Long Island Engel Home

Mr. Fix-It (Part 1)

2008-03-28T09:02:00.003-05:00

So being a home owner is not all it's cracked up to be. Things break, and they need to be fixed.

A week or so ago, we had a string of bad luck… I don’t usually believe in such things, but it really seemed like Murphy’s law was really doing a number on us. One such incident happened as I was doing the laundry.

I was about to transfer what I thought were dry clothes to a clothes basket. Upon opening the door, I found damp clothes. Now as I am advancing in my years, it’s not too uncommon for me to forget to turn the darn thing on. So I wasn’t too surprised by this. So I set it up, hit the on button and to much surprise it didn’t sound right.

I opened up the door and found the magical light turning on, not unlike the magic light in the refrigerator. I could feel that heat had been blowing in, but the drum just would NOT turn.
Instant visions of an expensive plumber’s-crack sporting repairman charging me an arm and a leg ran through my head. After beating my head against the stairs to get this vision OUT of my head, I was bound and determined to fix this beast myself.

My good friend Cliff consults with his good friend Lord Google on a regular basis for any number of issue. I followed his example and started out my quest to fix the unholy dryer.

I was not all that surprised to find a plethora of sites that assisted me in my quest. Several wanted to charge me for the information, but others like myself seemed to be generous enough to blog about such incidents.

I narrowed the problem down to either the belt ($20) that spins the dryer drum or the motor ($100) that drives it. With the way my luck had been running lately, the pessimistic side of me focused on the higher ticket/more complicated fix. I forced myself to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

In the searching for answers, I even found a video that told me how to A) open the dryer and B) Replace the belt or the motor. Of you are at all interested you can see that here as well:

So after following their simple instructions and popped open the dryer and noticed that there was no belt around the drum. I flashed my flashlight down to the bottom and was rewarded with the site of a frayed end of belt. SCORE!

I found that the dryer belt had been pretty much shredded into tiny little piece which now coated the entire motor. After cleaning this up with the new Dyson vacuum (Another blog in the works), I hastely found the nearest place that I could find a new belt. This was NOT an item carried at your local Home Depot.

Ffter calling around to several places it turned out the be a ($20) trip to the nearest SEARS repair center. I rushed back home to install the belt according to the YouTube video instructions.

All went off without a hitch, and I was able to dry all of our clothes again. I was pretty pleased that I didn’t have to spend an arm and a leg to have someone else repair this and make me endure the inevitable view of pants that won’t stay up… AUGH!

Parole...

2008-03-27T06:45:00.014-05:00

Back in they day, I used to be into computer video games. Not the Playstation style games so much, however recently the whole family has gotten into these, but those games actually played on a computer.

I really got into the first person shooter type games like Counterstrike, Medal of Honor, Rainbow Six, and other first-person-shooter games too numerous to mention... Also the Strategy games like Command and Conquer were some of my favorites...

Before we moved to New York, we used to have gatherings we several other couples in Lansing. We would all meet up at one particular friends house and have cookouts and have a great time. As the evening wore down, the guys would head into the basement with their laptops and the ladies would hang out upstairs doing whatever they do...

The children, at the time it was only Jonah for us, would all hang out and play between the Ladies upstairs and the guys downstairs.

As I mentioned before, whatever the ladies did up there, I have no idea. Speculation on my part would be folly, and quite frankly I've fried WAY too many brain cells trying to figure women out. I'm content knowing that I'll never really understand them completely. That's not a bad thing, it always keeps things interesting...

Anyway, Back to the geeks downstairs...

We would set up the laptops into a quick network and start shooting each other on numerous battlefields of one or another. Our game of choice at the time was Half Life: Counterstrike. One set of us would be on the team of terrorists while the other's played the part of Counter-terrorists. Essentially it's digital hide and seek combined with paintball. In this way there is little physical exertion other than finger movements and the occassional drink from a soda or beer. We also didn't have the sting of a paintball or the cleanup afterwards.

Those were the days...

That was long ago...

We have all now moved on to other locations of the country and have pretty much lost contact with one another. Some of us still keep in contact, but the days of the impromptu "Come over, bring some snacks and your laptop", have gone away.

Until a month or so ago...

My wife surprised me out of blue with a comment that threw me. She asked me if I had spoken with Pete lately. This led to, you should see about going online and playing some games again with him...

I was floored, "Who are you, and what have you done with my wife?" Came to mind, but was NOT spoken. Do not look a gift horse in the mouth, and do NOT try to read into the why's behind the statement. "Take it and RUN!" the emaciated gaming portion of my mind screamed.

I hid my excitement as I probed the situation carefully. I half expected her to laugh at me and call it a joke. But she was serious.

Within minutes I was contacting my old buddy Pete to find out what game they have been playing lately. Pete, being one of the founding members of 1776gamers, was the host for our gaming parties in the past. They had always been dedicated with Counterstrike and it's newer versions but had recently turend to Battlefield 2 and a specific modification of it called Project Reality.

In a word... Wow...

I've got to say this, the graphics are very good, the maps are huge, and there are lots of people able to play all at once. The best part is, the price is right. You can pick up the main game for $10 at Best Buy and the Project reality modification is free. No complaints from me!

This version of the game is rather unforgiving. You can't take all that much damage before your character is dead. This is all part of the idea of the reality project. They wanted to make it seem much more real. And they have achieved this very well.

So I am on the learning curve right now with this game, but enjoying it. I get to hang out with my old friend and am making some new ones as well. We meet up a couple times per week and shoot at one another, have a few laughs and stay up way past our bedtimes.

Pass the chips, grab a soda and join in the fun!

If you are curious about this game and it's modification, here's a video teaser to check out... WOW! Yeah, I guess I'm still a geek at heart... :)

Parenting 101: Bed Time Stories...

2008-03-26T08:52:00.004-05:00

Oooohhh, I have been tempted...

Do you ever get the feeling that your kids may be just a little too spoiled? Or maybe call it entitlement... Whatever you want to call it, sometimes they just think they deserve to have what they want and that's it. I suppose I was the same way as a child, as were pretty much all of us. It's not a fun part of parenting...

Who doesn't want to see their child happy and enjoying life? Of course we all want that. But does that give us the right to hand everything to them on a silver platter? Not really... I think we would be doing them a dis-service by not teaching them that earning those things that they would like is much better than just getting them outright.

Recently Webkins have been on the scene and are a constant source of the "can I have that one?"'s When several have been received as birthday or Christmas presents, they are enjoyed, but not to the extent as those that have been earned as a reward. There's no physical difference in one from the other, other than the obvious that it's a different animal. It's the psychological feeling of truelly earning something that makes it that more special. There's an emotional bond there that doesn't get created when the item is just thrown at them from one fo those "Can I Have That?" moments.

I Love my children. Eventhough today was one of those mornings where the daughter decided it was time to awake before dawn... In relation to yesterdays post, sometimes that little break we get at night doesn't necessarily get us as much sleep as we really need. Early morning's like today must be some kind of Murphy's-Law-like balancing to make me pay for having some adult time... *Sigh*

Another day, another ulser... Just kidding... :)

Parenting 101: Bed time

2008-03-25T08:03:00.003-05:00

In a way, Bed Time seems to be evening parole for parents.

Don't get me wrong... Children are a joy and a cherished commodity. However, after 12 to 14 hours of a child dominated day, a little break is also a cherished commodity. Call it Mommy/Daddy time, call it a respite, whatever. It's just nice to have a little down time for a while.

So what do those parents out there like to do during their break?

We like to take some time and veg out in front of the television to catch up on whatever shows may interest us. Some snacks, a little soda... And one or the other of usually falls asleep on the couch for a while. It's a system that we've been refining over the past few years...

Ties to Home

2008-03-24T06:52:00.002-05:00

Growing up in a touristy town in Michigan WAS pretty nice. At the time, I didn't appreciate it as much as I do now that I'm grown up and moved away to another State.

At the time, it was kind of a nuisance at times especially where it pertained to the traffic going in and out of the town. Frankenmuth, also known as Michigan's Little Bavaria, is a German themed town tied to actual German settlers who came to Michigan as Missionaries to teach the Native American's of the Lutheran religion.

The town has changed much over the years but it's still nice to visit home again. This past Christmas we made the long drive from Long Island to Michigan to visit our families. It's always an adventure packing the kids into the SUV. Whether it's a trip across country or just a short trip to the store there always something happening.

I've blogged about car trips before (Parenting 101: Driving), so I won't have to go into great detail on what usually occurs.

I was recently speaking with my brother who is the COO of the Bavarian Inn Lodge . We were catching up about family and of course business in Frankenmuth. Michigan currently has the highest unemployment rate in the U.S. This doesn't surprise me all that much with all of the motor companies pulling out of Michigan and moving to other locations, mostly out of the country... So the disposable income of Michiganders just isn't there for Frankemuth's tourism to thrive as much as they used to.

But business is business and they all must do what they can to survive. The Bavarian Inn Corporation recently came out with some new commercials to try to bring people to Frankenmuth. These are pretty catchy, and my kids keep saying "Again! Again!" When I play it back for them off YouTube.

So here, for your viewing enjoyment are the two new commercials they are currently using. If you have kids, they will probably enjoy these very much and much just chant "Again! Again!"

Have a great day!

The Rebirth of 80's TV

2008-03-21T07:14:00.008-05:00

Over the past several years, we have found some of the more popular TV shows from the 80’s moving to the big screen. I suppose it started with Starsky and Hutch, technically a late 70’s show, which led to the Dukes of Hazard and Miami Vice. Now these are coming back in the form of TV shows as well.

The Bionic Woman came back with a new face and spin on the Bionic Woman series which was technically a spinoff of the Six Million Dollar Man, one of my favorites as a kid. I believe the rebirth of this show was cancelled. I did have the opportunity to catch this show. It wasn’t too bad, but they really could have done more with the show than they had. The special effects were pretty cool, but the background plot was pretty thin. You just never got really invested in the characters.

Recently Knight Rider came back. They even brought David Hasselhoff back as the father of the new Knight Rider. Yes, it was a tad cheesy. It was essentially the worlds longest commercial for the Ford Mustang. If it didn’t feel like one giant commercial for Ford vehicles I think the show could come back as a pretty good series again.

So what’s going to be next? I’ve heard rumors of a Magnum PI movie. This has been a rumor for a while that has included George Clooney playing the part of Magnum PI. To be honest, I was always of a fan of the show. The cool thing about this show is that the characters were not just human, but the Ferrari took on a role in the show as well of the location. Beautiful Hawaii… My favorite place…

In the age of recycling and Going Green, I find it interesting that Hollywood is recycling these old shows bringing them new life again. So far they haven’t really hit all that well, but maybe they’ll get one right soon.

It's been a year...

2008-03-20T09:13:00.004-05:00

I can't believe that it's been a year, to the day, since I last blogged on anything... I'd like to say that I've been basking on the beaches to the right for the past year, but alas, nothing so posh...

A lot has been going on that has kept me from the daily blogging scene. I'll go into some of them in later posts, but for today I'd like to get this started with a Thank You for being patient during my hiatus.

As I mentioned before, much has happened in the past year. I've transitioned back into the roll of Stay at Home Dad for a while, the children are growing and changing on a daily basis and we've done more projects around that house that need to be reported on.

So there is much to get ready for if I want to get back into my daily blogging again. I have several topics already mapped out. I'm also looking into transitioning this blog into a new one. I'll keep you both posted... :)

Parenting 101: Television

2006-12-29T12:59:00.002-05:00

I know I've discusses the topic of television with kids before... This comic sums up exactly what I see on a daily basis.

Jonah has an accute case of Media Deficite Syndrome. As you can probably imagine, this is where someone has the inescapabe urge to have some kind of media around him at all times. Television is the most common, but of late the Game Boy Advance and PS2 are at the tops of his list.

Considering it's the Winter Break from school it's completely natural for him to immerse himself in these things that he doesn't get to do as often while school is in session. I'm curious how things will go once he heads back to school next week...

Here's a perfect comic for the topic.

Parenting 101: Chores

2006-12-01T09:32:00.002-05:00

I recall being a kid and having special things that I needed to do around the house. Starting out at a younger age it was something as simple as cleaning my room. To a young person, this can seem to be a daunting task as the accumulation of clothing and toys on the floor can resemble the aftermath of a hurricane or tornado. I now understand why my mother would describe my room in this manner. Of course her most common description was that of a pig sty. I guess this came from her growing up on a farm. All I can recall about pig sty's is that they smell very, very bad.

So now that I'm a parent it's difficult to get my frame of mind back to when I was Jonah's age. I was brought back to my youth this morning while speaking with Holly. In the eternal pursuit of candy, Jonah decided to get some candy for himself and his sister from the top of the refrigerator. Having been caught and punished several times in the past, this did little to keep him from trying once again.

It took me back to when I was about his age and would use the drawers like steps to get up on the counter to get to a large container of candy stored on top of the refrigerator. There was this one type of candy that was like taffy that was peppermint flavored that was my father and I both enjoyed. I recall getting caught several times, but I also recall getting away with it as well.

I guess sometimes in the eyes of the child, the chance of getting caught is worth the chance of getting away with some candy. It's times like these that Jonah and Brielle actually get along. When the sneak-factor kicks in, they bond together pretty well. I guess there's hope for them yet...

I kind of strayed from my initial topic, but this Calvin and Hobbes comic reminded me of things that I had to do as a child.

Have a great weekend!

Parenting 101: Procrastination

2006-10-24T09:12:00.001-05:00

I found a series of Calvin and Hobbes that fits the season just right...

To start off, I've been a procrastinator all my life... I say this not to brag or be proud of it, it's just the way I've been for as long as I can remember. This is an atribute I'm not particularly fond of, yet I put off doing anything about it... I suppose this is the very definition of a paradox.

Anyway, in the spirit of procrastination, Some Calvin...

The Death of Customer Service Part 1

2006-10-23T13:42:00.000-05:00

I've written about this before... This past weekend I've come to realize that the decline of customer service has continued it's course unabated. In the period of less than 24 hours we had problems with Pizza Delivery, a drive thru coffee place and Taco Bell. The first situation happened Friday evening.

We had decided to have pizza delivered. As we didn't have any cash in our hand we had to opt for the pizza place that would take our credit card over the phone. I called Papa John's and a teenage girl took my order. She said it would be 30 - 35 minute. 45 minutes later I called to ask about the pizza. She said that the delivery guy had just left with it. After 1 hour I called again. The same, or similar pizza g irl answered the phone and said they've been pretty busy and the pizza guy had just left.

I seem to notice a pattern here...

6 Minuted later, the Pizza guy arrives... YEAH!!! All hail the pizza guy. The kids were jumping for joy, the dogs were bouncing around with the prospect of Brielle tossing 90% of her pizza on the floor.

I tipped the guy on the credit card slip and away he went.

We opened the pizza's and found them both to be luke warm.

I wasn't too pleased, Holly was much more upset.

I called again and got one of the two girls I had been speaking with earlier. Of course they gave use the run around that it was a busy night... yada yada yada... Still that's no excuse for cold pizza. They were going to give us free stuff... As unlikely as that would be to redeem, we chose to have them credit our credit card. The girls decided to blame the delivery guy as he was the reason that the pizza was cold. So we asked that the entire amount be credited back to our card. This wasn't too much to ask...

The girl wasn't sure how to do this in the system so she covered the phone (unsuccessfully) and asked a co-worker. Her co-worker unthinkingly says F-Her. (As you can imagine she said the real deal not the edited version I placed here...)

