As Ring Luck would have it

This past May, our twin daughters celebrated their 6th birthday. To celebrate this special occasion we got them a brand-new outdoor wooden play set, to replace the previous one, which was apparently left in our yard by a previous owner, who must have built it before they invented measuring tape and bubble levels, judging from the condition of the wood, and the craftsmanship. My father has been helping a great deal on this project. We've just started building the new one, and this promises to be a massive project. So far, the manual instructed me to buy drill bit attachments that I didn't need, it failed to tell me to buy drill bit attachments that I would need, it has inconsistently labeled washers and bolts, and at least one diagram is drawn incorrectly. In comparison to most projects that my family works on, this project is going amazingly smooth. Our 13-year old son proved to be quite enthusiastic and adept at dismantling the old playset. The first phase of the proje...

I'm not stupid. I just do stupid things. I'm hoping there's a difference. See my latest article in the Northern Virginia Daily. http://www.nvdaily.com/lifestyle/2013/02/anthony-ring-the-de-santa-fication-process-never-ends.php

*As the NVD has moved this link, I've copied the full article back to this page. If you ever decide to remove the lights from a pre-lit artificial Christmas tree, it is vitally important to have the following tools on hand: 1. Needle-nose pliers 2. Scissors 3. Sturdy gloves 4. A time machine, so you can go back and slap yourself in the face before you begin. For the past five years or so, our family has been using an artificial Christmas tree, which was given to us by friends, who had previously used it themselves for a few years. It is very well-made and it looks very realistic. It has served us well and saved us a good deal of money. Recently, some of the light strands started going bad, possibly due to being forcibly crammed into a bag and dragged, pulled or dropped down the stairs for the past half a decade. We had the bright idea of just pulling off the pre-installed lights, and replacing them with new lights. After all, the tree still looked good. We thought,...

I’m not sure what was more exciting, 45 minutes worth of a fireworks display crammed into 10 minutes, or the mad 4-mile dash back to the car in a desperate attempt to outrun a ferocious thunderstorm. Like most of the United States, we recently took the girls and our nephew (who is 6) to a nearby 4th of July event. Somehow word had spread to our daughters about the existence of fireworks, possibly the week-long build-up at daycare, so excitement was reaching dangerous levels. For days, the normal response to any question, comment or request was, “When are we going to see fireworks?” and if your answer was anything other than, “Right this instant,” they would reply, “But it’s America’s birthday!” We decided to take everyone to the festivities in Strasburg, VA. By “decided,” I mean “were forced.” Not that there is anything wrong with Strasburg’s Independence Day celebration. We’ve been going there for years, and it’s always a good time. But this year we had wanted to go to a different...

Despite being specifically designed to withstand high temperatures, a metal stove top kettle can, in fact, catch on fire. This is one of the many valuable and useful lessons that ought to be taught in school, but isn’t. Recently, I found myself wishing that I had been given this knowledge in a structured academic environment, instead of learning it the hard way in my kitchen. You might think that it is fairly impossible to ignite a metal teapot using only the heat generated from a standard stove top burner, but you would be vastly underestimating Ring Luck. I don’t recall reading anywhere on the box that said that this sturdy water-boiling kitchen device wouldn’t catch on fire, so I guess it’s partially my own fault. My wife and stepson were away from the house at a Scouting event, and I was watching the girls at home. For some odd reason, I never considered boiling water to be particularly dangerous, so I started a saucepan of water to brew some tea. I’m not sure entirely what ...

I’ve heard that when the city of Washington D.C. was first designed, the layout was based on powerful Masonic symbols, which made traveling efficient and logical. Looking at it now, however, it seems to have been desi gned on an etch-a-sketch, by someone who has had 3 or 4 too many Red Bulls. Roads and neighborhoods have been randomly (or ‘malevolently’) tacked on to the original design and the entire town seems to be in a perpetual state of construction. Apparently the modern designers, thinking outside the box, disregarded the idea that if you have a one-way street, then the next one-way street should go in the opposite direction. Also, they did not seem to want to conform to the idea that a street like, ‘North Johnson Street’ should have to connect in any way with ‘South Johnson Stre et.’ In addition, there are plenty of detours and unmarked roads to further confuse the issue. You might as well be driving blindfolded. Apparently everyone else is, and it doesn’t make any difference f...

My family and I recently visited to the National Zoo, in Washington, D.C. It is exciting to witness the savage laws of the jungle, and to learn about how some creatures are in a constant fight for survival in a harsh environment. And that was just us, during the trip home. The zoo idea came about because of three things:  1. Kids love animals.  2. There is a major zoo within fairly easy driving distance from our house.  And most importantly, due to the current economy and our financial situation,  3. The National Zoo is FREE. The trip there went fairly smoothly. My wife drove, and the directions led us where we needed to go.  I have to give her credit for her amazing driving skills because it is no easy task to pay attention to all the traffic lights (which are mounted on the sides of the roads instead of hanging over the center - prettier, but much less obvious to an out-of-towner) plus keep an eye on pedestrians fearlessly stepping into the road with...

