The Sponge

One of the oddities of Northern Colorado is that despite it being a locale very attuned to private gun ownership, there are very few places around at which to go shooting. And most of those that do exist are member-only places. The SF Bay area, which one might consider the antithesis of a free culture, had a much greater selection of nearby ranges, and none of them were members-only (though some offered discounts if you bought a membership). For the one as I count 'em open-to-the-public range around here the hourly rate is about 50% higher than the place I used to shoot in Santa Clarabelle.

Needless to say, this is cutting into my shooting time. Not as much as interference from the home life, but it's hard to justify $40+ for a couple hours of shooting on a Saturday just for lane rental. My good buddy The Ice Man took me out to his private range once to shoot my new .40, and it was about a 40 minute drive from my house. It's a very popular range with a long waiting list because it is the closest outdoor range to Fort TomCollins. They also only accept new members once a year in the end of December/beginning of January timeframe. So I was sitting around at work right after Christmas, being one of like 15 people at work that week, and I got to thinking. I said, "Self, in a year or two, HannahC is going to want to start practicing her shooting at a longer range than the little distance-across-the-garage (30 ft?) pellet gun setup you have. You better get yourself on the waiting list for next year." So I sent in the application. Another fellow at work who had applied in the summer had gotten a call a couple months back to schedule his new member orientation training, so I mailed it with confidence that I had missed this year's window of opportunity.

But Lo! and Behold! the guy from the range called me last night to tell me that they'd had 20 no-shows at the orientations so far, and this had opened up a chance for me to make it in this year if and only if I could show up at the range on this upcoming Sunday at 1pm with a check for $125. I quickly checked the playoff schedule to make sure The Bills weren't playing at that time, and confirming that they were not, I said with great confidence, "I'll be there."

Then I sat and ruminated about how to break the news to The Mrs. The Mrs. does not like when I schedule things without her permission. Especially on a weekend. But, hey, it was a family membership. We'd all get to go for free once I took the class and paid the annual dues and new membership fee. But still, telling this guy I'd go without having first consulted with The Mrs. could be seen as a sign that my pair might be growing back, and thus I was filled with fear.

I wrote it on her calendar and kept quiet for the night.

The Mrs. had decided to wash all the pillows in the house yesterday (one of the benefits of having a front-load washer, I suppose. You know, other than that you get to pay twice as much for special low-sudsing detergent and four times as much for the washer in the first place). Naturally, mine were the very last ones she did, so when it was time to go to bed, I was instructed to go fetch them from the dryer.

As I was putting on the pillow cases, I noted to The Mrs. how one of my pillows seemed oddly heavier than the other, when they had both been identical before. She told me that they were dry and that I should stop criticizing her. Or maybe she said I should go fetch a pillow from the guest room in the basement if I wasn't happy with her abilities to do laundry. Either way, I interpreted it as a, "F-off. Not my problem. I'm going to bed," kind of answer. So I went to be myself as well.

In the middle of the night, I rolled over and realized that I had rolled into a big puddle. The first thing I thought was, "Damnit! MaxieC peed the bed!" cuz MaxieC shows up in the middle of the night every night, and sometimes his diaper leaks, and naturally since all the bedding including the pillows had been washed that day, it would be the perfect opportunity for the little pisser.

But MaxieC wasn't even there. What I determined had happened was that I was sleeping on the heavier pillow, and this had squeezed water out the ends like if you squeezed the middle of a wet sponge. The ends of the pillow were soaked, but the center was quite dry.

I ditched it on the floor and used the lighter pillow. In the morning, after telling this story to her, The Mrs. said something to the effect of, "What kind of a dumbass sleeps on a pillow he knows is wet?"

"But you told me it was dry!"

"If it was dry, why would it be so much heavier than the other one?" Roll eyes.

Whatever.

Later, after she had had a shower and was thus in her "happy place", I said, "Hey, I've got to go take a class over in Weld County on Sunday in the afternoon. It's like 3 hours."

"What gun did you buy this time?"

"Huh? I didn't buy a gun."

"When do you think you're going hunting?" but aren't.

"Not going hunting. Just joining a shooting range. They make you take an orientation class. This is my last chance to take it for a year. If I go 4 times, I'll be ahead."

"Oh. Harumph! Write it on the calendar."

Later, at work, I was talking to Ice Man about how I squeaked in this year. He started asking me if I'd bought HannahC one of those little, pink .22's yet, as like his niece had just gotten one. After much debate on the subject, I stuck with the, "I'm gonna get her a better air gun first." The problem with a pink .22, though, is that there's no way I can hand that down to MaxieC. I bet they'd both love camo, though.

Oddly enough, at dinner tonight The Mrs. expressed actual sorrow that my pillow was wet, and reported that she had dried both of them for many additional hours during the day today. And she also seemed supportive of the whole gun range thing. So, maybe it's just me.

Today was a wonderful day

Well, parts of it at least.

It started badly, with the fambly heading to the Outlet Mall in Loverlyland to hit some sale at OshKosh where they had everything like more than 50% off. MaxieC, of course, got incredibly bored very shortly after discovering that despite the clothes being for him, only Mommy was allowed to pick anything out. So went and sat in the winivan where he watched Brother Bear and ate Slim Jims.

Then we had to go to the Carter's Outlet, where they had a Lego table. He played nicely with another kid about his age. So that went smoothly.

The Outlet Mall is right next to Sportsman's Warehouse, but I decided not to mention it. The Mrs. was already piling up millions of places we had to go, MaxieC was worn out, and we were instructed that none of us could eat lunch until everything was complete. This is something I call "planning ahead." I am the only person in the fambly with that skill when it comes to things like lunch.

Why did I want to go to Sportsman's? Well, because The Mrs. is getting me a stainless 4" S&W 686+ .357 magnum for Valentine's Day because she loves me so much.

Oh wait, that right, Valentine's Day is what we call The Day of Disappointment around here. I imagine I will not be getting that, or really anything at all, other than the standard, "I wasn't disappointed. I've learned to have absolutely zero expectations, and that way I'm not always disappointed."

That's a direct quote. You can ask her. She uses it on her birthday and Valentines Day, which on most year fall within a couple of days of one another.

On Christmas, she uses, "It wasn't worse than I expected." I'm not sure if that's better or not.

No, I wanted to go to Sportsman's to see if they carried CamelBak parts. In particular, I'm looking for the tube and bite valve. See, I got one of those beer hats for Christmas. The kind that hold two beers, and then there's hose to your mouth. This was given to me by someone who really cares about my happiness and wants me to maximize my joy when riding my lawn tractor. Namely, Fat Moother, from whose loins The Mrs. sprung lo those many years ago. The Mrs. tells me she was a little disappointed in the birth. It didn't really make her feel special. It seemed like there was a lot of focus on her mother through most of it, and not so much on her until the very end.

So, the thing about the beer hat - and I'm not trying to criticize here as I love the gift very much, and it was one of the most personally touching gifts I got this year - is that I don't think the Chinese have lawn tractors. See, if they did, they would have realized that having a very difficult to operate ratchet clamp to start and stop the flow of beer would mean time driving along with no hands on the wheel, since the left hand is, of course, fully occupied with a fine Partagas cigar.

Now, the hiking and mountain biking crowd figured this out a long time ago. The CamelBak guys invented this fancy thing they call a "bite valve" that is a big round silicone thing that fits in your mouth, and it has a slit in the front of it that opens up when you bits this. Actually, I'm guessing it was one of the girls at CamelBak that thought of this. That, or I feel really sorry for one of the guys there.

It's like prom night all over again, as they say.

So the nice thing about the bite valve is that it requires no hands to operate. You hear that? It requires no hands to operate correctly.

I know they sell replacement ones, as do a couple other companies that make knock-offs, including Nalgene that makes one to convert their bottles into suck things. I also know they're available at REI, I but, like Fred Thompson, don't like to be near hippies.

But we skipped that little outing.

We hit Office Max cuz they were having one of those "15% off anything you can fit in this bag" sales, and The Mrs. has been hounding me to get a can of compressed air to clean out all the smoke detectors. I don't have any idea why.

The great thing about Office Max is that right in the same parking lot there is a store called "Liquor Max Warehouse". And they have great prices. The first three things I picked up were all about $10 less per bottle than at the regular place. And they had sales! Wow. I got a bottle of Tanqueray on sale! I haven't gotten liquor on sale since leaving Kalifornia.

Funny thing - they had Crown Royal in 1.75L bottles, something I've never seen. Crown Royal bottles come in boxes, so I grabbed a box and put it in the cart. Then, shortly thereafter,

HannahC: "Da?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah?"

