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Framing myself into a corner

Just trying to figure out how to frame the ductwork monstrosity into a simple but not prone-to-causing-head-injuries soffit. Steel framing really hurts my brain. I'm gonna sit here and eat a hot pocket and draw this.

Comfest 2008

I decided to replace quantity with quality this year for Comfest and ducked over with my Mom to watch El Jesus de Magico after abandoning my family for the Crew (2-1 over Colorado with Emmanuel Ekpo's first MLS goal) game. Here's video I took of their closing song with my camera. It was a beautiful thing, as my card ran out of space two seconds before they ended.

Weekend

More money is spent. Framing has begun. I've got one and 3/4 walls done at the moment, as I've hit the complex framing around the gas and water meters. It is entirely within reason that the stud walls will be finished next weekend, and then roughing in electric, insulation and finally drywall. 105" diagonal screen here we come.

Shrlee Joseph, this Energizer is for you

Dear Shirlee, and ya cheatn' bastard Dube. Count the salutes from the Nordecke. (Full res is a bit better, if you can get it)

BTW Shrils, Crewfighter has the video the MLS needs, along with more than enough proof the Nordecke needs to tone it down a bit.

Dandelion Season

This was from before the rain.

Long, busy, fun but not restful weekend. Soccer is over. A party was had. Mother's day came and went. I got Jane laundry baskets. We had a tornado warning.

Head filled with random crap

Four straight hours of play and I'm getting better at FIFA 08. My thumbs are paying the price though.

I'm still not entirely sure how to frame box soffits with steel studs.

Screens are up. Storm windows are put away.

Jane's bike needs one of these, and a more round back wheel.

3 c-forms in a year leads to one very in trouble boy.

The blonde tornado is now down to a 1/2" buzz cut.

The bus has trouble running cold. My first project. Gotta remember how carburetors work.

Crew on top of league. Celtic won and Huns drew, so hope is still alive.

Head exploding with ADD. Gotta do twelve things.

Ten

We've been parents for ten years. It is such a clear before/after line in my life.

On a vaguely related note, Michael texted me to remind me that I took him to see Primus open for 24-7 Spyz on 7/26/1989, his 10th BD, and then abandoned him at the Newport to go to the mosh pit.

I just bought 4 tickets to see Flogging Molly in August, and what do you know! It's an all-ages show....

Weekend Wrapup

Progress

Here's what we accomplished last evening. Yesterday morning was spent removing the shelves which were on the left.

The saws and WorkMate are in the driveway and Ellie's bugging me to start hammering pieces together.

Basement

Subfloor. It's the beginning.

Blizzard Sledding

I can't believe it's only 2PM. This is the most we've gotten done on a Saturday in a long time. Here's Ellie after an hour of sledding and tunneling and general rolling around in the snow. A ton more pictures are here, and I'll have some video up later today. All of our clothes are in the dryer now and we're thinking about naps and movies and such.

The snow on the other hand, is still coming.

Joey

As I'm leaving Joey's room last night after reading to him, he leans over in the top bunk and says earnestly, but softly, "Dad, when I get to college, I'm going to fill my room with booby traps."

(This photo was taken by one of the other parents in his class at their Valentine's Day party. I'm certain that he had all of two seconds to react to the camera.)

Not much new

We're halfway through February though..

I dredged this photo up from the archives in my drive. Taken in the late 80's, scanned in 1997.

Can't see this with Microsoft in charge....

Photobooth: The second best parenting tool on the Mac

Joey and I did some Photoboothing today. It was the only thing that would cheer him up, and subsequently was the only thing that kept him from being sold to the Gypsies.

Februray

Catching the mood?

Birthday Pizza at Bridie & Gordon's

As you can see, Katie was quite done with the photos and all the excitement at her house at this point. It is Ben Franklin's birthday, which means that Bridie is 35. Since Bridie is Katie's mom, we pumped her with all kinds of useful information like "Mom is 200 years old." and "Now that mommy is so old, she has to go to bed before you. So be sure to tuck her in."

