It’s such a good feeling
What an outstanding day it’s been! Started off by not having to wake up to an alarm. It doesn’t take me long to wake up once I’m out of bed, but that initial roll off the mattress is always a killer when you have to do it. I used to be able to sleep until well past noon back in my slacker days. Now I sleep until 8am and I feel like a king or something. Helps I guess that I don’t go to bed at 3:30am anymore.
So up and around easing into the day with a cup of coffee. Thinking about how its nice not having all sorts of “floaties” in my beverage since the water softener has been working. After a cup or two I figure might as well go mow the yard before a hot day takes over.
Too late. The temperature wasn’t bad but it was a crystal clear day and even at 9:30 in the morning the sun was beating down and making some hot work of pushing the little mower around. I should get me a riding mower some day, but this works and I get some much needed exercise. One of the most rewarding feelings is looking back at a freshly cut lawn, I think. Just so nice and neat. Like a green carpet.
Anywho, after that and hosing off the outdoors Andrea and I played a little Guild Wars. She’s working on getting one of her characters through all three chapters and I’m taking a character through the first game for the first time. So were helping each other. Knocked out a couple missions today. Got the bonus on one but not the other. Oh well, something to come back for.
Andrea is more tired these days. Don’t blame her. Growing a baby is a lot of work! So while she was napping, I tried to think of something to do. Decided I would take one of the extra florescent lights above the garage and relocate it above my work bench. Good news is I think I wired it up safer than before! And now I have some much better light to work with. I still need to find a place for everything in the garage though!
By now its late afternoon, Andrea ie up again do so we go shoot some hoops in the driveway for a while and head back in for supper. One of the things I’m trying to do is cook more stuff that will have leftovers. We don’t get to come home for lunch anymore so if we don’t take something, its either go hungry or spend crazy money eating out. So I cooked up some shrimp and rice stir fry. Made lots so there should be a couple days worth of leftovers.
So productive, satisfying, and relaxing. Those are the words of the day. Actually ready to face a busy work week after a weekend like this!
Problems logging in
Not sure what’s causing it. Must have been a WordPress update, but the past few days I haven’t been able to login unless I go directly to buthard.wordpress.com. I’m trying a few things and should have it sorted out soon!
Some clean pictures!
Man, it seems like it’s taking forever to get unpacked! Close to done though in the living room and kitchen. Everything else either still has boxes or is just empty. But I can’t just leave those messy pictures from days ago up and not post a few proving that we’ve cleaned up the place!
Living Room
Andrea did a good job decorating the mantle!
The old radio gets a featured location! Bust out some vinyl, baby!
Most wouldn't, but I'm actually diggin' the retro range.
The next big hit
Ha ha. How can two of my least favorite “bands” combine for something so totally awesome?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kspPE9E1yGM]
05.11.11How the dog and the car almost died
Well last weekend was the big camping weekend at Kanopolis Lake. We got off early, but everyone else had headed out there first thing so we were already going to be the last to arrive. Andrea and I got off at about 2PM and stopped by the post office to pick up the mail before we packed up and hit the road.
As soon as I got back in the car, Andrea said, “Um… its stuck.” Sure enough the damn car was stuck in park! And we were double screwed because we couldn’t even put it in neutral to get a tow home. So we walk back to the house. Luckily nothing is farther than three blocks away from anything else in Albert! We loaded up the tools in the back of the other car and headed back to see if I could figure anything out. I tried several things, but finally just had to unhook the shifter and craw under the car and shift the transmission by hand, which at that time caused the car to start rolling with me under it! Luckily Andrea was quick on the brake.
Next I swallowed some pride and walked over to the local restaurant and got the owner to help push the car into the street and give us a tow home. I told him I’ll stop by his place and rack up a big bill here soon.
So we made it home. And since we weren’t planning on taking Andrea’s car anyway we loaded up the Toronado as planned and got the heck out of town. Figured I’d worry about the Cutlass when we got back.
Camping was great. It’s always awesome seeing the family and the kids, and it was especially fun haning out with my buddy Chris! We just don’t keep in touch the way we should so it was great to spend a little time hanging out.
One of the nights though, Daisy (who loves to bark at anything that moves within 1,500 ft) took off after a truck. Andrea had her on a leash, but the leash slipped out of her hands. So here goes this stupid little wiener dog chasing after a big ol diesel pickup in the middle of the night with a leash flapping behind her. She runs along side yapping and yapping, then all of a sudden we could see Daisy in the headlights of the truck. About half a second later she appears to trip over something and the truck rolls right OVER her. She goes right between the tires and the truck keeps on going and a bewildered wiener dog finally notices Andrea screaming at her, and in a daze, trots straight back over to the campground. Our guess is her leash she was dragging behind her got caught under a tire and tripped her up.
But despite some unnecessary excitement it was a very excellent weekend. We got Andrea’s car fixed that following Monday after work and Daisy is still the same as always.
05.4.11Starting to feel like home
There’s still boxes to be unpacked, and a lot of rooms that could use some more seating (like the room with the TV) but it’s starting to feel a lot more like home now that we have some of our own stuff on the walls and been going through some daily chores it’s definitely starting to feel like our place.
Hasn’t been without some adventure though. Our first run of the dishwasher found that it wouldn’t drain. And it was filling to the point that it would leak out the door onto the kitchen floor. Called the landlord who was great about being over that day to fix it. So the next day we ran our first REAL load of dishes through. Andrea and I were down stairs with her nephew and we both started to smell something funny… I went upstairs to find the whole floor of the house was filled with smoke! Not thick black smoke by any means, but the kind of smoke that fills the house when you burn the bacon (I would know!). Odds were it came from the dishwasher, but after opening it I expected a ton of smoke to come billowing out, which it didn’t. So all of a sudden I wasn’t sure if it was the dishwasher or not, and if it wasn’t… was whatever it was still burning?
We kicked the attic fan on to clear out the atmosphere and paid close attention to see of there was any more smoke anywhere. When I didn’t find any it was safe to assume it WAS the dishwasher and apparently either from being flooded for so long, or a chemical they used to clean it out, the burner was just coated with crud and when the dry cycle kicked in it started smoking. But nothing caught on fire, no damage caused so no harm no foul. We’ve since run a couple smokeless loads through with no problems other than some real hard water.
There’s a couple other little issues that still need addressed. There’s a small leak at the upstairs toilet, and the water softener seems to be out of commission. The bypass for the water softener valve is broken, so I worry that running our water through a non working water softener could actually be making the water HARDER than it already is. We’ll get to it all in time though.
I got out underneath the Toronado last night to address some exhaust issues. I could tell for a while now that the exhaust was leaking pretty good. The tail pipe was getting a little loose so I kinda parked it for a while until the move-in slowed down and I had a chance to look at it. Didn’t want to go over some railroad tracks and have my muffler fly off. After looking at it last night it’s a good thing! The muffler was barely hanging on, so I pulled that and the rusty tail pipe. Everything from the muffler forward was in pretty good shape, so I won’t worry about that too much. But I’m determined to tackle this one by myself. I’ve never done exhaust work before, but there’s a lot of stuff I’d never taken on before I got the Toronado.
So there’s a long update. Looking forward to the upcoming camping trips and will be sure to snap lots of pictures!