Kitchen Pantry

I worked on the kitchen pantry shelves today. It's about the only thing I got done today, but they are pretty much done at this point. (At least usable.) This picture is with the shelves all framed, about 45 minutes before I clocked myself in the head with a board...)

The view from a few feet back doesn't do much for seeing what it looks like.

The nearly finished project. All the stuff is up on the shelves. I want to get some 1x6 boards to use as facing on the thing, to make it look nice and give it a lip so stuff doesn't fall off the shelves, but that is a job for another day.

Game Time

Board games for Tara's birthday.

Trivial Pursuit - Tara won. (I had 5 pies.) It was the 20th Anniversary edition. Literature category is hard.

Cities and Knights of Catan - I won. Tara made the mistake of letting me pick the second game to play. I made her play Cities and Knights...

That's it. No rubber match.

Happy Birthday to Tara

Happy Birthday Tara. Your present will arrive in the mail Sept 9th. (You can try to guess, if you like.)

Way too early!

Tara and I took a quick trip up to Costco this evening. They had a quarter aisle of Christmas stuff out. Lights, Nativities, and ornaments. Is it just me, or is August a little too early for that stuff to be out?

Measure once, Cut twice

It's a little hard to tell what you are looking at here, but what we have here is the first shelf in the kitchen pantry. The water is there to hold the top down while the glue dries.


To get to this point, I took the truck to the dump today to get the back cleaned out. It was kind of stinky down there today. Drew also brought up his drills for me to borrow for a while, which helped a lot with motivation.

It might be a few days before I get the second shelf on, my evenings are booked up tomorrow and Wednesday, but at least the thing is started now.

I am a lazy bum

There is a lot of stuff I haven't been doing around here. Here is a list:

• Finishing the work on the house. I have painting to do, several doors to hang, lots shelving to install, outside lights to hang, and blinds to put up. I haven't really done anything of note since I got sick 2 weeks ago. Drew is loaning me a drill, which should help with the motivation, I think. Most of our boxes are emptied, yesterday I hung some pictures.
• Work on the yard. It has been hot out. I haven't mowed the lawn in months. A portion of the lawn is dried out and in bad shape. I need to weed the garden, weed whip around the yard, dig the lawn mower out from behind the junk in the shed, and mow the lawn. Then I need to water some more. It was over 100 degrees here today, I stayed inside. (We also went to a luncheon for a wedding today and I took Adam to the grocery store, so it is not like I have been a complete hermit...)
• Read anything. I haven't picked up a book since I stepped off the plane in Buffalo last month. I "read" a handyman magazine a couple of days ago, skimming through things, and I read the better part of this month's Ensign last week, but that's about it. Maybe I should start walking to work, it seems like it was easier to read consistently when I walked to work...
• Taking the girls to Seven Peaks. I have a season pass this year, including parking, and I went a few times in June/July, but I haven't taken any of the kids over there this year. I think they close down in about 2 weeks or so for the season, and are down to half days, so time is running short. I don't have to pay to get Adam or Lily in, I thought about taking Lily yesterday, but she was down for a nap when I got home from work, I got into the air conditioning, and the next time I went outside, I realized how hot it was out there and got demotivated. It is supposed to be in the 80's next week, maybe I can get over there a little bit one or two days next week. (It is hard when they open at 4pm, and I need ot be somewhere else at 6pm, but maybe one hour is the perfect amount of time for Lily or Adam to be over there...)
• Figure out what in the world the truck is doing. It really doesn't like the heat. Or something. It has power problems. It also needs a good cleaning. I have a load of stuff in the bed that needs to go out to the dump, I went early this week to head out there, but it started pouring down rain, I couldn't get the wipers to work right. They just went full speed, no slow or intermittent, just fast. Then I turned them off, and the wipers kept going. It was weird. Add that to the truck not wanting to really go all that fast, and I turned around to go home. The wipers eventually stopped. Tonight I went out, and the lights on the dash wouldn't come on until I fiddled with them for a while. Then I stopped somewhere, the second time same problem. Things are weird in that truck right now...

One of these days I will get around to getting some of this stuff done.

Not funny to everyone, but I thought it was hilarious...

(From XKCD web comic)

Start of school

School starts tomorrow. Everyone cheer for Tara.