HannahC: "Do you think that bottle still comes in a purple bag like the smaller one does?"

Me, CherkyB: "That's a very good question. (look in box) Yup. It's just a bigger bag."

HannahC: "OK. Good."

I could sense The Mrs. looking at me with one of those "Why does my 7-year old daughter know Crown Royal is packaged" looks that we've all experienced. Sheesh. Womens.

Then, The Mrs. declared that we had to stop at the Safeway that was in the town on the opposite side of our house from where we were, and if we were good, she'd let us get drive through from a place that MaxieC hates and that has like a 20 minute wait at the drive through. So, despite being right across the street from Lowe's, I forsook the spa chemicals (we can go another day without water clarifier, and we're not technically out of defoamer yet). Mostly cuz I was hungry as hell at this point, what with it being 12:15.

I managed to get a "Gut Buster Coney with onions and cheddar". The Gut Buster is a 1/2 lbs. hot dog. The Coney adds chili. Wow, was it good.

The rest of the day I was assigned to keep MaxieC calm. He's got a bad cold, so he needs rest. I role modeled for him by lying on the couch under a blanket with him and watching TV all day.

That was the best.

There was a time

When I would look to others on the blogroll for blogging inspiration.

That isn't working today.

Now you just watch

This blog post is going to suck. I mean really suck. Suck even worse than those blog posts that catalog exciting stuff like trips to the post office, or what you heard on the radio today, or how many times you masturbated in guacamole to a picture of Al Gore. This is probably going to be the worst blog post you've ever read. Even worse than this gem.

How do I know? Well, for starters, not a god damned thing of any interest happened to me today. The Mrs. didn't say anything particularly witty. My Childrens didn't do any awww shucksy cute stuff. I didn't yell at anyone at work (it was, in fact, a remarkably productive and idiot-free day). There wasn't even any weather today. No weather at all.

And then, on top of that, I've been having a bit of acid reflux the last few days, so I decided to lay off the nectar of life today. So this is Me, CherkyB blogging sober. It's so awful I can't even bring myself to proof read it.

The Mrs. and I watched Superbad yesterday. It was funny. McLovin ... Hah!

I've decided to implement a policy of watching movies when I want to and not waiting around for The Mrs. She has the habit of saying, "Let's watch a movie!" and then going to read one or more of The Childrens one or more stories for one or more hours, and then showing up to announce that it is too late to watch, and then going to bed. Yesterday, I simply announced I was going to watch a movie, and I booted up the DVD. The Mrs. managed to show up while I was mixing myself a little something to enjoy during the viewing.

So there.

That's just great

Somehow, the story of our middle-of-the-night false alarm made the Sunday paper. Yup, it was the featured local editorial about how 911 calls are routinely mis-directed in my neighborhood. The Mrs. was quoted in the story, as was a neighbor who actually called the local paper as they've been fighting with the 911 problem since the neighborhood was built. I'd send you the link to the story, but then you'd all learn our IRLs.

Of course, I'm not the one who is obsessed with nobody learning my IRL. So obsessed with privacy that I track down people who leave comments and send their wives Christmas cards. No, that wouldn't be Me, CherkyB. So here you go. It's a wonderful example of professional journalism. It starts out by mis-identifying the area in which we live right in the headline. Then it includes a couple quotes from The Mrs. that she claims never to have made (and at least one of them is kinda way too stoopid for The Mrs. to have ever actually said, so I made fun of her all day about it). Our realtor called us after she read the article. I'm not sure I'll be able to show my face at work tomorrow.

I does have a nice picture of the rockpile at the entrance to our neighborhood on which our subdivision's name is written. We sometimes go sledding on the hill next to that.

So, here's a funny story:

I walked in to the dining room this evening, and The Mrs. was standing there ironing. I went back to the family room and...

Me, CherkyB: "MaxieC! What happened to Momma?"

MaxieC: "Momma?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. See, there's this crazy woman in the dining room and she's"

The Mrs.: "It's for a project! Don't get all excited!"

The failure

The consensus opinion is that one does not call the fire department when the smoke alarm goes off unless one actually locates smoke. The fact that I did not call the fire department, but instead The Mrs. did, apparently does not eliminate my shame.


The dishwasher is now fixed. $100. $60 to come out, then $20 for every 15 minutes, or something like that. The problem? A bad connection to the power pigtail due to the wrong size wire nuts being used. So we paid $100 to have a guy replace two wire nuts - something I could very easily have done myself. My only saving grace here was that it was a major pain-in-the-ass to get to the power connection, so it took him a half hour despite being a professional. I probably would have removed the dishwasher from the counter to do the work, but he was able to do it by reaching underneath. I couldn't even find the power connection when I looked down there. The Mrs. (who witnessed the repair) reported that it was behind some plastic panel back underneath that needed to be removed.

My only redeeming feat of manliness this week was that I changed the battery in my truck. This is the first vehicle in a while where I could actually get to the battery without removing tons of stuff, and since Sears doesn't (or didn't) charge for the install if you buy the battery, I used to let them do it. It took them over two hours to change the battery on The Mrs's old winivan, which needed to have a body crossmember, a couple wiring harnesses, a fuse box, and the air filter box removed in order to get to the battery.

I got a battery at Checker, though. It's an Exide platinum series. I hope it's not crap. It has 20 more cold cranking amps (770A) than did the old battery, but it's a bit smaller. Yesterday when I got out of work, when I started the truck, it did one of those grr-pause-vroom things that a battery does when it's just starting to go. It was the original and just passed 5 years of age, which is pretty good for an original battery, as they're usually crap.

Why am I posting at 2:36AM?

Well, I had to wait for the fire department to go home first.


[Everything is fine. One of our smoke detectors got dusty, apparently, and in these fancy new houses, they're all wired together. When every smoke detector in the house goes off at 2AM, you kinda just grab the kids and get the hell out of the house.]

Curse you

and your bad dishwasher karma!

Our dishwasher died last night mid-cycle. It just went dead. My little VoltAlert tells me that it still has power underneath, so I'm guessing that the door switch went bad. I'm not calling a repair guy on New Years Day, though. It'll have to wait until tomorrow, and we'll make do with the dishwasher in the bar and (gasp) washing dishes by hand.

[Oh, in case you care, it is neither a dreaded Bosch nor the much-acclaimed KitchenAid. It is some plastic-tubbed Kenmore that appears to be a rebranded lower model Whirlpool. And yes, I know KitchenAids are also rebranded Whirlpools...]

DrinkPact #5 - Water Torture

I was sooo happy to hear that one of my cherished readers has been sampling the DrinkPacts that I even was able to overlook the blatent ripoff of titling a post "never blog sober". I was also inspired to give you the final DrinkPact of 2007 (or the first of 2008, depending on when you log in).

We have guests coming over at 10am tomorrow morning, so it's very important that I try to minimize the hangover potential of the drink. Though, truth be told, if you don't get a hangover, you're not really trying. The key to avoiding a hangover, besides hydration and vitamin B12 (and, you know, sipping like a wuss), is using nothing but clear liquid. And thus is born yet another masterpiece. Or something.

Water Torture

1 oz. Vodka
1 oz. Gin
1 oz. Puerto Rican Light Rum

Stir with ice and garnish with an olive.

Drinker's Impressions:

It tastes surprisingly like gin, which is almost something you might consider a damned shame given that nasty pine-needly taste of gin. Except that the dilution of the vodka and the rum take the edge off the strong gin flavor. I think it very important that a quality gin is used here (I'm using Bombay Sapphire). There is just a delicate hint of rumminess in the drink, and that defines the finish so nicely.

I wonder how it will go with champagne later tonight.

I know, I know

I only have two days in which to post the New Year's Drinkpact. I wanted it to be champagne-based, but as it turns out, champagne is expensive. And you're kind of committed to drinking the whole bottle once you open it because it's hard to reseal due to the pressure. And I drank that bottle on Christmas and forgot that I was supposed to experiment with recipes. So now I just have the one bottle, and tomorrow is Sunday, so I can't get another until Monday when it will be too late.

I may have to experiment with it tomorrow.

Or, perhaps, have a drink recipe that uses the next best thing - rye whiskey.

Not that any of you care. You never try my drinks. It's as if you fear my genius.

Something is very wrong with me

I don't know what it is. It's always on a weekend when something is wrong. Doctors are closed on weekends.

