In The World…

Everyone out there, do me a favor.  Next time I mention that I’m thinking of doing some sort of home improvement project myself, just repeat those words to me.  “Just get a professional.”  It would certainly save me a bunch of time, frustration and body soreness in the long run.

Why do I mention this?  Well, this past weekend Jess and I decided it was finally time to get a water softener.  Our water in Meridian is super hard (with dissolved minerals, you sickos).  We’ve wanted to get a water softener since we moved in almost 2 years ago.  Our shower walls are slowly turning orange.  The funny thing is, we put aside most of the cash we got for the wedding in an envelope with the specific purpose of buying a water softener.  It just took us this long to actually pull the trigger.

Well, the time had come and Jess was able to convince me that we could totally install it ourselves.  And by “we”, she meant her dad and I.  So, Saturday morning we headed to Lowe’s full of resolve that it was to be that day.  We had grand plans to crank this mother out and be enjoying our soft water that evening.

Hang on there, Sparky.  As is always my problem with things like this, I don’t know what I don’t know.  I did know that having looked at the plumbing for the softener (that our house was built with) meant that piping was going to have to be cut.  See the above image. I guarantee this fact added at least a solid year to my procrastination.  There was no handy-dandy screw off ends here.  Also, this isn’t PVC pipe either.  It is something called PEX which I’d never heard of. Of course, this requires a special tool we gotta rent.

Having purchased all the crap we’d need and planned our attack we started in.  This PEX clamper-tool-dealy-thingy (which resembles bolt cutters) was a bitch and a half.  Let me tell ya, compressing that bastard took everything I had.  This was compounded by the fact that final rings needed to be compressed behind the water softener.  I’m basically dry humping the water heater trying to get enough leverage and strength to do it.  It very nearly didn’t happen. Not to mention that I could hardly get out of bed the next day with my back, shoulders and arms all jacked up.  When we were “finished” I didn’t have enough strength in my arms to even close the tool. But I digress.

Long story short, we get all of the new piping cut and connected.  It comes time to test for water fastness.  I am happy to report that NONE of the PEX ring seams had a single problem.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that the threaded pieces leading into the softener itself were dripping.  Very slowly, but dripping.  Shit.  Well, we disassemble and unscrew them… re-teflon-tape them and reassemble.  Same thing.  We tried tightening.  We tried more teflon.  We tightened some more.  No dice.  It was at this point where we were out of ideas.

Fortunately, we still had usable water (thanks to my massive PEXing) so we didn’t have to spend the weekend like backpackers in the wilderness or anything.  However, the bucket under the tubing told a different story.  Honestly, I’m just glad that at this point I didn’t have water cascading around the garage looking like Old Faithful.

This is what always seems to happen to me.  Every project I do I can get 80% of the way done.  Then comes some curve ball and I’m basically dead in the water (no pun intended).  Something on my end is always different from the instructions.  When that happens, I don’t have the knowledge necessary to adapt the plan and continue.  Usually at that point I get frustrated that I shot an entire Saturday on the project and am just going to have to call someone in anyway.  F-bombs and flying tools usually commence.

This morning, the good people from A-1 Plumbing came out.  The guy was really nice.  He even complimented me on my PEX seals.  He told me about a guy who tried this a few weeks ago and every single one of his PEX joints was leaking.  At least I got that going for me.  Anyway, a couple hours and 300 bucks later we are up and running.  Not to mention that there were a couple pieces that he did and I didn’t even know about which could have cause us MUCHO problems in the future.

I guess I’m just not enough of a “manly” man to know this stuff. It is time to admit to myself that I really don’t know what I’m doing.  I suppose I wouldn’t expect a plumber to build me a website either.  There is a reason these people exist.  Just bite the bullet, pay the money and have it done right.

Thus endeth the lesson…

This past weekend the Idaho State Capitol building was reopened to the public following 3 years of construction.  Jess wanted to go but I wasn’t too sure… then she mentioned that I could shoot pictures and that sealed it.  Not only was I in, I was excited to go!

So, we rounded up the parents (both sets wanted to go) and headed down there Saturday morning.  I’m no expert on what all they did during the construction, but I do know that they added two wings that are underground with skylights which were pretty cool.  They did an amazing job matching up all of the marble as well.  Go to the idahostatesman.com for more on that front.

I mainly just wanted to take photos, so that’s what I did.  Here are my favorites.  You can also go to the entire Flickr.com set to view more than what is here.  Also, I would like to add that you really should click on each image to view it larger.  Some of them really benefit from being viewed bigger.  Thanks and enjoy!

This is the first picture I took that day.  Might be my favorite…

Two cheapo flags, held by me. Just playing around.

