BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02535 Today is Christmas Eve. We are all off of school and finishing up last minute things for the holiday. Allison made her chicken soup for dinner and we went to 4pm Mass for the holiday. We got the yearly photo of the kids in front of the nativity scene. After Mass we drove home quickly to get bundled up for a walk around La Salette to see the lights. It was frigid cold out and we had to basically speed walk around the place. No stopping at the Nativity Scene Museum today, Allison had gone earlier in the week with her friend Jenn.  We made one lap and headed home for some hot chicken stew. The big pile of tree trunks from our trees were picked up this morning. A guy came with a truck with a giant grabber arm and he vey efficiently picked through the logs and put them onto his truck. He must have an amazing sense of space because they fit on that truck very well. We all watched. After dinner we watched a movie. We watched many Christmas movies this year. I'm not ...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02534 No, ot Christmas trees. We had two of our trees in our yard taken down today. We went with the company, Out On a Limb and they were excellent. It took a while for them to actually come but when they did they got everything done in the day. I no longer have to worry that someone is going to get crushed by our giant dying tree in the side yard. That sucker is gone and it was so dead inside. I think that this tree needed to come down when we moved in and that was 14 years ago. It took me that long to bite the bullet, get the cash and get it done. We were all watching from the windows as the guys took these trees down and ground most of them up. The pile above will be picked up tomorrow.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02533 I went out shopping today for some Christmas gifts. Some of the ones that I had ordered are not going to make it for Christmas if they even make it to me at all. I am starting to think I got scammed on this purchase. And that sucks because the thing I ordered would be perfect. So instead I was off at the liquor stores for gifts. I came across an interesting beer called Dragon's Milk. So I bought a few. I don't drink often. I drink from time to time.It was pretty good. 

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02532 One of Eva's friends wanted to print out a file on our 3D printer and I hadn't had it up and running for the better part of a year. I had a cover for it that my cousin Shaun printed for me. However, it broke and so I ordered a new one because I finally found an official one from Creality. I also got a few upgrades for the 3D printer that I will install at a later time. I only needed the cover to get started. I'm still kicking myself for not clearly labelling ever screw after I took this thing apart the first time.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02531 There is a Tik Tok creator that I have been following for a while and I am a fan of their work. She cosplays characters from Star Trek and this past couple years I have been enjoying the heck out of the Star Trek franchise on Paramount +. Seraphima cosplays Lt. Ortega the ship's pilot. She also has a service dog named Riker after Commander Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation. This year at Megacon Jonathan Frakes, the actor that portrays Commander Riker, will be at the event. Seraphima wants to get a photo of her service dog, Riker with Riker. So she has attempted to raise money by selling photos of Riker that were signed by her dog. I bought one and it arrived today. She also included a Christmas card and some Star Trek stickers.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02530 A while back skybound put together a Kickstarter for a Transformers Compendium. This collects the 80 issues from the 80's - 90's. That is the collection of comics I just completed in their original form. The compendium is 4 giant embossed cover books. Then they reprinted 3 key issues from the comic book series. They were issues 2,5 and 67. They even made some tech specs, lenticular images and portraits of characters. I did buy an extra Decepticon sticker because I bought the Autobot version of the compendium and so the sticker for Decepticons only was part of the Decepticon version. There was also an Autobot pin and a challenge coin. It is a beautiful set.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02529 Eva's friend Ollie has a 3D print that they want to get done and asked if they could use our printer. I had not used the printer in a while so I ran some test prints. I then decided to try printing something I had wanted to print for a while and well, the red thing int he picture, that is a 3D printed cover that my cousin Shaun made me when my actual cover broke. That has now broken as well. So, I searched on amazon and see that there are a few upgrade kits I can get for the printer. I'm getting a new cover and a few other things to give the printer the ability to print multiple colors of filament in a single print. I won't be getting the item that you need to do this quite yet. Let's see how much printing I actually do in a while but the ability is there when I decide to go for it. At least it will be when the kits arrive this weekend and I overhaul the printer. Tonight was the talent show and play at Andy's school. andy ran the lights for th...