Great day

I slept in, and woke up to a hand-made card and a doughnut. Then received some cool gifts. We chilled for a while and spun Beth on an office chair 'till she nearly puked while I jammed some Pandora on the computer (Coldplay, Mazzy Star, Tori Amos, Nada Surf, Snow Patrol...... I love Pandora!), and then packed up the kids and dogs and went for a hike up the hills behind our house. It was the first time either of the kids had been to the peak, and there's a 360-degree view. It was kinda cloudy and windy today, but it's still Hawaii. It's 80 degrees and gorgeous. We radioed down (Yeah, that's right. With walkie-talkies - 'cause I'm nerdy like that) to SuperMom so we could wave at each other, and then came back down to smoothies with Mangos from our mango tree. Oh yeah, we found that Mangos, aren't so bad after all. I love having a fruit tree. I'd love it more if it was self-cleaning, though.




Fathers Day was great. I just wish mine was still around to share it with.

Savings and Loam

Yeah, it's been slim pickings on my blog for a while. As long as my new computer doesn't randomly reboot (again), I might actually get something published and start using it regularly again.

So the financial debacle has finally caught up with us. I'm in no position to whine, it is merely a statement. SuperMom and I are doing fine and working away, but our tenant that lives in our old house in San Diego just became the unwilling recipient of a gradual withdrawal from the unemployment coffers. L happens to be the coolest tenant ever. As much as we'd like to see her succeed and buy a home of her own, if she has to rent, we really want her to rent from us because she is awesome. No hassles, low maintenance, easy to talk to, and very funny. So anyways, she just had a life-altering surprise and asked us if we can help. Well, we weren't about to risk losing her and having to find a new weirdo tenant from 2600 miles away, so we're, digging deep and helping her out.

In other news, the traditional pre-birth "nesting" stage is upon us. Last time I was remodeling our kitchen right up until munchkin's arrival. This time it's a whole lotta yard work. We finally broke down and had the front yard landscaped, but that really only gave me a breather. This weekend she we decided to complete some unfinished grass and sprinklers in the backyard. After an hour or so with the neighbor's roto-tiller, a few hours of raking, several hours of digging, soldering, cutting, gluing, and reinstalling all the sprinkler valves the hack landscaper installed, we were almost done. And then it got dark. And then it rained. And there we were shoveling Hawaii clay at 10PM on Sunday night. This project is of course going to stick around long enough to ruin more than one weekend. So far we have what earlier in the weekend was about 400 sq feet of freshly tilled and nicely raked dirt. It now is a lumpy, muddy mess (with sprinklers!). Oh and how lovely it is to come home and have to give the dogs a bath before they can come inside the house. Gah.

On the upside, our mango tree is loaded with a couple-hundred mangos that are beginning to get ripe - and none of us like mangos. Why couldn't we get a house with an avocado tree, or bananas, or coconuts, or apples?! There's nothing quite as tortuous as having a ginormous fruit tree that everyone in the neighborhood raves about and it being one of the very few foods that you don't care for.

Poop Bounty

With a 2 year-old and one more on the way at the end of July, I'm in a perpetual potty-training hell. Taking care of "#1" was easy. Currently there is roughly a 3-chocolate-chip/one-half popsicle bounty on poo that actually makes it into the toilet. This has been an uphill battle between us and the hazmat special ops team at day-care. It's lovely that she knows where to potty, how to potty, is not afraid of the potty, and still is more comfortable squatting in some dark corner or behind a wall of pillows and dropping a log into her panties.

*sigh*

Sometime, perhaps 3 or 4 years from now, We will have the biggest, most awesome, potty-training-is-over-forever party you've ever seen. I can see a bonfire on the beach where we burn old panties and undies, and a bountiful feast of chocolate chips and popsicles for all. Everyone will be invited. Friends, family, and even you - as long as you're not a creepy internet stalker/pedophile (I'll have to ask you to use your best judgment). It will be awesome.

You can't argue with geometry

Just last weekend my wife was trying to coerce talk me into some chores.

SuperMom: "Now would be a good time to mow the lawn."

Turtle: "Actually, it's 11:30 and about 10,000 degrees outside with 90% humidity. It's not the first thing on my to-do list."

SuperMom: "Really? What else is on your list?"

Turtle: "Let's see. I have to do some plumbing outside - too hot. I need to do some wiring in the attic - too hot. I need to sand, primer, and paint the bedroom ceiling - too hot and dusty, and you and Munchkin are here. I need to clean the gutters, dig up the old fence posts, bury pavers under the new fence to keep the dogs from digging out, add the expansion tank to the solar water heater...."

SuperMom: "So which is at the top of your list?"

Turtle: "Well, none, really."

SuperMom: "What kind of list has no beginning?!"

Turtle: "It's a.......a circle!"

Party animals

Computer, you're on notice!

