Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

Oh, to be 12 Again

Today at lunch I took my mountain bike (with slighly low tires, but that didnt’ stop me) to the BMX track near our house. I went around the track 4 time, maybe 5 and was done for the day. What a rush though! I was rather winded and dehydrated by the end but I just had a great time riding. I seperated from my bike only once and kept hold of the handle bar with my right hand so that when I landed on my feet I could keep going.

When I was 12 I dreamed of such a thing as a local track and actual jumps like that. It was beautiful. Sure, I’m 15 years late, but I can still have a wee bit of fun 🙂

No Microwave

We don’t have a microwave at our new place. We haven’t missed it yet.

How often do you use your microwave when cooking it on the stovetop or reheating it in the oven or on the grill would have sufficed? Our kitchen is smaller than any kitchen we’ve had with the exception of our first two stints in tiny apartments. This has required better organization and better decision making about what we keep, what we need to buy for the kitchen and in the end, so far we’ve decided not to get a new microwave. Sure, that rush schedule may show up that would have made it convenient, but heating times is tending to be only a few minutes longer in the toaster oven or stove top.

I think that microwaves have become a cultural thing. Sure, there’s convenience, but I think that at some point in time it became an issue of jonesing [definition: to want something to ‘keep up with the Joneses’]. Sure, there are areas of my life where I too long for something completely superficial (yet another guitar, for example), but not the microwave… I’d rather have the new super-deluxe, ultra-amazing fridge-oven that you can program to keep food cool, and then at the set time it starts to heat it so that your turkey can be hot and ready to eat when you get home frum church 🙂 However, I’m not going to part with the $5,000 USD for one 🙂 That’s a major part of our kitchen remodelling budget that doesn’t exist yet.

Busy but Loving It

OK, so I’m busy… but not with work. Well, not paid work anyway. I’m working on the house, working my normal hours, plus we’re having folks over, going over to folks houses and generally getting back into the social world. After Jessica got pregnant, the first trimester was insane. Then, with my previous busy work schedule followed by the move we were just pretty out of it. It feels good to be visiting with folks, laughing more and eating food not made by teenagers over greesy microwaves.

Bring on the food, Friends and Fellowship!

Tea… or Close To It

My Sister-in-Law Shari asked in the comments of my earlier blog post about a romantic weekend with my wife how it went. Well: we didn’t go to tea. We almost went to tea but arrived in the parking lot of the ‘tea house’ and chickened out. You see, the tea house my wife picked out was about 15 minutes north of Denver. And so, we drove and drove and drove, arriving in the very downtrodden part of Denver known as ‘Lakewood.’ I mention that it was downtrodden only to say that I was glad that the locks on my doors worked, and I was glad that I could lock the car at a moments notice. Not all of Lakewood is that downtrodden, but the part we drove through was. Also, Mississippie, the name of the road we took, stops for about a block and you have to drive around the block that it stops at. Upon trying to re-access Mississippi, the sign looks like the road disappears from one direction, however, upon turning around the sign has a different name for the street!

So we arrived at the ‘House of Windsor’ and chickened out. Mostly because it was in a shopping strip mall and my wife just couldn’t get over the fact that the romantic English tea she wanted was going to be next to a Casino dealers school. So, because if you’re going to have crappy food, you might as well not pay as much for it, we went to Starbucks and had Frappo…. frap… frozen drink thingies. And then drove down to the other end of Denver, 15 minutes South and had lunch at PF Changs. We had tea with lunch.

Sprinkle, Sprinkle Little System

Yesterday afternoon I spent the time working on our ‘new’ sprinkler system. It was high time we turned it on and got it wetting the lawn. However, upon turning things on there were two ‘trouble spots’ in the front. I had the experienced eyes and hands of my neighbor, Wayne, there. In fact he did a lot of work himself and I did a lot more watching than I expected. However, now the poortly clamped pipe has been fixed with the appropriate parts (instead of flexible hose and clamps we’ve actually got pipe!) and I’ve got a new sprinkler head at the front. Of course the new one is not adjusting right so I would water the streets if I turned it on, but I am going to take that back to my one way bank, that only accepts deposits Lowe’s tonight and get one that will spray a 180 degree radius instead of 360 degrees. I don’t plan on cultivating pavement.
Here’s a close-up of the clamp that died in its time in the dirt, attempting to hold a hose to some pipe when more pipe would have been appropriate:
A Rusted Clamp
Such is life.

I will be getting pictures of the house up soon. Jessica has to approve the ones I put up and the ones I keep taking have not passed her test for content allowed up on the site 🙂

Roman Tick Evening + Tea

Tonight we are dropping the Abigator off at my parent’s house and having a night to ourselves. We’ll go to dinner and watch a movie. Tomorrow Jessica has arranged for us to go to a tea/lunch at a place somewhere in Denver. I hope to have a good time as well as be able to spend some quality time with my wife given the last three months’ business and then moving.

I love my wife, she’s a terrific woman and a great friend. Unlike Brad Pitt, I think I can think of forever.

Never Let a Hungry, Pregnant Woman Go Grocery Shopping

Yes, that title is a might long. Jessica went grocery shopping after her chiropractor appoinment today. I think she spent a tiny fraction compared to the United States Gross National Debt but she spent a lot. She bought lots of things we needed… plus some snacks. Or, maybe it could be better stated: she bought a lot of snacks, and some other things we needed.

I asked her why so many snacks and she just told me, “Never Let a Hungry, Pregnant Woman Go Grocery Shopping.”

Enough of the Negat’ism

Well, the last couple posts have been rather negative. For that I apologize. It is now time for something completely different:

Abby likes jumping. A lot. More than a lot. I think that today she might possibly have burned enough calories to lose me a pound or two. She’s just a jumping little girl. When she gets excited she jumps, when she gets upset because she’s not getting her way she jumps and then slumps. When she’s playing she jumps. Sometimes when we’re praying she jumps. If this were green eggs and ham she would eat them jumping without a question.

I think in the end though, she likes jumping because temporarily, for just the slightest fraction of time she’s suspended in the air and that’s quite a feeling when a fraction of a second is a longer part of your life than when you’re 27 🙂

Hi-Fi Satan

Well, we did it. We have gotten 666 tattooed onto our hands, on our foreheads and and our credit cards for good measure. OK, not really. We had basic cable installed. However, the first show that came up: Maurey Povich. That’s like having Satan beamed in on hi-fi.

I think that my favorite part will be the Jerry Springer Show at all hours of the day. Of course the televangelists come in clearly as well, and that’s just outright evil 😉

I Want a New Cell Phone, But…

I went into the Cingular store last night to possibly buy one of their most expensive phones. I don’t write that to brag, it’s for work purposes. However, here’s why I didn’t upgrade my phone or change services:

  1. The phone does not have insurance offered for it. That’s right, they want me to spend hundreds of dollars on a device that will get outdated… but if something happens to it they don’t even offer a way for me to insure it.
  2. Because the device is a PDA I have to buy their $24.99 (USD) a month internet connectivity plan if I want to use the phone for anything other than a phone. Forget the fact that I could get a cable and plug the phone into my laptop and use it as an internet connection for a modem using only ‘phone minutes.’

I’m going to buy a Pocket PC from Dell and move on. This is really silly, Cingular.