What a Week. I Need a Vacation.

I could talk about the great flight I had coming home from Kauai last week.  The two full-length movies (The Matrix and Chocolat) I watched on my iPhone through great-sounding Skull Candy earbuds.  I could talk about how perfect the timing of the flight attendants was when they came around at just the right time each of the three times they gave me free coke that I could slyly empty my rum miniatures into.  I could talk about how the people sitting next to me had just the right talk/shut up ratio.  I could talk about how amazing the early evening landing was, with the waning sun lighting everything up as we flew north toward SeaTac airport.  I could talk about how I saw four volcanoes at one time out my window as we neared home: Mt. Hood, Mt. St Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Rainier.

No, I didn't come to talk about those things.

Last Tuesday when I got in at the airport, Sarah picked me up and took me home.  She needed to finalize a project she had been working on for school, so she was going to hang out at the house for a couple hours when she was printing stuff.  When I walked through the door I noticed it smelled musty, bit it had been two weeks we had been gone and I figured it just needed to be aired-out.  I was putzing around and checking on stuff (computer, mail, etc).  I wasn't too concerned about my bedtime (even though the next day was a workday) because I was still 3 hours behind on Kauai time.  Finally, at about 11:00 I started to fade.  My energy levels were running low.  I decided I'd better put my clothes and stuff away before I kicked Sarah out and went to bed.  I walked back to the guest bedroom where all my shirts hang in the closet.

Squish, squish, squish.

That was the sound my stocking feet made as they trod on the carpet in that bedroom.  What the...?  I went over to the water heater in the closet and the whole top of it was wet.  Fortunately it wasn't squirting.  I went for a towel to mop things off to try to get a handle on what was leaking.  It was not a line, it was the heater itself.  Water was welling up out the top from below.  The carpet was wet and musty-smelling, and all the particle board under the carpet was also saturated.  Ditto the particle board under the water heater.  I had no choice but to turn the water off and loop the lines, bypassing the water heater completely.  That gave the house water at least--just not hot water.  By the time I had gotten to this point it was somewhere around 12:30 and I was dragging both physically and emotionally.  I wanted to come home, put my feet up, and relax.  Now I was in the midst of a crisis.

After getting only a couple hours sleep that night, the next day when I got home from work (and it was a heavy day of it too), I badly needed to sit and rest.  No.  I ran down to Home Depot and bought another water heater and feed lines.  Little did I know I couldn't install it yet.  With the water heater drained and tossed out in the back yard, I had to do exploratory surgery.  The same thing happened Wednesday and Thursday too.  No rest.  Instead, I dug deeper.  .  The more I dug, the worse it looked.  The particle board that lined the entire closet was so bad I removed it with a large scraper--one scoop at a time.  With that out of the way, the 2x8's below were visible.  Rot.  Lots of rot.  The drywall was rotten all along the bottom too.  By Friday night (3 days without hot water at that point) I had pretty much decided my course of action:  Remove and rebuild.  There's no way I could put another water heater on that floor.

It's weird to stand on dirt while you're inside your house, waist deep in a hole where a closet should be.  To have to put a door mat outside the bedroom to wipe mud off my feet before I walked through the house was also weird.  It took careful thought to repair the damage without going even deeper.  There were plenty of wall studs that had water damage but I forced myself to adopt a stopping point.  I came to the conclusion that what I was looking at was water damage from at least two water heaters.  Wood generally doesn't rot the way this stuff was rotted in only a decade or two.  I spend a lot of time doing this job.  I had to rebuild a lot of things to restore solidity to the area, and that's no small feat for someone non-carpenter savvy like myself.

I took lots of pictures.  Here are a few of them:

Notice the black mold and
the water heater imprint?

Particle board removed
along with rotted drywall

The top of this floor joist was
rotted so I removed some of it

A spacer board to take the
place of the rot I removed

Digging for treasure?

