Out with the old in with the new

After the last 6 months we have been sitting up to a metal patio table to eat our meals. We have had plans to get a new table and we finally had an excuse to go to IKEA in Sacramento and got a new table and chairs. Here is a picture of the old and the new.

Assorted pics from vacation

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE DUSTIN

CHEESER





CINDERELLA




Robinhood and Little John

Fireman

We had a great trip to CA and back. It was short but sweet. Too bad we didn't get up to the ranch but we were all sick and not too excited about spending more time in the car. We did manage a trip to IKEA and Trader Joes. We got a new table which I will feature in the next post.

If you have some time a fun thing to do is to spend 15 hours in a sitting behind the wheel of a car. It is even more fun if you you choose to drive southeastern ID and northwestern NV. So basically the route was Boise to Stockton to Oakland and back to Stockton. With 2 previous nights of short sleep it was actually not that bad. It is also better considering that we are in a nice car and that we are not driving a wagon with a team of oxen.

Grandparent plague

It has been a consistent pattern. The grandparents come and everyone gets sick. We made it through the entire winter without a single cough or runny nose since the grandparents left last fall. As I predicted within a week of the grandparents arrival the noses started to run and the coughs started to bark and throats turned sore. It starts with the kids, then moves to the the grandpa and the dad and eventually to the grandma that has the cold until the next season we see them. So no more sickness is expected until later this summer when the granparents might return.

For those requesting pictures of the "No Roof Car"

I have posted a few pictures to the new blog "No Roof Car". I decided to document improvements and maintence etc on the blog so I can see how far we have gotten and where we have been. So far a few little things have been fixed and the 5 times over the car washx2, clean, polish, wax. There are many things to get it into the shape it should be but these things will take time and money. At least it is now able to legally ride on the road and it doesn't act like it will leave me stranded yet.

Back from blogging vacation

I am back froma blogging vacation. It is not as if I have been too busy working or due to lack of Bloggin ideas it is merely laziness and time spent doing other things. the grandparents are here and we try to get in a Settlers game each night. I finally lost tonight. We have done a couple of home projects and also some auto work. I will try to get some pictures up tomorrow.

I have also been losing weight which takes up a lot of my time. In the last year I have dropped around 20 lbs. So you are all dying to know the answer. For me it has amounted to portion control and watching what goes into the mouth. the less you eat eventually you get used to it and aren't as hungry. So now I am in the normal weight range and no longer over weight. I am guessing it has been about 13-14 yrs since I have been at this weight and I am still losing. Now if only I could get myself to exercise and gain some muscle mass I will be set. The weather is great so that excuse is gone. So for those of you keeping score at home I am at 191. Ten years ago at my fattest I was pushing 230. I was looking at my passport photo today and noticed my face was pretty chubby.

Ok enough of that. I will try to get some pictures up.

For those of you that are wondering we did get a "No roof car" and it has been pretty fun. It needs some working over and the projects have begun. I will get some pictures up tomorrow.
I am comtempating a blog regarding the car to help me document resoration and maintenace etc. I haven't thought of a perfect title for the blog but am thinking about "The no roof car" as this is what we refer to it in our house. I will keep you posted.

Howdy Pardner!

Spring has almost Sprung

This is the time of year when you think it should be spring. When we lived in MI it was hard to get to March and know that spring was really another month and a half away. Well, apart from having an easy winter it is exciting to see the bulbs poking up and buds swelling on the trees and a weather report that says 67 degrees by Sunday. And the good news is that I don't have to work this weekend. Anyway, the worst part of the MI winter was that it would not go away. There was usually a thaw this time of the year followed by a couple other winters before spring came. When spring did come it was wonderful.
The old grandparents are coming on Thursday afternoon for a few weeks. That will be fun as we have had no company since late summer except for a one night stay by the FIL sometime late fall. No one in the house has been sick this entire winter. That is a new record since kids have been with us. I am sure that when the grandparents come everyone will get sick as this has been the general pattern. Well, I think this post is dull enough for 2 or 3 of my usual posts. I will sign off for the night and remind our dear friends in MI that time cannot be stopped and spring will be there soon......only another month or two.

Confucius says: "Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart."

Figured I would start out with a quote....Not that it means much of anything in relation to the post but we met our son's Cardiologist today. Many of you know that when our son was a 20 week old fetus we found out that he had some interesting abnormalities. Not what you want to find out about your 20 week old fetus. Anyway, to make a long story shorter he has a number of abnormalities that are totally functional and the only thing he has to worry about is Endocarditis with dental or other invasive medical work that could cause infection. Given all the other scenarios this is pretty easy to live with. Our son will have a repeat cardiac echo in the next year to determine if he has a bicuspid or tricuspid heart valve.
The Cardiologist was a young personable man that went over everything with us and talked about what further plans might be. I already mentioned the need for my son to take prophylactic antibiotics but the other main concern of the doctor was not medical but financial. We hadn't even remotely thought about this. He said that people like our son can have a hard time getting life insurance if it is not spelled out in black and white that his condition is not really any great threat to his life expectancy. We had never even thought about that but interesting none the less. The other interesting thing we found out is that we found out that our Pediatrician (who we haven't even met yet) is the fairy God mother of the Cardiologists son. Small town, small world.

