CherkyB, Melodramatician

This weekend, I decided to have a conversation with my wife. It's not something I do terribly often, given the general futility of such endeavors, but I gave it a shot.

Me, CherkyB: "I've decided maybe I'm clinically depressed."

The Mrs.: "Oh?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes. I think I'd like to be depressed. That way, none of this would be my fault."

The Mrs.: "You should get some pills for your depression then."

Me, CherkyB: "Oh, that would work out spectacularly."

Both: "Sigh."

I realized yesterday that my daughter pronounces the "t" in "often". I think she might be British. I'm not sure why, though it's rumored I have some grandparents from there.

Speaking of British, you know how they like to boil their food? I believe the Irish do this as well (there's no accounting for taste, as they say). Well, imagine, if you will, saying this to someone, "Yes, yes, boiling is wonderful, but if you really want to bring out the flavor of a dish, instead of boiling I recommend soaking the food in tepid water for ten hours."

You should give it a try.

There have been many awe-inspiring new developments in the old Cherky household that I would have told you about as they happened, excepting I'm in a deep funk that requires me to sit around in the basement (a place I have decided to call "my flat") watching TV for all my free time. A TV that is not more than 15 feet from my blogging compooter - a distance I find insurmountable.

This, of course, made all the worse by the fact that my blogging compooter is a laptop that has an extended life battery that lasts over three hours and so would be easily ported to the couch on which I recline while watching TV, except that would require walking all the way over here from over there. Though over here is right next to the bar, a place somehow I am able to keep up with visiting. Plus, I can blog from my phone, though the blogging app doesn't support the blockquotes format, so I can't do those little conversations I have with The Mrs. that form the basis of so many of my posts, and that makes me sad.

So, let me just tell you about Sunday. Sunday was the day of days. But first, a little setup is in order. You all remember a couple weeks back how I started getting sick, so I had to go sleep in the basement guest room (AKA Granny's Room). Well, either The Mrs. or I have been sick the entire time since then, and so I've managed to keep sleeping in the basement, hence I have begun to refer to the basement as "my flat." I had been calling it "my apartment," but that seemed somewhat lowbrow and annoyed The Mrs. quite a bit. After weighing the pros and cons of that, I decided I really didn't like being lowbrow. One of the side-effects of me living in my flat is that I am sleeping uncommonly well given the lack of constant interruption from MaxieC and the always-present exasperated tsk-tsking from The Mrs. at every tiny little noise. However, there has been one little thing.

I've found I sometimes lose sleep if I don't have a gun with me. I left the gun up with The Mrs., figuring that I'm a very deep sleeper, whereas she's quite a light sleeper, and so if'n anything came to pass, I'd probably sleep through the whole thing in the nice quiet, dark basement, so it'd be better if she had the gun. But, I woke up at 3am on Saturday night thinking to myself, "Self, the only thing in this room that'd be marginally useful against a home invasion is your guitar. And really, that's a pretty light guitar to be bashing over anyone's head. Plus, it's not easily replaceable, given it hasn't been made for over 15 years. You should come up with another plan."

Now, I'm a reasonably bright guy, so coming up with a plan wasn't all that difficult. Especially since "the gun" up there means, "the gun I have in the bedside GunVault," not "the one gun I have." This really boiled down to getting another GunVault. So when I got up out of bed on Sunday, I was determined to go score another GunVault. I emerged from my flat, and The Mrs. started crabbing at me about something - I don't know what cuz I don't pay it any mind any more - so I said:

Me, CherkyB: "I'm going out."

The Mrs.: "But I'm making breakfast!"

Me, CherkyB: "Do I normally eat breakfast?"

The Mrs.: "No."

Me, CherkyB: "OK then. I'm going out."

The Mrs.: "Where?"

Me, CherkyB: "Shopping."

The Mrs.: "Where?"

Me, CherkyB: "I think probably Sportsman's".

The Mrs.: "But HannahC has to be at the ice rink by 12:30."

Me, CherkyB: "I think I can make it to Sportsman's and back in three hours. It's only ten minutes from here. Did MaxieC eat?"

The Mrs.: "Yes."

Me, CherkyB: "Great. I'll take him with me."

