On Starters

So... On my way to my friend's house last night, I stopped at a 7-11 to grab a couple of snacks. When I returned to the car, the starter died. I know it was the starter as we checked the fuses and relays. So I got permission to leave it there overnight and made plans to repair it the following morning and got a ride home from one of my friends.

This morning, I stopped by Auto-Zone and purchased a new starter on the way to the 7-11 to perform surgery on the car.

After a successful, 2-hour surgery, the patient fired up like a champ. I'm proud of my ability to be handy. :) I probably saved us a few hundred bucks on towing and mechanic labor. I'll tell you this one thing. It is NOT pleasant working on a car in front of a convenience store in the COLD.

At least it's all done now. Cars are such money pits. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters F, I, X, and the number 13.

Lights!

I put up Christmas lights today. Those of you who live here in Salt Lake city know that it was an unpleasant day to hang Christmas lights, but I'm pretty much done with the outside lights. In fact I can't do any more until I either borrow or buy an extension ladder.

Hopefully I can finish it off this week without too much trouble.

This post was brought to you by the letters S, N, O, W, and the number 3.

Update, and Getting Back Into the Groove.

WARNING - Long Post follows!!! :)

OK. So I haven't been the best at updating this thing, but I'm working on it again.

So last week, we went camping. Thursday, after work, we drove up to the camp site for my wife's church camping trip. We took 2 cars since I needed to leave and could not stay the night. Just after arriving, it started raining, so I quickly set up the tents in the rain, pretty much alone. It wasn't the most fun I've ever had, but I did it and then dried up the water from the interior of the tent.

I left that night after dinner since I had to work on Friday. The Queen, the 2 princesses, and our new little prince all stayed at the campgrounds.

The next day, they had a pretty good time by all accounts of things until rather late in the day when the rain showers came through. After the second of these showers, the oldest princess reported to the Queen that the interior of the tens and all sleeping bags were soaking wet which prompted a call to me. By this time, I had finished work and was trying to enjoy a little friendly geeking time with a few friends before heading up to the camp grounds. Anyway, The call informed me that the interior of the tent was flooded and the sleeping bags were wet, etc. I wasn't sure if there was anything I could do at that point, but attempt to be a good hubby. (I'm not so sure how well I did on that little quiz, by the way.) The Queen tried to dry out a camp chair for inside the tent and then the 3rd rain shower came and it was all over. I got a call indicating the Queen and the royal offspring were leaving and that I could go get the tent and the rest of our stuff whenever I wanted. Needless to say, I didn't go to the campground when I was done geeking - I went home instead where I found an annoyed royal spouse. (It would seem, I have a superpower. I can make it rain on my family and make them miserable. I have no control over this power, though.)

The following morning, I woke the princesses and we went to retrieve our belongings from the campground. It began to hail and rain while we were packing up and we all got thoroughly soaked. The temps were in the lower 40s, by the way. Eventually we got everything back home where things were pretty dry and warm and after hot showers, we felt human again.

We then proceeded to go to 2 other activities that took up the remainder of our Saturday. Unfortunately, the Queen became very ill with a stomach bug shortly after we began the second activity and we returned home where she retreated to the bedroom with connected bathroom for the remainder of the evening/night. Apparently, one of the other families brought the bug to the campground and the Queen caught it. Luckily, it was a rather short-lived bug and she was well on the mend by around midnight. The next morning, she indicated she felt fine if a little tired from her ordeal. I have set up the tents in the back yard, hosed the muck off them, and opened the screens so the hot sun and breeze would dry them out. I'll take them down once I get home today.

I suggest you all poke at the Queen to get her to post pics of the vacation and tell her side of our camping adventure. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters R, A, I, N, and the number 3.

Fingers?, Toes? What are those things?

It is frakking COLD! The boiler at work broke at some point over the weekend and I could see my breath when I walked into my office this morning. It's only marginally better at this point, but typing is a real challenge. Unfortunately for me, I have craptacular circulation in my hands and toes so they'll be cold for the next week or so.

I've been in my fleece and coat all day in an effort to fight off the insanity, but I'm not really sure how well I'm doing in this fight. This is probably a bad sign, but such is life, eh? :)

On to other things, I have enough materials (once I get a bucket of nails and a small shopvac) to start work in the basement of our house now. Of course it still isn't cleared out, but there are a few more items I can do before I start the framing. I have to relocate/reconfigure a few pipes, run a heating duct into the bedroom and add a cold air return to the space in the basement all of which can be done before the framing starts.

