Tiny Little Home Projects

This weekend was a pretty abysmal downpour, and since none of our friends were up for much adventure, we somehow found ourselves making a list of things to get from the hardware store. I should have known that "stuff we got at the hardware store" would quickly convert into "projects that Matt finished." Nothing major, nothing you could get a bid for, or would go to a homeshow about, or would even register at Mom and Dad's house as an update. But it's kinda a big deal at our house.

Here, I present the finished products. (Note, I did help a bit, but some of this stuff really only needs one motivated pair of hands.)

Project 1: Our bathroom sink is crowded.

 We have nice enough bathroom in the master bedroom, the lights and mirrors (both over the sink and on the closet door behind) make it bright in there. But the big mirror behind the sink is just that. Just a mirror, no medicine cabinet.

Fig 1. Bathroom Before picture. Notice the stuff on the counter, and the lame two handled sink.

Sure, there is places for bathroom stuff in the closet behind there, but I don't like digging in the closet everytime I put lotion on my face. Or brush my teeth. Or need an antacid. Or most anything, according to figure 1, since I leave all that stuff out on the counter.

Ever the engineer, Matt suggested we install a medicine cabinet. We went back and forth on what that might require, and finally landed on a  small cabinet that would mount above the outlets (fig 2). It was pretty easy to install, and even easier to fill up.

Project 2: Two handled sinks make temperature control annoying.

We actually have two major needs for our bathroom sink.
1) Typical hand/face/teeth washing behavoir.
2) Leaving a slow drip for the cat to drink from.

Our two handle sink was lame at both. It's a major event to get the temprature right with the two handles. And the handles were wobbly, which made adjusting to a drip a hassle, both for the human adjusting and the feline anxiously waiting a drink.

Fig 2. Sitting beneath a glamorous medicine cabinet, the cat waits impatiently for a drink from the new faucet.

The solution was a new, single handled faucet. In brushed nickel, since that shows fewer smudges. The cat is reasonably impressed.

Project 3: This kitchen outlet is hideous.

We had rationalized that this outlet, and the GIANT security box that sat next to it, were part of the home security system, which necessitated some rewiring (fig 3). However, that has been removed, and let's be honest, what it left is pretty shoddy. I was never going to think much of it, but that's because I don't relish making things tidy (especially if that thing is the kitchen, apparently. I can't change who I am.)

Fig 3. Probably not live wires sticking out of this kitchen outlet. Right?

And let's just discuss that motion detector switch- it should turn on the light (Project 4) in the kitchen. When left on auto, it sometimes turns on the middle of the night to notify us that the cat is on the counter, but otherwise fails to turn on when we are flailing in the dark trying to walk across the kitchen without tripping on the above cat. Instead, Matt installed a new switch, a new outlet, and safely tucked away the remaining electrical mysteries. He also covered the gaping hole that was left by the security system.

Fig 4. A tidy outlet and switch combo with hardly any possibility of electrocution.

Project 4: This kitchen light is so terrible we never use it.

Partly because of the weirdness of the outlet, partly because the other lights in the kitchen are sufficient, and mostly because this canister light just was sucky, we never used it. Matt managed to get it arranged to direct light in relevant places, but it didn't hold that position well, so the canisters would sometimes focus beams of light in the cabinet.

Fig 5. The terrible canister light balanced so that it projects light two directions. Not quite the directions you'd want, but near as it gets. Also note the gaping hole below the counter, resolved in Project 3.

It's also pretty dated looking. It took a little time to find a light arrangement that we thought would improve this space. We ended up with a track-ish light (each bulb can be redirected, but the distance between them is set). These lights highlight the one workspace that isn't adequately illuminated by the other box fluorescent. And it doesn't look dated. And with the new switch, I will probably actually use it.

Fig 6. Vastly superior kitchen light, in a well lit kitchen.

