The Lindenbergs

One of the Ghostbusters fan sites I used as a reference for building proton packs (that I sold during Halloween) is putting together a Ghostbusters art calendar. Considering how useful the site has been, I thought I'd make a contribution:





The picture is entirely hand drawn and took about 20 hours over a week. I did this one as a speed painting. You can watch the whole process condensed to less than 5 minutes right here:



-Eric (Dad)

Labels: ghostbusters ecto ecto-1 proton pack ghost car cadillac

For those who are not able to view the speed paint video (Dad), here's the final result.

Faces are not my forte, but I'm reasonably happy with the end result. I think the cape is my favorite part.

-Eric (Dad)

For the regular followers of this blog, you may remember I posted a speed painting of Anna about a year ago. It wasn't bad -I certainly learned alot from the experience.

I recently finished a new speed painting based on a publicity still from the movie Superman Returns. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty pleased with it. It took about 5 hours, over several days, to complete. The entire process has been recorded, sped up and condensed down to about 3 and a half minutes.

Tell me what you think...



-Eric (Dad)

I've been contemplating building the kids Harry Potter-style wands ever since I saw a version of them in the SkyMall magazine a couple of months ago. My original plan was to use a dremel tool to carve out a couple of dowel rods to make the wands. I still may, but I found a great website that had instructions for making wands from paper and hot glue.

...and here they are (tell me what you think -click the pictures to view a larger version):



-Eric (Dad)

Labels: harry potter wand scratch built build make construct paper hotglue

I don't think I've written much about our dog, Josie. We adopted her from a pet rescue organization when she was probably about 4 years old. She has a very gentle disposition and loves to be petted. Anna adores her, and the feeling is obviously mutual.

Josie was picked up as a stray by the adoption organization, so not much is known about her. When we first got her she was very timid. She's wince if you made sudden moves and would actually have an accident if you tried to wrestle or rough-house with her. She's much better now, she knows she's in a safe and cared-for environment. But we can make some guesses about the environment she must have come from.

One of Josie's "eccentricities" is that she doesn't like to go outside unless:

1) She has to go to the bathroom
2) Someone goes outside with her

The only exception is snow. She seems to love snow. We got our first snow of the season on Sunday and Josie loves snuffling around in it. She's a fairly large dog, but she changes the way she walks when she goes through snow. More of a doggy skip.

Interesting, huh?

-Eric (Dad)

Labels: snow josie dog adoption rescue

Picture this, its about 11:00 at night and the five of us are crammed into my Mom's car driving from the airport to her house. I'm driving with Nora in the passenger seat and my Mom wedged between the kid's two car seats in the back.

The conversation so far has been about our flight and the day in general. A quiet lull breaks up the conversation and, after a few moments of silence, Anna asks, "Dad, when I was born, did the tag on my foot say 'From God' or 'From Jesus'?"

-Eric (Dad)

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving.

Our little clan flew out to Virginia Beach for the long weekend. My youngest brother, Scott, and his family drove up from South Carolina so my Mom had the entire family, with grand kids, all back home (my middle brother, Doug, and his family still live in town).

As visits go, this one was relatively short. We flew into Norfolk on Wednesday, getting into town about 10:30 pm. Thursday was pretty relaxing. My sister-in-law, Stacey, and I hit the gym for a quick workout, then Doug, Scott and I headed to a local park for a round of Frisbee golf. My oldest nephew, Chance, also came and played. For November, the day was bright and warm and we had a great time walking the course.

Unfortunately, I'm having elbow problems, so I was an observer, not a player. I've never seen my brothers play Frisbee golf and I was pretty impressed. Chance, Scott's son, was good; consistently making par. In keeping with Lindenberg tradition, we did not have Turkey as part of our Thanksgiving meal. Instead it was Cornish hen, oven-fried chicken, potato latkes, cranberry relish, corn souffle', and green bean casserole. Mmmmmm.

We did a kids table for Pierce, Anna and Kevin and they seemed to like the setup. Doug's twins, Adam and Derrick ate with us, and they were hilarious. They're almost three and very chatty. Doug was able to extend the evening by giving his kids bathes at my Mom's house so they could stay a little later.

Friday started with another work out, this time with Stacey, Nora and me. After an easy afternoon, Nora and Stacey went shopping, my Mom took all the grand kids bowling, and we three boys went for a bike ride. Again, we got great weather and were able to ride some trails for a couple of hours with just sweatshirts on. As always, we spent the time catching up and telling old stories. We all re-convened at Doug's house for Pizza and salad and more visiting.

All the kids got along very well. Chance was incredibly patient with his much younger cousins and spent a lot of time playing with Kevin. Anna and Kevin were also "two peas in a pod" with Anna frequently deferring to the younger Kevin to lead their activities. Pierce and Derrick hit it off, with Pierce either reading to Derrick, or playing with his toys.

Scott and his family headed back to South Carolina Saturday morning. Scott was anxious to get back, so Stacey and Nora cancelled their shopping plans so Scott's family could get on the road a little earlier. Needless to say, the day was very quiet relative to the prior couple of days. We had tentative plans to hit a children's museum, but instead spent a quiet day in the house with Nora and me tag-team napping. Doug and his family came over for Saturday night dinner. The previous evening I had helped Doug work on his computer to get it back in prime working order, and he brought his laptop over to see if we could tweak it a bit more (unfortunately, the results were somewhat mixed).

Our return flight was an early 6:30 am Sunday morning. With the exception of Pierce, we all slept on the long, first-leg of the flight. For a change, we had the perfect air-travel experience with no significant problems either going to, or returning from, Virginia. Its been years since we've been able to say that.

We got back into town around lunch and the kids and I pretty much hung out. Nora headed of to the store to buy her parents an anniversary gift to an anniversary dinner held for them at Billy's house that (Sunday) night. Billy's family is very warm and friendly and we always enjoy spending time with them. Pierce and Anna spent all the non-eating time playing with their older cousins.

We got home at a decent hour and got Pierce and Anna bathed and in bed early. Then, of course, Nora and I stayed up way too late.

-Eric (Dad)