Three Gallons

So first off, let me say I had a wonderful story to tell in today's blarg. It involved getting help in such a fashion that the job would take longer than it would without help. But before I got started, I was perusing some of the new posts from the old blogroll and, much to my chagrin, I discovered that Rio had blogged about the same thing already today. Now, she actually titled her post "My Greatness".

This gave me pause.

"My Greatness". I got to thinking what a blog post of mine with that title would look like. I had never really considered it before. Normally, when a dude titles a blog post "My Greatness", it will include grainy cellphone photos he shot of his manhood, badly Photoshopped for, shall we say, her pleasure. I don't even own Photoshop, and my Windows 3.1 version of CorelPaint doesn't seem to run anymore. So at Me, CherkyB, my greatness is just going to have to be implicit.

But I'm still gonna tell the story about the help, since it's the only interesting thing that happened today. See, it all started when I went outside this morning to work on the playset. Today, I was applying the tinted sealer. Shortly after I began, HannahC showed up in her painting clothes. So I gave her a roller, and she proceeded to roll on the sealer. She didn't do the best job in the world, or the fastest, but it was non-negative work.

Then MaxieC showed up with The Mrs. He wanted to paint, too. The Mrs. put him in his paint clothes, and he came out. He and HannahC fought over which of the two rollers and one brush they each wanted, with them both changing their minds in rapid succession but always agreeing that they wanted exactly the same one at all times. Finally this got all worked out.

The Mrs. asked what I wanted her to do. I said, "Try to keep them from putting the rollers in the sand. Mostly MaxieC, since HannahC seems to be OK."

So, The Mrs. processed to grab a paintbrush and started sealing also. The way she kepy tabs on MaxieC, as far as I could tell, was to bark out criticism every 10-15 seconds about how he wasn't paying enough attention. In between that, she had to bark out orders at HannahC as well about how she was dripping the stuff too much.

Now, if you've ever dealt with sealer or stain, you know this is very thin stuff. It's designed to be absorbed by the wood, after all. There is simply no way to apply it that doesn't drip a bit off the roller or brush.

I'm listening to all this hollering, trying to tune it out and go to my happy place, when out of the corner of my eye, I see a paint roller come toppling down. I look over just in time to see the roller extension handle bonk off The Mrs.'s head and the roller land right in the sand. And little MaxieC saying how he accidentally dropped it.

All I can say is, "Ohh...right in the sand."

So The Mrs. is all whining, the way only a woman can, about how horribly hurt she is because a 2 lbs. aluminum tube brushed the top of her head. But at the same time, she is telling MaxieC what a badly behaved boy he is for dropping it on her head. I noted later to The Mrs., after she had calmed down, how it really might not have been the best idea to give a little boy who just turned four and is barely more than three feet tall a paint roller on an eight foot extension pole so he could paint the stuff that was ten feet off the ground. In gusting winds.

She felt I was criticizing her.

Which I was.

I took the roller and hosed it off. Not the best thing to do with oil-based sealer, but about all that could be done. I then rolled all the water off onto a piece of cardboard. Upon my return, there was still no end to the hollering. So I sent all three of them packing back into the house so I could get a little peace.

I hope The Mrs. hasn't written any nasty couplets about me because of it.

After about 5 hours of work, during which time it never got above 43 degrees so I had to keep running into the garage to return the feeling to my fingers, I managed to use up three of the four gallons of sealer I had purchased. I think I'm a bit over halfway done, as I have two exterior walls, 1/4 of the roof, almost the entire interior, the swing extension, and most of the underside of the "house" done. It'll probably take 3 more gallons and another 5 hours to finish. Next weekend, I suppose.



Shortly after I packed it in, it began to snow. Joy.

Things that I hate

1. People.
   

Some photoblogging

I haven't posted any pictures to the old blog in a long time. In fact, I had to install the software on my compooter to get the photos out of the camera, and I got this compooter in December. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to see when the last time I used picture was.

So, given that I've taken my eye off the visual side of the blog, it's perhaps not surprising that I forgot to take "before" pictures for the playset refinishing project. I was kinda smart enough to take "during" photos, though not until I finished the cleaning phase. However, the playset is not something I have never photographed, so I dug through my photo archive and found this little beauty from August of 2006. This is just a couple weeks after we moved in and shows the nicest the playset has ever been. It also makes me yearn for spring.


Here's the shot after the cleaning. Olympic scrub-free deck cleaner. It really works, and the color difference for the most parts appears in less than 30 seconds. It's not just a different lighting on the photo. It really looks this different. Surprised the hell out of me, to be honest.


Up inside the fortress was the hardest part. I got all dripped on, which made big splotches on my clothes. I kept worrying that it would make big splotches on my hair, too, but it didn't.


One thing I thought I had talked about, but apparently I did that at lunch wif da boyz and not on the blog, was that the support for the bottom of the slide turned out to be all rotted. It turned out that due to this rot, the sides were no longer parallel to each other but instead angled inwards at the top. This mad the slide suddenly narrower at the end, which you can actually see in the first photo. So I rebuilt the crosspiece. The old, rotted timber is in the front of the photo.

I sistered together two 2x6 lengths of redwood that were leftover from the deck. I held them together with 4 3/4"x3" carriage bolts and some exterior-grade deck and subfloor construction adhesive. It was easier than buying an 8-foot 4x6 and cutting and notching it to size and having a lot left over. I used the 1" forstner bit that was given to me for a birthday or Christmas or something by The Mrs.'s mother to countersink the nuts and the hex-head lag screws. Thanks, Moo Moo.


Then, I noted that I didn't like how the corners were kept at right angles. The original piece wasn't cut tightly enough for the notch to support the verticals, and so it relied on just 2 lag screws in each leg to keep them upright. With the pounding a slide takes, plus the fact that these bolts are buried under sand all the time (making the wood prone to squishyness), the joints get a little loose.

Well, say what you will about Ashley's singing talent, but that Simpson family really knows how to make a strong tie. I had a few of these mohambees left over from a prior project, so I slapped them on with hot-dipped screw-shank deck nails. Like a Power Bar in my colon, it's going nowhere.

More Parenting Tips from CherkyB

The conversation I had with my darling son this morning as I was walking out of the bedroom:

MaxieC: "You're a jerk!"

Me, CherkyB: "Huh?"

MaxieC: "You're a jerk!"

Me, CherkyB: "Why? What did I do to be a jerk?"

MaxieC: "You're an idiot moron!"

Me, CherkyB: "OK. I'll just tell Santa not to come anymore."

MaxieC: "Heh heh. Just kidding. You're nice."

A larger job than expected

The Mrs. used this list to plan the weekend. She chose two thing to do this weekend, but one of them we did a little more research into and decided was going to be a warmer-weather thing. So I was left with:

• Clean and stain/seal the playset

This was exciting because I'd never done anything like it before. Thus, it was sure to be an adventure that would take many trips to Lowe's and Ace to complete.

So far, it has not disappointed. We went to Lowe's yesterday and picked up 2.5 gallons of Olympic scrubless deck cleaner and a gallon of Cabot cedar-tinted sealer. I also got a few junky paint roller sleeves and paint brushes that I can throw out instead of trying to clean. It's very hard to clean sealer, I imagine.

I spent quite a bit of time this morning removing swings and plastic bits and covering the big bolt heads and washer with blue tape. The fambly helped. We also dug the sand back from around the bottom so we could strip and seal below grade.

Then it went badly.

The cleaner needs to be applied with a garden sprayer. I went to use up the weed killer in my garden sprayer, and it clogged up. I spent 20 minutes trying to unclog it, then I gave up. It has been clogging a lot lately, like every time I use it, so it has become quite a bother. I threw it the hell out and bought another at Ace. It lasted about 8 years. That's pretty good.

