Can someone clue me in?

Tara thinks this comic is funny. I have no idea why...

Neighborhood kids...

Last week, Tara was driving down the street to the kids school for a parent teacher conference. She heard a bang, the window in the van broke. Looks like someone put a BB through the window.



I taped it up with packing tape because it was late afternoon on a Friday, and I didn't want to deal with it right away. It turns out that packing tape does a pretty good job keeping the shattered window in place. I've been ignoring the problem since then. At some point soon, I will have to replace the window. For now, it's a non-stained stained glass window, providing an interesting blind spot in the van. Some of the kids seem to like looking at it.

Who sits in their yard waiting to shot out car windows?

Also, how does Blogger know which way to orient the pictures that are uploaded? Does my phone provide that information, or is Blogger guessing?

My work here is done.

Last Sunday, I spoke to the youth in the ward. I told them that I wanted to tell them about three times in my life that I've been chased. I started to tell them about the time I was a Freshman in High School, our band director switched me from clarinet for baritone sax. I was not a good clarinet player. I ended up being an ok baritone sax player, at least as far as high school standards went...

Anyway, the school's baritone sax had this big case with a loose handle. I was playing with the handle one day early on, and the case was wobbling. I twisted it, the case went sideways, and swiped two football players that had 6 inches and about 25 pounds on me. They were running in the opposite direction down the hall, and ended up tumbling into a heap. They looked up at me, and gave me a dirty look. I panicked, dropped everything I had, and bolted. They gave chase.

About this time in telling the story, the youth figured out I was talking about "chased", not "chaste". They started relaxing and chattering a bit. I asked "what did you think I was talking about?" I thought it was pretty funny.

A couple of days ago, we were all in the car, driving back from Salt Lake. Tara asked the girls what it meant to be "chaste". I looked in the rear view mirror, Kate was looking at me laughing a little.

My work here is done.

Tara's return

Two weeks ago, Tara got home from her trip. Noel and I went out to the airport to get her. (A 12 minute drive - not on the freeway - absolutely fantastic!)

When the plane landed, Noel was looking around, after Tara walked up, I gave Noel to her. After a few seconds Noel looked at her, and gave a look of total surprise. Eyebrows arched, eyes open wide, and mouth in a little 'o'. It lasted only a few seconds, but I've never seen a look like that on a four month old baby before. It was kind of funny.

After we got home, Noel screamed at Tara for over an hour. Just letting her know about her displeasure. She seemed fine the next day.

I am sure the kids are happy Tara came home. They were tired of me, I was just tired, which made things worse. Now if we could only get them to go to sleep at night...

"The agitator turns at midnight"

AKA "A little torque makes the world turn round"

Our washing machine tried breaking down again. This time it was the upper agitator that stopped working. I've noticed lately that it wasn't rotating the clothes all that well. Last week, Kate stuffed the washer full, and the clothes didn't turn around at all. It took several cycles to get the soap all the way out.


The part that grabs the agitator and turns it had worn down to the point that it was basically useless. Options - fix the washer or replace the washer. I don't have the money right now for the washer I want to replace the current one with, so I explored repair of the washer, likely not for the last time...

Last week, I found a parts website - http://www.repairclinic.com - they made it very easy to find the replacement part. It cost me $10 plus $5 shipping, and the parts came in 5 days, including a public holiday where there was no mail.

While waiting for the part, we did half full loads, so the bottom agitator, which still worked, could move the clothes around in the water. With nine people in the house, laundry piles very fast if you are only doing half loads.


The part came, and I spent a good 45 minutes trying to get the bolt off the agitator, so I could replace the part. I was using a socket and a straight attachment to try to take it off, not a socket wrench. This clearly wasn't working, so I borrowed a long extender from my friend Chad. It took about 30 seconds to get the thing off with the extender and a socket wrench. (Thanks again, Chad!) Proper torque beats brute force any day.

Anyway, the washer works as designed again, even with a full load. Now I can make Emma take that jacket off that she wears every single day...

Halloween

I never got around to posting Halloween pictures from this year. Here they are:

Dr. Who. I had jelly babies in my pocket, and feed them to the kids while we walked around the neighborhood. More than knew what the costume was. (Maybe a dozen.) That exceeded my expectations. I'm thinking about going back to Beaker next year...

Kate was Athena, or Hera, or Artemis, or something. I have forgotten. It was two weeks ago, and I had to fill my head with HPUX information again 10 days ago. There was a buffer overflow, I lost some things.

I thought I would win the prize for "most obscure costume" in the family this year. I was wrong. That prize went to Mary. She was a character in the Young Adult book series she read. I hear it went over good at school, but most of the people whose house we visited didn't really know what she was.

Superman. We had problems with the curl that day.

Dorothy. As far as I know, this year, there wasn't the same confusion regarding Emma's costume as previous years...

Ruth was a princess. Just a princess, she would say.

Lily was a princess. As we went out that night, she started saying "Princess of the World", then "Princess of the Universe". By the end of the night, she had a whole back story ready for anyone who would listen. I think that's why Ruth kept saying "Just a princess"...

Days 13-19: "Mostly a haze"

I never got around to finishing my report of how things went with Tara gone.

I caught the mouse. It was pretty easy. Mice are suckers for peanut butter. Set the trap, leave the house, and blam! - that's it for the mouse. Retrap things, no evidence of mice since...

That last week Tara was gone was kind of interesting. I was staying up very late watching priority registration, and waking up very early to feed the baby and get the kids to school. I got about 4 hours a sleep a night that week. And drank lots of Dr. Pepper. Most of it is a haze. I think I watched way to much "Fresh Beat Band" that week. There may have been an extra helping of "Bad Cop" around the house.

I don't know if homework was done. I am pretty sure the kids ended up where they were supposed to be. They lived through it. Everyone stayed clothed, feed, and healthy. I guess that's something.

After Tara got back, I told her she couldn't do that again until after the kids are all in full day school. It wouldn't have been nearly as hard if Noel wasn't a 4 month old baby...