Iowa State Fair 2013: Stick Your Head in There Edition

In a lot of ways, this year's trip to the fair was like our previous visits to the fair.

We stopped by Ye Old Mill to see our fair brick.

The girls shared a pork chop on a stick. And like last year, I didn't share mine.

They shared a funnel cake, and I stayed out of it. The only nonmeat items I eat at the fair are the cheese curds.

And we tried some new foods on a stick. A lot was made of the shrimp corn dog, but the bacon-wrapped rib won me over. Man, I hope this makes a comeback for next year.

Here's my rib, and yes, I did share it with Daphne. She got a bite.

The big difference with this visit to the fairgrounds was Charlotte herself. I'm sure it's just a phase, but she was too scared to do most of the things we enjoyed last last year. Clifford the Big Red Dog was terrifying. She was sure she'd be eaten by the tunnel at Ye Old Mill. And although we were among the 94,705 people who slid down the Giant Slide in 2012, Char was having none of it this year. She told me she wanted to go, but she ran away after I bought her a ticket to ride.

So, I went by myself.

The only ride she'd try was the Sky Ride, and I suspect that was because she could sit next to mom the whole time.

The big hit for Char were the wooden and fabric stand-ins that you can put your face through. She was all over those. 

Daphne doesn't have a clue why Char got such a kick out of posing with these stand-ins, but I have a suspicion.

My confession will come later.

Take a Food Tour of the Iowa State Fair...

...circa 1973. Here.
I'm a sucker for loose meat sandwich recipes (called a "Made Right" in this clip), and I'm gonna try to scale her recipe down for my family.
Verbal recipe from the clip:

Combine:
10 pounds of ground beef
1/4 cup of vinegar
1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of salt
1 cup of minced onion
1 cup of water
In a large pot, heat mixture until it's all "cooked up", and then stir in:
1 and 1/3 cup oatmeal to absorb the extra juice for a few minutes more.

If it was good enough for the Iowa State Fair, then it's good enough for me. I'm really curious about using the oatmeal.

Unhappiness is... An Iowa State Unfair

We spied this sign while walking through the Iowa State Fair on Thursday. At first glance, this looked awesome. Then we read the fine print.

Shame on you, Community Choice Credit Union. You broke our hearts, and we'll never unbank with you now.

Finding Needles

I'm not sure where she got the idea to have her cremated remains inserted into a firework and launched towards the heavens, but my mother-in-law was very excited when she told us that was what she wanted us to do with her body after she died. 

That was about five years ago, and to be honest I thought it was going to be a fun, but passing thought. I was wrong. Deb never lost her enthusiasm for lighting up the night sky. 

The problem we faced when she died in July was how were we supposed to do it? Yes, she had already reached stage four lung cancer when she found out she was sick, and we all knew where her road was leading her, but the chemo treatments were doing their job. She was in the hospital for an infection when her brain began to hemorrhage. Her death was truly unexpected. 

Because it was so unexpected, no one had ever asked Deb how she had planned to get herself inside a July rocket. Seriously, how do you start that conversation when your mom is fighting nausea tooth and nail from the confines of a hospital bed? We didn't.

After Deb's funeral, the girls started digging through their mom's files looking for something pertaining to a firework company. They found nothing. Funeral file? Nope. Cremation instructions? Again, negative. I'm not sure how she noticed it, but Daphne spied this short notation in a small notebook, "800-648-3890 J&M".  A Google search lead to J&M Displays. Daphne gave them a call, and she was told, "Yep, we can do that. We do funeral shells." Well, all right. Not only is this going to be possible (and legal), there even was a legitimate name for the service. Funeral Shells.

The next event J&M was working was the National Balloon Classic in Indianola, Iowa. We decided to go with their second show on August 3. On that day in the early afternoon, Daphne and Phaedra drove to Indianola and through a huge, open field to meet with Jason from J&M.

Here's the funeral shell (see, it even says so on the label). It's important to note that this is a five inch shell, and that it's the only shell of this size that was going into the display on Saturday night.

The top of the funeral shell screws open, and the cremains can be poured in.

Since the shell was covered in brown paper, each girl took the opportunity to write an inscription to their mom.

Daphne wired the shell.

Phaedra placed the shell in the launching tube.

The final step was connect the red and black wires to the launching cart. The gals shared connecting duties. 

Here's Deb armed and dangerous.

We got to the Balloon Classic around 6:30. Charlotte was pretty impressed with the huge balloon launch, but she was more excited about playing in the inflatable bounce house. 

Around 9:00 Daph and Phaedra left to meet up with Jason again.  J&M was going to let them both push the button that launched their mother's shell. That's is very cool. (I have to mention that Daphne was so impressed with how nice everyone from J&M was.) 

