Moments to Remember

This past Friday I was up early and off to the state capitol. One of the bigger sleep conferences was being held at the Kellogg Center on the campus of Michigan State University. I had no idea how bad traffic was going to be so I was on the road by 5:30am. I arrived about 6:45am and had plenty of time to check in.

The conference was one of the best I have been to. There were some great sessions that talked about dreams and their connection with trauma, another one about “sleepwalking’ crimes, and a discussion about later school start times. The speakers were good, so it was easy to stay engaged.

The highlight for me was running into one of the gals who was in the sleep program with me. She has moved up in the world and is now working for one of the companies that does home sleep studies. She noticed me first and called my name. When I turned to see who it was, there were hugs all around.

We had to do presentations in class on a certain sleep disorder. She totally went out and bought one of the “old man” hats I always wore, got some felt and made herself a mustache and goatee and presented as me. It was hilarious! There was so much to catch up on. We’re hoping to get the families together to catch up more soon.

On Saturday, the kids had a birthday party that they were invited to. It was held at a bowling alley. Ella has only been bowling once and this was Andrew’s first time. They started out using the ramps to roll the ball…

It didn’t take long for them to just start throwing them without the ramp. Andrew somehow managed to throw the ball and get it stuck between the gutter and the bumpers. Ella was just happy to get the ball to knock down pins. Andrew decided to relax as the ball rolled down the alley.

My brother came up from Ohio this weekend. He had asked me if we were going to be around and that was before I knew about the birthday party. So after the birthday party we went to Frankenmuth where the Scarecrow Festival was going on.

They had pumpkin bowling, bounce houses, pumpkin launching and more. Many of the little shops had their own pumpkin scarecrows outside. Guests could vote for the best one on their phones. The kids liked seeing many of them.

The weather was mild, so it was nice enough to walk around without jackets. We walked around the Riverplace shops and also went to the Castle Shops and visited the bakery. Cookies all around!

Whether we were just too busy catching up or chasing the kids, my brother and I only got to grab one picture while we were there.

Around 6 all the fun stuff outdoors shut down. We were all hungry, so we decided to go to this little Italian place just outside of town. Neither of us had ever been there. It was delicious. I had lasagna which reminded me of a place my folks use to eat at all the time. Ella opted for spaghetti (which is noodles with butter and no sauce for her.) I usually cut it up for her, but she decided to eat it right from the bowl. I love this picture of her …

Andrew, who loves spaghetti, threw me for a loop when he asked for a grilled cheese and French fries. How do you make that Italian? If you look closely at his plate, you will see that he has put parmesan cheese all over his food.

When we left to go home, it poured rain. It was monsoon rain. There was thunder and lightening, which Andrew thought was really cool to see at night.

My brother and Stacey stopped over Sunday and hung out most of the day. They brought the kids Happy Meals and some gifts. Ella got a Barbie and Ken doll – both were decked out for soccer. Andrew got some monster trucks and this cool thing that you toss up in the air and it floats around. You control it with your hands. It was pretty cool.

Our visit was cut short because I had to give the kids baths and get them in bed for school the next day. They are always glad to see them. One day I hope to be able to make the drive down to Ohio with the kids to see them.

I’ll wrap up with something I just thought was cool. I love high school football. One thing I’ve noticed as years have gone by is the increase of the presence of law enforcement at games. At one high school the policemen really got into things. They were cheering for the home team and telling folks they had better, too.

Check out these two law officers being held up by the cheerleaders. I love the sign: Cheer or go to jail!

I love seeing stuff like this! Kudos to these officers – and the cheer team!

“It Should Be a Quick Job”

My father-in-law asked me if I would be available Sunday to help him swap a few deck boards at his place. “It should be a quick job. We’re only replacing a few bad ones,” he said. Well, it indeed started off with “a few bad” boards…

On the porch itself, we put in three new boards. On the ramp, we used 4 long boards to replace 7 boards. As you can see from the above photo, the thought eventually was to just go ahead and replace all the ramp boards. And we did.

