A Milestone

I taught MaxieC how to ride his bike without training wheels today. I'm such a fabulous teacher that it took all of 5 minutes. I think that 12" bikes are pretty easy to learn on, as you're very low to the ground. HannahC learned on a 16", and it took a lot longer despite my powerful teaching skills.

Of course she, like her mother, is quite obstinate and just always has to do the exact opposite of what I say to do. That might have something to do with it.

JackieC the rat is quite sick again. A few months back, she had surgery to remove all her breast cancer tumors (very common in rats. Mostly females.), and she's been doing very well until just recently. The Mrs. had noticed her losing her balance on occasion the past couple weeks, and then yesterday she went all limp. The Mrs. and HannahC nursed her back from the brink by feeding her lots of peeled grapes, and she can move about a bit now, but she's definitely not normal. She is past the average life expectancy of a rat by about 25%, so while we're all pulling for her, I believe that death is imminent.

Poor JackieC.

Yesterday, we went to the Denver Zoo with the 4-H group for a guided tour. It was interesting. The tour was two hours long, then we stayed another 4 hours (at which point the zoo closed, and everyone was cranky from being on their feet all day). Naturally, we didn't go home.

We went to The Mrs.'s favorite Greek restaraunt, which is in Denver near the zoo. And then we headed home.

Well, not quite. Then we headed to Bass Pro to spend all my gift certificates. Oh, and spend we did. I got me all setup for catfish hunting. Just so Carl, Jr. can be jealous, the rod was $130, and the reel was $110. Together, that exceeded my gift card balance by $5. I didn't get anything that was purpose-built for catfish. Instead, it's a lightish surf-fishing outfit. The "catfish" gear looked like crap to me, and the dude at the store said it was crap, too. They make them look really big and strong, but it's all cosmetics. I stuck with a spinning reel, though a pretty big one that also has a trolling mode.

I doubt I'll catch a thing.

I need to find some good stink-bait recipes. Then, I plan to try them out in the back pond where we have two very well-fed catfish (along with 18 goldfish/koi). No hook. I just want to see what these guys like to eat. I saw the black catfish up close for the first time in a while today while I was cleaning algae out of the pond, and he was over a foot long. Oh my. Two years ago when we got them, they were only about 3". The black one has always been bigger than the white one.

There was a time

..that such a thing would have surprised me. But today is not such a day.

We've attempted to attempted to begin planning our cross-country venture to Ellie's wedding, but progress has been halting. However, a great breakthrough occurred today - we figured out what to do with the dog.

Last year, we took him along (as we did the rat), but that was in May. This year, it'll be in July, and it will be way too hot to leave him in the car while we eat meals. So we needed to find somewhere for him to stay. My friend Rico said he'd take him, but then decided that he was going to be out of town during that time. The Mrs. decided to check out a pet sitter she had met in a parking lot. Turns out she lives kinda far from us, but she said she could keep FreddyC at her house if'n he could get along with her 4 dogs.

He had his trial meeting today, and he got along quite nicely. So that's taken care of (at the cost of $30/day). The Mrs. has also found a home for CinnamonC and FluffyC, the guinea pigs. She's working on a home for JackieC (the rat) and LexieC (the toad).

Next step is to start mapping out hotels. Our biggest hurdle here is to decide if we want to stay together or not. This being a humor blog, you probably assume I'm joking about that, but I'm not. There are a lot of political considerations that need to be taken into account on the fambly visits. Kids, if you do for some crazy reason decide to get married, don't ever marry someone from your hometown if you plan to some day move away from that hometown. It complicates things greatly.

I really wanna go shoot my new shotgun. That's the trouble with new guns if you live in suburbia.

A trip to JoAnn's Fabric

The Mrs. loves the fabric store, and there was this coupon for some percentage off everything in the store, including sales, that expired today. She decided to buy the stuff to make MaxieC some blackout curtains so that he will sleep in later. He has a tendency to wake up with the sun.

Well, JoAnn's is in the same plaza at Sportsman's Warehouse, and I've been needing some new fishing line for The Childrens' reels. They both have the original line on them, and it was getting all nasty towards the end of last season. So I dropped The Mrs. and HannahC off at JoAnn's and MaxieC and I headed over to Sportsman's. The Mrs. told me to take a long time at Sportsman's, cuz she was going to get full use out of the coupon. MaxieC spent about a half hour there, which is a really long time for two dude to go "shopping", even at Sportsman's Warehouse.