They had back to school night tonight. I didn't go, I was at the Stake center. Like every year, the teachers are begging for "involuntary" donations. They say it is involuntary, and no child will be excluded if a family does not donate to a teacher, but you get hounded over and over for the donation if you do not hand the money over. (Might possibly be an exaggeration on my part.)

Last year Kate's teacher didn't ask for a donation. I was happy to give him the $20. (That's right, I did the opposite.) Tara tells me that Kate's teacher is asking for a $25 donation this year. Makes me want to hold out until February or so...

Am I the only person around here that feels like these involuntary donations are really a hidden tax? I have 3 kids this year in the school, 4 every year after that for a while. After that, Kate will need to start paying for book rental. I don't remember my parents paying for all this extra stuff for school, maybe I wasn't paying attention.

Anyway, school starts tomorrow. Everyone cheer for Tara.

-- our valued customer --

I've talked about the postal service once or twice before here. (My favorite.) I think they just don't get it... We got a postcard from them today:

---

Dear Postal Customer,

In an effort to adjust to rapidly declining mail volume, we find it necessary to consolidate deliveries in many neighborhoods. What this means to you -- our valued customer -- is this adjustment may change your normal time of delivery.

These changes will be implemented over the next several weeks. Please watch for your letter carrier to determine your new delivery time.

Your U.S. Postal Service is committed to providing you with affordable and efficient service, and we appreciate your continued patronage.

---

I am not sure which part of this letter makes me laugh more.

1. Mail volume is rapidly declining. I wonder if they realize they will be in incredible trouble when Netflix figures out how to stream to the masses and stops their mail service.
2. I am supposed to watch for my mail carrier to see when the new delivery time is. As if that is all I have to do all day long. (I am sure some do. There is nothing wrong with that.) We already don't get our mail at all on some Saturdays. I convinced Emma the street lights at night are turned on by a monkey the city hired. Maybe the Postal Service could think about something along those lines.
3. "The U.S. Postal Service is committed to providing you with affordable and efficient service..." Did the U.S. Postal Service just commit mail fraud?
   

Restaurant Review

TGI Friday's

For our anniversary, (11 years today) Tara and I went out to lunch. We got appetizers - (Buffalo) chicken tenders, onion rings, and fried green beans. These were all good.

Tara had some sort of pecan chicken salad. No pecan was spared. She seemed to like it.

I ordered a flat iron steak, medium, with sweet potato fries. The steak came out, very rare. Not in any way medium. While waiting for the waitress, I ate some of the fries. Not really salted.

The waitress came back, and agreed that they missed a bit. They took the steak back, and the waitress brought me a broccoli cheese soup. When the manager brought the thing back, the steak was pretty much medium rare. I kept it, I didn't want to send it back and have them scorch the thing. They refreshed the fries, which were salted this time. Both the steak and fries were good. I couldn't finish the soup. (Hadn't planned on it in the first place, anyway.)

Long story short, good food, but I wouldn't trust them to cook my steak again. At least not the one in town...

Really long blog posts can be tiring to read...

It's been a long couple of weeks, this weekend seemed kind of long as well. (More on that soon.)

I got a new hat. It's got a sewn on felt symbol on it.

It is also 'weathered' looking, so the hat look like you could have been wearing it for the last 20 years. Didn't come with sweat stains, though. Not the bags under the eyes. This was Thursday, I think.

One day last week we had fried chicken (cornmeal batter), mashed potatoes (horseradish and garlic flavored), and zucchini from the garden. I think Tara and I liked it better than the girls did. Adam eats everything within reach.

Emma had her two week Chinese immersion boot camp. She seemed to enjoy it.

Here she is practising for the ribbon dance...

...and a blurry picture of the ribbon dance itself.

Another blurry picture. I don't know why I try to take pictures at these school functions. I never get them in right.

Head shoulders, knees, and toes, I think. Emma is starting to walk around the house saying things in Chinese. We need to get on the stick, otherwise she will start teaching her sisters, and we they will take over the house, using their foreign language skills...

I got a short video in of the ribbon dance. Still a little blurry, but you get the idea.

The girls have been watching too much Disney channel. That week at Grandma White's house did it, I think. Every since one of them need to be reprogrammed...

