Let The Rain Pour ...... Let It Rain Til Morning ......

We have had two straight days (nights really) of rain! Wow. I was starting to forget what that was like around here. The weird part is that it got cold enough last night to freeze the rain (actually think it was snow now.) The cars have ice on them and I am afraid the trees do too. The fruit trees have already started to bloom. Ouch.

So we sorta hung out inside in the evening and played until Emily thought we should go eat at Chili's. That turned out to be a yummy idea.


Not sure if we have told the grandparents but Elizabeth has been blowing her nose for awhile for us. Here she is doing it herself.




She also had a first yesterday on the potty for her Mom. Yea. She is very proud. We will send the photo out by email though. :)












On another note: I have not looked at the blog with IE ever since I stopped using it a good while ago. I now use Mozilla (Firefox to be exact) at home for spyware and popup control (excellent I might add too) and Mozilla and Safari at work.

Anyway, I discovered with the IE version at home that the blog does not look quite the same compared to the ones I use regularly. A couple of my template hacks do not work as well as I would like. Mozilla and Safari seem to handle this blog better than IE. I also noticed that the Nolen's Blog looks different too...actually better with IE as far as picture layout on their blog goes than Mozilla or Safari on their blog. Interesting. I wonder what a newer version of IE will look like on this blog. Not all browsers are alike I guess as far as HTML goes.

Friends of a Famous Bowler!

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Player Won, Lost Bowling Tourney

By Glen Rosales
For The ABQ Journal

Nate Limback found himself in an interesting position Sunday afternoon in the finals of the Strike It Rich King Classic bowling tournament.

That's because he was a member of both teams that were playing for the championship at the Big Rock Casino in Española.

"That's not the kind of scenario you want to be in," he said.

On one hand, he was assured of being a part of the winning, five-man team.

But Limback, of Los Alamos, looked at it another way.

"It put a lot of pressure on me to make a good shot for both teams," he said. "I wanted to leave the outcome up to the rest of the members of each team."

The teams played a two-game series in the finale, with the Lock & Load squad of Santa Fe with Fred Moya, Henry Olivas, Ron George and Lance Emerson winning 234-207, 239-194 over Heads Up No. 2 of Española with Brian Hindberg, David Viera Jr., Rory Tooley and Dave Cates.

Lock & Load teammates split $3,000 for first place, while Heads Up No. 2 shared $2,000. So Limback came away with a cool $1,000 for his efforts.

"That's the most money I've ever won," he said. "I've played in this tournament two other times and never even made it the final 16. I was pretty excited."

Under the tournament's rules, one player could be on several teams, as long no more than three bowlers aren't part of two teams.

Although Limback was on both teams, he said the other bowlers on the teams were pretty understanding about the situation.

"I've known all the guys for a long time; they're all really good guys," he said. "That's another reason there was so much pressure on me to well for both teams."

For the most part, he was able to manage that, picking up two strikes for both teams in the first game and a strike and an open split in the other.

Nearly 400 teams participated in the three-day tournament, which was then whittled down to a final 16. From there, the teams played a double-elimination tournament to arrive at the final two teams.

In the round of 16, the games were rolled by each of the five bowlers, with each team member having two frames.

George, who recently won the Santa Fe city tournament, said that made this a challenging event.

"It gets rough," he said. "But everybody bowled a lot the day before. We had the rhythm going."

The monetary aspect added another challenge to the equation.

"It was a lot better because there was more money involved," he said. "It made it a lot more exciting. But it was kind of nerve wracking. I'd never bowled with that much money on the line."


It appears that Nate (friend, student, and workmate of Steve and I) has been busy bowling on at least three teams in a tournament this last weekend. He came in 1st, 2nd, and 4th. Guess the 1st and 2nd place was a bit of a strain for him. :)

Congrats Nate!

I am waiting to find out when he will shout Steve and me lunch one of these days. ;)

Livermore Watching Los Alamos and Worrying ....

I am not sure the National Labs will ever be the same again:

Livermore Article

On another note, I found out that our ex-lab director is still getting paid by the University of California so he can vest in the UC retirement:

Pete Nanos still connected to us...

Our Girls

Emily in her Easter dress and a knit scarf she made herself. She is really growing up on us. Sometimes quite the young lady.










