Friday, September 14, 2007
Thing that happened to me today #26
Brewed a nice IPA today, racked a wonderful Belgian Tripel into the secondary fermenter, and kegged an Irish stout. If you have no idea what I am talking about, then, oh well. If you do, then perhaps you are a tad jealous. There is nothing like a good homebrew.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Thing that happened to me today #25
Saw a huge red-tailed hawk today sitting in a tree about ten feet above the ground right outside the door of the building I work in. I was right under it with a perfect view. It was awesome, had to be at least a foot and a half tall standing up. I tried to get my camera phone out to get a picture but it took off before I could snap it. Things like this are once in a lifetime and to get to see a wild bird like that so up close and personal is amazing. My brother Gwydion who has gotten into bird watching would have loved it, too bad I couldn't get a pic to show off!
Thing that happened to me today #24
Went to see Rush on Sunday night with my brother Jon. Floor, center section, row 10. If you are not familiar with the music of Rush, familiarize yourself now, trust me. Musically phenomenal. This was the best show I have seen in a long time. Lots of fun.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Thing that happened to me today #23
Have not been blogging in a while, so I will fill in on a few things:
First, in case you have been looking for a mouse update, the mice are finished (I think). We practically tore our kitchen apart trying to figure out where they were hiding to no avail. Tried the live trap thing for several days and it didn't catch squat. So we had no choice. We had to go with the old fashioned snap traps that kill them. Hated to do it, and I still can't believe that Sandy went for it, but as I said, we had no choice. The darn cat was useless and we could hear them scuttling around in the kitchen at night, just gross and unsanitary to say the least. The first night we put two traps out and we came down to a dead one in the morning. It was huge (probably chock full of nuts). The trap did its thing and although I wasn't there, it seemed as if it was pretty quick (and dare I say painless?). The other traps bait was gone and eaten (malfunction I think). Since we knew there were two (at least) we did it again the following night. This time it didn't go quite as smoothly. I hate to describe this, but if it helps anyone decide whether or not to do this themselves, at least maybe they will have a better idea of what might be in store for them. Anyway, the next morning we came down to a sprung trap on the floor and leading away from it a trail of blood heading towards the living room....yum....and no mouse to be seen. So I start looking around the living room and finally I find the thing under the entertainment center against the wall. I thought it must have suffered awhile, then died of its injuries, but all those thoughts were erased once it moved. Damn (side note - the darn cat STILL could not catch an INJURED mouse). So I grab a produce bag, the kind you might stick your broccoli in at the grocery store, and put my hand in it and head towards the mouse as if it were a pile of dog crap that my dog just laid in the one neighbors yard that was outside on his porch at the moment (this happens all the time but I digress). So what does the mouse do? It takes off running. Clearly hobbled and hurt it still had some spunk. I did finally corner it on another side of the room and tried to grab it, and after a bit of fighting I managed to get it in the bag. What do you do now you ask? Well the first thing Sandy says is you can't let it suffer in that bag, you have to do something to ease its misery. Man this was terrible. So I take the bag outside to the nice concrete steps outside and..........swung that bag around as hard as I could and slammed it onto the stairs. Did I mention that this was terrible yet? It was one of those moments where you just don't know what to do, and you do the first thing that comes to your mind. Anyway, it did the deed, the mouse was instantly motionless, and sparing you anymore gory details, lets just say I could tell it was dead. So, if you ever get a mouse in your house (or 3), think twice about how you plan on ridding your house of the unwelcome guest(s). Please fill me in if you have any better ideas. The kitchen has been silent since.
Also, over the weekend, I installed our new storm door. I trashed the old one when we painted the house and we purchased one of those new ones that is all glass and the top half of the glass slides down bringing a screen down with it (it hides away rolled up in the top when the glass is up). Very cool door. Installation went perfect, saved myself $150. The guide was like a book with lots of intricate steps, but if you pick through it carefully, it's not that hard. Proud of myself to say the least.
Now I am coming down with an upper respiratory infection and have been doing the coughing/sneezing/runny nose thing for two days. Always comes at the wrong time (not that there is a right time), but my brother Jon is coming into town this weekend, going to see Rush at the Excel Energy Center on Sunday night, etc. I just want this to pass fast, although colds like this hardly ever do. Can't we just find a cure for the common cold already?