After all the hard work to assemble the proper parts for my new computer, and hours of bench-testing the new setup, I finally assembled everything into my case and began the final assembly. This includes 4-6 hours just for filling, priming, and leak-testing the new watercooling setup. Finally, the moment of truth. I press the power button.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Nothing

(-->Insert exhaustive and comprehensive list of expletives here<--)

Initially, I submitted an RMA to NewEgg for the motherboard, then I punished it by giving it a time-out and ignoring it for a week and a half. Yesterday I decided to finally prep it for shipping, but I'd better test it one last time before I pay another $15 to ship it back to the mainland - again.

Success, kind of.

Horray in that it is fully-functional. Holy crap in that I have absolutely no idea where to begin in the troubleshooting.

So now it sits for a little longer until I can summon the patience to toy with it again. I'm still limping along on my wife's computer, and praying daily to the great pasta god that this system doesn't go belly-up on me while I'm using it.

I lose. I win! I lose. I win!!

I lose.
You may have noticed that immediately following my proclamation that I would pick up on the blogging again, that I dropped off the face of the earth. Asus, Gigabyte, and Microsoft can collectively kiss my ass. First, my motherboard died - suddenly. Attempts to rebuild have been hampered by hardware failures, RMA wait times, and Microsoft's inability to allow you to load RAID drivers from anything but a floppy disk (unless you slipstream, which so far has only been mildly successful). Between all of this fun, housework, and life in general, I'm going on 4 weeks without my own computer up & running, which must be some kind of record.

I win!
The latest super-dooper 3-d sonogram told us quite clearly that we are having a boy in late July! I know I should be indifferent, and no doubt I still would love the baby if it were a girl, but I'm truly esctatic that I will have a boy to continue the family name, eat dirt with, and enjoy watching movies involving gratuitous violence with when we're older.

I lose.
As part of the new, baby 2.5 edition (oldest sister is a half-sibling) soon to be released, I have been both highly anticipating and dreading the replacement of Danger Ranger III. Alas, DR3 cannot fit 2 car seats and had thus had an expiration date equal to that of the arrival of baby 2.5. DR3, my 1999 Ford Ranger had been my nicest truck thus far, and I had heavily customized it to compliment it's street-only life. Fat tires, rear anti-roll bar, KYB shocks, Flowmaster, upgraded intake, as well as a host of other customizations. It was downright fun to drive, and will be the last stick-shift that I will have had the pleasure to own for quite some time. I will miss that truck dearly.

I win!!



My new truck, that needs a name. 2007 Honda Ridgeline RTS 4WD. Okay, Honda has the audacity to call it a 4WD. It's really front-wheel drive with automatic variable torque output (up to 50%) to the rear wheels. The short version: No 4WD low, so it's only "All-wheel-drive," and I can live with that. If it handles trails as gracefully as my wife's Pilot, I'm stoked. You know what else I'm stoked about? A 25% smaller engine (3.5L) that puts out 36% (87!) more HP. There are more cubby-holes and storage places on this thing than I've ever seen. You could probably smuggle 10 people across the border just in the trunk alone!

Since this truck is mechanically near-identical to my wife's '04 Pilot, I only have to buy 1 set of fluids, filters, wiper blades, light-bulbs, etc!

And the mother of all wins, I got an awesome trade-in on my Ranger. Awesome as-in they didn't drive it and find out that it has major engine computer issues (idle hangs at 2000RPM at stoplights) and the tranmission shifts so hard (bad syncros) it's like driving a dump-truck sometimes. I would have lovingly fixed it all if I knew I was keeping it (eventually), but it was kind of cool to get high private-party blue-book for it ($5300) as a trade in. Kinda like sticking it to the man for a change. Of course we basically paid sticker price for the Ridgeline (just below retail value), so its all a matter of semantics. We stuck it to each other.

It's a little depressing, in that this will be the frist time that I was Ford-less in about 15 years. I do love Fords, and even considered the F150 Super Crew (sorry Explorer Sport-Trac, you're ugly), but it came down to what was the smallest, and best truck that I could find that I liked, and Honda won hands-down. Counting motorcycles, this is my 5th Honda, and I don't regret "switching teams."

Redneck pride

Did you think I'd let Tanis over at Attack of the Redneck Mommy get all the glory? Well, maybe. She does have me outnumbered at the moment (congratulations!). But we still have duct tape and we're not afraid to use it.


And just for good measure, it takes a redneck to take a truck like this;


turn it into a truck like this;


and then sink it in a river like this:


Touché!

Thank you Grandpa

The last few months have been busy. Since buying this place, it's been a never-ending collage of home improvement projects minor and major. Lately though we started to give ourselves a little time off so our heads wouldn't explode.

