BenSpark Family Adventures

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00943 This morning I joined about 40 other students from America’s Best Defense for a Krav Maga class at Mason Field. Master Garcia led the class and we started with some warm up exercises. Then we got into some drills. I worked with a bunch of people that I had not met before. It was great getting out there meeting other people and throwing punches and kicks. We also did some self defense drills with knives and guns. It was a great class and lots of fun. I’m going to have to start hitting the Saturday 8am classes because once I got to sleep I slept straight through to 5pm. I should also do the Saturday morning classes to work on my conditioning as I prepare for my Black Belt.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00942 I bought a new computer to help me make videos. This has been the way it has been with every new computer for the past several years. I start making videos and at first everything goes great, then technology changes and the way I do things ends up getting slowed down and unworkable. I noticed that my Fortnite videos were starting to drop frames and so the image would totally freeze and sometimes I could not redo something to make it work right. I was getting extremely frustrated. At the time my laptop was completely suited for making videos.  Then, it got slower and slower. I tried several things to speed it up but I needed more power. With this new computer I doubled the amount of processing power I had and even got 4GB of video RAM to make things even faster. I picked up the computer, a monitor and two 16 GB memory chips. The computer is a gaming computer and so it has all these fancy lights. The 16GB RAM chips are stylized and have lights on them as...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00941 We were backing into a space at Karate to pick up Andy from Camp and we saw this chalk drawing in the back up camera. I thought it rather funny so I had Allison pull forward and slowly back up so I could photograph it. After we picked up Andy at camp we ran over to Best Buy so that I could pick up my new computer and also get new screen protectors for my phone and for Allison’s phone. We got everything swapped out and the new computer picked up quickly. We went home and had dinner. Then I set up the new machine. I didn’t take photos of the new setup yet, though. I was tweaking it a lot first.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00940 It must seem like all we are doing is eating out lately. Well, tonight Allison had a night with her friends and since Andy and I were left to our own devices we went and had dinner at Bliss. But I am getting ahead of myself. Today was a long time spent in the car. Last night my brother-in-law and his friends and their 3 year old son were supposed to arrive in Providence and my sister was going to pick them up. The flights got cancelled and they were stuck in Washington. I offered to pick them up today once they arrived. Well, after a seventeen hour delay between their actual departure and arrival time they made it to Providence where I picked them up and then took them down the Cape. I stopped there long enough to say hi to everyone except for Eva who was out with her Aunt. I am looking forward to having her home and miss her very much. I did have to get home so I couldn’t stay until she returned. So, I guess it is a good thing that I did not sell or trade ...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00939 The Cousins Maine Lobster Food Truck was at Gasbarro’s tonight in North Attleboro. We had heard about it a little while ago and Allison had remembered and she wanted to try it out. Andy does not do lobster but they make a grilled cheese or cheese quesadilla for kids so he got that. I love lobster but I decided to go with their lobster bisque. Allison was the adventurous one and she got the lobster tacos. I didn’t think to take a photo of everything or even at the food truck so I got this photo of the last taco with a bite taken out of it. They were quite delicious and so was the bisque.

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00938 We had a great lunch at Boneyard BBQ today with our great friend Meghan. Meghan and I went to high school together and it has been several years since we last saw each other. She was home for a little while and was able to come out with us to lunch so that we could catch up. We did a lot of catching up on each other’s lives and it was a great time. We spent several hours talking about everything under the sun as we enjoyed some amazing wings. Meghan was impressed with my selection of a combination of buffalo bacon and buffalo blue cheese sauces for my wings.  We also split some curly fries and enjoyed dipping those into the sauce as well. We look forward to her next visit coming this November. It was such a nice time to spend together. Luckily Eva was at the Cape and Andy was at Karate camp because both kids get freaked out by the décor of the place. The tables are covered in concert posters and some have skulls and other things on them that freaked th...

  Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00937 Tonight Andy showed us his artwork from his Science School class these past three weeks. He took Ecological Art and his teachers were so impressed with how he created his artwork. Andy made a collage, paintings, sculptures an sketches. He loved making everything including some painted rocks. I think his best piece is a sculpture of a sea otter. He took so much time working on this and adding such detail to his sculpture. I took a close up of the sleeping otter and it is below. You can see how much detail he put in to the fur on this otter. The otter is sleeping.