It wasn't long enough. The Mrs. needed about another half hour, by which time she was all cranky (JoAnn's always makes The Mrs. cranky, despite it being her favorite store). She had two big rolls of fabric for the curtains, plus a curtain rod. These proved to be a little bit too long to fit lenghtwise through the hatch of the minivan:

What would you do?
	Cry because you spent so long picking out the perfect fabric, but now you can't get it home.
	Turn it a bit diagonally so that the end goes in first and it fits fine.
	Keep bashing it into the sides while growling about how your loving husband's brand new shotgun is in the way.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Ohhhh... who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

I'll tell ya, I just don't know where the blogging time has gone.

OK, I do. We've been "spring cleaning" the house, planting the garden, and The Mrs. has been feeling a bit under the weather in general punctuated by the occasional burst of serious, heartfelt, "I'm going to die!!!!"

I'm telling ya folks, if you're not prepared for every medical malady to turn into a major performance, then don't marry someone with a performance degree. The Mrs. isn't going to die. The Mrs. was never even close to dying. Well, at least not any closer than that time she got really "happy" at the conservatory and decided to show her friends how athletic she was by demonstrating how she could jump down a whole flight of stairs without getting hurt and then called me up in the middle of the night (400 miles away) to ask me if she should go to the hospital.

But we're not supposed to talk about that.

As part of the spring cleaning, The Childrens have been boxing and bagging up toys that they don't need any more. Some for donation, some for sellin' at the consignment shoppe (at least until the new lead rules for certifying toys go into effect, which puts consignment stores out of business). Then, they'll be rewarded with new toys of a smaller volume, but likely higher dollar cost.

Probably they'll each get a Nintendo DSi. They need them for the road trip anyways, so we might as well kill two birds with one stone.

I'm thinking of cleaning up the garage so I can make room for a new truck. I have the most devious of plans. See, it goes like this:

My HOA won't let me park a boat outside, on account of the fact that I live in a nice neighborhood, so owning a boat becomes way too much hassle, cuz then I gotta rent some place to park it, go get it the night before, charge the batteries, check everything over, go fishing, come back, clean it all off, then take it back to storage. Hence, the saga of the fishing boat ended with me empty-handed.

Now, the prospect of the Gub'ment and/or the UAW and/or Fiat running Dodge has made me worry about the possibility of not being able to get quality replacement parts for the old truckster. I'm almost at 60k miles, which is about as far as once can expect a Dodge to go without requiring a steady diet of replacement parts. Yes, I know, if I'd gotten the Heavy Duty, that wouldn't be true. But I got a compact (I lived in California, and the compact didn't fit in my garage at all and just barely fit in the driveway). The Dakota, like its brother the Durango, is known more for its styling and class-leading available V8 power than it is for its longevity. You can axe 'Billy about how well his Durango held up once it got to a certain age.

So, if'n I'm replacing the Dakota in a year or so, first you gotta look at all the possible replacements. The Dakota, despite being competely redesigned a couple years ago, remains largely identical to the one I have now (plus, see above about Gub'ment/UAW/Fiat), so that's out. The Chevy/GMC twins, while they've managed to wedge a nice V8 in there, are otherwise non-competitive models, and while Fiat doesn't look to be involved, Gub'ment/UAW ownership is on the horizon. The Frontier (made in USA) and Tacoma (made in Mexico) both have laughably small beds - even smaller than I have now. There are only two serious complaints I have about my truck: pathetic gas mileage (12 city/15 hwy) and the small bed. The Ford Explorer Sport Track I don't even understand the point of.

So, I'm left going full-size. And when you go full-size, you're only real option in the half-ton market is the F-150.

Now, I've checked the dimensions of the F-150, and it will not fit through my garage door without the mirrors folded. It's not clear to me if they have power folding mirrors, i.e., mirrors that you push a button, and they automatically fold. If they do, then we might be able to get it through the door (I'm not getting in and out to fold/unfold mirrors every time I use the garage). Once inside, though, I'm pretty sure I'd have to take out the shelves on the left wall in order to open the driver's door, and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to open the right rear passenger door because I have no way to remove the post that holds up the second floor that is right there. I figure if I get the SuperCrew with the 6.5' bed, there's no practical way I'll be able to park it in the garage.