It's been a while since I did a project just for the heck of it. Okay, I guess the last one was the hoist for the kayak, but that was a response to the challenge, "Where do we store the new boat?" I get to be crafty and ingenious at work while solving unique problems, but that too, is problem-solving with flair. In a small way, so was this one. "What do I get SuperMom for Valentine's Day?"

Neither of us are big into the commercialization of that day, but I know she still appreciates the sentiment. Flowers are, oversold. I try to remember to give her those on completely random days of the year with a special process involving a Chinese lunar calendar, a hampster, pecans, and a bicycle chain. What could I put together on short notice (Yeah, procrastination is a specialty. It's like a gift-with-purchase for being male)? Better yet, what could I build?

My brain started to flash back to my youth. My grandpa was great with these kinds of things. Small projects. Tinkering projects. When you grow up during the Great Depression, you get great at building your own solutions rather than buying them. Grandpa used to build most of his own Christmas decorations. He'd build airplanes out of beer cans. He helped me carve out custom propellers for my 7th grade science fair project on propeller-pitch-efficiency. Lots of things I know were cool but just can't remember, but most of all they were simple. That's when it hit me. A bird house.

Yeah, I know all you women are thinking about how much you'd just loooooooove to get a frickin' bird house for Valentines Day, but there's a perfectly good story that goes with that decision. And no, I'm not going to tell you :p

So I grabbed the munchkin and made a quick trip to the hardware store, then to the shop for some of my tools (because even though I have practically everything, most of it stays on the utility truck @ work), and finally it was off to the internet to figure out the best way to build a bird house. Yeah, it seems simple enough, but I did actually learn some stuff. Like those little dowels everyone puts in front for the bird to perch on? -Apparently the birds don't like them so much. Friggin' finnickey birds already made me waste $2 on a piece of dowel and I haven't even started building yet! And the hole in front, yeah, they don't care for that either. Aww come the frick on! What happened to the old-fashioned birds that were happy to get free housing whatever way we decided to build it for them? Damned yuppie birds.

So for the most part, it was simple. Measure twice, cut, um, 3 times or so. Wood glue, brad nails, and lots of painter's caulk. The best part though was having Twerp help paint it. It took me about three times longer to accomplish, but she helped, "build the birdhouse for mommy and the birds," and loved it.

And so did SuperMom.

Where, oh where has my sister gone?

This song, from my youth, makes me think of her every time. I was 12 when my parents divorced. It was odd. I had a strange relationship with my father, and since I was an only child, had always been more of an introvert anyhow. The break-up didn't hit me too hard. At least not tragically like in some families. If anything I got a lot more attention from dad than before. It was awkward, but we coped well.

I'm not sure how long afterward it was before he began dating again. It wasn't too long. By the time I was 13 he was dating a great woman named Roberta, who had 2 kids of her own. Robin was 16, and Steve was 19 and had already moved away. The very first time I spent the weekend at their house, I remember Robin coming to give me a hug before we left. Not a mandatory hug out of courtesy - a real hug. When you're 13 and a hot 16 year-old gives you a real hug, it makes an impression. Most girls her age wouldn't be caught dead around a geeky guy like me, but her acceptance was both immediate and unbounded. Even in public and around her friends. All that and she was cool, too. Crafty, smart, and artistic.

When I was 14 I had my first official "girlfriend," which consisted of a whole lot of telephone talking gibberish and some hand-holding. Unfortunately, she lived about 15 miles away. On one of dad's weekends, Robin spent her Saturday night driving me to Donna's house (yes, I still remember her full name and her former address), bringing us both back to Santee for a movie, drove us back to Clairemont to drop her off, and then back home again. At that point in time, she was cemented in my mind as the coolest sister I never had.

The three of them accepted me without reservation or hesitation. I never refer to them as my "step" siblings. It's simply my brother and my sister. Even years after the death of both of our parents to cancer within 2 months of each other, we have remained very close. They both came to my wedding in Hawaii, and we've seen each other through quite a bit. It's because of her that my wife and I have a mild addiction to "Scrubs."

This summer my sister went off the map though. All I got was a cryptic email about needing time to herself and then.............nothing. I have enough vague communication channels to know that she's alive and not on her death bed or anything, but aside from that I'm in the dark, and I don't like it. We all have our ups and downs, and it seems that Robin has gotten a disproportional amount of downs over the years. Every time we talk I have something cool to tell her like getting married, a promotion in a job I love, a new kid, moving to Hawaii, another great job, travel with my older daughter, etc. I have had an exceptionally fortunate life (not counting some "turbulence" from 1997-2000) and can't help but think that it might be depressing for her to talk to me.

Robin, please call, or write, or email, or send a message in a bottle or something. I don't care if you're depressed, in a heavy metal band, joined the CIA, in a cult, have differing political or religions views from me, questioning your sexuality, or just frustrated with the world. I. Don't . Care. I love you and I miss my sister. Do you want me to fly out for a weekend with the kids? Done. I just want to know you're okay. We're all worried about you.