A Leader of Boys to Men

A few weeks ago I was asked to be an Assistant Scout Leader in my community. I am an Eagle Scout and have been an assistant before, but I am not a huge fan of the scouting program. This is one of the most difficult things that I have to do. I am basically a 13 year old child myself; so it is really hard for me to try and be a good example of adulthood for a group of kids that age.

A couple of weeks ago we went to a friends ranch where we cleared a bunch of areas and campsites of logs and branches that washed in when the river overflowed. We stacked the wood and had a rather large bon-fire. The flames stretched a good 20 feet into the air. The fire burned all night and into the following day. Some of my clothes from that night still smell like smoke.

The kids that I work with are basically good kids with a wide range of personalities. In the picture, I'm the hard working one on the right. It is interesting to watch the kids as they look at the picture and try to decide who the other figures are in the picture.

Christmas in February

Well, here we are in February and I'm finally getting around to posting some Christmas stuff.

This is Jake and me with our favorite Christmas gifts ever; a pair of remote-control tanks with built-in air-soft guns. We have loads of fun driving them around, shooting everything (and sometimes everyone) in site.
I was trolling around the Internet one day and found these awsome tanks. The "Snow leopard" is really a M-26 Pershing. The tank battles are a blast.

Notice what a beautiful piece of work I am in the morning. I have the real "hillbilly" look goin' on.

This is my complete Christmas haul. I got this totally cool, flat CD-iPod-stereo thing; The tanks; and the complete Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain collection. My family are the best people ever!

In this last photo, my friend got a cake decorating kit for Christmas; so of course we had to make a cake promoting the Karlin!

It was delicious!

The Karlin Goes to Paris

Well, the karlin has gone international! In November my company sent me to Paris to work on a conference there. Now granted, it was Paris in late November so the sights weren't as spectacular as they could have been, but it was fabulous all the same.

Here I am on top of the Arc de Triomphe in the middle of Paris. If you click on the photos and look closely you can see that even the French promote the karlin whenever possible.



Here I am actually touching the Eiffel Tower. I think that these kinds of photos are important because anyone can get a picture of these monuments at any gift shop, but a photo of me actually touching the monument, brings home the point that I was really there.


And here I am at Notre Dame. I have a photo of me actually touching the building also, but it is somewhat uninteresting. Besides the guy behind me seems to be named Karlin which just goes to prove that even though few have heard of us, we are everywhere.

While I was in Notre Dame it occurred to me that I could be standing on the exact spot where Napoleon once stood when he uttered those immortal words "Hmmm, I'm a little hungry... I think I'll have a baguette." I love to visit old places where famous historical people have trod and imagine them doing the same everyday things that I am doing.

I have posted this series a little late and actually Christmas has come and gone; so next posting I'll have to show all what Santa brought the Karlin. I hope that everyone had fabulous holidays!

Cookin'

Anyone who knows me in recent years knows that I like to cook. I'm not really a baker, but if it involves lots of fire, knives, chopping and many pots and pans, I'm there. As my wife has observed, I can make a huge mess just preparing the simplest meal.

I am posting some pics of a coupe of my favorite meals to prepare. This is Pan Seared Shrimp with Lemon Garlic Sauce:

The shrimp were frozen and had to be shelled and deveined before cooking. It's pretty smelly work, but delicious. My daughter likes BBQ shrimp better, but this dish not only tastes good, but looks good too.

This is Smothered Pork Chops. This is a family favorite. It's mostly just braised pork chops and a lot of onions, but the addition of fresh lemon-thyme and bacon puts this dish over the top! The chops and sauce are wonderful served over spaghetti or linguini, and leftovers are even better the second day.

Looking at these makes me hungry. I think I'll go and make some dinner.

Eet Smakelijk!!

Doodle Time!

Here are some recent sketches from my sketch book.

I often visit the blog of my friend (see "So, Cat Tacos" link to the right) and his work has inspired me to get out my sketchbook after years of neglect. I found it interesting that at first all I could think of to draw were things that I remembered from his blog (the cat, the pirate, the butler) then, as I took the sketchbook to more meetings I have slowly started to doodle like the good old days. I haven't really sketched in many years; which is kinda funny because during those years I started and helped manage 2 design firms and have had some luck with a freelance design business. The work is all computer-based graphic design and I rarely have a need to draw freehand.

I really like just doing random drawings. When you have small kids they always have something in particular for you to draw for them, and they have little patience for any drawing that takes more than 3 or four minutes. Now that my kids have started drawing their own pics I can just sit and do my own doodling during church and other meetings. What fun! I don't have much talent, but I really wish that I could draw well, and doodling lets me think that I am a serious artist for few minutes. I am currently finishing off a sketch book that I started almost 15 years ago! (i told you haven't sketched for a while). So much has happened and the old sketches (like Garden Man) make me very sentimental. The blank spots are where the notes from the meetings were. I figure that no one wants to see those. I actually find it somewhat interesting to go back after a particular meeting and see the randomness of the images that turned out on the page. Maybe they mean something?

I'm hoping that as time goes on I'll get better, and maybe even do some actual pictures for the wall. Maybe one day I'll actually take a stab at painting again...maybe...

6 Karlins

Another Sunday evening at my porch has gone by and another post for my friends. I have a little friend that arrived at Popcorn Time; she is the sister to the girl with the cool stitches (see previous post). She took a pretty bad spill on her scooter last week which scratched her little face up somethin' fierce. She decided that she would like a little healing Karlin placed on her wounds like her sisters stitches. So after much pleading from her and a bunch of silly photography, I decided to post a picture just for her.