Off we went. MaxieC, when we got there, declared that he needed some snorkel gear. Why, I know not, but it definitely in some way involved the fact that HannahC had some, and he didn't. So I snagged him a snorkel. Then I looked at the bedside safes. They had everything under the sun but the one I wanted. I wanted to get one identical to the one I had, given that in the middle of the night when someone is intruding, you may not want to go, "Hmmm...now which safe is this, and how do I open this one?"

And thus we were off to Jax, which about a year ago opened a location quite near Sportsman's. Well, Jax had big stacks of exactly the model I was looking for. Hot damn. I bought one, and as we were walking out of the place, I spied a whole bunch of outdoor power equipment lined up over towards the right. And lo, there was the sweetest looking little chipper there. I mean, what's not to like about a 10hp engine with 14.5 lbs-ft of torque in a compact package for under $1000?

So I had to buy a chipper, too.

I got home at about 11:30 with my new chipper and gun safe, and MaxieC ran in the house to show The Mrs. his new snorkel. She came out to announce that she was about to make breakfast and to ask if I wanted any.

Now, see, two hours earlier, I thought we had already had this conversation. I'm pretty damn sure she was about to make breakfast when I left. But, being as that I was temporarily happy from spending over $1000 on my purchases, I didn't want to get her all catty at me (well, any more than usual), so I acquiesced and agreed to eat scrambled eggs.

But this was killing me. A brand new chipper, less than an hour before we have to leave for the ice rink (HannahC had a competition - she won!), and I've got to eat breakfast instead of playing with my new toy. So I got it out of the truck and filled it with gas while she cooked the eggs, then I gobbled down my breakfast as fast as I could and ran outside to play.

Now, naturally, given that I was in a hurry, I decided to forgo all those safety things like eye protection and gloves and steel toe boots. I blazed it up (and let me tell you, pull-starting a 305cc 10HP engine is not what I would call a joy of joys) and looked around for a branch. I had many piles of branches lying around from the fall and winter that were awaiting the arduous, all-day task of chipping them in my horrible electric chipper, and I grabbed the biggest one that was nearby and put it into the branch feed chute.

With the electric chipper, you have to push the branches in slowly to get them to shred. So I had a nice firm grasp on the branch, and I pushed it in, and it tore the branch right out of my hand with that wonderfully satisfying "ZZZZZrrrrroooopp" sound that real chippers make.

Of course, if you have a nice tight grip on a branch, and it is torn out of your hand, well, some collateral damage is to be expected. It also tore a big flap of skin off the web between my thumb and first finger.

Note to self - leather gloves.

So branch one down, and one injury. Just moments left before we have to shut down and head to the ice rink, so I look around for something fun to shred, and I see a pile of nice long, straight sticks. I grab me a handful.

Oh. Sh!t. These are raspberry bush branches. Raspberry bush branches are completely covered with fine prickers that break off in your skin if you grab them.

Maybe I'm not depressed. Maybe I'm retarded.

OK, that's it. I'm done running the chipper without gloves. I shut her down just in time to head to the ice rink, where I spend the next hour trying to pull raspberry prickers out of my hands with my fingernails.

HannahC skated beautifully, and she won "Level Two Freestyle with Music", receiving 3 first and two second place rankings from panel of five judges, thus securing first place.

Upon returning home, I got my boots on and some eye gear and my gloves, and I fired up the chipper again. Woo hoo! I chomped up everything in about 45 minutes. It was, I must say, spectacular.

Though I am easily amused.

Tonight, if you decide to break in to my house, you'll need to decide if you want to face 180gr Winchester Supreme Elite JHP .40 S&W or take your changes with 147gr Federal Hydra-Shok JHP 9mm. You'll have to guess which is which, but if you make enough noise, maybe you'll get to see both.

I will sleep soundly.

CherkyB, Romantic

HannahC: "Hey Dah. Why, even though your brother, Uncle CherkyK, is older than you, did you get married before he did?"

Me, CherkyB: "Poor judgment."

You don't say

I didn't know anyone read my blog who wasn't a facebook friend of mine, but earlier someone left this comment:

Anonymous said...

Somebody has to ask....New truck??

Monday, March 15, 2010 6:31:00 PM

I suppose I shouldn't complain about people who read my blog and don't use facebook. After all, facebook is pure evil, whereas I make boatloads of money off my blog. Though, having recently done my taxes, it seems that my boat last year was 1/3 of what it was in 2008. And I blame facebook for that.

