Slow thy role

Do you remember that time that I told you a story about my lawn mower not working and I heroically wrestled it back from death's cruel grasp (and dude, my arms look so cut while I was doing it)?  Yea, well this time, the next day, I was the cruel mistress raining down misfortune upon it - what a whacky turn of events, reader!  This is why I can't have nice things.

Last Friday we (Adam) had some company at the house after I got home from work so I thought it would be an excellent time to start being a doer and do some stuff that required doing in regards to my leaf vacuum or "leafpocalypse" setup.  Really, the last piece of the puzzle was that I needed to cut the mower deck boot to fit on, well, the mower deck (duh).  In some startling turn of events, I cut it and got it properly mounted exactly as planned without any major problems.  Surely I should have should have had some alarms of This is going way too easy, Mr. Guy going off in my head, but instead I felt smugly smug with myself and rode off back to the shed where the second half to this project was waiting for me.

I got the hose mounted up to the mower deck, the hose clamp all clamped down, and I was ready to go.  I hooked up the trailer to the hitch point, and slowly crept forward mowing and sucking and mulching leaves for a solid 10 minutes.  Amber can attest my next mistake:  Grinning, bouncing, and other outward acts of joy and pride only a father (of a leaf vacuum project) can feel in his heart.  That heart, ladies and gentleman, was about to be broken just like my mower.  It was a young and foolish early-fall romance, if we're assigning labels here, it wasn't meant to be.

Needless to say the mower came to a slow crawl and refused to move forward or backward.  The engine was still running, but it strained as it tried to move.  "Well, shit" said the author of this blog.  In my haste to mow/suck/mulch, I foolishly put the brake on, that I never use no less, and I had been riding around the yard for 10 minutes riding the brake.  "Double shit" soon followed as well as feeling like an enormous dumb guy.

To make things as entertaining as possible for everyone who isn't me, I had to drag the tractor back to the shed with the four wheeler, stopping every 5 feet or so to adjust the steering wheel on the tractor to dodge the mine fields of trees and other solid objects.  And when I say drag, I mean that word that I said I meant.  The rear wheels were locked up even with the transmission disengaged it wouldn't budge.  By the time I got it in the shed it was dark so feeling defeated, I packed it in for the evening.

Now that I have you on the edge of your seat Imma ruin it for you:  The brake was just locked up, no catastrophic transmission failure that I was worried about.  I've since disconnected the brake, as I've said, I never use it other than to try and ruin my life, and we were once again in business.  I made a few passes in the back yard and booyah, leaf and grass all up ins:

Important life lesson:  Never be happy or excited about any project you take on, because you already made a whole lot of mistakes that will come back to Wanye-Brady-Choke-a-Bitch you.  With that in mind, this is a close approximation of my emotion level having my leaf cleanup infinitely easier this season:

Let's be honest, you only come here for my impeccable taste in animated .gifs anyway.

In other updates, I got the dishwasher project finished up last night and spent a lot of money on a new snowblower which will virtually guarantee that we don't get any snow this year.  So either way, probably a good buy!

Projectus Maximus

Today, I am humbly blogging from the bottom of a figurative avalanche of projects that are threatening to snuff me out and/or force me into making a decision of who to eat first. It seems every time I start on something I want to do, it involves fixing something else along the way, not to mention taking away time from squishing Adam's cheeks.

Last weekend I tasked myself with installing our new(er) dishwasher we bought from some friends to replace our old-but-still-working dishwasher. Immediately you can see the problem in this, there wasn't anything technically wrong, and yet I thought it would be a good idea to fix it. I've been petitioning the Oxford people to reconsider the new definition for "fix"

fix [fiks] verb, fixed or fixt, fix·ing, noun  To make things worse in every way, you big dumb fat dumby face

First of all, removing the old dishwasher was much harder than I thought it would be, it eventually took a large crow-bar to pry the one side up enough to free it from it's wooden tomb. Unfortuantely that was just the beginning.  The old unit ran off a standard oulet plug, the newer unit was hard wired. Not wanting to smash up the wall to hard wire it I bought an electrical cord to wire it up. Inconvenient, but not a day-ender.

Where I'm stuck now is the plumbing, after the shutoff for the supply line there are a bunch of weird adapters, where I thought it was going to hook up was incorrect, so I now need to find a very specialized fitting, or man up and do some cutting and torching and soldering. I've hit my comfort limit so that's where it currently sits.

Last night, finding a bit of free time, I thought I'd try and mow the lawn. Our tractor has had a hard time starting lately but I figured I could eventually coax it to life as I have in the past. Once my coaxing skills ran out, I pushed it from our shed over to the garage where I worked on it for the next hour and a half, eventually finding the problem.  Seems that some of my furry rodent friends made a nest underneath one of the engine covers and ate half of the ignition wire.  Since I can't replace just the wire, I "fabricated up" (whenever I refer to something like this, run) a healthy portion of electrical tape to temporarily solve the problem.

