Weather pixies are evil. Homey
Weather pixies are evil. Homey needs to make them die.
Weather pixies are evil. Homey needs to make them die.
Early this morning I became an uncle for the first time. Alison’s brother had their daughter, Lauren this morning. She came via C-section because she was breech. All is well. It’s a strange feeling to be an uncle.
Lauren shares her birthday with my Dad who turns 56 today. Hard to imagine that my dad is a few years from 60. Someone stop the clock, please….
Today my last plane parts should arrive. I hope to have it up in the air this weekend. Here’s hoping.
Tomorrow, 8pm E A G L E S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This weekends itinerary, wash and wax both vehicles. Pressure washer party and normal house maintenance routine. We may also try to catch a movie.
We watched the Bachelorette and Celebrity Mole last night. We didn’t realize the fun only started at 9pm so it was a late night. Both shows were good and will make the Tivo list. Cathy Griffin (Griffith?) is EXTREMELY funny on celebrity mole.
Today I met up with the insurance appraiser to look at the buick. He pretty much agreed the car was history. Now I wait for the insurance company to contact me to discuss settlement. I am hoping to do a salvage buy-back of the buick so I can sell it as a parts car.
My new plane should be complete soon, I am just waiting for a few parts. Pictures are on the way.
Eagles play this Saturday night. I hope Donovan is ready to rock and roll. It would be quite a disappointment to have their season end now after so many things wound up falling their way.
The pool guys didn’t show Monday as they promised but they did show up on Tuesday. We came home to a drained pool. It looks like they drained it, patched the wall and were in the process of filling it all in one day. Too bad we have had to wait 5 weeks + for them to show. Now our pool is filling with brown smelly well water. 🙁 At least it is too cold to use right now.
I’m slowly assembling the 2nd plane I have been accumulating the parts for. It is painted Eagles silver and green. I am getting a hellacious motor for it so it should be a beast in the air. Hopefully I can keep it in the air. 😉
I got a call from the local insurance company about the Buick. He asked if it was just a little fire. I said nope, the interior is bare metal. He said , “Oh….” long pause “we will send out an adjuster” I’ll be glad when it is all behind me. Feels like a graveyard when I pull into my driveway.
I still have our outside Christmas lights going on at night. Is that tacky? It looks nice so I am not in a rush to take them down. I guess this weekend I’ll do it.
Over last weekend I slapped in a 2nd 80 gig hard drive in my home pc, giving me a total of 160 gig. The reason I did it was for video editing, those files eat up drive space FAST.
Last night I pulled out my digital cable box. Time Warner’s rates went up 6 or 7 bucks for the new year. I did some investigating, they charge me 9 bucks a month to “rent” the cable box and then another 20 a month for the digital channels it provides. However, after reviewing those channels I realized that I never view any of them, ever. So out goes the box and into my pocket goes 30 bucks a month. I’ll survive with 78 channels. 🙂
I got automatic profile generation for Exchange to work! I had messed with this off and on for awhile but finally took the time to do it. Who cares, eh?
One TV note. Watched Joe Millionaire. Boy does that guy come off as dumb. The women weren’t overly impressive either. I heard one interesting theory. Someone suggested that maybe Fox is actually pulling the wool over the viewers eyes. Maybe this guy actually is rich? Well we will see. More mindless entertainment! Tonight the Bachelorette and Celebrity Mole. Both look promising.
My gutter project went down this weekend. The weekend prior, Ali and I got all the gutters and hardware in the VINYL flavor. In total it was probably close to 100 different parts we bought. I started on the project bright and early Saturday AM. I ran into multiple issues. The vinyl gutter, due to the method used for hanging it allowed water to run behind it. I tried various “modifications” but none of them were successful. Frustrated, I realized that I needed to bite the bullet and go get the metal gutters. I collected up the dozens of pieces and the associated store receipts for a trip back to Home Depot. The retun process took a good 20 minutes alone until we got all the parts straight. However the Home Depot rep was a very nice lady and didn’t give me any problems. Armed with my store credit I went and picked out the metal equivelant for my gutters. I was pleasantly surprised that it actually would cost me less in material to do it with metal. So much less that I was able to also pick up a new ladder which we desparately needed and have $1.13 left over. 🙂 Installation with the metal gutters was TONS easier. I did about 100 foot of gutter in about 5 hours of time total. It looks better and feels more secure. I can hardly wait for it to rain so I can see my handywork in action.
The rest of the weekend involved a lot of football viewing. I fell asleep during the college championship game unfortunately. Too bad, it sounded like a classic. I did however see all the nfl games. The Sunday games were great. In the first game, Pittsburgh mounted a huge comeback in the last few minutes against Cleveland to squeak out a win. Then, in the late game, the hated Giants blew a huge 24 point second half lead! It was classic.
