Welcome to the Wilcox Family weB LOG, your source for the latest Wilcox news, anecdotes, and rants; and, as Jack Benny quipped on his first radio show (March 29, 1932), “There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?’â€â€
For the past month or so, six mornings a week, I’ve been working on running, trying to get up to a mile without stopping. Today, I finally made it!
This is pretty much how I felt after finally completing a mile without stopping.
Previously my best distance before walking (and then resuming the run after I caught my breath) was only about seven tenths of a mile. Whew! Hope I can make it again tomorrow.
Or, “A Match Made Where?”
Way back in October, Nichelle and I traveled to Florida for my brother Paul’s wedding. There’s much I could say here, like how Paul had to wear makeup after opening the truck door into his forehead, or how they “accidentally” played the Imperial March as they walked down the aisle together at the end of the ceremony.
Skvid = SKit on VIDeo
Last week our pastor asked me to put together a video skit to help illustrate a sermon in a series of lessons on stewardship: What happens when we overwhelm ourselves with choices and activities? Of course, it also illustrates beautifully the quirkiness of the Wilcox family.
I did the video in Windows Movie Maker, a free download for Windows XP. I had to overcome a quirk that kept locking the software up, discovering that previewing clips in the preview window wouldn’t work correctly, unless I dragged the clips to the timeline first. I can’t explain that, but wish I’d found the answer hours earlier. Movie Maker isn’t bad, but I need something that will let me treat the audio track from the video separately, as well as add more audio layers.
The film was shot entirely out of sequence, in order to meet the availability schedule of the actors (my kids), over the course of a very busy Saturday. The Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back clip was created by shooting our own HDTV, the quickest way I could think of to get the piece I needed.
Background music includes Ella Fitzgerald’s, “I’m Beginning to See the Light,” and the title theme from Back to the Future.
Overall, it’s a tad too long at just over 6 minutes (the goal was 5 minutes), and I never got around to including any video transitions. I may tweak it a bit in the next few days, especially if I try out a more advanced software package, and hope to get it down to 4 to 4.5 minutes. I recall seeing George Lucas talking about an old filmmaker adage, “Films are never finished, just abandoned,” and how he had the technology (and money) to keep going back to his films to finish them the way he wanted.
Back in September, Nichelle, Isaac, Phil, and I participating in our church’s extremely informal, annual skeet shoot. (I know not all churches go shooting together, and one certainly won’t find the Apostle Paul writing about it, but we do, after all, live in New Hampshire.)
Neither Nichelle nor I hit any of the clay pigeons with our 12-gauges. Phil nicked one or two, but didn’t really fare much better than we. Isaac, however, managed to nail three of them (putting him in 5th place for the day), with a more-his-size 410.
We also did some handgun shooting. I found that to be highly invigorating. (Translation: “Quite the rush!”) Target shooting is also a little easier than skeet shooting, so doing that last helped rebuild my shattered ego after being trounced by Isaac.
; "Nichelle finishing a set of bench presses.")
A couple of weeks ago, Nichelle had a dream about weight lifting.
In the dream, she was doing bench presses, and having a great time. A friend came up to her with a concerned look, and said, “Uh, Nichelle, you’re … dead.”
Nichelle responded, “You mean, I’m dead, and I can still do this? That’s awesome!”
I was directed to this item over on Rick Harrington’s BLOG by Erik DiVietro.
The “health and wealth” movement is an affront to Christianity, but one that (in various degrees) has pervaded our Christian culture. We all tend to assume, unless we actively fight it, that the wealthy (especially wealthy believers) have some special blessing from God.
But televangelists and false preachers have spread the message of “God wants everyone rich,” around the world, to the detriment of Christ’s cause. Piper really nails my opinion of this false gospel.
From http://www.myspace.com/LegoDoug—my MySpace page.
; "Naomi with her Belle dress, which is far too big for her.")
Last week we were visiting the McGrath family, and they (as usual) offered the kids some food. NaNi was eating a bread roll, and said, “Dad, we can cut open your head, and put this inside, and glue it back together, and you’ll act all crazy. Then when you’re done acting crazy, we can cut your head open again, and put your regular brain back in, and glue it back together again.”
A week before that, she said, “Dad, I can’t take my head off, because my blood is sticky—just like glue—and it holds it on.”
What a kid.
Oh, she also is crazy about dresses. Two weeks ago she slyly pronounced, “Dad, if you buy me a twirley Cinderella dress, I am soooo letting you take me to the ball.”
This morning I reported to my dentist at 8:00 a.m. to have a crown done. They use a CEREC system, and I was amazed by the technology.
They shot me up with Novocaine, got rid of the old filling and ground down the disintegrating part of the molar. Then they use an IR imager to get a 3D image of the tooth that remains, and match—in beautifully animated 3D—the crown that will be milled to the base that remains, using the tooth outline against a database of about 500 3D teeth to get one that looks natural. (See the video above. It’s jaw-dropping.)
The dentist then can adjust this using a mouse and 3D view. They pick a tint that matches the rest of your teeth, throw a block of dental material in a tiny, computerized milling machine, and in 11 to 22 minutes, the crown is done.
This gets molecularly bonded (rather than just cemented) to the original tooth surface, and voila—essentially a new tooth, in less time than it takes the Novocaine to wear off.
I was out and on my way again at 9:20.