Which means helllloooo fishing boat.

Why yes, I have been neglecting you

You'll get over it. I know I did.

There hasn't been a lot to report on the old homefront these day that has any entertainment value. So I'll have to choreblog (given that The Mrs. has squirreled away the camera where I can't find it, I can't even photoblog).

Sunday of course was Mothers' Day, or as it goes by around here The Day of Anger. The Mrs. went out to the hot tub in the morning, and then came back in moments later without saying anything. An hour later, I asked if there was anything wrong with the hot tub, and she said, "It's a filthy, disgusting mess. The water is green. There is yellow mold growing up the sides. I'm not going in there."

Now, I found this odd given that just a couple days prior I had checked all the chemical levels and shocked the hell out of it (as the water was starting to look a little less transparent than I like). So I checked, and sure enough, the water was slightly green and there was some yellowish scum forming around the edges. I don't think it was necessarily mold, but I don't have a better explanation.

I decided to head to the spa store to see if I could score some new filters.

As it turns out, they didn't have any. However, the guy declared my filter just fine. Now, this was actually the owner dude - the guy we had bought the tub from - not one of the, shall we say, less knowledgeable young ladies that normally mans the counter on weekends. So I discussed the problems I had been having of late keeping the tub clean despite the copious amounts of shock I put in regularly and the fact that all the chemical levels always read just fine on the test strip.

He said, "It sounds like your ozone isn't working. That's odd. They usually last a little over a year."

"The tub is two years old."

"Oh. Have you ever changed the ozone generator module?"

"Uh, no. I didn't know you had to."

"You have to change them every year."

I really don't remember that little gem being in the manual, but it has been two years since I read the manual. He also recommended I change the backflow valve for the ozone, cuz they don't last forever either, and then you get water in the ozone generator and burn it out.

And, as it turns out, there's a little window you look in to see if it is glowing purple when turned on. If it's purple, ozone. If not, time for a new one.

No purple in mine. I would describe it more as carbonized from some kind of catastrophic burnout than as purple. Plus, the hose seemed to have shmutz deposits in it. It was a pretty easy change once I gave up on the idea of getting the old backflow valve out (it snapped off in the tube when I tried to remove it) and just cut off the end of the tube. Then, I actually used a pipe cleaner to clean the shmutz out of the tube.

Of course, now the tube was too short. So I had to make a quick trip to Ace for $2 worth of stuff to splice in a new short length of new tube. Then I emptied and refilled the tub. So far, 4 days later, it is holding up very well. The water smells better than it has in a long time (even when it was freshly filled before) - one might even say the water doesn't smell at all. I'm hoping this was the key.

I've finally decided to get the big dent in my truck fender repaired. If you recall the story (which you don't), some f$%knuts smashed into my truck in the work parking lot back in October 2006 and didn't leave a note or anything. Now, it's finally starting to rust. So I'm going to have to put up the $500 deductible and get it fixed. Get this - rather than replacing the fender, they're going to repair it, and they've estimated this is going to take 12 hours of labor. 12 hours to hammer out a dent and sand some Bondo? Can't you build an entire car out of Bondo in less than 12 hours? Maybe not a truck, but something small, like a Tacoma. And then it's another 4 hours of labor to paint it.

Plus $32.50 for the "4x4" decal. That's the only part they're actually replacing.

I managed to eat a very quick lunch today then run to the body shop for an estimate. $988. Robbery, I tell you. Then, I had to call my insurance company to see if they'd still pay a claim that was almost 3 years old. They had to "re-activate" it, but that took mere moments. So I'll be dropping the truck off the day before we had to Barfalo for Ellie's wedding, and it'll be ready and waiting when we return.

Then, I can look up what the value of my truck in "good" condition will be as opposed to "fair". I hear that Dodges lost 6% of their value after Chrysler filed for chapter 11, so probably that fancy fender paint will be the most expensive part of the vehicle. Well, until I replace the shocks, which it is also badly in need of.

That is all. Carry on.

It appears to have been cancelled

My new feature, which was to be a multimedia extravaganza, appears to have had the plug pulled on it by The Mrs. See, I was farting around with my new video editing software (which really, really sucks as it turns out - good thing it was free) along with some sound and picture editors trying to figure out the easiest way to take a still image, record a voiceover for that, and then splice it in with some video footage, when The Mrs. walked in and was absolutely convinced that the fake stills, voiceover, and goofy video I had recorded just to figure out the software was actually evidence of me carrying on some affair with an unknown woman over the compooter.

