Electro

My office at the church is bipolar. When it's hot, it's really hot; when it's cold, it's really cold. Our hvac system is dated and ineffective, so I use a space heater throughout the fall/winter to stay comfortable. It's my litium.

This morning I unlocked my door and bent down to plug in the heater, as is my custom upon entering the room, but the results were anything but usual. I still had my keys in my hand and I think one of the keys entered the outlet as I plugged in the heater. POP!!! A nice sized spark lit up the room and I jumped back... luckily unharmed. The plate surrounding the outlet was metal and another key grounded the shock to the plate blowing the fuse and saving me from a big buzz.

Any close calls for you lately?

cubism

Have you ever see a car that you thought was just plain ugly? Which models/makes are on your list?

I'm not old enough to has seen such classic disasters such as the Edsel, but there are plenty of vehicles on the road that I think are design failures: PT Cruizer, Chevy HHR, and the worst offender, the Pontiac Aztek.

Early Aztek Engineering Design

Now there's a new polarizing design on the horizon... the Nissan Cube. It is reminiscent of the boxy styling of the Honda Element or Scion xb. The windows have rounded frames and the rear hatch opens via side mounted hinges.

Forward design or huge mistake?

JUMP!

As church started this morning I couldn't help but notice that Becky and Evan weren't sitting in their usual spot. They can be a few minutes late from time to time [understandable when trying to mobilize 3 kids under 4], but when they weren't there after singing ended I admit I was a bit worried. Glanced out into the parking lot I could see our Odyssey wasn't there. I went to my office to check my phone and there was a message from Becky saying... the van is dead!

Our boys love to play in the van. They climb all over it, press every button and twist every knob. I usually go back through the van and turn everything back off but... oops. After lunch it was up to me to re-animate our lifeless beast. You should understand that I'm not a gear head. It's not that I don't care, but it was never part of my upbringing and even jumping a car is mildly intimidating. But I'm the man of the house and if there's a job to be done, I'm gonna do it.

First we backed the car up the driveway and into the backyard. Then we figured out how to get the van into neutral and I pushed it back out of the garage. [I felt like I was competing in the world's strongest man... that thing is heavy!] I got it all hooked up and managed to get the van back online with relative ease.

Here's a couple picture of me doing man things.

(Thanks Becky for your help)

Then I backed the van into the fence and scratched the bumper. Hooray!

spring cleaning

It's that time of year again. Time for us to clear out the junk that we've accumulated over the last few months (and last few years). It seems that we constantly are throwing away things we've been carrying around from house to house. Perhaps those of you who are not homeowners can relate, but we've been carrying around box upon box of items that we say will come in handy or be put to use once we have a home of our own, yet it stays boxed only to be discovered later as we say "why on earth did we ever keep this?".

In anticipation of our baby girl we have realized/admitted that we need to exorcise our basement. We've slowly been hacking away at it for a week and today i incurred my first (ever?) spring cleaning injury. I was hoisting some large wood panels up into the rafters of the garage to create some more floor space when i lost my balance and dropped the panel on my foot. I am currently rockin' a nice sized bruise on top of my foot. But the cleanliness will be worth the pain (i hope).

How's your spring cleaning so far?