New Site Design

I had a bit of free time on my hands and accidentally discovered Blogger's easy to use site designer and with a little bit of fiddling, gave the blog a new look. And, because my wife asked, the background picture behind the title is mine, taken in our unimpressive backyard.

How to...

Katie got this little container for holding plastic bags from Wal-Mart yesterday. We hang onto our plastic bags for dog-related purposes and they tend to clutter up in the pantry closet. This cheap container is supposed to hold all those bags and even has a (faux?) stainless steal finish.

Installation is easy and straight-forward and instruction are only necessary if you've never done anything like this before. Two drywall anchors and two screws. Done in less than five minutes.

The instructions do have some comedic value, though. Check out the list of needed tools, shown in universal-style images.

That's right. In addition to a screwdriver, drill, hammer, and pencil you'll also need to be a human male.

Water Dogs

Both our dogs are English Springer Spaniels, a breed whose original purpose was to help in hunting water fowl. Its not surprising then, that they love water and the only things that make baths unpleasant is all that soap and shampoo. Last year we purchased a large inflatable pool for them to play in and that lasted a week or two until they popped it. It also took much more water to fill than I expected.

This year we went with the cheaper, smaller pool and bring it out on hot summer days to help cool them off when outside. Our dogs are very different in temperament and I think the following two movie clips will make this clear.

Anise:

Basil:

Attic Fan

This past spring, in an attempt to save ourselves some money, hassle, and discomfort, we decided to purchase and install an attic fan. Katie had experience with one growing up and insisted that if we were going to do this it had to be quiet so we ended up on one provided by Airscape. As with my home projects, the install took longer than I thought but once it was in and running we were loving it. Instead of messing with multiple box fans that didn't seem to work very well we open a few windows and flip a switch. The fan pulls in the cool air from outside and shoves the hot air in the house and attic outside.

The fan ceases to be useful, though, when things don't really cool down at night very much. We knew that the fan wouldn't be able to be used all summer but based on historical data on the temperatures here in town, it seemed it would still be worth it the rest of the year. The summer heat has seemed to hit a bit early this year and already the night-time lows are 78'F at our house; there's no sense in exchanging one set of hot air with another so the fan is staying off.

Other than this not so small complication, we have been big fans of the fan. For people who live in places where the night-time lows are more reasonable, I can whole-heartedly endorse the product. Where I grew up, we didn't have air-conditioning and this worked out fine most of the year but a fan like this would have made all the difference and saved my father from same box-fan routine we used to do here.

Helping with the move

Our friends were making a move this last Wednesday and I volunteered to help them out. I have no classes during the summer leaving my schedule very flexible and I was glad to do what I could. Unfortunately, most of the working world does not have weekdays off so when we started in the morning at 9:30am, there was four of us. By lunch there was just three. The morning turned into a long day but by early evening we were starting to see more help show up, thankfully.

As the sun was setting a group of guys was trying to manipulate a sleeper-sofa down a tight squeeze in the stairwell to the basement. We were very close to making it work but just couldn't get it to fit. After tearing up the door jamb, putting a small hole in the wall of the stairwell, and scuffing a big of paint off the other stairwell corner, we gave up and decided the sofa would have to live upstairs. We gathered to eat a quick bite before finishing for the evening and I took stock of the man-power we had present and came to a conclusion: as tired as we were, we needed to move the piano tonight. We probably weren't going to have any more help at a future date and needed to get it down while we could.

I made my case to my friend the home-owner and I could tell that he wasn't thrilled with the idea as he was as tired as I. Using what little skills of persuasion I have, though, I was able to convince him to at least give it a shot. It was the last item to be moved and if we could get the piano moved, we could claim victory for the day. Six guys, one big, heavy, wooden box.

Loading it into the truck was not too difficult, though one of the casters was broken so we lifted it the entire way. Once in the truck we started the short ride back to the new place.

Half a block from the house, at the last turn of the ride, the most unbelievable event occurred. The piano, which we had not tied down, came flying out of the bed of the truck. It came crashing to the ground but, amazingly, stayed more or less in one piece. I was in the vehicle behind the fateful truck and I have never seen anything like this. The piano started to lean to one side, the top of the console got over the edge of the truck, and somehow, the caster wheels ended higher up than any other part of the piano as it seemed to jump and flip towards the street.

We all stopped, got out of the cars, and stared for a minute, still in shock over what happened. I looked back at the road on the corner we had just turned and couldn't see any of Wichita's famous potholes, drainage troughs, or uplifted pavement. It was as smooth as roads get around here. How did this happen?

We loaded the piano back into the truck and, after traveling a few hundred feet, into the house. A quick glance while walking by the piano and you wouldn't think it had fallen to the road but even the most cursory inspection showed not only deep scuff marks and gouges in the wood but also that the keyboard was uneven, elevated, and none of the keys could be moved. The piano was no beauty to begin with but now it couldn't even be played.

Epilogue:

Katie and I rode over to the new house the other day on our way home from a farmer's market to see how the unpacking was going. We found out that, as miraculous as the flying piano incident was, even more miraculous is that our friends were able to easily fix the piano and every key works! The only problem with the keyboard was that the keys had lifted out of their guides and were resting on top of them rather than sliding between them. Simply lifting the keys and resting them back into place solved the problem. The piano needs to be tuned, of course, and all the beauty marks are still there but the instrument functions the way it was designed.

June 5th

June 5th 2009 was the day I was laid off at Cessna. That morning I was told by my supervisor that I was being let go and after that day I never went back to my desk again. It was not a happy day.

June 5th 2010 at 4:30am my first niece was born to my wife's sister in Enid, OK. She had a high-risk pregnancy and was induced so as not to prevent any complications. (I assume that was the logic, anyways.) She checked-in to the hospital on Friday morning but for a variety of reasons did not progress as quickly as was expected. As seems to be the case for every mother I meet, the labor was lengthy and Maylin Brooke wasn't born until nearly twenty-one hours later.

Thankfully, other than the long labor everything went smoothly. The epidural helped that as well.

I hope to be a father some day but for now, I'm an uncle, now three times over. This June 5th was much better than the last.

Escape!

Last night Anise had a brief night on the town. I had left the door between our garage and the backyard open as well as the garage door to help cool off our garage. I forgot to close them, Katie let Anise out into the backyard, and she took advantage of the opportunity to explore the neighborhood. Thankfully somebody managed to grab her long enough to read her collar and give us a call. By the time I headed out on my bike, I could see her up the street, playing with the dogs of some of our friends. As best we can tell, she just kind of took herself for a walk along the route we normally go. She came right away when I called and raced me back home, enjoying her freedom and crazily zig-zagging down the street in front of me. When we got her inside she just kept running around the house; she was completely wired and it took half an hour for her to calm down enough to put her to bed.

She appeared to have a lot of fun and if it weren't for the fact that she lacks complete common sense when it comes to cars (and many other things) then I don't think we would have been very worried. Owning pets is like being parents in many small ways and we had a small parenting scare last night.