This past weekend we all went to South Padre Island for the 2005 Sand Castle Days. There had been red tide warnings for the week previous, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect, but when we arrived Friday afternoon, conditions were outstanding — temperatures in the lower 80s, warm water, nice waves for bodysurfing, no jellyfish to be seen, and the clearest water I’ve ever seen at a Texas beach, clear enough that you could see your feet when in chest-deep. We splashed around for several hours and then retired to the room for cartoons and cereal.Mom McMains and Christina joined us later on that evening to round out our eight-people-in-a-suite vacation savings plan.

On Saturday, Kathy helped out one of the San Marcos teams a bit and signed up all the kids except Maggie for the sand castle competition. Liam and Abby were initially a team together, but quickly dissolved in the midst of squabbles over what they would do and how they would do it. Emily diligently worked on her entry, a memorial to victims of hurricane Katrina, for several hours. It was a very nicely done series of images of people surrounded by a giant series of concentric swirls representing the hurricane, and won her second place in her division and $75, which she says she’s saving for an iPod.

Because of the beautiful weather, I quickly lost interest in sand sculpting and appointed myself full-time lifeguard, taking out any of the kids who were interested into the deeper water and teaching them the finer points of body surfing. (“Now you have to shout ‘Woooooo!’ as loud as you can and then run back into the water until you fall down. Why? Trust me, it’s just how body surfing works.”) We pulled up innumerably oyster shells, watched many school of fish swim by and bump against our ankles or jump between us, and explored every possible way to deal with a wave — jumping over, swimming under, smashing through. As the afternoon wore on, the waves got bigger, eventually deciding that instead of providing a nice ride into the shallow water, they’d smash me into the ocean floor instead, which was quite exciting in its own way.

The Grant Mazak Band played that night for a shrimp boil and party hosted by some of the other folks from San Marcos. In addition to our usual roster, we had an extra guitar player, another harmonica player, and our old friend Scott Wade playing a cool little hand drum. There was lots of dancing, lots of energy, and lots of food — altogether an excellent way to while away an evening.

The next morning we visited Sea Turtle Inc., a turtle rescue and rehabilitation center just a few miles down from where we were staying. I honestly wasn’t expecting too much, but the place was fascinating — huge open tanks allowed you to see (and even feed) some of the turtles that the center was taking care of, and knowledgeable guides filled us in on all the details of the different species of sea turtles (of which there are seven or eight, depending on who you ask). We then went and had one last romp on the beach and headed back for home.

I was thrilled that the trip went as well as it did. The Texas coast is one of my favorite places in the world, and this trip had plenty of all of the things that make me so fond of it. It was super fun to get to play in the water with the kids so much, and we were thrilled at Emily’s great showing in the sculpting competition. The only thing that would have made it better, I think, is for South Padre to be closer!

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a news conference the confirmed toll so far in Pakistan [from the recent earthquake] was 23,000 dead and 51,000 injured, while India has confirmed slightly over 1,200 deaths.

I find it intensely difficult to square this sort of thing with the idea that we Christians hold that God is omnipotent and cares about the people of our world. If this sort of tragedy were perpetrated by the hand of man, we would surely consider the planner one of history’s worst villians. But when it’s an act of God, how do we process it? It would seem our understanding of God or of goodness must give way in the face of that.

It’s enough to drive one to drink or deism. Mulling…

• We enjoyed a superb celebration of Maggie’s fifth birthday this past weekend. Thanks to all the friends and family who helped make that a delight; it’s a remarkable thing to be surrounded by so many supportive people, and we are deeply and daily grateful for it.
• Daniel and Fanny came back to Texas to attend his brother’s wedding and are now staying with us for a few days. It has been a real treat to get to see these newlyweds again, to renew those friendships, and to bask in the reflected glow of their affection for one another.
• Liam and Abigail both have strep, and Kathy’s dealing with yet another sinus infection. It looks like she’s got underdeveloped sinus cavities, and we’re giving some thought to seeing if it will make sense to send a surgeon in there with a roto-rooter to open things up a bit.
• Our next door neighbor Pete, who once offered to shove a french horn up my tookus, died last week. He was a neat man, and while I enjoyed having him for a neighbor, the memorial service made me wish I’d taken more time to get to know him better. His family loved him a great deal, and are missing him, but take comfort in the fact that he was a committed believer.

Do you use Windows? Then take a peek at this auction. It’s a pile of Windows software that Seth auctioned off to benefit cancer research. While I was happy to bid on it for The Noble Cause, I suspect that other people might get a good deal more use out of some of these items than I would, since I’m a Mac guy when I have my choice. (Seth auctioned Mac software too, but it quickly got out of my price range!)

So, here’s the deal: if you see something you like among the titles in the auction, send me an email at <my first name&gt@<my last name>.net. If nobody’s spoken for that piece of software, I’ll ask Seth to have it registered in your name. (The only one I definitely want to retain for myself is the mypersonalcal.com membership.)

The only caveat: I’m cutting it off at midnight CST on Friday night so as not to keep Seth waiting for long. So, if you want free stuff, act fast!

I’m not crazy about the part of the year when school’s in session. We all seem so tied up with the various work and school responsibilities that there’s comparatively little opportunity to spend fun time together and to do those things we really want to do. (A note to Emily’s teachers: ease up on the homework a little! Sheesh!)

I did, however, take the kids down for the opening day of the Texas Renaissance Festival on Saturday. We had been last year and had quite a good time. I was mildly disappointed that many of the shows were using the same scripts and that there was no fire show as part of the closing ceremonies. However, it was all worth it for the sight of the three guys dressed in Star Wars Stormtrooper costumes and the varied reactions they elicited from the knight, faeries, ladies-in-waiting and jesters around them. Funny stuff.