First, in case you have been looking for a mouse update, the mice are finished (I think). We practically tore our kitchen apart trying to figure out where they were hiding to no avail. Tried the live trap thing for several days and it didn't catch squat. So we had no choice. We had to go with the old fashioned snap traps that kill them. Hated to do it, and I still can't believe that Sandy went for it, but as I said, we had no choice. The darn cat was useless and we could hear them scuttling around in the kitchen at night, just gross and unsanitary to say the least. The first night we put two traps out and we came down to a dead one in the morning. It was huge (probably chock full of nuts). The trap did its thing and although I wasn't there, it seemed as if it was pretty quick (and dare I say painless?). The other traps bait was gone and eaten (malfunction I think). Since we knew there were two (at least) we did it again the following night. This time it didn't go quite as smoothly. I hate to describe this, but if it helps anyone decide whether or not to do this themselves, at least maybe they will have a better idea of what might be in store for them. Anyway, the next morning we came down to a sprung trap on the floor and leading away from it a trail of blood heading towards the living room....yum....and no mouse to be seen. So I start looking around the living room and finally I find the thing under the entertainment center against the wall. I thought it must have suffered awhile, then died of its injuries, but all those thoughts were erased once it moved. Damn (side note - the darn cat STILL could not catch an INJURED mouse). So I grab a produce bag, the kind you might stick your broccoli in at the grocery store, and put my hand in it and head towards the mouse as if it were a pile of dog crap that my dog just laid in the one neighbors yard that was outside on his porch at the moment (this happens all the time but I digress). So what does the mouse do? It takes off running. Clearly hobbled and hurt it still had some spunk. I did finally corner it on another side of the room and tried to grab it, and after a bit of fighting I managed to get it in the bag. What do you do now you ask? Well the first thing Sandy says is you can't let it suffer in that bag, you have to do something to ease its misery. Man this was terrible. So I take the bag outside to the nice concrete steps outside and..........swung that bag around as hard as I could and slammed it onto the stairs. Did I mention that this was terrible yet? It was one of those moments where you just don't know what to do, and you do the first thing that comes to your mind. Anyway, it did the deed, the mouse was instantly motionless, and sparing you anymore gory details, lets just say I could tell it was dead. So, if you ever get a mouse in your house (or 3), think twice about how you plan on ridding your house of the unwelcome guest(s). Please fill me in if you have any better ideas. The kitchen has been silent since.
Also, over the weekend, I installed our new storm door. I trashed the old one when we painted the house and we purchased one of those new ones that is all glass and the top half of the glass slides down bringing a screen down with it (it hides away rolled up in the top when the glass is up). Very cool door. Installation went perfect, saved myself $150. The guide was like a book with lots of intricate steps, but if you pick through it carefully, it's not that hard. Proud of myself to say the least.
Now I am coming down with an upper respiratory infection and have been doing the coughing/sneezing/runny nose thing for two days. Always comes at the wrong time (not that there is a right time), but my brother Jon is coming into town this weekend, going to see Rush at the Excel Energy Center on Sunday night, etc. I just want this to pass fast, although colds like this hardly ever do. Can't we just find a cure for the common cold already?
Monday, August 27, 2007
Thing that happened to me today #22
So I am trying to learn how to do some work on my car to save a little money and make sure it is done correctly (and also to not get hosed for the extra things they say you always need at repair shops). So I went to do my rear brakes yesterday, and it didn't turn out so easy. I have changed pads on cars 3-4 times before, but have never done the rotors. Apparently it is actually pretty easy, most of the time they just slide off when you get the caliper off, sometimes they have two screws holding them on that you need to get out.
Now rear brakes only actually do about 20% of the braking on your car, the fronts do the brunt of the work. So they don't need to get changed nearly as often. In fact my car was bought brand new and now has 106,000 miles on it, and the rear brakes had never been changed. Recently they started to make some noise and I knew it was time.
So once I got the wheel off and took a look at it I realized that after 106,000 miles, things can get a bit rusty in there. So rusty that I could not get the two little screws out for the life of me. I was told by several car people that they are useless, only put on there during the car building process to hold the rotor in place, but that they really serve no purpose (the lug nuts actually do the holding on, not the two screws). So the advice I got was to try to drill them out, just past the head of the screw, then the rotor would pop off and no need to worry about replacing them. This was much easier said then done. I actually tried an impact hammer first, which uses the force of a hammer blow to torque the screw out, which didn't budge it. So I went for the drill. After toying with it on one side for about a half-hour, I gave up. So I just figured I would put the pads on the old rotors and see what happened. After installing the pads on both sides I took it for a test drive and boy was it horrible sounding. Rotors definitely had to be changed (I could tell they were in bad shape before I even did it but had no choice but to take a chance).