As luck would have it, by the time I finished up it was too dark to mow. While it's great the tractor is now running, the real work has just begun since I still need to mount up my mower deck to the leaf vacuum I bought last month.  That is the most important project I need to work on this weekend by far because

The leaves: they are coming.

My tentative project list for the moment:

• Get the riding mower and leaf vacuum to make sweet leaf-mulching love so I can:
• "Prepare my anus" for the upcoming leafocaust and general yard work that should be done.  
• Get the plumbing sorted for the dishwasher, cut some scrap wood to get the dishwasher to the proper height (it sits a bit low).  Pray to Cascade, the dishwashing god, that I haven't messed anything else up.
• Leaf-blow the gutters out at least every other week until it stops raining.
• Speaking of gutters, I really need to install two more downspouts.  You know, another thing I don't know how to do.
• Wrangle up a large number of able-bodied men to help me remove my wood burning insert from our fireplace.  This weighs many hundreds of ell bee esses.  
• Get the pellet stove mostly in place, figure out what I need to connect it to my chimney.
• Install new top on the Miata (I've only been putting this off for almost two years).

While the wife's away: Showerbeer Vol 1

Amber had an overnight training last week which gave me some time to myself.  Aside from the aforementioned showerbeer it was a pretty mild time.  After work on Wednesday I had my first experience picking up a baby from daycare all by myself.  Me, picking up a baby!  Shattering everyone's expectations, I delivered the baby on time and unharmed.

My next pickup and delivery task was to ask Gigi if she was a bad enough dude to stay at Casa Dreese overnight, and she accepted with a lot of enthusiasm, which could have been confusing to her since I was holding her leash.  I now realize my rookie mistake.

With Gigi at the house I didn't have to worry about the cats making any sort of disturbance since half of our cat population is deathly afraid of Gigi, while the other tries to play it really cool and show the other one how brave he is.  

Since Gigi and I both share the fact that we're big both fat fatties now adays, I thought it would be a great opportunity to do the big loop around the house, which I've rode on my bike before, but not walked.  It was a gorgeous day so I figured why not.  It took us about an hour and 16 minutes to cover the 4.4 miles, which isn't too bad considering the elevation changes.

It was nice to have Gigi around to force me into taking her for walks, but at much as I love her it just further solidifies the fact that I don't think I'm ready for a dog now, nor do I think I will be anytime soon.

2010 Wrapup

With the lack of posts here thanks to my laziness, I've resorted to cutting and pasting my holiday e-mail to be forever enshrined on this blog that no one reads.

Greetings to my most faithful and loyal e-mail readers! As another year quickly comes to an end it's time for "that Dreese family" to brag about how rad they are under the clever guise of a friendly newsletter. No doubt you've been waiting with bated breath to hear of our tales of worldly travel, unimaginable fortunes, and maybe even some snake charming. So, uh, with the possibility of you being really disappointed, let us jump in.

July marked our first full year in our house. Aside from some excitement with a wasp infestation, a basement flood, furnace issues, and the never ending forrest of leaves, it has been overall very quiet and pleasant. Recently we've started our first big house project, a full remodel of one of our spare bedrooms (I'll try and keep that album updated as progress is being made). While it's a bit slow-moving at the moment, I'm hoping with some time off after xmas we'll be able to make some more progress. If nothing else it's been a fun (and expensive) learning experience. The next big steps are fixing/finishing the electrical wiring, running network cable, re-insulating the ceiling, re-framing the closet, and then probably drywall and all that stuff. I should be able to bust all that out in a few hours, eh?

Arguably our biggest news of the year been paying off Amber's student loans in full at the end of September! It took us just shy of two years, which was our goal. As you can imagine we're thrilled and all sorts of full of ourselves ;) To award ourselves we now have satellite TV so we didn't miss much of the football season. If you want to be nosey and read about the nitty-gritty details you may do so here. Since we're in polite company I decided to keep the tacky details out of my high-brow e-mail newsletter for monocle enthusiasts.

We had a nice week-long vacation in Emerald Isle, NC with Amber's family in June. We had a small condo right on the beach which was (as expected) really great :) My second trip of the year was to San Deigo for a work conference, it was my first commercial flight anywhere and it was overall a good time :)

Aside from that, it's been your typical everyday living going on. Work has been going pretty well for Amber and myself. We're still working at the same place so we continue to carpool to work and eat lunches together on most days. She's been settling just fine to her position as a supports coordinator and I've continued my reign as the (sometimes evil) database administrator. Amber continued with her assistant coaching of the women's volleyball team this year, and after some deep thought she decided 5 seasons of coaching was enough. In October she received the "Outstanding Athletic Alumni Award" for her role as a coach and a player during college. Speaking of volleyball, we still continue to play in weekly leagues and had a fairly successful season that wrapped up last week.

That's about it! I hope everyone has a safe and successful holiday season and just maybe we can keep in better touch! You know, if you want to. It's cool :) Thankfully technology makes this much easier these days, there are many ways to keep up on what's happening:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dandreese

Personal blog: http://www.3dollarbicycle.com

Automotive video themed blog: http://www.giveitthebeans.com

Twitter: @dreesemonkey