Retirement

I can’t even think about it for myself right now, it is too far away. But after working for 40 years for the same company, my dad is retiring this week. That seems like forever–and then some. How can somebody work for so long?!

Every time I talk to him on the phone now, though, it has been:

“Only 56 days left.”

“Only 25 days left.”

“Only 3 days left.”

Yesterday was his last day. My mom shared some thoughts from the retirement party that they gave him at work:

There was a slide show showing pictures of Dad through the years and then several co-workers told stories on Dad. He has the reputation of being tenacious and inventive when it comes to solving problems…The facilities manager came up to me and told me how kind Dad is and what a gentleman he had always been. I got more of a sense of how much Dad is respected not only for his technical expertise, but also for his interaction and treatment of people.

After living with a person up close, it is hard to see them from the outside. You get used to the person that you think you know, and you just expect them to be who you thought they were.

Somehow, my Dad was more than what I knew. Everyday he went to work: tenacious, diligent, respected and kind.

I can’t tell you of how proud I am of my Dad. I want to be that kind of man.

Opening Up

With the advent of spring and the budding of new life, the warmer temperatures have come into play and it has gotten up into the 80’s on some days.

I love this time of year because we can open up the windows and let the fresh air in. 

It’s warm enough that we don’t need to turn on the heat, but cool enough that we don’t need the air conditioner.

So we coast along and live on the cheap. 

Did I mention that I love this time of year?

NASCAR for Kids

Our boys recently joined a Cub Scout pack in the area. One of the spring projects that they have is called Pinewood Derby. Each of the boys is given a block of (pine) wood, 4 wheels and axles and they build a car to compete in the “Derby,” where they race on a track and get prizes for winning or having the best design or whatever.

I had heard of this when I was a kid, and have even seen a demonstration once, where they were racing the cars. It was so cool! But, never having been a Cub Scout, I have never built or raced a Pinewood Derby car.

I was a little nervous about the whole thing because I had never built one, I don’t have a band saw to cut the shape of the car out, and I had two to build (one for each son). But once we got started, the process went pretty well and we could work on it over several weekends.

We started out by cutting the shape out with a coping saw and then sanding it into shape.

We then painted the cars and added the trim. ~K~ wanted to be Number 8 because his favorite driver is Dale Earnhardt Jr. ~D~ likes Jeff Gordon, so he was Number 24.

Here’s the final result once we had the wheels on:

There is actually more going on than just building the car. I talked to some more experienced Cub Scout dads and they said that you have to sand and polish the axles to make them smooth so the car can go faster. You also have to make the car as heavy as possible (5 oz. without going over) because this apparently makes the car go faster.

This past Sunday was race day and we were looking forward to testing the cars out. I was expecting that we would race on a nice Pinewood Derby track like this :(because from talking with dads from other packs said that they share a track among all the packs in the area.)

They even said there is an electronic timer at the finish line so you can tell what cars finish first.

When we got to the Derby, the actual track looked like this:

A huge disappointment. The fancy track had been available, but the Cub scout leader didn’t want to take the 3 hours that it would’ve taken to put the track together. (If only he had asked for help!)

The kids still had a good time, but after all the work, I (and several of the other dads) were disappointed with the outcome. You couldn’t even tell who won the race because the cars would go every which way once they got onto the pavement of the parking lot. (But I guess winning isn’t the important thing.)

Overall, we had a good time, and I had been looking for a project to work on with the kids. So from that standpoint, it was all good. And maybe next year we can convince the Cub Scout leader to use the other track.