I was outside in the driveway using My Beloved to clean up the snow that the plow had piled at the end of the driveway as well as the roughly 1/2" more that fell after the last time I ran My Beloved over the driveway. Then, I got to thinking, "I wonder if The Mrs. is jealous because I call the snowblower My Beloved? I wonder if she thinks it's mean?"

I hope to be back to normal soon.

You'd think

that by now I'd have something to say.

I don't.

In the World of MaxieC

The Mrs. put out on the coffee table a bowl of Christmas nuts. Christmas nuts, you say? Yes. An assortment of nuts: walnuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, something that looks like acorns without the tops (possibly Barcelona hazelnuts), and pecans. In the shell, of course, as that's what makes them Christmasy.

MaxieC dragged me over there to eat them, as he finds them fascinating given that he can rarely crack one open even with the nutcrackers. He didn't actually want to eat any himself; he just wanted to watch me open them and eat them.

Well, eating Christmas nuts is thirsty work, so by and by I said to MaxieC, "Hey, I need a beers. In the fridge in the garage, on the door, there are bottles of beer. Can you bring me one?"

He dashed off, quite happy, as he recognizes that fetching me a beers is a task generally handled by his older sister. Thus, it is a badge of honor and big-boyhood to be trusted to fetch a beers. And not just a can of beers, but an actual glass bottle.

He came back all excited with the beer in one hand and the opener that hangs on the wall next to the garage fridge in the other.

"Look Da! I even brought you the opener from the garage so you can open it!"

"Thanks, son. You know, I have an opener in my pocket, as all men do, so it wasn't really necessary to bring it. But that one works much better, so thank you for thinking of it."

I quickly release my Isolation Ale from its cold prison. Than I hand MaxieC the opener and say, "Can you put this back, now? Oh, and you can keep this bottle cap. Here, I'll put it in your pocket for you."

I stuffed the cap into the pocket of his overalls. And then, out of nowhere, my son was transformed. He get these big eyes, like he'd just seen the real Santa Claus, and he said in a voice of wonderment, "Wow Da! It's like a dream come true!"

Then he went running off, "I have a beer top pocket! I have a beer top pocket! ..."

Listen All Of Y'all It's A Sabotage

MaxieC got a Spy Master kit Thursday. Yet, for some reason, it makes me think more of The Beastie Boys.

This is annoying

The laptop that The Company provides me I use as my own compooter when at home so I don't have to fight with The Mrs. for the desktop system and so that I can log in to work to check email and IM with work people. I also do most of my blogging from it cuz I'm right there. Well, on Wednesday night, the backlight control decided to flake out. Now, whenever the compooter gets warm, it shuts off the backlight and I can't see the screen anymore. I have to do a standby and let it cool off for about a half hour, and then the screen comes back. I've learned that if I set all the power management features to absolute lowest power levels, I can keep it up about 45 minutes.

I tried to get the IT guy to swap the hard drive into another body, but these are being end-of-lifed, and they're dropping like flies. Can't get the chassis anymore. So instead I get issued a brand new compooter. But the Windows build failed on it Thursday night, so I couldn't get it Friday like I was supposed to. I get it Wednesday instead. Then, I imagine, I spend most of Wednesday migrating files and installing software.

Blogging is so much more dangerous now, knowing that at any instant it could cut out on me. Happily, [Gaaa!!! I just lost the screen. That only stayed up for 5 minutes.]

Happily, blogger autosaves every minute or two, so when the screen cuts out, I just sit a couple minutes, then complete the post from the desktop compooter. As I am doing now. I could hook up an external monitor, but that would be a royal pain to dig the 17" CRT out of the storage room. Especially at Christmas time when the storage room is like a war zone of wrapping paper and ribbons and secret secret stuff squirreled about.

I completed the re-lighting of the kitchen cabinets today, right on schedule. It required a quick trip to Ace hardware to pick up a couple 1/2" knockout wire grommet thingees. Those are the little plastic jobbers that go in the knockout holes to keep the bare sheet metal of the light chassis from cutting into the wire running through the knockout hole. I had been scavenging the ones on the old fixtures, but when I got to the second-last one it didn't have one (code violation!). I bought two, just in case the last one also didn't have one. And it didn't.

I learned why the light fixture over the cooktop only had the left side working. The wire that powered the right side was not hooked up. It was just sitting there, happily, like the day it was born. I couldn't find any indication that it had ever been hooked up as the stripped conductor tip was nice and smooth and didn't have the the thread bites in it from the wire nuts that everything else had when I unhooked them. Odd.

The dimmer switch (a Lutron Faedra) is fancy-schmancy. When you turn it on or off, it ramps the light level up or down, respectively, rather than doing it abruptly. And it had little LEDs that tell you how high it is set. When The Mrs. saw it hooked up to all the new lights, she said I was "pimping our kitchen."

I've been practicing the guitar again. I know you're all very happy to know that. I had let it go roughly since we moved, but this week I was sentenced to sit next to HannahC in the office while she did her homework. After a couple days, I decided there must be something better for me to do during this time than play Bubble Shooter. So I brought up my favorite guitar and a couple songs that I had once kinda learned though not at full speed, and I started re-learning them.

Now my finger tips hurt.

Tomorrow, HannahC and I will run out for some last-minute Christmas shopping. Not much. Just a couple quick things.

Let there be light!

The Mrs. finally, finally, finally allowed me to begin the kitchen cabinet re-lighting adventure. As with all adventures, I headed off for Lowe's with MaxieC in tow. MaxieC doesn't like to shop very much, but we bribed him with a Tootsie Pop that he could eat only while sitting quietly in the cart.

But let me back up - the kitchen cabinet re-lighting adventure involves replacing six under-cabinet light fixtures of which only two have worked correctly since we bought the house. The ones in there are cheap, contractor-grade mini-fluorescents that are in pretty rough shape. The previous owners left us a box full of starters for these, which was our first clue to the problematic nature of the lights. In fact, we didn't even know most of the lights existed until quite some time after we bought the house, given that most didn't come on when you turned on the switch. When I discovered the lights, I managed to get one and a half more of them working (total of 3.5 of the six), but then the half gave up last week (the one over the cooktop).

Some of the fixtures were missing diffusers, one had the starter somehow melted and fused in there. This was not worth salvaging. I decided to replace everything.

Fast forward to Lowe's - everything is crap. Some of it is as cheap crap as what is in there already, and some is nicer, but the nicer stuff is not designed for hardwiring. It is designed for plug-in wiring and requires an external junction box, where you snip off the plug and wire that to the box, in order to hardwire. F- that. I did manage to decide I wanted Xenon, as opposed to halogen or LED, based on their selection. Fluorescent was already off the table.

So MaxieC and I headed to The Home Depot. The Home Depot managed to make the stuff at Lowe's look good, though they did have a number of fixtures designed for hardwiring that were marginally better than what I had. Only fluorescent, though.

I said to MaxieC, "Well, son, it looks like a trip to a lighting store is called for."

He said, "No. I want to go home."

I drove to the lighting store (which was on the way home), but he still insisted he wanted to go home. Now, a lighting store is not a particularly good place to take an angry, betrayed 3-year old boy. I guess maybe an antique store or the proverbial china shop might be worse, but a lighting store has got to be up there in terms of the kinds of places small children can do thousands of dollars in damage very rapidly.

So we went home.

Later, I headed out to the lighting store by myself. The Mrs. said, "You're going out in this weather?" She is intimidated by virtually all weather. It was clear and dry, but we had a bit of wind. I'm not actually afraid of wind. Not wind of the 20mph with gusts to 40 kind, at least. Hurricanes and tornadoes I try not to go shopping during.

At the lighting store, I was met near the entrance by a very friendly woman. Here in Colorado, a lot of people are actually friendly, so you never know just how much of the friendliness is faked for the purposes of a sale. Being that I am a remarkably attractive man, I'm going to say only 10% was faked.

It's not like I was in a car dealership.

I said, "I need to get some under-cabinet lighting."

She said, "Wonderful! Do you have the measurements?"

"Yes."

"Oooh - you made my day!"

OK, now that was probably fake. Though I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people actually went to buy this kind of stuff without realizing that they needed to choose sizes. But that's because I'm no longer surprised with how stupid people are in general.

Global warming. Snicker.

So I told her I was retrofitting, so I didn't want anything that needed me to run lots of new wires or install transformers (like those fancy halogen spot systems). She asked me what I had now, and I said, "mini-fluorescent."

She stopped dead in her tracks with a horrified look and said, "But you want to go to Xenon, right?"

"Yes." Thank you Lowe's.

