July 2, 2009 – Bill's Blog

I had a wonderful day yesterday. The cool temperatures have kept most people indoors. The boys went to the movies with Uncle Jim and Aunt Shelly. Nadia was not feeling well, so Ocean and I took advantage of this and went for a bike ride around Iron Mountain. Jim has a bike with a “rickshaw” and we rode around Lake Antoine, visited city park, and went by Iron Mountain High School. We stopped at various parks and had them all to ourselves. I guess it was a Wednesday afternoon and the occasional rain kept people out of the parks. As you can see, Ocean enjoyed it. It was good to spend time alone with my daughter. She is such a loving little girl!

Later, when the boys got back, we had batting practice. Owen is working on getting rid of his upper cut. My brother Jim is an excellent coach and really helped him at Northside Field. We then took the boys for pasties and headed home. All in all, a fantastic day!

White-tailed Deer are a Common Sight in the UP

A couple of days ago, we dusted off the potato cannon and conducted a few test blasts. As you can see in the video above, it worked. My father and I constructed the potato cannon a few summers ago with instructions from the book, Backyard Ballistics. It is made mostly of PVC pipe, with a flint sparker on the end. Last time we used an aersol hair spray as a propellant, and this year we used starter fluid.

The book has a lot of ideas of experiments to do that mostly involve explosions and gadgets. One of the boys favorite television programs is Mythbusters, and they love tinkering with experiments. We’ll continue to hone this one until we get the potato shooting out across the neighborhood. I made the “tennis ball mortar” with my science classes in Anaco to great success. They also had a homemade version of the fire paper lanterns that we had at our farewell party last month. I am also a pyromaniac and love blowing things up with the boys.

Owen said that someday he wants to be a scientist, soccer player, and a spy. He is not sure which one.