Five Fun Things Friday — Father’s Day 2012 Edition

Oh, it’s been a while, has­n’t it?

My last post was mid-March. Since then, I’ve been the busiest I’ve been my entire work­ing career. Prob­lem #1 is that I have a hard time say­ing no to col­leagues. Prob­lem #2 is —one of the main caus­es of #1— is that I real­ly enjoy all of the projects I’m involved with.

So, after 2–1/2 months of 60+ hour weeks, I’ve scaled back my work-load (thanks very much to my sup­port­ive boss & col­leagues along with my very tal­ent­ed sum­mer interns). As a result, I’ve had a lit­tle time enjoy some cool things in the past week or so:

1. Father’s Day — This year was ter­rif­ic; much more than I deserved real­ly. Angela made me a deli­cious break­fast of choco­late chip pan­cakes. I got drill press (see the fol­low­ing) from Angela and some swim gog­gles from the kids. And I got to spend almost the entire day with the fam­i­ly (except when the kids were out shop­ping for swim gog­gles & I was play­ing with the drill press).
2. Wood­work­ing — As the kids have got­ten big­ger, they’ve start­ed to out-grow their play & crafts table. So Angela asked me to make it tall enough to store toys under­neath & allow them to sit at the table for crafts. So, using my new drill press, I hol­lowed out some glued-up MDF blocks to cre­ate leg exten­sions I could lag-bolt into the table legs. It’s a bit rough, but was the first thing I’ve got to make in quite a long time. 
   
3. Hunger Games — I com­plet­ed Mock­ing­jay, the final book of Suzanne Collins’ excel­lent post-apoc­a­lyp­tic YA nov­els. I haven’t seen the film based on the first book yet, but I can cer­tain­ly rec­om­mend the books. They are light­en­ing fast to read, thanks to Collins’ choice of first per­son nar­ra­tive and her intense action.
4. Prometheus — Okay, this was tech­ni­cal­ly last week, but I went with my broth­er, Stephen, to watch Rid­ley Scot­t’s return to sci­ence fic­tion. There has been some intense dis­cus­sions about this movie. I, for one, real­ly enjoyed it. I’ve been a big fan of the Alien series for a long time, includ­ing the comics. I can’t quite say it was a per­fect film, but it met my every expec­ta­tion and it cer­tain­ly one of the year’s best sci-fi films.
5. Swim­ming — So, our kids have been tak­ing swim­ming lessons for the past few sum­mers and Angela recent­ly com­pet­ed in her first-ever triathlon. As a result, we’ve found our­selves at the pool quite a bit. As our kids are old enough to actu­al­ly swim around some and Angela has been also learn­ing how to prop­er­ly swim for a race, I’ve actu­al­ly got­ten to swim some, as well. Admit­ted­ly, I’m sure­ly the worst swim­mer in the fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, it’s a lot of fun to get to spend time in the pool with the fam­i­ly and a great way to beat the crazy heat here in TN.