So she showed me the Xenon lights they carried, which were Kichler (a high quality but overpriced brand), and happened to be exactly what I was looking for. So I got them. After she rang it all up, she said, "Oh. Let me give you a discount," and then she gave me 20% off.

That's the kind of thing you get used to when you're as strikingly handsome as I.

I also picked up a little solid-state dimmer switch that's lightswitch-shaped so it fits in a regular switchplate. Then we talked about pet fish and our children. An odd segue.

I managed to get two of the six fixtures up before The Mrs. shooed me out of the kitchen so she could cook. In this photo, it is the two on the right. You can see the nice, cozy yellow glow of the Xenon bulb compared to the institutional coldness of the fluorescent to the left of the cooktop. The cooktop's light is non-functional, so it is bathed in darkness.

Probably about 2 more hours of work tomorrow, and I'll be done.

The Mrs. and Ham

Over a year ago, as happens every year, there was a charity auction at work for the United Way drive. Being that the United Way, if we are to believe my take of the scandalous news reports each year, is an organization that seems to unfortunately employ a rather large number of grifters, I usually don't contribute directly despite the fact that you can now direct your donation to a particular charity.

I'm not sure why I'd need the United Way to direct my gift to a particular charity. If I wanted to give to a particular charity, I'd cut out the middle-man and write them a check (or, as I do with the NRA-ILA (technically not a charity, but working for the betterment of mankind nonetheless) charge it on the old plastic). I think this charity direction business is akin to the "Green Energy" option your electric company may offer you. Electric companies have, by nature, a small amount of their electricity coming from "Green" sources, and they have a small number of customers who are willing to pay extra to pretend they are better than the rest of us by buying "Green" electricity. So they sell the electricity they already had at a higher price to the Greenies so the Greenies can fell smug and superior. With the United Way, a certain small percentage of people designate a particular charity, so they send the money to that charity without graft or corruption, and they just double-dip into the non-designated majority of the donations to line their pockets - oops, I mean pay for overhead. That's just my opinion, of course. A man is entitled to his opinion without being sued. Except in Canada, where freedom of speech does not exist for non-popular opinions.

So they had this auction, and one of the things I like to do in charity auctions is bid below the value price because charity auctions aren't like eBay where everything is guaranteed some level of action. I managed to score a gift certificate to a day spa for $5 less than face value.

Now, that was over a year ago. Why do I bring it up now, and what does it have to do with The Mrs. and ham? I could tell you if you'd stop interrupting and try to quiet down your breathing. Try using your nose. It's really cool how it works. You close your mouth, then breathe.

The Mrs. has a shoulder with tendonitis. She's had a bad shoulder for somewhere around 6 years. Last week, she finally went to the doctor here and got another cortisone shot in it. Then it started to feel fine, so she became obsessed with some "knot" or something she had in her shoulder blade from overcompensating for the shoulder pain. Rather than just let it go away now that the shoulder doesn't hurt anymore, she decided it'd be a great time to use the gift certificate. Especially since I'm on vacation.

So she called up the place a few days ago and made an appointment for today for a one hour hot stone massage. Then they called her back a little later to say that the woman she had signed up with wasn't working today, but they had a man masseur available at the appointed time. Would she be OK with that?

The answer is, apparently, "Hell Yes!" She "much prefers a man to a woman" because "women can't really rub hard enough." With stones. Women can't hit you hard enough with stones?

Right.

But, I figure, when I got that one and only massage in my life, I had a woman masseuse, and I'm quite fine with that.

I'm not so happy that the guy was named "Mr. Stephen Ham Hands".

So off she went this morning. Like all spas (and hair salons and any place catering to womens), they try to get you to buy product before you leave. The Mrs. is a sucker for this kind of thing when she's spending my money, so she bought one thing.

Does anyone besides me find the name of this product to be humorous, given that it is sold at a massage parlor?

Nightmarish

That is what it is like in that space of time between when you've cleaned the house and when the dinner guests arrive. Especially if you have an almost-four-year-old boy who, like all of his ilk, sees a clear floor as a clean palette on which to create his next work of art by dumping out buckets full of toys and spreading them thickly.

As a child, I think between my brother and me, we had maybe three buckets of toys. My childrens have about three in every room of the house. My childrens are spoiled.

I measured up the kitchen cabinet lights for replacement today. Then I remembered I couldn't start anything because we were having dinner guests. Perhaps tomorrow.

It is fixed!

"What?" you ask, mouth hanging slightly open at the end of the question, "What is fixed?"

Well, not my colon. That is still suffering some of the lingering effects of The Illness I had yesterday, though happily all the chills and aches are gone today.

I've been on a bit of a fix-it tear this week. That often happens when I take vacation. I have fixed countless things over the past few days, but my grand triumph of the moment is that I replaced the GFCI outlet that powers the bar, and now it doesn't trip when I run the bar dishwasher. Oh, it was very exciting. I got to use the little gizmodo that plugs into the outlet and then I point the magic wand thingee at the circuit breakers and it beeps when I'm pointing to the one that powers the circuit I plugged it into. It identified one of the unlabeled breakers, and it was the right one.

The marvels of science.

Now, that circuit is labeled.

I also fixed the ear piece for my bluetooth headset that I had broken, I kid you not, while emphatically slamming my fist down on the center console of the truck while screaming at The Childrens to stop fighting with each other in the back seat. I'm not sure exactly why the bluetooth headset was involved in the discussion. It was a while back. I used the magic epoxy clay to fix this. I had tried any number of varieties of cyanoacrylate adhesives to no effect. This time, I used the Dremel tool and a thin cutting bit to trench the earpiece down the center, then I filled it with epoxy clay and also wrapped the outside in a thin layer. After drying, I shaped it with a grinding bit on the Dremel. I'm happy I didn't have to buy a new headset.

I also fixed a picture frame, a ceramic Christmas tree ornament, the little robot yapping dog, the electric connectors for the train track, hung up the CD racks, hung up the hanging toy sock jobber, and countless other things I don't even remember. I am The Man.

I've been pondering writing a digital camera buying guide, but the reality of it is that there are only two cameras you should consider, and the Canon SD850IS is by far the superior of the two if you don't insist on having something that uses standard AA batteries so you can travel and forget the charger.

I'm getting, literally, about 80 hits a day to the snowblower post this week. That's great, cuz I have an add that pays 1 cent ever 20 page views. So I'm making 4 cents a day! The guide to carpet cleaners isn't doing nearly as well.

I don't do Requests

By request, I am tagging Ellie of the improbably-named Ellie323 blog and Fat Moother of Flatulent Granny fame. As I understand it, they each now have to post five little-known facts about themselves, then we are to nit-pick how little-known those facts are in their comments section. Finally, they're supposed to tag 5 other people or suffer seven years of bad luck.

In the style of the immortal Sam Kinison:

Bad luck? Bring it on baby! I'm not afraid of your bad luck. I'm married! Aaaaaaaa! Aaaaaaaaaa!

That blasted tag stuff

As off of you are well aware at this point, there is a vicious game of tag going around, and I was tagged during one of my black mood periods. Probably triggered by the impending holiday, as holidays make me insanely depressed for no really good reason. Oddly, while I was backing out of the garage Wednesday, I was pondering what it could be that makes me not enjoy holidays so much, and the only thing I could come up with was the disappointment I felt as a child when I asked for the same present for Christmas and my birthday every year for about four years running, and never received it.

But then I wasn't sure it was a real emotion, as I'd watched A Christmas Story the night before. The Mrs. picked it up on DVD on sale at Wurst Buy, so this was the first time I'd ever seen the moovie without commercials or TV edits. I noticed a number of things I'd never noticed before. And I was without a doubt absolutely convinced that she broke the lamp on purpose. On every previous viewing, I was pretty sure it was an accident. Seeing it on widescreen on an upconverting DVD really let me see the subtle facial expressions of the mom. She did it on purpose. For sure.

Of course, Ralphie ended up actually getting his dream present in that movie, making it largely unbelievable.

So I guess the way this tag thing goes is that you tell five little-known facts about yourself, then you tag 5 more people. Now we here at Me, CherkyB have a longstanding editorial policy against tagging people. Just like in real life I throw chain letters in the garbage. But, since I don't have a darned useful thing to blog about, I'll play along with the little-known facts thing.