After an excellent church service on Sunday, we played some Lazer Tag around the house. (I found Lazer Tag guns on clearance at Target, so we’re up to 7 of them now. Who’s up for a game?) I had a gig at Cheatham Street later that afternoon which was well-attended. About half the people there were from some sort of German group, and would occassionally burst into German drinking songs in the middle of our Texas music. With the counterpoint of the passing trains which run about 30 feet from the stage, it began to sound hilariously like “Charles Ives Sings the Blues” night. We had a lot of fun.

My friend and former employer Seth Dillingham rides every year in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a bicycle event that raises money for cancer research. Seth is very committed to this cause, and this year has assembled some terrific bundles of software that he’s currently auctioning on eBay.

The discs feature a smorgasbord of applications, ranging from games to Internet utilities to time tracking and billing utilities, the creators of which have generously donated them to the cause. There are discs for both Mac and PC, so fly, my pretties, and bid, bid like the wind!

UPDATE: If you’d like to help promote Seth’s auctions using a red stripe ad like the one I’ve placed in the upper-right corner of my site, include the following lines of HTML in your site. (Make sure they’re outside of any tables or anything else that would force the position to change.)

<div style="position: fixed; top: 0px; right: 0px; align: right; width: 166px; z-index: 1000;">
<a href="http://www.truerwords.net/5127"><img style="border-width: 0px;" src="https://www.mcmains.net/1395/enclosure/pmcbanner.png"></a>
</div>

UPDATE 2: I’ve tweaked the above HTML just a bit.

Hurricane Rita is headed for the Texas coast, and our state is in a bit of turmoil. People coming out of Houston last night took about 12 hours to get to our neck of the woods, rather than the usual 3, as mandatory evacuations started to go into effect in the region. Our local groceries are selling out of bottled water and flashlights, and friends’ houses are beginning to fill up with people who have left the coastal towns to be further inland.

For those who have expressed concern, we’re in a pretty good spot to ride it out. Our house is in one of the highest parts of San Marcos, so we should be safe from flooding, and we’re stocking up a bit on non-perishables, gas, etc. in case services get disrupted. We may be welcoming in friends of friends over the next couple of days as coastal populations move inland, but don’t expect things to get too wild. We’ll post further as events warrant.

For those of you who don’t know, yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I began the observance early, greeting the kids at the table with “Avast, me wee buccaneers! I see ye be eatin’ your fine Cheerios and sea-tack already!” Curiously, instead of the usual chorus of “You’re wierd, Dad!” I instead got two separate cries of “Stop it, Dad!” Grumpy kids. They must not have had their coffee yet.

In other news, I’d been feeling very slightly smug even since Daniel had his bike accident back in April, as I’d been riding for a while without incident. My smugness evaporated this morning, as while I was taking a left turn from RR12 onto Holland Street (in front of Jive Turkey), my wheels, dampened from a slog through dew-moistened grass, went completely out from under me. I landed on hip and helmet, pretty well shredding my slacks. While I certainly felt the impact, my head was pretty well undamaged, thanks to the helmet doing exactly what helmets are designed to do. My forearm was a bit torn up as well, though I was fortunately in good enough shape to hastily get myself and my bike out of the road.

A quick trip home, a new pair of pants, some antibiotic ointment, and I was back on the road again, making it into the office the second time without incident. Huzzah.

Nintendo’s next-gen console, slated to more-or-less compete against the XBox 360 (lauching in November), and the PS3 (planned for 2006 sometime), is called the Revolution. While Nintendo’s let some info about the Revolution out, they’ve been very cagy about the controller. Until now.

At the Tokyo Game Show, they rolled this trailer for the controller. It can apparently be used to point at a specific location on the screen (Duck Hunt 3000, anyone?), but also tracks motion gyroscopically, and can be used like a baseball (or cricket) bat, sword, drumstick, flashlight, dentist’s drill, etc. As the DS has enabled some interesting sorts of games that nobody else is doing, so also should the Revolution open up some new possibilities. It’s great to see Nintendo carving out their own niche amid the clash of the titans that is console gaming these days.

UPDATE: It appears that the motion tracking may not be gyroscopic, but infrared that relies on an array of sensors around the screen. All things considered, that probably makes more sense, as gyroscopes would need calibration from time to time, and would draw more power from the batteries of the wireless remote. Having a separate sensor array also means that there wouldn’t have to be any of the screen flash you get with Duck Hunt or similar games.

UPDATE 2: Tilt-sensitive? Ok, maybe there are gyroscopes in the dang thing. Who knows. I’m sure someone will take one apart as soon as they’re in the public’s hands.

Sorry for the dearth of updates lately. I was sick for a fair portion of last week, and have been generally in a creative slump, so haven’t been turning out anything in the way of interesting writing or photography. A few items of note:

• Kathy and I enjoyed a great birthday party this past weekend for Jason Young. Thanks for inviting us to be part of the fun, Erin!
• I’m signed up for a Kayaking class on September 24-25, and am pretty excited about it.
• I pitched some of my nascent ideas about exploring games in education to one of the managers in my office, and he thought it a good enough idea to spring for my registration for the Serious Games Summit. So, I’ll be in D.C. on halloween, enjoying discussions of the pedagogical applications of interactive play. (No repeat of The Screaming Electric Pumpkin this year, I’m afraid!) I’m pretty excited about this one too.
• We went to Nava, Mexico over labor day for a friend’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. It was a good experience overall. We enjoyed raiding the excellent bakery at the a supermarket there, visiting candy and pinata shops, and being pretty well befuddled by a celebratory mass in Spanish.
• Emily went to her first school dance recently and, in spite of (or, as we like to flatter ourselves, because of) parental worry, had a great time.