A new swing

This is a piece of log, like several pieces of log, carved off a bench that I will get around to finishing someday. (Maybe this summer!) The bench project was paused after I burned out my belt sander (this has since been fixed), and I used a grinder for one or two days that I decided was too dangerous to continue using. I have several pieces of log like this, so I should be able to make more of these swings for the front yard.

Sanding the swing down left it with some interesting waves in the bench. You can sort of see them in this picture. The bottom was not sanded or shaved down in any way, I wanted to make it look kind of natural, like a swing you would find out in the woods somewhere. (Made by a bear, I guess.) You can't see the lag bolts I put in from the back to close up the cracks in the wood... (I'm pretty sure a bear wouldn't use lag bolts. That's how you can distinguish between the work of a bear and me...)

After sanding it down, I decided that a little bit of stain would make the swing bench look really nice. I had some sitting around, and since I wasn't looking for any particular color, one coat took care of it.

On June 4th, I had gotten to the point that the swing was ready to hang. I had planned to take care of it sometime the next week, but I got side tracked working on a house a few doors down.

My friend Chad, who is feeling lots better these days, came over this afternoon to help me hang the swing. He has had plenty of experience, knowing just what to do to not have to use the ladder... You can see the girls were happy to try it out.

Sometime later in the summer, I will make a couple of more swings for the tree, so this one is not lonely. I need to ponder improvements to the design first...

Preparing for the baby

T minus 3 days...

We plan to use the old crib, at least for a few months. (We have used it for all the kids, I think. Not completely sure.) It has been white, it was painted blue for Adam, and I think it was briefly pink, although I have a hard time remembering what in the house has been pink over the years. (And I didn't see pink while scraping and sanding, so I may be wrong about that.)

We picked yellow. I am not completely sure that it's fully yellow, it's yellow as far as my colorblind eye can see. It may be yellow with patches of green. We'll see...

Dear InterMountain Health Care...

Tara got a call from someone in the collections department from IHC today. The lady was insistent that Tara needed to pay part or all of her $40 bill today, or risk being sent off to collections. Tara didn't let the lady bully her. (Good for her...) She asked when the bill was from, and at first the lady was saying something about late May. Then Tara lit into her about turning something over to collections right away after it cleared insurance. The lady backed off and said it was something from late March, and still wanted the money right away, because they had sent three bills and hadn't heard from us at all. Tara then explained that we paid a large chunk at the end of April, and a chunk at the end of May, and they would get more money on Thursday, after we get paid. Tara had to explain that we paid online. The billing lady had to go look it up, and low and behold, we had been paying them money! Shocker! Good for Tara. The lady should just be glad that Tara didn't just have them call my cell phone. I would have played bad cop.

Listen up IHC people: I paid online because I didn't want to have to deal with you people. It's bad enough that you are billing things under three different accounts. Tara has been over there every week for months, and she's having a baby next week. We get bills from you constantly, in differing states - just billed, off to insurance, and finally "patient's responsibility". When they get to the state of "patient responsibility", the bill goes in the file with all the other bills to pay at the end of the month.

Additionally, your online bill payment site poorly designed. I log in, I can see the three accounts, but right this very minute, two of the accounts show the balance for "Patient Responsibility", which I know about and am ready to pay, and the third has a large balance and just says "pending insurance". You have little 'information' buttons, but they don't seem to work, so it's hard to see if the third balance is the one that has the $40 on it or not. Too bad for you, but I am not paying money against that third account while it says that. I will wait for the insurance to post, and pay then. If it doesn't happen before the end of this month, you will have to wait until July to get your $40. (In the meantime, I will feel free to pay down the other two accounts, since those appear to post against things I have seen come through insurance recently.) Now, you may say, "but sir, if you are keeping those bills in the file, can't you just pay the money?" I am pretty sure there is an outside chance of me reacting badly to that question, since we are already giving you people a portion of our monthly income...

P.S. If you have problems with this, call my cell. I gave the number to you the last time I made a payment. I would be glad to talk to you about your little problem, and have some suggestions as to what you can do with your online payment website.

