Thankful Thursday: Wayne Anderson

I have a neighbor down the street named Wayne. Wayne happens to also go to church with me, but for now I’m going to just be thankful for neighbor Wayne. Neighbor Wayne has been incredibly helpful this first two years that we’ve been home owners. Wayne has helped me with many projects, and even has managed to help me when I wasn’t home (like fixing my sink plumbing when I was out of town). Wayne enjoys joking and hanging out, but he also likes to educate me and that’s just cool. So we can laugh, we’ve even cried (like grown men do, no sissy crying), and we’ve probably learned a thing or two from one another. I’m thankful for Wayne because he’s just been really, really awesome. I hope I can be that sort of neighbor to my other neighbors some day.

Wayne’s wife Sue is also an amazing sweetheart and I’m grateful for her friendship as well.  Jessica has learned a great deal from Sue in many areas and we would probably trade our car for a large case of her apple pies.

Rotten Eggs

So this morning Krystal came over to work out with Jessica.  But she arrived as my eggs that Jessica was kindly cooking finished cooking and Jessica set them aside on a plate and let them sit there while they chatted about yoga, pilates and ran their mouths burning more calories.  My egg, however, was losing temperature fast.  Heat transfer was taking place due to the cold plate, the cool air around the top of the egg, and the fact that moisture was exiting the egg through evaporation.

Jessica marched it down to my office and in a loving way as she exited my office declared, “Its probably cold.”  Fortunately she didn’t finish the sentence with recommended methods of arming it up like sticking the egg under my armpits or sitting on it.

Sears Borkbucks: The Borkination Continues

So this morning was finally the day that the repairman from Sears was supposed to come out and unbork our fridge. That is until this morning when some poor soul had to call our house and tell us that they had scheduled a repair when there wasn’t a repairman available. She kindly asked us if we could wait another 8 days. You know, because walking out into our garage to get any item that needs to be refrigerated is a good thing. Not really, but surely they must appreciate putting customers on hold for weeks.

Jessica was nearly screaming at the automated voice system when she called back to try to speak to someone with actual authority. The automatic voice recognition system isn’t designed to handle angry people, which makes the angry people more angry, and it makes the system more not work, which means when the person gets a hold of a manager they’re ready to rip off the heads of live chickens in an Ozzy Osbourne type show trying to demonstrate their anger and communicate to the manager that the situation is grim.

I just hope that Sears deals with us soon and quickly because I’d have to have to write a third post about borking – its starting to make me feel kind of mad-scientist like with all of this evil laughter.

Update: Jessica got through to a live person, who promptly hung up on her, then she called back, got another live person who transferred her to a manager who got an appointment scheduled for Friday.  Not exactly now, but definitely better than next week some time.

Spider!

This morning as I began my lunch break Jessica asked me to get rid of a spider sac.  As I looked closer I could see the baby spider alive in the sac.  So I took a picture.  Yeah, I’m weird like that.  The macro on my camera is pretty good, but I happened to move a bit while taking these two photos.

The spider

The spider in the sac

The spider emerges

The spider exiting the sac.

Jessica demanded I kill it moments later 🙂

Scabby Abby

Last night Abby had a fall at the park while I was at Bible Study at the Doyle’s.  She scraped up her knees, her left arm (yes, she’s left handed like several of her grandparents and her mother), the left side of her face and her nose.  She’s OK, but she’s rather scabby.  She’s a sweetheart though and is toughing it out rather well.

Thankful Thursday: Mr. & Mrs. Frank Anthony Nuzzi

My buddy Tony who currently lives in Round Rock, Texas has been a friend since college.  I began working with his wife at the Christian bookstore.  We quickly became friends (Jessica and I and Tony and his bride Erin) and it became apparent that I was a jerk.  I was trying to be funny but it often came about by me speaking rudely about Jessica.  Tony & Erin told me I was not welcome at their apartment any more if I continued to be rude like that.  I learned a valuable lesson that night.  We came over many times after that and once getting married we moved in next door to them.  They were both part of our wedding party.

Tony & I are goofy together, which has been a lot less often since I’ve moved to Colorado, but I count he and his bride as dear friends.  Tony inspired me to be a coder, inspires me to be a better theologian, and he also inspires me to use the word Hermeneutics in any conversation we have together at least once.  I’m thankful for my friendship with him, and Erin as well.  We’re looking forward to them coming to visit us next month.

Fifth of July

So yesterday night, after going to a mall (!) for to watch Fireworks the exiting of the mall was insanely slow.  While we waited for the mall parking lot to clear out one car driver got mad at another driver whom he thought was ‘cheating’ and started yelling out of his window at the other driver.  The other driver got out of his car and walked over and put his hands on the car door, fingers reaching into the car.  Dude!  Put your brain on, if you’re going to try to talk to an already angry driver, putting any part of your body into the car is stupid!  You may already know this.  I had my camera ready to record the fight, but it never happened.  The guy who got out of his car quickly got back into his car and waited and the fight never took place.

We ended up walking around the mall and killing time so that we still had to wait to get out of the mall.  If a 9/11 kind of event were to be threatened at that mall everyone would be at least injured simply because leaving the mall would be impossible.  Things were stupidly backed up with police help directing traffic.  I think next year we’ll watch fireworks from the comfort of some place else less insane.

Show Me the Money

I’ve started a new blog about what I’m learning in the world of finances.  Its a rather transparent blog about what I don’t know, what I do know, and what I want to learn.  You can read it by going to WatchMyMoneyMaker.com.   I’m going to be doing some interviews soon to create an audio podcast as well.  I still need to work up a site style & theme, but there is already some writing up for you to peruse, critique and evaluate.  Also, if you’ve got questions about various principles or things you want to learn more about shoot me an email and I’ll do my best to research the answer so I can learn and you can learn, too!

Fridge Borked – Sears More Borked than the Swedish Chef

So this weekend our fridge (which is just slightly older than two years) just totally stopped fridging and turned into a room-temperature-ator.  Fortunately we have a special service warranty on our fridge.  That way Sears can come out and service and take care of it.  So I called up and attempted to get service quickly.  Ha ha!  Silly me.  Why would I want cold foods?  Room temperature is the way to go.  Sears can’t schedule anyone to come out to my house until Tuesday late in the evening.  So I scheduled for Wednesday morning which was a more convenient time for me.  Not really, but since I’m going to have to go out to my garage fridge to get anything that I need to keep cold, I might as well do it an extra day so that the repairman can come when I’m home.

The other upside with my Sears call was that the guy on the other end of the phone barely spoke legible English.  I have no idea what his name was, but his thick Spanish accent made ‘Greg’ a little bit hard to believe as his name.  At least it wasn’t Peter Parker.