My wife and I recently celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary and we did what many married couples do on occasions such as this – we went sightseeing through the woods, by hurling ourselves off some very tall trees. That’s right, we took a zip line tour through the Blue Ridge Mountains. I highly recommend it. If you’ve never heard about this recreational activity, a zip line is basically a long cable connecting two trees or poles. They put harnesses on you and you climb up the tree to a platform where they attach you to the cable using a very thin strip of material which appears to be the size and thickness of a strip of masking tape. Then they toss you off the platform, at which point you “zip” across the “line.” (Please pardon the technical jargon I am using here.) You can reach speeds of up to 40 mph, and are several stories above the ground, so obviously safety is a concern. This is why they have you strap on a helmet, and go through a rigorous 10-minute training s...

Whenever you have a vehicle that is out of commission, sometimes the most frustrating part is the inconvenience of it all, and all the hassle you have to go through. Sometimes it’s the thousands of dollars it costs to have it repaired. In my case, it’s usually both. After my truck broke down last month, leaving my wife stranded on the highway, I had packed up the kids and gone to get her, which you can read about in Part 1 . It was a joyous reunion. The kids and I hadn’t seen her all weekend, and we knew she had been through some rough weather in addition to all the intense activities she had participated in during her Woodbadge training. The excited hugging that you would expect in a reunion such as this was somewhat dampened by the 40-ton tractor trailers whooshing by a few feet away at 80 plus mph, plus all the miscellaneous litter and roadkill. Still, it was obvious that everyone was very excited to see each other. We got Sara and all her camping stuff transferred into our othe...

A couple weeks ago, my truck sort of gave out, which is odd, because it is a mere 14 years old. I don't think I have ever owned a vehicle that was born in the same decade as the year I bought it. As you would guess, I'm sort of used to car trouble. Of course, the truck waited to break down until my wife, Sara, was driving it all alone. It had been desperately hanging on up until this point, waiting for the chance to wreak the most havoc. Or, possibly, it had done everything it could to warn us that it was on the verge of total system failure and I just missed it. In retrospect, I guess there were a few subtle, practically imperceptible warning signs I should have picked up on: 1) It shimmied and shook every time you got it to a fairly high speed, upwards of 25 mph. 2) It made a noise, similar to a freight train screeching down the tracks with the emergency brakes on full stop. 3) It refused to go into fourth gear. 4) My wife repeatedly saying things like, "I think th...

   I’m fairly certain that most if not all the toys in my house arrived in a container of some sort. I am positive that extra containers have been purchased, recycled, borrowed and given to us to help store the massive amounts of various items that need containing. Yet we still seem to have a container issue. The issue is not that there is a shortage. The issue is more about how the concept of “using things as they were intended” goes against our kids’ nature.    Containers never seem to actually contain anything. Or they contain the wrong things. Cats, for example. Sometimes they contain our kids, in such imaginative uses like cars, or beds, or trampolines. But not for very long, mostly because household containers are generally not designed to withstand the sheer destructive force that our children are capable of wielding. I can easily imagine an engineer in charge of designing a sturdy container saying, “This container has a 300 cubic feet capacity, can support ...

Eating dinner out, and potty training are two things that do not combine very well. First off, when our kids were slightly younger than they are now, any dinner out was a disaster. There are three of them and only two of us, so right off the bat, we are outnumbered. There’s no man-to-man defense in a situation such as this. Add to that the fact that two of them are twins and sometimes you can have yourself a real situation.   Once, when the girls were not quite fully potty-trained, we were having a dinner at a restaurant. Of course, for us, ‘having dinner’ means there was food on the table, but instead of eating it, we were frantically jumping around catching thrown forks and spilled cups and tipping high chairs.    At one point, one of our daughters said she had to go potty. If you’ve ever potty trained a child, you know the thought process that happens at this moment. There is mild frustration at having to interrupt dinner to take care of things. There is excitement a...

  If it weren’t for my kids, I would never have considered the advantages of keeping cheese in the cleaning supply closet for several days. These are the sorts of enlightening tidbits that you pick up when you become a parent.   My children love to help. They are overflowing with excitement and energy when it comes to all sorts of chores. Except, of course, the ones they are supposed to be doing, such as cleaning up their messes. Still, whenever they see us carrying something heavy or working with some sort of high-powered appliance, they are eagerly on board. Particularly if it is potentially messy or dangerous.   Unfortunately, a child’s desire to help you is inversely proportional to the actual level of help they are physically capable of providing. So in letting them help, we are actually making things take longer and usually creating more of a mess. Still, we don’t want to discourage them, because we know that eventually the day will come that they will be abl...