Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Keeping up with the Jones’s

Published
by
Patrick
on April 28, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

Back in 2001 or so, Urn wrote a journal article about how I was always trying to keep up with him. He got a blog, I got a blog. He got a webcam. I got a webcam. I always thought of it more like I was a step behind him. I was planning to do something, and he beat me to the punch. It’s also some of that same weird wavelength that we tend to be on where we think similarly. Spooky. WoooOOOoooo.

It’s happened again, although a little differently than in the past. A few weeks ago, he posted that he and Kat got a Roomba. I had never really put much thought into one, but then while at Sharper Image on Friday, Sharron sees one and says, “Oh, that’s not a bad model.” I didn’t know anything about Roomba’s, so I was surprised that she did. By Saturday, we were over at Pat and John’s house (for another reason, see below) and she asked if she could try out their Roomba. Uh oh, my mind went, we’re getting a Roomba. We watched the little vacuum go all over the place and saw how well it got the dirt off of the floor. By the time we got home later, we were pretty much determined to order our own…and we did. It should be here within 10 days or so and we’re looking forward to showing it around the house.

I asked Sharron later about her research into the Roomba. She said since she does the vacuuming, she was more inclined to research something that does it for her. I’m going to have to suck it up very soon and take over more of the household chores as she’s going to be going to work too. This makes me feel pretty bad as I feel like I don’t do enough around the house. Now that I recognize that, I can try to improve though.

Sharron thinks that the marketers for the Roomba need to present it from the house cleaning point of view. Any new technology that reduces the amount work you have to do shouldn’t be too hard to market. I tend to agree. :-)

For some big news in our lives, Sharron and I bought a Toyota Prius on Saturday. We’ve been VERY interested in a new car for awhile now and have put a lot of thought into what we should get. For awhile we’d been thinking of just picking up a beater. This would get me to the bus stop and back. Sharron would drive the Pathfinder. However, with gas prices up near $3.80 in Connecticut, I started thinking about the Pathfinder’s 15 MPG. With Sharron’s new job in Newington, she’ll be driving around 37 miles per day. That’s about 185 miles per week just in work driving. In the Pathfinder, that’s about all the miles you get before it’s time to put another $65 into the tank. Ugh. I started doing the math, and even a car that get 30 MPG would be a good investment as the savings in gas would justify the car payments. Then we started thinking about the Prius. At an average of 44 MPG, the gas savings would DEFINITELY pay for the car. So, we ordered one to test drive ($1,000 refundable deposit) as you can’t just test drive one as there AREN’T any! We checked it out Thursday night and by the time we returned it on Friday, we’d decided we liked it enough to buy it. So, Saturday morning we got up early and hung out at the Toyota dealer for a few hours to process all the paperwork. We now own it and it’s awesome. It’s sky blue, very similar to the Pathfinder, but we like it. :-)

Apples and Reiki

Published
by
Patrick
on April 23, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

About 3 weeks ago I had my annual physical. It was the first one not done by the military in many years and so was quite interesting. One of the things the doctor told me was that I needed more fiber in my diet. He said an easy way to do that is to eat fruit with my lunch. I told him I eat a Banana every day, but what he meant was an Apple or some other fruit with a skin that’s harder to digest. So, I’ve started eating Apples with my lunch. At first I wasn’t too keen on them, they were only ok. The last few days though I’ve found myself looking forward to my Apple. It’s crazy! I mean, it’s not chocolate or sugar and I actually want it? Crazy!

Also in the last few weeks I had a Reiki session. A Reiki master is someone who can heal you with their energy. The master I worked with told me it’s not “woo woo” (new age non-sense) but actually a long practiced method of healing. It doesn’t really seem like something I would normally be in to, but Sharron went based on the recommendation of our Chiropractor and she really seemed to enjoy it. I wanted to understand this a little more and also be closer to my wife, so I decided to try it out.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous going in. I had no idea what to expect. The master was very nice and we sat and talked for about 20 minutes before starting the session. She told me that I’m very open and that’s very important for healing. She had me lay down on a cushey table and said I could close my eyes if I wanted to, or sleep or really do anything that made me comfortable. I didn’t want to miss anything, but I also didn’t want to be staring at her the whole time, so I closed my eyes, but tried not to fall asleep.  She started at my head and I really focused on not thinking about anything.  I wanted to keep my mind clear.  At first I didn’t noticed anything, just the warmth from her hands.  After a while though, I started to see some purple colors.  They were odd shapes at first, but then they turned into specific things.  I saw an old man with a beard and then what I thought was the Statue of Liberty, but it transformed into an Indian with a headdress.  I also saw myself in the middle of a forest with a rake under a blue sky.