As gasoline poured on a flame flares up, my wife followed suit. Appalled at the mistreatment by the teeny-bopper, Holly called them out on the comment. She explained to them that she has never been so mistreated in a situation where the business was clearly at fault and then the insulting comments was just the icing on teh cake...

I know what you are thinking. For crying out loud Matt, you live in New York. Of COURSE they are going to be surly and using all kind of expletives.

I took this under consideration and while yes, we do live in New York, this really isn't how people are on Long Island. Maybe in the city, but I live 60 miles from the city...

So putting the fear of God into the young ladies, she did not blame the girl asking the question, Holly made a point to get the managers name who was conveniently on vacation. For now I'm not sure if Holly will contact the manager but we'll see.

I'll save the other two issues for the next entry. I can see the next big training seminars gearing up for customer service training. It's pretty sad that you have to teach people basic human kindness and interaction. Oh, and maybe a touch of work ethic... Maybe too much to ask...

Does anyone remember the days of "your pizza is there in 30 minutes or it's free"??? I guess that gimmic died long ago...

The Joys of Shopping Part 2

2006-10-13T08:21:00.000-05:00

As I stated in The Joys of Shopping Part 1, shopping with children isn't all that enjoyable. Since they all have their own personalities, I'm pretty sure I didn't see that option on the order form, they make the experience just that... An Experience...

Since the oldest boy and the girl are of opposite opinions about shopping, they are like oil and water at this age.

The one saving grace is that the trip to and from the store is distracted with a DVD player in the SUV. Thank GOD for that!

Once at the store all bets are off. Sometimes they are great for a while, but eventually they are running around, poking one another or generally just whining about the fact that we are still shopping.

At times Holly and I are driven to the point of Seinfeld's Frank Costanza yelling "Serenity Now!"

There are certain points of shopping that are predictable. The kids love checking out the lobster tanks. The havethe occassional crabs as well. But our favorite store also sports a giant lobster. They vary in size much like anywhere else in the country but recently they've been putting one GIANT lobster in with the rest. This one is generall y between 8 and 10 pounds. To give you an idea of how big this is... Imagine what a normal sized lobster looks like in the tank. Now imagine a lobster with one clow being the size of a regular sized lobster...

Yeah.. I know... huge!

I love my family... We do have a lot of fun together, but shopping isn't one of our best times. To be honest, I don't mind shopping by myself in the least. I don't have to worry about any arguments about what cereal we are getting, whether or not the yogurt is the right flavor... It's somewhat peacful. I then feel for those families I pass with three children arguing down one aisle or another. The poor bastards....

The Joys of Shopping Part 1

2006-10-09T12:56:00.000-05:00

Shopping with children... sucks... There I said it! It really does. 90% of the shopping excursions we take as a family are less-than-pleasant experiences.

Why you ask? Well lets put the equation together.

I have a 7 year old boy who, if given the opportunity, would stay firmly attached to any visual device that entertains. Television, Playstation, Gameboy, DVD player... Anything that will make him transform into vegetation, he's in to.

I also have a 2 1/2 year-old girl who loves to get out of the house. She doesn't want to stay home at all. She wants to walk around town, go to the store or just do anything to not be home. When we start going back home, she starts to chant, "No Home, No Home". Which is quickly followed by "Yes Home" from the 7 year-old... Which results in the much anticipated screaming match.

The third, and final, part of the equation is the 3 1/2 month old boy. He pretty much just hangs out. If the trip lasts too long, he lets us know about it. So he's pretty much the neutral party in this.

So we have the Boy who can't stand shopping and will drag his feet and delay the inevitable, all the while ticking off his parents for not listening. Then we have the girl who, not unlike the dogs when they hear the word "food" or "outside", runs and grabs her shoes chanting, "let's go! let's go!"

With this base, I'll leave you to ponder the moments with some Calvin.

Parenting 101: Remembering the good old days...

2006-10-09T10:51:00.001-05:00

Jonah has quite the imagination...

Lately he had been playing a lot of video games which then get his mind into the mode of games he would like Santa to make for him for Christmas. It's very cute! Although sometimes that's all he talks about and trying to get his mind focused on other things can be a bit of a challenge.

Imagination is an awesome thing. You can transport yourself to anywhere and be anything with the blink of an eye. There are many mediums that take advantage of peoples imaginations. Books have been around for many many years where television and video games are still infants in the grand scheme of things.

Many people believe that television and video games are the harbingers of death in relationship to imagination. If you try to apply this to Jonah, it's the complete opposite. I keep suggestion that he write all these ideas down so that when he's old enough to start learning to program he can make these games and get himself into a great career. Considering he's 7, the programming for games will change 5 or 6 times before he hits college to learn all this stuff.

I know that if he uses his imagination as a method of making a living he's going to do very well.

In the spirit of imagination, a little Calvin & Hobbes to brighten your day...

Confessions of a fallen Blogger...

2006-10-09T10:43:00.000-05:00

I have to admit it... This isn't easy for me... But I'm a BBBAAADDDD Blogger... For all those that have been following my blog, I apologize for not blogging in quite a while.

I won't throw out all kinds of excuses... I could say that my computer died, I lost access to the internet from work, the sun was in my eyes... But truth be told, I just got caught up with other projects... I'm now taking up the torch again and beginning to blog once more.

To those loyal readers, thanks for the patience. For the new ones. I hope you enjoy this blog.

Let the blogging commence...

Build-a-Bear

2006-08-03T08:35:00.000-05:00

This weekend we went to the Build-a-bear store in the mall. It was kind of on accident that we found ourselves in this store. Our main reason for being in the mall was to escape the heat and have the kids ride the carousel. Apparently the carousel has been gone for awhile. I guess that shows how often we head to the mall. So to kill some time, and keep cool, we went into the build-a-bear shop.

If you have never been to one it’s pretty much just what it’s called. You build.. a bear… But they have other pre-stuffed animals as well. Suck ahs money’s, puppy’s and giraffes. What caught our attention was a Cookie Monster. Now for those of you who don’t know, Brielle Loves Cooking monster. Several times a week I have to show this video from Youtube for Brielle to sing along with. Go ahead play it… You’ll remember the words… Sing-a-long… Go ahead, your co-workers won’t mind. They’ll probably join in!

For Brielle’s birthday we searched everywhere for a stuffed cookie monster. We couldn’t find any anywhere. The closest thing we found was a cookie monster that would do the hokey pokey. I think it scared her more than she liked it… So when we saw the Cookie Monster at this place, we knew we have to get one.

So we ended up getting all three kids a “bear”. Brie with her Cookie Monster, Jonah with his Black bear and even Liam was treated to a nice little bear…

The kids were involved in the stuffing process.. They pressed down on a pedal which made the fluff shoot out of this steel tube shoved into the back of the critter to be stuffed. They then took a small heart and had to warm it up with their hands, kiss it and make a wish. Very cute…

After the bear is done they give them a bath. Essentially it’s a fake bathtub with shower heads that spray air on the bear.

They then fill out a form on the computer to make up the birth certificate. Then the parents get taken to the cleaners…

The other cool part of this is that you can have the stuffed critter implanted with a sound module. For the cookie monster he says several things in cookie monsters voice. For Jonah’s he chose a vicious roar.. no surprise there… And for Liam, Holly and I recorded a special message for him on the module.

That evening they both slept with their bears. (We are saving Liam’s for later). Here are the pics with them asleep with their new "bears".

All in all a good trip to the mall

Mohawk...

2006-08-02T08:10:00.000-05:00

Inspired by my buddy Will and his son Cameron back in Michigan I decided to go for the popular hair style of the day. Since I am already employed, and I answer phones for a living, I could afford a new look… I was surprised to be at Jonah’s school and see several kids with Mohawks as well. Jonah doesn’t seem that interested in getting one, other than playing around in the bathtub in a pretty good impersonation of Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller’s day off less the singing.. “I recall.. .Central Park in fall.. How you tore your dress, what a mess, I confess…” Jonah has yet to see this movie with me, although he has seen most of Back to the Future which seems to play every other weekend on some cable channel or another…This a classic that I rank right up there with Ferris and his famous day off.

Now I need a piece of metal poked through my lip and my nose with a chain joining the two… Oh and a new crotch rocket. A Harley doesn’t have the right attitude for the Mohawk…

Maybe the next hairstyle will be the semi-popular early 90’s look of shaved words on my head…

Visitors from Afar...

2006-07-18T15:09:00.000-05:00

My family was able to come out to visit with us a few weeks after Liam Matthew came into our world.

Abby and Brielle were hanging out and having a great time while Jonah and Alex hung out and played on the computer. A water fight was fit in there somewhere... I think I went grocery shopping and missed all the action.

My Mom brought along a large amount of plants from home to help decorate our yard. Some Hydrangia, Rose of Sharon and Canadian Redbud were planted in the front where there is a lot of light, and several ferns and lily of the valley were placed in the back to make this area a little nicer to look at.

I'll post photos of plants later, for now here are some pics of the family!!!

Landlord firsts...

2006-07-07T14:53:00.000-05:00

Since purchasing our house we finally set everything up to rent the apartment at our house. Everything was set and cleaned and working nicely. Of course, that's when the toilet decided to give us some trouble.

The toilet valve leaks just enough to make it run almost constantly.

So being the handyman that I’m not, I opened up the tank to take a look. I’ve had to do a little work on toilets in the past, so it wasn’t a completely alien view to me. That being said, this toilet looked like it just fell from the International Space Station. What I was expecting to see was something called a “Flapper” a funky valve attached to a chain. What I found was some plunger looking device growing out of the hole to the toilet bowl with a lever attached to the handle of the toilet.

I went to the local hardware store and he gave me a flapper… He said this would do the job. It didn’t…

I went back to this hardware store but they were closed, so I went to another one armed with me trusty cellular phone equipped with my handy dandy camera. The guy looked at the picture on my tiny screen and scratched his balding head. "I don’t recognize that thing but let’s look", he mumbled as we weaved our way through aisle upon aisle of things I hope I’ll never need. We finally stopped in front of a ton of tubes and plastic things. He grunted and pointed and started scratching his head again. I looked around and suddenly saw the alien device that sat in the toilet tank. Would you believe it was called a toilet valve… Imagine that.. calling it something that it actually is… So I bought the thing and read through the directions and started scratching my head as well… (There must be something contagious about plumbing…)

The instructions told me to remove the tank from the bowl of the toilet. But of course never mentioned HOW to do this. Great…

So I went to my savior, the Internet. I quickly found what I needed and began to sob. Apparently hacksaws, tape and other utensils are also needed for this project which complicated the process even more..

Several expletives flew from my mouth as I ranted and raved for a while about toilets and those who manufacture them.

The likelihood of my getting this to work is next to nothing. I found out that it’s actually easier to install a brand new toilet than to install this piece of crap into the old piece of crap crapper!

My next step is to head out on the quest for a new toilet.

Here he is!!!

2006-06-27T08:27:00.000-05:00

Liam Matthew Engel has finally made his appearance! He was born on June 23, 2006 at 5:15 PM. He weighed 7 lbs 12 oz and was 20 inches long. Everything went very well with the delivery with both Holly and Liam doing very well. The little guy started screaming right away and is very healthy.

Here are a few photos, I'll post more later.

So far the little guy is very calm. Hopefully he keeps this attitude... I'm sure we will have some Parenting 101 Blogs with him as the focus in the near future...

Parenting 101: Quick List

2006-06-20T07:15:00.001-05:00

Currently the blogger site does not have an option to group blog entries by category, I'll put this notice out with links to all of the current Parenting 101 Blogs and any others that are similar with Calvin and Hobbes on the scene. Hope you all enjoy these!
Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes
Pre-Parenting 101
Jonah in the funny papers... Friday, February 24, 2006
Jonah, Once again in the funny papers Monday, February 27, 2006
Jonah / Calvin at dinner Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Sometimes, they are just too smart for our own good... Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Jonah was hoping... Thursday, March 02, 2006
Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes
Parenting 101 Blogs
Parenting 101 Friday, March 03, 2006
Parenting 101: Dinner Monday, March 06, 2006
Parenting 101: Dinner table manners Monday, March 06, 2006
Parenting 101: Listening Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Parenting 101: Bath Time Thursday, March 09, 2006
Parenting 101: Reading between the lines... Friday, March 10, 2006
Parenting 101: Snacks... Monday, March 13, 2006
Parenting 101: True.. But Why?!?! Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Parenting 101: Mornings Friday, March 17, 2006
Parenting 101: The things we do for our kids... Monday, March 20, 2006
Parenting 101: Where do babies come from? Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Parenting 101: Dinnertime Fun Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Parenting 101: Tonight's Bed Time Plan... Friday, March 24, 2006
Parenting 101: Housework Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Parenting 101: Starting a Club Thursday, March 30, 2006
Parenting 101: Finance Monday, April 03, 2006
Parenting 101: Home Improvement Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Parenting 101: Where do they get these ideas? Thursday, April 06, 2006
Parenting 101: Testing Boundaries Friday, April 07, 2006
Parenting 101: Shaping their minds Friday, April 14, 2006
Parenting 101: Television Thursday, April 20, 2006
Parenting 101: Labor Pains Monday, April 24, 2006
Parenting 101: Driving Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Parenting 101: Only the facts... Thursday, April 27, 2006
Parenting 101: Shopping Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Parenting 101: More Questions Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Parenting 101: Bed Time Friday, May 05, 2006
Parenting 101: Meal time Monday, May 08, 2006
Parenting 101: Questioning your reasoning... Monday, May 22, 2006
Parenting 101: Summer Vacations Friday, May 26, 2006
Parenting 101: Just a little fun... Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Parenting 101: Couldn't be closer to the truth... Thursday, June 01, 2006
Parenting 101: Writing stories Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Parenting 101: Lunch on a daily basis... Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Parenting 101: Reading and what they learn... Thursday, June 15, 2006
Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Matt Engel Matthew Engel Matt Engel Matthew Engel Matt Engel Matthew Engel comics
I hadn't realized how many of these I've made so far. Once again, Enjoy!
Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes Parenting 101 Calvin and Hobbes Calvin & Hobbes

Oh, Oh it's Magic...

2006-06-19T14:51:00.000-05:00

My buddy Cliff sent me this video today... I hadn't seen this magician before. I guess I haven't spent much time on A&E lately...

I've seen David Blain and his act of levitation, which appears to be more camera trickery mixed with astonished reactions from onlookers who are in a specially selected angle for view.

This guy has a different way to do it. I'm impressed.

Enjoy!

I found another of his videos that gives you an idea on how he does some of his tricks...

Parenting 101: Reading and what they learn...

2006-06-15T08:09:00.000-05:00

Since Jonah has been learning to read, he is absorbing so much information. While we are driving he is reading the signs as we pass by. He even tries to read to his sister every now and then. Most of the time she enjoys it, other times she just wants to rip the pages apart. I guess that's part of the "Terrible Two's" we are going through right now.

I found a series of Calvin and Hobbes clips that fit this situation pretty well. I can see Jonah doing this at any moment.

Enjoy!

Parenting 101: Lunch on a daily basis...

2006-06-14T13:33:00.000-05:00

Setting up school lunches can be a pain...

It's a lot easier to throw some money in a baggie for the kids to get lunch at school, but it's a bit more economical to pack a lunch for them. Whether they eat it or not is another thing all together.

We make a weekly trip to the Warehouse center nearby to pick up many grociery items in bulk. The bulk pack of snack chips for lunches, the puddings and of course drink box/pouches.

Invariably the wrong choice has been made in drink or sandwich ingredients.

Jonah: "I don't like these drinks."

Mom/Dad: "You picked them out at the store,
so you have to finish them before we buy more."

Jonah: "I hate them!"

Mom/Dad: "Sorry, you will have to make do."