So, I bought the Ford F150, as you can probably guess from the picture below. I had debated getting the Ram 1500, but I decided I couldn't live without a 6.5' bed, and the Ram is only available with a 5.5' bed if you get the crew cab.


It's a King Ranch, which means I'm an all uppity cowboy. If I were an uppity city-slicker, I'd have a Platinum. If were an aging, pony-tailed hippy, I'd have gotten a Harley Davidson edition.


The King Ranch gives you this fancy stitched leather interior, though the burled walnut is "faux."


It also gives you these nifty buttons here:

That, when you push them, blow air conditioned air through all these little holes on the seats:


It is sublime.

And yes, that's a USB port there on the dash below the climate controls that allows me to play music off thumb drives as well as to mount any of the popular mp3 players to play and/or charge. I also have a 10GB hard drive on which I can store music, but it will only rip music off audio CDs. It won't copy mp3s from the USB port or from an mp3 CD. Stupid sop to the RIAA.

You also get little spotlights that light up the running boards when you get in and out.


And, if you get the SatNav system, you get one of these things under one of the back seats, too:


I also got the bed access steps that pop out from the sides to let you get to the front of the bed without climbing in it.


And, of course, the most fun was when I got to use my Sawzall to cut away the bottom part of this cabinet so that I could get the door open when I parked in the garage.

It started innocently enough

Being an electrical engineer is very dangerous work. I know what you're thinking, "Oh, puhlease. You're not one of those power electrical engineers who designs electrical distribution systems and gets his hands blown off by 20,000 volt high tension wires. You're a power management architect for things that top out at 130W. That's less than one fifth the power of the amplifier under Max's seat in your new truck. And Max is in no danger of getting his butt blown off."

It would be harder for me to know what you were thinking if you didn't move your lips when you thought. But, then again, it would be nice if turkeys didn't stare up at the sky and drown themselves when it rained. Or if women didn't decide to ignore their husbands once they had children. There are a lot of things that would be nice but aren't going to happen.

So, I am at peace with your lips moving.

I was on my way home from work Wednesday, and when I slung my laptop should strap over my shoulder, a horrible, horrible pain shot through my shoulder blade. Yes, such are the travails of the veritable power management architect - ergonomic injuries from working at a compooter all day. The old tendinitis is acting up.

I loaded up on ibuprofen and tossed and turned all night. It turns out to be hard to sleep if any movement at all causes pain to shoot through your back.

Thursday wasn't any better, though I found that sitting upright was a lot less painful than lying down. It was also 4H meeting night, which means not a lot of time for dinner between 4H and when I get to go out wif da boyz to Fat Camp. While we were chowing down at Arby's, my throat started to hurt. A lot. And so did my ear. The Mrs. noticed that I wasn't my cheery self, so to comfort me, said said, "If you are at all sick when you get home from Fat Camp, you're sleeping in the basement."

That's love, folks. I hope it's not too mushy for you.

When I got home from Fat Camp, my throat still hurt. So did my shoulder. You really can't drink enough beer to kill that kind of pain and still drive home. So, I did what anyone in my position would do - I popped a vicodin that I had left over from the last time I had great pain and went to sleep in the basement guest room.

Ahhh, there's nothing quite like that first vicodin. Yes, you build up a tolerance really quickly, so each one is less and less enjoyable, but that first one - the joy is almost indescribable. It's like the first time you flip on the air conditioned seat cooling in your new truck, only warmer.

So I'm peacefully sleeping in the basement, full of beer and vicodin, and suddenly I am startled awake by the door being flung open. It's dark, I'm not in my normal bed, I don't have my glasses, and I've got a prescription narcotic in my system. In short, I have no f'ing idea what is going on. All I know is that there is a very animated woman in my room lecturing me about something.

All I can see is the clock. 3:44am. I have this conversation with someone standing somewhere behind me, the whole time I'm trying to figure out what is going on:

The Mrs.: "MaxieC has a really croupy-sounding cough!"

Me, CherkyB: "Uhhhhh...there's not much I can do about that."

The Mrs.: "It's starting to interfere with his breathing!"

Me, CherkyB: "It's 3 o'clock in the morning. What can I do about it?"

The Mrs.: "I want to take him to the hospital!"

Me, CherkyB: "OK...and...?"

