Friday, July 27, 2007

Ruidoso bound

Well, like last year we are packing up and headed for the mountains. William is headed for Kingsland to spend the week with his Grandmother and Grandad (see Mom, I even capitalized it).

I'm not sure when we're coming home, but I'm looking forward to thin air, cool weather, and the latest Harry Potter book.

I'll try to update and post when we return.

Laters.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Another weekend down



So, unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the last Harry Potter book has been released. There are 759 pages in this sucker, and my wife has now read them all. She went to Wal-Mart on Friday night for the midnight release of the book. Now less than 48 hours later she has finished the book. I'm waiting till our vacation to crack the cover on that thing, and its driving her crazy. She wants to discuss the story with me, but I've forbidden all mention of the story till I've read it myself. She hates me right now.



Saturday night we decided to grill some ribs. I know on pork ribs that low heat and slow cooking is the key. I just don't know how to do this. I fired up the grill, let it on low, and put on the ribs. I go inside the house and set the timer for 5 minutes to remind me to go check them. 5 minutes later I go outside with William and Mary to find my grill on fire. Actually its more like the ribs were on fire. I learned something new. Pork is combustable. I mean this stuff burns like wood, paper, and gasoline. After putting out the ribs, and asking Mary if she basted them in Napalm, I went about salvaging dinner.






I dare say I did a good job.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Ok mom, don't write me out of the will. I'm posting!

My mother (who better be reading this) has requested that I update my blog and put up some pics of my kiddo. In the interest of continuing to be her favorite son, and to keep her from driving up here to kick my butt, here is a post.

I'm sure most of you are aware that its been raining here in Texas. Dad told me that droughts always end with a flood, and as usual the man is right. Living out here in the county, in our cardboard box of death, we of course have a septic system. For those of you who don't know what a septic system is and how it works, I'm sure google and wikipedia are only a click away.

Since our lateral lines were full of rain water we were having trouble with water consumption. As in take very short showers only when you have to, only flush the toilet when it asks you to, and of course don't wash any laundry because you'll dump 40 gallons of water into the flooded system. This would create back pressure that would then blow the toilet off the flange and floor our bathroom with all sorts of unpleasant stuff.

Doing laundry wasn't much of an issue anyway because the discharge pump had seized up again, and shredded the drive belt on the washer. We thought about fixing it again, but after 27 years we decided that this pair of washer and dryer were in need of being put out to pasture, or in our case out in the carport. Yes, appliances have moved into the carport again.

So I'm not known for making snap decisions when a chunk of cash is involved. I decided the front load energystar compliant washer would probably be a good idea since it uses only 14 gallons vs 40 gallons of a top loader. That and if we had an energystar washer Al Gore would stop calling us and telling us we needed to flush less, carpool, and turn off our air conditioner.

I was at Home Depot agonizing over what to do. Get a cheap top loader($300), cheap frontloader ($600), or just go to the laundry mat. Mom and Dad were kind enough to help us out, so I've got a budget and I can't decide what to do. Suddenly its like my mom was there in my head. I zoned in on a floor model. They were dented, scratched, discounted $150, discounted another %10, and they were throwing in a $50 HD gift card. The only thing they wouldn't do was deliver for free. They would do that for new ones, but not floor models.

I paid for them on Thursday, and went home to get the trailer out of the back yard so that we could pick them up Friday after work. It hadn't rained on Thursday so I thought I'd be alright to drive across my front yard, through the side yard, into the back yard, hook onto the trailer and park in the driveway.

I was wrong. Very wrong. Very wet, very stuck, very wrong. I didn't make it 20 feet before I came to a stop, stuck in my front yard. Ok, not a problem, I'll use the Jeep to pull out the Kia. Well if my chain was about 5 foot longer I'd have been alright. Instead I had not one but two cars stuck in my front yard. When I screw something up, I don't stop till it is totally screwed up.



Eventually my father inlaw came with his 4WD truck and yanked both my cars out of the mud, and helped me get the trailer out of the backyard. Now for the really sad part. All I had to do to get the trailer out of the back yard was to hook it to my riding mower which wouldn't have gotten stuck since it weighs so little. Yes, little dumb ass strikes again. But the good news is, I have clean laundry, and it hasn't rained since this little incident. But now I can do laundry, so Mary can clean my clothes after I finish filling in the ruts in our yard.



You can thank me for stopping the flood.