So I took it to a place this morning and watched what the guy did, he took a welding torch and melted those screws out of there, neat stuff, but no way I could have done it. So in the end, I paid $20 for the pads, which they said would have been around $80 installed, and $177 for the rotors installed, which would have cost me $60 from the auto parts store. In other words, it cost me $117 to have a couple screws torched out (talk about getting screwed, literally).
So is it worth it to try yourself? Depends if you are the curious type who likes to know how things work like myself, and also, of course, the value of your time. For me, saving $60 to do the pads myself, which only takes an hour, less if you are good, is worth it because I learned something while doing it. Would have been even more worth it if I could have gotten the darn rotors off, but oh well. I'd say for most people though, just pay for it!
Now rear brakes only actually do about 20% of the braking on your car, the fronts do the brunt of the work. So they don't need to get changed nearly as often. In fact my car was bought brand new and now has 106,000 miles on it, and the rear brakes had never been changed. Recently they started to make some noise and I knew it was time.
So once I got the wheel off and took a look at it I realized that after 106,000 miles, things can get a bit rusty in there. So rusty that I could not get the two little screws out for the life of me. I was told by several car people that they are useless, only put on there during the car building process to hold the rotor in place, but that they really serve no purpose (the lug nuts actually do the holding on, not the two screws). So the advice I got was to try to drill them out, just past the head of the screw, then the rotor would pop off and no need to worry about replacing them. This was much easier said then done. I actually tried an impact hammer first, which uses the force of a hammer blow to torque the screw out, which didn't budge it. So I went for the drill. After toying with it on one side for about a half-hour, I gave up. So I just figured I would put the pads on the old rotors and see what happened. After installing the pads on both sides I took it for a test drive and boy was it horrible sounding. Rotors definitely had to be changed (I could tell they were in bad shape before I even did it but had no choice but to take a chance).
So I took it to a place this morning and watched what the guy did, he took a welding torch and melted those screws out of there, neat stuff, but no way I could have done it. So in the end, I paid $20 for the pads, which they said would have been around $80 installed, and $177 for the rotors installed, which would have cost me $60 from the auto parts store. In other words, it cost me $117 to have a couple screws torched out (talk about getting screwed, literally).
So is it worth it to try yourself? Depends if you are the curious type who likes to know how things work like myself, and also, of course, the value of your time. For me, saving $60 to do the pads myself, which only takes an hour, less if you are good, is worth it because I learned something while doing it. Would have been even more worth it if I could have gotten the darn rotors off, but oh well. I'd say for most people though, just pay for it!
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Thing that happened to me today #21
The mice must be breeding like mice this time of year (or do they breed like rabbits?). At least my house must have some appeal to the few that are out there, because they keep coming in. I caught one recently, and now we have two more. It has been two days of waking up to things having been eaten in the kitchen during the night. First it was a half-eaten tomato on the counter, then the next day they ran off with an ENTIRE BAG OF NUTS. That's right, Sandy left a ziplock bag of nuts on the counter that was to be her snack yesterday at work, and when she got up in the morning it was gone, the whole thing, bag and all. Not to mention a large chunk of a banana eaten out, surprised they didn't take the whole thing with them, or the refrigerator for that matter. I did put a trap out last night, but it was empty this morning. They probably have enough stashed to feed themselves for a month. After I went to work though, Sandy called me frantically, said a mouse jumped on her foot when she turned the oven on, then ran back under it. She said she freaked and the cake batter went flying. I told her to try and pull the stove out. She did a little and said she saw two mice huddling in the corner. I guess I know what I have to do when I get home. The beastmaster is back! I will never buy an 83 year old house again.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Thing that happened to me today #20
In Minnesota you only get a few months a year of really nice weather, so when it rains for 5 STRAIGHT DAYS like it has, you start to get a little pissy. Everything has greened up nice which is good, now if we could only see some sun, we could enjoy it a bit. Hopefully this weekend will be nice. Otherwise I will begin construction on the ark.
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