The pool freaks still didn’t show up on Friday. I called and A&S said they were there, looked at it had to schedule the work. I said THAT WAS WHAT WE WERE WAITING FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE! So after more calls it is supposed to be done tomorrow. Yea, right.
I dug through the remains of my car. I recovered the melted toolcase and found the horncap, intact, melted to the bottom of the case! I have no idea how it got there or how it survived but at least it will be a nice momento for me to hold on to.
Just looked at the before and after shots of my Buick. Now I’m all depressed again. I bought a blue tarp to cover it. I hate having to see it like that. Argh…..
It’s been a month since I called Anthony & Sylvan Pools regarding a crack in the surface of our pool. I’ve called them at least a half dozen times asking when they were coming out. I asked them if they cared at all about customer service. Yesterday I asked the lady if they used any sort of method of tracking problems to ensure they get fixed or do they instead prefer to rely on customers calling in to complain to remind them? Their customer service SUCKS. I have had 3 issues since the pool was done. The quickest I got any resolution has been 2 weeks.
Tentatively I am planning to install gutters along both sides of our house this weekend. I’ve put it off long enough.
I heard back home another round of snow is coming. A bad winter in PA. Florida is sounding better to my mom every week.
A memorable Xmas holiday followed up by an unforgettable New Years Day. 2003 the year my Buick burned. Yep. I took it out for a quick spin. It started to smoke behind the dash, before I knew it I had an all out inferno on my hands. All the horrifying details and pics are here. I certainly hope it isn’t a sign of things to come in 2003. Could be a long year if it is.
One New Years Eve note. We didn’t do anything but get pizza, watch Lord of Rings on DVD and Dick Clark. Why doesn’t Dick get on the rooftops anymore? Just not the same. The broadcast was dumb too recapping the years best of. Dick sounded ridiculous saying the names of all of the rap stars. Moby Blah Blah, Dixie Do Dick, whatever….. blah! His forced laughter at the dumb jokes by the new street casters was corny too. Anyone see Christopher Reeve? OH MY GOD. I know the guy is paralyzed but what made his face get all distorted? Lookin like elephant man almost. Scary shit.
2 negative log entries in a row, hopefully this is not a trend. Am I old and grumpy already? Hope not.
Is there a better line in a song than “I don’t feel tardy?” Well, maybe there is but not many…….
Back from a week in PA. An adventure for sure. Let’s see how well I can recap. It’s long.
Saturday – The car is packed to the gills but I manage to get it all in. We pull out at 5:15 AM, we drive all day until about 6:30 PM and arrive at Wilson, NC. We have dinner with Ali’s friend Sue, and her daughter Kaitlyn. We sit next to some high school kids that thought it was cute to make little comments when Kaitlyn was acting funny. I muttered about how I was going to reach over and strangle theses idiots if they don’t stop. I didn’t hear anything else afterward. The actual drive that day was fine, however once we got out of Florida and were surrounded by the typical barren greys and browns of winter, we both felt depression creeping in. Something I had not felt since my last PA winter. It was amazing how fast that feeling returned.
Sunday – We get up and enjoy the nice hotel provided continental breakfast and head out between 7:30 and 8:00 after a nice night in the hotel. I got to watch the Eagles beat up on the hapless Cowboys. We got from NC to PA in a quick 6 and a half hours. Our only mishap was hitting the Washington DC area right before the Skins game which resulted in sitting in a half hour traffic jam. We pulled into my mom’s at 2:30. It was in the 30’s. Quite a climate shock but oh well we would make the best of it. All of the gifts that we had sent up there were awaiting wrapping and we forgot to jam in our extra wrapping paper so my first duty was to head out to Redner’s and stock up. It felt so odd to be there again, not much seemed different but it sure felt strange to be back in the environment that I moved 1200 miles to get away from. My mom and sis showed up later and we had a nice night.
Monday – On Sunday night we noticed that our showers were rapidly losing hot water. Also the diverter in my mom’s tub was shooting 85% of the water right down the drain. The hot water heater had been replaced 8 months prior so there should not have been a problem. In true Mom fashion she worried about it all night and called UGI first thing at 6:30 am this morning since she has a service contract on it. They told her that someone would be out today but they could give no time estimates and that the rep would call before visiting. They said if noone answered they would assume that noone was home and would not come. My mom, Ali and Torrin already had a shopping trip planned so I said I would stay home and man the ship. While I was home I replaced the faucet so the diverter problem was fixed. But then I just hung out, and hung out. All day long I hung out. No call. Finally at 6 pm the guy shows up with no call. He looks at the heater, does a couple quick tests and says the heater is fine. So I wasted all day sitting there for nothing. The hot water was fine the rest of the week so I think the diverter issue may have been causing it to use the hot water faster than a normal shower would. Monday night we went up to Gary’s for a reunion/ Xmas/ MNF get together. I got drunk and had a good time. I miss the vball crew almost as much as my family. A good time to counteract the wasted day.