Here are five little-known fact about Me, CherkyB:

1. I think cognac is an abomination, and I don't understand how anyone can actually drink it.
2. I bought my first bottle of Captain Morgan a few months ago when we were having a couple over for dinner, and I said to myself, "Self, what is it that chicks like to drink?" And I recalled two stories from years back, one from a fellow we called Boesky, and the other from a fellow we called Skittle, both of which involved Captain Morgan and banging stewardesses. Now, no one else has ever told me a first-person account about banging stewardesses, so I figured all stewardesses must like Captain Morgan, and thus it must be an extraordinarily good chick drink. So I picked up a bottle of it. As luck would have it, the lady guest spent the whole time sipping red wine, so I was left with 1.5 liters of the Captain. Now, this was also the time that The Mrs. had decided to stop buying anything but Berries and Cream Diet Dr. Pepper, and she had stocked my bar fridge full of it. I quickly learned that Jack Daniels does not mix well with Berries'n'cream prune soda, so I said to myself, "Self, what in the hell can I put in this stuff?" Naturally, the big bottle of The Captain came to mind. And it's really good in Berries'n'Cream Diet Dr. Pepper. It also turns out to be really good in lots of other stuff. Right the minute, I'm drinking it in eggnog. I drink a lot of Captain Morgan now. More than anything else, except perhaps beer. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.
3. When I was in my teens, my friends used to call me Lewie, because they thought I looked like Lew Zealand. I didn't.
4. Despite all the bravado, I don't own more firearms than I can count on one hand. And I've lived in Colorado for more than a year and still don't have my concealed carry permit. I expect both of these facts to expire before next Christmas.
5. A day where we "just stay home and relax" is a nightmare for me. It's not that I'm against being home or relaxing. It's just that there is nothing about being home with my fambly that is the least bit relaxing. I often invent marginal reasons for having to go to Ace Hardware or Lowe's or the liquor store just to get out of the house on these stay-home-and-relax days.
   

Now, if you'd like to be tagged, drop me a line and I can tag you. But I think I only know about 3 bloggers who haven't been tagged already.

I like my new tires

Yup. Very excellent in the snow, which we've had quite a bit of over the last three days. The Firestone Destination A/T's are definitely living up to their high (#2) ranking on TireRack. I drove The Mrs.'s winivan on Sunday in the snow, it it really underscored the difference. The stability control was constantly kicking in there, whereas I can drive the pickup in RWD through much nastier stuff with no troubles at all.

Being a pickup, it doesn't have stability control. What it has is a little knob that says "2WD, 4HI, 4LO". You leave it in 2WD until you slide off the road into the ditch, yelling, "Hold my beer and watch this!" Then you flip it to 4HI and drive back out.

I haven't had to do that at all this year. Which is good, cuz I hate spilling beer.

I believe that I may just very possibly finally have gotten the tire chains onto My Precious lawn tractor so that they don't fall off when I blow the snow with My Beloved. This morning was now the fourth time this season I have gotten to use My Beloved, and it was the first time one (same one every time) of the chains didn't fall off. The first time, I actually broke a link. After repairing that, I just couldn't get it to stay on. I even had to google for pictures to see if I was doing something wrong, but I wasn't.

I think you just have to put it on, drive a little bit, and if it's loose, tighten it up, and repeat for a while. That's what I ended up doing last time, and it is holding up nicely.

Not that you care.

I had a whole wonderful blog thought up yesterday when I was waiting for HannahC at her swimming lesson. It had to do with the relative popularity of sweatpants and sneakers vs. nice clothes and shoes among the mothers in the audience, and reasons for that disparity. But, I decided the majority of my readers (since Me, CherkyB, like daytime television, skews mostly towards the mommy crowd) would be offended by my observations. I'm like The View.

Only funny.

And not rabidly left-wing.

See above about funny.

We got our first blog Christmas card Saturday from someone I've never met but who has somehow, in a bizarre twist of fate, become e-pals with The Mrs. It included in it a sheet of paper with many photos of the fambly printed on it. Naturally, The Mrs. said, "Hey! A sheet of photos! We could do this!"

Naturally, by "we" she means "Me, CherkyB," as The Mrs. has steadfastly refused to learn how to lay out a bunch of photos on a page in Powerpoint, which is one of those skills that takes maybe 15 to 20 seconds to learn. In previous years, we've special-ordered custom Christmas cards with a photo of the fambly on the front from Snapfish, but we just haven't gotten off our butts to do that this year, and now it's too late.

So we'll be sending out store-bought cards. If you're lucky, The Mrs. will insert a page of photos in a blatant ripoff of the C, H, C-H fambly, but I wouldn't count on it. She's pretty lazy, and I post every decent photo I take onto the blog.

Oh, and MaxieC today decided that he wasn't really potty trained, and that it was more fun to play games on nickjr.com than to go potty. So he pooped himself at the compooter, and then peed himself a couple hours later. No compooter for him tomorrow.

The Gem and Train Show

We drove about 30 miles to a gem and model train show today. We had been planning to go ever since the dood at the train store told me I'd have to go to train shows to try to find the part to fix my commemorative bicentennial American Flyer diesel engine. Plus, we'd gone to a gem show in San Schmose a not long before we moved, and HannahC really enjoyed it.

Honestly, the gem side of the show was a lot more impressive than the train side. There was a surprising amount of N-scale stuff - both layouts and gear for sale - followed closely behind by O-scale. Not much HO stuff, despite that being the most popular scale by far. Perhaps that's why there isn't much at the show, as you can get a good selection and just about any hobby store.

I came away empty handed. Though about 20 minutes after our arrival, The Mrs. won a random drawing for a door prize. They gave away two about every half hour. She got herself a carved jade(?) iguana. I call it "El Lizardo." She was very happy.

HannahC and I watched a guy "scratch building" a wooden house. That means it wasn't a kit. He had made up a little drafting of the building and was cutting tiny pieces of wood to put it together. I don't think he was doing the 16" on center stud distance to scale, though. More like 24". He wasn't particularly inclined to interact with the audience, as he complained about all the interruptions he experienced at the show while trying to build.

Maybe if he didn't have a big sign that said, "Scratch Building Demonstration," in front of him, and wasn't sitting at the demonstration table at a train show, he could have had a more peaceful time. But it was nifty to see the tools he was using to make the thing. Really, the only thing he had that I don't already own was a thing that looked like a hybrid of a miter box and a paper cutter that was used to cut the little sticks to length. Mostly, he just cut them with an X-acto knife, though.

He was the only guy actually doing anything at the train demonstration table. The other guys were just sitting around with stuff they'd already built in the past handing out fliers about how much they'd charge to make you something like it.

Now, over on the gem side, HannahC and MaxieC both learned to pan for gold. HannahC also got to grind and polish a rock into an oval shape on a six wheel wet grinder bench. They called this "making a cabachon". She spent a good 20 minutes on it. Afterwards, she and The Mrs. headed off to the gem vendors' section and found a little necklace mount in which it fit, and now HannahC proudly displays her art around her neck.

On the way back, we stopped at a brand new TGI Friday's. We almost never eat at TGI Friday's, and The Mrs. was nostalgic for it. It is apparently one of the favorite hangouts for her sister and mother, though not the one in Longmont.

So, I didn't manage to find a replacement piece for my engine at the train show. But, not to worry. As you all know by now, I am the master of fixin' stuff. I had decided to take a crack at fixing this before having to plunk down like $20 to buy a whole engine just to scavenge one little part off of it. My dad had tried and failed many years ago to fix this by trying to reform the plastic with a plastic-melting tip for his soldering gun. I decided to go more high-tech.

I schlepped MaxieC off to Ace while the womens were seeing that godawful hopping-around-in-tights and toy-soldier-marching Christmas tradition, "The Nutcracker." Ace, as it turns out, has a dizzying selection epoxy clay. They probably had 8 to choose from, including one that was even Ace-branded.

That was 8 more than Lowe's had, but at Lowe's we did manage to score a whole lot of hot tub chemicals. I've learned that, around here, Lowe's is my best bet for inexpensive hot tub chemicals. See, they sell the non-chlorine shock (that my hot tub seems to require about a half pound of every time we go in it) packaged both for hot tubs and for pools. If you buy it for pools, it's about 1/4 the price. They also, for the first time, had water clarifier and filter cleaner, so I got everything I needed. Except for epoxy clay.

I got the second-cheapest epoxy clay at Ace, as the cheapest didn't claim to stick to plastic. $4.99 for the tube. Epoxy clay is cool, as it's like what you'd get if a cheese log were a tool. It has an inner core of one color clay and an outer shell of another. You cut of a slice, then knead the two together until they're mixed. Then you have about 5 minutes to work it into whatever shape you want, and it's completely hardened in an hour.

The one I got was called "Quick Steel", which made me kinda wistful for twenty years ago. I don't know why.