 Matt has once again proven himself to be a handy guy around the house. The faucet install included a new drain plunger, which escalated to replacing other janky looking gaskets to prevent future leaks. When I asked him where he learned about plumbing, he said, "Learned about plumbing? It's not rocket science..." Putting tubes together so they don't leak seems pretty magical to me. You can assume his attitude about electrics is similar.

The bonus of these projects (to him) is that he got a new set of drill bits, and revealed that he needs a new electric drill. (His chuck is maybe bent?) I (or Dad) can get this for his next gift exchange holiday. I'm confident leaving this note here, since he never reads the blog.

Also, we got our first postcard from Japan! Remember back when Dad didn't get to see the Seahwaks win the Superbowl? That's when he sent us a card from Mt Fuji.

Nana Stories

One of the neat things about having Nana nearby is that I get to hear stories from her. Not just the major, life changing stories, like how she met Papa, or what it was like to have kids in Juneau's early days, but normal stories.  I wanted to capture a few of them here for my siblings/ nephew and niece.

Last weekend over dinner I was talking about reading the Monuments Men (about the effort to save art, artifacts and monuments during WWII), and I confessed that I know embarrassingly little about world history. Did you know that Germany tried to invade Russia? Which is why Russia ended up in the war? And that we weren't exactly on the same side? Matt and I bemoaned that Juneau schools never seemed to take history very seriously, so now we are just ignorant adults. Nana said she also didn't get much world history. In high school she was on the annual commitee (yearbook), and she has this very sweet, very dull world history teacher. Should would just come in the class, flash him a smile and say, "I have to work on some things for the annual. Can I do the assignment next week?" and he would let her out of class. Pretty much all year. Seriously. I never pegged Nana for ditching class.

Earlier this week, we were talking about hot water heaters, and Nana reminisced about how when she was growing up, their hot water tank was basically uninsulated, so you could feel on the site how much and how hot the water was. (I assume Nana's Mom had impervious hands as well.) Nana said her mom always seemed to have infinite energy. I have heard he describe the garden that kept the family fed all year, especially when beans, fruits or other things were ready for canning. Because it was a large garden, there were huge spurts of urgency where Grandma Sandlin would have both Nana and Auntie Jeanne in the kitchen, canning for hours. Nana said she could see out the window that it was blue skies and sunny, but she was always caught in the sweltering kitchen heat. And at the end of a major canning effort, her every energetic mother would pat the hot water heater and say, "Come on girls, we still have enough hot water to do a load of laundry." I thought of how ambivalent I can feel about laundry when I'm tired, and then she told me how they DID laundry: manually. They would fill up two tubs, one with soap and a rinse that they would run it through a ringer, and they drop it into the second rinse, with "bluing" and then ring that out, and then hang it all out to dry in the sun. Just hearing that makes me want to flop into a frazzled domestic mess, but she said her mom never wanted her dad to see how much work it was. He liked to see her looking calm and relaxed when he came home from work, so she always made time to clean up from all these things, including scrubbing the floor, brushing her hair and changing her apron so that when her dad got home things were calm and quiet. I asked if she was ever able to achieve that standard with her own kids, and she just laughed.

We had planned to see her and Jerry this week to have dinner and go to the movie Saving Mr. Banks. Due to my poor planning (oh, the movie starts when?) and our general lack of urgency, we missed the movie, but it was nice to have dinner with Nana and Jerry. Just like "old times" before the folks moved here.

Oh, and I feel like bragging. As I mentioned we had a really great time at MOHAI a couple weeks ago, and when I mentioned this to Nana and Jerry, they thought it sounded cool, too. So cool, in fact, that they got one of the buses to take a load of people down there for the day. And they ALSO enjoyed it a lot.

Matt has been busy this week. He gave a talk on Friday, and is gearing up for the mountain bike race series. This means making changes and updates to the bike, that seemed to involved new wheels, and new cables, and many hours in the garage. He really enjoys that.

Winter Wonderland!

