I recently spoke to the local Rotary Club, discussing The Chatham Voice’s three years in business.
What a warm, welcoming crowd. It was a fun, rewarding time.
During my short speech, I ran a slideshow that featured a number of front pages of our paper over our time in business.
Simple stuff. So simple, in fact, that the person who helped me put together the PowerPoint was disappointed.
That person was none other than my 14-year-old daughter. Yes, she’s much more versed in PowerPoint than I am, so I sought out her advice, explaining what I wanted to do.
She tried to get me to go with a theme. No, thanks. Introductory slide? Nah. How about running some of the speech in point form beside the images? No, thanks.
Brenna remained helpful through it all, despite her failed efforts to jazz things up.
The presentation went well, and people seemed to enjoy the trip down front-page memory lane. But maybe next time, I can jazz things up slightly, with the help of my young assistant.
Speaking of Brenna, I cannot stress to parents enough to try to make time to spend with your kids. Most of you do, I’m sure, but I at times take our relationship for granted. My wife and daughter are quite close, and I’ll often retreat into the basement while they are reading or on their laptops.
I miss out on their conversations, not that I necessarily want to or should hear everything they say.
I took a half day off last week and did nothing other than some housework, with her help. And we had a really fun time doing it. Of course, the burger and fries at Simon’s afterwards were nice bonuses too!
More time off at the end of this week for me, all to be spent with the young lady, except when she has to go off to work herself.
With the humidity gone, maybe we’ll spend more time outdoors in the backyard. I really do need her help with a special project. I need to purchase a two-litre bottle of pop and we need to drink about three quarters of it.
Yep, it’s wasp season again – that time of late summer and early fall where the wasps suddenly don’t have as many flowers to enjoy, so they instead come hunting for food and drink.
Oh, I’ll let them drink to their heart’s content, all right, inside the homemade wasp trap.
I credit my friend Chad with showing me a few years ago the simple trick of turning a big pop bottle into a very effective wasp trap.
Drink most of the pop, then pour out the rest and set it aside.
Cut the top off the bottle just below where it reaches the full circumference of the bottle.
Flip the top over so it looks like a funnel that pours into the bottle.
Tape the top to the rest of the bottle.
Pour in the leftover pop.
Set in a place outdoors near, but not too close to, where you like to hang out.
Those yellow jackets will fly up to it, crawl in and buzz around inside, but they will not fly out, as they can’t seem to fly straight up.
Yes, the odd one may crawl out, but the vast majority attracted by the sweet drink, will be trapped in there and die.
With fewer wasps around our backyard, and cooler weather, that means more enjoyable barbecuing for us.