I spent hours spraying this stuff on. It works great, but it's noxious. Smells like bleach, mostly. My sweatshirt got covered in little droplets, so now it's polka-dot. Just in time for Dingus Day, I guess. I planned on that and wore an old sweatshirt, plus fancy safety glasses and rubber gloves. Then I ran out of the stuff, so I had to go to Lowe's to buy 5 more gallons. I'm pretty sure this playset had never been cleaned or sealed since it was brand new, and it took many coats in most places to get it nice and clean.

I picked up another 3 gallons of the sealer while I was there. What the hell. The wood was just drinking up the cleaner, so I'll be lucky if 4 gallons covers it with even one coat.

After I was all done, I had to wash the thing down with the hose for roughly another hour. That's when I noticed that a lot of the wood was very silky with dead fibers. So tomorrow, I'm going to have to get out the belt sander.

It's supposed to rain and/or snow tomorrow. That's OK, since I think I can sand this thing down in about 14 hours, and it probably will only rain/snow for one or two.

A Lunchtime Story

This is another amazingly true story, though I'm changing one person's name in order to avoid busting on a friend. This happened at lunch today.

Me, CherkyB: "Soooo... you remember that girl in the green who came out of the bathroom at L.J.'s last night with her friend?"

Richy: "Her fat friend?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah."

Richy: "She was hot."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. Do remember saying, 'She's hot. Too bad she doesn't have any [boobs] at all'?"

Richy: "Yeah. She didn't."

Me, CherkyB: "Did you happen to notice she only had one arm?"

Richy: "What? Seriously?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yup. Well, I guess she really had one and a half arms."

Richy: "Really? I didn't notice she was missing an arm."

Me, CherkyB: "Yet you noticed she was missing big [boobs]."

Richy: "Yeah. I guess I know what my priorities are."

Me, CherkyB: "I just thought you might want to know that about yourself."

Bozzetto: "These wings are too hot. I can't eat that many."

A True Story

You can't make stuff like this up.

Today, I was coming back from lunch at Taco Bell, and because Bozzetto was driving, we headed 3-4 blocks in directly the opposite direction from the way we needed to go because he couldn't decide between making a U-Turn or circling around the block to the right. We got to go to Taco Bell because Rico is out of town, and Rico is a very very very picky eater, though he makes fun of others for relatively minor details, like not wanting to spend $20 for authentic Mexican food since anything authentic in Mexico wouldn't cost $20. We ended up by CSU, since that's just a couple blocks north of Taco Bell, and it reminded me of our trip to Little Shop of Physics a couple weeks back when I wanted to go to Sears.

Having been reminded of Little Shop of Physics, I also recalled a funny story about a co-worker who we ran into there. That story went like this:

Co-worker: "Hey [CherkyB]. Are you, uh, here with your kids?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yup. Those two right there are mine."

Co-worker: "Oh. I didn't know you had kids. Are you married?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yup. This is my wife."

Co-worker: "Wow. I always got the impression you were single."

The Mrs.: [glare glare glare]

Co-worker: "Ummm...I don't know what it would have been that gave me that impression. I, uh, never really thought about it."

The Mrs.: [glare glare]

Co-worker: "OK, well I gotta go now before I cause any more trouble." [whoosh]

The Mrs. [to Me, CherkyB]: "So what exactly is it that you do that gives people the impression you are single?"

Me, CherkyB: "I dunno. I hardly know that guy."

So I tell that story, since the guys I'm with both know this guy. When I conclude, the guy in the backseat says, "Yeah. I can see how he could make that mistake. You always seem waaay to cheerful and upbeat to be married."

I wonder

Exactly what could it be that is worth $5500 an hour. It must be that, really, you're only paying for about 10 minutes. Still, though, that's almost a grand. You can get an awful lot of beer and pizza for that.

The Day's Greatest Accomplishment

Making the industrial-strength power flush toilet at work require two flushes.

I probably should look for a new line of work.

Surmountability Issues

Yesterday wasn't a very nice day. We managed to get almost nothing done, though I re-caulked the joint at the bottom of one of the shower stalls as the caulk had cracked.

Today, however, was beautiful. We did more yard cleanup. I sharpened the blades of the devil chipper/shredder, and it worked much better. I grilled hot dogs for lunch, and grilled a pork sirloin roast with a fancy glaze for dinner. We got the recipe from a new grill cookbook I got yesterday at Safeway. It was delicious, though next time I'll rotisserie it. The directions said, "rotate roast every five minutes," and it took two hours to cook.

The Mrs. managed to get all the planting beds trimmed of their dead stalks, and I managed to turn all of that into mulch, along with the rest of the corn stalks and sunflower stalks and much of the remaining garden waste. But we got to chatting about all the stuff that needs to get done in the yard this year, and I'm thinking it'll be at least two more years before I get it all done. For all the houses I have owned, it has taken over three years to get the yard "done".

The list:

• Fill old pond with dirt to form the basis for the rock garden
• Take out the old waterfall from the old pond
• Run watering lines to the rock garden
• Plant the rock garden
• Run low voltage lines to the rock garden
• Fix the low voltage lines running around the other pond
• Install new low voltage light fixtures around the old pond and rock garden
• Plant vines for the pergola
• Move sprinkler head out from under the pine trees
• Take grass out from between the pine trees
• Put concrete keystone paver edging around the pine trees where grass was removed
• Fill area under pine trees with mulch
• Get a load or two of compost for the garden
  
• Rototill the garden
• Plant the garden
• Fix the flagstone at the serenity spot that heaved in the winter ice
• Pour concrete pad for the smoker
• Put down dirt in the low spots of yard
• Plant grass on new dirt and on old bare spots along western fence
• Build a picnic table for the deck
• Replace the top of the cabinet on the deck with Corian
• Build two planting boxes for west side of deck
• Build worm farm in garden
• Clean and stain/seal the playset
• Stain/seal the deck floor
• Install underground pipe for downspout next to hot tub
• Install underground conduit for east pump of pond
• Put down Arizona flagstone for walking paths next to hot tub, in rock garden, and at garage side exit

That's all I can think of right now. At least in the back yard.

Oy Vay

Friday, I got home from work all worn out from a week of absolutely nothing going right, and I went to the bathroom right before dinner. As I closed the door, I realized the doorknob had been coated in a thick slime. From the distinctive odor, I determined it was the hand lotion that The Mrs. has next to the sink.

So first, I figure MaxieC put the hand lotion on too thickly, and slimed the doorknob. MaxieC has to put lotion on his hands every time he washes them in the winter, or his skin cracks. He has a fairly non-severe form of excema. Upon further inspection, however, I note that the doorknob is thoroughly covered. We have lever-style doorknobs, and MaxieC has a pretty small hand, being only 4. No, this was clearly an intentional slime job.

So I yell out, "Who covered the doorknob in lotion?"

And MaxieC replies, "Oh. That was me, Dah. Yeah. I was painting. Sorry."

Grumble grumble grumble. I return to the bidness at hand, except when I open the toilet lid, I note the entire seat and bowl are also covered with hand lotion. I start cleaning that up and hollering, and just when I'm done cleaning it up, The Mrs. shows up with HannahC and instructs her to clean it up.

Apparently, HannahC was also painting.

I guess two rooms of the house dedicated to art projects, including a large variety of finger paints, watercolors, and tempera isn't enough.

Oy.

A fabulous drink idea

Inspiration usually comes by chance. If it was just a matter of sitting down and thinking about it a bit, well, then we never would have had the likes of the AMC Pacer. Or "Hillary Clinton for President". Or the whole entire field of post office blogging. No, instead we depend upon chance circumstances throwing together enough random events in such a way that a truly talented person will sit back and go, "Shee-it. Now there's an idear!"