Tuesday – Christmas Eve. The weather forecast for Christmas still calls for snow but I don’t take it very seriously. We head over to my brother’s for Chrsitmas Eve dinner/lunch. My bro has a full fledged sports bar in his basement, it really is something to see. He has has neighbors over ALL the time and entertains more than I can believe. The food is great. We had a built in out cause we had to visit friends of ours that night. We had a brief visit and then headed home to see what Christmas would bring.
Wednesday – The big day. We woke up to snow covered cars but the roads were only wet. It looks like we dodged the bullet. It starts to rain and melt what little snow there was. However a quick glance at the weather channel said it will turn back to snow. Bah they are full of it. We begin the Christmas festivities. My brother and his wife are and hour and a half late. Ali and I opened our stuff ahead of them. My mom went super crazy buying gifts this year. She spent way too much but defended it by saying it may be the last time everyone is all together at the same time for xmas. By the time we were done opening, the snow had returned in earnest for awhile. It was big, wet snow that was coming down at a blizzard like rate. It was piling up fast. I decide it would be a good idea to take the Nissan on a quick test drive through Flying Hills to see how it handled in snow since it has never been in snow before. I made it around the loop but it was very tough. I wanted to try to back it in to the parking space but could not so I took it down around again since I couldn’t go any other direction. This time I got stuck coming up the small hill since I had no momentum. I tried multiple times with no luck. Finally I gave up and tried to back down. It was very hard to see. I heard something go under the car. I was stuck. I inadvertently backed over a concrete half circle thing that is used to keep cars off the grass. I desperately tried rocking it but it was hopeless. My brother was watching from the window and came down. We tried pushing but we just fell on our ass as it was too slippery to get footing. We wound up having to jack the car up and pull the concrete divider out by hand. So my bro and I took turns on our bellies in the wet, muddy mush pulling this out. What a mess. After removing it I finally could get out and took my car back down and around and parked it where it stayed. Obviously we couldnt use our car to go to my Dad’s so we all piled into my bro’s Suburban. Even with it’s 4wd and tank-like weight it had trouble. Several times we had to squeeze by downed trees that littered the road. We got to my Dad’s and he already had lost power. Being resourceful they prepared the dinner on top of their woodstove and out on his gas grill. 🙂 It was a good dinner and we had an enjoyable time. We called home and my mom still had power so all was good. My Dad took us home, however as we pulled into flying hills we saw a huge tree was across an intersection and there were no lights on, anywhere. My mom lost power 10 minutes before we got home. No wood stove there to provide heat. We decide to tough it out and bundle up. Surely the power would be back on soon. We went to sleep knowing this would be a Christmas we would remember forever.
Thursday – I woke up early and saw we still were dark. I valiantly decide I won’t let my family freeze so I head out to the local Home Depot and pick up a kerosene heater and all of the accesories. I decide to get the heater once I hear on the radio that power is out for 10’s of thousands of people and it may not be restored until Saturday. I return home with it but am greeted with skepticism of the intelligence of going to buy a heater when the power could come on at any minute. I agree to leave it in the box for awhile and see what happens. Around lunch we head out for a day with Alison’s family hoping power would be restored when we got back. In the meantime my bro came and snagged my mom and sis so they could stay with them. We got back around 8pm and still no power (or phones) Despite pleading from my mom to come over to my brother’s I said we would just start the heater and stay. I cracked the box and fired it up. It heated the place in no time. However, the power came back on during the night. 🙂 So I spent 150 bucks for 7 or 8 hours of heat, oh well. I told my mom to sell it.
Friday – Wow the week has gone fast. I haven’t gotten to see all the people I had planned to and we would be returning to Florida tomorrow. Well at least we had power. We had breakfast with Ali’s grandfather, Pop Pop. He is 89 but still very active. He is great. Later we went to see Lord of the Rings with my 2 sisters. A 3 hour flick and I had to piss for the last 2 hours but it still rocked. An AWESOME movie. Afterward my sis wanted to check out the mall for some after xmas deals. I agreed since she put up with my torment all week, it was the least I could do. The mall was a mob scene with no parking to be found. I finally found one in an unplowed spot. After an hour or two there I made a quick pit stop at Sov to pick up some routers to be used for my CCNA training and head home to pack. We went out for a nice dinner with my mom to California Bar and Grill. Shortly before we were ready to go, I hear a woman call my name, it is my Aunt and cousins. I haven’t seen them for years. It is amazing that we ran into them. We talked to them for awhile, exchanged contact info and headed out still amazed of the chance of that meeting. I loaded up the car, somehow it was fuller than when we came up. I set the alarm for 4:45 am. My mom was sad to see us go. As much as I hated the winter part of the trip I was very sad to leave everyone behind.