It actually came out pretty good and only took about half the day. Then at some point, the decision was made to do the whole porch.

In the above photo, you can see the three boards we replaced. Once we knew we were doing the whole porch, we had to rip out the rest of the boards. It was a job! My father-in-law and brother-in-law ran up to Home Depot to get more boards and more screws while I ripped out the deck boards.

When they returned, they helped me with the remaining boards. We worked pretty much up until dinner time and we called it a day. We still had half the porch to finish which meant we were back at it on Monday afternoon. I stayed until about 6pm, and left because I needed to get the kids home, bathed and in bed for school the next day. They were almost finished when I left.

Tuesday morning, I had to stop over there after dropping Ella off at school. My wife bought something from a fundraiser and I had to bring over the money for it. When I walked up the ramp I saw that they had all but the very end board done. They didn’t finish it because my father-in-law was going to put in a different size board to avoid cutting the size they were using.

It looked fantastic. I can tell you, though, Sunday night I was sore. Monday night, I was stiff and sore. My hips were on fire, probably because we were hoping over deck boarding all day. My knees were killing me too because we were on them the entire time we were screwing in deck boards.

I’m always glad to help out my father-in-law. Lord knows how many times he has helped me! I’m happy it is done and that my mother-in-law is happy with the way it looks.

Now……pass the ibuprofen, please….

Brakes – Broke!

It wasn’t too long ago that my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and I worked on the brakes on my car. Recently, I began to hear grinding on one of the back brakes. It was just the one and there was no indication that the pads were going before it began grinding.

If you are familiar with the brake pads, they have a little indicator thingy that when your pads are getting low, they begin to squeal a bit. My brakes never did that. The one side just started grinding – and bad.

The day I noticed it, I pulled into work and could see that the pad was tearing a huge gouge right in the middle of the rotor. The other side was fine. I couldn’t really figure out what happened. My brother-in-law and father-in-law thought I might have gotten a set of bad pads and one cracked. By the time we got a day to work on them, that pad had tore up the entire rotor on that side.

They had gotten so loud that any time I stopped at a drive thru for coffee, the workers looked at me and the back end of my car as I drove up to the window. As I drove away, the watched as well, probably hoping to see sparks flying from the back wheels or something!

After calling around and getting estimates, I picked up the parts and we were blessed to have a nice day to work on them. My brother-in-law said it would be a “piece of cake” and the whole job should take less than an hour. We figured we’d jack up both ends at the same time and he could do one side while I did the other. Our time saving idea really didn’t work.

We forgot about one of the bolts that happened to be in a really tight place on the brake shoe. The nut sits in such a way that you can barely get a wrench in there to loosen or tighten it. The longest part of the job was getting to that particular nut. We had to painstakingly turn this nut little by little (maybe 1/8 turns at a time) until we could loosen them by hand. What a pain!

Once we got the old rotor off and the pads on back on the shoe, everything came together quickly. That is until we had to tighten that one bolt/nut again. I swear that was tedious! It took so much time.

Finally we got everything set and we put the tires back on. My father-in-law has a socket for the lug nuts. He also has a breaker bar which you put over the socket to tighten or loosen the nuts. Basically, the end of the socket goes into the hollow tube of the breaker bar. His is square, but this gives you a sort of idea as to what I am talking about:

So the tire is now on the ground and I have this socket in the pipe. I am tugging on all the lug nuts to be sure they are secure. I must not have had the socket one one of the nuts, because as I tugged on it, the bar slipped off the socket and because I was bent over, the thing came up and conked me on the forehead! The only thing missing was the “pipe konk” sound effect used in a Three Stooges film! I saw stars for a few, but recovered quickly.

The goose egg had gone down a lot by the time I took a picture of it. You can still see it and it still hurts like a bugger!!

I’m happy to say that despite the comedy interlude, the brakes are working fine. Thanks to my father-in-law and brother-in-law for their help once again!