What we usually find out at this point is that he chose this particular drink because of the cool pictures on it. Not the flavors.

The same thing goes for Cereal. We recently went to the store and Jonah really wanted the Cocoa Pebbles. No complaint from me, I grew up on the stuff (although fruity pebbles in my opinion are much better.)

The next morning I get breakfast ready for everyone and Jonah doesn't want the Cocoa Pebbles. Holly and I remind him that he chose them. The then he discloses that he just wanted the toy that came with it...

Blast from the past...

2006-06-09T12:32:00.000-05:00

My office mate came across this video and I thought I'd share it with you here as well.

It reminds me of when I was younger and watching television with the family. Enjoy!

4 Years Ago Today...

2006-06-08T09:35:00.000-05:00

Today, Holly and I celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. Looking at that number 4 makes it seem like it wasn't that long ago at all that we took our stroll down the aisle back in Frankenmuth Michigan with all our friends and family in attendance. It feels like we have known each other forever. Which, I guess, is what marriage and family as all about. Well at least a part of it at least...

A lot has happened in our lives since we were married. The day after our wedding we spent part of the day watching the Bavarian Festival Parade which fills my old home town with tourists of all ages. Consumption of much beer and Bratwurst is a prerequisite for this event. The next day we left for our Honeymoon in South Beach, Miami. Our initial plan was to stay in South Beach for a few days then drive down to the Key's. This didn't really go as planned.

We planned our trip at the same time as Monsoon Season, not on purpose. Not exactly the best time in terms of weather, but we were Newly Wed's... We had a Suite overlooking the ocean. That's about all we really needed for the duration.

There were several days where it was nicer and we were able to venture out without being drowned. There was one particular morning where I decided to walk to the nearest Dunkin Donuts. We had driven past a number of times and it didn't seem all that far. It wasn't that far by car. By foot it was a bit further in time. It turned out to be a mile away. About halfway there it started to rain. Of course I had no umbrella, which is probably just as well because the wind would have blown it apart in no time. My cellular phone was left charging in the room. It was one of my more brainy days...

I made it to Dunkin Donuts, ordered our food and asked for extra bags to bag everything up in for the walk back. This time I was walking into the wind. Now this wasn't as terrible as you would think. The rain was very warm. It actually felt like I was walking in the shower, it was that warm. I kept watching for Holly to pull up in the Convertible we had rented and pick me up out of the rain. She never showed up, but I made it all the way back to the Eden Roc after being gone for 2 hours.

Walking through the lobby was a real treat. My clothes were completely saturated. What was interesting is that the wind had dried my back off while I was walking into the wind. The rain was hitting only the front of me on my walk back. I received some rather peculiar looks as I left sandal shaped water puddles on the marble clad floor.

Upon arriving to the suite, I found Holly on the bed lost in a television show. She looked at me and started to laugh asking what happened to me. Apparently she had no idea that it had been a down-pour outside... I glanced at the wall of windows and watched as the rain ran down in a sheet.

A puddle grew at my feet as I stood there dripping with the bags of Dunkin Donuts treats. They say a picture is worth a thousand words... Here you go.

Looking back, the walk itself was not all that bad. It's a memory I will carry with me for the rest of my life which will always make me smile.

We had a great time on our Honeymoon, rain storms not with standing...

So far I hadn't posted wedding details and honeymoon details. Some of the details of the last four years together are chronicled in the Moving blog entries which can be found below:

The Move (Packing)
The Move (communications) sidebar
The Move (on the road)
The Move (the rest of the way...)
The Move (the morning after)

Holly has been the best wife I could ever ask for. She has brought Jonah, Brielle and the new addition (6/23/06) into my life which has brought me much joy. I Love them all dearly.

Happy Anniversary Babe!

I Love you,

Matt

Parenting 101: Writing stories

2006-06-07T12:17:00.001-05:00

Jonah has really gotten into creating his own books. We recently went shopping for office supplies and bought Jonah his own ream of paper to write his books. Considering he had already gone through several reams of our printer paper, we figured this to be the best idea.

He starts off by drawing the pictures of the story and then goes through and writes out the story. He has several stories written already. All of them are quite good, of course being his father I guess there's some bias there. But for just turning 7 and still in the early stages of reading, both Holly and I think he's doing very well.

The first story of his that I have scanned in is a variation of the Three Little Pigs that we all grew up with. I'll post some of his original stories soon. I haven't had the opportunity to scan them all in yet. Please forgive the quality of this first book. I'm working out the bugs between Adobe Acrobat and my scanner.

Here's the story in Adobe PDF format. The Three Little Pigs - By Jonah Hercules (More stories to follow...)

If you don't have Adobe Acrobat reader, you can download it from here:

Parenting 101: Couldn't be closer to the truth...

2006-06-01T15:57:00.001-05:00

It's always a pleasant surprise when the kids do something by themselves that you usually have to ask them 5 or 6 times to do.

Brielle is still in the molding stage. Holly says that because she is a girl she likes to help. I'm not sure if it's because of her gender or not, but she really does like to help. Generally the help is counter-productive, but she's happy to help and is excited about the praise she gets.

On the flip-side of this is Jonah. There are times when he takes care of all the things we normally have to ask several times for. These times generally have use getting to the point of a time-out or loss of some kind of privledge. It's always a pleasant surprise when he does things when he is not asked. If only it was that way all the time, but I don't recall doing that either as a child, so I guess I shouldn't expect it from my own children.

This Calvin comic fits this situation perfectly. Enjoy your day!

Parenting 101: Just a little fun...

2006-05-31T13:19:00.001-05:00

Sometimes a Dad's gotta do, what a Dad's gotta do...

I Love my children. I preface by saying this in that some things you think of doing, you never would becuase you love your children. Although in your head it seems very funny...

Both Jonah and Brielle are funny and loveable in their own ways. They are two great kids. With a third on the way, we can't help but wonder what he will be like. We'll be finding out soon enough. June 23rd appears to be the date to induce labor.

As for some of the fun things you think of saying or doing with your kids, several of the Parenting 101 blogs deal with pulling your kids leg every now and then. This one is no exception.

Sometimes you just want a little peace and quiet... Or to give them a small taste of their own medicine...

This Calvin comic reminded me of how Holly and I direct one or both children to the other to get them out of our hair for a few moments...

Parenting 101: Summer Vacations

2006-05-26T14:48:00.001-05:00

It's almost Summer time...

Soon the kids will be home all day and people will get to take vacations. I'm not sure if we'll be doing much traveling with the little one coming in the end of June, but other people will be traveling.

I recall the days of being trapped in the back of my parents Caprice Classic as we drove to Northern Michigan or across the border into Canada on one trip or another. My father was a Real Estate Appraiser how would take jobs with the State of Michigan to value property for road expansion projects. A number of summers took us to different parts of Michigan while my Dad checked out buildings and vacant land stretching along endless highways.

On several occasions my Mom would come along, on a few it was just he and I on these trips. I have some very good memories about these moments in time. When I was older, around 17, my Dad took me up to the upper peninsula of Michigan to Marquette and several of the outlying towns.

There is a part in Marquette where there are walking and biking paths. We went out to one of these points and found an area to walk out on. There was a section where you could walk out and look down to see Lake Superior and the caves created by the never ending waves crashing up against the limestone.

I recall scaring the bejesus out of my Dad when I walked out on an outcropping of rock and looked down the side of the cliff. I don't recall if there was a railing or not, but it really surprised my Dad that I did this. In retrospect it wasn't the smartest thing to do, but I was 17. That's my excuse.

My memories of traveling when I was younger are a bit more cloudy. I have this feeling that it was a situation not too dissimilar from Calvin on one of his road trips with his parents. This is so true of Jonah and Brielle is starting to follow this path as well.

Enjoy the Calvin and Hobbes!

Parenting 101: Questioning your reasoning...

2006-05-22T14:40:00.001-05:00

Kids are wonderful... but sometimes...

Jonah and his Brothers

2006-05-22T09:36:00.000-05:00

Jonah had a visit from his Brothers Caden and Callan this weekend along with their Grandma, Aunt and Cousin Kiara.

They had a great time running, jumping and screaming through the house. No injuries, thank God.

Here are a few pictures to show how they all look. They all had a great time!

Callan is on the left with Jonah in the center and Caiden on the right. It's hard to believe that Jonah and Caden are the same age!

Here they are Cheesing it up on the couch. They have Kiara in the middle of them hanging out with the boys!

Brielle was fast asleep by the time they made it from New Jersey. Here's a picture of her this morning on her way to school with Dad. She was in a rush to make sure that I didn't leave without her. No time for pictures Mom... I gotta Go!!!

Ding, Dong, The Blazer’s Gone!

2006-05-17T08:53:00.000-05:00

As they say, all good things must come to an end. In my case it’s the legacy that has been the eight years of owning my Chevy Blazer. To be honest, it hasn’t been THAT bad of a vehicle. In it’s history, I had to have some warranty work done on her just at the end of the warranty period. I had a bad bearing in one of the wheels which was making a ton of noise and scaring me senseless while driving.

Over the eight years, she gave me 158,000 miles of traveling. For the most part everything was ok… Except for a couple of things…

Early on, the seat adjustment lever for the drivers side kept falling off. I eventually just left it and hadn’t used it again.
There was a panel that had the hatch release and hatch windshield wiper controls that popped out and wouldn’t go back into the dash. (the pins had broken off) It reminded me of a Stephen King movie where a corpse was walking around with it’s eyeball popped from the socket dangling by the optic nerve. (Sorry about the graphic visualization, but it’s fairly accurate minus the gore.)
There was a tray that you could hold change in that again, the pins broke off and the whole thing would fly out of it’s holder when I would make a tight turn.
Both the tray and the panel were temporarily fixed with tack putty and eventually permanently fixed with super glue.
The windshield wipers would work when they felt like it. I would sometimes have to drive several miles before the wipers would begin working again. Thank God for Rainex to bead up the rain on the windshield and make it easier for me to see without the blades running.
The windshield cracked pretty badly a year ago during winter. After a particularly bad dumping of snow the melting then freezing snow filled in a small chip and turned it into the grand canyon across the windshield. (We didn’t bother spending $200 to replace it.)
If I would drive further than 35 miles in one setting the transmission would have issues going from first to second. A lurch would occur scaring myself and any passengers I may have had onboard at the time.
A couple years ago, I was driving to a meeting at work and suddenly found steering control very difficult as if I had a flat tire. I quickly pulled over to assess the problem. I looked at my drivers side tire and found that it was leaning inward at about a 25 degree angle. A connection broke that holds the wheel in place. I also found out that there was more damage to the other wheel but it wasn’t an immediate danger. We fixed the wheel having the problem and let the other stuff go.

Now that I've itemized it like this, I guess I did have a number of issues with it. Considering our Toyota Avalon has only had a flat tire... once.

Thankfully nothing ever happened with the vehicle causing any accidents. We could have pumped over $2000 into it to keep her running well, but out expanding family would not have fit into my “single-guy” blazer. The 2 doors and the rear bucket seats do not allow for 2 car seats and a 7-year-old to fit legally or at all…

So the Quest for a new vehicle began.

We finally decided to modify our situation and NOT get a brand new vehicle. We really liked the new Honda Pilot and the Toyota Highlander, but the cost was more than we were willing to pay. So we started checking out the Certified Pre-Owned (used) vehicles. We ended up finding one with low mileage and all the features we wanted for below the blue book price. No complaints from us!

Holly and Jonah picked up the new Toyota Highlander and turned in the Blazer. Holly asked me if it bothered me getting rid of the vehicle. To a certain extent the vehicle was a reminder of how my life was changing around the time of getting a new job and buying my new vehicle. I’m not much for nostalgia on physical items, although I’m a packrat at heart. But seeing her go was a little bitter sweet. I no longer have to worry about driving an unsafe vehicle for both my safety and my family.

The vehicle had not passed it’s safety inspection and didn’t have new registration because of it. Hence my uneasiness every time I would pass a police officer on the road. That is a thing of the past.

So I’m happy to get to drive the Avalon while Holly uses the Highlander. We may swap every now and then, but that’s how my parents used to work their vehicles. My Mom would use the new car, and my Dad would get the older one. I have no complaints, because now I have a moon roof…

Parenting 101: Meal time... (comic)

2006-05-08T08:20:00.001-05:00

Could not be more true to reality...

This happens in our house about every other week. One minute it's the greatest thing ever, then it's worse than liver and onions...

Parenting 101: Bed Time

2006-05-05T13:30:00.001-05:00

Bed times are a blessing... and a curse...

7:00 PM
"Come on Brie Brie, it's time to change your clothes. Give Jonah hugs and kisses Good Night!"
Starting a whimpering cry, Brielle starts to chant the mantra, "No Night, Night. No Night, Night." She begrudgingly gives her older brother hugs and kisses all the while chanting her claim that she doesn't want to go to bed. That's about as bad as it gets. Although it tugs greatly on the heart strings, she goes to bed pretty well.

8:00 PM
"Jonah, it's time to turn off the TV, brush your teeth and get your comfy clothes on." At this point Jonah finds every excuse in the book to delay bed time. Generally we have to repeat the above statement 2 or more times before the television turns off. Then he came up with all sorts of "important" questions that can't wait before he brushes his teeth.

After the teeth are scrubbed clean he comes out to give us hugs and kisses goodnight. This is generally accompanied by several more questions that couldn't possibly wait till morning or his head would certainly explode.

After being shipped off to bed we have to remind him to stay in his bed several times as we hear him roaming around the upstairs trying to do anything other than sleep. The occasional trip back downstairs with the most important question followed by us being exasperated and telling him he will lose TV time if he doesn't keep himself in his bed.

All of this usually lasts until 9:00 or so. Sometimes a little later... Then it's just us time.

Unfortunately we are generally exhausted from the day and veg on the couch. I'll Rub Holly's feet while we watch House, American Idol, Medium or any other of our favorite shows. Then off to bed to put an end to a long day and refresh us, if only marginally. for the next long day ahead.Calvin is always getting himself into trouble. This is probably what we have in store for us in the not too distant future... Enjoy.

Parenting 101: More Questions

2006-05-03T12:36:00.001-05:00

Jonah has some interesting insight for a 6-year-old. Well, almost 7. He turns 7 tomorrow, which he is VERY excited about.

As I was saying... He thinks of things on multiple levels which amazes me... We were watching something on television the other evening, and he made a comment about how before Adam and Eve sinned everything was in black and white. Then everything was color after the original sin.

Where this came from, I have no idea... But anyone that has any background with religion and knows the story of original sin will have an idea of what this is about. I was floored. That a 6-year-old would come up with such a comment really made me think about it in a different way.

A couple of years ago when Jonah was in Pre-K, they were learning about music. Beethoven to be more specific. Jonah commented that Beethoven's music was rather dark. We asked if his teachers had said this, and he said no, that it was dark like the basement to him...

Another music angle on this was even earlier. Holly and I were married in 2002. Jonah was 3. For a while before the wedding, we had different kinds of classical music playing in the car, trying to figure out what chamber music to use during the ceremony. Pachelbel's Cannon in D was one such piece. About 2 years after we were married, Jonah was humming the tune in the back seat on the way to or from somewhere. Holly was surprised that he remembered the tune.

He just said that he liked it.

I'm going to start putting more of his deep thoughts out here to both remember the moments and share with all of you. The boy is definately bright, there's no doubt about that.

Jonah has also taken to writing books. We have been encouraging him to do so and he's becoming quite the artist now as well... I'll be publishing a few of his books on the web in the near future. He's very excited about making these books and thinks it's great that I'll put his stories on the web.

When it comes to questions that Jonah asks, sometimes its more fun to make things up. This is too close to reality...

