Monday, February 29, 2016

2016 Week 8: Endings and Ongoings

Sunday the 21st was the anniversary of Daddy's passing. I went back to the poem I wrote, "Dear Daddy" and later reviewed the photos of the days when we gathered as a family to celebrate his life. 



 This week also marked the end of robot build-season. As always, the team worked extra long hours to meet the deadline.


Tuesday, February 23 midnight, Bag and Tag took place and they celebrated with rootbeer floats.

However, that was not the end. This year they pushed hard to build an additional robot in order to practice the game before competition season. They were also allowed to keep back a limited amount of components to continue perfecting their mechanisms.

Mike told me this morning, almost a week later, that he figured out a problem in his sleep. One of the feats the robot must accomplish to get best points, is to climb the tower at the end. They managed it off and on, and again before the bagging. A certain sound in the process clued him into a recurring problem.
It seems that his brain continues to iterate uninterrupted when he is at rest. He explained the word: an iteration is a repetition which includes a change or additional step, whereas a reiteration is an exact repetition. Anyway, two missing steps came to him as he napped.

The team needs help: this wonderfully built and muti-skilled robot remains nameless!

I learned another word this week Tsundoku--a reading pile, or the tendency to acquire and let books pile up unread. My stacks illustrate this obvious problem: top right--three books that arrived this week; middle right--audio books I have or am enjoying. . .



Wednesday, I planned to help Mother get to her follow-up visit with the surgeon, but winter storm warnings discouraged travel. I was in Marion for a hair cut when I learned that her Dr.s office was closing for the day and we'd have to reschedule her appointment. I was so grateful to make it home safely. However, I found the lane blocked, had to walk the last stretch and wait for Michael to cut and remove the fallen tree.



At that point we were only getting rain and very strong winds. Snow came later.

We woke up Thursday to the birds having a party around the bird feeders.


Friday, February 25th, remembering three years ago when we buried Dad.
Thanks to cousin Stan Hoyt and neice Tina Herschberger we have a wonderful collection of photos.


Five Hoyt siblings with Mother--the day of the viewing and the day of the funeral
Sam's family was only able to come the day of the viewing. How the young ones have changed!


Stephan and Karen came for the viewing and friend Gina. Leah and family came for the memorial service the next day.


Saturday I happened to be at the Red Barn and peeked into the Pottery room at the many pieces accumulating there--a reminder of another of Mike's weekly commitments. Wednesday he had quite a large group of kids during the after-school session.




My Spanish classes were fun, different, interesting this week. The best one was a guest speaker from Chile, who happens to be a tour guide. I asked him to share 15 or 20 minutes and the students would also have prepared questions. He extolled the wonders of his country for two hours and we were enthralled!

2 comments:

  1. I'm glad you weren't driving through when that tree fell! I love the snow picture. Do you reckon we're done with snow now? I'm thinking probably not :)

    Hmmm...robot names... I got nothing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I beat him to the tree cutting! :) We would normally be gone during the day, but we were home because Renee had just returned from Haiti the night before after being gone for 6 weeks teaching there. The kids stayed home and we were all vegging out with her. She woke up to look out and see the tree down and a traffic jam starting to form behind it, so I got the chainsaw and started cutting. Mike showed up and said, "You beat me to it!" I mentioned that this time is wasn't our fault - the tree fell from your side of the woods. Usually it's ours!

    ReplyDelete

I love hearing from you!