If you're wondering how everyone else was going to know which firework was Deb's, you're not alone. Jason's solution was to shoot off a "cake", and then pause for ten seconds before the flip the switch. Although they didn't know it, a crowd of a few thousand people were about to attend my mother-in-law's second funeral.

Here's a video of the event given to us by a good friend. The pause begins at the 30 second mark, and Deb comes on ten seconds later.

You might think this story ends with a boom and a flash and a puff of smoke, but it doesn't.

After the display ended, Daphne and Phaedra returned to our camp of chairs and blankets flush from the excitement of standing beneath an explosive umbrella of fire and sparks. As the family was hugging and wiping away tears, the lights across the field were being extinguished. Then a figure appeared out of the dark with hands full.

It was Jason, "I found your mom's shell. I thought you might like to have it." We knew he found the right shell. Like I said earlier, it was the only five inch one used that night.

The shell's case was split into two equal parts, like the last slice of dessert two sisters are forced to share.

I would think finding just one half of this shell in the light of day would be quite a feat, but finding both sides in the pitch dark? How does that happen?

But then again, I don't know how Jason even found us. I wasn't joking when I said there were thousands of people there. How do you walk across an open field in the ink of night, and within minutes find the right group of people who are folding up blankets and chairs like hundreds of others? How does that happen?

Drawers and drawers of files. Acres and acres of field. Hills and hills of people.

So many haystacks.

You'd have to have an angel on your shoulder to successfully navigate them all...

You Get What You Deserve

As seen on a billboard along Douglas Ave:

If I did something that earned me a can of Busch Light, then I didn't do something very well.

We're Almost Out of Neosporin

So I'm pretty excited our kitten is getting declawed tomorrow. 

Bug Update: Seeing Red

As it should, the Bug has taken a severe back seat to all of our family responsibilities this summer, but I have managed to squeeze in a couple of small jobs.

Back in May, I decided I was done sitting in a trashed seat. You can see it was once held together with duct tape, but that never lasts. After a while you end up with an adhesive slick that sticks to your clothes. For years I used an old tee shirt to cover the ripped vinyl, but I grew tired of that, too.

These red and white seat covers are not original to the car, but except for the damaged backrest, they're fine for now. Since we don't own a sewing machine, I took the backrest to a local upholster to see if he could do the repair, but the price he quoted me was more than a new set of seat covers for the entire car. I had to pass. When the time comes, I'll install new seat covers. But I just don't have that time right now. What I needed was a quick fix, so I can sit in my car without sticking to it.

What I found was a seat cover for sale on TheSamba.com. The cover was used but in good shape. The only problem was that it was black. I bought the cover, and installed it anyway.

Every time I take something apart on this car, it's a bit like automotive archeology. There were random wads of stuffing from what could have been an old couch under the cover, and the thin board behind the backrest was rotten. Using the tattered board as a template, I cut a new one from a large panel of a cardboard box. Three of the four metal clips that hold the spring frame to the seat frame were broken. Instead of paying someone to weld the clips back on, I used some heavy plastic zip ties to secure the springs to the frame. Maybe the folks on the VW restoration forums would consider that cheating, but I don't really know those people.

I was tempted to run the black seat cover as is. The black color sticks out, but I don't stick to it. And that's a big improvement. But here's the trouble when I improve something. Once I've made the improvement, I forget what it used to look like, and I scrutinize what I now have. Okay that's looks pretty good... I think this could be better. Two of the above pictures are pretty washed out, but the middle shot shows how black the seat really was.

I say, "was" because I decided to take this fix one step further. I have read about vinyl upholstery dye. You can get it in a spray can, and I was curious how red dye would adhere to a black surface.

When I found a bike against a dumpster couple of years ago, it came with a seat with its black vinyl torn loose. Since I also intend to do a headliner install sometime, I thought I'd use the black bike seat as a way to experiment with contact cement and the vinyl dye.

To start, I secured the cemented, loose flap of vinyl with some clips from OfficeMax. Strangely, black clips cost five times more than red clips.

The cement holds really well, and those indentations caused by the clips were much less noticeable a day later.

So, it was time to try the dye. I checked the store shelves for "Butt Worn, Faded Out Red" to get a perfect match for my car seat, but all they sell is "Red".

I used about half of the can, and I think it looks pretty smooth. You'd never suspect this saddle used to be black. See, you can't really see the clip indentations.

To check if the dye would rub off onto my clothes, I mounted the seat to my bike and pedaled around the neighborhood. After several trips around the block, the only thing that was red was the bike seat. Score.