New support in place

Other new supports
and boards coming in

Sub floor complete

Or is this the sub floor level?

New plywood over tar paper

Floor done, careful drywall removal

New drywall!

Freshly mudded, and new vinyl

Just like new!

It's been five days without hot water.  I skipped a shower or two, took one cold shower one night, and took nice, hot showers across the street at Rachyl and Tony's house (bless their heart and proximity) a couple times.  I'm glad that's all over.

Now we just have to move the bed out and roll the carpet back so all of that can totally dry.

The Space/Time Continuum of Air Travel

It's amazing how much of an impact something can have on air travel.  During this trip over here to Sue's parents' house on the island of Kauai, I studied things that had a major impact on the space/time continuum of air travel.

I know there's a rule for bladder function as it relates to air travel.  Like the fact that buttered bread always seems to fall buttered side down, similarly, you always have to pee as soon as the wheels leave the runway.  The feeling that you have to pee increases exponentially as you climb in altitude.  Maybe it's an air pressure thing.  Most times Sue and I choose window seats, and this year was no exception.  That means there is a stranger occupying the aisle seat next to us.  I call him the gatekeeper.  Just the very presence of a human sitting there that you don't know keeps you from getting up to pee.  Just so I don't appear to be a pain in the ass, I always try to talk my bladder out of it.

"You can't be serious... We can't pee now--we're climbing."

"Are you sure?  You can't really under that much pressure--you just peed a few minutes ago in the terminal, remember?"

"Come on--it's going to be at least fifteen more minutes before they even turn the seat belt sign off, and when they do half the airplane is going to want to pee at the same time."

"It's embarrassing standing up and having the whole plane looking at you when you get up."

The flight attendants don't help things either.  They block the aisle with a beverage cart.  Yes, the beverage cart that gives you more things to make you have to pee.

Yes, I have observed that the very fact that you have to pee can double or even triple the duration of your flight.  If you don't want your 6-hour flight to feel like ten or twelve, you need to pee as soon as the urge hits you.

An uncomfortable seat can also be a contributor to doubling the length of your flight.  Just having a seat that feels like it's leaning the wrong way is all it takes.  I need to consider a memory foam cushion that conforms to my aging buttocks.  Yeah... That's what I need.

Conversely to the above items, I have found that watching a movie is a sure-fire way to shorten a plane flight.  Sue and I both went out of our way to put multiple full-length movies on our iPhones.  That way we would have choices.  Everybody loves choices.  I ended up watching a whole movie... Listening to a few songs, then watching another movie.  I actually almost got annoyed when we got to a point in our descent when they made us turn off all our personal electronic devices.

What?  We're here already?

Espionage

You know what you just never hear these day? The word espionage. It used to be something that was almost always in the news or in novels.  It never failed to add an element of mystique and danger to a seemingly ordinary detective story.  Nowadays, you never hear about espionage, nor do you ever hear the word used in conversation.

Espionage.

It has a dangerous sound to it, doesn't it?

Espionage.

Yesterday morning at work espionage came up. Marc, our assembly lead, was lurking around a corner, pretending to sneak up on my inbox and plant more work in it for me. He's a funny guy--always putting a little lighthearted weirdness into an otherwise mundane workplace. I looked at him with my head turned slightly away from him--eyes mere slits.

"What are you doing, you sneaky man?" I asked, with a Rick version of a French accent.
"I am a master of espionage." he answered, peeking from around the corner.
"Espionage. Now that is a word of danger... Of spies... A word to impress women with." I continued as he came forth from his pretend hiding place.  "Women melt at the mere mention of the word espionage."

Just then, Elaine walked up.  I turned my head slightly, narrowed my eyes, cocked an eyebrow, and spoke one word.

"Espionage." I said, throwing a little extra French accent into it.
"Espionage." Marc repeated, watching her reaction.

Elaine laughed as she continued walking. I looked at Marc.