The case of the wet underwear

It is 2AM and as my conciousness rises to the surface I hear the padding of feet. It is not the sound of solo feet but of two kids runnning into the bedroom. My wife is the first to respond. "You guys can lay down here on my side of the bed but you need to go get your pillows and blankets." The padding retreats except I notice one diverts to the bathroom. In a minute there is the unmistakable moan/cry of someone half asleep that has wet their pants. So the dad jumps into action. He finds the girl in the bathroom with the classic jumpsuit footy pajamas zipped to the very top with the girl standing and moaning, "I wet my pants". Yes this is obvious and we start to take off the pajamas. At this point I say, "You need to get your underwear off and get new ones." To this she acts very suprised and says, "But my underwear are not wet." Hmmm. Not wanting to start a debate about how it is not possible to have wet pajamas and dry underwear I decide to take another approach. "OK. I am going to go get some new pajamas then" Of I go to get pajamas and underwear. By the time I get back an astonished girl exclaims. "Daddy, my underwear are wet." Yes, I know and here we have a new pair." Isn't it amazing the things parents know. Sherlock Holmes she may not be yet but perhaps a strong Dr. Watson in the making.

Budding Artist

This post needs a little background. Our son is 2 and a 1/4 yrs old. He still takes a nap each afternoon from 2-3 hours. We have found recently the longer the nap the longer it takes him to get to sleep at night. He and his sister sleep in the same room. She goes right to sleep. She no longer naps. She does not allow the door to be closed and I think this keeps him up. It didn't used to bother him to have the door closed when we had an extra bedroom. So usually she goes to sleep and he plays around in his room with cars or something and eventually goes to sleep. He will sometimes come out and get taken back to bed 2-3 times but it hasn't been a big issue.
So.........tonight we hear the little whispers of conversation with himself and we tell him from the living room to be quiet and go to bed. We figure he is up to his harmless play and will eventually fall asleep. Well, eventually he pops his head out of the room and in the faded light I can tell something is not quite right. I ask him to come a little closer for inspection. This is what I find. I am guessing this is is his self portrait (literally).
So we go to the bathroom and wash up and find he had already been working on that project with red hue soap all over the bathroom. He also had done some nice free hand work on the bathroom door. I got his hands clean and the door cleaned while giving the lecture (probably for the 100th time) about how we only write on paper. Then it is back to the bed where I find his masterpiece on the popular pillowcase medium. He may be the next Christo.

This time we click a few pictures, try not to giggle, while continuing the stern lecture about it is not ok to write on things other then paper. The door was closed and a budding artists creativity was stifled for another day.
The plan is to skip the nap, endure the late afternoon whining and put him to bed early without late night adventures in his art studio.
P.S. And yes there are worse things for toddlers to paint/draw with than markers that wipe clean with soap and water.

Tintin Addicts

Sleeping poses

Hmm..... So what's new?

I have been shirking my blogging duties and am not sure I have much to add today but feel guilty for lack of posting so I will pretend to blog something of interest. I am going to go with the hodge podge approach today.

1. I had a good laugh this last week when I decided to measure the kids to see how tall they were. Girl= 43 in and Boy= 36in. Then I thought I should see what the height limit is for tubing on the ski hill. It is 36 inches. So the kids and I checked out the tubing hill and looked at pictures online. Later on we were talking about someday else and my daughter said, "Dad I think that Tuliping really looks like fun!" I gave her a confused look. "You know tuliping on the ski hill."

2. I am in my classic long planning stage for some home remodeling. Yes, I went to the art store and got grid paper and measured out the entire house to try to figure out what to do. By the time we figure out what to do we won't have the finances to do it.

3. Speaking of finances I am planning to sell my Passat. So if any of you are interested in a fine European Sport wagon let me know. It is a great car but the verdict is that we don't need two expensive late model cars but rather sell one and get a little runabout as my wife is now just 2 miles from work and I am just 5 miles. My wife also claims she is going to ride her bike to work but I will wait to see the day on that one. So we can bank the money from the Passat for more home remodeling. So the question remains...what are you going to replace the Passat with? Well, this will shock most of you but I am thinking about a VW. So you are probably wondering about my past cars (or not) I will list them here for you:

1. 1978 VW Rabbit diesel

2. 1986 VW GTI

3. 1990 VW Golf

4. 1990 Ford Explorer

5. 1997 VW Jetta

6. 1997 Jeep Wrangler

7. 1991 Honda Civic

8. 2002 VW Passat Wagon

9. 2005 Honda Pilot

So you note a certain pattern here. Mostly German with a few Japanese and American cars thrown in. So I figured that I should go back to our roots and get a classic. I am in the process of looking for a 1992 or 1993 VW Cabriolet. This would be the car to run back and forth to work with. It will take a little work to find a good one. Let me know if anything pops up in your neighborhood. I have a few helpers looking for me and I check craigslist often. I found some guy that bought a 1992 for less then blue book with 10,000 miles on the odometer. Not likely to find one of those but will keep looking.