My current project

My friend hurt himself pretty badly last week, and has his left hand in a cast.  He was working on the house pictured here when he did it, and was only about 10% into the project.  He's not able to work for a while.  (He was given a 20% chance to keep his thumb a week ago.  It was upgraded to a 85% chance today.)

I've been spending Saturday and weekday afternoons working on the project for him.  We've got people from the ward helping.  Here is a picture of what we got done today.  Trim on one side of the house, and several rows of siding.  Not pictured, but finished was also a lot of sheeting and tar paper.  The house is finally closed up, and ready for shingles all the way around it. 

If you are looking for me, I am down the street.  Listen for the construction noises on my street.  I might be busy for a while longer, and won't have time to post here...

Happy Birthday, Adam

Today was Adam's birthday. For some reason, he seemed to think it was hilarious for people to sing "Happy Birthday" to him. We missed the expression on his face when he opened the present that had the Diego tshirt in it, but he was very excited about it. If you ask him what else he wants for his birthday, he says a "doggie pillow pet". We have not been able to find any doggie pillow pets...

The other thing he really wants is cake and ice cream. The kid catches on fast. We got him some cake and ice cream, and after, went to the creamery to get some balloons. We got enough for him and the girls, and as I was putting the balloons in the car, I tried buckling them in the seatbelt, and the flew away. Adam still had his, but he seemed a bit shocked about the ones flying off into the clouds.

It reminded me of the time that we went to the Children's Hospital employee picnic, which was a gigantic thing, at least it seemed to me. (I must have been somewhere in the range of 6-10, I suppose.) At the end, we had balloons. It was a hot car, my dad was driving, and the windows were opened. We were told to hold our balloons, but I let mine go, and it immediately floated up right in front of my Dad's view. He was able to bat the thing out the window and kept driving. I watched the thing float away as we drove away...

Today was sort of like that, except that I was not in the driver's seat then, the van wasn't moving, and it was 5 balloons, not 1 balloon. Also, having been a driver all these years, and having the occasional 'distracted driver' problem, I think my Dad took the balloon in the line of vision problem really, really well.

Late Spring project

The temperature out there is in the mid 70's, heading into the 80's. So naturally, it's a good time to make a scarf, right? I tried a different pattern this time around.

So maybe it's not the right time of year for scarves. Tara tells me that I need to make Kate a purse still, Kate feels a strong injustice at not having one. That's funny, she's never told me that. (I don't really remember why she didn't get a purse, I assume it had something to do with a hand injury, or some sort of attention disorder...

Anyway, this scarf turned out ok, I guess. It's been a while since I made a single color one, and I stopped before this one was big enough to cover a small South Pacific island.

All my problems are melting away...

Last night at 6:45pm, I had a number of things wrong:

• Tara was 20 miles away with all the kids, a cousin, her Mom, and a dead van
• I was supposed to be at the church helping the Young Women get connected to the internet there
• I was still at work staring at a Netware cluster that no longer wanted to function

I called Tara's Dad to see if he could get up there and shuttle some kinds down to his house. I called the Young Women's leader to tell her I wasn't going to make it, and talked her through it one more time. We had three of us at work, one at home, and on the phone on vacation in Las Vegas.

I also arraigned to get a minivan to take up to get Tara, and was waiting my brother Tom to make it up to my office to pick me up. Tara called her sister, by the time Tom got up to my office, Tara's brother-in-law had gotten there, jump started the van, and they were ready to come home. This mornign I took the thing down to Autozone, the battery tested fully charged and good. Looks like they just drained the battery. Problem #1 fixed, I think. I also think I owe Tom and Corey a lunch...

The young women were having problems connecting to the wireless at church. We have the access point not broadcasting. They only had one of eight laptops connecting properly. I had them move to a room closer to the access point, and eventually found someone that could go down there and try to help them. I don't know how successful he was, or what really happened after that, but they didn't call back, and the activity was over before I got home, so for now, I am just assuming things went ok.