I put the stuff on there (which I had to do twice cuz the first time I didn't get enough of the black core and it never hardened), shaped it as well as I could with some mini-screwdrivers, let it dry, and then used my Dremel tool with a grout cutting bit to shape the tab until it fit just right on the engine. Now the wheels don't fall off anymore, and I can use the engine that matches the caboose.

I only needed about 20 cents worth of the Quick Steel. I have three years to figure out uses for the rest. I'm thinking of using it to fill the holes when I change out some of the old hitches for the new style, which requires some filling and drilling. I just fixed my Leatherman, which had a little tab break off that would keep the pliers from getting stuck against the screwdriver when you closed it. Oh, the joy.

HannahC - Sexist

The fambly watched The Santa Clause 3 tonight. None of us had seen it before. It was the weakest of the three, I think. After the moovie, they showed a bunch of "extra features" that include an extended bloopers reel and also a music video by "Aly & AJ" that was one of those moovie soundtrack videos where you cut back and forth between the band and scenes from the moovie.

Aly and AJ both sing and play guitar. About halfway through the video, little HannahC says with disgust, "Why do they have girls playing the guitar?"

So I have to muster up daddy-mode. "Well, hon, girls can play the guitar." [stifle a snicker]

"But, you know, they're just strumming and singing. If you watch, you'll see there's a guy in the back on the right playing a Flying V, and he's playing the actual hard guitar parts. Uhhh...a Flying V is a guitar whose body is shaped like a big V. An awful lot of bands that have a girl that sings and plays guitar have a guy in the back who plays the hard guitar parts."

"Oh yeah. I see him," says darling HannahC.

"Yes, well, girls can still be good guitar players and play the hard parts. They don't always play rhythm guitar. For instance, ummmm.....hmmmm..., that girl in The Donnas, she's a really good guitarist and she plays all the hard parts. And there are probably a lot of other bands, too."

Yeah. Right.

Duh or No Duh 4

A co-worker of mine, who shall remain nameless for the purposes of this discussion, has been hosting a couple designers from an out-of-town site at work this week. Sometimes, when hosting someone from an out-of-town site, you need to take the folks out for dinner and/or a good time after work. That's why they never let me host anyone from out-of-town.

So anyways, at lunch today:

Nameless Co-worker: "Man, I did not need that last shot of tequila last night."

Me, CherkyB: "Nobody ever needs a shot of tequila."

It's not like it's frickin' Yukon Jack.

Duh.™

A Glorious Timesink

People have been unusually interested in the train that I set up under the tree. As though this is some kind of bizarre thing that requires great talent and mystery. Like if I said I had a snowmobile or a hot, young girlfriend.

Anyways, as much as I like to say, "We here are Me, CherkyB have a thoughtful and coherent editorial policy. We do not do requests," in reality I do requests. Shhh. Don't tell management. I'll end up having to do another "CherkyB's Guide to [some crap one of you wants to know something about]."

I'm such a blogging whore.

So here is the train set:


Well, OK, that's only about half the train set. The half I haven't dug out yet cuz it's either missing parts, or I can't use it on the temporary setup around the tree (like bridges and electric switches), or I just can't deal with anything more that's broken yet.

Roughly 2/3 of the stuff comes out of the packing broken. Not cuz it got broken in the shipping, mind you, but because it got broken in the approximately 10 years it was set up in my parents' basement. The core package was purchased in 1976, after all. Most of the accessories came later, but during the presidency of one James Earl Carter, Jr., a man who almost single-handedly destroyed this great country of ours, and continues to try to do so.

Here is the train set as of Saturday afternoon. The engine is not the original from the set, as that has a broken truck that causes the wheels to fall off, and the guy at one of the largest model train stores in the word told me good luck finding that replacement part, and that my only hope was to buy a whole used engine at a train show (and there's one this coming Sunday, as it turns out), though I think I found one on eBay today for ~$20 with shipping, which is about what an engine of this quality costs brand spanking new. The crane car is also a later addition. I have just a couple of the model buildings out here, plus I've hooked up the electric whistle and the "Arco" fuel tank with flashing red light on top.


The kids love the flashing red light. I like it cuz I can easily tell from a distance if the crappy little transformer was left plugged in. I learned today that my transformer is completely inadequate to run a proper engine. I also learned that all three of my engines have many of the qualities on the "avoid this" list. Hell, I learned I have the wrong track, the wrong transformer, the wrong engines, the wrong cars, and the wrong couplers. The only thing I have that is "right" are the little metal connectors that hook the track together.

It's amazing that I've had so many years of fun with everything being so horribly, horribly wrong.

Now, out of the crate, two of the three engines and the trolley car didn't work. I got the engines working, excepting the aforementioned problem with the wheels falling off the diesel, but I hadn't gotten the trolley car working. When we were in the local hobby shop Saturday morning picking up some misc. track and electronics parts, HannahC fell in love with a new trolley car. It said "Main Street" on the side.

So we got the dood to open up the cabinet, and when he took out the box, behind it was the same trolley only painted in Christmas colors with "Happy Holidays" on the side. So we got that one instead. $23. Pretty cheap.


Later that day, HannahC was doing schoolwork, so I decided to take MaxieC out to the workbench to try to fix the original trolley car. We took it all apart and cleaned everything with Grease Grizzly and Q-Tips and lubed everything up with BreakFree CLP. Then I put it back together, and it didn't work at all.

Using my advanced electronics debugging skills, I got out the multimeter and did a little probing. I determined that it was making electrical connection with only one track rail. I then realized I'd put the axles in backwards. I always forget this with HO trains. Usually the wheels on one end of the axle are connected directly to the axle, and on the other they are isolated by a plastic insulator. That way, the engine needs to have wheel pickups on only one set of wheels, and it doesn't short across the rails through the axle. But if you put it backwards, only one side is connected.

After reversing the axles, it ran fine.


As of tonight, things are more elaborate. We have two more buildings (unpacked them), a pond (new), three trees (new), two sets of HO scale people (new), and a very high end sulfuric acid tanker car that has high end couplers that do not work with my old stuff (new).

DrinkPact #4 - Miracle Martini

It is rare that God speaks to me through vodka. I find that I am closest to God when chugging shots of Yukon Jack, which I don't do very often on account of I was very upset to learn that God was Canadian.

So, last week I sat down to make the perfect Christmas drink. I quizzed HannahC on what she thought Christmas flavors would be, and she chose chocolate and peppermint. Thinking this was awfully close to the ingredients list of the most horrible Minty Fresh (who, interestingly enough, happens to be a recurring character in Christopher Moore novels - though I knew it not at the time, not having ever even heard of Christopher Moore last year, though he today firmly occupies the space of CherkyB's favorite author, displacing Hemingway or maybe Davie Foster Wallace), I decided to keep it simple at first. I tried three different minor variations of the theme - Boozettos, I like to call them - and this was the most palatable. It wasn't by any means heavenly, but more on that later.

The Miracle Martini

1.25 oz. premium Vodka
0.5 oz. Creme de Cacao
splash of Peppermint schnappers

Shake with ice. Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a stick of candy cane for a stirrer.

Drinker's Impressions:

Ahhh, at last the wonderful flavor of Andes Candies in an intoxicating beverage. The chocolaty undertones from the creme de cacao banish any errant thoughts of "toothpaste", which can be such a recurring problem with minty drinks. After two or three of these, you might be inclined to cut out the creme de cacao and the peppermint schnapps, go with straight vodka in the glass, and simply munch on a candy cane. And that's the great thing about this drink. It is as much or as little as you want it to be. Really, the exact opposite of a spouse.

So from where does this strange name, "Miracle martini," come? What is miraculous about a martini, especially one with no Yukon Jack? Well, feast your eyes on the photo below:


Note the glowing stars shining on the glass. Here's the thing: there are no stars in that room. None. I took three pictures, all from the same angle, and this one came out with stars in it. Real, perfect Christmas stars. The other two, just ordinary light. I didn't notice this until I downloaded the pictures from the camera and looked at them on the screen. To this day, I have no f'ing idea where those stars came from. Really. Not making that up. I did, for this one shot, use a different mode on the digital camera. Now I have to dig out the manual to see if it does a digital "star" filter on it.

If not, it's very clearly a message from God.

And God has bad taste in drinks.

Which is kinda what you'd expect. You know, God being Canadian and all.

The Cycle of Life

Here is a beetle that MaxieC and I found on the floor of the Denver Museum of Natural History on Sunday afternoon. I'm not really sure what it is. It could be a type of "long-horn beetle". The picture is, unfortunately, slightly out of focus despite the use of the macro zoom.