For the last couple of years, Matt and I have managed to get in one winter camping trip. We usually go with Matt's bestie, but this year his family is too busy, so we decided we should just go ourselves. We booked a cabin at Wallace Falls State Park, as scant hour from our house, and figured we could have an early Valentine's weekend escape.

Things being as they are, this was exactly the sort of week where if we had not already made a reservation, there was no way we'd be going camping, even for one night, even an hour from home. It was a busy week, Matt has been getting "additional opportunities" (a management joke) at work, and I hadn't been feeling that well. Neither of us had any time for planning, but come Friday night we went to REI to buy ourselves a campstove, and Matt ran to the store for groceries (bagels, goldfish, and frosted animal cookies). The forecast seemed like it might be too cold for sitting around a campfire, so we opted not to pick food that should get cooked over a fire, and went for stuff we could cook on the stove. We rationalised that we could hike the falls on Saturday, and either slow poke our way home on Sunday, or admit defeat and come back whenever we were ready to wimp out.

Our evening activities included cataloging the species in the animal cookies.
Is the lower right a pig?

The hike up Wallace Falls is not that arduous, but I was feeling ... very... slow. The 5 mile, low elevation gain hike took more than 3 hours. We got to stop and look at lots of things. The tiny ice towers that form when water freezers under mud. The "snow" that forms along the river canyon from the splash of the falls. The icecicles that crowned every rock in the river. It was a really beautiful hike.

It was cold. He didn't want to pose for this picture.

Since I knew I was going to be moving slow, and that it was cold, I wore my heavy winter coat, and a layer of thermals under my clothes. I was quite toasty, and pulled off my hat and gloves when we were moving. Matt, however, always has a super high metabolism and forgot what cold is all about. He was wearing highly ventilated plastic pants, and a fleece he has had since high school that uses a technology he calls "wind accelerating." His hat and gloves were firmly in place the whole time, and only in the last mile did he concede to putting the raincoat he had (along with several other other layers) in his backpack.

The trail head to the falls is also where our cabin was. Our last winter camping was in a yurt, which is basically a big tent wearing a warm coat. It has a light bulb near the door, and an outclassed radiator chugging along all night. Last year's yurt slept 5, with a bunk bed and futon, but once we put a couple backpacks in there, the place was full. I had expected some variation of that, but this cabin was posh. It had TWO rooms. The thermostat was set when we arrived, so it was quite toasty. There were curtains on all the windows, and adorable log furniture, including the futon, bunk, end table, dining table and chairs. By this point, we were both happy to sit inside and read, slipping out as far at the porch (yeah, porch) to boil water for tea and warm up our soup. Well after dark, maybe 7?, Matt stepped out to rinse the stove of our soup, and mentioned that there was some "slow rain" falling outside. Sometime after that we realized that "slow rain" falling in the cold was snow!

Snow in Western Washington! Everyone Panic!

Actually, sitting in a toasty cabin with nothing to do but my knitting (and timing Matt to see how many pistachios he could eat in 60 seconds) was the perfect place to be on a snowy evening. The half inch or so that accumulated was still there in the morning. Matt has plenty of snow driving experience, even in his sporty little car, so our only concern was that outside of the state park, the weather may have prompted an Armageddon level of panic and mayhem. It actually seemed quite mellow. Wallace Falls is off highway 2, so most of the outbound traffic was heading up the mountains to ski, and the westboard traffic was light. There was a bakery in Sultan, WA keeping busy in spite of the weather. And we opted to stop at the Reptile Zoo in Monroe on the way home, too. (Did you know that not all lizards have limbs?? If your snake has eyelids, it might not be a snake...) It was a cool museum, that maybe Tyler would enjoy (unless one of his parents has a phobia about snakes, in which case, forget I mentioned it). It was kept nice and warm for the cold blooded critters there.

Two headed turtle at the Reptile Zoo, obviously.