During the session, she moved around my body and this caused different feelings and I saw different things.  I saw Parker at one point and felt an ENORMOUS amount of love for him.  At another point I was in a hospital and turned to see my mother in a bed.  I think this means that I’m scared of her dying.   At another point I could swear that I saw myself sit up.  I was still lying on the table, but there I was sitting up too.  The last thing I clearly remember was when the master was working on my left foot and finished, she walked up towards my head and it was as if the sun were rising where she was.  It was pretty interesting.

All in all I had a really interesting time.  She told me afterwards that my  paternal grandfather had come into the room during the session and “bugged” her a little.  She said that he was so interested in me that she had to shoo him away.  :-)

Worked our Asses off!

Published
by
Patrick
on April 14, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

As I mentioned in my last post, we have been in the process of clearing the fence line of debris for the beginning of the fence installation today. Sharron and I decided to take it a step further and simply clear out any large debris inside the fence line too. This included any fallen trees, branches, limbs, etc. Did I mention that this fence is going to contain .6 acres of our land? Oh my. We started working at 11 on Saturday. I’d asked my co-worker Adam if he was interested in coming over to help, but he’d brushed me off. I’d also asked our friend John if he was interested, and he said yes, but only if he could bring HIS chain saw. :-) Sharron and I started by setting up a debris/mulch pit. We lined up several tree trunks to on 4 of the 5 sides. I kept adding to these walls throughout the day and it worked great. Mostly our work consisted of dragging trees and limbs to the pile and making it bigger. John showed up at around 4 and got to work with the chain saw. While he was cutting, I got the wheel barrow out and started hauling the logs. Whew! We stopped at just before 6pm because we were seriously tired. We’d cleared out about 5/8 of what we’d set out to accomplish.

We started again on Sunday at 11. It was MUCH harder to get going on the 2nd day, but we had a definite goal in mind. Our first obstacle was to clear out all of the logs we’d cut the day before. This took a good long time, but we kept making good progress too. After most of the logs had been cleared from one section, we decided it was time for the tarp. Sharron had bought a tarp and two handled D-rings (with hand foam for softness!). We loaded the tarp up 3 or 4 times and dragged it back to the mulch pile. That turned out to work VERY well and we’ll probably do the same thing when we finally get around to clearing out all the leaves. :-) The chain saw took its turn again on Sunday and I cut up a bunch of the trees that were still left. We quit for lunch at 3pm and Sharron realized that her back was in SCREAMING pain. I recommended that she take a hot bath and relax for the rest of the day. At 4:15, I headed back out to finish up. I still needed to cut a couple of the fallen trees, and drag a few more to the pile. Luckily, with the end in sight, I made short work of the remainder and even after clean-up I was done by 6pm. DONE I tell you DONE! Ha ha ha haaaaaa!

We went to the supermarket and got Salmon filets stuffed with crab and jumbo Shrimp for an appetizer. It was a great dinner.

Ok ok, we’re not 100% finished yet. The previous owner(s) had been making their own refuse pile…about 20 feet from the house! (the morons) We started removing that, but decided it wasn’t worth our time this weekend. It’s a project for another day.

Chain Sawin

Published
by
Patrick
on April 11, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, Sears had a sale on Craftsman tools.  My wife is the best wife in the world and rushed out to get us a few.  She came home with a circular saw and a chain saw!  Wow.  Haven’t used the circular saw yet, but last night, we busted out the chain saw for the first time.  I had used one when my family lived in Texas MANY years ago, but it felt like my first time again.  We read the instruction manual to make sure we’d use it safely and read the section on felling trees.  Oh yeah.  Felling.  Trees.

On Monday the fence company we hired is going to start putting up a fence in our back yard for Parker.  Over the last couple of nights we’ve been clearing the fence line of debris (of which there is MUCH) and we discovered that there was at least one place where we’d need to cut a tree with the chain saw.  This tree was mostly fallen over already, but the damn thing was still livin!  What was really cool was how easily the chain saw cut through this tree.  I thought it was going to be really heavy and shake my hands terribly (like the one I used in Texas), but it was really smooth and cut through the tree easily.

Of course, once you start cutting, it’s hard to stop.  Sharron suggested we cut down several smaller trees right along the fence line and towards the end of our daylight, we decided that one of the bigger trees needed to go too.  We followed the directions and cut a wedge out of the side we wanted the tree to fall towards and then started cutting in to the other side.  One snap later and the tree went right over.  TIMBER seemed to ring through our woods.  Of course, on the way down it hit another tree, so THAT one had to come down too.  :-)

We still have a lot of work to do before Monday, and some of that includes more use of the chain saw.  Woo hoo!