Uncle Bob = Positive Influence

8 Hours in the car today

And I managed to take a picture, before I got out of the car at this Subway-equipped gas station to have my second structurally-unsound 6" Subway Club with no cheese and all the veggies of the day.

Bathtime!

The fun thing about bathtime is that when the girls are both screaming, the tile walls and the glass door both reflect and amplify the sound enough to make adult ears bleed. Luckily, the only one that still really screams is Fin. Ellie just makes a bunch of noise to add to the screaming while I wash Fin's hair.

Fin here is modeling what the long-haired people in our house call the "hair towel." This is the original that Jane had. She made Fin and Ellie copies of it for Christmas

Much was accomplished today, but no one can tell exactly what.

Off to TV. I hope that the Sarah Connor Chronicles doesn't suck.

Food

I wants it, but I can'ts have it, at least not a lot of it. Jane and I stopped at Aladdin's for take out after going out for a movie. She had a splitting headache from taking the dog for a huge walk and waiting till 9PM for dinner, but we got out for a bit which was nice.

It is amazing what the simple act of logging what you eat does to your habits. This is the brilliant part of the Weight Watcher's "Points" system. This is the third time I've put myself back on a system (using an amazing, but hugely illegal piece of software) and each time the "Boy, I would have just eaten that without thinking" moments have blown me away. Now to start exercising....

The Pollypocalypse

This, I believe, is a Polly Pocket cat. This is not the Barbie cat that Fin so desperately wanted (and got) for Christmas. Little Miss fine-motor-skills herself put four different Polly Pocket footwear items (I'd say shoes, but two are slippers) on this cat tonight and walked around showing them off.
In addition to the cat, which must have come with a set, we were blessed with the Polly Pocket Polly-Tastic Jumbo Jet (with built in fashion show) and a few thousand other incredibly small rubberized pieces of clothing. Amazingly, the girls are doing a good job managing to keep all of the pieces both together and organized.

The boys, on the other hand got ~600 Legos, which are coating every horizontal surface of their room.

The kitty warming rack

Sometimes this is what we get in the morning at our house, two cats warming themselves over the heater in the kitchen. This is actually preferable to their normal behavior which is sitting on top of the heaters in our room, blocking all of the warm air. Perhaps they are growing old, they used to pile up with Elmer the rabbit on the baseboard heater grate in our living room at our old apartment, further contributing to the freezing state of the place.

Nightcap for the King

Bailey's on ice to end the King's birthday. (and my Uncle's, and my other Uncle's, and my Sister's)

ecto says I'm listening to A.M. Slow Golden Hit from the album "SXSW 2006 Showcasing Artist" by Hotel Lights

Ellie's Library Card

Like most families of the 21st century, we have rules for our children based on random Arthur episodes. Today's example is that our kids can't get library cards until they can write their names on the card. Ellie, was struck with a schme today and while jumping up and down asked Jane "Mom, can you write my last name down on a piece of paper so I can copy it and get my library card?" As you can see, she was allowed to get away with Ellie O'S, written left to right, for those noticing such things.

ecto says I'm listening to California Über Alles from the album "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables" by Dead Kennedys

My camera has a 'Food' setting

On Epiphany we go to see Great Grandma Murtaugh in Ashland. Rhubarb Pie from Grandma Martha was for desert ("Dad!! It's a square pie!" said Joey, thrown by the square baking pan.).
This also turned out to be my one holiday PC service call, and we moved Grandma's PC upstairs from the basement and had to re-route the cable line to the cable modem.

On the ride back we listened to Ellie belt out "My Favorite Things" and "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" while she listened to Sound of Music on her iPod.

ecto says I'm listening to Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag ) from the album "Mary Poppins (Original Soundtrack)" by Julie Andrews

And a picture

Jane and Grandpa John sort for edge pieces on New Year's Day.

ecto says I'm listening to The Other Way Of Stopping from the album "Zenyatta Mondatta" by The Police

3

Lest we forget someone is now three...

One more soccer game. Birthday bottle of Speyburn is half gone. I'm knee deep in broken Cadillacs.

and I've got more endurance than at least one of my kids

ecto says I'm listening to Goodnight Irene from the album "Orphans: Bawlers" by Tom Waits

Home!

(or, Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire)

We're back. The kids are alive and detoxing from sugar. We also survived, and learned the hard way how much work four kids are on vacation. We've got hundreds of pictures, plenty of new stuffed penguins, great stories, dirty laundry and a huge credit card bill.
We got lunch with Tracey, survived much bad (or no) planning, enjoyed outdoor musical theater and took notes.

More after we sleep and get through job stress!

Flexcar at OSU!

Coooool!   It looks like urban car sharing company Flexcar has setup shop (or poles at least) on the OSU campus.  This is their spot on Woody Hayes Dr., overlooking the horseshoe, and featuring a Toyota Tacoma, a Honda Accord and a Civic Hybrid.  Too bad that Flexcar seems to have gotten a ton of publicity that they weren't prepared for, and are projecting a 2-4 week wait for account applications to go through.  I've got no use for the Accord or the hybrid, but an hourly rental of a pickup, or some sort of sports car (I couldn't find their stash of Minis, Miatas or Solaras) would be quite useful.

DAD!!!! I HAVE DOTS ON!!!

 

We love the Crayola washable markers at our house...

And in other news

Bobby, his Grandmother Aunt Molly and Uncle Michael went to Studio 35 to party and get their Harry Potter books. Butterbeer was drunk by all. Bobby is on chapter 8.

Later in the day, while playing a video game, Bobby swallowed a metal ball from a toy, that we are pretty sure is stainless steel. He's been punishing himself over it all day.

And, to top it all off, right before dinner was served, Joey fell down and hit his elbow hard against the slide, breaking tip of his ulna and possibly spraining his wrist. He's in a soft cast/splint and gets to do an orthopedic consult this week.

Good times. Good times....

Coffee With Ellie

 

It's been a rough three weeks.  Time to get grounded again.

I love you Dad

Dad died this morning, surrounded by his wife and children, and his brothers and sister. He is at peace and we all have some very big shoes to fill.

Paintshaver, the test run

If you enlarge the picture you an can see the first section of the house that I stripped with the Paintshaver. This section took ~30min, give or take for adjustment and learning time. I later spent another 30min finishing the courses up to the eaves. It now has oil-based primer on it.
Once I got the Paintshaver dialed in to cut the correct depth, and got a feel for it, this section went pretty quick. I did the higher courses from a utility ladder with a pretty wide stage. The Paintshaver is ideally setup for flat boards, though, and I've got a bit of bowing in the siding here. Some passes just cut a bit, while others cut as intended.

LOLJustin

I had to do it, just because it would make Justin laugh like Scooby Doo.

A Hell of a Girl: But where is the manhole?

The boy has style

The hat came home from the IC carnival and immediately was thrown on the roof.

Woha!

Speed Racer! Although not with the Johnny Dep/Nicholas Cage casting that some had imagined.

Cousin time

A grandma-engineered photo op on the rock at 279.

Fishing ends with desert

???????????????????????????????????????

Uh, yeah. That had nothing at all to do with the two pints of Guinness I had at the Shamrock Club.

What I meant to say was: I should have taken a picture of the three fish sandwiches that Bobby ate, but well, he ate them.....

Slack

I just got a wonderful present:  A box of the six rolls  of Kodachrome that I shot over the past year or so.  I had been waiting to get them processed until I had most of all of them shot, as I had some Kodak processing mailers and I wanted to send them all off at once.  I shouldn't have been surprised to find that Kodak had sold off all of their K-14 process lines and that the only way to get Kodachrome processed was at Dwayne's Photo in Kansas City, but I was.  Dwayne's still honored the mailers, and I even coughed up for the crappy PhotoCD scans that they offered.  I've uploaded the good ones here, and will rescan most of them, along with the ones that were too awful to post.  I had to include the unexpected surprise picture of Joey above, as I didn't even remember taking it, way back in July 2005.  It's a crappy scan (see the glow around his shirt), but damn, look at the slack he's getting at four years old.

Cleaning up the place

Sorry, but on the once-a-day plan, you get my todo list every once in a while.
I need to re-design this place and do the following:
Move all the pictures to Flickr.  It works better, and I'm paying for it.
Clean the link  list again.  Maybe just put in whatever I'm adding to my gazillions of rss feeds.
Colors?  Header?  Fonts?  Like I have the time.
Create a booklist (I may already have done this by the time you read this...)

Keep your fingers crossed.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a post on how we're DIAPER FREE!!!!

2007

More Pictures: Not faster (the photo at left is from August), just more
More blogging: The goal was every day, but I've already blown that by missing yesterday.
Less Me: Going to be playing soccer, if anyone will have me, running and eating a little better.
More books: Better to go to sleep dreaming of Discworld than stewing about work.
More projects: Got tools. Got ideas. Need time.
More organization: Make it work better at work. Start it at home.

Sleep, who needs it?

Here's Fin, who has found sleep quite a challenge over the last few weeks, sleeping sitting up in her room, which lasted a good 15min, before she keeled over on her back. This was after her usual wired-for-sound performance that we've been subjected to every night for quite a while now. Tonight she added jumping off of furniture to her methods of not going to sleep. Last night, after being sent off, she registered her protest by falling asleep flat on her face across the doorway to our bedroom.

The sleep usually lasts till 4:30AM, when the screaming and fighting over where she needs to go starts. This hopefully ends around five with Jane leaving for Fin and Ellie's bed, and Fin hopefully moving over towards her side of our bed to spread out and sleep. Worst case scenario though is kicking and climbing on me till ~3min before my alarm goes off.

This too shall pass....

Ballet Lessons

Well, actually it's Ellie who is taking Ballet, but I just had to stick this picture up here. Fin insisted that she get to also try on the ballet outfits that were dropped off at our house. She also insisted on the shoes and the helmet. She was so impressed with her own outfit that she went out of her way to hold still for this picture.

Ellie's ballet lessons, on Friday mornings at Whetstone Rec. have been going very well. She, until the accident, would gladly show off her plié skills.

The accident you say?

Denial isn't just a club outside of McManerberry

Well, the good news is that we got a new van. Can't you tell? Don't worry, nobody else can either. That was the idea. After all the consternation and test drives and such two years ago when we got the first one, Jane just looked at me and said, "Get me one just like the one I had. I don't want to deal with it."

And yes, they did total the old one. Simply too much damage to complicated sheet metal to fix. Luckily, it had under 70,000 miles on it so we got about half what we paid for the new one out of it. We've moved up in the world too. The new van is four years younger (it's a 2003), has a roof rack and a CD player.

It's the new bluesmobile.

In other news, life hurtles forward. With the curveballs of the wrecked car and bathroom repair, we are somewhat behind on Christmas. I had to abandon, early on, my main gift project (about which I won't be saying any more until next year, as a certain number of you who would benefit from the project read this), and I'm behind a bit on things like Christmas lights and shopping.

Last week, Bobby pulled off his best spelling score yet, a -1 (yes, everything is a minus). He's amazingly happy and feeling quite successful, especially since he got every single word wrong on his pre-test at the beginning of the week. We'll be trying out a spelling drill program over break to see if he can get any better.

Bobby also, after five years of waiting, got to open his Lego Droid Developer Kit. He's halfway through R2-D2 right now.

Okay, there's more, but I'm running short on battery and I've got to shop tomorrow.

A tale of two kids

Here is Ellie, late in the mess that was Saturday, having fallen asleep while hiding under the dining room table. Shun and Neysa were over visiting and dropping things off when Ellie, after bending Neysa's willing ear for quite a long time, started playing hide-and-seek with Shun. Her last hiding place was here under the table. Shun, who was also carrying on conversations with Jane and me left without finding her. About 20 strangely quiet minutes later, Jane looked at me and asked, "where is Ellie?"