The unknown woman talking to me in the voiceover, oddly enough, was actually a recording of me that I had pitch-shifted up using Audacity, which is a kick-ass free sound editor. So, The Mrs. is mad at me right now for making a recording of me asking myself a question, and then a video of me answering myself.

And thus dies "Ask CherkyB." It had such promise, too. Sigh. How I suffer for my art.

The joys of prostate health

On AM radio, you hear a lot of commercials to buy gold. Today, though, we got to hear a commercial for a homeopathic herbal concoction for prostate health.

HannahC: "Hey Dah, what's 'sex drive'?"

Me, CherkyB: "Umm..." CherkyB must run through the possible answers before speaking:

(It's something men have all the time and women have until they get married.)

(Ask your mother. She might remember.)

(It's the thing that makes men want to earn more money.)

(You know all those Girls Gone Wild commercials on TV?)

Me, CherkyB: "So, you remember that video with Howie Mandel about how babies were made? You remember what 'sex' was?"

HannahC: "Yeah."

Me, CherkyB: "Sex drive is the thing that makes you want to have sex."

HannahC: "OK. What's a prostate?"

Me, CherkyB: "[blah blah blah] and when you get old it often doesn't work right."

HannahC: "I see."

HannahC: "Dah?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes?"

HannahC: "Are you too old to have sex anymore?"

Oh sweet Jesus.

I'm thinking of a new feature

I'm not sure what to call it yet, as I have two or three different versions of the idea. But, you know, now that Andy Rooney is dead, I sense a vacuum.

Momma is one of Those

HannahC had a talent show today. I had to pick MaxieC up from the gym at 6:00 and drive us to the show. Being that this was the evening drive, Michael Savage was on the radio one of his satiric resignation bits.

Michael Savage: "Oooooh, I think I'm going to become one of those people who just shuts up and gets along."

MS: "I mean, what have I got to complain about? 99% of people just looooove Obama."

MaxieC: "Momma is one of those."

Me, CherkyB: "Huh?"

MaxieC: "Momma is one of those. Momma cares for Obama."

I wonder what it is that they do all day when I'm at work.

They're Not All Winners 3

Given that it has been 6 months since the last installment, one can't help but notice that, while they may not all be winners, damn close to all of them are. Oh, the quality of entertainment delivered by Me, CherkyB is absolutely top notch. I'm like Top Gear, only without the need for a continuous stream of automobile props. Or the need for two sidekicks. And not British.

OK, nothing like Top Gear, but top notch nonetheless.

So last night was an action-packed night, being Friday and all. First, upon returning home from work, I realized I had forgotten to pick up HannahC from gymnastics because she changes her schedule every week, and I had thought this Friday she wasn't there. Not to worry - I had plenty of time. I rushed back to get her and had to stand around for 15 minutes while she puddled around in the locker room jibber-jabbering with her friends.

Then, upon returning home a second time, I immediately set forth trying to clean up the breakfast and lunch dishes enough to have room to serve dinner. See, The Mrs. likes every meal to require at least two different size plates and/or bowls per person, and then a serving plate or bowl (along with a serving spoon or tongs) for each and every dish, plus at least one, preferably more food prep items. Thus, for example, a simple breakfast of pancakes for three (I don't normally eat breakfast, instead using the time to sleep in before leaving for work) will create the following carnage:

• One mixing bowl
• One measuring cup to measure the powdered mix
• A different measuring cup to measure the water
• Two beaters from the electric mixer
• A spatula to scrape the sides of the mixing bowl when mixing
• A different spatula to control the pour when pouring the batter into the pan
• A frying pan that will not be dishwasher safe
• A spatula to turn over the pancakes
• A second non-dishwasher safe pan to fry the sausage links
• A different spatula to roll the links so they cook on all sides
• A splatter screen to keep the sausages from splattering hot grease
  
• A colander in which to wash the grapes
• A bowl in which to serve the grapes
• A bowl for each child so that they can put grapes in there and not keep sticking their fingers in the main serving bowl
• A plate on which to serve the pancakes
• A big fork to move pancakes from serving plate to eating plate
• A plate on which to serve the sausage links
• A set of tongs to get sausage links from the plate
• A plate to put the butter on
• A butter knife
• Three forks
• Two knives, one for each child
• A third knife because HannahC didn't like the original one cuz it was not a steak knife
• Three juice glasses
• A coffee mug
• A milk cup because MaxieC decided he wanted milk instead of juice after the juice was poured
  

Now, if it is a good day, the non-consumed food on The Childrens' plates will be dumped into the sink in the general vicinity of the disposal. The disposal will not be run. Then some dishes will be piled up in the sink on top of the pile of food, and the napkins will be placed in the syrup on each plate, and then the plates stacked upon one another so that the napkins can properly fuse to the plates before I get home.