The National Anthem… I wish I could have gotten a little closer to the 2 servicemen, with everything in the background.  But I still like this shot.

Straight up through the dome.  This almost looks like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey or something.

Zoomed on the dome a bit more… removing the lights gave a much “cooler” blue feel.

Visitors gazing up to the dome.

There you go, hope you enjoyed.  Like I said, there are more images in the Flickr set.  Go there now.

As a side photography note, I have a bunch of really good photos from the Christmas holiday that I have yet to share.  I know Christmas feels like a couple months ago at this point, but hopefully I’ll post them soon.

Some of you who know me, know that I really enjoy Christmas music.  Have since I was a kid.  I still remember learning all the words to all of the songs in grade school.  In many of the songs, I can even sing those 2nd verses that often get left off of modern recordings.

In fact, in years past I have written blog posts about my favorite Christmas songs as well as my not so favorites.

That being said, there is one song in particular that amuses me,  “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”.  You all know that song and have heard it a million times from a thousand different artists.  But, what amuses me about it is a couple lines in the song:

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

Nice sentiment right?  Christmas is a time to reflect back to the good old days.  It is also a time for friends and family to come together and enjoy each other again.  I’m sure this is just as true in your family as it is in mine.

However, if you listen to many of the versions out there, the artist mistakenly (or otherwise) swaps two of those lines which completely changes the meaning of the tune:

Faithful friends who are near to us
Will be dear to us once more.

It’s a subtle swap that you probably never thought about, but basically turns from expressing the joy of having far-flung loved ones around for the holidays to the following…

“You know, you scumbags are around all the friggin time…  You rotten son-a-bitches really piss me off the rest of the year, however it is Christmas time, so I guess you’ll be dear to me again… But I swear to God, come January you people are all back on the shitlist!”

Can you see why that amuses me so?

Merry Christmas everyone!

This week will bring along my 36th birthday.  Holy crap, that sounds really bad.  THIRTY SIX?!  How in the hell did that happen?  I mean, I don’t feel significantly different from 32, or 28, or 25.  When you’re a kid, you think about when you’ll be an “adult”.  Honestly, I’m still wondering…  It’s gotta happen one of these days, right?

It occurred to me, that at 35 you are half of 70.  Granted life expectancy now is mid to late 70’s, but if you kick at 70, nobody looks a that as a great tragedy.  Whoa.  That is a sobering thought.

With such a birthday coming, I’ve been thinking about aging.  Stages of life, if you will.  Of course, we have the epic speech by Billy Crystal in City Slickers.  But I think I can expand on it a little bit. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I don’t personally know the older ranges… I’m educated guessing)

Age 0
You’re born.  You obviously don’t remember this, and probably for good reason.  Ye olde play-doh fun factory of life would probably not be something you want to look fondly back on.  You are the center of attention, even if you don’t know it.

Age 1-2
You start to figure things out.  The walking. The talking. “NO”.  You know… The essentials.  You may have some friends you recognize from day care.  The most important toy is always the one the other kid has.

Age 3-5
The last years before you enter the forced hierarchical structure that is school.  This is a golden time.  Your parents are the smartest people on the planet. I remember very well hanging out with Mom all day.  She worked from home sewing, so I would crawl around in the closet full of fabric and listen to daytime TV.  Occasionally make a run to the bank or grocery store.  All I knew was that my older sister wasn’t around and didn’t get to do any of this fun stuff.

Age 6-12
Now you’re in school.  You have a ready made gauge for ranking everyone.  When you’re in first grade, all you know is everything is new and you’re the youngest in the school (except for those wimpy kindergartners but they don’t even go to school all day).  Once you jump to 2nd grade, you realize what all the fuss is about.  You instantly know, you are not the youngest, and thus, the most lame.  Everyone older than you is cooler, everyone younger is not.  That is just the way it is. School is the dominating force in your life.  You spend the most time there.  The year feels SO long.  It might as well be 5 years between Christmases.

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Well, they still do.

The latest abomination was foisted upon the unsuspecting public this previous weekend.  They shipped out with Sunday’s paper an insert… Their college football preview piece.  Needless to say, this city is pretty jacked up about the rapidly approaching Boise State game vs the vaunted Ducks of Oregon down on the Blue.  Obviously, there has been a lot of hype for this game during this past 8 months.  Appropriately, they titled their guide “Hype”.

Now, I’m not critiqueing their content.  It was good enough apart from some exceptionally lame “overrated” pieces on each page, (really?  Bashing Twitter is not fresh) but I digress.  No, I have a problem… wait, check that… I have NUMEROUS problems with the image they created for their cover.