There are 6 Karlins in the picture. Click on the picture to see a larger version. I had to place them so a 6 year old can find them, so don't strain yourselves too much. And have a great week!

Garden Man

Many years ago, when I was just a young man, a friend and I were speculating on the many types of superheroes that there were and the sillyness that they inspired in us. Somewhere along the conversation I did this silly sketch of a shovel-head guy. My friend, being vastly more creative and talented than I, took the concept deep into the far reaching spaces of his creative genius and thus "Garden Man" was born.
I believe that I have the first issue (though incomplete) of Garden Man ever produced. Occasionally Garden Man would show up in my sketchbook and would just make me smile. Like The Karlin, Garden Man can spread the goodness.
Over the years I haven't sketched too often. I've acquired a family, a home and many new friends; but each time I open the ol' sketchbook and see Garden Man grimacing back at me, I just have to laugh out loud. The big lavender flowers and the head-rake just crack me up. My favorite part is the little text box that reminds us,"Often Garden Man's massive body blocks his words."
Today I just thought that I would spread the Garden Man goodness before going out and mowing my lawn.
Enjoy:

The Karlin Goes to the Doctor

So there we were enjoying a beautiful Sunday evening on the porch; when my friend decides that there is not enough popcorn at this Popcorn Time gathering. She asks if she can go and make some more popcorn; to which I answer "of course!" and I give her directions to where the little bags are stored.

The minutes pass and we are pleasantly engaged in other conversation when I detect this tiny voice calling out "um...guys...I think I'm bleeding". I turn to see my friend at the door, clutching her leg. She is putting a brave face on an otherwise pain-stricken expression. She had slipped in the kichen and injured her leg on an evil cabinet.

We jump to her aid and get her seated. We raise her pantleg to reveal a gaping wound. The skin is scraped up and is all stuffed up into a kind of puncture wound at the top. I can perform an appendectemy on myself, no problem, but I cannot handle the blood of other people at all. Luckily the crunched-up skin is keeping the bleeding to a minimum. There happens to be a nurse amongst our visitors this Sunday evening and she suggests we get my friend some stitches. She is whisked off to the doctors office for some fancy sewing.

I see this as the perfect opportunity to promote The Karlin (can you see it?--click on the photo for a larger image). 11 stitches or so later her leg is the first guest shot on the blog. I hope that the leg heals quickly and the scar is small.

What is The Karlin?

What is the karlin? Well...let's start from the very beginning...a very good place to start...when you read you begin with A, B, C; when you talk about the Karlin you begin with summer and Sunday afternoons on the porch.

One Sunday afternoon I was sitting around my porch with some friends discussing the fact that Karlin (with a K) is not a very common name (especially for a boy) and that my friend was writing the great american novel. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be cool to be mentioned by name in some really famous book. It would be the ultimate inside joke. So I asked her if she could insert me as just a little side character, or even just get my name into the text somehow. She said that she would try and I thought that was the end of it.

A few weeks later we were spending another Sunday afternoon on the porch and my friend mentions that she worked me into the manuscript as a non-descript blacksmith or something of the sort. She seemed very excited and pleased to have gotten Karlin into the book. I found that I was also very pleased. This got me to thinking; if getting the Karlin into one book brought such joy, why not put it other places and spread the Karlin goodness? This girl's brother happens to be in an amateur heavy-metal band in the area. I asked if he could just work a little Karlin into the lyrics or background vocals somewhere.

We started to speculate where else you could put a little Karlin and spread the joy. School children and college students everywhere write untold amounts of essays and short-stories and are always making up characters and names for things in these papers. Why not just make Karlin one of those characters in each paper or essay? Millions of pictures are drawn and photos are arranged and a little Karlin could be on a background sign or scratched in the sand or Photoshopped into a cloud. When you finally figure out how to insert a little Karlin into your work there is a strange little thrill and a sense of satisfaction that goes through you and it seems to improve everything around you.

What is the Karlin? It is whatever you need it to be. It is the blacksmith shop in the great american novel, it is the bop-bop, and du-lang of the next platinum album. It is the tatoo on the Caribean pirate and the label on the pitchfork of the American Gothic. He is the perfect example in your next sermon and the comforting inside joke in your next coversation. When you see it or hear it or just plain feel its presence it makes you smile if only for a second. And if everyone in the world smiled for just that second, that's over four billion seconds of happiness that everyone could use. So the next time you have opportunity to create, try adding a little Karlin and make the world a happier place.

Try it and you will see.

The First Post

This is my first post and I took a while to decide if I would start a blog, but sometimes you've just got to do some things or explode.

The name of the blog has a little story behind it and I will expound upon that when I have more time. The picture is because of a conversation that I had with a friend this evening about how difficult it can be to keep up with a decent blog. There's always the pressure to be funny or really informational, or really visual. I had the idea that I could just troll around all of the blogs that I enjoy and just steal all of the parts that I like; a sort of "blog pirate" if you will. Thereafter, the "jolly-roger" (notice how I worked "roger" into this post) was the natural picture to choose. Of course I had to promote The Karlin.

I have many, many inside jokes with many people and I figure this can be a place where I can expand upon them all. If you are diligent you might catch more and more as time goes on.