Time to spray the Bug's seat cover... or so I thought. I needed a dry day (one) at home (two) with temperatures between to 70 and 90 degrees (three). I had to wait twenty two days for those three requirements to align.

Finally, on the morning of June 28, it was time to spray the Bug's seat cover. Instead of getting over spray all over the garage, I hung the seat from a solid tree branch in our back yard. 

I went through a can and a half of the spray coating, and the color covered very well. After an hour under the tree, I let the seat hang in our garage for a few days to make sure the dye had time to cure. After that, I returned the backrest to the car.

Even a colorblind guy like me can tell that the colors don't match. But the seat's no longer ripped, sticky, or black. I bet after some time the new color will fade some, too.

Honesty, I don't think most people will notice my mistakes or my missteps on this car unless I point them out. They'll just see the overall effect. The people who are actually looking for my mistakes aren't worth my time or my worry.

Now that I think about it, I should apply that philosophy to other aspects of my life.

Nokia Royale

Cue the James Bond music.

Sunday morning, at 08:15, I deployed the Nokia decoy.

Twenty minutes later, while I was in our bedroom, I heard a stifled giggle and the padding of small feet down the hall. I quietly checked the kitchen island to see if my plan had worked.

"Hey," I yelled in mock frustration, "where's my cell phone?" A burst of giggles coming from Charlotte's room was all I needed for a confirmation. 

This time the phone wasn't too hard to find, Mommy spy was watching, and she gave it's location away.

Considering that once the phone is on this shelf, it's out of Char's line of vision, so this is a pretty good hiding place from her point of view. 

Call Me (a Dinosaur)

Here's a picture of my cell phone:

Now before you throw a rock at me, and yell at me to go back to my cave, I have to tell you a few things.

First of all, I never wanted a cell phone. There was a stretch of time in my life when every time I answered a call I would hear bad news concerning my dad. To this day, my heart simultaneously races and sinks when I hear a phone ring. Since I hate bad news, I also hate telephones. Get a cell phone? Why on earth would I want bad news to be able to find me anywhere and anytime it wanted to? Forget that mess; thank you very little.

Despite my dragging heels, Daphne bought me a TracFone for Christmas in 2004. She assured me she bought the cheapest phone with the shortest service plan she could find, and if I hated using the phone I could just throw it away. But she added,"Though it would be nice to be able to call you whenever I really needed you."

After nine years, the Nokia 1100 is still my cell phone of choice. Again, put down that rock. There are some other things I want to tell you about my phone that might earn it your respect.

1) My phone is the best selling consumer electronics device in the world. The 1100 was only manufactured from 2003 to 2005, but over two hundred and fifty million units were sold during that time. Daphne bought mine at Target, but the 1100's no-slip grips and dust-proof case were really aimed at third-world regions where texting and calling were all a cell phone needed to do. The thing sold like wildfire.

2) Talking about sales, a cell phone like mine sold on eBay for $32,000. Seriously, phones made in Bochum, Germany, had a software flaw that could be exploited to gain access to other people's online banking accounts. Hackers in Russia, Romania, and Morocco were especially interested. Some of these German phones are still for sale on eBay. Today I found one selling for $299:

3) My phone has a fan club and it's own wikipedia page.

4) My phone has a flashlight:

5) I can leave my phone on for 16 days straight without having to charge it. The battery in the 1100 was also used in much more advanced Nokia handsets which needed more power to run the functions my phone doesn't have. What kind of functions? All of them.

6) I can play Snake 2 on my Nokia 1100.

7) In a world full of cracked and shattered display screens, the Nokia 1100 has proven to be almost indestructible. When I was googling doing serious research for this post, I discovered that every product review stated how simple the 1100 is, and how tough. It can even battle Chuck Norris!

But after nine years of dutiful service, I decided I needed an upgrade. So, I went on eBay, and bought my phone some new clothes. I think the new grey housing looks rather nice.

Now, here's the only draw back about my phone. Charlotte knows I like it, so she hides my phone. And she's pretty good when it comes to finding hiding places, but she pretty bad when it comes to remembering where the hiding places are. Awhile back I "lost" my phone for eight days. 

When she was napping today, I went to a thrift store and actually found what I was looking for. A decoy Nokia phone.

The phone was only fifty cents, but there was an electronics sale going that I didn't even know about. Wow, that's 37 cents well spent! I'm going to leave this new guy where I usually place my real phone, and hope this is the one that gets hidden/ forgotten. Of course this Nokia still works, too. It even had a text message from 2007:

Get Dad a Nokia 1100 for Father's day? What a GREAT GIFT idea. Talk about a smart phone.