Category: General

Swimming lessons

July 9th, 2007 · · General 8 comments - Tags:

Today I signed the kids up for swim lessons at the Club. To be honest, I think Amaya will take to it immediately. She was splashing around today and almost had it down. Erich is trying, but doesn’t seem as close as Amaya.

I don’t want them to be as old as I am and not know how to swim. I would love to learn and be able to go swim everyday.  We’ll see if I’m too old to learn new tricks or not soon enough. Em has volunteered to help me learn.

I’m the kind of person who can look at a diagram and “get it”. I can talk to people and understand and empathize with them. I just don’t get swimming or treading water. I know, it’s soooooo simple that little kids can do it, but not me.

I’ll keep you updated.

Vacation photos (abridged version)

July 6th, 2007 · · General One comment - Tags: , ,

Well, I said I would try to get around to posting some vacation photos, and now I have a few loaded on Flickr, so here they are:

MO Botanical Garden

This was taken at the “Japanese garden” section of the Missouri Botanical Garden in Saint Louis. I wasn’t in the mood to walk too much, but I had to see this while we were there. If I remember correctly, this is the largest Japanese garden in the United States and was designed by a Japanese professor specifically for the Botanical Garden.

MO Botanical Garden

Here is a close view of a lotus bloom in the Japanese garden. This area was relaxing. I wish I had 10 acres and a few million to design my own environment like this one.

MO Botanical Garden

Here is a photo of my dream patio. There’s a nice circular brick wall around the outside, and a bubbling fountain on either side of the bonsai tree that centers everything. It was truly a relaxing atmosphere.

Grant's Farm - Goats

This is Em petting the goats at Grant’s Farm. I have to say that the Farm was like the zoo, only better. I’m sure I’ll get all kinds of harassment from Em over this, but I had to do it.

Grant's Farm - Bald Eagles

Obviously two bald eagles. Unfortunately these two have received injuries and can no longer fly. They are truly beautiful creatures.

Something I didn’t know about Grant’s Farm – the fence (at least in the front) is made from United States civil war-era rifle barrels. Kinda weird seeing them with the sights still attached.

Well, that’s enough photos for now. If you want to see more, go check out my Flickr account. The photos are larger and clearer on there. Please note that all photos are licensed according to the Creative Commons No Commercial, Attribution, Share-Alike license.

Everything happens in one week, I swear

July 2nd, 2007 · · General 2 comments - Tags: ,

This week, Emily and I went to Saint Louis for two days without the kids. All told, we did quite a bit of tourist-y stuff. We toured the Budweiser brewery, Grant’s Farm, Missouri Botanical Gardens, and blew some money at Ameristar.

I had a great time spending time with her and watching her relax. Maybe I’m really simple, but making other people happy is all it really takes to make my day.

There were a lot of pictures taken by Emily. Hopefully I’ll get them posted soon so you can check them out.

I’m sure everyone has done all of this stuff before, but we hadn’t. It’s like someone who lives in NYC not going to see the Statue of Liberty. It’s there, you know it, but you never go check it out.

Then, there was the Lodge’s fund-raiser on Saturday, the Hiltibidal picnic on Sunday, and now Kid’s Alley on Wednesday. It’s a busy week.

Resume “training”

June 26th, 2007 · · General No comments - Tags:

Tuesday and Wednesday, our last group to leave First Cellular/Alltel went through Spherion’s “Carrer Continuance” training/class.

I will admit that I had pretty low expectations. To be frank, I expected the same Resume 101 garbage that has been force-fed to us since high school. This was nothing like that. We were shown several different additions to make on our resume to make it more interesting, informative, and able to stand out.

Our presenter, Mr. Meyers, was not the boring guy I expected. His presentation was informative. A lot of the information presented was new to me and also common-sensical. Several things he informed us of had us slapping our foreheads in a “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that” manner.

Guess that’ll teach me to be more open-minded.

The faucet is fixed, and I’m planning my next adventure

June 13th, 2007 · · General No comments - Tags:

Yay! I finally got the last CPVC elbow I needed and squeezed under the cabinet to get the faucet glued into place. Now comes the 2 hour wait to see if it is watertight. About 1PM Central I get to turn the water back on and run to make sure there isn’t water spraying everywhere.

It will be nice to actually accomplish something instead of scouring the internet and classifieds looking for employment. I’m even kicking around the idea of taking out a small ad and doing freelance PC work. The only thing holding me back is the fact that once you work on a PC, the owner will expect you to come fix EVERYTHING that ever goes wrong for free.

When you call a plumber to fix your toilet, does he come back to fix the sink for free? Nope. Same for computer repair. How about when a mechanic changes your oil, does he then have to fix your transmission in a month when it goes out? Nope. Same for computer repair.

Moving on though… …I think I’ll replace the shower in the master bath next. It should just be a matter of replacing the shower lever and the surrounding enclosure. I hope.

After Emily wakes up, I’ll look at it closer. May as well get home repairs/projects out of the way while I have the time.

UPDATE: The pipes are not leaking. Go me.