I am, of course, a man of remarkable, breath-taking talent in this respect. At least, if I haven't been drinking too much in an effort to force inspiration. Drinking is a poor substitute for inspiration, and perhaps had a role in the afore-mentioned AMC Pacer and Hillary campaign, though I happen to know for a fact it was uninvolved in the birth of post office blogging. No, I have no idea what is responsible for visiting that abomination upon us.

So, I'm sitting there at a local restaurant with Rico and couple other folks from work waiting for lunch to arrive, and we're talking about drinking on account of them having a big sign up by the entrance advertising their new drink of the month - The Tiramisu Martini - which upon seeing that all I could think was "fuuuuuu$%, I bet that's a horrible drink."

We're discussing the finer point of drinking, including a long argument about whether there is a difference between "straight" and "straight up" (there is) and how it makes no damned sense at all to order a vodka martini "straight up", except Rico, being the argumentative type, is arguing that there is no difference, when out of the blue one of the other people asks, "Hey, is MoodyT still eating vegetarian?" (A hobby MoodyT started roughly last week to try to break the winter dooldrums.)

Rico stops his futile attempt at winning an argument about drinking with me long enough to say, "Yeah, I think he is."

I add, "Luckily, there are very few liquors that are meat-based, so it hasn't been that hard."

This immediately spun into a discussion of whether anyone could think of any mixed drink that had a meat product in it. None of us could. And no, Rhonda, I don't consider beer brats to be a drink with meat in it. I consider it a meat with a drink in it.

I proffered that I bet if you wrapped prosciutto around a big, fat olive in a dry martini, it'd be fabulous.

Now, of course, I need to send The Mrs. to the store for some prosciutto.

Bloggable phrases that aren't

Mere moments ago, I had to say this to The Mrs.: "If you didn't want to live with a man, you shouldn't have married one."

Yet, oddly, there's not a whole lot more to write about. I've just been a little gassy.

Damn

I used to be a much better blogger.

I was checking my statcounter log, and I noticed someone hit this post with a google search today. So I re-read it. Man, I suck now.

I'm still better than all of you, at least.

I'm pretty sure

That I'm going insane.

Not quickly. Just a little at a time. But there it is.

I try to think back to the last time I can clearly recall not feeling like I was going insane. I think it was before I had children, when I used to be allowed to sing at the top of my lungs common songs, except I would make up utterly filthy lyrics on-the-fly. Our downstairs neighbor in Rochester was a big fan of that. She would comment.

By now I have had to stifle my art, and it is makes me feel rigid and about to explode.

Today I was instructed by my boss's boss's boss that I should make sure I am present for our project's review with our two V.P.'s on Thursday, because there will be a lot of very hard questions that I will need to be there to answer. "Very hard questions" is our little euphemism for a lynching. You're not supposed to say "lynching" because of the negative racial connotations.

There's nothing like a big f-up to increase your face time with the VP's. I doesn't have to be your own f-up. It just has to be one about which you can answer "very hard questions". It really, really helps to also have a statement that begins, "and this is what we're going to do about it..." handy. Happily, I have one of those.

I'll have to remember not to wear a snarky T-shirt on Thursday. Especially not the "I make stuff up" one. Probably not the "Beer Inside" one, either. I may have to iron something with buttons and a collar.

My entire bar is covered in sand. HannahC and MaxieC decided to turn one of the spider habitats into a ladybug habitat due to the demise of the spider yesterday. The habitat had reptile sand in the bottom, so they dumped it into "the garbage". The Mrs. was angry because the sand was expensive reptile sand. I was angry because my entire bar was covered with a very fine-grained sand. Apparently, my anger is somehow irrational because we can always vacuum the bar, but hers is rational because once $3 of sand is thrown out, you can never get it back.

The whiskey in my glass cost more than $3. That's never coming back, either. However, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets replaced rather quickly.

On the other hand, we don't own any reptiles. Never have.

There are times

...when you just want to nap a little. Maybe your throat is sore. Maybe your sinuses are congested. But every time your darling 4-year old son makes a peep, his mother sends him to, "Go play with Daddy."

And maybe darling son's idea of playing with Daddy is to sit quietly in bed next to Daddy and wait until he looks like he's just fallen asleep, then do a flying trampoline jump onto Daddy's junk. Being married, it is a rare event indeed for me to be awakened by a skull to the crotch. It's not anywhere near as pleasant and you might expect.

The Quick, The Dead, and The Mrs.

As if this post wasn't enough to convince you, The Mrs. once again floored me with her rapier wit.

Yesterday, there was a big pile of mail on the kitchen counter from the night before. I was making French toast for breakfast, because there are a few breakfasts that for some reason The Mrs. never makes but that I like, so when it's my turn to make breakfast, I make them. Now, for those of you who've made French toast, you know there's a flurry of activity at the beginning when you mix up the eggs and stuff, but then after that it's mostly sitting around waiting for it to be time to flip.

So I got to looking at the mail. It was quite a jackpot. Not only did we get the Cabela's Spring-Summer catalog, but we also got the Venus swimwear catalog. I glanced at the catalogs for a moment, but then I had to go flip the French toast.

The Mrs. came wandering in. She started leafing through the mail pile, and she stopped on the Venus catalog. The the following gem ensued:

Me, CherkyB: "I picked you out something from that catalog."

The Mrs.: "Really? What?"

Me, CherkyB: [Flipping the catalog to the back cover and pointing at the model's very perfectly large and obviously fake breasts] "I thought you'd look really good in a with a pair of these."

The Mrs.: "I like flip-flops."

I went to Sears

I dropped HannahC off at gymnastics and then went to Sears with MaxieC. The Mrs. was at the doctor for her icky female checkup.

We walked into the tool department, and MaxieC went nuts. He had to look at every single tool and go, "Wow! They have drills! Wow! They have leaf blowers! Wow! They have saws!" We walked all around. I looked at their tag list for dethatchers, and they didn't carry the one I was looking for. They had a different make for $30 more, but not the one I wanted.

So, when some dood came up to me to axe if I had found everything for which I was looking, I axed about it. He said, "Uhhhh...you probably gotta order that from the website. They gots a lotta stuff we can't get in the store."

Sensing he wasn't the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, I yelled, "Obama!"

Hope. It's a funny thing, if I recall correctly.

I ended up buying a couple of extra blades for the mower, since I manage to spindle those things up all the time, and I never have spares. As I was checking out, the same dood said, "Did you find everything you were looking for?"

I said, "Yeah. Except for the dethatcher."

"Oh. Huh huh. I guess I asked you that already. Huh huh."

"Obama!"

Then we went to Lowe's. They had a different brand, 42" instead of 48", but 25% cheaper than the Sears website. I got that. Haven't assembled it yet.

I just wanted to go to Sears

I planned for only one thing this weekend: a trip to Sears. I planned nothing else. Nothing at all. I just wanted to go to Sears. I have gift cards, you see, and they have the best price on the Agri-Fab 48" de-thatcher.

However, first, it turned out someone volunteered to babysit one of HannahC's friends starting at 7:30AM on Saturday. At that same someone spent the whole night before complaining of being sick and needing extra rest, so I figured I was pretty much doomed - especially since HannahC rarely gets up before 8:30. As luck would have it, though, The Mrs. has been suffering from insomnia, so she was up at 6am, and I got to sleep until about 8.

Then, it turned out The Mrs. had volunteered to let two of the neighbor kids come over at 9:30. And we were going to drive everyone over to the roller rink where MaxieC was having his belated 4th birthday party from 10 to noon. We rented out the whole rink, so it was just MaxieC's peoples. That was fun.

Then, as it turned out, The Mrs. had planned for us to go to Little Shop of Physics at CSU, and we took two of the three not-our kids there, along with our two. I got the task of watching MaxieC, who whined and complained the whole entire time. It was mobbed, so you had to proceed around the exhibits in order and wait your turn. The Childrens hate that.

