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there is a fire in the hills a couple of blocks from our house…
here are some [updated] photos from the blaze.

14 kids and a handful of dads in the desert adds up to one grand adventure!
3 sunscreen applications per day, a hat, lots of water and s’mores kept all the kids happily frenetic
photos:
joshua tree part 1 - lizard catching, rock climbing and an archaeological dig.
joshua tree part 2 - spelunking down abandoned gold mines and close encounters with a rattle snake.
joshua tree part 3 - kid portraits.

brooks is hosting a silent auction to help bryan watt (a brooks alum working with dri) to raise $20K to build a school for kids in laos.
silent auction poster pdf.
Read more about Bryan and his work.
i donated two diana prints to the cause…

i created a game called “flinch” for the company picnic…
the game relied on the high tensile strength of 1/8″ polycarbonate (which looks like plexiglass but is much stronger.)
we started out with tennis balls but soon moved on to golf balls, a baseball, blocks of 2×4, a screwdriver and then finally, my 32 oz estwing framing hammer…
there were some fun “flinches” and reactions
photos here…

macey turned six this week.
she got a new bike without training wheels!

the hordes descended on el capitan state beach for the annual birthday campout.
Here are some photos:
Part I - friday night at the rogers’ and saturday at the beach
Part II - camp fire and chilling at el cap

the tubbs spent a long weekend in SB which was a blast!

the next weekend i headed down to their place and shaun and i built a teak memorial bench for gerg that will be installed at our ventura campus.

we recently purchased a car and inadvertently discovered a very powerful negotiating tool: small kids.
small kids have the attention span of 37 seconds which results in a lot of bouncing off the walls, running around the sales floor and asking for balloons.
there is also the crying, this is particulary effective.
crying occured when: balloon was released into the ozone, head collided with sales office door, paper airplane went under showroom car and it was “taking a long tiiiiiiime”
the net result of this activity is that the sales staff lost their nerve and were frazzled. they were literally sweating buckets by the time we left the lot.
we got a great price

i had my camera and took a few photos of the fun

dave gilbert, greg’s dad, has set up “the gerg foundation” to give scholarships to westmont (where greg attended college) computer science students.
you can find out more by visiting the gergfoundation.org website.
the foundation website is also where all future info and updates will be posted re: our friend.

yesterday my friend greg gilbert passed away at the young age of 26.

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although i dug a 75 foot long trench in the backyard with “help” from the kids, we stil managed to have some fun.
i whipped up a few little boats that the kids floated down the rarely running “creek” behind our house…
and here are a few photos taken as tad clark got even older

during the Democratic Presidential Primary Debate a few days ago, barack obama made a statement that resonates with me re: the war…
i downloaded the video from cnn.com and cut out the 20 second “video byte” which you can watch below…

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to close the loop on the collards’ tree adventure: everything is fine
the Glendale City Attorney dropped all charges against mike and ann.

some photos of the madness

i paused in sunnyvale on my drive from santa barbara to sonoma.
dan lives in sunnyvale so it was the perfect place for a break!
i took photos.
here is a slideshow of images taken at the san jose kendo dojo.
and a few extra random images hanging with dan.