Parenting 101: Shopping

2006-05-02T09:18:00.001-05:00

Shopping with children should be considered cruel and unusual... for the parents.

I remember when I was young and wanting to go shopping with my Mom. Usually I would beg and plead for some kind of trinket, or a pack of baseball cards. That's the only part of the shopping experience I really recall. I do recall my Mom telling me that I couldn't come shopping, and now that I have kids of my own, I completely understand why.

It's as if the automatic doors leading into the grocery store transmogrifies your child into a tiny monster that has no concept of self control.

"Mom, I want THAT sugar packed cereal with the guy from my favorite cartoon on the front of it"

"Dad, can I have those popsicles with the super heroes on it?"

Then the daughter gets into the mix... Instead of sitting in the cart seat, she wants to walk. Unfortunately this means that she tries to run away from me at every possible opportunity. And she thinks it's funny...

It IS kind of cute, but not when you are dodging other shoppers trying to grab the screaming 2-year-old.

Maybe the next phase of shopping centers will have a setup like McDonalds and Burger King have developed with the huge indoor playground with hamster tubes to crawl through and balls to jump into. This could be supervised by one parent while the other can leisurely pick out the correct groceries.

This could make the shopping experience a bit more enjoyable for the parents as well.

The alternative, which we recently received coupons in the mail for, is having the groceries delivered to our door. For about $6 we can have everything we would normally shop for brought right to our door at a time we specify. We may test this sometime soon. My only concern is the quality. I don't get to choose which tomatoes that I think look good or how fresh the asparagus looks. We'll see...

Until then we will continue the battle of grocery shopping.

Parenting 101: Only the facts...

2006-04-27T13:38:00.001-05:00

Jonah is very smart. I try to fool him every now and then with something silly and funny. Most of the time he sees right through me and calls me out on it. If Holly hears me trying to mess with him, much like Calvin's Mom, she puts a quick end to it.

Now I don't do it to be mean or try to make the kid less intelligent, because I know he's very smart. I like to try to pull one over on him every now and then. That is one of the joys of being a parent. You can mess with your kids every now and then. Hey, they do their best to mess with us so sometimes a little payback is in order.

Brielle is still too young to pull little pranks on, but rest assured she will be messing with us in no time. She already has me wrapped around her little finger. Much like Jonah has his mom is wrapped around his entire hand...

Of course I say all this in jest. The kids are fun to play with, and we always try to give the most accurate answers to all of their questions. Jonah's are much more complex than Brielle's questions. He's pretty deep. Trying to word the answers in such a way that a 1st grader can understand it is a bit challenging of course.

As always, enjoy a cup of Calvin & Hobbes with some coffee...

Parenting 101: Driving

2006-04-26T15:05:00.001-05:00

As the weather is getting nicer and nicer, so we are traveling a little more on our Island.

Actually, we have been car shopping and are trapped in the tiny Avalon where the kids are in their stage of being buddies one minute, teaming up to try to annoy the parents as much as possible, to being enemies the next fighting over every possible thing you can imagine.

At the end of June the family will be growing a little larger with a new baby boy joining us. With this comes the need for something that can hold a few more bodies. My 2-door Blazer is on it's last legs and is not easy to get kids in and out of.

So we are looking at either the Toyota Highlander, or the Honda Pilot.

They are comparable vehicles and are about the same price. We are currently in the price factor phase. Whoever can give us the better deal will be the victor and win us as customers. The vehicles are a bit more spacious so we should be able to separate the kids a little better and have a little more peace of mind while we make our travels. Hopefully this will allow us the opportunity to make a trip back to Michigan in the future.

As for Traveling, enjoy some classic Calvin and Hobbes... Couldn't be more true... Except generally Holly is driving...

Parenting 101: Labor Pains

2006-04-24T07:32:00.001-05:00

This weekend was a wet one... It drizzled on and off all day Saturday and poured pretty much all day on Sunday.

Of course the kids could not go out, so staying in was the only option. This is a recipe for disaster. Constant running through the house, screaming at the top of their lungs and smashing into things. The yell for us to tell them to stop throwing/kicking balls around the house and things getting knocked down after repeatedly saying stop throwing/kicking the balls!!!

This Calvin and Hobbes seemed to fit the mood pretty well.

Hope your weekend was much drier than ours...

Parenting 101: Television

2006-04-20T08:15:00.001-05:00

At one time, the kitchen was THE room in the house that the family would congregate in. Since the introduction of the television, the shift has been made to the living/family room. Or wherever you happen to have a television plugged in.

I love television. Since marriage has decreed that the remote ownership shifts to the wife, I get to watch what I'm told that I like. I think it's in the vows somehwere between honor and sickness and in health... This is of little consequence since I generally enjoy whatever I watch with my lovely wife.

As for kids, television is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, as a parent, it's easy to fall into the trap of letting the television be the babysitter. If it's an occassional thing and under the right circumstances this is fine, but in large quantities is not so good. They need the interactive experience of playing with others. So this is the challenge to interact more with the kids instead of letting the television show them their role models.

Within these social interactions lies in the "Play-date". I'm not really sure where this term came from. I can discern from the words what it means, but we never called it a "Play-date". My phrasing was, "I'm going out to play with Scott and Johnny!" or, "Tomorrow, Scott and John are coming over to build a fort!"

The phrase play-date never left my lips. Now I have nothing against the phrasing although it still feels aquard to say. As I have come to thinking about this subject I have to analyze what is different now compared to when I was a kid.

I suppose it all comes from our new enviroment on the East Coast, although I think the term is widely used everywhere now...

As for integration of television into the family unit... Well Calvin usually has something that fits. Jonah seems to be doing this a lot lately as well... For a long time, Jonah has been reciting back funny parts of his cartoons. Sometimes they make sense, most of the time I think you really had to see it to get the humor. But we laugh just the same... Lately he's been adding background theme music to his activities. It's quite funny. Although I have to wonder if we should be concerned about it or not...

Enjoy some Calvin with your day...

Landscaping: Raised Flowerbed

2006-04-19T14:24:00.000-05:00

This weekend we decided it was time to take care of the flowerbed that has been in much need of care.

The one side closest to the sidewalk has a large planting of Mums that bloom in the fall, which we want to leave as is. They are just starting to pop up now. The rest of the mess is juniper, which has claimed every available space. What a mess... From this picture the juniper looks more like grass, but not as pretty.

Considering Holly is nearing the end of her pregnancy, she is by default the Foreman. Slavedriver would be a better phrasing... Only kidding! She has some excellent ideas of what we can do with this space, so I'm grateful for all the help she gives. She even got me water... Now that's Love!

Ok, enough joking... So I started pulling up the juniper to see where everything was rooted. WOW!!! These things were everywhere! I was able to use a saw to cut everything from the root system, but still have a number of stumps to get out of there. I'll take care of that soon enough.

It took me a couple of hours to completely remove the juniper from the bed. At the end I was tired and swetty and felt like I had just won a battle with a great beast. The corpse of which was now lying piled up in the lower steps leading to the porch.

Dragging the mess across the driveway reminded me of the scene in Independance Day with Will Smith dragging the Alien across the desert, Dreadlocks dragging and everything.
The juniper got a few last scratches in as it found it's final resting place, but it felt good to take care of something myself in the new house.

The next day was Easter. We did all of the fun things you normally do on Easter.

We decided to plant a number of Hyacynth's, Daffodils and Tulips in our newly cleared bed. I had to do a little more removing of stumps and roots to make this happen, but in no time the flowers were planted and smelling as sweet as ever.

Our next step is to replaced the top railroad ties that are damaged. We will then get a weeping cherry tree to place in the center of this bed. A Holly bush will be planted closer to the latice work closest to the house. Of course we will use mulch to make it all look nice again. I'll show all of that after we get it all put together.

There's just something about the smell of Spring flowers that makes things just feel better...

Enjoy the pictures.
(Disclaimer: the juniper mentioned in this post was harmed during this process. This was unavoidable...)

Vistors in the Day: Part 2

2006-04-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

On Easter morning, I was speaking with my Mom back in Michigan over the phone. I wandered through the house making sure that the kids were not over-loading on Easter Candy when I found myself standing at our glass storm door looking over the front yard.

It took me a moment to notice that there was a visitor standing on the porch not four feet from me.

Apparently our house has become the free lunch spot for all kinds of travelers. Today it was Rocky. No he's not a flying squirrel, I couldn't think of another name off the top of my head. He's your run-of-the-mill Grey Squirrel.

Apparently he enjoys cat food. I thought Squirrels were more into the corn and peanut kind of cuisine. I suppose in a pinch, cat food will do...

Happy Easter!

2006-04-17T09:07:00.000-05:00

The kids had a great time on Easter.

The morning started out with the yearly tradition of finding the easter basket. The Easter Bunny hides Jonah and Brielle's baskets somewhere in the house. It's always fun to watch them run around trying to figure out where the basket has been hidden this year.

Of course what is Easter, Aside from the religous aspects of the Holiday, without an Easter Egg Hunt?

This year it was a little different. The Easter Bunny broke from his norm and woke Holly and I up to let us know he couldn't hide eggs outside because of the "bandits" aka "Visitors in the Night" that were on the loose. We completely understood this situation and agreed to hide the eggs for him later in the morning. In return for this service, he left us a bag of candy for ourselves... Pretty kind of the bunny...

So later in the day... The hunt began.

These pictures pretty much tell it all.

Hope you all had a nice Holiday!!!!

Ladies and Gentleman... Huey Lewis and the NEWS!

2006-04-14T14:18:00.000-05:00

My buddy Clifford made this video while in College. He posted it on his blog a while ago, and I thought I'd throw it out here as well for others to enjoy.

Have fun!

Parenting 101: Shaping their minds

2006-04-14T10:20:00.001-05:00

As a parent, it is our job to train and teach our children to be responsible caring people. This includes educating them along with the schooling they receive from their teachers.

There are situations where you have to scratch your head and wonder where they come up with some of the questions they ask you. Other times you just want to take a humorous moment and pull a Calvin's Dad on them.

Enjoy this post for the day...

Parenting 101: Testing Boundaries

2006-04-07T08:43:00.001-05:00

Why do kids have to test their boundaries?

After a certain age, they just won't take our word on much of anything. Jonah has moved into this phase with full force. Testing every last nerve possible and then some. Since Holly is pregnant, her nerves are at the frazzled level already... So when the testing starts, it is not pretty...

More and more every day, I come to realize what my parents had to go through when I was a child. It's amazing that I'm alive today thinking of some of the things that I did as a kid. I don't know how they made it through any of it either. I've been noticing more and more grey hairs as I look in the mirror. I suppose keeping my hair shorter makes it a little less noticeable.

I don't know how Holly does it. She doesn't have a single grey hair and has all this turmoil going on around her. She's definitely a pillar of strength during these troubling times of parenting. We count ourselves very fortunate that our kids are as good as they are.

We see some of the kids that Jonah goes to school with and how they act and thank God that we don't have to deal with some of those issues. Then watching a show like Nanny 911 or Super Nanny make us count our blessings even more. There are some very testing children out there...

Jonah has tried something similar to this comic in the past... It works as well for him as it does for Calvin...

Have a great weekend!!!

Parenting 101: Where do they get these ideas?

2006-04-06T14:22:00.001-05:00

In my opinion, educational television is a great thing. Jonah is starting to get into these from his interest in dinosaurs. He loves the prehistoric creatures. Some of the new programs like Dinosaur Planet have some excellent graphics and make you feel like you are watching a real documentary rather than an animated creation.

Jonah questions a lot of things that he hears on television.... Which is VERY good, because there are some pretty weird shows that he ends up watching that I'm not all that certain we want him to see. Regardless, he asks questions, and we try to answer them to the best of our abilities.

This comic of Calvin goes along with this topic. So far Jones hasn't gone to this extreme in his television believability.... yet.

Parenting 101: Home Improvement

2006-04-05T10:32:00.000-05:00

Improving the home is generally a good thing. Trying to repair things yourself can be fun... when things go right.

The recent installation of exterior lights, with the help of Merlin, went very well. On my own I probably would have had more holes than I could deal with. We still have our projects around the house to work on. Thankfully most of it just has to do with painting. Thankfully that's fairly easy. Picking the colors is another story.

My other project is to finish the floors. Actually the floors are done it's the molding along the baseboards that I need to finish. The one room has them installed. I need to fill the nail holes and paint them. The other room I have to do more precise fitting and nailing. I'll be pre-painting these to make the job go a little more smoothly. We'll see how this one turns out.

The kids are generally pretty good while we are trying to improve the house. Keeping the tools out of their reach is a challenge of course. Jonah is very interested in painting, but we are reluctant to hand over a brush anytime soon. Maybe if everything were covered with tarps... including ourselves.

Brielle just wants to be in the middle of it all... She's the uber-helper. Wants to get into it all and help, help, help... Most of the time it's the opposite of help and makes more work for us, but it's awesome that she wants to help none-the-less.

At least the kids aren't too destructive. Messy most of the time, but not destructive... Unlike our little friend Calvin...

Hope you are all enjoying these.

Have a great day!

It's raining here on Long Island today with some mixed snow. BRRRrrrrr.

Landscaping Corner

2006-04-04T08:04:00.000-05:00

Now that it is officially Spring, we have started evaluating the current landscaping and trying to figure out what the hell we have out there.

This weekend we trimmed out the dead stuff from last year and found some nice flowers starting to poke through the layer of leaves left from this past fall. We found a group of 5 Hyacinths and several places, in our yard of all placed, where there are Crocuses growing in small groups.

The strangest part of our investigation came from the yard itself. Our grass is a combination of about 30 different kinds of weeds and I think there might be some patches of grass in there somewhere. The odd part is that we have Chives growing all over our front yard. For those of you that cook, you are familiar with the onion flavored herb used in many cooking dished. For those of you who don't... Well... I guess now you do.

We found that Chives in this area are a lot like Dandelions. They have a top that has seeds on them which apparently spread like a weed. I counted over 20 chive plants in our front yard. I guess the lawn mower will take care of them, but I do have a place where I'll be transferring some of them for our herb garden. I do enjoy adding chives to certain recipes.

I'll also pull the crocuses from the yard and place them in flowerbeds. Who am I to complain about free landscaping flowers?

We had Holly's Mom and Merlin out a few weeks ago. Sandy was able to identify this tropical looking plant that we have planted all over in the back yard. They are a Rhododendron plant. They have these huge flower buds on them that I'm anxious to see what they turn out to look like.

There are several bushes that we will be removing and replacing. We also have a Hasta plant in the front that is very large. I found that I can break it into small plants and place them in shady areas of the yard. That is my plan for part of the entrance around the lower level apartment. We'd like to make it look a lot nicer back there for our future renter.

We are in the analysis phase for landscaping now. I'll put more posts out as we make our changes. We'd like to get more flowers integrated into our design.

Let the FUN Begin!!!

Parenting 101: Finance

2006-04-03T14:09:00.002-05:00

To give... or not to give an allowance...

It's begining to feel alot like Spring time

2006-03-30T13:51:00.000-05:00

The Robins have returned and the sounds of all kinds of birds are beginning to overshadow the low rumble of the boats in our harbor.

I hadn't noticed how many Blue Jays that we have flying around our yard until recently. Apparently they must take off for the winter too. The Cardinals are pretty much the only birds that I've seen all winter long. We even have a lone Mockingbird hanging around looking for a mate. Good luck!

We are starting to examine our yard a little more carefully now to see what we have and what we'd like to do to make our landscaping a bit more our own. We have some overgrown bushes that we will either shop the hell out of, or remove completely. The jury is currently out on this one.