The Mrs.: "I think he needs to go to the hospital!"

Me, CherkyB: "And...?"

The Mrs.: "I'm going to take him to the ER!"

Me, CherkyB: "OK. Take him to the ER."

The Mrs.: "Fine! I will then! I'll take him to the ER!"

Me, CherkyB: "OK."

Then the door slammed, and I was alone again. The chance of MaxieC dying of a cough in the 10 minutes it takes to drive to the hospital at 3:44am was pretty low, I decided. I went back to sleep.

I heard them return about 1.5 hours later. No one came to wake me up, so I assumed MaxieC was still amongst the living.

When my alarm went off, I took a shower then went upstairs to get some clothes. There was MaxieC lying in bed next to The Mrs. He was awake. I asked him how he was, and he said he was OK.

This woke up The Mrs., who told me, quite proudly I might add, that MaxieC did in fact have the croup, but that he would be just fine because they gave him cough syrup with prednisone at the hospital, thus staving off the sub-1% chance of dying from the croup and bringing us maybe $1000 closer to the deductible limit on the high-deductible health insurance we have.

I wanted to say to MaxieC, "If you are at all sick when you get back from the hospital, you're sleeping in the basement," but The Mrs. looked sleepy and cranky.

Sometimes, when you come across a big pot of crazy, it's best not to stir.

Don't Pity Me

Because I know you don't care.

As you all know by now, this is the week that we refer to around these parts as, "The Week of Disappointment." I've covered it before: here, here, here, and here (and maybe other places, I dunno). It has gone reasonably well this year, I think. Let me give you a quick rundown:

• I was out of town on The Mrs.'s birthday. I called her, but she didn't want to talk. I memorialized the phone call in yesterday's post.
• She complained to The Childrens that I didn't talk long enough.
• HannahC probably has strep throat.
• Yesterday, I made The Mrs. a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for her birthday. I made it all from scratch, except I bought a spray can of decorative icing that came with 4 tips. As I was putting flowers and swirlies and writing "Happy Birthday" on is, The Mrs. asked me, "Can you please leave a part of the cake that you don't ruin with that so that I can have part of it that I can enjoy eating?" Yeah. She actually said, "ruin."
  
• The Mrs. has laryngitis. She went on and on and on about it this morning. About how she knew that something was circling around inside of her looking for a place to settle, and it settled in her voice box, and how it has been so long since the last time she had laryngitis that she can't even remember how long it has been, cuz it has been a long time, and she figured out that the pain in her abdomen had turned out to be gas and had to rummage around on the medicine shelf to try to find the Gas-X at 2:30 am, and after that she could sleep, and boy was she tired cuz she hadn't slept in days cuz of the thing circling around inside of her looking for somewhere to settle, and it settled in her voice box, and now she was all hoarse, and how that was weird cuz it has been so long since she had laryngitis...
• I said, "Well, it sure hasn't affected your ability to talk."
• We were supposed to go to Wild Birds Unlimited today to pick out a new finch feeder, but then The Mrs. decided she was too sick. So, I spent the whole morning creating a movie about it.

Tomorrow will be the 15th anniversary of when I proposed to The Mrs. That is the culminating event of The Week of Disappointment, though I hear there's still like 5 more weeks of winter.

I called The Mrs. on her Birthday

cuz I was out of town on business.

All's well

That ends badly.

I'd like to apologize to all my fans for not writing more often. A couple years back, I could look at any situation and see something blogworthy. Now, I look at every situation and see something mundane.

CherkyB has lost his edge.

It's not really my edge that I've lost. It's my pain.

Oh wait. Here's MaxieC. My pain is found.

[Brief interlude of playing PS2 games with him.]

A few days back, my wife asked me why I didn't become, "One of those famous humor bloggers." I guess she was talking about Frank J, cuz I'm not really aware of any other famous humor bloggers. Funny people, by and large, don't need to immerse themselves in the internet as an outlet for their humor. No, funny people just go around being funny, and then they have to beat the pu$$y off with a stick.

With a stick.

Speaking of which, I told a slow motion joke last week. Damned if I can remember what it was (it was more of a humorous topical reference than a funny joke, per se), but it traveled in a wave at about 1 ft per second. I was sitting at a lunch table with three other guys, and then I put the fish in the water. The guy diagonally across from me said, "I don't get the reference," and then stared, confusedly. Then a couple seconds later, the guy across from me went, "Oh, yeah. Heh."
Then the guy next to me got it. Finally, the guy on the diagonal figured it out. It was really something to behold - how often do you actually get to see humor propagate as sub-sonic speed? It's like one of those videos of polar bears humping.