This is a picture of the beetle moments later, after MaxieC had stomped it.


The life cycle of a beetle is tragically short.

Something Not to Do 15

Let's say, purely hypothetically, that your wife has told The Childrens that tonight is "Mommy and Daddy time night", and put the younger to bed, and sent the older to read books in her room. Then she has poured herself a glass of wine and said to you, "Let's go in the hot tub."

So far, so good, you are thinking. And you'd be right. And James Dean was driving just fine up until that last curve, too.

The Mrs.: [Looks at herself in master bath mirror] "I'm not any fatter than I was when we got married."

Me, CherkyB: "Uh, yes you are."

Self: "Doh! You idiot! That was a trap!"

Me, CherkyB: "I mean, no, you're not at all."

That would be Something Not to Do.™

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The tree! The tree!

I took all these pictures on Friday, and I planned to post them right away. But I was overcome with the "I don't cares", so I didn't. The Mrs. today complained that I haven't had a post in a long time, so I'm photoblogging. I have very little to say right now as, oddly, I've been spending a lot of my evenings working at home rather than ruminating.

Here's the "before" picture of the tree room. It's officially our living room, though we have never used it as such. The previous owners (who had the house built for them) had a pool table in it, so I wonder if it has ever been used as a living room.


Here's the fambly in Stinky Greeley huddled at the fire pit waiting for the tractor hayride to take us to the Christmas tree field. A ride that is about 30 seconds and which you could walk in 2 minutes. I'm practically standing in the field to take this picture. By the hayride is part of the schtik, and if there's one thing the day after Thanksgiving is all about, it's schtik.


At last! It took longer to wait for the hayride than it took to pick a tree and cut it down.


Another tradition - the photo of the fambly right before the killing of the tree. See that dark tree in the background on the left between the two buildings - that's where the hayride starts.


The problem with having a back seat in your pickup is that you end up with a 5.5' bed, and the Christmas tree hangs out. The fambly headed into the building for the free cookies and hot apple cider, which meant a delay of about 20 minutes. MaxieC didn't like his cookie, so I had to eat it while he got a fresh one.


We got the tree all stood up, and then the first thing I installed was the angel on the top. I realize this is somewhat against tradition, but the little 3' cord on the angel dictates the placement of the extension cord, which then in turn dictates the placement of the lights. So it needs to go first.

The Mrs. thought it was hysterical that I took my beers up the ladder with me, so she needed to snap this photo. Unfortunately, I'd finished long before she scared up the camera, and I was just standing at the top of the ladder drinking beer. So she made me pretend to be installing the angel.

"Installing the angel" sounds kinda dirty, doesn't it? I'm not sure what it would mean, but it just sounds dirty. I may have to use it as a new catchphrase.


MaxieC could only reach the low branches. This branch was his favorite for whatever reason.


Here's the view from the loft down to the "completed" setup. It's not really 100% done yet, and the train isn't up yet (it was two more days before tackling that). Note the little village lighted of ceramic houses on the display shelves along the staircase. They were a gift from someone named "Q" who I think I have met once in my life but is bestest friends with The Mrs's mother.

Ha HA! Triumph!

Blogging is oddly cathartic. When I find myself frustrated to the point where I can't think straight anymore, it's nice to be able to kick back with a big giant drink and write about it.

Strangely, as I was writing about maybe needing the low voltage Fluke VoltAlert, I got to thinking about why I would need the low voltage VoltAlert. Christmas tree lights have the bulbs strung in series connections of 25 or so bulbs, and then they have a bunch of these strings in parallel so that if you unplug one light, you lose only the series that that particular bulb is part of and not the stuff in parallel.

Now, each of the series-connected strings divides the voltage across the bulbs such that if the string is working, each bulb sees a progressively lower voltage. That explains why the VoltAlert (which is only good down to 90V) can't find voltage present in the last bulb of a string but can in the first. However, if you unplug the last bulb in the series, suddenly there is no current, and every bulb sees the line voltage, and will light up the VoltAlert. I tested this on a working series just to make sure.

Now, the very first light in the bad series didn't register any voltage. I unplugged its bulb just to make sure there were no downstream shorts (though that should have blown the fuse), and still no voltage. That means a bad supply line, not a bad bulb. I'd been searching for the wrong thing last night, in the dark, in the cold, with the lights strung up on a snow-covered tree.

So I started at the plug and found that the supply was fine. I followed it along with the VoltAlert, and within 30 seconds found a place where the wire was severed. A couple minutes later after judicious application of a soldering iron and a water-proof wire nut, and the lights were back in working order.

Sometimes, it helps to work during daylight hours.

My luck with the HO trainset I tried to set up under the tree today was much more agonized. It's a trainset I've had since I was a kid, but it was nailed down to a sheet of plywood forever, and my parents just brought it here on their last visit. It sat in a suitcase since then. Until today when, in a momentary lapse into good parenting, I decided to show it to MaxieC.

I think it's kinda sorts working now. It's very hard to run HO tracks on a carpet, so I cut out a platform for it out of 1/2" blue rigid styrofoam insulation I had left over from the garage door insulating project. I still need to tack down the track and shim the turns, though, as there is still a tendency to roll over at the corners and for the track to separate if the foam is bumped.

I haven't hooked up any accessories yet.

Today, I feel lousy

Not lousy in a sick way. Just devoid of any energy or will to do anything. I think this is because today was outdoor Christmas light day, and it ended in failure. I got everything hooked up, but some of the lights don't work and I can't figure out why. I though I had one string root-caused when I found a light bulb that was broken off, but upon replacement, it still didn't work.

I was out there with my inductive AC voltage sensor, but it wasn't picking anything up. It wasn't even picking anything up on the wires going to the lights that actually worked. I found that it worked for the first 30 or so lights, then after that, it got nothing. These strings have about 100 lights in series. It seems I need the "LAC" (low voltage AC) model.

I got out my digital multimeter and tried to do continuity checks, but my probe tips wouldn't fit in the slots.

Yeah - there's a prom night joke in there somewhere.

So I was reduced to removing a big giant handful of bulbs and then doing continuity checks on them individually. I got through 22 (all passed) before I gave up and went inside for dinner. These lights I hung on the tree last year, and I left them up all year. They are "commercial grade" lights that are supposed to last forever. But, they are the same made in China crap as everything else.

I got fed up with this same problem on the indoor tree, and I bought LED lights this year. I read an article that said they were about the same price as conventional lights. However, it was comparing C4-sized lights (those big 4W bulbs you put outside). For mini-lights, it's $10.99 for 50 LEDs vs. $3.99 for 150 incandescents. But if it saves me one day of Christmas light hell, it will be worth it. I plan to gradually convert everything over to LEDs.

They flicker, by the way. LEDs only emit light when the voltage is applied in one polarity. Household AC alternates. So you get this really cool 60 Hz flicker that you can only see if it's moving. If the light is still, it seems to be on solid. But if you wave the string around, they strobe. It's wicked hooper-dooper.

I think what bother me the most, though, is the I have a g-damned Ph.D. in electrical engineering, I've spent much of my career becoming an electrical debug expert at The Company, and I can't get a stupid string of Christmas lights to work.

And the winner is...

...The Mrs.!

We had expected to be alone this Thanksgiving weekend, on account of how none of our friends or relatives like us or something. But, yesterday at dinner time, our good friend Big D dropped by. OK, so maybe one unexpected guest.

Well, this evening as we were decorating the tree, another of our old friends popped in to see The Mrs. I was in the living room hanging ornaments when I heard the commotion in the kitchen. The Mrs. was talking to Ralphie.

Later, she described the meeting thusly:

"I stuffed like four of the pickles in my mouth at once. Then the vinegar went down the wrong pipe, and I had a problem."

Curse you, pickle and olive platter.

A Thanksgiving Tradition

Somehow, I thought this year might be different. No Granny Moo Moo. No visitors at all. Just the four of us for a nice, peaceful Thanksgiving dinner.

We sat down to dinner, and as people were beginning to eat, I started to deliver my prepared speech on the meaning of Thanksgiving, as that is my job as the patriarch of the fambly. I had just gotten through thanking The Mrs. for "slaving away in the kitchen all day", and she had just finished interrupting me to assert, "two days!" when MaxieC ripped a big one.

I made a pithy comment about how MaxieC was also giving thanks in his own special way, and then I continued. However, I was having a hard time being heard, as MaxieC had started yelling, "Diarrhea! Diarrhea!"

The Mrs. got up to check. Yup. Diarrhea.