Saturday – We wake my mom and say goodbye, she is very sad. We are going to have her down around Easter. We pull out and wave goodbye to all the snow and ice. We get to Wilson NC in 6 hours and have lunch with Sue and Kaitlyn. We were makin great time. We entertain the idea of going straight thru since we are making such good time. The idea fades fast. After lunch we are swamped with a hoarde of snowbirds on route 95 that brings traffic to a standstill. We go through at least 30 miles of stop and go traffic. It was incredibly frustrating. While we sat I was trying to listen to the Eagles – Giant game on a broken up AM station. I barely made out “It’s good! Giants win in overtime!” Grrrrrrr. That made it even worse. In total we probably lost at least 2 hours of time just sitting in traffic. Later in the day we hit another very long delay. A cop had worked thru traffic in front of us so we figured it was a bad acccident. After almost 45 minutes we get up to the accident scene, it is on the other side of a divided highway!!!!! There was no accident on our side. The entire thing was a damn GAPER DELAY! ARRRRRGGHHHHHH. I am border line pyschotic at this point, driving Ali crazy with my incessant cursing. It was bad. She comforted me with the thought of staying at a nice hotel and getting a good night’s sleep. We decided to go till about 9 pm or 800 miles whatever came first. We hit 800 and pulled off at a Georgia exit that had a bunch of different hotels. We checked the first one. No rooms. Oh shucks that looked like a nice one too, guess we will try another, no rooms there either. Well we went through this routine at 4 or 5 more hotels off of 2 different exits, all full. At our 6th or 7th hotel they said no we don’t have rooms but the Howard Johnson just down the street does! Excited, we raced to the motel. It didn’t look great but it is a chain so how bad could it be? Ali ran in and then came out excited that they did indeed have rooms. We got out room card. Oddly it had the room number attached with a post-it note. We pulled around the back. The courtyard looked like a scene out of a murder movie. It was dark, one of the few lights was strobing creating a very erie effect. We got in the room and were greeted with a tub that was covered in lime, stained sheets, towels, pillows and blankets and state of the art 70’s furniture. A total dive. The tub was so gross Ali refused to take a shower. I decided to risk it. When I turned on the water, a brown gush and a dead fly came out. However, after a few minutes it cleared up. The hot water was barely hot enough to take a shower, you didn’t need to use the cold faucet at all. I took the fastest shower imagineable. We laid down on the bed only covered with one blanket that didn’t appear to have stains. Surprisingly, we slept straight through till our 4:45 alarm. Saturday was the worst travel expereince I can ever remember.
Sunday – The big day. The day we finally get home. We were quite motivated to get out of that shithole as well as being excited about the prospect of being home before lunch. Ali who normally is the walking dead in the morning, shot out of bed with me at 4:45 AM. We hit the road. We had no major problems on Sunday and made it from the Georgia/Florida state line to Naples in about 6 hours. It was sunny and upper 60’s in Naples. It felt great. We were relieved to be home to say the least.
So there ya go. If you made it through the whole thing that’s amazing. 🙂 A week we will not soon forget.
Last night was the Survivor finale. A very good finale. Plenty of backstabbing and harsh words. Here are my observations.
– Clay looked like he gained 40 lbs since the show finished taping
– Clay was hands down the worst lobbyist for his own case I ever saw on any survivor, he basically insulted half of the jurors and still only lost by one vote
– Brian is as slick as they come, that porn career must have paid off
– Penny voted for Clay because he could answer more trivia about her, isn’t it about who deserves to win?
– Helen’s death stares were classic
– The juror questions for the finalist segment was the most vicious I can remember, Clay was called a redneck, lazy and a racist. Brian was called a liar and was repeatedly chastised for living up to his used car salesman profession.
– During the reunion, couldn’t someone give Tanya some water so she could stop coughing?
– Thank GOD Rosie wasn’t the host this year, I think Jeff did a fine job
– Why did Erin’s face look so weird?
– I can’t believe the Stephanie segment, her entry tape made her look like a crazy sex kitten, on the show she came off as a hard core grumpy lesbian. Weird.
– Who was the gay person on this cast? They always have one yet I was not able to pick them out this time.
I think of the 2 left, Brian deserved to win but for the first time I can remember neither of the final two were likeable people. But hey, he is a million dollars richer now, maybe his wife will stop beating him up now.
The next show in the Amazon looks brutal, the contestants are not in for a fun time.