Or something.

Many Things

First, I'd like to say that I was on edge all day over the special election in Massachusetts. I even had to watch the results live on TV. In the end, Good triumphed over Evil, which quite honestly was kind of a shocker for me, as I figured the Devil has our future all wrapped up in her handbasket already, and only a large stockpile of guns and ammo would pry it loose.

Shows what I know.

Which brings me to an old joke that I haven't been able to get out of my head for weeks now:

Q: How can you tell when Obama is lying?

A: His lips are moving.

But it's not a political blog. I risk alienating one or two of my readers with that above joke. So, you know, it's just a joke. His lips don't actually have to be moving.

--

As you weather fans know, I promised you a review of The Hangover. It was good. I recommend seeing it. It wasn't anywhere near Superbad good, though. It has been claimed that this is the best comedy ever set in Vegas, but I must say I can't personally name any other comedies set in Vegas. A lot of Smokin' Aces was set in Tahoe (or, more accurately, Stateline, NV), and it wasn't technically a comedy either. If it had been a comedy set in Vegas, it would have been better than The Hangover.

I almost got to create a Something Not to Do episode from the movie, when after it ended The Mrs. was bitching about something or other (I tune it out now, after so many years), and I told her she should consider which of the movie's characters she is most like.

Once you see the movie, you'll understand that.

--

I'm thinking of going to Napa. I've always liked wine country.

--

The clincher, I think, happened when I realized how I've been using only blower levels 1 and 4 on the HVAC system in my Dodge for a couple months now, and how 4 is too high, and 1 is too low. It'd be nice if there were some levels in between 1 and 4. Say, 2 and 3. But where 2 and 3 should be, there are instead two levels where all you hear is the fan rattling around on worn-out bearings.

And my truck is from 2003, a time when Chrysler Corp. quality was supposed to be at its peak.

My guess is that Fiat hasn't added a whole lot of quality to the situation.

Time to give Ford another shot.

You don't know the half of it

I was sitting in the back at 4H tonight when the fellow two seats over from me leaned over to his wife, who was seated next to me, and whispered to her, "Boy, Hannah must be a handful at home."

I'm normally quite decisive

But it seems that picking out a new vehicle is one of those things that always takes forever. In general, I think this is because they cost so much more than I want to spend, and then they promptly lose their value. I know, I know, I should buy used. But I've never had particularly good luck with used cars, even in cases where I know that the car was impeccably maintained because I bought it from, say, my parents.

I'm also a very clever person. Not just clever in a "CherkyB brings new life to weather reporting" kind of way. Clever in a "that boy is too clever for his own good" kind of way. You see, a while back I had this grand plan to trick The Mrs. into letting me buy a new truck. It went like this:

Me, CherkyB: "I put the back up higher on HannahC's booster seat."

The Mrs.: "Good. She's been complaining that it was too low."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. It's all the way up now."

The Mrs.: "Well, when she grows some more, we can take the back off and just use the seat part, right?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes. [sigh] But there's a small problem with that."

The Mrs.: "What's that?"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, it'll work fine in the van. My my truck is so old that it doesn't have headrests in the back seat. So when we take the back off the booster seat, her head will be right in front of the back window. If we get in a crash, her head will go through the back window, and it'll shoot glass into her brain stem and kill her."

[Note: this is actually a pretty common way to die in a pickup truck. It's not something I made up. Though, more often, you just get a horrible concussion from smashing the back of your head into glass instead of a headrest.]

The Mrs.: "Oh. You should probably get a new truck."

Me, CherkyB: "Well, if you think so."

So now it's almost bonus time at The Company, and this was not too bad year for us, as we're not as dependent upon the US economy as a lot of companies are. Most of the rest of the world is exiting the recession reasonably rapidly, whereas we are at best holding steady and more likely heading deeper because of the reckless and amateurish economic policy of Mr. Hopenchange.

I have about four weeks until all the bonuses roll in (and I find out the size of them this week, in theory), so I'll need to be striking while the iron is hot. Problem is, I still haven't figured out what to get.