Look Grandmas and Grandpa, Elizabeth is brushing her teeth. She loves her toothbrush.

Seldom Disappointed But.........

I just found out that the Texas Section of the American Physical Society was held at Angelo State Univ. in late March and see how Elizabeth sympathizes with me. (Just kidding...she is sad her Mommy was in the shower and would not let her in.)

I am very disappointed and sad to have missed it since it was at ASU for the first time in a long time that I can remember. I would have supported it for sure. Might have got Tim and/or Nate to go too. Oh well.

ASU TSAPS Spring 2006

On another note, the family got up this morning and Gwen & Emmy headed to church to help with the music and skits for vacation bible school training. ALB and me are batching it for a hour or so.

And ALB is actually much happy now. Gwen took this one yesterday.

Daniel Boone/Davey Crockett/Jim Coates

For years I had heard that Fess Parker graduated from San Angelo High School in the 40's. I decided to do a google on him and found that yes he did graduate from Angelo and went to Hardin-Simmons for awhile then on to UT. Said he played football in high school and my guess he play about a year or two before they won the State Championship using the single wing offense, and beat Doak Walker and Bobby Lane at Highland Park on the way to State game.

Here is an interesting interview where Fess shares a good bit about acting in the 50/60's and working for Disney and missing out on some big roles. Seems Walt Disney held Fess back a good bit:

Interview with Fess Parker

Also here is Fess Parker's webpage:

Fess Parker Webpage

On another note........worked in the backyard yesterday and got the second third of the yard raked and mowed and watered. Took a break this evening from it to help Tim Davenport (an Engineering Physics student at TTU and that works in the summer with Steve and me) with some of his quantum mechanics homework. I know this will sound strange but I really miss quantum.

I will work on the other third of the yard tomorrow. Need to get some fertilzer down soon too. Hopefully get the swing set in the ground sometime this week.

On another other note: Was watching the "Dirty Jobs" show on Discovery. It is amazing what horse farms do to bred horses. The whole collection and insemination (spell) process is a nasty dirty job. Wow. It is amazing some of the dirty jobs this guy does just for TV. Usually very interesting.

Now watching Quigley Down Under....what more can a guy want in a movie....a nice looking rifle and some great long range shooting.

Easter Day

Here are the girls in their Easter dresses (on the left) in front of the churches traditional flower cross. And (on the right) is ALittleBit putting a flower on the cross...with Em in the background putting hers on too.




Then at Children's Time I got a pretty good picture of Em and Elizabeth sitting together listening to Pastor Chuck. Notice on the right of Elizabeth is Erin Burrell and just on the Pastor's right arm is Caleb Nolen. Elizabeth sat there pretty good thru most of Children's time. Emily, Erin, and one other friend of Emily's, Emma Schmidt, kept Elizabeth corralled. :)


After church we joined the Nolens and Schmidts over at the Nolens for Easter Lunch. It was Yum and we all had a good visit. Then we returned home for a brief nap and then an egg hunt for Elizabeth. It took her a few minutes to figure out that she was suppose to find the eggs. Then she would just go calmly around picking them up if she beat Emily to them.



During most of the egg hunt, I for the first time in a long time was out in the backyard and started stressing about how badly the yard needed attention. So after the hunt was over I pulled the mower and rakes out and started working on the yards. Yikes ... so much to do and no
time to do it. We have lost one tree to barkbeetles and need to get someone over to
take it out and to do what we can to protect the other trees. This will be a long
summer I am afraid.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!

Warm spring day

Well it was a warm spring day with a bit of wind to keep it cool. Didn't do much today. Took Em to the park to play.

Thought a good bit about the shoot I was missing. But was glad I was here with my family. Removed the driver's side door handle on my truck. It broke off and I need to get a new one. Finally get tired of having to roll down the wind'er and pull on the outside handle to open my door. :)


ALittleBit was in good form today. She can be a real joy to be around. One of her favorite things to do is sit on a turned over plastic box in the kitchen. She uses the shelves for her own little
table. ALB loves to wear hats too and spends alot of time sitting here in the kitchen while we do work.