There seemed to be even more snow- like a whole inch!- at our house. It's melting slowly, and I expect the pandemonium will have subsided in time to make it to work tomorrow.

I Should Write More

One of my favorite things to do these days is to go back and read the blogs from when Tyler was born. It's good to have a record of how I felt over those days, all the craziness that happened, and all the memories I wanted to store. And since I'm clearly coming up on another big event that would be nice to record, I figured I would. Might as well get in a few entries on the run-up as well, just to set the stage for the big event.

Tyler is almost 3. He's growing a lot. Every once in a while he will get a CRAZY hunger bug and destroy a whole plate of pancakes and eggs or a pint of milk or something, and then I'm pretty sure he's an inch taller the next week. He talks a lot and has lots to say, loves playing imagining games and has a ton of questions. Reminds me of me, or at least of what parts of me I remember from near that age. Does anyone besides me remember stomping around the house to what may have been Holst's “The Planets” and pretending to be dinosaurs? Well Tyler has been spending a lot of time alternating between pretending to be a baby, a bear, a shark, a monkey...rather a lot of things, come to think of it.

Casey is a kicker. She kicks a LOT. Especially at night, Jess and I will be laying down and reading or almost asleep, and then Jess will take in a sharp breath and I'll know that the little one is awake. She does it during the day, too. Casey hasn't interrupted any meetings yet, but she certainly could if she figured out the timing.

It's been a really cold winder for us down here in Austin. We've had two or three snow days already, which is kinda neat but also kind of a pain. A few of the snow days didn't actually involve any precipitation...just an overactive School System. I went in to work for that one, Jess stayed home.

To catch up on the other things from my last blog post (so many months ago) Tyler is still in his underwear. We have to tell him to use the restroom, especially if he's having fun. He'll wet his underwear a little then get upset and have to do a little 'Cowboy Waddle' over to the bathroom to finish peeing. And then we have to change his underwear. But that's happening less and less now. We even have him in pull-ups for nighttime now, and I don't think he's wet them once. He's pretty good at this.

Which makes me suspicious about the next one...hmm...

Also, I weighed in at 199.6 pounds this morning. I don't think I've weighted this little since...probably college. I'm pretty sure I was 190 through most of high school. Anyway, I'm pretty thrilled. I'm thinking the treadmill desk will turn out to be a really good idea. I burned 500 calories today while playing video games for a couple of hours. Didn't feel like a workout, that's for sure.

Christmas has come and gone, and Thanksgiving, so Tyler has managed to see most everyone so that we can all see how much he has grown. He likes to talk about Baby Casey a lot too. I'm sure he has no idea what life with a little sister is going to be like, but we just like that he has the idea in his head. He always does much better if we warn him before any big transition anyway, and a transition this big is going to require a LOT of warning.

Other than that, not much to report. Still at the same job, working on my mini-painting, excited for ReaperCon, went to Big Bend National Park, Volunteering to teach Kids Math...you know, stuff. I'm an old man now, I don't have time for crazy adventures!

-N

Updates for the Oversees Readership

Since the parents are inaccessible by phone for the next few months, I thought I might get some leverage out of the blog in place of long, rambly emails.

As the parents were leaving on their grand adventure, my in-laws were in town for a few days. They came for the boat show, after a great adventure of their own to Southeast Asia. (Being retired sounds awesome...). [Note to parents: eating brains, raw blood, or "washed" lettuce are all perfectly valid ways to get terribly ill.] We went to MOHAI, a very awesome Seattle-centric history museum. It had boats, and old Seattle history, and wartime history, and modern stuff too. I'm hoping I can take Nana and Jerry some tiem this month. Matt's step-mom made greek food (yay!), and we all got to watch the Superbowl together.

Over the summer, Mom had helped Nana and I make what seemed like an absurd quantity of freezer jam. It's super yummy, but I just don't eat that much jam these days. The freezer jam was a big hit with pancakes, and the freezer Raspberry jam was to DIE for on the Trader Joe's flourless chocolate cake we had with the Greek food. Even though I managed to not cook even slightly all weekend, it made me feel like a domestic hero to have my own jam on hand.