If it is a bad day, everything will simply be left on the kitchen table, pushed into my spot (since I'm at work and thus not using my spot) when it comes time to make lunch (with an equivalent use of dishes).

Yesterday was apparently a good day.

Now, the prior night I had noted how the entire house was a wreck and that The Fambly should plan on spending some time cleaning up while I was work. The Mrs. informed me that she had never "signed up" to clean or cook or do dishes. All she had "signed up" for was to raise The Childrens. I noted that the only thing I had signed up for was to earn the money, and I also noted that the only way I could detect what she did all day while I was gone was to log into the credit card website and watch the numbers spin by on balance.

So that pretty much guaranteed that the first thing I would have to do upon returning home was the dishes. It was a nice added touch that the groceries from the trip to the supermarket two days ago were still all lined up in bags in the hallway, and The Mrs. was complaining that the back of the van was filled with more from a trip to Sam's Club yesterday but that she didn't have anywhere to pile them. She did "try" to find all the perishables and get them into the refrigerator or freezer, though. She did not have confidence in complete success on that.

After eating dinner (a dinner of guacamole and Tostitos Hint of Lime tortilla chips), it was announced that it was hot tub time. So we hit the tub for a while - at first just The Childrens and I, with The Mrs. joining us a bit later. Afterwards, they all just went inside, leaving me to put in the chemicals, close the lid, and collect the empties. It was about 41 degrees out.

This finally brings us to the topic of the post. Upon returning inside, The Mrs. and I were changing out of our bathing suits when the following transpired:

The Mrs.: "So..."

Me, CherkyB: "What?"

The Mrs.: "No. I'm not going to say it. You'll just get mad."

Me, CherkyB: "Well, now I'm going to get mad either way, so you might as well just say it."

The Mrs.: "So...was it cold outside?"

Me, CherkyB: "I dunno. Did the earth suddenly develop more mass?"

They're not all winners.

Asymmetric Tonsillitis

My right tonsil hurts. In fact, it has hurt for two days now. My right ear canal is beginning to hurt today. It's very odd. Normally when I get a sore throat, it affects both tonsils and the whole throat. But not this time. If I could figure out how to swallow with just the left half of my throat, it wouldn't hurt to eat at all.

Alas, I have not figured that out.

I figure this must be some horrible disease to be affecting me on just one side. I assume that I am not long for this world, and thus I am napping a lot. Normally, I force myself not to nap because of the wrath that this brings down upon me, but given the unavoidable consequences of this horrible affliction, I am unmoved by worries of future penance to be extracted. I let it ride.

Sadly, this all comes at a time when I am becoming hugely popular on Facebook. I am up to 8 friends now, 6 of whom invited me. Yes, The CherkyB is in high demand wherever he goes and mingles with the little peoples. I have thus far eschewed the "applications," despite receiving about 12 different requests of some sort or another, each of which requires me to agree to a new "terms of service" form plus grant the application unfettered access to my account.

I must say, I am intrigued by this "shot request" application, though. I have one request pending on that. I may break down. I generally don't refuse shots.

Unless they're flu shots, which the gubment uses to track you.

I should probably lie down. I'm going to lie on my left side to see if the disease spreads due to gravity.

Has my wife ever met me?

This is the coffee she bought for me, cuz I won't drink her nasty Starbucks half-caf:

Again with the mice

Today, I happened to glance into the closet by the garage where The Childrens keep their shoes. I noticed there was a lot of dog food strewn about in there. Hmmm. That usually means mice.

So I checked for turds.

Yup. Mice. Turds on the floor. Turds on the shelf. Turds in the shoe caddy.

