Whew!

Well, I wanted to post yesterday but never got to it, so here is "Yesterday's post Today!"
My 8 year old was sick all week, he finally started feeling better on Thursday afternoon so that was when he finally designed his pinewood derby car. Last year his car was a very cool serpent coming out of a sea of water, however, it was NOT a fast car. I kept telling him it would not be fast, but he wanted to do the serpent so we did. When his car came in dead last, well, then he decided he probably really did want something fast.
THIS year, he had a basic design for a car. I can't tell you how thankful I was, I make him do all of the sanding, painting, etc., but I do the power tool work, ie. most of the cutting. The serpent was, well, not easy (he didn't enjoy sanding it either). Well, we cut the wood block together, with me talking about basic safety lessons with the power tools, then he sanded the car down to what he wanted, then the fun part. I told him that I read (on the internet) that sanding the little pieces of metal on the head of the nail down would make the car go faster. Remember, this is a boy that has been sick for 4 days running, he sanded down those nails, with sandpaper, until they were nice and smooth--yes, I could have used a disc grinder but probably would have taken the head right off of one of the nails. He painted the car and used some rub-on decals that I bought and added the wheels. Saturday morning before the race we weighed the car and put the weights on (yes, I made him turn the screws-damn I am mean).
Yes, the story is long, he won the pinewood derby. Of all the races and heats his car was in (which were a lot as his car was one used to repeatedly test the timing system, that is another story though) his car came in 1st in all but one single race. That race was for "bragging rights" against the "family" category winner. Basically, his cub scout pack has a "family" category to encourage parents or other kids to do their own cars and let the cub scouts actually do the work on their cars. Well, they had to run 4 races (once in each lane) to determine the winner between his car and the winner of the "family" winner. Here is the funny thing, last year he was last (or close to last) for the cub scouts and the girl that one the family category this year, well, last year her car lost its wheel and couldn't even complete racing. Yes, the kids that came in last in the previous race both won this year's race and I can assure you that both of them were jumping for joy.
Who knows it the filing of the nails was really that important, but he did it, while still recovering from being sick, and he won the race this year. All you can do as a parent is smile and say, "Well, hard work does pay off, doesn't it?"

Okay, enough bragging, on to work. I have some nice submissions now and I am going to be talking to a graphic and layout designer on Tuesday about a number of things. I am excited about it as I have seen some of his work and it is very good. I think the "third time's the charm" on the layout end, and I have some other things to discuss with him too.

I have also, strangely, acquired some books on architecture and building from 1902 and 1906 from the library (okay, the citywide interlibrary loan system) that have some nice drawings of buildings-yeah, big surprise-that are all public domain. Some of these public domain pieces of artwork can probably save me a good amount of money in the future, although actually scanning them all is going to be quite the task. It looks like one of the local universities has some collections of old magazines and newspapers on microfilm. I might be able to get some pictures from those too, not sure how excited I am about the time I would spend doing it. I tend to get distracted by the history and the articles involved. Yes, I am one of those nutcases that can literally spend HOURS in a library "looking at stuff."

San Antonio is a fairly old city with a number of different private, university, and public libraries so there is a lot of material out there I could potentially use, the question is, is it really worth my time to track it all down? Is it work the fee charged to photograph the old archival collection books? The fee is actually nominal, but still.

Okay, enough bragging, back to work ...