I would like to get some actual grass to grow in our back yard. It is mostly sand and back rocks right now. I'm guessing that at one time, the hill that our house is built on had been a sand dune. We have all kinds of small stones and beach-like sand in our back yard. Since it is mostly shady back there, grass doesn't have much of a chance of growing. So we are looking into types of plants that enjoy the low-light environment.

I'll start snapping photos of the current landscape this weekend and start posting some of them out here. Maybe some of you will have some tips to share as well...

As always, enjoy a little Calvin & Hobbes for today...

Parenting 101: Starting a Club

2006-03-30T08:56:00.001-05:00

Jonah recently came home from school very excited. He and his friends were starting their own club. He was very excited to be making plans and figuring out cool things that the club was going to do.

Again, refelcting on my own childhood, I recall myself doing the same kind of things when I was a kid. My friends and I built forts and planned clubs and had secret codes to get into the cool forts we would build. Our best fort that we ever made was made from old logs and some old plywood that we had ripped apart from our old deck. The logs made perfect walls, and the plywood was the perfect roof.

Ah... to be able to go back to the innocence of childhood... We couldn't wait to grow up and be independent. What were we thinking?

New Baby Engel

2006-03-28T15:13:00.000-05:00

Here's an e-mail that Holly sent out today. Enjoy the pictures!

The earlier pictures are first and the most recent pictures are further down.

You can click each image to get a larger view of that picture.

Hi Guys,

Here are a few pictures of Baby Engel 2006. We thought that you might enjoy seeing the little guy even before he makes his grand entrance.

Enjoy!

Love,

Holly, Matt, Jonah and Brielle

Parenting 101: Housework

2006-03-28T15:12:00.001-05:00

Cleaning day in our house is on Sundays. We try to keep up with the clutter throughout the week to make it a less daunting task on Sunday, and seem to be succeeding more often than not.
Trying to get the kids to clean is generally more work than the cleaning itself. But they are getting better and better with this and with fewer complaints. This past Sunday Jonah was awesome with the cleaning. I don't think I heard one complaint as he picked up his room and cleaned up the toy area(s) around the house.

Brielle is the ever helper. She wants to help no matter what. This isn't always all that helpful, but we encourage her anyway. When it comes to the laundry, shes right there eager to pull everything from the basket and hand it to us to fold. Unfortunately this includes the previously folded items as well. But she's almost 2, so who can complain?

Cleaning is not all that fun, but we try to get it all done so that we can have some fun as a family. Generally we are too exhausted to do much of anything other than hang out in front of the TV and watch movies with some popcorn. Jonah loves popcorn more than anything. If we play a game and have popcorn at the same time, forget about it. His hand and mouth are in constant motion until that bowl is empty. If we want any, we better grab it while we can before the popcorn-monster swallows the bowl.

He reminds me of me when I was younger. I used to love popcorn too. I used to tell my mom that I had a popcorn-headache. Only popcorn would make it go away. More often than not we got the popcorn. It wasn't as easy as it is now... We had the old hot air popper that would blow the kernels around and shoot them out the top into the waiting bowl. The attached butter melter that would drip the golden deliciousness onto the kernels rarely did more than soak 1/3 of the kernels leaving the others dry. But we liked it just the same.

Our personal favorite is the crank style popcorn popper. This one is a small kettle with a lid that has a crank attached to a "beater" of sorts. This one makes great popcorn and you get to have a little exercise while you are making it. Ours has sinced passed on, so we'll have to obtain another one sometime in the future.

I'm not sure how I got from Sunday cleaning to the popcorn frenzy of our household, but here's a Calvin & Hobbes comic to bring us back to the original topic.

Parenting 101: Tonight's Bed Time Plan...

2006-03-24T09:54:00.001-05:00

I'm going to try this one tonight... Let's see if it works...

Control of the Remote...

2006-03-22T20:39:00.000-05:00

I learned something soon after my wife Holly and I moved in together. This was a very important lesson that I'd like to share with all you guys out there, married or not... It's about control of the remote. You see, there's an unwritten and unspoken vow you take when you get married. It's a clause that I have yet to see in writing, but am completely aware of, and the consequences that can incurr if not followed.

The ownership of the remote transfers to the wife immediately upon uttering those two little words 'I Do.' There's little to no negotiations about this and please don't try to gain the ownership back. Just step away from the remote and live with the fact that you will no longer have access to it when she walks into the room.

Luckily I can stomach pretty much all of the shows that Holly has on. I enjoy American Idol... There I admitted it... I'm not that crazy about the Apprentice anymore. The Donald's hair is just too annoying to me... America's Next to Model. As a guy, I shouldn't mind being subjected to these shows, but, I almost ashamed to say it, I'd rather see some good explosions and action sequences than pretty girls being catty with one another... So unfortunately the shows that I really like to watch are missed. However, once again my savior in this respect, the Internet comes to the rescue.

I don't have Tivo, and my VCR's leave quite a bit to be desired. So instead of being high tech and getting a Tivo that I have to pay a monthly subscription for, I download each episode of the shows that I really like to watch from the Internet and what them when I have time. I get them without commercials, and in High Definition quality.

Some of my favorites shows are CSI Miami, NCIS and 24. These are not on Holly's list of favorite shows. The best part about being able to download each episode is that I can watch several episodes back to back without missing anything. With 24 it's the best. I hate having a cliffhanger ending and waiting a week for the next installment. This may seem a little weird, but I've been waiting a couple months to start watching the episodes. I've download half of the season and start watching them a couple at a time. It works for me and I can watch them whenever I want. Well, almost...

These shows aren't suitable for children. So I have to wait until the kids are in bed. For the most part, it's best if I wait until Holly goes to bed as well. Since we both work, we don't get a whole lot of time to spend alone without kids fighting around us. So late-night-viewing is the best option. Well, I also watch them during my lunch at work. I bring my lunch in and each episode, sans commercials, lasts about 44 minutes.

We all make out concessions when we get married. I don't mind having to fit in my shows when I can. Thanks to the Internet, I don't have to miss my shows.

If your are curious about how I do it, Write in a comment to tell me you are interested and I'll post my favorite sites as well. To the best of my knowledge, downloading current television shows is NOT illegal. Older shows available on DVD are probably another story...

Parenting 101: Weekend Mayhem

2006-03-22T10:06:00.001-05:00

Our weekends are not as colorful as this, but to a lesser degree we have our moments.

Parenting 101: Dinnertime Fun

2006-03-22T08:16:00.002-05:00

Little boys love to think about eating gross things...

Generally we use dinosaur references for Jonah. He's getting a little old to fall for it now, but if we catch him in the right mood it can be pretty fun...

It reminds me of the cruel joke I tried to play on my niece one Easter a long time ago. We were all getting ready to eat dinner. Abby was playing with olives at the end of her fingers. It's a cute thing that I recall doing as well... So I said to her.

"Oh, I see you found the bunny eyes..."

I got a pretty strange look from Abby as she asked, "What?"

Pointing to her fingers, I said again, "The bunny eyes, you found them!" She didn't believe me...

"Dad," says pointing her black olive tipped fingers at my brother, "Uncle Matt says these are bunny eyes."

My brother, never missing a chance to mess with his daughter went along with the trick. But of course our mother, who was still slaving away in the kitchen told us to knock it off.

Abby never really fell for it, but it's still a funny story to revisit during family gatherings.

"Pass the Bunny Eyes please."

Parenting 101: Where do babies come from?

2006-03-21T09:56:00.002-05:00

If only I could pull this one off...

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Global Warming Part 1 (Where Were You?)

2006-03-20T09:52:00.000-05:00

This is a parallel post with my Rants and Raves page.

Holly and I were watching 60 minutes last night and part of the show was about Global Warming called Rewriting the Science. Of course this specific topic got me a little fired up.

Some people are very concerned about the environment. This can be for several reasons. One they feel very strongly about conservation and the environment in general. This is pretty popular and tend to have people that are involved in many organizations from Green Peace to other environmental protection groups.

I've never considered myself as a "tree hugger", although I don't have anything against anyone that has a fondness for trees. I think they are pretty, but I've never felt the need to give one a quick squeeze. I feel that this term seems to be more negative than positive, so I don't even use the term. Except in this type of situation where it's a widely realized term.

For the past several years, I've started feeling more and more strongly about the use of fossil fuels. This is probably stemming from the attacks on 9/11. Like the majority of Americans on that day, I recall everything in great detail as I heard the news over the radio on my commute into work. I hadn't experienced this phenomenon before, but had heard numerous people describe it when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Many people could recall every minute detail of those moments.

In retrospect there are a few other historical events in my life time that have similar but lesser effects than 9/11. When President Reagan was shot and wounded I was practicing the Piano before going to my piano lessons. When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on take off it was my Freshman year. The news was brought to us while I was in my typing class. I even recall that I was wearing a Space Shuttle T-shirt that day. (We had recently returned from a vacation down to Florida where we were hoping to see the launch of the shuttle.)

I'm curious what events others recall and where they were when historic events occured during their life time. These are the events of our life-times that everyone has shared in one degree or another.

I'd like to give this topic the focus that it needs. I will be breaking this subject up into several parts to give it the attention it deserves. Please read the article, Rewriting the Science and video, then read the follow-up posts here.

Parenting 101 The things we do for our kids...

2006-03-20T08:13:00.001-05:00

I wonder if my father felt this way with me too...

Ever feel this way?

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Parenting 101: Mornings

2006-03-17T08:05:00.001-05:00

Why is this sooo true?

In our house this occasionally happens on the weekdays as well... However, this usually occurs at or around 5:30 a.m. If Jonah gets up, chances are he will make just enough noise to wake up his little sister. Then it's all over...

With Jonah, we can tell him to go back to bed. If Brie gets up, the whole house knows about it...

MAMA!!! DADA!!! MAMA!!! DADA!!!

She generally doesn't cry, but she can bellow pretty well. Yesterday morning she woke up because of me. I scratched my back and slammed my elbow into the night stand, DAMN!. She was up a few minutes later... she started chanting her morning mantra of "MAMA!!! DADA!!! MAMA!!! DADA!!!". She then proceeded to babble... which is pretty darn cute... Can I sleep through this? No.... Because she's so darned cute! Then she began singing Twinkle, twinkle little star... That was it, no possibility of falling back to sleep...

Such is life...

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Will "The Dancing Machine"

2006-03-16T15:11:00.000-05:00

First off, I have to say that Will made me do it... I read his Blog today (Top O' The Morning To You) and recalled that I had a picture to share... Oh Boy!!!

So I couldn't resist. Enjoy the pic... We've been enjoying it for years!

Is that an Irish Jig?

I apologize for the fuzziness of this shot, but you can get the idea...

OPERATION: Night-Light

2006-03-15T09:07:00.000-05:00

Holly’s Mom and Merlin came to visit this weekend.

As always, it’s great to have them come to visit. I don’t know if they enjoy it half as much as we do. We get to sponge off their invaluable advice on home repairs and interior decorating.

This weekend was no exception. While Holly and Sandy were doing some painting and working on window treatments, Merlin and I were tackling the installation of an exterior security light. When we eventually have a tenant in our lower level apartment, we wanted to have them be able to navigate the exterior of the house without falling into the woods to be carried away by the raccoons.

We had purchased a nice two headed halogen floodlight with motion sensing action from the local Home Depot. (My buddy Clifford is cringing at the mention of his least favorite place on earth.)

The most difficult part of the project was finding a location for the new light. As there was no light on this side of the house before, we had to do some cutting. The area where we wanted to light up was on the path leading to a gate that takes a tenant into the backyard where there is a rear entrance to the apartment. When it’s late at night it gets very dark in this area. The handy sodium vapor orange glow from the street does not penetrate to this area.

With Merlin’s expert advice, we found that the best location was near the fence and opposite an electrical outlet that we could connect to for power.

After getting all of the necessary equipment, I set to work cutting into the drywall for the switch to operate the light. We then fished the power cable down to the electrical outlet, after tuning off the power to this part of the house (I’ve learned the lesson the hard way).

The next step was to climb our five foot ladder to drill the hole through the asbestos siding and into the wall to put more wires through. This wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. Our ladder, being 5 feet tall was not nearly tall enough. So I, being the daring Tim “The Toolman” Taylor-type, stood on the very top of the ladder to do the drilling.

When it came time to mount the light, it was too far over my head to be able to see the wiring. Luckily I mounted the light between the fence and a storage shed. It happened to be just wide enough for me to play Spiderman and suspend myself between the two. Did I mention that it had rained earlier in the day? That just added a little extra danger. Unlike the original “Toolman”, I was able to complete the project unscathed.

In the end, everything went together and mounted just as Merlin had planned it. He was a lifesaver on this project. For that matter, he has been a sanity saver on all the projects that he has helped me out with since buying our first house. Thanks for all the help Merlin!

The light works great. I haven’t tested the sensitivity of the motion sensor yet. When someone walks down the sidewalk toward the gate of the fence it trips on without blinding the person. That was one of my main concerns when setting this up.

I’m hoping that it will be sensitive enough to ward off the late-night bandits that enjoy rummaging through our garbage. Their preferred route seems to take them past this area. Time will tell…

Parenting 101: True.. But Why?!?!

2006-03-14T08:34:00.001-05:00

Why does this happen. Both Jonah and Brielle do this and it drives us up the wall... Especially with hardwood flooring... (Can you say ECHO, Echo, echo...) AUGH!

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Weekend projects...

2006-03-14T08:13:00.000-05:00

I'm drafting out the projects that we accomplished this weekend. Due to kids being sick and general life happenings the project log will be slightly delayed. I'll have the first project posted tomorrow with some images to share.

I'll have a Parenting 101 post out later this morning.

Parenting 101: Snacks...

2006-03-13T08:39:00.001-05:00

Every kid loves to snack. Jonah must ask for snacks 20 times throughout the day. At least on the weekends... If it's a half hour before lunch of dinner time we generally say "No". Followed by incessant whining and repeating of the mantra, "I'm starving!"

I'm pretty sure I said that at his age as well, but I don't fall for it any more than my parents did. If we are feeling especially generous we'll give him a choice of grapes, banana or raisins. All of these he normal wants in abundance, suddenly become the worst thing he's ever tasted.

"Can I have a popsicle?"

"No, you can have some grapes."

"I Don't want grapes!"

I don't want to be so darned good looking but I have to live with it, so can you..." He never finds this comment funny... Neither does Holly....

"Can I have some yogurt?" This is the Trix variety which tastes more like ice-cream than like the yogurt I grew up on. I will sometimes fold on this one, but...

"How about some raisins?" I ask.

"I hate raisins!"

"Then you must not be very hungry..."

"Mom?"

"Don't bother, she's going to give you the same answers as I am..."

"AWWWW!" The sound of stomping feet, and flopping down on the couch to watch more mind numbing cartoons.

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Parenting 101: Reading between the lines...

2006-03-10T09:23:00.001-05:00

You don't have to have ESP, just remain one step ahead...

This situation is text book. The next common one has to do with monitoring what they are watching on TV. Just listening will do.

If you just half listen, pick up the idea of what's happening on their show, whatever question they come up with will probably like to the show. This can tip you off right away. I do this while cooking in the kitchen. It works fairly well.

Let's just say theres a cartoon and they are parachuting somwhere. If you get a question like, "Dad, where do we keep the extra sheets?" or, "Where's the really tall ladder?" Tip off!!!

The obvious answer is always "No". Repeat after me... NO

You generally don't have to discuss it further, they already know that they can't fool you, but they have to try anway. It's their job...

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Parenting 101: Bath Time

2006-03-09T11:11:00.002-05:00

As a whole both Jonah and Brielle like takings baths... Actually, Jonah likes it, Brielle LOVES it!