Plus, I found dogfood in the toes of some of The Mrs.'s shoes that were in there. I didn't actually find any little mousy nests, though. I see that as a good thing, as I'm not as quick as I once was (though I'm as quick once as I ever was), so I don't really like to grab mice and squeeze them to death with my bare hands anymore.

I checked the perimeter defenses, and there were dead mice in two of the three traps. One of the dead ones was covered in ants. They'd been there a while. So I dumped out the deaders and reset the traps, moving two of them into the shoe closet.

Now that we have Amazon Prime, I ordered me up a couple more traps. Can never be too careful.

I just got unjustly accused

The Mrs. just forced me to show her all my facebook friends because she suspected I was having an affair with someone nicer than she via facebook. She suspected this because I told her that a guy I used to be friends with in elementary school and that she knew from high school was one of my (few - I'm not very popular) facebook friends, and he had sent me an email telling about his family.

So, naturally, she assumed I was cheating on her. How sad she was to discover that my only non-relative female facebook friend was blogauthor.

Now, if I were blogauthor, I'd be deeply offended that The Mrs. dismissed out of hand the possibility of us having an affair.

But then again, I did say she expected I was having an affair with someone nicer.

The Fountain of Joy

First, let me open with the view out my bedroom window this morning. You've probably heard how Denver had a big snow storm this weekend. Well, we didn't. However, the mountains just west of town did. You can see the nice fresh coat of white on them.

Also, you can see how green my next-door neighbor's lawn is compared to mine. He turned on his sprinklers a couple weeks ago, whereas I haven't yet. I did drag the de-thatcher around the yard yesterday in the rain, so my lawn kinda looks "combed."


My project for today was to get the little fountain pool that spills down into the corner of the back pond running. It's located right directly behind the pergola in the above picture, so's ya cain't see it atall.

It has never run since we moved here. To me, this seemed to obviously be because it didn't have a pump, and it's pretty damn hard to coax water out of a pond and up about four feet through six feet of 3/4" tubing to spring forth in a fountain without a pump. No, pump clearly was called for.

So I headed off to my local pond store (which, now, is the 3rd closest pond store - used to be the closest, but they moved past #2, and then someone opened up a new one even closer than that) where the guy is always very helpful, and he fixed my up with a pump and all the tubing an valves I'd need for the elaborate setup I was going for.

See, there was this little status of an alligator that was supposed to spout water into the little pool:


And there was also this little fishie that was supposed to spout water into the pool:


That requires a couple of extra lines with T's and apportioning valves. But in the end, it worked out:


When I first turned it on, I noticed it was spilling over the sides a whole lot and seemed to be washing a lot of dirt into the pond. Upon investigation, I discovered that the liner had not really been installed right for the channel, and that it stopped 8" short of the pond. The pond liner was all folded up under rocks down there, so I unfolded it and ran it up under the channel liner for about a foot so as to make a contiguous liner from pool to pond. This appears to have worked.

Oh, I also got a new toy. This is my new Blaster 1000 spa filter cleaner. It automatically turns the filter while it sprays it. Coolio.

Thirst, Interrupted

I'm starting to get the idea here with facebook. it goes like this: "I'm going to delude myself into thinking that people care about all the tiny little crap that I do, and I'm just going to give little updates all the time. This will, in turn, prompt other people to think that their mundane little things are just as interesting as mine, and they will start to post them. And so on."

It almost beats the hell out of having something to say. Except people will soon discover that most of the mundane things in my life revolve around figuring out what to drink. Or, even worse, they'll think that I'm pretending that I spend spend a lot of time thinking about what to drink because I think it'll make me look cool.

Neither will be true, though. In fact, most of the mundane things in my life revolve around actually drinking, not contemplating what to have. I am a very decisive person, though not necessarily known for my good judgment.

Now, one of the interesting things about facebook seems to be the way it selects people to suggest as your friends. I get that it tries to match background, but this is perhaps done in a ridiculous fashion. For instance, it keeps insisting that I want some guy named DannyK as my friend because "You and Dan both went to SUNY Buffalo."

SUNY Buffalo is a pretty darned big school. Its enrollment has been running around 28,000 students per year. The chances of me knowing just anyone who went to that school is pretty low. But get this - this DannyK fellow is a grad student there right now, according to his profile. I graduated in 1990. 19 years ago. They graduate ~7000 people a year, and it decides that I'm gonna want to be friends with some random dude out of the 130,000 people who went there after I left.

Bizarre.