Oh, and I may have mentioned the Superbowl was played over the weekend. I dunno if you were watching, but the SEAHAWKS WON! There had been a lot of excitement, even on our (suburban, working class) campus, with potlucks, and photo-ops and the like. We watched at Jeffery's house, where we had a huge screen, lots of snacks and a pretty mellow watching experience. This was ideal, since by the half, it was hard to pretend we were biting our nails for the outcome anymore- there was plenty of time to catch up. We went back to our suburban home where not much was happening, but I relished seeing the parties downtown, including Seattle's no-jay walk riots. I know not all my family loves sports, but in this day and age of tv-on-demand and personalized everything, it's really awesome to be able to share a story like that with a large community.

While WA has been spared of most of the brutal winter weather that has been visiting on the midwest and east coast (and TX sometimes, too), this week is actually getting pretty nippy. I mention this only because Matt and I have plans to be camping this weekend in a cabin at Wallace Falls. WE were planning to do a little hiking and a little eating by campfire, but we may opt for a lot of drinking cocoa in our sleeping bags if it stays below freezing.

Updates are still coming in on the fundraising blog- 75% there with Mom's help taking dinner to the shelter last week! I'm starting to feel like when I am done with this crazy project I am doing NOTHING for at least another year. Turns out, $30,000 is a big number.

Golden Opportunities

This probably qualifies as a first world/White guy problem but after years of heavy duty commuting and educational travel, I have gotten used to the joys of premier frequent flier privileges. Being an Alaska Airlines Gold MVP has gotten us numerous first class upgrades, free bags, no charge ticket changes, and the occasional free alcohol (strictly medicinal..).  Well, after retirement, the work travel stopped and though we enjoyed a great deal of personal travel, I was 14,000 miles short of the annual goal for this year.


We actually thought about what it would take to just do some long dead-head trips, out and back to Miami or Mexico. Heck, my old partner was known to do a loop to Hawaii through Anchorage for just this purpose, taking advantage of a special offer-cheap ticket when he could.  The accounting just didn't hold up: a couple of thousand bucks of useless travel for the right to get free drinks seemed a poor investment.  So, I was resigned to diminished  status and ordinary MVP standing with the dawn of the new year.


But wait!! A special offer hits my in-box while I'm donating blood yesterday (had to be reading something while my life's essence drained away...) Alaska Air will give me a chance to redeem myself by just flying 8 segments in the next 2 months, then, poof, front of the line again!  So last night I start scheming.  Nephew Matt was visiting while I spun the travel wheel, so my first thought was spending a day tripping back and forth to Portland 4 times. Very easy to do, but still $200 a trip.  So I started exploring the super deal section of the Alaska web-site and came up with the following: Seattle to the new location, Mammoth lakes California through LAX and back. I stay in Mammoth Lakes long enough to go back and forth to LAX again mid-day.  That's 6 segments in one day for a discount special of $340, almost half of the Portland fares. Then 2 days later, I spend a brief morning in San Jose for $120. The cool part about that trip is that I get back a little after noon and I can wait at the airport for Nana to return from her annual visit to Rae Anne in San Diego at 1 o'clock!! And the miles count,  too, slowly building to the dreamed of Business/First Class trip to Rome I have promised Connie and myself for years.


I know Matt thought this was a weird way to spend a day but the freebies have been a very welcome privilege for these past years and were hard to give up. We have a head start on beating this problem for next year because the tip to Asia is on an International partner airline, almost 20,000 miles to begin with, then Austin, Vegas. and any other excuse we need.  So, still a combat booking agent for now. Wave at us in the big chairs....

