The Wargo Blog

When we were in Akron, I just couldn’t get excited about Christmas. I don’t know whether it was something about the house or who wasn’t in the house with us, but I just stopped caring about decorating for Christmas. Now that we’re in Charlotte, I decided to try to make a big deal out of the holiday (and all holidays).  If you’ve seen the pictures, the house has a series of dormers across the front. There’s even one above the front door and for some reason it has a power outlet in it. So, when we bought the house, I decided that we were going to put something up in that dormer for each holiday – something that could be seen from the street and also from within the house.

We’ve been so busy this year that I really haven’t been able to make anything happen, but for Christmas Anna picked up a 7 1/2 foot lighted (fake) Christmas tree. Friday morning, I couldn’t put ANYTHING up for Christmas before Thanksgiving, I dug out the new tree and assembled it up in the dormer. It looks great from the street and from the main foyer. We even finally figured out what that last switch was for in one of the bedroom storage areas (it controlled the outlet in the dormer). Here’s a picture of the twins up in the dormer with the new tree.

Dormer Tree

Anna and I were talking the other day about Christmas at the kid’s school. Apparently it’s against the rules to bring candy canes in to the school. Apparently some idiot decided to make Candy Canes all about Jesus, so now the kids can’t have them at school. Why can’t a candy cane be about, I don’t know, candy?  Why does it have to be religious? Apparently people are starting to compare snowflakes to the star Jesus was born under, so anything snowflake related will be prohibited too. You’ve got to be kidding me.

I was sitting with the kids and Anna this morning as they got ready for school and August asked me if I knew how many loaves and fishes he had. I had no idea what he was talking about. Anna filled me in – they’re collecting food for the poor and every day the kids are bringing in canned goods and other foodstuffs. Wait a minute – why can’t they have candy canes (too jesusy) but instead can do loaves and fishes? Of all of the things I’ve mentioned in this post, loaves and fishes are the only thing that actually are related to religion – it’s a story from the Bible.

I hate parts of this politically correct and bizarre world we live in. Won’t be long before cotton balls, q-tips or socks are somehow related to religion and are somehow banned from the schools. Argh!

I hate it when you go to what’s supposed to be a great steak restaurant and they don’t know how to melt blue cheese on s steak. If the steak is almost $30 and the ‘melted blue cheese’ is still crumbles, you’re wasting your time with this restaurant.

And, what gives with this blue cheese crust thing Outback and Flemings are doing? Yuck. Why would I want bread crumbs mixed in with my blue cheese when blue cheese all by itself is so freaking awesome? Inquiring minds want to know.

The  funniest thing about last night was me chasing my neighbor Liz up her  driveway with a squirt gun. It’s a STEEP hill and, although I knew she  was a runner, I thought that since she was a girl (and I had Soccer  legs) that I could catch her. Nope, no way. I got a certain distance  behind her and couldn’t get any closer to her as we ran. Unfortunately,  she was just far enough away and we were both running fast enough that I  could barely spray her.

I got her later, she was hiding from my neighbor Jeff behind a bush – of  course, I snuck up behind her around the other side of the bush and  dumped a bucket on her. Too much fun.

It’s been an amazing weekend here. Last night we got together with two other couples to have a nice dinner at The Dish in Charlotte then headed over to the Neighborhood Theater to see Paul Thorn (www.paulthorn.com) in concert. It was amazing. Dinner was great and the concert was awesome; he puts on a great show every time.

Today August had a Soccer game at 9 then he and Elizbeth were off to a birthday party followed by another one for August this afternoon. Since Anna was with August, Elizabeth and I headed out for lunch at Steak & Shake and then off to play miniature golf and ride go-carts.