"You zee?" I said, while Elaine was still within earshot, "Women love zis word espionage. It is both dangerous and romantic. Zey cannot resist ze lure and power of espionage."

"Espionage." Marc added.

She stopped and looked back at us, laughing.

It's a fun word to say. That's why I'm repeating it over and over. It has a mysterious, romantic flair to it--no doubt because it's a French word.

Espionage. I think most French words are that way. They add a passion to an otherwise ordinary spoken word.

And they make your ordinary work day a little less ordinary.

Meh.

I find myself less than enthused about much of anything these days.  I sit here and try to think of a single thing that I feel excited about and just can't come up with anything.  This blog? Nope.  My Harley? Nope.  Our upcoming trip to Kauai? Nope, not that either.  Even the fact that the weather is changing for the warmer and things are growing.  Nope, it's not working either.

The funny thing is: I don't feel the 'blahs'.  On the contrary--I feel fine.  At least I think I do.

Instead of answering people with a 'wow' or a raise of the eyebrows, I find myself doing more of a 'hm' sort of thing.  At least it's not an apathetic "whatever" or sneer, right?

It's been ages since I've blogged anything.  I know a lot has transpired since my last blog, but I feel no excitement to write about it.

My car has been dead with a mysterious ailment that I can't find, and has been for months now.  You'd think the $4+ gas prices would goad me into action to get that underway wouldn't you?  Well, it doesn't. I look at the car and go, "Hm" and then look at something else.  My truck runs great but it's a gasaholic compared to my aged Neon.

The Harley has failed to enthuse me for a long time now.  I don't attribute it to anything in particular.  I think it's just a victim of my constant fickle attitude towards things.  I jump on board with something new and I run with it like crazy, than it fizzles out and there's nothing.  It's kind of like a skyrocket without the burst at the end.  I will be putting it up for sale, and spring is the time to get 'er done.  Lots of folks will be bitten by the motorcycle bug.

My computer got an unscheduled makeover last weekend when I picked up a virus I couldn't shake.  It wasn't serious enough that I didn't still have control of everything so I was able to do a nice, careful backup of every single thing on it.  With a complete reformat and reload, it's running nice and peppy again and I didn't lose a thing.

This was a winter when we actually used all of our firewood.  Thanks to extra usage (cold, power outage, house guests, etc) we went through 2 cords of wood this year.  I had to bring home a truckload of "square firewood" (aka pallets) from work to keep us nice and cozy.  A couple of weeks ago we brought home 3 pickup loads of tree rounds from the city park behind my parents' house.  We're pretty sure they are Locust tree, and if that's the case it will be good wood when it's seasoned.  I split some of it a couple nights ago and it seems to split well for as heavy and dense as it is.

I've been having fun with the iPhone apps.  I have over 70 of them so far.  I think I have actually bought a couple of them, but most not.  I don't feel like I'm doing anything illegal, rather--I feel like I'm more of a software tester.  Both Sue and I are enjoying some fun things on our phones.  Oh, and they actually work very well as phones too.

Sarah and Teresa lost their beloved dog last month.  It's an odd thing because it's exactly the same way their previous one went a few years ago:  Seizures.  I have to wonder if there isn't something they're getting into around their house that's causing it.  Standing water in a plant pot or bucket, or a plant itself that they're chewing on?  Whatever the reason, it's tragic either way.  Now when I go over there, there is no "dog alarm" to announce my presence, and the cats are both very visible and have their house back.

Along the same vein, a canine tragedy also struck Melinda and Danny last summer.  We only found out a couple weeks ago when we visited them.  It seems one of their beloved (and amazingly smart!) Border Collies jumped into the truck when she saw the door open (you know how dogs are).  The trouble is, when someone walks by an open car door their natural reaction is to shut it, right?  Well, when you put pet together with closed vehicle and have it take place in August the result is not good.  Very tragic.  We'll miss her.