Wish me luck! I'll take pictures and post them. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters S, B, Y, E, and the number 3.

Sick Again

I'm sick again. That may explain my feelings of getting old. :) I went to work feeling down in the dumps and left within 2 hours because I began to feel even worse. I've taken meds for my sinuses (we're having some serious pressure turmoil in the weather lately), tossed back a few vitamin c tablets, Downed and Orange and some orange juice and napped most of the day under lots of layers of clothing and blankets.

I just took a shower and feel mostly human again. :) My head is still a little stuffy and I have an occasional cough from the drainage, but I think I'm through the worst of it. The aches and chills are all gone and I'm fairly certain I'll live.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

This post was brought to you by the letters C, C, C, C and the number 9.

The Lights are Finally Done!

I have finally completed setting up all tht Christmas lights. We now have a family of deer in the front yard, some twinkly snowflakes, a couple of lighted topiaries, and some stake-based decorations. I think it looks pretty good, but I'll ask the Queen to take a few pics and show them off to you all.


At the moment, I'm a little chilly, so I'm calling it a day.

:)

This post was brought to you by the letters L, I, G, H, T, S, and the number 3.

Simple Electronics

Simple electronics really know how to get me going. We have icicle lights that I've been trying to hang for about the last 2 weeks. I tested each set so that I could be sure to put up only the ones that were WORKING.

So, I wander out there in the freezing temps, hang up some lights, borrow a longer ladder, hang up some more lights, turn them on and...

Oh. The. AGONY!

One section of the lights I just tested, and carefully hung on the house, is out.

So-- What now?

I get a replacement bulb and go out there to find the offending bad bulb. I give them all a viual inspectionn and they all seem fine. I check the wiring and it all seems sound. Only one thing left, start swapping out bulbs until I find the bad one. An hour later, I find it (one of the last few I change out). Grrr... Stupid simple electronics...

So now my fingertips, ears, and toes are all numb, but the lights are hung. Happy Day!

So, tomorrow, I get to put out the moving deer, light up the topiary bushes, and line the walkway with nice seasonal lights. Sounds like I'll have some more numb toes. :)

This post was brought to you by the letters T, A, I, V, and the number 8.

A Rock and a Hard Place...

So... my company's developer accepted a position elsewhere and will be leaving at the end of the month. Unfortunately, there are all these big plans from management to do all these different things that involve developers. They haven't allowed me to increase my staff which would have helped this problem before it became a problem, but that's life, right? Wrong! I know they expect that we'll continue where we left off without any break and without any interruption. They are so short-sighted. We need at least 2 people capable of covering each position. I know that may seem a little obvious to some of you, but we're talking some real rocket scientists here. The entire situation puts me squarely between the aforementioned extremely dense objects.

Now... on to other things. I'm enjoying the book Wicked. Many thanks to Admiral Bob for turning me on to the book. It's quite entertaining. Once I'm done with it, I think I'll go on to the next Harry Potter book that's lying on the floor of the Rec Room. I haven't read it yet and it's been around here for quite some time. I've been pretty good at controlling myself... :)

GEEK WARNING!!! GEEK WARNING!!!
My gaming group has completed my Sidewinder campaign and we've moved on to a v3.5 D&D campaign. I'm having a great deal of fun with this one. Of course, I'm playing a H. Elf Ranger/Sorcerer (pretty standard for me) and it's a she. About 50-60% of the time I play a female character. Go figure! :)
GEEKINESS COMPLETE!

I guess I'll go read some Wicked since I'm too tired to play WoW. It's also a bit too cold in the basement to play WoW at the moment. The basement is unfinished and there are no heating ducts in the basement. We get a little residual heat when the furnace starts and from the computers down here, but that's it. We borrowed my Mother-In-Law's space heater, but it pretty much has to be within 10 inches to be effective so the Queen uses it most of the time. She gets cold easily... :)

By the way, the temps around here have ranged from 0° F to about 20° F. That's cool enough to make me agree that it's cold. :) I'm sure the Queen will be happy to read that I admitted to that.

This post was brought to you by the letters F, R, I, G, I, D, and the number 0.