We beat our heads on the work problem until 9pm or so, to no avail. We should have been off the Netware cluster a while back. We don't have a support contract, I'm not convinced that Novell really wants to support people anymore. (They outsourced their "per incident" support service.) At about 9pm, the guy in Vegas decided he was the best person to open the call, and we decided to let him. I told him to call me if he needed help, one of the other guys planned to be at work at 6:30am to take over if needed. This guy stayed up all night, and got the problem fixed at 6am. (Outside of the service call he made. $1000 for nothing, essentially.) I woke up at 7am, and found the the problem had been fixed.

So, three problems last night, all fixed, that I didn't directly resolve. I like the ones that get fixed for me. I fully expect to walk out the door in a couple of hours and find a new truck sitting in the driveway, waiting for me... I am also seriously considering writing an epistle for work about "IT Brittleness", where I talk about how running services on outdated hardware, old Operating Systems, poor applications, or lack of redundancy causes outages to last longer and take more effort to fix, but that's a story for another day...

Wardrobe malfunction

I've been thinking about shirts today. And pants. White dress shirts, and suit pants. Here's the problem: When I wear my suit pants, I always feel like they are bout the fall down to my ankles when I get up from sitting. White shirts never seem to fit quite right, I have a couple that refuse to stay fully buttoned. Both of these can be a problem when you are trying to limit your 'exposure'...

I don't know why I have such problems with my suit pants. I wear belts, but I must just stand up funny or something. Up I go, and I feel the irresistible pull of gravity tugging on the pant legs. I guess I should be wearing suspenders or something. I can have the pants cinched tight, the feeling doesn't escape.

I have three kinds of white shirts. The first fits very nicely everywhere but the arms. The arms on that shirt are too short. The shirt tails are nice and long, the shirt stays tucked in at all times, which is a plus when you think your pants are going to fall down. I wore the collar on this shirt out, because I had worn it so much. It was really nice when I didn't wear suits to church all the time, I would just roll the sleeves up, and off I would go. The only other drawback to this shirt is that it was a little thicker fabric or something, when I wear it with a suit coat, my insides melt from the broiler that is generated. I would get more of this kind of shirt, if the shirt wasn't so hot to wear.

I have another kind of shirt, that it lighter weight, and pretty much fits everywhere, except for the fact that I think they ended the shirt one button short at the bottom. I am always having the bottom button come undone. Combine that which a belt that is cinched up to avoid a pantsing, and the shirt starts moving around in various directions. No one really wants to see my belly. I think this is the main reason ties wear invented. Men started wearing them so you can't see that one of their shirt buttons have come undone. That's why people look uncomfortable in a tuxedo. Sure, you have a cumber bun on that helps with the pants problem, but right there, out in the open to the world are your shirt buttons.

The third kind of shirt I have is slightly narrow in the neck, and a little too short on me. The buttons stay buttoned, but the bottom of the shirt gets exposed when the pants do their thing. Maybe I need longer shirts or something. Like the kind that go down to your kneecaps. I am always wanting to unbutton the top button on this shirt.

There you go. Your "too much information" quota for the day. Maybe I should just suck it up and go shopping, of all things, for new shirts. And some suspenders. I don't even know where most of these shirts came from. Tara has the unenviable task of trying to buy me normal clothes from time to time. Maybe I shouldn't complain until I have walked a mile in her shopping moccasins...

I can see Adam being the exact same way as me some day. He does want to wear his church clothes one minute more than he has to. He gets home from church, and is immediately ready for someone to help him get the clothes off. Today Tara rolled his sleeves up on his shirt, he seemed to like that pretty well.

Man Cave

We watching the movie "Red" on Monday night. Since then, I have been thinking about the possibilities for digging out underneath my carport and shed, and making myself a workspace. Then I can get a shell of some car somewhere, and use the front of the car as the entrance to the workspace. It can just sit in the driveway, looking like it was supposed to be there.

The house can just be a decoy...