walking towel » Pictures

Gun Free Zones Scare Me

Shawn Dowler — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:38:38 +0000

Am I the only one who gets the chills when I see a sign that says “Gun Free Zone” at the entrance of an establishment? My instincts told me not to enter the local library when I saw that on the front door. Here’s a beautiful cartoon from the Rome News-Tribune.

International Talk Like A Pirate Birthday

Shawn Dowler — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:40:58 +0000

My boss came in to the office with a little birthday present for me. He’s taking our group at work out to lunch for my birthday. He wants me to wear at least the eye patch when we go out since it’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

UPDATE: We went out to the Olive Garden. I wore the eye patch and scared a little girl with a teddy bear while waiting in the lobby. I wore the eye patch up until after we ordered drinks. When the waitress came back and I didn’t have the eye patch on she told me that she thought there was really something wrong with my eye! I felt a little bad for having unintentionally deceived her, but she seemed to think it was all right, and she gave me extra ice cream for dessert. Of course, I was so stuffed after the ravioli, breadsticks, and 2 bowls of Zuppa Toscana that I couldn’t have eaten a regular portion of the chocolate-caramel goodness.

Overall, we didn’t do too well when it came to talking like pirates. I guess there’s always next year!

Nothing Gets out Chocolate… See?

Shawn Dowler — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:58:36 +0000

Police Chief Wiggum explained to Lisa that nothing gets chocolate out, then he motioned to the large brown stain on the front of his police pants to prove his point. Now I have a pair of pants of my very own that can be used to illustrate that same principle. I won’t blame anyone for the mishap. Wendy’s frosties are mighty tasty, but you need to be careful when you put an empty frosty cup on the top of a fast food bag that’s completely full of trash. You need to be especially careful when that bag has a small tear at the top and the empty frosty cup has a spoon in it causing the empty frosty cup to lean against the torn part of the bag. The most unfortunate things can happen when driving over speed bumps, so watch out for those as well. When all of these circumstances come together it’s curtains for your pants… See?

Like Carver Like Son

Shawn Dowler — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 03:15:23 +0000

Some people seemed to think that the jack-o-lantern that we carved this year looks a little bit like Yours Truly. I’ll let you decide.

Old Meets New in a Night of Nintendo

Shawn Dowler — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:19:54 +0000

Every few weeks a bunch of us (mostly) married guys congregate to rot our brains and enjoy some much-needed multiplayer video game action. Usually we are content with just one television and taking turns, but someone began spreading rumours of an unused television in Dan’s apartment, but he was still at work. Spencer finally got up and walked out. Minutes later he kicked the front door open bearing a second one-eyed monster! Dan’s wife apparently let him take it! We immediately hooked it up to Mike’s NES (that’s Nintendo Entertainment System. Aptly named when Nintendo only had one video game console on the market.) and Matt made sure the first game played was RBI Baseball. There was some difficulty getting the game to work. I pitched in and even though I hadn’t done it for over eight years, I knew just how to exhale into the cartridge and then place it almost all the way in, then push down and diagonally toward the back of the system simultaneously to achieve the perfect connection with the contacts. The title screen came up, but there were still some artifacts. Mike did it again and took care of those. Everyone laughed as they recalled the long-forgotten techniques we all employed in our youth to wrestle the NES into action.

The rest of us played Super Monkey Ball 2 and Mario Party 7 on the Gamecube. I can’t wait to get a similar picture with the Wii on one TV and the NES on the other.

I didn’t bring my camera but Michael Whiting, our gracious host (and awesome sculptor) let me use the one he took below.

Staining Legs in the Bathroom

Shawn Dowler — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 02:05:18 +0000

Krissy was having so much trouble today with staining all four sides of the table legs that she had to figure out a way to hang them up. If we had a garage that would really make things so much easier, but we don’t. Krissy got the ingenious idea to hang the legs up in the bathroom by the shower rod. So I rigged up some twine (hooray for Boy Scouts!) and get it all ready for her to hang them by the bolt near the top of each leg. I must say that it worked out perfectly! That means no more showers until the stain has dried, though. And we have to run the fan in the bathroom 24/7 until the fumes stop wafting off of the wood, but it’s still better than what she was doing before!

Pictures coming soon.

Petroleum Fumes All Night Long!

Shawn Dowler — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 06:09:12 +0000

Krissy got to work tonight on staining the entrance table a dark mahogany color. We went to Home Depot hoping to get just what we were looking for. They had the right color but we still had to buy a can of stain at least twice as big as we needed. They had smaller ones, but not for the glossy stain only for the “satin” finish. When we got home we moved the dining room table into the kitchen blocking access to the dishwasher, sink, and trash can. Now we have a pile of dishes and trash on the counter next to the sink! Let’s hope it gets even higher tomorrow.

Krissy laid out a tarp on the linoleum in front of the piano and got to work. It says to do two coats sanding after the first with a really fine-grained steel-wool. Here’s what the table looks like so far. Pictures coming soon.

Krissy’s Battle with the Power Sander

Shawn Dowler — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 22:35:37 +0000

Last night after we had shoveled and sifted many wheelbarrows full of dirt Krissy got to work sanding the small table we have at the entrance of our apartment. She wants to stain it a dark cherry or walnut color to match our other furniture and the white stain on it had to go. It was amazing how much effort it took even with a power sander. I think she was outside sanding of over two hours! She just doesn’t know when to quit. But, it’s mission accomplished and the sanded table is back home ready to be stained. We thought we already had stain but realized after getting home that we only have finish-restoring liquid that isn’t powerful enough to stain on its own. I guess it will just have to wait until Monday or Tuesday.

Red Cap (GCYQE0)

Shawn Dowler — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 00:30:57 +0000

This one is pretty close to the road if you know where to park. We came here from the Taylor’s Quarry cache and so we just followed the trail all the way out here. It was 0.33 miles according to our GPSr. When we were within about 800 feet of the cache there was another entrance from the road to the trail we were on. Oh well, we needed the exercise anyway.

The cache itself was a lot of fun. We were standing on top of it and I kept looking under the bushes for it. It was hidden under a rock so well that you would never even think of looking under it. The coordinates were dead on, but it still took us a while to investigate that one inconspicuous rock. We walked back to the car on the road and got to see a lot of fun Halloween decorations. What a fun day caching!

Taylor’s Quarry (GCYAFR)

Shawn Dowler — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 20:26:08 +0000

Krissy and I found this one without too much trouble, although it has some of the best camouflage I’ve ever seen in Geocaching. There was a Spiderman Travel Bug action figure inside, so I thought this one would come with us to either Las Vegas for Thanksgiving or to Georgia this Christmas.