Thanksgiving Morning

A photoblog.

Here is the fambly room. You may note the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on the TV. You may also note that the room is devoid of inhabitants, as no one in the fambly actually likes to watch the parade. But The Mrs. always requires it to be on. I turned on the gas fireplace as it's only 16 degrees outside, and one wall of this room is glass.


Ahh, good. The pond heaters are working.



Cinnamon buns for breakfast.


Someone may have gotten tired of waiting for cinnamon buns and started the morning with a Screw Yu.


The Mrs. and HannahC decide to do crafts. Something they call "paper quilling" but that I call "twiddling."

Happy Thanksgiving

Nothing goes better with turkey than a Leaf Blower.

Fame and Fortune, Fame and Fortune

They said if Rupert Murdoch bought The Wall Street Journal, the quality would suffer, and they were right!

I'd like you all to pay close attention

However, I have nothing today that warrants it. If you concentrate enough, you probably won't notice.

HannahC is sick. This is problematic, as it means The Mrs. has an excuse to stay cooped up in the house all day, which in turn means that MaxieC has an excuse to be especially crazy. And there's a long weekend coming up for which I have stockpiled only 4 beers. Plus, I'm pretty much out of Captain Morgan and Bushmills.

Friday, we will all have to head for Greeley, which smells, and cut down a Christmas tree. Last year, we had Granny Moo Moo with us, but this we we are alone. That means we can take the pickup and just throw the tree in the back instead of having to tie it down to the roof rack. Oh joy of joys. And likely no one will throw up.

I always am irked by the day after Thanksgiving. The Mrs. desperately needs to turn it into an all-day Christmas affair, including cutting a tree, setting it up, trimming it, getting out all the holiday decorations from the storage room/shed and putting them up, and decorating the outside trees. I, on the other hand, am usually pretty tired from all the eating the day before, and I mostly want to nap.

Only one of us ever wins.

And it has never been me.

I spend most of the day being accused of being "Bah Humbug". But I'm not. I'm just tired. And I don't see why Christmas has to arrive 100% completely the day after Thanksgiving. Don't we have a few weeks to prepare for it?

The answer is, apparently, "No."

The Mrs. - Loving Wife

The Mrs.: "It's supposed to snow on Tuesday! You'll get to use your new tires when it snows."

Me, CherkyB: "I think I'll get to use my new tires even if it doesn't snow. It's kinda hard to drive anywhere without using the tires."

The Mrs.: "Oh. Yeah. Please don't spin out with the kids in the car."

Me, CherkyB: "I never spin out with the kids in the car."

The Mrs.: "I worry so."

Me, CherkyB: "You have such a low opinion of me."

The Mrs.: "No. I have a low opinion of your judgment."

You see...

...there's gold leaf in Goldschläger. See? Gold leaf.

And tequila.

Leaf blower.

You get it? Huh? Huh?

Nevermind.

CherkyB - Master of the Wood

And I'm pretty good at building stuff, too.

A long, long time ago, we were driving down the street and noticed a big giant pile of toys thrown out at a neighbor's house. I believe it was right after Christmas, as some households have a "zero growth" policy on the quantity of toys. The Mrs. hollered, "Stop!" So, as a dutiful hubsband, I stopped, grumbled, and reversed back to the pile of junk so that The Mrs. could pick through for holiday treasures - a habit she apparently picked up when younger.

There was a lot of misc. stuff that still had a useful life to it, and one big piece of piratey bootie - a Lego table. It had, unfortunately, only two legs. But its Lego holding bag was even still filled with Legos. The Mrs. said to me, "You can fix this," and we tossed it in the back of the vehicle.

So on and off for almost a year now I have been pondering how to fix this thing. It's all plastic. It's hard to fix plastic things. But finally, after we'd reached that plane of Zen in life where the Lego table has reached the top of The Mrs.'s "nag my husband until he can't take it anymore" list, I formulated a plan.

I would fashion new legs out of wood.

Well, that had kinda been the plan all along, except I kept wondering how I would be doing this. See, the previous plastic legs were exactly 2"x2", and they had a truncated cone at the top that fit into a conical hole in the bottom of the table that was recessed in a 2x2 hole. There's no way I would be able to duplicate the cone without a lathe. And I'm not buying a lathe so that I can fix a garbage-picked Lego table. A brand new Lego table is a lot cheaper.

I decided to get a 4x4 and mill it down to 2x2 at the end (keeping in mind that a 2x2 is only 1 -5/8 x 1-5/8, or something like that, so too small to use for a 2"x2" hole). To mill it down, I would use my router table with a straight-cut bit, as I exploded my table saw a couple years by trying to use a dado blade on it and never replaced it. So we hit Lowe's and picked up a 4x4. I also picked up a few right-angle Simpson ties and some paneling anchors in case I needed to secure it to the bottom of the table.

After about 2 hour of labor, I was finished. One of my easier creations. Much the way The Mrs. thinks about MaxieC.


It turned out that just making the wood fit the hole perfectly made it stay in, so I don't need to use the right-angle brackets. I can also just pop the legs off to move and/or store the table without having to remove screws.


I was telling The Mrs. how I fixed this for $8 - the cost of an 8' 4x4. But then I got to thinking about all the tools I actually needed to own in order to be able to do this. I don't know the prices of everything, so all the dollar costs are ballpark estimated.

Hitachi 12" compound power miter saw: $300
12" blade for miter saw: $25
Porter Cable router: $175
Craftsman router table: $100
Craftsman 3/4" straight-cut router bit, 1/2" shank: $25
Bosch 1/2" self-guided roundover bit, 1/2" shank: $30
Tape measure: $5
Combination square: $15
Skil belt sander: $50
Belt for sander: $2
DeWalt palm sander: $40
Sandpaper for palm sander: $0.50
1" wood chisel: $10
Hearing protection: $35
Safety glasses: $8
20A extension cord: $25
3 outlet Y adapter for extension cord: $10
Rigid canister vac: $80
Pencil: $0.25
Craftsman #2 philips screwdriver: $8

Which means I had to invest almost $950 in order to be able to fix a garbage-picked Lego table for $8. Happily, none of these tools were purchased just for this project, but I need to charge some of their depreciation to it.

DrinkPact #3 - The Leaf Blower

It's very difficult to create art by committee.
-CherkyB

Especially if everyone on the committee is an idiot but you.
- Little known addendum

Last night, I decided it was time to get back to the grind and churn out another of my holiday cocktail recipes, as I know you, my slack-jawed fans, are probably going to make your final run to the liquor store this weekend in preparation for the big Thanksgiving feast where you will be put on the spot during dinner to name something for which you are thankful, except Gramma will get to go first and will use the, "thankful for being surrounded by so many of my loving fambly" rot, and by the time it gets to you, all the good answers will be gone, and you'll be left picking between, "I'm thankful that people are starting to learn that the al Dura scandal was a hoax manufactured and propagated by a left-wing media," which is maybe a little too morbid for Thanksgiving, even for you, and, "I sure am glad that 'The 64 Effect' doesn't happen with Code Red Mountain Dew." Personally, I'm going with the latter.

But you'll want to impress your friends and/or family somehow, and given that you've gotten this far into your life without witty banter being part of your repertoire, you've pretty much resigned yourself to it being something more mundane. Like a card trick. Or a joke that is either hysterical (to you) or doesn't make any sense at all (to your family and friends) and leaves people shaking their heads and excusing themselves to get a drink.

"Ah HA!" you yell. "A fancy drink!" That's how you'll impress your friends and/or family. Or, at the very least, you can get good and sloshed on something either too sophisticated or bizarre for the rest of the pedestrian bunch you holiday with.

So, the chances of this particular drink being your salvation are somewhat low. That because, during the moments the creative juices began flowing (i.e., when my drink was empty and I needed to fill 'er up), I happened to be YMing with one of my long-lost grad school buddies, Dr. A-berg. And he kept yelling "Add vermouth!" after every step.

I can't think of many situations that vermouth is the answer to. In the end, I broke down and added it. It really destroyed the drink. You should never take drinking advice from someone who would serve gewurztaminer at his wedding.

Anyway, this was my first shot at a Thanksgiving drink. And if you can get past the first sip, it's actually remarkably not anywhere near as bad as the Minty Fresh. I should have an alternative selection available in a couple days. That way you can have two fancy drink recipes to ask your host to make when they say, "Can I fix you a drink?"

The Leaf Blower

3 oz. Cranberry juice
1 oz. Tequila
0.5 oz. Goldschläger

Shake with ice, strain, enjoy.