Then, as it turned out, The Mrs. decided we should go to Culver's and get everybody ice cream. Or frozen custard, as it were. That went about as well as you could expect.

Then back home to play in the yard. At last this was my chance. It was warm and sunny, so I got out the garden hoses and did pond maintenance. Then, I started in on the hot tub.

Whoo-wee, it was stinky. And when I put the water clarifier in it, it got a little chunky, too. I hadn't been in it for about a week. The Mrs. used it a lot, and she never adds any chemicals to it after she uses it, so I often get a surprise on Saturday when I open it up to clean the filters. I put in all the junk and ran the pumps for about a half hour, and it wasn't clearing up.

So I decided to drain it. It had been a while since I drained it, as it's not fun to do in the winter. Apparently, I should be draining it about every 60 days given our "bather load". Whatever.

This was a great opportunity for me, as I got out the Bud and guzzled while watching the tub drain, every now and then giving the newly-uncovered sidewalls a rinse with a jet from the hose. It took over two hours to drain, so I got to enjoy my beers. The Childrens all went off and did their thing, as did The Mrs., so it was just me and FreddyC. Ahh, the joy.

I filled it back up while we ate dinner, and the water was 45 degrees according to the digital readout. Needless to say, it did not warm up in time to go in last night.

So that shot the whole day, but at least I could go to Sears Sunday, right?

Wrong!

Sunday came about with The Mrs. complaining even more about being sick. She slept in, I made breakfast. She took a nap in the basement bedroom, I made lunch. Then it was time to start think about smoking the ribs.

I hadn't used the smoker for months, so it was full of nasty coagulated fat and misc. meat bits stuck to the racks. That took a half hour to clean up.

I used a handful of sugar maple, a handful of alder, and a handful of Jack Daniels oak whiskey barrel to produce the very special smoke. I don't recommend you try that at home, as it takes quite a seasoned touch in order to not overload on the JD casks. It was fabulously tasty.

So, now I was ready to hit Sears. Having done some additional research on the web, I determined this was probably a mail-order-only item, but the website has only been correct about 50% of the time in the past, so I always like to swing by to see for myself. I also had planned a side-trip to Lowe's to see if they had anything comparable. Their website claimed they might have something, but it wasn't sure ("will arrive in the store on or before March 8"). I also needed some PVC tubing and glue from Lowe's to fix a laundry hamper that The Mrs. destroyed by accidentally stomping the living hell out of it.

HannahC was going to go along for the ride, but she decided at the last minute that she wanted to play in the mud instead. She made mud pottery.

Thus, The Mrs. said to me, "Can you get all the stuff you were going to get at Lowe's at Ace?" Ace being very nearby, whereas Lowe's is about 15 minutes away.

"Yes."

"Why don't you just go to Ace and then go to Sears some other time? Cuz I'm sick and can't watch both kids."

"Uhh...........ok."

Thus ends another weekend where I had one and only one thing planned, and I spent the entire weekend doing the stuff The Mrs. planned instead.

I guarantee you I won't make it to Sears next weekend, either.

Turning a new leaf

I haven't had much time for blogging of late, as for some bizarre reason, I've been spending time with my wife in the evenings. We've watched some DVDs and actually sat in the family room reading books with the children in bed. Not like reading the books out loud to each other. We were both reading individual books. The Mrs. was reading Don't Ever Leave Me, which is some trashy novel about a guy who discovers his wife is cheating on him, and then he psychologically tortures her and eventually kills her or something. I only read the blurb on the back.

I spent a lot of the week going, "Hey, I hope you made something special for dinner tonight. Don't ever leave me," and such. The Mrs. was largely unamused.

My genius is rarely recognized.

I read Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, which actually was the book that came before You Suck: A Love Story, but I didn't know that and read them out of order. I've now read nine of Christopher Moore's ten novels. I have the tenth on the nightstand. Then, I'll need to find a new hobby. Like maybe blogging.

This weekend was a very exciting one, as it marked the end of The Week of Disappointment, and it was three days long. We got to drop the kiddies off at the science center for some classes on Monday, and then we got to go buy stuff. I got myself some of those 16-mile FRS/GMRS 2-way radios. They were on sale at Big 5. 2-pack, regularly $139.99, now just $44. Big 5 didn't have everything we were looking for, so we went to Sports Authority, where the same 2-pack of radios was on sale, regularly $59, now just $49. Oddly, I felt a little misled by Big 5, yet I was still happy to have gotten the better price.

I have to fill out some FCC licensing form before I'm legally allowed to push the "high power" button that kicks you up to GMRS from FRS. I pushed it anyways a couple times. Breakin' the Law, Breakin' the Law!

I also got to experience the joy of the Red Phone at Performance Bicycles. I picked something out from their web page that was on big-time President's Day sale ($90 vs. $129.99), and we went to the store to buy it. It was a Performance-branded item (not gonna tell you what, cuz Fat Moother will spill the beans to the kids), and when I got to the store they're all like, "Duhhhh... we only carry the Schwinn ones." But you're a Performance Bicycle outlet, you morons. You don't stock the house brand? When I go to Safeway, they never tell me they only stock Claritin. They have the big gigantic box of Safeway-brand knockoffs right next to the Claritin!

But, anyways, the Big Red Phone is the direct line to the catalog guys. It rang about 50 times and then started howling static. The girl from the store came over, listened, hung it up, picked it up again, and it started ringing again, and she handed it to me and said, "It's ringing now," like I was some kind of big dump fuck who didn't know how to use a telephone. Jesus fucking christ, people get on my nerves sometimes.

And the f'ing red phone guys charge you shipping (to the store) AND tax. WTF?

So we had the next-door neighbors over for "Happy Hour" on Sunday. This was a spur-of-the-moment thing. We were out grocery shopping on Saturday, and when we got back, there was a message from the lady next door saying she hadn't seen us in a while on account of the weather, and just wanted to chat in a neighborly fashion. So The Mrs. called back and told them to come over and booze with us. Which is cool and all, except The Mrs. has once again declared that she cannot stand alcohol.

Which is bound to put a crimp in my marriage, and thus the blogging should pick up substantially.

You know the saying that "good fences make good neighbors"? Well, having 100 yards between houses works just as well, in my experience. I highly recommend it. We love all our neighbors, though only a couple ever drop by for happy hour.

I'm starting to get the spring itch. When I sit outside in the hot tub, I think to myself, "Gotta de-thatch the lawn this year. And get the fountain working. And fix the landscape lights. And put in the rock garden. And move those three sprinkler heads. And power wash and seal the play set. And mulch under the pine trees. And pour the foundation for the smoker." Etc. etc. etc. Nothing like a warm spell to get the get-out-of-the-house-and-do-anything-other-than-play-with-the-kids-all-day juices flowing.

It's supposed to get cold again this weekend. Maybe I'll finish shampooing all the carpets. Only got about 1/3 of the house done on Sunday morning.

A funny thing happened today at work

But I can't tell you about it, cuz it's secret-secret. Remind me in a couple weeks.

The Mrs. and I also had a funny conversation about what we wanted as presents for The Day of Grandest Disappointment. But I also can't tell you about that.

Once you delete those two things, I am left without any great things to share. I didn't go to the gym. I didn't ride the erg. I didn't go to the post office. I didn't even have ice cream. There have been no shirt-hanger-related squabbles of late.

Someone has been eating my potato chips while I was at work.

Today I received an email at work inviting me to enroll in a class called "Gender Differences and Communication". I figured it was about how certain nouns have different gender in different languages and how that reflects the attitudes of the population of people speaking those languages. I thought that an odd subject to be offering at work. But then I read further, and learned that it was actually about communication differences between the sexes and had nothing to do with gender at all. The author had just substituted the word "gender" when she meant to say "sex". How very leftist and trendy!

