Lily completed her 2nd year in Girl Scouts this June. Her Girl Scout troop celebrated all of the Brownies moving on up to becoming Juniors with a “bridging” ceremony. Lily has been a Brownie since she last bridged back in June 2015, so I think this is a big jump. I had to race home early from the office that day, but I was able to make it in time for the ceremony.
After much work these past few months (and some prodding from his parents), Joshua completed a number of BSA merit badges, and fulfilled all of the rank advancement requirements to move up from Tenderfoot to 2nd Class. Huzzah.
His Boy Scout troop conducted their Court of Honor to recognize all of the scouts in the troop moving up, as well handing out whatever merit badges they had earned. This was also the last meeting until September, so if you didn’t move up this month, you would have to wait out the entire summer. His last requirements was to plan out a 10 mile hike or bike ride. Bike ride, you say? Joshua and I completed that Memorial Day weekend.
Yes, we’re proud of him. Not just for the rank advancement, but for working hard on those merit badges as well.
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Man, check out the bicycle shoe cleats on the bottom row. They were in bad shape. I bought them a few years ago during the 2013 MS Bike Tour down in Brielle when my last set broke during the rode (around 30 miles in.)
This time I bought my own off Amazon, and replaced them on my own. No big deal, easy peasy.
Our friends Sunil and Ligy (and kids) are moving to Houston later this month. They’ve sold their house, packed up the stuff, and moving away. We had one last together before they left. We’ll certainly miss them, and wishing them all the best down in Texas.
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Couch and new rug set up. Also a 2nd coat of paint on the shelves. Handyman says we can start stacking books this week.
I started watching Arrival (2016) on a flight to Dallas, but didn’t finish the 2nd half until I had a chance to request the Blu-ray disc via Netflix this week. From what I watched initially, I was absolutely fascinated by the look of the film, and the quality directing. Especially with the directing by Denis Villeneuve, I was impressed with the atmosphere with the film — if this happened in real life, this is exactly how humankind would react, and the challenges we would face in communicating.
The film is based upon the short story “Story of Your Life” written by Ted Chiang in 1998. According to one of the disc extra features, the producers desperately wanted to turn the novella into a film, but he was very doubtful that Hollywood would ever be interested. Finally, when he had a good chance, he made the pitch, and the movie execs said yes.
The film stars Amy Adams as top linguist Louise Banks. The audience is initially introduced to her through some interesting backstory. Soon enough in the present day, the world is shocked when 12 alien ships arrive on Earth. She and Jeremy Renner will be tasked with making first contact with the aliens in America. While Jeremy Renner’s character Ian Donnelly is the scientist, Louise is the key as she must try to make sense of the alien language, then formulate a response. Forest Whitaker plays the gruff Colonel Weber in charge at the alien landing site in Montana.
The film is really different than what I would have expected. Without giving the plot away and ruining the surprise, while the film is really realistic, there are clues that the film is more than the sum of its parts. In addition, the film makes a “Crazy Ivan” towards the end of the film that surprised me, and I like when a film surprises me.
Arrival (2016)
In May, Lily and a number of girls from our township (and another one adjacent) tried out for an upcoming 8U girls softball / (“All Stars”) tournament scheduled for June 1 – June 4 down in Florence NJ. They had so many girls, they had two teams participating.
I was able to attend all of the games (an evening game on Thursday, a doubleheader on Saturday, then the championship game Sunday morning.) The girls did great overall, and Lily’s particular team went into the championship game against Robbinsville Sunday. It was tough, Robbinsville was just too good.
Kudos to all the girls and parents because it was a lotta softball in four days. Congratulations to the girls for coming in 2nd place.
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The floor is in!
On Friday, our electrician was here for a few hours to install four new 4″ recessed lighting fixtures, and to tie them temporarily to the wall switch. This week, I had to run around to three home improvement stores in an attempt to find four 4″ remodel fixtures, baffles, LED lightbulbs that will fit the fixtures, and summer switches. I wasn’t entirely successful.
The ultimate lighting plan is to have four 4″ recessed lighting fixtures, which we have installed now. We could have gone the easier route with 5″ or 6″ cans which provide brighter light, and can accommodate more varies lightbulbs. Why did we (for now) go with smaller lights with hard-to-find 50 watt light bulbs?
I like the look of the smaller 4″ lights but it’s currently only 200 watts of light in the room, and summer than I prefer. The big job was to install new lighting. If we’re not happy with the 4″ cans, we can easily go back and replace with 6″ lights in the future.
I wasn’t able to find two dimmer switches at three stores, so I ordered two matching Lutron dimmers and a grey two gang faceplate from Amazon.com.
Good news! We had our new flooring delivered this week! It has to sit in our house and acclimate to our pocket of the multiverse for a few days before installation early next week