They both have their own toys that they like to play with. Jonah has his Dinosaurs and other guys that tend to constantly fight or get eaten by the sharks lurking below the surface of bubbles.

Brielle likes to play with her sesame Street bath set, specifically Elmo and a jet ski. She loves Elmo. When I took her to daycare this morning she grabbed two Elmos and started running to the play area...

Generally neither of them wants to get out of the tub, but they seem to like to splash... A LOT!

That's why this specific Calvin & Hobbes seemed to fit so well. Of course, Jonah makes MUCH bigger splashes than his sister, but she's still in training...

Tomorrow I will have some family pictures to share. Until then...

Enjoy the comic...

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Parenting 101: Listening

2006-03-08T08:01:00.001-05:00

Could this be any more true?

Why, as parents, do we have to repeat ourselves over, and over, and over again?

They say that as a child learns its the repetition of things that gets them to learn. Then why do I have repeat the same thing day in and day out again and again?!?!?!

But they are adorable, for the most part... One minute you will want to hang them from the chandelier by their toes, (my daughter would have a blast with this...) the next they give you a big hug and say they love you... It works every damn time too!!!

Sometimes I still wish I had gotten the order that I asked for when signing up for kids. I asked for a pause button, power button and mute button. I didn't think it was too much to ask for. Wouldn't you know it? We ended up getting the stock models that pee on you when you least expect it.

Maybe God will grant the order on this next one... I won't hold my breath.

Of course, with all this said, it's all just a joke. No matter what, we love our kids and nothing can change that. I seem to recall not listening all that much as a kid too, hence why I can relate to the calvin comics so much. It's easy to lose sight of that when you are in the moment and at your whits end. But I wouldn't trade fatherhood for anything in the world. I have two great kids, with the third on the way... (confirmed to be a boy!)

Just remember all the cliche remarks you heard as a kid... "It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt..."

Have a great day!

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Parenting 101: Dinner table manners

2006-03-06T12:26:00.001-05:00

We've been teaching Jonah, and now Brielle, manners at the dinner table. For the most part Jonah is doing very well. An occasional reminder to keep his mouth closed while chewing is about the extent of it.

Which brings me to the subject of manners while eating. I do not profess to be the ultimate in manners... But, I have an office-mate that apparently was never taught to chew with his mouth closed. Or, for that matter, drink quietly!

My God! First off in the morning I hear the loud slurping of coffee followed by the smacking of lips. (cringe)

Then if I'm unlucky enough to have him bringing his lunch back from a near-by restaurant I get to listen to the masticating of every morsel.

I swear it sounds like a washing machine when you leave the top open as it starts it's agitation cycle. It drives me up the wall! I thank heavens that Jonah has better eating manners than this 29 year-old.

If I have the misfortune of turning to talk to him while he's eating it's quite a show... I'm reminded of my friend Buck back in college when he had an Iguana. Bucks manners were fine. Stimpy, that's the Iguana, would devour his broccoli with his mouth wide open. Kind of creepy to look at, but the poor lizard doesn't have any lips! So I can't blame him for his table manners.

I almost feel sorry for my office mate. He's the joke of the entire office. Everyone is always chuckling as he leaves to pick up his lunch before the big show. They can at least walk past and watch, much like feeding time at the zoo. But my desk is 5 feet from him...

Oh no... Here he comes with Chinese food. Oh God... and Soup! Serenity Now!!!!!!! (Slurp)

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Parenting 101: Dinner

2006-03-06T08:06:00.001-05:00

Sometimes a parent has to do whatever it takes to get them too eat their dinner...

With Jonah, we usually have to say something about it turning you into a dinosaur. Specifically a Velociraptor, that's his favorite.

So far Brielle will eat pretty much anything, but when she's done, she's done. Without warning the plate gets over turned and thrown to the floor followed by her juice cup. Then she starts chanting popcicle...

What kind of stories do you have?

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Parenting 101

2006-03-03T14:22:00.002-05:00

This is the first installment of a section I'm calling Parenting 101. I'm hoping that you will all find this enjoyable whether you have children or not. For those with children, however, these can be especially fun as you have probably experienced things similar to these.

The first installment of parent techniques to string your kids along...

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to pull something like this off successfully? Ah... The many way's to twist the mind of a child... :)

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Spirits Part 2

2006-03-03T08:10:00.000-05:00

My Mom and her friend Bev used to have the best luck with getting the Ouija Board to work. They would have the planchette slide around the board very quickly. So quickly in fact that either my Dad or Bev’s husband would have to write down the answers because the speed was too quick for mom or Bev to read it.

They would ask it silly questions like how may coins were in my Dad’s pocket. My Dad didn’t even know how many coins he had in his pocket, but the Ouija board had the correct answer.

They would then ask how many ice cubes were in the freezer. Who the hell counts their ice cubes?

The Ouija answered correctly here as well.

In 1969 they were playing with the Ouija board and asked about the health of Bev’s baby who was due the coming February. It replied that the baby would be ok, but would have a pronounced birthmark. This concerned them a little but only enough to be disturbed by it.

The following February Bev had a baby girl with a large birthmark covering most of her left arm from forearm past her elbow and nearly to her shoulder.

The most disturbing situation came when Bev asked if her husband, an avid game hunter, would be getting his Moose on his upcoming hunting trip. The reply shocked all of them and I believe that this was the final time they used the board.

The answer was Yes, if it doesn’t get him first. I don’t know exactly the wording of what followed as I was not yet born, but from descriptions from my parents it went on to say that nature does not need the likes of you. Apparently this spirit was not fond of hunting wild game.

I’m not saying that I believe that the Ouija Board is controlled by spirits. I have no idea what makes them say what they say. I haven’t used one in a very long time, but I’m still curious as to what makes them tick…

Anyone else have experience with these things? Or have any spooky stories of their own? I know my friends Pete and Autumn have a number of stories that they could share. Please feel free to post some if you get the chance guys. I’d like to hear them again and I’m sure others would be interested as well…

Till later…

Jonah was hoping...

2006-03-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

We were supposed to get pounded with sleet and snow last night... Well, 4 - 8 inches... Depends on your location I guess for the definition of "pounded"...

This morning Jonah came in at 6:15 stomping into the room, then whispering that it didn't snow last night. He was hoping for something like the following image:

Such is life... *sigh*

We will start getting hit later this morning. We'll see what turns up...

*** UPDATE ***
I just received the notice that Jonah gets to leave school early today due to snow... Guess the inside out pajamas worked out!

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Spirits...

2006-03-02T07:54:00.000-05:00

Here's a topic I have yet to bring up...

How many of you out there believe in ghosts? I should probably be leaving this topic for around Halloween, but since it's so far off at this point, why bother waiting?

I have had very little, if no, experience with the supernatural. I have only one story that fits into this situation and that was dealing with a Ouija Board.

New Years Eve, 1987

A High School friend of mine Cory and I were going to celebrate the New Year eating Pizza and watching MTV ring in the new year. My parents were out at a friends house celebrating the new year so we had the place to ourselves. My house was in a decent sized neighborhood, the house was ranch built in the early 60's by my parents. The house was not haunted and no supernatural things had ever happened there to the best of my knowledge.

Considering I was a pretty straight-laced kid I wasn’t the type to go out drinking can carrying on or even sneaking a little drink here and there out of my parents liquor cabinet. (They had, and still have, this old wardrobe converted to a liquor cabinet in the living room.) I was happy not to get involved with all that until I was older, which I still never went overboard on the drinking.

This particular evening we decided to play around with the Ouija board. I don't know how many of you have ever used a Ouija board, or anything like it, but it’s pretty strange. You have this device called a Planchette. It’s a small heart shaped device with three small pegs tipped with felt for legs. A small circle towards the point is cut into the small table like device to show the letter that the “spirits” are pointing to for communication.

At first the thing didn’t move at all. We sat on the floor with our legs crossed facing one another. The board rests on both of your knees with only your fingertips lightly touching the edges of the planchette. Slowly but surely the pointer started to move. We kept asking if there were any spirits with us, as the small felt tipped pegs slid slowly in a circle around the board.

After a few minutes of slowly gaining more and more speed we asked again if there was someone who would like to communicate. The planchette slid to the word “Yes” at the corner of the board.

Now throughout this entire circling-the-board thing I watched carefully as did Cory to me to see if either of us were the one’s moving the board. Neither of us could tell if the other was truly moving the device. We really wanted to see if this worked so we trusted that neither of us was trying to pull one over on the other.

Unfortunately I no longer recall any of the stupid questions that we asked. However, I do recall that the planchette was moving faster and faster after we would stop for a few minutes to think of more questions to ask. Instead of just circling the board, it now moved in a figure 8 around the board.

Each time we came up with more questions and set the board back up there was no wait time at all. It would immediately start sliding in the figure eight and seemed to move a little more erratically each time.

The final time that we paused to think of more questions it was nearly 1:00 am. While discussing what our next questions would be the lights went out with the sound of a kachunk as if the power switch . located in the basement beside the breaker box was pulled.

Now this wasn’t the normal, lights flicked off and back on again like you see in the movies. It was as if someone hit that main power switch. The power was out for only a second or so when the corresponding kachunk returned with the lights back on and the furnace blower kicking into motion.

If it were possible for our eyes to bug out of their sockets, they would have at that moment. Wide-eyed we both looked down at the board at our feet contemplating what caused this temporary power loss.

Our first inclination of course was that the spirit we were speaking with wanted to communicate more. We put the board back on our knees… STUPID! And put our finger tips back on the planchette. (this is where the movie goers would be yelling at the stupid people to leave well enough alone.

The Planchette started moving right away again. We asked if it had caused something to happen to let us know it wanted to talk to us. It pointed to “Yes’ immediately, then spelled out L-I-G-H-T-S.

We prompted let go of the planchette and threw the board back in the box.

I’ve never had an experience like this before, but my parents in the late 60’s early 70’s used to play with one at their friends house. I'll chat about that one tomorrow.

Anyone else have experience with these things? Or have any spooky stories of their own? I know my friends Pete and Autumn have a number of stories that they could share. Please feel free to post some if you get the chance guys. I’d like to hear them again and I’m sure others would be interested as well…

Till later…

Sometimes, they are just too smart for our own good...

2006-02-28T16:42:00.000-05:00

Jonah was making faces the other day when Holly told him a story that her mother had told her.

"Jonah, Grandma told me a story when I was your age about a boy who kept making faces and his face stuck that way."

"Really?" Jonah looked at her sensing a setup...

"Yes, and his face was never the same again." Holly pulled it off pretty well, but unfortunately for this situation, Jonah is just too darned smart. He wouldn't fall for it. He deemed it impossible for ones face to freeze and challenge her by telling her to call Grandma.

When Holly called she was amazed that Jonah saw through the ruse at the age of 6. All of her 4 children had fallen for that story hook, line and sinker. Not Jonah.

Hats off to the boy who could not be hoodwinked. In commemoration of this, a little Calvin is in order...

Thankfully Jonah hasn't taken in this far...

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Jonah / Calvin at dinner

2006-02-28T08:25:00.000-05:00

Generally Jonah is a very good eater. Sometimes he decides that he doesn't like something before even looking at it. I suppose this happens with all kids. I vaguely recall doing this myself but I'll never admit it... oops just did...

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Customer Service… Cable Companies.

2006-02-28T08:23:00.000-05:00

I have another story about the move into our new home. This one deals with the fun part of every move changing and setting up the utilities and services to the house.

For the most part everything transferred over just fine. Except for one part… Cable service. Now one wouldn’t think this would be a complicated matter.

1) We already had an account with Cablevision
2) The former owners of the house also had Cablevision for cable service
3) We were moving from one end of the Village to the other

Seems pretty simple and probably happens many times per week.

Well it turned into a huge complicated mess… go figure...

When we moved to New York we signed up for cable television and cable internet access. Everything was great, we had very few problems. When we were set to move into our new house, they told me it was going to be a breeze. They checked to make sure there was already a hook up there. The girl was friendly and mentioned that the previous owner had recently shut her account off so transferring us over was no problem, someone would be over the following Friday to set everything up… Oh boy…

The same day that I called they shut off the account at our apartment. Not a big deal since we would be moving the next day anyway. After we moved I decided to check out to see if the cable worked. It did… Sort of... The basic cable worked but our digital boxes were useless. The Internet would also not work yet.

I called them on the day they were to come out to work on the cable and they said that it was the following Friday they would be coming out… Great.. I had to get the Internet up and running for Holly to be able to do her work!

So I call customer service. Talked in circles for a while with a person who was clueless and finally got the supervisor who was nearly as clueless at the rep I was speaking with… Grand…

She insisted that I could not get to the internet without having the tech’s come out to set up the equipment. I told her that I have been a computer tech for eight years had am very capable of setting up this end, nothing needs to be adjusted here, it’s on the cable company side that a line of information needs to be changed to make it see our modem.

She insisted that she knew better. So I entered this line of questioning:

Matt: So what you are telling me is that I don’t have any cable access right now, that is why I can’t get to the Internet.
Supervisor: Yes.
Matt: So I also can’t see anything on cable until they come out here?
Supervisor: That’s right (sounding smug)
Matt: So explain to me why I’m watching CNN over basic cable, in my house that has no cable connection.
Supervisor: (long pause) I’m not sure.
Matt: So I can receive information from the cable company, this tells me that I’m connected. The modem that I have has the Mac Address: (whatever the hell it was) and should be able to have YOUR team connect it to this account.
Supervisor: (sheepishly) I’ll have to do some checking and call you back.

Needless to say I never got a call back, but I had the Internet running an hour after I was off the phone.

I HATE INCOMPETANCE!!!

This seems to be the running theme with our cablevision company. For three months we were fighting with them over the billing. It seems that they created a new account for us and never cancelled the old one. Then tired to charge us for the cable boxes that were never returned…

WE WERE STILL USING THEM!!!

I swear it was like pulling teeth with these people. After four months of fighting we finally have everything figured out but it was a royal pain.

I dealt with the technical issues at the start but Holly dealt with the billing issues. It was a team effort and we finally prevailed. It seems like the old saying of: “the customer is always right.” Has been changed to “the customer is always wrong and we will screw them over whenever possible.” Sad that it feels this way, but it seems more often than not that this is the case.

Please feel free to comment. I’m curious about how others are experiencing their customer service with other companies.

Jonah, Once again in the funny papers

2006-02-27T09:33:00.000-05:00

I swear that Calvin is the All-American-Kid. I can find so many things that connect to me when I was young and now reliving my childhood through my son Jonah.

This fits so well!

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Visitors in the day...

2006-02-24T11:53:00.000-05:00

Guess who came to visit while Brielle was napping.

No, it wasn't the Sandman, early Easter Bunny, late Cupid. It was none other than everyone's favorite religious visitor... The Jehova's Witness...

Let me start off by saying I have NOTHING against other religions in general. I respect that other people may have a different religion from my own. I even have a smidgion of curiosity about the differences between religions (not enough to sit and chat about it, the internet is enough for me...).

That being said. I can understand to a certain extent why people feel the need to sell the Lord door to door. I suppose for some that have no belief in a higher power it is a welcome distraction from their daily lives that may be overwhelming at times. (I'm practicing being optimistic.) In our case, they couldn't help but see my Angel wind chime as they climbed the stairs. It's quite pretty... I'm not an atheist or Satan Worshiper. (We have no cats hanging from trees and all of the Halloween decorations went away right after that holiday.)

I'm secure in my faith and happy to be blissfully ignorant of other religions around me. So when they come a knocking, I don't feel like answering. In this case, Holly didn't feel like answering. This is for several reasons.