Weight Loss

As several of you may have seen, via my Facebook post, Ryan Davis died a couple of months ago. There's no reason any of you should know him, he was a 'web personality' at one of my favorite Video Game websites. He was a riot to listen to and a great writer. He died five days after he got married. He was also fat. You can find pictures if you want, but let's not beat around the bush here; there's not a whole lot of guessing about what killed him. After I read about Ryan dying, I walked into the bathroom and weighed myself. I was 236 pounds. That might be the most I've ever weighed. It was right after the 4^th of July weekend, so it may have been a little skewed by recent munchitude, but 236 was too much.

The next day I started doing something I didn't think I'd ever do: count calories.

I got on a website called MyFitnessPal, put it my weight, guessed at a goal weight and, started trying to keep my caloric intake under the goal number for the day (roughly 2000). As it turns out, calories can sneak in via some pretty circuitous routes. My trail mix? Lots of calories in there. I only ate 5 fig newtons a day, for my daily 'lunch-dessert', but considering the low number I was trying to hit, that had to hit the highway. PB&J after Tyler goes to bed? Nearly 400 calories by my estimation, and that's just too much. I've gotten down to small dinners, carefully measured lunches, and...pretty much the same breakfast I've been eating for years, so that was okay. I might try and throw some more eggs in there, though. They seem like good breakfast fare.

It's made me really reconsider what I want to eat. When you start limiting yourself like this you start to really think about where you want your calories to come from, and when you want to eat them. Especially, too, when you make yourself exercise, and you start to see how much effort it is just to burn off a few hundred calories. Did you know I don't even get to eat fruit whenever I want anymore? Too much energy in most fruit. I can eat veggies at will, but let's be honest, Tyler is right: veggies are pretty gross.

It's a lot of effort, and I never thought I'd spend this much time thinking about what I eat, scrutinizing every meal. I'm not tracking calories every day anymore, I tend to estimate just to keep my sanity, but a couple of times a week I try to keep a solid count, just to keep myself honest.

Oh, and last time I checked, I was at 224 and dropping. So the effort is paying off. I'm just hoping I can keep this up, you know, forever.

Tyler. Is. Wearing. Underwear. Holy crap! This is big news, people, stop whatever you're doing. Well, okay, technically, now he's wearing diapers, because he's asleep and we're not crazy, but we started him on saturday and kept him in underwear most of the weekend. He did pretty well, though we have to lead him periodically to the bathroom, and he won't think of it on his own yet. #2 is also pretty tricky, but it's a work in progress. The point is that we've taken a big step, here, people. One that is going to involve a lot of extra laundry for a while. But if you recall, we had him in cloth diapers for many, many months, so super-gross laundry is nothing new to us.

Today was his first day back at school with underwear. He was a little bummed out when he realized that his pants obscured his totally sweet Lighting McQueen underwear, but for the most part he did pretty good today. It'll be a work in process (and don't be surprised if we totally wuss out for the New York Trip) but the little guy is growing up. Apologies to whichever family members' floor he pees on first. I figure it's only a matter of time.

Tyler is also starting to have full conversations, though for some reason he likes it better when he has a toy and you have a toy and your toy asks his toy what his toy did during the school day. Too modest, otherwise, I suppose. He also is putting together some pretty elaborate play scenarios. On Sunday he got his luggage, some luggage for daddy (a pumpkin bucket) some luggage for mommy (a purse) and then we went to the airport (kitchen) and sat in the airplane (floor) and went to new york. He walked over to the museum (Office) and saw the Dinosaur (actual Toy Dinosaur, I was impressed) and then we looked up and saw the big Blue Whale (ceiling). It was too high up to touch. We checked. And then, after all of that, we went back on the plane, flew back to Texas, and then said hello to the kitties when we got back to the house. Then he did our tax returns!

Micro-News!

Tyler has been taking swim lessons. Next week is his last class and I am coming to watch and see how good Tyler is now.

Tyler is starting to learn numbers and sounds. He'll be writing novellas before you know it.

Till next time, everyone,

-N