I've narrowed it down to two choices: Ford F-150, and Ram 1500. You may note that it is no longer "Dodge Ram 1500", as Fiat decided to spin off the truck division from Dodge under the Ram label. So you can now buy something called a "Ram Dakota", which would be very similar to my current ride - a Dodge Dakota - except it'd be newer and better in nearly every way. And it'd also be one of the worst-selling pickups on the market, outselling only the badge-engineered Chevy Colorado sold as a GMC Canyon and the same vehicle rebadged and slightly modified sold as a Hummer H3T (and possibly the Ford Ranger rebadged as a Mazda and the Toyota Tacoma rebadged as a Suzuki - trucks I didn't bother to look up the sales figures for).

I guess the good news is that I've eliminated Chevy/GMC, Toyota, and Nissan from the running, each for different reasons. Not coincidentally, I get an affiliates discount from both Ford and Chrysler through The Company which gives them a price advantage over the competition, though this is not a deciding factor (especially since, right now, it looks like the Ram "preferred pricing" is a whopping $250 discount - but they have thousands of dollars of incentives and rebates available to all that makes them largely comparable to the Ford with the affiliate discount).

I would summarize the pro's/con's of the two this way:

• Everything I actually do with my pickup, the Ram is better at than the Ford. But Ram is owned by Fiat.
  
• All those things I wish I did but never actually do, the Ford is better.

For instance, if I were towing a 7000lbs. trailer, the Ford would be better (though, honestly, one should be looking at 3/4 ton class trucks for that kind of weight). I don't actually own any trailer. The only things I might consider buying that I would tow would be a fishing boat, which would have a towing weight of somewhere around 2000lbs., or a pop-up camper, which would be even less.

The ride with a 1000lbs. payload is much better in the Ford than in the Ram, though the opposite is true when unloaded. This is my daily driver vehicle. Guess how often I have 1000lbs. in the bed. Six times a year. 3 loads of shredded redwood bark for the mulch beds, and three loads of compost for the garden. Sure, I move some furniture around on occasion, and our trips to Sam's Clubs are legendary in their volume, if not their weight. But, gosh, it feels like I should optimize for unloaded, no-trailer.

There is really no question that for me, the Ram is the better truck. My Dakota has been quite reliable (as good as our Honda minivan - and quite possibly better), and after 6 years and 60k miles, with half of those miles sitting idle in traffic in San Schmose, there's nothing at all wrong with it that a new set of shocks wouldn't fix (except for a lack of headrests in the back seat). But, gosh, Ram is owned by Fiat. What are the chances it'll exist 6 years from now?

I dunno.

Don't worry. It happens to all guys...

...as they get older.

Just words, they were. Yeah yeah, all guys but me.

But it happened to me.

Yep. I mixed a drink, took a sip, and I said to myself, "Self, that drink is a little too strong."

God have mercy on my soul.

Vocabulary Corner

I learned a new word today: "fatocalypse." I was reading this wonderful article called "The Misandry Bubble" that is a rather longish article about, among other things, the changing nature of the marriage "contract" in Western society, particularly in the US, and how these types of changes have in all past societies that have implemented similar systems proven unsustainable and have led to the disappearance of that culture, and all of a sudden I came across a new word.

Here it is, in context:

We earlier discussed why marriage was created, but equally important were the factors that sustained the institution and kept it true to its objectives. The reasons that marriage 'worked' not too long ago were :

1) People married at the age of 20, and usually died by the age of 50. People were virgins at marriage, and women spent their 20s tending to 3 or more children. The wife retained her beauty 15 years into the marriage, and the lack of processed junk food kept her slim even after that. This is an entirely different psychological foundation than the present urban feminist norm of a woman marrying at the age of 34 after having had 10 or more prior sexual relationships, who then promptly emerges from her trim chrysalis in an event that can best be described as a fatocalypse.

I suggest you read the whole thing.

Project #1

Stupid Saturation Coverage

Is it just me, or every time you hear "White Christmas" do you think of Tiger Woods?

...and may all your mistresses be whiiiiite.

The Trepidation

Tomorrow is the big day. The day we've prepared for for weeks, working our fingers to the bone. Yes, tomorrow is when the in-laws arrive for their Christmas visit.