Talk to Bob and Gale today. Bob just got back from Illinois. Turns out this last week his cousin Emily Marie passed on. She was in
her 90s and was very thrilled that we named our first child Emily Marie too. I am not sure Gwen has told Em that she passed on yet.....it will make Em sad since Emily Marie would write and send Em stuff.

Today Pearle called to let us know that a lady called out of the blue and was interested in renting our other place for one year. Not sure of the details but sounded like a binding deal for one year. I'm not sure we want to give up the option of selling it while we have renters. We have not actually pursued renting the place yet though it has been an option in back of our minds.

Well, tomorrow is Easter. Yea He's alive and I am forgiven! We are planning to have Easter lunch with the Nolens. It should be a great day.

Cricket Power

Finally added some optical power to Em's Cricket. Not a bad looking scope. Hopefully she can get used to it easier than the peep-sights that come with the rifle.

There are several firearm options out there for small kids and youth to learn with. Sorta neat that folks are thinking about training the future of the shooting sports.

• Cricket Rifles
  
• Chipmunk Rifles(Legendary)
  
• Henry Rifles (Mini and Acu - Bolts)
  
• Savage Rifles (The Cub)
  
• CZ Rifles (The Scout RF)
  

Say It Isn't So Don ! Farewell Tour!?

While putting Other Links on this blog I found out that the Gentle Giant is doing his Farewell Tour. I am not sure if Don is not going to tour at all or just stop his international touring which has been to England, Oz, NZ, and so forth. A banner at his website says he will undertake his farewell tour of the UK and Ireland in April/May.

I am hoping he will still do some touring in the good Ole USA but I cannot count on it and am thinking I will have to catch one of his shows this year somewhere. I am now regretting I did not try to see him down in Espanola last November. At least my In-Laws got to see him out in Mesquite, NV.

I have been wanting to see him live for several years now but just have not gott'er done. I should have figured on this since Don is not getting any younger. I have missed my Texas chances this year. But there is still Colorado or NV possibly near the end of the year.

The man is a Classic.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

When I got home from work yesterday I expected to find Elizabeth in a grumpy mood since Gwen had to take her to the doctor for an ear infection. As I drove up all my girls came out the front door with smiles on their face and Em&ALittleBit had on some summer "cowboy" hats that Texas Grandma has sent them. I thought they were pretty nice looking hats and ALittleBit wore hers happily with a big smile. See Texas Grandma!? Thx!

Emily had rigged up the Radio Flyer wagon with a seat cushion, a backrest, and a seat belt just for ALittleBit. Em was pulling her around smiling the whole time.

Spring Fever !!!

Well I've been meaning to post several times this past week but just have not had time. So I will try to catch up with a few posts.

Last week was spring break so Gwen and the kids went to the ABQ zoo with the Grahams. Emily came back with some major hayfever due to animals and everything blooming in ABQ. Other than that it sounds like they had fun. They brought back some BBQ from Rudy's for us to eat the next evening for supper. Sausage Yum!

Steve (that is him in the picture) came over to eat BBQ with us. One of many meals we ate with Dr. Nuke since he was batching it due to April and the kids being in Texas visiting family. Also had Nate over one evening to finish off a pot roast (a Gwen speciality) made using Homemade Gourmet. Some new world records in computer snowboarding were broken too while visiting Steve over at the Nolen's house.

Friday afternoon Steve, Emily, and myself slipped off the Shooting Range and spent many 22LR rounds. Emily finally has the hang of the peep-sights on her Cricket 22 and hit the target often. And not surprisingly Steve was right at home and nearly ran out of ammo using the old Remington pump-action. Good thing we did not have a semi-auto or Steve's fun would have been over in about 15 minutes not to mention we would have ran out of prairie dog targets to light up.

A good time was had by all.

Em got to feed and walk the Baker's dog, Misty and Mia, over the weekend. We all really enjoyed the dogs and Emily got to exercise some responsibility. She did a pretty good job. A Little Bit loves seeing and talking to the neighborhood dogs. When the Baker's got back and brought the dogs out for their daily walk Elizabeth went running up to them saying, "Mia, Mia, Mia!" through her binky. It surprised Mr. Baker. She also has the hang of saying Misty and Bailey (another neighbor's dog.) She loves calling to them and waving.

All in all a pretty good Spring break week.