On a good note, Dane is doing superb at work.  I've never seen anyone move so fast when he goes from point A to point B in my life.  The people there all like him and he's already had lots of opportunities to pick up skills and knowledge.  Oh, and can you say overtime?  He loves overtime!  Overall translation: Great employee.

Let spring and summer begin!

The Return of Sanity

It's been over a month since my last real blog post, and given the nature of all that's transpired in that time, it really doesn't surprise me.  My last blog post was just a poem and I don't think anyone other than myself cares for those (too bad).  It's about time I slapped something together isn't it?

We've finally gotten things quieted down around here.  There has been a lot of change in our house recently, and when I started adding things up I was surprised to find out just how many things have happened.  All the activity also spanned a greater amount of time than I was aware of.  In other words, it was fast and furious for a while around these parts.

Here are some of the key points of all the turmoil from my perspective--pretty much in the order in which they happened:

• Dane moved back home in early December.  It was mainly so he could save up some money and not have to pay rent where he was living.  But before he did so, all my stuff had to be moved out of that room into the garage.  It was mostly a storage room at that point and we needed to be able to put a bed back down and he obviously needed enough room to live in it.  I was resentful.  After all--all my stuff (junk to Suz) was going to the cold, damp garage.  Would it ever return?
  
• During the next week or so following the room preparation several loads of Dane's furniture-type stuff were put into temporary storage in the garage.  Our truck was directly involved more than once, but Suzie did the deed during those times I believe.  It seemed that most of that activity took place in the evening hours.  Sometimes I think that everyone else in the world stays up until midnight but me.
  
• Dane moves in.  It took me no time at all to realize I liked having Dane here because he's so social.  He talked, laughed, and related stories all the time.  Conversely, Keith is a ninja.  He makes appearances like a flash bulb.  Poof! and he's gone again.  Anyway, during this time Dane still worked a construction job up in Edmonds so he had to get up fairly early.  I was more than a little concerned (it's my way of saying worried) about our interaction in the morning and how it would work out bathroom-wise and all that, but it went fine.  It's also my quiet time and I was hoping that wouldn't be disrupted.  It didn't.  It was fine.  I'm thinking he worked there another week or so and that job ended.  Back to quiet mornings.
  
• Throw in a little holiday turmoil, but not much. (Nobody in this family celebrates it but me, but that doesn't mean I don't do a fine job of fretting over stuff all by myself.  I do.)  Gift-giving went fine, but I still have a lot of holiday turmoil that bounces around in my head.  Traditions, events, family interactions all weigh on me, and in the end always turn out to be non-events.
  
• Early January brought Denny and Heather's new daughter, Taylor, into the picture.  That meant a lot of activity around here for Sue while she helped with things and took pictures and such.  That was pretty easy for me.  I stayed home.
  
• (During all this time Dane's wedding plans are still evolving.)
  
• Sarah had a birthday in late January, and I fretted about what to give her.  She's now drinking age, so I gave her a nice meal out at Azteca with a celebratory margarita.
  
• Also in late January Dane found a new job--at the same place I work.  I was happy for him, but inside I had no idea how he would work out.  He hasn't had any work experience like that before.  I hoped for him to be a good reflection on myself and Suzie.  (He is doing great by-the-way.)  I also fretted about the fact that it meant the two of us would be competing for time and space in the morning as we readied for work.  That ended up being fine too.
  
• Dane get's he and his bride-to-be's new home finalized.  They got lucky finding that place!  We make several pickup truck trips with his stored goods from the garage in preparation to them moving in after they're married.
  
• Monday before their wedding we evicted Dane and move him into his new home.  As Sue would say, "You go now--bye bye."
  
• Tuesday the room Dane formerly inhabited got a complete, whirlwind makeover from Sue in preparation for her parents, Flynn and Maggie, coming for two weeks.  It was now a real guest room, complete with artworks on the wall.
  
• They came the next day.  They showed up long after I went to bed but I heard them.
  