After dinner I started this ginormous squirt gun fight with the neighborhood kids. It all started when I turned on the sprinker system to try to get August wet. As he and some friends started riding their bikes through the water, I grabbed a big squirt gun and started hosing everyone down. Before you knew it, we were all across the street terrorizing our neighbors. Within about an hour, everyone was wet (including 5 adults) and we were all exhausted. Way, way fun. I LOVE this neighborhood.  We had the hose out, garbage cans full of water and little sophie had this wee tiny little squirt gun (we all had big ones); it was like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Afterwards, some of the neighborhood kids were over and started begging Anna to allow a sleep over. She immediately said no, no, no but then when I walked upstairs, I said ‘sure, why not.’  Well, hours later, they’re just now getting into bed. There’s four kids in August’s room, we have four mattresses on the floor (after August’s bed collapsed during preparations). We’ll see if anyone goes to sleep. The neighborhod kids have been told they’re going home if they don’t sleep. August and Elizabeth were told they’re going to sleep in the garage if they don’t go to sleep. It won’t work, but so far they’re having fun. Me too!

We took the twins to Carowinds today – it’s a local amusement park just about 20 miles from here. I noticed two interesting things while we were at the park. One was an interesting marketing trick and another was an interesting use of technology.

Living in North Carolina, we get more nice weather than we were use to in Northeastern Ohio. I loved Cedar Point, but never seemed to make it there. With the nicer weather here, I can go from March to November, much longer than I could at Cedar Point.

As we walked around the park, they repeatedly made announcements indicating that we could trade in today’s admission price against a season pass for the 2011. Regular price was about $50 (plus $10 for parking) and with a discount received by delivering one canned Coke product for each of us, we were able to enter the park for $35 each. Expensive for a fall day, but not a bad deal considering it would have been $50 otherwise ($200 for the 4 of us). The additional cost for a season pass for next year was $30 for each of us. That meant, for less than the cost of admission today, we get an entire season of free admission plus free parking. Not a bad deal.

The acquisition price for a new season pass holder must be pretty high or sales must be pretty low for them to offer this deal. We know we’re going to go at least once next year, so no matter what we’ve saved money on this deal. Nice.

As you probably know, they take pictures everywhere at the park and try to get you to buy them. When we rode the first ride that generated a picture, it was interesting to see them offer putting the photo on a USB memory drive for the same price as a printed picture. Nice idea – I get an electronic copy of the photo and don’t have to carry a print with me everywhere I go.

There’s got to be a mobile application in here somewhere.

I’m thinking that an amusement park could offer customers a mobile application to help make this even easier. You download a free copy of the mobile application before going to the park then enter in your credit card information. As you finish the ride and get funneled through the area to view the photos that were just taken, you can acquire the photo directly from your mobile phone; nothing to carry around the remainder of the day. When you find a picture you like, you enter the ride number then the photo number. Your credit card could be charged directly and you could even be offered a discount by using the application. It would certainly cost the amusement park less money since there’d be no printing or copying files to a memory stick that would just get lost. The photo could be emailed to the device, sent via MMS or even downloaded directly to the application running on the phone.
Yeah, that would be something I would be interested in. I’d probably buy more photos.

I had lunch at Sky-Way drive-in in Akron today. Haven’t done that since we left town six months and a day ago. It was nice to sit there and feel back home again. Afterwards I headed off to the West Side Bakery to pick up some cookies before heading off to visit with an old neighbor. The old house looks great and the neighborhood looks great as well. Nice to be home again.

A small crew was at the house today working on filling the foundation and roughing in the plumbing. I’d asked the guy moving the dirt around if August could get a ride some time and he kindly agreed. At the end of his day, he let both August and Elizabeth drive his Dingo – the machine you see in the following pictures. The kids had a blast, couldn’t believe he was letting them drive by themselves.

We have these crappy little blocks the previous owner used to build some stairs down into the back yard. They were used to build the walls for the stairs and some rocks were dumped into the area to make the floor. Didn’t like it and couldn’t wait to get rid of them. We asked the builder to put all of the blocks and rocks into the fill for the new garage and that’s likely to happen today.

This last weekend, I suggested that we take some of the blocks and make a fire pit down/back in the woods in my back yard. My back is out (9 days now) so Elizabeth worked one block down into the back and Anna carried/rolled another 23 of them down. The blocks lay perfectly into a little circle, so now we have a nice fire pit to use this fall/winter.  Here’s a pic (I dropped the camera, so it no longer focuses – probably explains the blurriness of the picture).

The Fire Pit

Anna and I ‘finished’ the fort today. When her sister was in town last week, they sewed a cover for the main part of the fort. We attached it today and it turned out great! check out the pics: