Indiana-no place

We made the trek yesterday to Indy to have Andrew's eye checked out again (follow up). We dropped William off at the in laws and hit the road around 11:00 which is almost the time we tried to hit the road. The drive down was pretty uneventful. We drove through numerous snow storms, but just little flakes here and there every once in a while. I am glad I live in a relatively small town. I can't imagine driving in the traffic of a large city every day. A guy in a camper came inches from side swiping me, but luckily I was changing lanes right as he decided that he wanted to be in my lane. Then you have quite the mixture of people going the speed limit, people going slower than the speed limit, and then those who think its the autobahn and weave in and out of traffic like total idiots. We were about half an hour early for the appointment which gave us just enough time to run down the the built in McDonald's at Riley's. As soon as Andrew saw the golden arches he was excited. (he love Mcdonald's). We quickly ate lunch and headed upstairs for his appointment. We had a relatively short wait and headed back to see the doctor. Basicly everything looks good for his eyes. We just have to keep and eye on his eye and if it starts having a problem where they don't track the same we need to contact them. If nothing then back in another 6 months for another checkup. Nothing like 7 hours of driving and farting around for a 10 min appointment. I got a chance to see the CT scan from the last time were were there and ask why we put Andrew through that hell, and got a pretty satisfactory answer. So back on the road to Fort Wayne. We again hit snow storms on the way back, and one by Marion was bad enough to make me kick off the cruise with the roads looking slick. I also had a van behind me that was just going slighly faster than me, but when she got in my blind spot she went the same speed. So I had to keep speeding up to pass people since she wouldn't pass me, man that was annoying. So back in town by 5:00 and the in laws were nice enough to run down to KFC and get dinner for us.

A cool thing that I saw on the way back is that they are building a new outdoor mall at the noblesville exit (Deercreak) and it has an IMAX theater. They have another IMAX theater in Indy but this one would be alot quicker to get to for us. We just might have to go down for a few shows if they have some cool stuff. Yet another reason for the Q's to move to Indy :)

New Imax theater (Hamilton 16) info : HERE

They Came... They Saw.... They Left

Quick recap of the Q's drive-by visit. Just kidding kids :)... Thursday night I get home from work around 5:00 and they arrived at the house not too long after that. After some initial visiting, we were trying to decide what to feed the kids. Of course the kids were too busy playing and running around that I think they would have forgotten to eat entirely. We initially thought about getting pizza, but the Q's had that Wednesday night so on to plan "b". After some discussion we decide that pizza two days in a row isn't too bad so John and I head off to the hunt. First stop is to the grocery store for essentials, Milk, Cereal, and BEER!! Then over to papa Murphy's for pizza. Luckily the now vegetarian-ish Q's don't see pepperoni as meat so we get a pepperoni pizza and a small vege pizza. We finally get the kids fed and then corralled around 9:00 and off to bed. A short time later the rest of us are fighting sleep so everyone heads to bed around 11:00ish. Friday was a work day for me and the Q's ended up spending the day with the Kannings. I get home from work and help Jen put together some stuff for the party and get the house ready. People start coming to the house around 6:30 or so. We had a really great turnout with just about everyone showing up. It was fun to be able to visit with everyone and in some cases just find out what everyone was up to. The kids were having a blast running all over the place and playing. After a bit the kids started playing with the Wii since Mary and Charlie had some experience playing it. The party stared to thin out around 10:00 and we were able to get the kids to bed with a little effort. With the kids down it was time for the parents to play the Wii. The Q's had brought 5 games with them, but we didn't have a chance to play with all the other stuff going on. We played a couple of the games that were pretty fun including a couple mario games. The last one we played was Resident Evil 4. This is a shoot 'em up game where you go into villages and kill zombie-like people. That was very interesting and very hard too. Finally around 2:30am we finally turned off the Wii and headed to bed. Of course the kids don't care that we were up until 2:30am and got up promptly at 7:30 (yawn). But after more playing around and feeding children, the Q's headed toward the long and winding road around 11:00, after almost forgetting their pillows and sleeping bags. It wouldn't be a visit from the Q's without finding something they forgot, but so far we haven't found anything. It was a real good visit, but just too darn short, but I think Carrie got enough of a baby fix. Jen and I are talking about making the trek in the summer to visit the Q's or trying hard to make Geekfest happen this summer. Either way we are going to have a van by then since I can't imagine driving that many hours shoehorned into the jeep.

I tried waiting

I waited for Jeff to post this picture of Joshua, but he hasn't blogged in weeks. Too busy changing diapers I suppose. For those of you who didn't get this in your email.. enjoy. TOO CUTE!!

I have humidity

One of the projects for this winter was to get our Aprilaire humidifier working. The first winter we moved in was November two years ago, but we were too busy dealing with moving in and painting and boxes and babies so I didn't bother. Last year was a mild winter so we barely noticed it being dry in the house and used a vaporizer in the bedroom to up the humidity. This year I decided to finally get the thing working. Yeah I know it's already February, but I have been busy with other stuff, including baby stuff again. So a couple of months ago I replaced the water panel which is a yearly maintenance thing that I am sure hadn't been done in 10 years with the previous owners. I replaced the water panel and decided to give it a try. I turned on the thermostat and didn't get any water flow at all. I decided to trace the water line back to the source. Hooked to the hot water pipe of the water heater was the saddle valve that controlled the water. Of course they placed it almost to the top of the ceiling, above the water heater, among the other furnace pipes and crap. But with the help of a ladder I was barely able to get to it. Of course it was stuck. I oiled the crap out of it and still could get it barely to turn. So I resorted to the wrench. The last thing I wanted to do was over "wrench" the saddle valve and have it break. I opened the water all the way and still no water flow. The next culprit to look at was the solenoid connected to the thermostat. (The thermostat tells the solenoid to let water flow to the unit. ) I tore that apart and found tons of water pressure before the solenoid, but nothing after. So I have to replace the solenoid (I think). I call around to authorized dealers of Aprilaire to look for the part and to see if they can test the solenoid to see if it's working. Doc dancer will bench test the solenoid, but charge $95 for the part. Yikes. Korte (where I got the water panel) has the part for $79, but can't test it, but will send out a guy for $70. Crap. I find the part on-line for $45. Now comes the leap of faith. Spend the money without the test and hope the problem is the solenoid and hope it's the correct part? I finally decided to give it a shot. I order the part and get it a couple days later. This starts another comedy of errors. As I am connecting the wires with the wire nut, I twist it too tight and break off the end of both wires. As I am stripping the wires to try it again I slice my thumb open (need to get a wire stripper). As I am turning the water back on I cut my arm on the copper wire ground for the water heater. As I am turning the water back on (with a wrench) the end of the saddle valve snaps off (thank God it didn't start shooting water). And lastly, after turning the water back on, the saddle valve starts to leak (luckily I fixed that problem just tightening the saddle valve nut). Maybe the $70 would have been a good idea..... Anyway after getting everything hooked back up and on I am getting good water flow through the unit and my little indoor/outdoor thermometer in the house shows the humidity around 32% which is good for winter. Someday I will have to fix that saddle valve and I might move it down to be able to get to it a little easier. The ironic part is that we had to get a DE-humidifier for the basement because it was too humid.

Screwed Again

Little news to anyone that my favorite group is Rush. Hard working power trio that has been together for over 30 years. The message in there music is always fresh and their tunes are never rehashed or similar. They always push the boundry of new and interesting songs with a true rock feel. The one thing this band lacks is recongition. They have a serious die hard following but never made into the main stream (not sure they would want it that way). Their tour last year was in the top 25 of ALL concerts last year so you know they still draw a crowd. This group is in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and win numerous awards in Canada, but not love in the U.S. I was pumped to hear that they actually got a grammy nomination this year for an instrumental song on the new "snakes and arrows" disc.

Let's look at the following picture... We have all taken the SAT's or other comprehension test. Which one of these things is not like the other?

Bruce Sprinsteen????? And he WON? Are you freakin kidding me? You can't put that hack in the same category with Metalica, Satriani, and Vai. Of course Satriani and Vai get little to no love from the mainstream either even though they are very talented artists. I just listened to this Springsteen tripe (HERE) and IT'S NOT ROCK. The song is something a guy recorded 20+ years ago and Bruce just put some guitar tracks over the top of it. He didn't do any work on a the freakin song. That does not deserve a grammy. This is total Bull Sh**. I probably wouldn't be so p.o.ed if Rush lost to anybody else than Springsteen. Only 5 grammy nominations over 30 years and 0 wins. Just another reason not to watch awards shows. Like the academy awards giving out statues to movies you never heard of and will probably never watch in your lifetime. Yeah I know it's not really fair to give an award to the movie that makes the most money, but they can make it a little more realistic to movies the public has seen.

Deep breath.......

Wii Training

Jen and I have started our wii training for the Q's visit in a week. This is actually the first time that Jen had even tried it, and I think she likes it. We were able to play all of the games on the sports disc that came with the game and she did really well. She kicked my butt in Golf!! Including a shot from the fairway that hit the pin and went in the hole!! Bowling is fun too. It still amazes me how much actual physical activity is required to get the game to work to it's full potential. Jen had a bit of a sore arm like I did the last time due to the physical requirments needed to play. Overall the graphics on the wii are pretty cool. It will be fun to see what games the Q's bring with them. We might run over and rent a couple for the visit. We would have done this before, but we just don't have the time to play video games like we used to. Back in the day, we would stay up till 2:00am playing Zelda on Nintendo (original recipe) all week long. Now by 10:30, Jen is flaked out on the couch and I am fighting it in the comfy chair. There is Zelda for the Wii, maybe rent that one. Oh and I finally got the wi-fi feature to work on the Wii so I can do some internet stuff. I am still reading on what exactly I can do with this little white box. Maybe see how to hook up with the Q's and the Crammers on-line and have a game night. That might be interesting.

Visitors from Afar

Just got confirmation that the Q collective is coming to town so Carrie can get a "baby fix". It just happens that the kids have break in school where they can come and visit with little fuss and muss. They should be rolling into town on Feb 21st (of course subject to change at any second). As of right now there is nothing planned except for baby visiting with us and Jeff and Paula (need to come up with a neat nickname for those two... i mean three) We were thinking of attempting to plan a get together again on Friday or Saturday night at our house. Besides that nothing on the docket. Jen and I need to get our Wii skills sharpened for the visit. The Q's are so much more experienced than we are. Jen hasn't even played it yet, but Carrie is addicted to a mario brothers game and hopefully she will bring it with her. Also, Carrie, if you are reading this, don't forget to bring your extra controllers with you, we only have the one. Last week I got a special offer from the Kalahari for a super deal ($299 a night) on the village room. I was going to suggest to meet up with them for a night on the way over, but the special deal didn't fall on those nights, and that would cut into Carrie's "baby time". Still, reminder to everyone to save up for Geekfest later this year (maybe). On the way to vollyball last night I saw a sign at a little bar for "Guitar Hero-oke" I assume it's like kerioke but with guitar hero. That would be interesting to watch. Maybe if the Q's skills are good enough they could take it to the next level..... bar competition. Now we are just going to be working on our Wii skills, getting the house cleaned, and getting the sleeping arrangements made which will be different since moving William into the Lightning McQueen room. Actually the Q's might like the new arrangement better since there will be more room to spread out. So be on the lookout for emails and let me know if anything else is going on that weekend.
Hopefully by the weekend John will be out of Carrie's doghouse. He forgot to tell her that Joshua came early. ooops.

Fun time... too short

So I get a call out of the blue from Keith. He tells me that he is organizing a little bit of a guys night out. Cool. Besides MR halloween and christmas we almost never get together at all during the year, which is a shame since we all have so much fun when we are together. But usually life gets in the way and between kids and other stuff our availability it a little tighter than before. Before we got married, Jen used to be a fixture at Keith's house and would spend alot of time there. Now she might get a few minutes to talk to Lori on the phone every couple of weeks. Anyway, back to the gathering. Keith recommended trying the new granite city food and brew restaurant. It just opened up near the mall and looked interesting. I have been to their website and it looked like it had a good menu and atmosphere. We figured we could take the evening to celebrate Jeff's upcoming father-hood, but leave it to Paula to mess up the evening by having the baby on Monday night. Just kidding, all of God's blessings to little Joshua and his parents. Actually Jen was trying to arrange a dinner with Lori and Paula before the birth date, but again little Joshua came early. So after work I stopped off at the rehab hospital to visit mom for a little bit. She is doing really well and should be home tomorrow if she has any say in it. I get to the restaurant and head for the bar. There is a ton of waiters and staff standing at the front door to welcome you. This is pretty typical for a new restaurant. Wait for 6 months and you might see one or two people at the front door. Anyway. The restaurant itself is pretty nice. It's not very big, but well decorated and has a wide open layout which is comfortable. I walk through the bar and no Keith, I walk through the restaurant and no Keith, I was just about to call him and I see him and the guys in a booth hidden in the corner (obviously they know where to put the riff raff :)). The service from Scott our waiter was fantastic. He checked on us continually and always made sure we had everything we needed. He annoyed me a little when he kept referring to everyone at the table as "my man", but it wasn't a big deal. Looking at the menu, there was a nice selection of food where everything looked good. I was kinda looking for the prices, but there wasn't any on the menu... strange. But there was numbers after the descriptions. I was thinking that they might be the prices, but the appetizers were higher numbers than the sandwiches. I found out later that those numbers were the prices, they just have BIG appetizers. I now it's a kitchy thing to do, but would it kill you to just print a couple of zeros. The only beer to drink there was their 5 microbrews which were pretty tasty even with my stuffy head and off taster. The special for the night was a $5 "growler" on the website. I had to ask when the heck is a "growler". Basicly it's a big bottle (2 litres) that you can fill up and take home. You can't drink it there, but you can take this huge bottle and take it out the door. It reminded me of a story my grandma used to tell how her dad used to give her a nickle and a bucket and send her down to the corner store to fill it up with beer. The "growler" is actually a pretty good deal if you go by the restaurant often, especially with the beer being $4.25 a glass. They also had a "Mug" club that was a pretty good deal too (again if you were there frequently). Anyway back to the food. I changed my order at the last second from a wrap to a basic cheeseburger, which was a mistake. The cheeseburger was overcooked (burnt) and dry. Everyone elses food looked very good and they all seemed to like their meals. But my bad burger didn't put my off trying this restuarant again in the future. I am not sure if I can attribute my bad burger to the Cramer restaurant curse, but nothing else went wrong, so probably not. We were having a good time ribbing each other and telling stories. Most of the group (Marcus,Keith,Mike,Tim,and Todd) have known each other for 25 + years at least so I got a little lost in some of their stories and references, but it will still fun to hear them. After we ate and paid the bills, I was settling in for more stories and ribbing, and everyone got up and started to leave. That kinda surprised me, but I am sure there was other stuff to do on a tuesday night. Overall a good time at a good place. A little pricey, but not too bad overall. I look forward to Jen and I having a "date night" there sometime soon to give it another try.

The next tentative plan is to get together at ThunderBowl the old Hilcrest Bowl on the South side of town. At least half of the group worked there in high school and thought it would be nostalgic.

PSA for guys

SAINT Valentine's day is a little over a week away. Are you ready guys? Well like me your answer is probably, nope. I am here to help you out. I am providing you guys a new and innovative way to shop for you honey. If you are one of those brave souls that attempts to buy your sweetie garments of an "intimate" nature, then this might come in real handy. This site might help you to avoid fights by making sure that you pick the correct size and having a very good night.

Click here to proceed. The link is a little NSFW so open carefully.

For those of you who use this site to buy your girlfriend or wife (or both.. just kidding) a little something, you are welcome. For everyone else... keep you hands above the table.

Again, I am just here to help a fellow brother out.

Yes Carrie I will get back to work..

more baby stuff

finally got a chance to download some more video and pictures from Christophers birth. In this video William and Andrew check out their brother while bumpa holds him.

Next are a couple of pictures from when we got back to the room after Christophers birth.

So far the new camera is working well, but with a 2 gig memory card I don't have to empty the camera every 25 pictures like the old one so it's a little harder to get to posting picures.

I put some other pictures on the flickr account HERE

Lightning McQueen

Clearly the boys favorite Disney character is Lighning McQueen. They might not watch the DVD that much anymore, but give them anything with a "cars" character on it and it's their new favorite toy. Of course being boys they love cars in general. I have learned to shuffle my feet around the living room since it usually entails stepping on a car or two if I am not paying attention. We need to start enforcing the Q's plan of cleaning up toys before going to bed every night. Anyway with the new baby coming we decided to move all the kids to different bedrooms. I am not real sure why, but I am sure there was a good idea for it. I believe Jen's thinking is that the older the boy the bigger the bedroom. Of course I feel sorry for poor Christopher since he will get stuck with the smallest of the bedrooms, but he also gets the room in the back of the house so he doesn't have to worry about hearing cars drive by all night and the thumping stereos as much. Maybe I will find something to make that bedroom a little more special for when he gets older. So the big plan was to clear out the 4th bedroom and make it William's new bedroom (so much for storing anything in there anymore). Finally we got everything organized enough to allow me to get to the walls to start painting. Jen had found this neat little plan-o-gram for a lightning mcqueen room at home depot a few months back. It included a two color paint job with borders and all kinds of stuff. We had been talking about a lightning mcqueen room for a while now so Jen went out and bought bedding and other stuff for the themed room. I decided to get a little creative and decide on a two toned room with a border in the middle. Hopefully he will get a little more enjoyment out of this room than from the "finding Nemo" room that he was in. I don't think he ever got that his room was finding nemo themed at all since he really didn't get into that movie. We were trying to get him moved in before or soon after the baby is born, so I head over to home depot to buy the paint. The guy at home depot strongly recommends a tinted primer for the red part of the wall. "if not you will be putting multiple coats on the wall" he says to me, and all I can think of is the Q's and their 8+ layers of paint on Keith's room. Then the big question, "what kind of paint do you want?". Uh crap I hadn't thought of that. I heard the term semi-gloss and it sounded familiar so I told him two gallons of that. The blue color is offically called "Cinderalla's Gown" but I call it "radiator springs blue" to sound more manly. I get to work on the first coat of primer and it is really pink. Now I knew it was going to be pink, but it was strange to see that color on the wall. At this point I find out from Jen that my semi-gloss decision was a major faux paus and that I should have bought Satin. They won't take it back since it was a special mix so I have to buy another two gallons of paint. Lucky for me the primer didn't matter. The guy at home depot gives me advice on paiting the room, which is basicly the lazy man's way. Hey I am simpatico with "lazy". Basicly it's giving the paint at least 24 to 48 hours between coats to allow it to fully dry. At this point we aren't really sure how William will like being moved into another bedroom so I start building up the excitement telling him how cool the "Lightning McQueen" room will be. He gets real excited about it. For the next week, after eating dinner, he would tell me to get to work on the room. Yes sir, right away sir. I work on the room for about a week alternating colors so I can allow the paint to fully dry. The red goes on really well, but still requires 3 coats. I could have gotten away with 2, but I think the 3rd really made it look nice. The blue goes on well and only requires 2 coats, but I must have been real tired when I worked on it since I ended up accidentally hitting the ceiling 3 or 4 times which I usually don' t do. I figure I will touch that up when I fix the kids bathroom ceiling or get to work on our bathroom ceiling. Next was the border. I thought the stuff that I bought was peel and stick, but it wasn't it was prepasted. Crap. I have never hung wallpaper or border so I have no idea how to do it, and don' t really feel brave enough to attempt it until I am sure the paint in totally dry. Then a little thing called "having a baby" got in the way of this project. After getting Jen and the baby home I decided to finish the job. I start on a small wall first with a bucket of hot water. It goes on well, but not as good as I thought. I can adjust the border quite a bit while it is on the wall, but the perfectionist in me kept tweeking it and I could see me tweeking too much. I finally ended up putting the bigger pieces of border in the bathtub to get wet. Lucky (or unlucky) for me the majority of the room was long runs which entailed only one long big piece at time. Man what a pain in the butt. Finally I get all of the border on, but it's not laying flat to the wall. Crap. I am using the sponge like the instructions say, but it's not doing the job. So, I decide to ad lib and grab my 5 inch putty knife and start to use it like a squeegee. It does a fantastic job in getting the paper to lay down on the wall,but it also presses out all the excess glue out and down the wall. Son of a B****. At this point it's late, the kids are fussing since it's way past their bedtime, and I am trying to help Jen out with the baby. So I get the border put on, most of the excess glue wiped of the wall and put kids to bed. I go back into the room and start to fiddle with the border some more, (it wasn't totally level) but finally yelled at myself to just walk out of the room. I come back into the room the next day and it actually looked real good. Most of the places where the border didn't quite lay down actually laid down by itself. Finally got furniture rearranged and a bed put in there. We are going to buy a new bed for him but he is using a trundle bed right now. The other night when we are putting him to bed we ask, "do you want to sleep in lightning mcqueen room tonight?". You would have thought we were sending him to Disneyworld itself or just gave him Christmas again. He ran into the room and right into his bed. I still have to sit in the room with him until he falls asleep, and he still comes into our room in the middle of the night, but it's fun to see the joy in his eyes with his new room. Next plan is to move Andrew into his new (old) room and make that one a lightning mcqueen room also. No painting!! I figure the blue color in the nemo room is close enough to mcqueen room. I am just going to hang some stuff on the walls. Next I think I might do a little work on the basement to see what kind of trouble I can get into down there.