But that reminded me of something that happened yesterday. I was having lunch in the cafeteria with a guy from work, as we both had a meeting with our boss from 11:30-12:30 which rolled right over our ability to leave the building to eat. He was telling me how he had gained 8 lbs. since he switched from unsweatened iced tea to Coke for lunch. I held up my cup and said, "They sell Diet Coke. No calories." Then, he said, "I won't drink that. There's something in artificial sweeteners that's linked to insanity." So, naturally, I replied, "Come on. If that were true, every woman in the country would be insane. [dramatic pause, furrowed brow] Hmmm..."

I have very little to say

But given the overall level of excitement in your lives, I expect you'll hang on every word.

First, let me start out by saying that I was wrong. Not only was I wrong, but The Mrs. was also wrong. It's remarkably rare that both those things occur simultaneously, as having been together for so many year, we have settled into taking polar opposite positions on pretty much everything simply by default. She is the counterpoint to my point, though neither one of us relies heavily on the "you ignorant slut" catchphrase that accompanies a classical point-counterpoint exchange. In fact, we mulled over calling her blog "Counterpoint" for a while, with a theme that mostly gave her side of whatever I blogged about, but ultimately she settled on something else.

What were we wrong about? The Mrs. checked the blog archives for her birthday last year and discovered that I had baked her a cake last year. So I was wrong in my assertion that I bought an ice cream cake for her every year, and she was wrong in her assertion that she had to bake a cake for herself every year.

Of course, her level of incorrectness was greater, in that she has not had to bake herself a cake in either of the last two years - the only two years for which there is any extant documentation. Thus, she has no evidence of her assertion, whereas I was merely was wrong about the type of cake I provided. So, despite us both being wrong, I was much less wrong than she. Therefore, I am clearly the winner.

On a lighter note, on Monday Rico noted how his shack-up-honey always stole all his decent hangers for her clothes and left him with crappy wire ones as well. So perhaps this is simply part of the evil-woman gene and not something unique to The Mrs.

The pressure of Valentine's Day is weighing down upon me. I don't know whether to cancel Fat Camp or not. I said I was going to cancel it, but then there was strenuous objection from peoples. But I doubt these folks can pull off a fat camp without me. (Witness last week, where I had been out of town, and nobody at all bothered to show up because like a big bunch of dumb-asses, they can't understand the idea of something that happens every week at exactly the same time and place and instead insist on getting personal invitations every single Thursday. Man, my friends are morons.)

There have been some questions in the comments on some previous posts about what happened to Diversity Corner and what happened to only blogging about happy things. By a bizarre coincidence, both these questions have the same answer: f^ck you.

Do You Have a Mental Illness?

I really don't want this blog to turn into one of those "wives - they say the darndest things" blogs. I'm always very aware of that, because we're all just one step away from becoming the next Me, CherkyB. However, the occasional well-placed The Mrs. quote does little to no harm.

The first words The Mrs. said to me today, on this her first non-counted birthday, comprise the title of this post. My first though was the same as yours: "Duh!" But this isn't a new installment of Duh or No Duh, a sadly neglected recurring segment here. Thus, I get to expound a bit on this.

The Mrs. had apparently just come from the closet, where she inspected her t-shirts and determined that none of them were on my fancy wooden hangers. She therefore felt I had gone out of my way just to be mean to her, and that this could only be explained by mental illness.

I led her back to the closet and pointed to two T-shirts of hers on fancy wooden hangers. She said, "Oh. I didn't look there. That's strange, cuz those are two of my crappiest T-shirts." Upon further examination, she determined they were also two t-shirts that had really big neck openings (which is stylish on a woman's shirt and retarded on a man's), so they wouldn't stay on a regular hanger. Then she wondered aloud what happened to her really big plastic hangers that she "normally" hangs those shirts on.

I don't think we're ready to fully rule out mental illness, though.

On the way home from work, I stopped at the store to pick up a Carvel ice cream cake. They had cakes that had "Happy Birthday" written on them with plenty of room below to personalize. But no one was in the bakery department at the time. So I bought a little tube of matching icing and wrote The Mrs.'s name and a little heart on the cake. I came home and placed in on the counter for her to discover.

When she discovered it, she said, "Oh. I already baked myself a cake. But I was lamenting how we didn't have any ice cream, and now we do, so we can have both."

That was pleasant.

Then, during dinner, she nonchalantly drops the, "Soooo... did your parents call you and tell you to buy a cake?"

Huh?

"Well, when they called me to sing happy birthday (off key in 4ths, whatever that means), I was baking a cake. I told them I always have to bake my own cake, and they thought that was terrible, so I figured they probably called you to tell you to get one."

But you were already making one. What good would it do to tell me to get one if they knew you already had one? That doesn't make any sense. Except maybe to a person with a mental illness.

We discussed how I buy her an ice cream cake every year on her birthday, and she said, "No. I buy you an ice cream cake every year on your birthday." I could probably search the blog archives for last year for our respective birthdays, but I'm not going to. Let sleeping dogs lie, as they say.

The great thing, though, was that we had candles from The Mrs.'s cake from last year. They were those number candles. Since she didn't get any older this year, I got to use the same numbers. That saved a couple bucks.

Happy Birthday, The Mrs.

It's The Mrs.'s birthday today.

I am the snatch grabber

I really don't want this blog to turn into one of those "kids - they say the darndest things" blogs. I'm always very aware of that, because we're all just one step away from becoming the next Cavagnaro Blog or CJ's Blah. However, the occasional well-placed MaxieC quote does little to no harm.

He explained shortly thereafter that he was very good at snatching grabs, in case you care.

So today marked the official beginning of The Week of Disappointment. I believe I've mentioned before that this is what we call the week that has The Mrs.'s birthday followed immediately by Valentine's Day. A week that always ends with one of the following utterances:

• "I had no expectations, so I wasn't all that disappointed."
• "I had absolutely no expectations, and you met them, for the most part."

The Mrs. cranked on The Full Martyr today. Good lord, it didn't matter what I did, she responded with, "Why are you taking shots at me?"

Let me give a couple examples. In the morning, MaxieC had some magnetic darts in the fambly room. He was noting how the yellow and red darts repel each other, much like the red darts repel each other and the yellow darts repel each other. Then, he took his handful of darts and whipped them at the wall as hard as he could.

I said, "MaxieC, cut that out or I'm taking the darts away. I don't know why momma keeps insisting on buying you stuff for you to fling against the walls. "

See, it's a longstanding issue that The Mrs. thinks that somehow MaxieC is quite a bit older than he actually is, and she buys him presents that are for older children, and he just destroys either the presents, or the house, or both. This birthday, his fourth birthday, she got him tons of stuff that said, "Ages 8 and up". He doesn't, for instance, have any where near the muscle control or temperament required for a relaxing game of darts.

The Mrs., naturally, took great offense at me accusing her of buying him something that said, "Ages 8 and up," for his birthday, though of course she did, and then said something to the effect of how I care more about all the dents in the wall than I care about her or blah-dee-blah-blah-blah. I try to ignore her when she tries to go on offense when the puck is deep in her zone.

We had a bit of a thaw this weekend, so I managed to pick up the dog poop. I filled two plastic grocery bags. I couldn't get is all up, as some was still frozen solid to the ground. FreddyC will now have somewhere to poop without jumping the fence.

Then, I had to go to Lowe's to buy landscape light bulbs for our step lights on the deck. We run them 14 hours a day, and three had burned out. HannahC decided to go with me, and as I was getting her jacket down, I noted how her jacket was on one of my fancy wood hangers.

Again, The Mrs. exploded at me for noting this. However, I'd like to officially state my case.