I don't get it

I'm going to try to say this in a way that doesn't offend everybody. I know, however, that you're all hyper-sensitive and are just looking for some way to feel slighted by The CherkyB, so if it makes you feel better to feel offended, be my guest.

For I while, I had just one "Facebook Friend", and that was fine because it meant that facebook was largely what I expected it would be based upon descriptions given to me by co-workers who used it - an application completely devoid of any value whatsoever, but largely harmless. Then, this morning, I had two people who wanted to be my friends.

And that's when I realized it is much more than I had thought. It is actually not devoid of value. It has negative value. It allows people who should be keeping their inane thoughts largely to themselves to post every silly thing that comes to mind. I blogging, even really really bad blogging, you have to at least wait until you have a whole paragraph of something to say before you post it.

Not so in Facebook. It appears to be specifically designed for people who can't think of an entire paragraph of something to say.

For instance this little gem:

"5 Things i don't leave the house without!".My Brain, My wallet, My shoes, Patrick Swayze and My Boobs."

And if you click on any of the embedded photos, it asks you to consent to have all your personal information mined so that they can use it for something that is buried in the small print of a service agreement. Really.

Or this:

"[I] got the last Broadway Market butter lamb at Wegman's."

Followed later that same day by:

"[I] put the ham in the oven."

Lamb or ham? Which the f#$k is it, for f*%^k's sake?

And it just scrolls on and on and on like that. It make's Angry Thespian's work like like art in comparison.

It's like someone was kicking back one day hitting the herb a little hard and said, "You know what, maaaan? You know what I really miss with all this web 2.0 sh!t and stuff, man? I miss the days when you would call up your local bulletin board system on your 300 baud half-duplex modem and just post whatever you were thinking, man. And you didn't have to think too deep cuz at 300 baud you couldn't type too much. And you could have like a cool screen name like 'Kreton Metallicon' or 'Zerk the Infinite' and just like, be whatever, maaan. Someone should invent something like that only, like, with pictures, so if you didn't have anything to say, you could just snap a pic with your cellphone and put that up. Like, 'Hey, this is me. This is what I look like right now. I'm like feeling all baked and sh!t.' Only without having to write anything."

I can feel myself getting shallower already.

Oh so busy

The complaints have been pouring in here at headquarters that I haven't blahrged lately. Well, I'll tell ya', I been heap busy. See, it's springtime here in Fort TomCollins, and with springtime comes a whole host of new and exciting tasks, a lot of which require me to be outside while streaming bar-rockin' country music over the deck speakers.

With sprintime also comes the revelation that the weather is going to change rapidly and dramatically from day-to-day, so it also means planning ahead is difficult, and you've just gotta get done what you can when the weather holds.

Oh, and I suppose there were some high Holy Days over the last week.

We had a little snow and a little rain over the last week, so I decided to knock off a task that started with "dig a 20 foot trench" on Saturday. It was very exciting because it involved something I'd never done before - run electrical conduit and then pull a line through it. This meant I got to buy a new tool - a 75' steel fish tape. Oh joy of joys, I loves when I get to get a new tool. Plus, while I was there in the electrical department, I found that they sold those infrared thermometers with the laser pointer built in that let you measure the temperature of anything within about 15 feet, so I picked me up one of those for no reason at all. Happy Easter to me.

The back pond now has an electrical outlet at the east end (on a different circuit from the west end), so I can stop running the pump and heater at that end off an extension cord. It only took about six hours of work to do that, but I did it with just one trip to the store for supplies.

I also managed to get the cap off the pickup (in anticiaption of getting mulch and compost next weekend) and to do a routine drain/clean/fill on the hot tub. Things I did not get done included dethatching the lawn, taking the blower off the lawn tractor and installing the mowing deck, and fertilizing the lawn. It's supposed to snow again this week, so maybe that would have been premature. But a bunch of the neighbors have started up their sprinklers already, and my 35000 sq ft of brown isn't looking so good in comparison to their lush green. And, naturally, I have deeply ingrained in my DNA the need to compete with the neighbors on lawn quality. It's just one of those things. You can ask my dad about where that gene came from, if you get the chance.

I believe that this year I am going to spring for a tonneau cover for the pickup bed. I'd like some way to throw my fishing stuff in the bed and not worry about it being stolen, and I always remove the cap in the summer so I can get mulch and compost and the like dumped in the back. There was one on craigslist a while back very reasonably priced and the right color, but I didn't buy it.