Brielle is sick and was finally taking her nap
The Dogs bark ALOT when people are at the door. When we order Pizza or are expecting company, the dogs get sequestered outside or in a locked bedroom.
Holly is also trying to work during this time. She can only get her work done while Brielle sleeps.

So the first, and popular, inclination is to ignore them. Not easy to do when they know you are home because they hear you yelling at the dogs to SHUT UP!!! Because they know you are home they continue to knock. Of course they don't have any idea of reasons 1 - 3 above, they just want to assimilate us into their collective.

Holly handled the whole situation very well. She cracked the door open, apologize for not being able to talk as her daughter just went down for her nap and the dogs are making too much noise for that to continue much longer. She asked for their literature and they went on their way.

Jonah in the funny papers...

2006-02-24T10:16:00.000-05:00

I can't tell you how many times Jonah has tried something like this... Thought it would give you all a little chuckle.

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Continuation on Customer Service

2006-02-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

This just happened yesterday. Pretty convenient...

Brielle has always been a very healthy girl. She currently has a pretty nasty cough and fever, so Holly took her to the doctor to see about some medication. Holly, Brielle and Jonah made the trek to the doctor. Everything went fine they were both on their best behavior; even though Brie was feeling pretty cruddy.

They received the customary prescription for Amoxicillin, which seems to be the cure-all for child infections, then headed for the pharmacy.

Here’s where everything falls apart. First off, the Rite-aid where we get our prescriptions filled has their pharmacy as far back as possible in the store to promote sales of other items. I understand the marketing aspects of this but if you think about what service they are providing, it for people that aren’t really feeling all that well. They then have to walk through the store infecting others that may be shopping for other things. This is probably a topic for another time, it’s not the main focus of this discussion but it certainly wasn’t a helpful factor either.

When Brielle doesn’t feel well she wants to be held constantly. So Holly was forced to haul the kids through the store to the back counter.

They were more than happy to fill the prescription but wanted to see the insurance card. Brielle was not on record yet for any prescriptions. Unfortunately Holly did not have her card with her, but she and Jonah have had numerous prescriptions filled which keeps the insurance information right on the computer. Ah, the Information Age…

This is where crabby pharmacy girl takes her leap of ignorance. She was insisting upon having the actual card, which Holly didn’t have with her. Of course the children at this point were not going to be helpful to the situation; with Brie, not feeling well and whiny and Jonah deciding to test his boundaries to see how far away he could wander before Mom yelled at him… Holly, keeping her cool, stated that she and Jonah have both had prescriptions filed before here and everything should be on the computer.

The girl agreed, but said that the information on the computer is confidential and that she couldn’t just look it up. She then said it would be faster if she had the card.

So Holly, trying to be helpful without sounding patronizing said it wouldn’t be faster considering she would have to go home with a sick child and drag them all back to the store again. Then Holly suggested that the girl pull up Holly’s current prenatal prescription and copy the insurance information down.

The girl, now red faced, agreed and set up the prescription. Apparently it takes two hours to mix up amoxicillin. So Holly went home and asked me to pick up the prescription on the way home.

I went in to pick it up only to wait for them to mix it and put it in the bottle… What took two hours? I thought the medication was a powder which is then mixed with something, probably water to make the magic liquid. I didn’t ask, I just wanted to get home to my family.

Just another breakdown of customer service. What happened to the days of trying to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy? Dead and gone they may be.

A quick FYI... There's a new Rant on my other page. Feel free to check it out HERE.

Customer Service…

2006-02-23T10:56:00.000-05:00

I’ve noticed over the past several years that customer service has been going downhill among many different industries at about the same rate. At first I thought it was because I moved out to New York and by stereotype people are less friendly out here… Speaking from experience, this is partly true. I have met numerous friendly people, but when it comes to customer service with businesses, it stinks…

I started out my working life in a restaurant. My eight years of working there was always involved in the customer service realm. I started out greeting the guests when they came in, and then moved on to serving their meals. In order to make pretty good money, you had to be pretty good at Customer Service. It just makes sense… If the people like you, most would feel guilty NOT leaving you a good tip. This wasn’t a sure thing, but it all averages out at the end of the night.

Recently we have been having a string of bad luck at numerous restaurants with poor service. Servers not being attentive, chatting in the back and bringing out cold food… The list goes on. What ever happened to customer service?

Feel free to share your experiences as well. I'm curious about the break-down in customer service.

Rants, Raves and Intriguing Topics…

2006-02-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

This will be my first parallel posting. I've had a number of ideas for topics to put out on the blog and thought that I'd prefer to leave the Long Island Engel Home to more family topics and events. I’ve created a new blog called Rants, Raves and Intriguing Topics where I’ll discuss events in the news that move me, new technologies or just something that I need to just rant and rave about. Hopefully it will be entertaining and thought provoking. I welcome all comments as I discuss anything and everything.

My first topic will be about BioDiesel and an article / news video clip from CBS News.
I've been doing some research lately on BioDiesel. I mentioned in a previous message about some of the research and my method of getting the information. Since then I've been getting a lot of information on the BioDiesel industry and how it appears to be growing more and more.
To give you a practical view of what BioDiesel is and what it does here’s a good link.

A quick definition of BioDiesel: BioDiesel is derived from nothing less than vegetable oils. It can be pretty much any kind of oil. Extraction from soybeans is the most common, but there are others that tend to have a higher yield per acre that may be making a better option in the near future.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not much of an activist. I’ve never been into the tree hugging thing. Although I like trees in general, I’ve never met one that seemed to need a hug. Every now and then I hear something on the news or on NPR that piques my interest. BioDiesel is one of them. Although I don’t own a Diesel powered vehicle, the concept of BioDiesel makes me consider getting one.

The process of making BioDiesel is fairly simple. So simple in fact that you can make your own in your own garage. Yes, I said your own garage. If you don't have a garage you could make it in a shed if you like it takes up about as much room as a furnace and a hot water heater. Here's a link on how to make your own.

Holly and I were watching 60 Minutes the other night and saw a clip about global warming. This reminded Holly of a clip she had recently seen about a group of high school students who built a BioDiesel vehicle after school in their shop class. You can read and watch it here. There are many companies racing to become the leaders in BioDiesel production. I've found one that I think could be a viable company to invest in. I may discuss this at a later time. What I find enlightening in this news article and video, is that a group of troubled high school students that everyone else had given up on were responsible for building a vehicle that can run completely on fuel derived from vegetable oil. The following excerpt from the article sums it up pretty well:

"We made this work," says Hauger. "We're not geniuses. So why aren't they (the Automotive Industry) doing it?"

Kosi thinks he knows why. The answer, he says, is the big oil companies.

"They're making billions upon billions of dollars," he says. "And when this car sells, that'll go down — to low billions upon billions."

Recently General Motors (GM) has been putting out advertisements that say their vehicles will work with BioDiesel. What’s not so well known is that any Diesel vehicle made after 1992 can run on B100 (100% BioDiesel).

A number of states are requiring that all diesel fuel sold be a mixture of BioDiesel; At least 3%. Many are keeping the amount low where others are making it a B20 20% Biodiesel 80% petrol diesel. Some municipalities are requiring all road crew vehicles, bus lines and school buses to use the “green fuel”, as they like to call it.

Many people are saying that this is a great concept, but (there always has to be a but in there somewhere), there is a belief that there could never be a total switch from petrol diesel to BioDiesel because the production could never meet the need. There just isn’t enough space to grow enough crops.

Even so, reducing our dependence on foreign oil is an attractive reason along with pumping money into our own economy.

I’m continuing to research more about this. If you are curious I can post more information at a later date. Feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts on this. I welcome the opportunity to chat about it.

Topics like this one will be posted on the new blog (Rants, Raves and Intriguing Topics) Feel free to check it out!

The News You Have all Been Waiting For....

2006-02-21T15:48:00.000-05:00

We, meaning Holly, had an ultrasound performed yesterday to determine the sex of the baby and figure out all of the other development stage things they check for.

The new baby was breach. For those without kids or any knowledge whatsoever about the birth process, this is when the baby is feet downward instead of head down. This made it a little more challenging to view the important region for determining the sex of the baby.

The technician was very good at maneuvering the phaser like implement to view the baby. She caught a few glimpses and was able to give us a 99% on the baby being a BOY!

Holly has another appointment next week to check again to confirm. We'll see if this stays the same. I'll keep you all posted.

The due date is somewhere in the first week of July. More than likely we'll have him at the end of June.

Lessons Learned...

2006-02-21T10:46:00.000-05:00

The family and I went shopping a few weeks ago to our local shoppers warehouse. Out here on Long Island, there are a number of choices for such shopping. Both Costco and Sams have taken root out here, but there's one nearer to us called BJ's. Apparently they are all over too. I had just never been anywhere near one before moving to New York.

After we purchased our first home we decided that we finally had some room to store items that we could purchase in bulk. We headed to the local BJ's, took some unflattering images that barely resemble ourselves and set off to shop. Armed with our membership cards we pushed the cart with one bad wheel, up and down huge aisle after aisle picking up items and making mental calculations on how much we saved by buying in bulk.In order for us to make the shopping go as quickly as possible with two kids I generally run ahead and grab other things and drag either Jonah or Brielle with me.

We had a few items written down that we wanted to get for meals we would be making throughout the coming week. Two of these recipes included ground beef. We needed in total, 3 pounds of the ground up cow to make our favorite dishes. While I ran off getting hotdog buns and sandwich bread, Holly picked out the packages of meat.

When I returned she was concerned about the fact that she had to get two packages and would have an extra pound of meat left over. I figured we could find something to make with it. Hamburger Helper was down the very next aisle!!! In a 3 pack!

We finished up our shopping and headed for home. It was getting late, so Holly took Brielle up for a bath while Jonah and I unloaded the car and put the groceries away.

Something didn't feel right as I was putting the packages of hamburger away. I took a closer look at the packaging and spoke with Holly from the stairs.

"Babe, how many pounds did we need of hamburger?"

The splashing and giggling of Brielle in the tub over shadowed by Jonah's video game made it difficult to hear Holly's response.

"What was that?"

"Three pounds!" punctuated by an extra loud splash and a fusillade of laughter.

I couldn't suppress my laughter any more. "So what are we going to do with the extra nine pounds?"

I saw her head pop out from the bathroom door. "What?"

"We bought twelve pounds of hamburger..."

"Shut up..." she thought I was joking.

"As I laughed louder she began to realize that I wasn't kidding and that infect she had been looking at the cost per pound instead of the weight."

Well we both had a good laugh about it. None of the meat was put to waste. Jonah was extra excited, because we made a double batch of his favorite meatball recipe for his spaghetti.

Lessons learned...

The good news is that ground up cow has many uses and I found every single one of them...

The Blog’s of Other’s

2006-02-17T08:09:00.000-05:00

I have to give credit where credit is due. I didn't get into this whole blogging thing until my good friend Clifford had been writing for a while and brought me into the fold. In this section I want to give out a few of the blogs that I read up on throughout the day.

Of course my first one to hit is my buddy Clifford out in California. His Changing Directions Blog is enlightening and entertaining. It also proves that with perseverance you can eliminate thestrangle-holdd of credit card debt and student loans and start living the RDPD life. For those unfamiliar, RDPD is the quick form of speaking about the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of books that give a pretty good financial education in simplified concepts.

The next one that I visit is that of Scott Adams. This is the cartoonist that brought us the adventures of Dilbert as he works through his daily office antics. This blog is a fun read. If you were or are a fan of Dilbert, his writing is just as entertaining as his comics.

My third, and final, blog that I visit is that of Mr. David Bouchier. He is a writer/broadcaster who lives not too far from me here on Long Island. I first heard his essays on NPR on my daily commute to work. The first one that I heard was Ghost of Christmas Past. Since then I have been pouring through his pastessayss and visited his Blog (Writing Life) as well. I've been enjoying his writing style and hope to learn much from him as I develop my own.

Here are the links one last time.

Changing Directions
Scott Adams - Dilbert
David Bouchier - Essays Home Blog: Writing Life

I hope you enjoy these blogs as much as I do.

Have a great weekend!

Google, Google, Google...

2006-02-16T08:23:00.000-05:00

I’ve found a new service, at least it’s somewhat new to me, that is pretty cool for anyone that does the same kind of search on the Internet often. It's called Google Alerts from Google N ews. (I had to mention it, just in case the picture didn't give it away...)

I happened to be on google a few months ago researching something that I had heard on NPR while driving to work. (Yes, I said NPR… I used to think it was just of old people… Now I know that I’m getting old for sure…)

A news blurb was talking about Biodiesel and how it’s an easy to produce renewable fuel source. This peaked my interest, even though I do not have a Diesel power vehicle. I did a search on Google and received a notice that I could have this type of news search e-mail to me on a regular basis. Curious, I set up the mail information and proptly forgot about it.

The next day, in my inbox was a message labeled (Google Alert - "biodiesel") I opened the message and found a link to an article that mentioned biodiesel with a brief description.I thought this was a pretty cool service so I tried out a search in it on people. Being a Billy Joel fan for more than half my life I set it up to e-mail me with Billy Joel hits. I now receive messages a couple times throughout the week on what Billy’s been up to. Concert dates, interviews, whatever they felt like writing about.

The easiest way to use it is to perform the search you wish to receive a Google Alert for and scroll to the bottom of the listing. You will find a link for:

(New! Get the latest news on (your search here) with Google Alerts)

Anyway, I thought I’d share this all with you. Hopefully it hasn’t ‘bored you to tears. I think it’s a great service for topics that you find interesting or what I really like to use it for is to keep tabs on companies that I’m interested in from an investment standpoint.

Morning Visitor

2006-02-15T08:12:00.000-05:00

After the encounter with the raccoons, we decided to feed the cats on the front porch and bring it in every evening. This being my responsibility, I forget to do this more often than I remember. One morning I was going to set the trash out on the front porch to take out to the garbage can when I found a pink nosed visitor eating from the cat dish that I had forgotten to bring in from the night before. It blinked up at me and wiggled it’s pink little nose and went right back to eating. No, it wasn’t Ty, Rumor or Scandle. The bare pink tail was the giveaway. A young opossum decided to come up for a snack.

I stood there at the door watching for a little while until he became a little more self conscious and wandered away. It was then that I noticed Rumor lying on the railing about three feet above the young food thief.

“What good are you?” I asked him expecting no answer and getting only a yawn in return. I closed the door and went back inside being somewhat thankful that the cats aren’t trying to fight with the wildlife.

Visitors in the Night

2006-02-14T08:49:00.000-05:00

One night while watching some television in the family room, Holly and I heard crash come for the garage below us. The cats had now been outside for about a month but were generally not destructive when hanging out in the garage at night. We would keep the garage door open about 6 inches so they could crawl in and out. The garage is also home to our gas furnace and hot water heater. So the temperature in the garage is fairly comfortable, especially for those covered in fur.

They have it quite comfortable out there. There are several empty boxes for them to perch on or crawl into and their food and water were always filled to keep their bellies full.

On this night, I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to be dealing with our cats. It seemed that over the past week the dog and cat food bags had gone much lower than I could have imagined three cats eating. Mysteriously the bags were being ripped open which the cats generally don’t do.

I grabbed my trust flashlight and headed for the basement where we have an entry into the garage. The lights witch is located on the inside of the garage near the door. I turned on the flashlight and opened the door slowly. A pair of glowing eyes inside a black mask peered in at me. I fumbled with the flashlight as I stepped behind the door never taking my eyes from the intruder.

The Fat Raccoon turned its back on me and scuttled under the garage door. Jesus I swore under my breath reaching in and turning on the lights to the garage.