In other news, I have been pretty busy at work. I've got a security software upgrade I am trying to get through, it's sucking a lot of time and effort. We had a load test on Thursday, but the guy running the load test didn't really get the thing running the way it was supposed to. This means we are still not sure if the problems we had last month are actually fixed or not. School starts in 3 weeks, hard to say if we will know if things are alright before then. (Every keep your fingers crossed.) Add to it things like occasionally working on the house, spending time at the Stake center, dealing with outages at work (weird power outage in there), and just general piddling my time away, and I was pretty tired by the end of last week.

On Saturday, I was putting siding up on the back of the house. It was really nice outside, somewhere in the 70's. By about 1pm or so, I started not feeling completely right. My legs started aching, and I started seeing spots against the white siding pretty badly. (It was cloudy out, not like a burning sun shining on it.) Anyway, I stopped doing the siding, cleaned up the back patio so the girls could go out and play, and came inside. By evening, I was sore all over, with a headache and pain in the ears. By 8pm, I was under a blanket, alternating between burning to a crisp and freezing cold. I also started a little bit of a sore throat. I pretty much stayed down for the next 36 hours. I got up this morning, Tara took me to the urgent care, we both had strep throat. Not sure what caused it to knock me out like that, must have been how worn out I had been ahead of time. I will be non-contagious sometime tomorrow.

I still have painting to do in the house - here, there, pretty much everywhere. I need to build shelves in the pantry, both bathrooms, and the hallway closet. I did manage to get Tara's quilt rack back on the wall tonight. I also have to figure out what to do about the laundry room doors. (Level on top, not at all level on the bottom...) We need to get Chad out of here in the next day or two, because the well is running dry.

Tara got a letter in the mail today, showing pictures of the van running a red light last month in Washington. It certainly was "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" on that trip the young men took. I wonder how I can show the letter and fine to the young men's president in the manner that causes the most effect...

We still have about 30 boxes or so that have not been unpacked. We need to find some people to take the empties, but I didn't get to make the announcement in Priesthood meeting yesterday, because I was in bed. I also missed my home teaching appointments. I need to call my companion to see what happened. Hopefully he still went.

Anyway, tonight hopefully I (and Tara) will get a good night sleep. Tomorrow is new toothbrush day, and I plan to switch out my bipap stuff. No sense reinfecting after I get better...

We will ignore the fact for the moment that being sick sets me back two days worth of work... I guess it will start all over again in a few days. Somehow I missed fitting in a vacation this summer...

Why is he climbing the mountain?

A visit with the doctor

I wonder how many blogs out there are completely fallow at this point. The percentage must be high... This blog is not dead, I am just incredibly busy. And tired.

A few months ago, I visited with my doctor. He's kind of interesting, he definitely has 'alternative medicine' leaning tendencies. I definitely do not. A number of people on my team at work go to him, he is supposed to be good with Chronic Fatigue, fybromyaglia, and allergies.

Anyhow, a few months ago, I was talking to him about my pain flare up, and how I hadn't been able to figure out what was going on. (I didn't have the gut ache that had been associated with the problems of the past.) He did some blood work, and told me to keep in touch, hopefully I could figure out what was causing the flare up, or at least have things calm down a bit.

One morning a month ago, as I was about to take my daily dose of thyroid medicine, the thought came that maybe it was the cause of the pain flare up. Last summer I was feeling pretty good, I realized that was the time that I was on a different thyroid medicine while the stuff I was taking got recertified. I stopped taking the thyroid medicine, since then I have felt pretty good. (But tired.)

I was telling my doctor this today, he thought that was pretty interesting. He suggested that they test me for allergies to the different kinds of thyroid medicine. I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but 10 minutes later, they had me on an allergy testing machine. It had a little probe they touched against your finger, another metal thing you held in your other hand. It had something to do with the acupuncture location for allergies, and simulating the wavelengths of different things. Like I said, alternative medicine leaning tendencies. Maybe I just know nothing about any of it.

They took a baseline reading, then tested me for the thyroid medicine I have been taking. The machine reported an allergy. They tried a different type, again an allergy. They tried a third, no allergy. A fourth, no allergy. The doctor gave me a 30 day supply of one of the ones I tested negative to, so I can try it out and see if things are ok.

I should have had them try apples, oranges, and pineapple while I was there, but that would have been me buying into the whole thing. Maybe I have, it's not like I am headed out looking for another doctor at this point, he seems to be helping me feel better in general over the past two years...