Good news, and bad news

As you can see, the bath tub is done. Proper cement backerboard has been installed and tiles have been re-attached with proper thinset mortar. The whole thing has been re-grouted and all is well. Maybe now the plaster ceiling in our dining room will stop dropping chunks of paint. As you can also see, Jane wrecked her car today. Thankfully, everyone is okay. Joey got a bit knocked around by the impact, but was given a clean bill of health by the paramedics. He's been burping as loud as he can all afternoon, so we figure he's okay.

Oh Crap!

As I told Molly earlier tonight: If I find any of you attaching tile, especially tile in a bathroom, directly to plaster, I'll kill you where you stand.

This project started out, as a plan to re-grout the shower. I figured that there was a chance that some tiles would pop off, but I didn't figure that it would be this bad. The plaster, in some places was the consistency of cake frosting, and the oak lathe boards under the plaster are rotten, but it looks much worse than it actually is.

Hopefully, with some carefully applied bracing and cement backerboard, we'll be up and going in a day or two.

Thought I was gone, didn't you?

Nope, just flipping busy. Four kids, demanding end-of-fiscal at work, Jane in class four nights a week, and coaching soccer two of those.

Just a little busy.

Soccer is over, as the year at work so, we can breathe a bit now, at least for a few minutes before we host Thanksgiving two days after Ellie's birthday.

More, with pictures after the fold.

Parenting thought for the day

"So," Jane says, "Ellie just got out her cereal, poured the cereal and her milk and then put both the cereal and milk away. All by her self. I swear to God, if we had the girls first I'd be convinced that the boys were retarded."

-- Photo by Ellie, who planted her finger squarely on the lens to achieve the soft-focus effect.

ecto says I'm listening to Lifes Gonna Suck by (Dennis Leary)

Yessirree!! A cow made of butter

2005 butter cow, and the controversial kid and icecream cone companion.

--Title spelling corrected at the behest of my lovely mother-in-law. -Ed.

Lunch at the Fair

Corn dogs & fair fries, in the stroller.

Sadly, we only got five different types of fried foods, coming nowhere our goal of ten.

Joey solos on the helicopter

Ugly Cake Contest

First place award for the ugly cake contest at the 2005 Ohio State Fair

CD101: Mentally Handicapped?

Yup, parked in the handicapped spot in a new shopping center in Dublin. Gotta love 'em!

Eventually, this all pays off

Or at least that's what I keep telling Jane, and maybe myself. Strangely, looking at the calendar for next week, all of this summer so far looks pretty easy in retrospect. All three kids that can walk have activities this week, so Jane will spend just about every waking minute shuttling them around. We think that maybe she can make it to the grocery store on Tuesday.

Add in demanding work, and Jane's 4-night-a-week class and spare time is at a premium. As much as I've been trying to not do work at home, I pulled at least one late night last week for a morning deadline, and I'm sitting here now, watching the last remnants of my old work laptop move to the new one. I was hoping to do the whole move on the clock, but it's been over a month since I got the new one and I'm sick of hauling it around.

I haven't been completely inactive though. I've gotten so sick of my digital camera that I've hauled out my old Rolleiflex and Leica and started shooing film again. The thing I haven't done much of, though is scanning the film. A pile awaits in the basement. Most of it will be going to my Flickr page, if you want to look.

Technorati Tags: 256, baby, finoula, oshaughnessy

Crawling? That's so three days ago.

Seriously, she just started to figure out how to make her legs crawl, instead of rolling and pitching herself in the direction she wanted to go (which, BTW, was quite successful). I took this picture a few seconds after she was simply leaning against the basket playing with the Batman Pez dispenser with both hands. Her climbing is quickly getting out of hand. I watched her swing from the edge of the kids card table this weekend.
The problem for her now is strength. Her elephantine legs simply can't hold her up and she quickly starts wobbling.
Either way, she's on track to walk before any of her siblings did.

ecto says I'm listening to Highway 69 from the album "SXSW 2005 Showcasing Artist" by Tammy Faye Starlite

Technorati Tags: 256, baby, finoula, oshaughnessy