• Dane stayed at his new empty, topsy-turvy home alone all week before his wedding. He kept company with all sorts of boxes and piles I would suppose.  I don't think he was home all that much though--if he wasn't working he was visiting his beautiful fiance'.  He did fine on his own and was never late for work.  He still used us for his food though--both daytime lunch-making and eating dinner.
  
• Sue did an excellent job of finding me some killer shoes and pants for the event.  She gets embarrassed about how I dress and didn't want that during her son's wedding.  Can't say I blame her.  Nice, black slacks, and nice designer Italian shoes--both like new and compliments of Value Village.  I was dressed as well as George Zimmer!
  
• The big wedding. Whew! Glad that's over... The amount of girly stuff going on was driving me nuts.  The planning, crafting, organizing, buying, phone calls, meetings, and all that stuff was mind-boggling.  Throw in fits, tantrums, and worrying by one of them when things either don't go right, don't go at all, or they just don't know how they're going, and it was a mental stew in our house and Rachyl's house both.
  
• Then there was the wedding wind-down. For the following week there were pictures getting pored over, food items divided up, unused items returned for refund, and all sorts of things.
  
• The final step in the mix was when Flynn and Maggie left to go back to their paradise in Kauai.  The house suddenly went still.

Like Suzie's blog said, "Whew."

It was interesting having Flynn and Maggie here.  It's unusual to me to see folks their age interact with their computers as much as they do.  They did what Suzie and I always do:  Set up hiz & herz laptops at the dining room table and call it 'command central' from that point on.  Flynn, being of Hawaiian descent, lives for warm weather, so naturally he was smitten with the comfort our wood stove kept them provided with.  Still, they had to wrap themselves up plenty in their bed at night time.  Denny graciously provided them with full use of one of his vehicles during their stay.  Because they used to live here and knew so many people we expected they would have been out and about a lot more playing "catch up" with all their old acquaintances, but I guess the weather and our comfort kept them closer to home.  There were also a few times when one or another of them was feeling under the weather for whatever reason and chose to stay close.  Sorry about that folks (not that we had any control over that sort of thing).  The last thing we wanted was for either of you to get sick for any reason.  I fixed Flynn up with some new family tree software, and gave him access to my library login information  and he was like a kid in a candy store.  His love and pursuit of his genealogy hobby fueled him the last couple of days they were here, and from my perspective, a lot of progress was made along those lines.

It was fun, but I'm sure they were as happy to have their home back as we were ours when it was time for them to return to the land of wild chickens and pineapple.

Hey, now we get to descend on their world in a few months!

Pleading for Air

I started this poem a couple weeks ago but forgot about it until this morning. It's in reference to our amazingly brutal ice storm of a few weeks back.

I know everybody has the tendency to burn brush when they have to get rid of it. After all--it's free and you don't have to haul it.  The trouble is, when 1 out of 3 households are doing it at the same time, that's a lot of burning, a lot of smoke, and a lot of stink.  When the weather prevents it from dissipating, it's even worse.

This poem is for the pyromaniac lawn & garden fanatics out there.

Pleading for Air 

The freezing rain that fell that night
broke trees and branches with its might. 

Then people piled and burned the stuff
that fell when trees had had enough. 

The pungent, bluish smokey haze
goes not, but rather, here it stays. 

Instead of hauling it away
they opted to burn fires all day. 

Sure, nature's way of pruning a tree
isn't everyone's cup of tea, 

but I wish that folks would think of those
that have bad lungs or sensitive nose. 

Our eyes burn hot when we're outside
in neighborhoods where we reside. 

Come on people, stop burning crap
that's still full green and filled with sap. 

Rick Williams

All Grown Up!

A milestone in Sarah's life took place this week:  My little girl turned 21 years old!

Something people always seem to say about such an event is usually something like, "It seems like just the other day...", or "I can remember when you were just..." followed by some sort of size or age-related remark.