For the record, I am NOT a designer.  I think I have a marginal eye for design, but the designers I work with make me realize I have exactly ZERO skill compared to them.  Wirestone has some of the best designers I have ever seen in their employ.  Obviously, the Statesman does not.

Warning, the following image is so horrible, it could scar you for life.

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In honor of the holiday, I spent a few minutes on song.ly, which is a service to tweet muisc.  Don’t ask.

Anyway, I scored my own fireworks show, you know, were I to have one.  This is what my fireworks show would sound like.  I’m sure you can picture the brightly colored explosions perfectly timed to the following tunes.

http://song.ly/g4s7 U.S. Merchant Marine Band – Semper Fidelis

http://song.ly/g4sl John Philip Sousa – Stars and Stripes Forever

http://song.ly/g4t9 Williams, John – Theme From Superman

http://song.ly/g4tp Boston Pops – Indiana Jones Theme

http://song.ly/g4uf John Philip Sousa – Battle Hymn of the Republic

http://song.ly/g4vk Aaron Copeland – Hoe Down

http://song.ly/g4v0 George C. Scott as Patton – Patton Speech (I would play this as voice over a few of the songs)

http://song.ly/g4wq Aaron Copeland – Fanfare for the Common Man

http://song.ly/g4xl Back To The Future theme

http://song.ly/g506 Top Gun – Theme

http://song.ly/g50z Band of the Fighting Irish – Notre Dame Victory March

http://song.ly/g51z Chet Atkins, Roy Clark – Dueling Banjos

http://song.ly/g52s James Brown – Living in America

Grand Finale: http://song.ly/g53f Neil Diamond – Coming To America

Yes, the requisite fireworks show would have cost millions of dollars (at least the one I had in my head would) so, the best I can do is the music.

Happy Independence Day folks.  I love this country.

I guarantee I can beat it.  Here’s the story.

So, I’m working from home today.  I spent the last night coughing and nearly choking to death on phlegm to the point that I “slept” in the other bedroom so that I wouldn’t keep Jess up all night.  Upon arising  and hacking up a loogie the size of New Jersey, I decided that instead of subject my fellow coworkers to my respiratory issues, I would just log in and work from home.

Anyway, lunch time rolled around.  Jess reminded me that if I’m sick, I really should eat something.  I headed to the kitchen to see what I could find.  Ahh-ha… I know, I’ll have a nice big peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Haven’t had one of those in a while, that should hit the spot.  What else can I have?  Yes… good… we have a box of individual size bags of Sunchips that we got from Costco specifically for lunches.  Perfect.  Throw in a Pepsi and you have a pretty solid lunch.

I set about chowing down my sandwich (on 8 grain bread, I might add).  Trustworthy PB&J will never let you down.  If it wasn’t for those things I probably would have starved to death in childhood.  Also, I’m a bit of a strange eater when it comes to lunch.  More often than not, I don’t mix foods together.  I eat one thing, finish it, move onto the next.  Don’t ask me why, I just do.  If it’s a burger and fries, the fries go first, then the burger.  But, if its a sandwich and chips, the sandwich goes first.  I know, I’m weird.

Sandwich done, I open the bag of Sunchips to finish off my lunch.  I’m happily munching away while I work, as I’ve done hundreds of times before.

Let me preface this next part for those that might be squeemish… proceed with caution.

As setting, let me state that my office is fairly dim.  I don’t have the overhead lights on, and the shaded window has drapes on it. Really, the only light is from my monitor and a bit from the hallway, which is plenty.

As I was about 3/4 of my way through the bag of Harvest Cheddar chips, I began to ponder what those dark spots were on the chips.  I had noticed them upon starting, but in the dim light they appeared to just be another “grain” in the chips or perhaps larger clumps of seasoning.  Ummm… no… I’m not that lucky.

After piecing together my more recent history with Sunchips, I was fairly certain that Harvest Cheddar chips really didn’t look like that normally. Something was amiss.   That is when I looked a little closer, and came to a horrible HORRIBLE realization.

That’s not seasoning.

Again, squeemish people move on now.

They were ants.  Dead ants, specifically.  All curled up on themselves like dead ants do.  The bottom of the bag was FULL of them.

For the record, I chugged the rest of my Pepsi in about 2.4 seconds.  I can’t say I totally felt the urge to puke, but it did cross my mind.

Now I specifically remember eating one chip that had 20 or so specks on it.  Thinking nothing of it, I popped in and chewed away happily.  Hindsight being 20/20 and all, I think it did taste a bit… off…

I think the worst part now is that I still have bits of the chips stuck in my teeth.  Which, of course, means I’ve got bits of masticated dead ant in my teeth as well.