4. Winter has returned unfortunately. We have had snow the last 2 mornings. It is not supposed to be above freezing tomorrow. So much for our 60 degree days last month. Although I think it is still warmer than Michigan. One of our recent bedtime routines is to warm up these hot packs (the kind that have rice in them) in the microwave and take them to bed for our feet to keep our toes warm. I need to improve on the concept so you can actually get your feet all the way inside. I can make up some catchy marketing phrase and sell them by the millions.

5. Speaking of making my millions. I was looking on CafePress the other day and saw that someone had stolen my Obama campaign slogan and put it on a tshirt. So much for that get rich scheme.

Ok that is enough for one night. Maybe I will try to add a hodge podge of pictures tomorrow.

For those of us that have more education then smarts

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)
All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?
For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"
Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."
And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

Favorite games?

This is a poll to see what are people's most favorite games. We go through phases and then get bored and then modify the games and then eventually start on a new one (or Spring comes and we go outside). Winter time is the perfect time for playing games.

Currently, we are on a Settlers of Catan kick which we have been on for a while. We have recently been introduced to Blokus which is fun but we are still in the learning curve for strategy. We have been reintrduced to UNO because it is a game 4 yr olds can almost play.

So, I guess I am looking for a list of games from people that include games we don't know or forgot that are fun to play. Please indicate how many players required. My wife and I are also looking for good 2 person games that we can play without adding too much marital strife. Here is a short list of games I came up with.

1. Settlers of Catan - A fun boardgame that in our opinion best with 3 or more people.

2. Blokus - board game we have just started to learn. Not bad with 2 people. As I said we are still learning.

3. Rook- old standby card game that I could play in my sleep. It is nice because I don't have to think too hard and so it can be more social.

4. Books and Runs - this cardgame we played with regular cards but it looks like somegame company marketed it as Five Crowns. It is another old standby that it fun

5. Canasta- here is a card game that we used to play a lot but haven't played for years

6. Euchre - this is a Michigan favorite card game that we played a couple of times and I think we could have gotten into it but just never played enough but we could always try it again.

7. Cribbage- I found this board/card game in the closet. We bought it years ago to play as a couple and now we have forgotten how to play.

8. Spite and Malice - This is a card game that we played with my Great Aunt after school. My great Aunt was a great game player.

9. Aggravation - This is a board game that we played with my great aunt. It is a Milton Bradley version of Parchesi also known as Wahoo. My Aunt had her own custom board made out of board and had a whole bag full of dice some of which she had named. Some were probably loaded as she used certain die to roll certain numbers. My favorite wass "Dead Eye Dick" used to roll "1" when needed.

10. Clue - There was a version of Clue that was different then the basic board game that some friends of ours had in Reno. We were never able to find it to buy for ourselves. The unfortunate part is that I don't really recall what was different about it except that it was more fun then the original. I just tried to look on Ebay w/o luck.

These are just a few I could come up with over my years. Let me know if anyone else has some favorites. We are always looking to learn a new one or relearn one we forgot.

What things do we sleep with?

This question was posed on Will Ya or Won't Ya. I thought I would post a picture of our #2 with some of his bed mates.

You will note:

3 books

1 stuff elephant

1 firechief hat

1 doll aka Baby Bob

1 pillow

2 blankets not actually on child

various other things likely underneath child but unobservable

Three Cheers for CASIO

I like to applaud companies for good service just as well as I like to slander companies for bad service. Well here is one on the plus side for CASIO. We bought a camera from them nearly 2 yrs ago. It is a EX-Z750 we have loved it. It is small has a huge screen and battery life is terrific. So my wife was taking pictures and dropped it on the carpeted floor with the lens out (it has an automatic lens) and it wouldn't go back in. So I got online to see if it was going to cost more to fix it then to buy a new one and it looked like it fell in the range between 30-110$ to fix. I decided that that we reasonable as we could get an estimate prior to having it fixed. It wasn't under warranty as it had been two years but I threw in a copy of the original receipt when I sent it to Dover, NJ on 1/19/07. So a couple days later I get an email saying they had received it. So far so good. A couple days later they say it is fixed and we owe.......0$. I was not sure if they thought it was somehow under warranty as I had put the receipt in or if I was the millioneth person to have dropped a camera and had to have the lens assembly replaced or some camera repair lineman knew that we could use 100$ to buy food instead of camera repairs. Whatever it was, I am glad to have our little camera back and in working order. The impressive part is that this all took place in 11 days with half of that time taken up in shipping. Oh and they also upgraded the firmware (I am not sure what this did to make it better but I am happy none the less. There is my endorsement for CASIO.

Musicovery

My wife just sent me a link for this website:

Musicovery

It is kind of interesting.

I like how I don't post for a week and then do 5 posts in one day.

Obviously I am avoiding something else I should be doing. But what is it?

Blackmail Pictures

The first picture is pretty girly (notice the pink princess shoes). The second looks kind of like a Sumo ballerina.