A few years back, I was kind of in a state of the blahs. HannahC was young and annoying, and I'm not sure MaxieC was even born yet. I decided I needed a bit of change. About the same time, I was watching a good deal of TV, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a brand new show that was getting lots of hype. So I ended up watching it a lot.

I learned many things. For instance, I learned that I was too old to be going around with long hair wearing jeans and t-shirts all the time. So I cut my hair and bought a whole new wardrobe of decent clothes. Not investment banker clothes, but just sort of ordinary adult man clothes. I also learned that you ruin good shirts by putting them on little wire hangers, and instead need thick, wooden hangers to keep your shirts in shape.

So I bought a pack of wooden hangers.

The Mrs. immediately laid into me about how wooden hangers was a complete waste of money, and that the little wire hangers or the medium plastic hangers were just as good.

I bought a second pack of wooden hangers. Now I had enough for all my nice shirts.

The Mrs. again started in on me about wasting money and how she hoped I wasn't going to force her to switch the kind of hangers she used because of some big fuh-gee TV show and all that, and I agreed to only use the nice wooden hangers for my good shirts. For the record, I was perfectly willing to replace every hanger in the house with a wooden one. They don't cost all that much. But I was instructed not to.

Fast forward to last weekend. I was packing for a conference in San Fransicko where I was going to wear my nice clothes (I have, unfortunately, backslid on the whole jean-and-t-shits thing), and I noted how the majority of my nice shirts were on spindly little wire hangers. Odd. I look around. I note that the majority of my nice wooden hangers seem to have The Mrs.'s clothes hanging on them, and the most common thing on them appears to be her T-shirts.

I file this away for later use, as there is no point in starting up a squabble when you're going out of town the next day. Plus, just by the mere fact that you're going out of town the next day, you're in an exceptionally good mood.

So today, I'm heading to Lowe's to get the light bulbs for the step lights, and HannahC is going with me, and I discover he jacket hangin on one of my nice wooden hangers. And I find both of The Mrs.'s jackets hanging on my nice wooden hangers. While my nice shirts continue to be ruined by little wire hangers. So, I non-nonchalantly note, "Hey! Why are my nice wooden hangers in the coat closet when my good shirts that I bought them for are on wire hangars?"

The Mrs. goes ballistic. She comes into the closet and strips her coats off the wooden hangers and throws them on the floor. Then, she starts to mart about how mean I am to her, despite the fact the she is the one who declared the moratorium on buying these hangers and set the rule that they were only to be used for my shirts.

I believe I may go out and buy 200 wooden hangers tomorrow. That'll teach her.

When HannahC and I returned from Lowe's (and other places - HannahC insisted on shopping for birthday presents for her mother as well as valentine's presents for everyone else), The Mrs. picked up an old Target plastic bag and asked my permission to use it as a poop bag for FreddyC (they were going on a walk), cuz she didn't want to use anything I was saving for something else.

Next time she bakes cookies for a party, I'm going to eat them all. And if she complains, I'm going to walk around the house asking permission to use the water in the toilet or the electricity in the lights in case she's saving it for something else.

I wonder, if you've stopped counting the years, do you still get presents on your birthday?

Oh, and yesterday

I forgot our date. The first date we've had since moving to Colorado, and I was running around like crazy at work trying to finish up all this stuff that absolutely positively had to get done by other people this week, but if they didn't get it done, it would be my fault.

HannahC informed me that The Mrs. was very angry with me, but I could kinda tell that.

We're off to see the wizard

All I wanted to do was to go to Walgreens to pick up a prescription. I had ordered it on the web, and it was ready, and I was going to breeze through the drive-through.

Nothing is that simple, though.

First, The Mrs. put into my hand a grocery shopping list. Safeway is diagonally across the street from Walgreens. Safeway doesn't have a drive-through.

Then, I was instructed that I had to take MaxieC with me, though he was busy playing and screaming about not going.

The dog was at the back door whining to go out, so I let him out.

Then I was standing in the kitchen staring blankly at nothing, the way slaves do when they have a moment off. The Mrs. noticed and asked if I was "sick again".

Me, CherkyB: "No, you just don't understand the depths to which I hate my life."

The Mrs.: "Oh. Rats."

Me, CherkyB: "What?"

The Mrs.: "I plugged up the sink."

Me, CherkyB: "Sigh..."

I get the bucket out of the garage and remove the trap. Someone has put an entire strip of bacon down the drain, but no one knows anything about it.

Then The Mrs. asks if I ever let the dog back in. No, I've been under the sink.

"Oh, well I heard a lot of barking."

Call the dog, the dog doesn't come.

Look for the dog, don't find the dog.

Push the audible buzzer on the dog's electric collar, no response. Push the shocker button (level 1 - which only gets his attention), no response.

Damn.

HannahC starts hollering that she's found the dog. Oddly, he's next door on the other side of the fence and can't figure out how to get back.

I trudge through the snow in my slippers to get him and lead him back.

Bad dog.

Walgreens misplaced my prescription.

Gol dang it

I, like everyone on blogger, have any comments left on my blog automatically sent to me via email. That way, I don't have to constantly check every single post to see if someone has left a comment. Well, today I went to reply to a comment left on my last post, and I discovered there were actually three new comments on the post. So I went poking around in my "spam" folder. My spam filter has today decided that 2 of the four comments on that post are spam.

I don't know why. Two got through, two filtered as spam. None of them had a valid return address (all being the noreply-comment@blogger.com address). One was from a non-blogger account, the other was from Scooter from her blogger account.

I hope this is a glitch and not a trend. I may have to add noreply-comment@blogger.com to my email alias list.

Today, I am sick

Actually, I've kinda been sick since Friday. I was going to come home early from work on Friday, but then some new, anxiously-awaited data arrived that I had to go through, and then this happened, so I never got home early.

Both Saturday and Sunday featured me grogging my way through the day and then falling asleep moments after dinner. On Saturday, I was freezing cold after dinner, so I turned on the fireplace (wood burning fireplaces are illegal to install around these parts due to air quality concerns (i.e., the place has become lousy with Democrats)) and fell asleep on the floor in front of it. Sunday, I managed to make it to bed before dying.

At some point, there was a massive amount of screaming involving one or more of the childrens, and that woke me up. The Mrs., always happy to see me, banished me to the basement guest bedroom so that I wouldn't infect everyone. Thus, I ended up in bed at 8pm, which was odd.

I managed to sleep until 9:30 in the morning, when I first checked the clock. Oh. I hope I didn't have to meet anyone this morning at work...

I didn't.

Stayed home all day, mostly lying on the couch slumbering through daytime television. I still love The People's Court, mostly because I find morons entertaining. Though I must say there is a much higher class of clientèle on TPC than on many of the other court shows (notably Divorce Court). I also caught an episode of Cheaters, though it wasn't the one about Bill Clinton. Sadly, both episodes of Scrubs and the episode of Holmes on Homes were ones I had seen before.

I can't honestly say what's wrong with me other than that I generally don't feel good. Occasional chills, a loss of appetite, and a lack of energy. The Mrs. diagnosed me as having the flu, though if it's really the flu, it's the mildest one I've ever had. It's the lack of energy that is killing me. I can barely walk up the stairs. Neither of my feet appear to be broken, though.

I think I'll be OK to go to work tomorrow. I've been feeling a lot better tonight.

It's not like me to complain

but sometimes, things are just ridiculous.

Take this morning, for instance. MaxieC was up at the ungodly hour of 7:30. AM. The Mrs. told him to talk to me about it, so I stumbled out of bed, went downstairs with him, and turned on Spy Kids. I picked up a 2-pack of Spy Kids DVDs yesterday at Sam's Club for $13.98ish, so he still had some interest in seeing them cuz he'd only watched them each twice.