Ok… that thought is making me want to puke.  I’m off to brush and rinse with Listerine about 24 times.

Of course, I couldn’t NOT post a picture…

All told, I think I’m off Sunchips for awhile.  Oh, and Frito Lay?  Prepare to get a piece of my mind.

Well, we did it.  After just 8 short weeks, “the puppy” has come home.  Here is where I describe the ins and outs of bringing home a new puppy to two people who seemingly weren’t fully prepared for what was in store.

See, we had settled on the fact that we would reserve a puppy from Gem Doodle’s (next litter later summer/early fall ‘09 if you’re interested) most recent litter.  One of the offspring of Tula the poodle and Bruno the golden retriever would be ours.  All we had to do was wait.

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I am not the first one to say this… in fact, I’m probably the 2,304,865th person to express this sentiment, but allow me to add my voice to the cacophony declaring this an historic day.  I don’t think we can adequately appreciate exactly what this means.  You know, one of those things that is just so big that it really takes some distance to fully comprehend it all.

Instead of trying to detail out all the ramifications of Obama’s election and inauguration, which I am woefully ill equipped to do, I will instead just capture some of what I’m thinking about this day.

Obama feels like a president for everyone.  These past 8 years have certainly felt like there were vast swaths of the population who were marginalized or simply flat out ignored.  The mark of a good leader is someone who listens to all points of view to come up with solutions.  I think Obama is that man.  I told Jess, who was hesitant to get on the Obama train because she wasn’t sure she agreed with everything he stands for.  I told her, there will never be a candidate who you agree with 100% of the time.  We each have our own views shaped by our own experiences.  What you want to shoot for is someone who will listen to all sides and someone you trust to make the right decisions.  I honestly feel that Obama is that man.

I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.  That is tough to find in a candidate.   I feel better about Obama than I have about any candidate in a long time.

How nice is it to have a president who can actually speak?  I mean, words can move mountains.  Obama can expertly use words to convey an idea and make us feel.  All without using words like “nook-u-lar” or “misunderestimated”.  If anything, Obama is reminiscent of Regan.  He was the first president I remember as a kid and I used to like to listen to him talk.  He reminded me of my grandpa.  It is so nice to finally again have a president who when he opens his mouth you don’t have to cringe and what might come out.

In that same vein, I am very happy to have a president I can respect.  I had zero respect for Bush.

It moved me to no end to see the shots of the elderly african-americans who were present at the inauguration.  The stories of the civil rights marches, segregation, dogs and firehoses.  It amazes me to think that just 40 years ago, the country was so different.  Since all that happened before I was born it’s easy to think that it is ancient history.  But it’s not.  It’s recent and it showed on the faces of those present.  I can’t imagine what all this must mean for them.

I think what I will like best about the Obama administration is the polar shift in the attitude of the government towards the rest of the world.  Bush ruled with absolute arrogance.  He assumed that he always knew what was right and could never imagine that he could be wrong.  If any other countries disagreed, well we’ll just bully them into complying.   Of course the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms!  Why wouldn’t they?   Obama on the other hand, said in his speech that we will no longer operate that way.  He is about building and extending, not isolating and alienating .  How refreshing.

I also really liked to hear him paraphrase Ben Franklin’s famous quote of “Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither”.  Obama basically said we will not sacrifice our principles for anything.  Hopefully this means an end to Gitmo, domestic spying and warrantless wiretaps, and the secrecy and paranoia of the Bush years.  I absolutely hated the direction this country was headed.  I hope that has all changed.

Another area of focus he mentioned was our infrastructure.  Frankly, it is embarrassing the condition of our country.  If we’re the richest country on the planet, why in the hell are our roads and bridges deteriorating?  Why is public transport so pathetic?  Why do we rank so low in broadband penetration?  Why haven’t we built a new nuclear reactor in 30 years?  We spend billions and billions and seemingly have nothing to show for it.  Maybe we will now rectify this.

This really is too big for me to fully comprehend right now.  There is so much floating around my head right now that I can’t seem to write a coherant sentence.   I will say this… I am exceptionally proud to be an American.  I love this country.  I have since I was a little kid.  I am now more hopefull for our future than I have been in a long long time.

I think it is a very good sign for our country that there are millions of school children who watched the inaguration today, and didn’t know how significant it was for a black man to be elected president.  They just saw a man become president.  That’s all.

That bodes well for our futures.

One more quick post…

As I visited the Idaho Statesman’s website, I was greeted with their “Today’s Highlights” section, which is basically the ‘above the fold’ part of the website.  Of course, they were highlighting the inauguration.  Unfortunately, the images they chose to highlight it with really leaves something to be desired.  See below.

Statesman, you suck.