A banging noise erupted from the back of the garage. I turned my head and the flashlight toward the sound. We have a corner of the garage where we have been storing spare boards as we have been fixing up the house. The boards had seemed to take on a life of their own and slid against one another in a xylophonic melody.

“Another one.” I said under my breath to no ones else but myself. I seem to talk to myself without answering. I suppose this is pretty normal.

I closed the door to the basement and found a six foot bamboo pole that had been left by the former owners. As good a weapon as any I suppose.

I made my way to the back of the garage through the maze of unpacked boxes. I shielded myself from the pile of lumber with Holly’s tack box from her equestrian days. I used the flashlight to light up the floor near the boards and found a striped tail attached to a rather big raccoon butt.

I’m guessing Raccoons, much like children, think if they can’t see you, you can’t see them…

I gave my new found friend a friendly poke in the butt with the end of the bamboo stick. A slight growl and bumping of lumber on lumber came again and the little guy slid out of the lumber and stopped near some boxes. We stared at one another for what was probably like three seconds but felt like a minute. I decided to reason with him. “I’m not going to hurt you, I just want you to leave.” I can’t believe I was talking to a raccoon. The raccoon looked at his escape way and back up at me. “Go on,” I pointed to the now open garage door.

The raccoon took my suggestion and scurried from the garage. I followed him outside and watched as he scuttled into the woods beside our house. It was then that I found where the huge ass raccoon had stopped. On the edge of our property where the wooded area begins stand a very large oak tree. I couldn’t possible wrap my arms around this tree, nor would I want to with all of the thick vines climbing up the trunk. The bigger of the two raccoons must have exhausted himself from hauling his big fat butt out of the garage. He had stopped climbing up the trunk and was hanging there starting at me from about eight feet up. I had the flashlight on his and he just stayed there staring at me. He certainly had little fear of me, which is hardly the case for me of him. I gave him the look, you know the one, “And Stay Out!”

We have since placed the cat and dog food into the basement. The cats have their food on the front porch during the day and we try to bring it in every night. We still see the raccoons every now and then. They are usually running up or down the hill along the road late at night. I guess they are working off all that food that they devoured during their late-night raiding.

Weird Winter

2006-02-13T12:37:00.000-05:00

I started writing this message last Friday. I suppose this could have been a contributing factor to our recent weather situation. Here’s what I started with. And a before picture...

This is our third winter on Long Island. We are now in February and it has only snowed twice with any accumulation. The first time was two weeks before Christmas. Jonah was very excited and wore his pajamas inside out to bed in hopes that this would make for a snow-day. I’m guessing this is an east coast thing. It must have worked to a certain extent because they had a two hour delay the next morning. (Jonah continued to where his pajamas inside out for the next week in hopes of a full day off. No such luck.)

The second session of snow gave us two to three inches. Finally!!! Winter is here! Jonah and Brielle were elated. The slope in our front yard was perfect for sledding for the kids. They had a blast playing in the snow and had to make a few snow angels as well.

Two days later it rained. All the snow went away. We still have no snow.

The kids are kind of disappointed that they haven’t been able to play out in the snow. Jonah, more than Brielle. She doesn’t really get it yet.

The other day we received in the mail some gardening and landscaping catalogs from my Mom in Michigan. She put some notes on different plants we could use in our landscape-challenged yard. This gave us the urge for spring. Nice green plants, new flowers, birds singing… We’ve had our heads in the catalogs for the past week, ear marking pages for further analysis and dreaming of the warmer days to come. (The temperatures have been in the upper 40’s and has reached 60 a number of times.)

Since receiving the catalogs the temperatures have been in the 20’s and 30’s. “It’s beginning to feel a lot like Winter….”

Of course now it wants to be more like winter when I’m craving for it to be spring to make the yard look much nicer…

As I wrote the previous text I hit the weather.com site to see what was coming out way. They were predicting 12 – 18 inches of snow. Well, they said this before and we received 2 inches and it melted the next day…

This time the weather men were right. We received around 14 inches of snow throughout the night and most of the day yesterday. Jonah was excited for all the snow and had the foresight before bed to turn his clothes inside out. This helped to get another 2 hour delay. I was also hoping for a snow day. The lab ended up being closed until 12:00. At least a half day could be spent with the family where I’d otherwise be trapped in a cramped office…

It was nice getting to see the yard blanketed in the pretty white snow. Not so nice trying to move the drifted snow off the driveway. I’m still a little sore but at least my back didn’t get screwed up again.

Arachnid Wars

2006-02-10T09:47:00.000-05:00

The previous owner of the house was a naturalist. She liked to keep the landscaping somewhat natural. Most of the bushes were over grown with a pair of pine trees flanking the front porch that were in their last stages of life.
We found that the house had a good amount of spiders taking up residence both inside and outside of the house. We made quick order of evicting the eight legged intruders from within the house. Most of these were standard house spiders but some were huge nasty looking ones. (yes, I’m a little arachnophobic..)
After a little research on the web, we found that these are not the brown recluse that we had originally thought. They are commonly mistaken for them but they are actually a grass spider. These are the ones that make the conical shaped webs you find in shrubs that are about the size of a silver dollar.
YUCK!
Yet again, Home Depot bound…
We picked up three bottles of bug killer. It had spiders listed as well and it said to soak the area along the foundation. I not only soaked the foundation, but any and all spider weds I came across in the process. As I traversed the yard I can honestly say that I killed at least 100 spiders around the outside of the house. Many of the over-grown bushes had four or more webs in them.
As the mists of the battle dissipated, I found no more of the creepy critters crawling anywhere. There have been very few found in the house since, but I am ever vigilant and have my trusty spray bottle ready. As I’ve proven, I’m not afraid to use it. AH! Get it OFF ME!!!!

Flooring

2006-02-09T08:18:00.000-05:00

When we moved into our new house, the carpet was pretty bad. I say this as nicely as possible… It appeared to be original to the house. Twenty-year-old carpet wasn’t doing so well.

To make things worse, the previous owner had had cats. I have nothing against cats, we have three of our own. Apparently these cats liked to mark their territory, which made our cats want to mark it as well. This was no going to fly for us. We thought that changing the flooring would probably help. But even then the peeing continued. At the time we felt bad about it, but we had to make our cats become outdoor cats. We could not find any way for them to NOT pee in the house. So we made it very comfortable for the cats to sleep in the garage at night and rule the yard by day.

Remarkably the cats Love it outside. Rumor, my 6 year old Himalayan, has come alive since being outdoors. He used to be lethargic and grumpy toward the other cats. Now he is guardian of the yard. He and Ty chase off other cats from our yard on a daily basis. But they don’t want anything to do with the Opossum or Raccoons… More on them later.

We had finally decided on a nice kind of pergo style flooring. We found the best deals at Ikea in Hicksville. We carefully measured out how much we needed for both the family and living room and picked up the correct amount of flooring.

We started out by installing the flooring in the front family room where the kids play and watch TV. Pulling all of the staples from the sub-flooring was a royal pain, but a good pair of pliers helped out considerably.

On the day we started the flooring, we were able to finish about a third of the room before I had to leave for work. When I returned at about 9:30 Holly had finished all but the last row of boards. Go Holly! She would have had it all finished if not for the hot water base board radiators. This proved to be a challenge to install the flooring around.

The Living room proved to be a bit more challenging. The first step was to figure out the angled cuts I needed to make in the flooring to fit the bay window. Considering my geometry days are long in the past, it took a bit of head scratching, tape measures and angles to get it just right. The next hurdle was much more difficult to overcome. It seems that the floor closer to fireplace is a touch higher than the rest of the floor. So while we were installing the flooring, which is a reminder of legos from when I was a kid, the uneven section proved to be very challenging. I can’t begin to describe the methods we created to make it work. But in the end the floor turned out great.

Vent Fan

2006-02-07T23:26:00.000-05:00

Yet another trip to Home Depot yielded a vent fan for the full bath in the upstairs. This was a very nice and much needed Christmas gift from Holly's mom Sandy and Merlin. How the house never had a fan installed before is beyond me. The walls, window and mirror fogged up within moments of starting the shower. Initially we showered with the window open to vent some of the humidity. This doesn't work so well as the weather gets cooler. So another trip with Merlin to Home Depot and the early Christmas gift was set to be installed in the bathroom.

We quickly set to work figuring the best location in the ceiling while I crawled around in the attic. Thankfully the majority of the spiders that I've been finding around the house haven't been venturing into the attic. More on the Arachnid Wars later...

The installation was fairly easy. With most of the work coordinated by Merlin we were able to get the job done in quick order. We pre-wired the fan before mounting it in the ceiling, which saved us a ton of time. We also installed a timer switch in the wall to give us better flexibility.
One step that we didn't have to worry about was creating an outside vent hole in the roof to vent the humid air. The bathroom was strategically located at the end of the house were I was able to mount the vent tube right to the attic vent at the end of the house. It couldn't have worked out better if we had planned it that way. Actually, that was the deciding factor on getting the fan in the first place. The toughest part of installing one of these is cutting the hole in the roof. As we do not have a ladder tall enough to reach the roof yet this would have been difficult to say the least.

The next job of this caliber will be installing ceiling fans and wiring in each of the bed rooms. This house was built in the early 80's. Apparently it was popular to not install ceiling lights in the bedrooms. Of course there are light switches in each room but they control power outlets instead. Not my ideal setup, so this spring we'll tackle this project.

The Wall

2006-02-07T16:47:00.000-05:00

The first thing that Merlin and I tackled in the house was the railing at the top of the stairs. There was an industrial style pipe railing bolted to the floor at the top of the stairs. This was rather unsafe considering Brielle is walking and running around now. We wanted to have a gate at the top to keep her safe. Of course one of the first things Jonah had to try out was crawling through the pipes to go down the stairs. This was exactly what we wanted to keep from happening.

Merlin came up with an idea that would be less expensive than removing and replacing the existing railing. We built around the pipe railing using it as the bones for a wall. It turned out great. We put in 2x4 framing put 1x6’s on the front and top and enclosed the central part in drywall. The project took a good share of the day but turned out great.

The House (improvements)

2006-02-07T16:46:00.000-05:00

We like our new house very much. Structurally the house is just fine the way it is. There are a few things we changed within the first week. Holly’s Mom and Merlin came out right after we moved in to see the new house and help out with little things here and there.

Apparently there were more little things than I realized right away. I went to work one day and came home to find a new sink in the first floor bathroom and a new faucet in the upstairs bath. Then a new faucet appeared in the kitchen along with new lights in both bathrooms. I thought the home improvement fairy was stopping by bearing gifts until I realized we were paying for these things.

Then I got a lawnmower… It had been a long time since I had mowed a lawn. As a kid I hated mowing the lawn. The only positive thing that I could ever get out of mowing the lawn, other than it looking good, was that I could get a pretty good tan in the process. This, of course, was before all the concerns with skin cancers and the worries of other abnormalities.

We ended up with a great deal on a lawnmower from Home Depot.

Merlin and I arrived at Home Depot before the ladies and the kids. There was a line-up of slightly used lawn mowers. One's that had been used once or twice and then returned. They called them "refurbished".

We saw a Honda that looked pretty good. The Original price was $268. He said he'd take $68 off and make it an even $200. I called the Boss (Holly), who said go for it. I told him “ok”, he filled out the little work order told me to take it to checkout and bring the receipt back to pick up the mower. We met up with Holly and the rest of the clan in the store and picked up everything else that we needed.

As we went through the checkout I was off looking at hot tubs or something while they finished checking out. As they came up to me they had these wide eyed expressions that I couldn't at first read. They handed me the receipt and told me to run to get the mower before they changed their minds.

Apparently when Joe Home Depot wrote up my slip he wrote down the original price at $268 and the discount of $200 for the end price of $68.

When I got over to the mowers again there was this woman who spoke maybe three words of English who looked at the receipt, then the mower, then the receipt again… then once again the mower. Handed me the receipt and said "have good day". (those were the three words…)
I sped off with the mower like a bandit and threw it into the Blazer.

After we got home I found out from Holly and her Mom that they had tried to tell the cashier several times that this wasn't the correct price. But he said he had to ring it up the way it was written… This made me feel a little less guilty…

The mower runs great so far, we haven't had any problems with it.

House Hunting / Moving Again

2006-02-07T16:45:00.001-05:00

We spent quite a while cleaning up credit and getting fit to buying our first house. In the early spring of 2005 we found a listing that seemed to be a great price. The house was quite small but the large lot made up for the size of the house. We inquired on the property but by then we were too late. Apparently within hours of the listing the house was flooded with inquiries and an offer had been accepted the same day. It was this that put us into the officially looking for a house mode. The realtor that contacted us on this property started showing us houses… What’s interesting is that the second house he showed us is the house we eventually bought. Our first impression was nice house, nice lot very private but a bit too pricy for us. It took a lot more looking for us to realize that the house fit our needs very well and with a ready-made apartment in the basement the prospects for income grew as well.

I won’t bore you with the details of mortgages and rates, of course there were all kinds of trials and tribulations to detail there. Instead, I will stick to the theme so far with moving. Ah, once again packing all the memories and accumulated trinkets up for another move. Although this one was at least just across town. Not too bad at all, not likely to have a head gasket blow enroute.

We opted for Ryder this time instead of U-Haul which we have since been boycotting with a vengeance. It seems the only time their vehicles get maintained is when they break down. Not exactly a model business plan to follow, in my opinion.

The closing was set for August 31st the day our lease was set to expire. We figured that we could pack everything up and move it all night long and have the keys ready to be left by morning.

I picked up the Ryder truck while Holly went through the closing process. I had Jonah and Brielle with me which made the pickup a little more interesting but not enough to write it all out for you now…

We started packing everything into the truck which was taking much longer than we were expecting. Much to our surprise a few of the guys from the mortgage company came over to help us move. Since we still hadn’t made any close friends that we could ask to help us move, they found it in the kindness of their hearts to come over and help us load up and move our house over.

It took us longer than we expected. We had to stop for a few hours and start again early in the morning when the help came back to assist us again. From 9:00 pm till 2:30 am I moved items to the house.

We were complete with the move by early afternoon and had completed the clean-up of the townhouse. I handed the keys to Rocko, who as usual was very kind. I bade him farewell and headed back to the new house.

The only snafu with the whole house purchasing process was our view from the back yard. Our house is situated on the side of a hill and all the times we had toured the property a large amount of trees filled the backyard. Our property is fenced in the back by chain link fence. The very back fence is taller with barbed wire. This is for the security of a portion of the sewer system and the power plant. When we toured the property this was all covered in trees.
The next morning after we started moving in I looked out the back windows to find no trees. Bare sand with construction equipment everywhere. Trees were still being ripped out as I watched in dismay.

We found out a little later in the day when the neighbors stopped by to greet us. They said that there was a three year construction plan to rebuild a state of the art sewer treatment station to replace the one currently there. This has been the only drawback to our whole process of the move. On one hand the trees that used to block our view of the Port Jefferson Harbor no long block this view. We now have a pretty good view of the water if you can focus past the dome of the plant behind us. We are trying to figure out several options for screening this view. It appears that Bamboo is a possible solution to our view. Within a short period of time we should be able to have the area hidden behind a forest of bamboo. We’ll keep you posted on this.

The Move (in closing)

2006-02-07T16:45:00.000-05:00

The story of our move from Michigan to New York has been told numerous times. I once wrote it all out and e-mailed it to some friends soon after we were settled. It has long since been lost in the ether since that time but has left an indelible memory on me that I won’t soon forget. The story of our move to our first house is not as fraught with issues but it is mildly entertaining as well.