I then lay down on the loveseat with an afghan and a pillow to snooze a little more. This is, as you can imagine, a massive hardship for me. I am substantially taller than the loveseat is long, and afghans are OK for an afternoon nap in the sun, but not for a crack-of-dawn suffer-slumber. The Mrs., BTW, has never approved of me sleeping on the loveseat while MaxieC sits on the sofa watching a DVD. She, being the hovering sort, thinks this smacks of inattentiveness, like I should be reading him a book or something. However, MaxieC is perfectly mobile and able to get himself drinks and snacks and even hit the pause button on the remote if he has to pee. I see it as not interfering.

He did wake me up about every 15 minutes to open a mini chip bag for him. Another score from Sam's Club - a big box of vending-machine-sized Frito-Lays snacks. For some reason, MaxieC decided after a couple mouthfuls that he doesn't like Cheetos anymore, so I got to eat that one.

Eventually, HannahC showed up and watched the moovie, too. The Mrs. wandered down at some point, and sat and drank her coffee in peace while I watched The Childrens. Then she went to ride Carl in peace while I watched The Childrens, followed by a steam shower in the basement bathroom in peace while I watched The Childrens (though it is unconfirmed whether she actually turned on the steam). She wandered through the fambly room while I was wrastling with MaxieC and announced that she'd already had her shower.

I don't know why, as that tidbit of information did not in any way affect my life.

She wanders upstairs to get dressed in peace. HannahC is, at this point, complaining vehemently that I am not paying enough attention to her. The she huffs off to play her Wegets web game stuff.

After about a half hour (it's now 10:30), I head upstairs to see WTF. The Mrs. is still pootzering around and isn't even dressed. I wait patiently. She curses at me because I chuckle watching her put on her freshly-shrunk-for-the-dryer jeans. It's always entertaining to watch a woman try to put on fresh jeans, what with all the hopping and contorting and stuff. Just like on TV.

Eventually, she is dressed, so I ask permission to take a shower.

Me, CherkyB: "Can I take my shower now?"

The Mrs.: "I should hope so. It's practically noon. You've wasted the whole morning, and you haven't even taken your shower yet!"

Me, CherkyB: "I've been up over three hours watching The Childrens so that you could sleep in and drink your coffee and ride Carl and take a shower and get dressed in peace!"

The Mrs.: "Don't you dare begrudge me my one day of the week sleeping in!"

So there it is. I've "wasted" the entire morning watching The Childrens so that I could begrudge her her sleep-in day.

I took my shower. First, I tried to find a dry towel. There were 11 towels out in the master bath. 11. The number that were dry? Zero. Whatever.

Two minutes into the shower, HannahC comes storming in. "MaxieC is forking his chair!"

"What?"

"MaxieC is forking his chair!"

"I can't hear you. I'm in the shower."

"MaxieC is forking his chair!"

"Why are you telling me? I'm in the shower. Momma is watching you now (supposedly). Go tell her."

Five minutes later, MaxieC is pounding on the shower glass. "Breakfast is ready!"

Breakfast will just have to wait.

Yuck

This drink is so bad, I hesitate to document it.

It's hard

being Me, CherkyB. Well, harder than it looks.

Yesterday, I went to pick up HannahC at gymnastics after a day of suffering at work that ended with the determination that not only had we not fixed something, we had broken something else that had been working in the process. This is all software-kinda stuff, so it's not like we blew a million dollars on it and had it come back broken. It's just a couple simple little tests. You'd think that a team of highly paid engineers could get a couple simple little tests working in less than 3 months.

But, apparently, we can't.

So, as I walk to the door of the gym, I see MaxieC waving at me from inside. I said to myself, "Self, this is odd. The Mrs. very distinctly told me this morning that, though MaxieC had gymnastics class today, I did not have to pick him up because his class ended a lot earlier than HannahC's. Yet, here he is. I wonder what The Mrs. will yell at me for not remembering."

However, there was no yell at, as I had remembered correctly. She had just decided to fritter away the hours with shopping or something and found herself still in the neighborhood at the appointed picking-up time. Oh, and since the hours had been frittered away rather than spent at her work, we were going out for dinner.

Oh the joy. The joy.

The Mrs. suggests a place that is about 12 miles from where we were. All the way back to our house, and then keep going another four miles into the tiny nearby town. I thought it an odd suggestion, as we were literally sitting right in the middle of the restaurant district of Fort TomCollins, surrounded by a plethora of pretty new, soulless chain restaurants. Probably 20 different places within one mile. I started listing them.

The Mrs. selected Macaroni Grill. We'd never been there before, and it was only two blocks away. So what the hell?

One problem with Macaroni Grill is that it shares its parking lot with Texas Roadhouse and with the biggest movie theater in Fort TomCollins. And it was 6:45 on a Friday night. So we both had to circle around a bit to find someone pulling out, but it was only maybe a half minute. Inside, there was a mob. The wait - 1 hour.

OK, let's try Texas Roadhouse. The wait there was only 45 minutes.

I strolled across the parking lot to Old Chicago Pizza, where the wait was 10 minutes. HannahC loves Old C's, and she had expressed disappointment when we drove by it to go to Macaroni Grill. I phones The Mrs. and told her to bring the kids on over.

The moment we walked in the door, they seated us.

Now, this is when it got difficult. I'm not sure if many of my readers will understand the following story, given that most of them are womens and therefore they only relate to stories about childrens and dogs and shopping and the weather and stuff. But try to follow along.

Old C's has these booths that are slightly elevated compared to the floor. Not hugely elevated, but perhaps six to eight inches. It gives you a good view, though I managed to sit on the side where all I had to look at was a neon Budweiser sign, and the folks on the other side got to watch snowmobile racing on the TV behind me. Our waitress came along presently to take our drink order.

Our waitress was a nice young lady of, say, average young lady height. However, God had blessed her with a distinctly non-average, oh how can I say this delicately, bountiful cantaloupe garden. On top of that, despite it being the dead of winter in Colorado, there was quite a bit of it on display for your viewing pleasure.

So here I am sitting with my lovely wife and childrens in a booth that happens to be elevated just high enough that when combined with my height and that of our waitress, my eye level is staring right directly somewhere where you really don't want your wife to catch you looking. This is a very challenging situation, because every few minutes the waitress comes by to ask if everything is all right or to refill The Mrs's Diet Pepsi, and you know you turn your head automatically. Seriously, try to sit at a table and not turn your head automatically when someone comes up next to you and starts talking.

The whole time, I had to keep saying to myself, "Look upwards, then turn your head. Look upwards, then turn your head." It would really have helped if there had been a TV hanging on the ceiling for me to be watching, but there wasn't. I was very careful to have only one small beers lest I lose concentration.

I know it's a very strange thing to be complaining about.

Sadly for the young lady, The Mrs. paid the bill, so the tip did not reflect her talent as a waitress.

I'd always rather not

Don't take it personally, though.

The Dream

Last night, I dreamed that I was watching the news on TV and they were reporting that Mel Gibson had been run over by a truck and killed while filming a scene for an upcoming movie. Then, tonight I learned that it's all true.

Except that it wasn't Mel Gibson, it was Heath Ledger. And maybe some of the details about the truck were different. But still, it's pretty clear confirmation that I am psychic.

So, since we're talking about untimely death, I guess you all heard that Fred Thompson exited the race for president today. I'm not really sure where to go from here. He's the only candidate I trusted on my single issue - gun rights. The fact that I agreed with him on close to 100% of the remaining issues was just gravy on top.

The rest of the guys are largely a bunch of gun-grabbing lefties. McCain is maybe not too horribly bad in comparison to the rest of the bunch, but he's shifty. Plus, the fact that the main-stream media loves him so much is a red flag. The friend of your enemy is not your friend. Probably the best case scenario is that Obama gets elected, and then in four years, Fred beats him. I figure Obama will be too ineffectual to do too terribly much harm in just four years. The whole "outsider" thing doesn't really play that way inside the beltway.