Not just any in-laws, mind you. Of course, Grandmother Moo and Ellie are cherished, but they've been here before and therefore are No Big Deal. The Big Deal is Ellie's new husband. He's never been here before, and thus he doesn't know what slobs we are. Apparently, we want to keep this a big secret, as we've been cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. I even had to put up a bunch of towel bars in some of the bathrooms so that there wouldn't be any draping of towels over shower doors to dry.

Plus, we bought all new towels. And a new toilet seat for the basement bathroom (which is where the guest room is). I even splurged and bought a full tank of gas for the truck.

I'm sure he'll be completely fooled.

Movie Review - Inglorious Basterds

Meh.

Bubble Boy

Something Not to Do 21

Tonight was an odd night, as I ate dinner out with one of my old cohorts from Santa Clarabelle who was here to take my job away from me (don't fret - it's a crap job, and I have much better jobs lined up to replace it. As far as you know), plus, The Mrs. had a migraine today. It ended up that all of us had eaten before HannahC got out of gymnastics, but I sat with her while she ate dinner cuz I like to do that.

But it went badly.

HannahC: "Dah, this is something that Momma is going to talk to you about. But, well..."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah?"

HannahC: "You see, Miss Mickey has this tarantula that she doesn't want anymore, and..."

Me, CherkyB: "No!"

HannahC: "But..."

Me, CherkyB: "Oh, Jesus Christ."

At this point, HannahC burst into tears. That, dear readers, is Something Not to Do.

Update: It has come to my attention that it is not clear to some of my readers what the "something not to do" was in this episode. It was actually a two-fer. First, as a parent, even if you are not particularly religious, you are not supposed to blaspheme in front of your childrens. Second, you're also supposed to be more gentle and not cause your childrens to burst into tears.

Though I suspect that females use the tears thing as a technique for manipulation more than as an expression of emotion.

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Saving the fishies

During the cold snap we've been having this past week, the front koi pond decided to freeze. That has never happened before, as the combination of the pump running and the floating heater has always kept it going just fine. But during our multi-day sub-zero spell, the pipe from the pump to the waterfall froze, blocking water circulation. Then, we got a nice layer of ice across most of the pond except right around the heater.



Today it finally warmed up (much of the day over 40), so I set about trying to figure out how to get the pond running again. First thing I did was inspect the pump too see WTF.

Well, the old pump inlet was quite clogged with leaves. Plus a 3" crayfish (who perished as a result, sadly). So, I'm guessing that the flow of water was pretty severely restricted, and this was enough to allow a pipe to freeze. I may need to upgrade the pumps to what they call "sewage pumps". Those are designed to pump water that has crap in it, which they just grind up as it passes through. The pumps I have now are water pumps, and they sieve out any foreign matter in the water and thus clog with leaves all the damn time. I don't know how the leaves get in there - the box is covered and there is both a skimmer net and a 1" thick nylon mesh filter that everything has to pass through to get to the pump, yet the pumps clogs a lot.

I got to use my early-Christmas present from moother-in-law insulated waterproof gloves to screw around with the pump. My fingers stayed nice and dry and warm. I can put my hand in boiling water for up to 20 seconds and handle dry ice with these gloves, too. I'll let you know if that comes up.

Restoring the flow on the pump, though, didn't restore flow to the waterfall. Something was definitely frozen downstream. So I dumped a 5-gallon bucket of hot water into the waterfall box. This softened up the filter screens in there enough so that I could remove them, but the water stayed in the box. That box is higher than the pump, so normally if the pump is off, water will flow out of the box back through the pump. Nothing doing.

Next, I got another bucket of hot water and poured it over the ultraviolet sterilizer. It's about a 2-foot long PVC tube with a UV lightbulb down the center. I figured it might freeze given it's not really buried (cuz you have to change the bulb every year), but just has some rocks piled up on it. Still, the water stayed in the waterfall box.

I went inside to refill the 5ga bucket with hot water. When I returned, I noticed that the water level in the waterfall box was suspiciously lower than it had been earlier. Could it be? It couldn't be this easy. Could it?

I poured the hot water into the waterfall box, and I watched the level slowly go down. Sure enough, I could see the water flowing back out of the pump box at the other end of the pond. When it had emptied itself out, I turned on the pump. Voila! Waterfall.

A picture is worth 1000 words

But a picture really doesn't capture the real art of a weather report.