Well, it's the same for me of course.

Sarah was sort of a miracle baby.  Her mom lost one of her ovaries not long before she was pregnant, and just after Sarah was born the remaining one shut down.  It was a small window of opportunity she fell into for sure.  You know--before I was in such a scenario myself, I remember wondering why anyone would really want to see their child being born.  It just seemed like such a messy and private thing.  Well, when the opportunity presented itself to me as a new father, I didn't question it--I was eager to be there.  We only got one ultrasound during the pregnancy and it really didn't provide us with any information about what sex the new baby was, so as she was born I was the one to make the announcement to her mother as she was born.

When she was tiny we put a bunch of little color Formica samples that we got from one of the hardware stores on a bead chain.  We got them together as sort of a jingly thing for her to play with when we were in the car.  We called them her colors.  When we were ready to go somewhere we'd say, "Sarah, where are your colors?"  She'd start looking around until she found them.  She never went anywhere without her colors.  She knew fuchsia, teal, and all sorts of other colors before she could even walk.  I remember fuchsia was "booshba" to her.  If you tried to fool her with any colors she'd catch it right off the bat.

My favorite times with Sarah were reading stories to her.  Her mom and I were avid garage sale shoppers, and we amassed a huge collection of children's books.  I think I remember counting and we had over 600 of them.  When Sarah was an infant, her mother and I made a pact that we would never deny her if she wanted us to read to her.  Little did we know how much we would have to follow through on that decision.  From even before she could walk she would pull as many books as she possibly could off her bookshelf and head toward the nearest of us that was sitting.  I remember reading  a half a dozen books to her, and the whole time she would be intently focused on every single word and picture on every page.  When the last of the stack of books would be finished, I would breathe a sigh of relief.  Trouble is, she would climb down, toddle over to the shelf, and grab another armload.  We read a lot of stories over the years.  Her love for the books never waned.  I was always on the lookout for books that were a little different--books that offered a little more imagination.  Those were my favorites.  I also chose the ones with the best artwork.

I loved to go on drives with her.  I put some custom seat belts in the center of my pickup truck that were long enough to embrace her booster seat, and she was my copilot.  She chattered away, taking in everything that she saw.

I helped her with school projects a few times over the years, and like many parents probably went a little overboard--like one particular time when she was in maybe second grade.  Her school was named after the astronaut Dick Scobee, and they would occasionally have space-related events.  This time all the kids in her class were to dress up in some kind of special outfit or hat and they would parade in and out of every classroom in the school.  For Sarah, I made a helmet.  It was a motorcycle helmet that was covered in aluminum foil, and was equipped with a custom-made rotating dish antenna on top.  I made the antenna out of the top half of a Dri-Z-Air cage and some kind of battery powered rotating lollipop that was in the stores at the time.  All she had to do was reach up and push a button to start it rotating.  She was a hit!  Another time I made her a tuned xylophone out of electrical conduit for her music class.  I think she still has that one.

She was immersed in all sorts of things as she grew up.  Her mom insisted on exposing her to dance classes.  She did that for a few years.  I hated dance recitals.  I couldn't stand waiting for her to appear on stage and having to endure all those other fledglings, but when she was up there I'd get all teary-eyed and proud.  We also had her in soccer for several years.  I was one of the few parents that actually stood out and watched during practices.  I don't remember how many years she was kicking soccer balls, but it seems like it was like 8 or 9.  I've always liked to see her learning and progressing in the things she did.  Volleyball, art, math... There were so many things she was good at.

As she got older, things started happening faster.  I remember one time when it occurred to me that I was officially unable to help her with her math homework any longer.  She was way over my head in middle school.  It seems like the older she got the less I remember things.  I guess it was just the fact that the older a child gets the less direct parental involvement and supervision is taking place.

Ask almost any father and he will say the same thing:  "She may be an adult now, but she will always be my little girl."