Wonderful Happy Joyosity

MaxieC drew us a picture this morning. It was a picture of the whole fambly. He labeled the peoples, then he walked me through the diagram.

MaxieC: "This is mommy. This is you. That's HannahC, and that's me. And this thing here is JackieC. And this is FreddyC. And this is the aquarium full of crickets."

Me, CherkyB: "What's this over here?"

MaxieC: "That's the TV."

Me, CherkyB: "The TV is part of our fambly?"

MaxieC: "Yes."

An All New CherkyB

I'm thinking of revamping the blog a bit. You know, new template, new tagline, etc.

The first change I'm going to make, though, is to only write about happy things.

I'd just like to say

I'm not really a Giants fan. In fact, I've never really forgiven them for accidentally beating the Bills in the Superbowl. However, in tonight's game I found myself pulling for the Giants. That's right, despite the cross-state rivalry and the fact that nearly half the people in the world who share my last name hail from Milwaukee and of course the fact that Rhonda is a much more reliable ad clicker than Cavitation is, I found myself hoping for a Giants win.

Why?

Well, because I feel Eli Manning's pain. The poor guy is a pretty darn good quarterback, but he has to spend his whole life endlessly being compared to his older brother and to his father He can never just be Eli Manning. He has to be Peyton Manning's less-accomplished little brother, or Archie Manning's disappointing younger son.

And I understand what that is like.

On a lighter note, I managed to get a perfect score on my range rules true/false quiz at today's new member orientation. A perfect score is required to be accepted as a member. It's not too hard to get a perfect score, as it is an "open book" test and the book consists of one side of an 8.5x11 piece of paper with all the rules printed on it. And if you get one wrong, they call you up to the front of the class afterwards, and the instructor says, "I'd like you to re-read this question and think about your answer a bit. Then, I'll give you a chance to change your answer if you want to," and after you change your answer, the instructor says, "Wonderful! A perfect score!"

I am now a certified Range Official at the Weld County Fish and Wildlife High Plains Shooting Range. So there. Plus, I get a 5% discount on garage door repairs, which will come in handy given that my garage door springs all are in need of adjustment.

It's late

This morning, I got up at an ungodly early hour with MaxieC while The Mrs. slept in. Then, after playing with him for almost two hours, HannahC got up. So we all played Snap Circuits. Then, eventually, The Mrs. rolled out of bed.

When MaxieC and HannahC were down in the basement playing quietly on some kind of art project, I took a shower and got dressed. After I got out, MaxieC was playing games on the compooter, and HannahC playing with her rat.

So I sat down in the basement and turned on DIY Network's "Man Caves". I watched precisely 6 minutes of the show before The Mrs. stormed in, put her hands on her hips, and said, "So. You're going to sit around on your butt all day watching TV and go to the class at the shooting range?"

I was pleasantly surprised. I had expected this to begin yesterday.

Movie Night

It was a smashing success, as it always is when I'm allowed to pick the movie. The Mrs. likes to pick horrible movies that even she can't stand. This is because she picks movies based on who is in them, not what they are about. Thus, we get subjected to, say, a month of nothing but Kirsten Dunst movies. Or Jake Gyllenhaal. And the fact of the matter is that there are only two actors who have been in more than a couple movies yet never been in a bad one, but we've already seen all the Tom Hanks movies. And the other guy hasn't really been making movies since he became governor of California.

I, on the other hand, and much more concerned about the plot and the drama, so I choose movies based on that with little regard as to who is in them. I know this is exactly what Hollywood does not want me to do, so I feel all the better about it.

Let me add one little caveat, though, before The Mrs. gets all hysterical in the comments section or is moved to finally put up the first post on her blog. I do have one exception to the above, and that is that I have a penchant for Pam Grier movies. The Mrs does not share this love however, and after we watched one of the best movies made in the 70's, Coffy, she banned me from getting any more Pam Grier movies from Netflix.

She needs to exert control over every aspect of my life in order to be happy. I suppose I should be happy that she still lets me pee standing up.

Anyways, due to our differing methods for selecting entertainment, movie night is usually substantially more entertaining when we are watching one of my selections. And last night was no exception to that. We watched American Pie Presents: Beta House.

I don't want to say too much about this one, as it just recently came out on DVD so most of you probably haven't seen it yet. It had its rough spots - the dialog might have been written on a napkin during lunch at Burger King, the acting was reminiscent of cardboard cutouts, but the cinematography was fabulous. The whole movie, you never wanted to look away for a second, so riveting was the scenery.

Even The Mrs., who is not known for her comedic sensibilities, was heard to break into laughter during the "throwing up does not disqualify you" scene.

HannahC get the facts of life

Tonight, HannahC and I were soaking in the hot tub after The Mrs. and MaxieC got out so he could take a bath. I looked at my watch and noted that it was about time for us to be getting out so that The Mrs. and I could watch a moovie together.

And that's when it happened. HannahC asked one of those eternal questions that children often ask about the facts of life. Gaaa! I tried to think about a way I could creatively not answer, but then I got to thinking about how all the recent advice says that if you answer honestly and factually, the child will generally be placated for quite some time.

I felt a little uncomfortable, given that most of what I know about this I learned on the internet, but I gave it a shot:

HannahC: "Why do you and momma have to watch a movie together?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, see it's important that Mommy and Daddy spend time together without any childrens. And I don't just mean Mommy and me, I mean any mommy and daddy. "

HannahC: "Like, any married couple?"

Me, CherkyB: "Right."

HannahC: "So, not just no kids, but no other adults either?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes."

HannahC: "Why?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, you see, if mommies and daddies never spend any time together except with the kids, they start to kind of ignore each other cuz they end up spending all their time focusing on the kids. Then, eventually, Mommy will go, 'Hey. What do I need this guy around for anyways? I have my kids, and that's all I need.' Then she divorces Daddy."

Me, CherkyB: "Then, the Daddy has to move out."

HannahC: "Why doesn't Mommy have to move out if she the one who divorces you?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, kiddo, that's not the way it works in this country. Mommy gets to keep the house and the kids and the dog and everything, but Daddy has to keep paying for it cuz Mommy never got a job in her life that could afford all that."

Me, CherkyB: "So Daddy has to move out, and then you childrens have to come 'visit' me at my little one bedroom apartment every other weekend. Except the court also awards about $4000 a month in 'child support' that I have to pay Mommy. So, after paying for the house and the child support, I'm left with about $400 a month to live off. So I have to live in some dumpy roach and rat-infested hovel."

Me, CherkyB: "Then one day Mommy decides she doesn't want her precious childrens spending every other weekend in a roach and rat-infested hovel, so she goes to the court with pictures of my place to say that you shouldn't have to go there. So the court takes Mommy's side and says I no longer get to see you."

HannahC: "But what if we want to see you?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, Mommy won't want you to think it's her fault you never see me, so she'll start to tell you all kinds of things about how bad a person I was and how I never spent time with her or you, and how much better off you are without me, and how she always protected you from me. And after a while, you won't remember any different cuz you haven't seen me in a long time."

Me, CherkyB: "Of course, I won't say anything because I won't want to poison your relationship with you mother, cuz there's no point in you not liking either parent, and you'd have to live with her"

HannahC: "Oh."

Me, CherkyB: "So then, whenever I try to call you, you'll yell, 'How could you be so bad to Momma!' and hang up on me. And you'll go through the rest of your life being mad at me."

HannahC: "Oh."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah, so we better get out of the hot tub now so that Momma and I can watch a DVD."

HannahC: "Yeah. We better."

And she climbed out of the hot tub immediately.

Hang on

I'll keep you posted.

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...]