Yesterday, our fambly and another went to Fort Fun to play laser tag. It was fun. I came in second in the first game (which I think I would have won had I not backed into a wall in a hurry, which somehow managed to shut down my vest and gun for the remaining 2.5 minutes of the game, and I only lost by ~50 points out of ~1200), but I won the second most triumphantly. I was the only person over the age of 10 in the second game, though, so it wasn't much of a triumph.

Today I finally broke down and signed up for facebook. I did this because I needed to get some information for the Tax Day Tea Party Protest downtown, and they put it on an individual facebook account. If they'd done a business account, you wouldn't have needed to be a facebook member to see the info. But Tea Party protests are individually organized, not part of a business, so whatever. When I created the account, it told me that my sister had invited me to be her friend, so I clicked on allowing that. Then it found all the millions of the rest of you out there who it thought I might want to be friend with, but I skipped over that on account of I really don't plan to ever use it. Don't get all offended.

We should refinance every week

Consolidating two loans (a mortgage and a HELOC) from the same bank into one mortgage from the same bank turns out to be considered a "cash out" refinance, which as far as I can tell means they screw you for a whole lot more origination fees and paperwork, including requiring a walk-through appraisal.

Being the cheery, happy-go-lucky guy that I am, I tend just to see the bright side of all of this - and I mean on top of the $350/mo in interest we'll save with the new rate vs. the old. Yes, we've actually cleaned up the place. Vacuumed the whole house tonight, we did. We even got two vacuum going at once - I did the upstairs and first floor and half the basement with the fancy-shmancy Sebo X4 Automatic, while The Mrs. Slowpoke did the other half of the basement with the Hoover Fusion Cyclonic (a vacuum which, oddly, is almost to the penny 10% the cost of the other vacuum (and it shows)).

In addition to that, I got to clean all four of the toilets. It went like this:

Me, CherkyB: "Which rooms should I vacuum?"

The Mrs.: "The rooms aren't ready to vacuum. You should clean all the toilets."

Me, CherkyB: "I didn't ask if I should clean the toilets. I asked which rooms I should vacuum."

The Mrs.: "Here are some sanitizing wipees. You'll probably want to put on some vinyl gloves. The toilets are really disgusting."

Me, CherkyB: [in a whiny voice] "I didn't ask for wipees. I asked what rooms I should vacuum."

The Mrs.: "Make sure you get all four toilets."

Thank god only one of the toilets is black. That one needs to be buffed after cleaning in order to prevent streaks. It's almost like it needs a couple coats of carnauba wax.

I also got to fix some of those niggling little problems. Like, I patched a hole in The Childrens' bathroom wall that resulted when the little stopper that's supposed to keep the doorknob from crashing through the wall if you fling the door open broke and let the doorknob crash through the wall (not the first time, upon inspection). And I patched another hole in the master bedroom door that resulted from when that little stopper that's supposed to keep the doorknob from crashing into the wall if you fling the door open did not break and instead punched a hole right through the door (and thus, the doorknob only made a small dent in the wall instead of punching right through it). I've replaced those hinge-mounted things with ones that are on the baseboard and contact the wood frame of the door, not the crappy veneer panel.

I also got some grout caulk to temporarily patch the missing grout in the kitchen. There are some slightly loose tiles in the kitchen due to shoddy workmanship, and all the grout around them is coming out. I took a piece of grout to the store to match the color to the grout caulk (which has sand in it so that it dries looking a lot more like grout than normal caulk would). The one that matched the piece in the store did not match when it was in the floor (I would say the color on the tube was a very loose approximation of the actual color). So I went back and got another color. That one didn't match either. So I mixed the two together and got pretty close to the right color. Close enough that you wouldn't notice if you didn't know the spots I patched, which you don't.

I also re-attached the trim around our attic hatch that got knocked off when we had a giant wind storm and the attic hatch started flying around. Plus, I cleaned the ceiling in the master shower.

Yes, it's like some other fambly lives here. Some fambly that isn't a bunch of slobs.

CherkyB, Accidental Humorist

Those of you who know in IRL know that I have a tendency to answer every question with the same two word response. Sometimes, this is unexpectedly more funny than usual.

HannahC: "Sooo...whatcha doin' Dah?"

Me, CherkyB: "Your momma."