bedroom in the middle of the night and proceeded to crunch on it in the middle of the floor. I removed it as soon as I realised what he had, and he happily switched to the dry food bowl we keep in the master bathroom.

Our "third" cat Simon is gaining confidence around the house, snoozing on a front room couch in daytime, and hopping silently up on the bed when we wake in the mornings for a few moments of attention. He's very gentle and purrs a lot, and must have been starved of affection at his real home one road down from us.  He and Ghost have occasional standoffs, mostly when they encounter each other unexpectedly, but no actual fights have occurred.

A potential shake-up at work came to naught. A co-Manager (second highest rank in the building) left to manage a different store, resulting in various openings in the management structure as people shifted around. There was a brief possibility (at least in my mind) that I might be offered a Department Manager position, but our own Department Manager didn't get promoted so our department remained unchanged. We do have two new associates though.

Kayaking on the McKenzie

A free Saturday provided the opportunity for my next kayaking adventure. Having paddled the Willamette River from close below the I5 bridge (currently closed to river traffic) to Corvallis,  my next step was to explore the convergence of the McKenzie River with the Willamette. The McKenzie meanders North of Springfield, joining the Willamette outside of town.

For this adventure we parked up my Mazda at Brown's Landing, went home for breakfast, and then at a leisurely 9am~ish headed to Armitage Park. This Park, off the Coburg Road between Eugene and Coburg, has a great landing for boats to lauch, and is just west of the I5 bridge across the McKenzie.

Putting on the splashdeck is the worst part of preparation, requiring at least three hands or use of a knee as a clamp.

Phew, at last the splashdeck is on, paddle is ready, and everything loaded.

Using Beth's GPS for a rough guide. I'm not walking so it's more than 8.3 miles, but I'll be travelling faster than walking pace so I'll get there before 12:34, hopefully.

I try to keep my feet dry while getting in, but it's not very dignified. Fortunately nobody saw me except Beth, and the millions of dozens of three people following this blog.

Getting waterborne requires some joggling to shift the kayak forward, but at last I'm afloat. 

Just to test the current I start off upriver...

paddling furiously to gain the bridge

and confusing Beth who tries to follow me upstream. As soon as I turn back downstream I am carried away, and this was Beth's last view of me for a few hours.

Looking under a footbridge, I spot some interesting lumps

closer inspection proving them to be House Martin nests, or whatever the USA footbridge version of a House Martin is.

slightly weird and alien-looking without evidence of the birds, but I know they are there.

Somehow I never recognised the point where the two rivers join. In fact they join twice, as there's an island between them, and I missed both spots. Nice view of the mountains though.

Various birds as usual, I think this was an Osprey.