I Broke the House

The faucet on the outside of our house (the sillcock for those of you in the know) has been leaking all summer long every time we try to turn it on.  When it’s off, it’s fine.  Turn it on, and our garage starts to flood.  So I thought I would give my handyman skills a workout and see if I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. 

I grabbed my pipe wrench and went to work.  I had the whole thing taken apart with the exception of this one last piece.  I have a twist, and it turned right off.  Unfortunately the reason it twisted right off is because, not knowing my own strength, I actually twisted the pipe and broke it off.  Crap.  The bad news was that there was no direct water cut off for this faucet, so in order to turn the water off, I had to shut off water to the entire house.  So now I had to fix the thing as fast as possible, or go without having running water.  I had no idea where to start, but thankfully my father-in-law was at home “cleaning out the garage” (that’s what he calls it when he’s putzing around but wants to make it sound like he’s working)

Jeff came down and gave me some guidance and helped my replace the piping in the house, after cutting out a chunk of the wall.  Unfortunately the next morning, discovered that it was still leaking a little.  So I went up to our local Taylor’s Do-It Center where you get the absolute best service I have ever seen in any store.  There’s always some old guy who knows how to do everything, and he’s just waiting to answer your question.  I describe to the guy want happened, and what we did to fix it.  He pointed out to me that we skipped a step along the way and that I’d have to do it all again without skipping that step.  When I got home, I tried it and it worked.  Everything is up and working just fine now.

So I broke the house, but fortunately with the help of a couple of wizened men, I was able to fix it again.  Now if only I could fix the giant hole I cut in my wall, I’d be doing just fine.

On a related note, I’m actually writing a new book called “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Home Repair” which is written by me, The Complete Idiot.”For Idiots, by Idiots” is my motto.

Posing for Pictures in Wisconsin

I remember as a kid that each time we left my grandparents’ house, we’d always have to pose for a few pictures before we left.  So we always had pictures of all of us together. 

It seems like since digital cameras have taken over, and you can taken hundreds of pictures for nothing, those posed pictures just don’t happen as much.  At least they don’t happen as much in my family.  So this last time we were up in Wisconsin, I made it a point to get everyone together and pose for pictures.  But I went all out.  I did it like the Japanese at Disney World, which means you get every possible combination of people in the photo as possible (Dad with Goofy, then Mom with Goofy, then each kid separate, then all the kids, then just the girls, then Dad and the girls… I swear, it was like a whole roll of film from just one family). 

In the end, I now have a bunch of pictures that I had been wanting for a long time.  I even got a picture of my dad with his brother.  I think the last picture I have of the two of them together, Dad still had hair.  It was that long ago.  

Father-Son Bonding

Dad and I spent a lot of time bonding while we were in Chicago.  We sat on the deck and did some reading together.  We talked about serious life issues over an adult beverage.  We even got the baseball gloves out and played a little catch.  “Go long Dad!  Great catch.”  But most importantly, we played a little Super Jock Super Toe together. 

Super Toe is the game that my parents got my brother for Christmas sometime in the early 80’s.  While putting it together, my dad decided to test it out.  He then proceeded to test it out for the next several hours, and kept testing it until it broke.  So to help him relive the good ole’ days, I got him his very own Super Toe for Christmas this year with the understanding that if he practices, we’d play.  And practice he did.

Dad’s skills have really improved over the years, and he was able to beat me in the tournament.  Though, I think he and Kasia were conspiring against me because every time it was my turn to kick, Kasia would rush over and try to swipe the ball away as I was about to kick it.  This made me rush nearly all of my shots.  Then when it was Dad’s turn, she mysteriously became really well behaved.  Funny.

I was able to come back in the end and at least win the “longest kick” competition. 

Go West Young Man

One of the things we did while in Chicago was go to a Wild West park.  Here we could do things like pan for gold.  Lasso a cow.  Throw a tomahawk.  And ride in a covered wagon.  Look at this picture of us heading west, just like in Little House on the Prairie.  Kasia is confidently guiding the horses while I’m pointing the way.  Kara meanwhile seems confused as to what the future holds for us.

Actually she’s confused because she doesn’t know what I’m point at.  I guess she failed to realize that I was posing for a picture, and the whole time she’s going “What?  What are you looking at?”  I thought it made for a great photo though. 

By the way, I also found out that my mother is pretty good with a sling shot and a bow and arrow.  I never would have guessed it from looking at her, but she showed us all up.  Now if only she could cook or sew like Caroline Ingalls. 

A Natural Gamer

While at Pat’s house, we decided to head down in to the basement and play for awhile on his old pinball machine.  Much of my high school career was spent in this basement on that pinball machine.  Watching the thing light up and tell me I had “multi-ball” was one of the best feelings ever. 

So we played a couple of times.  I beat Pat one game.  He beat me in another.  And then Kasia had her turn.  I kid you not when I say that she schooled us both.  I think the highest score I had was 14 million.  Pat’s high score was 16 million.  Kasia managed to score over 21 million in one game. 

I mean, just look at her face while she’s playing.  Look at the focus.  Look at the determination.  Look at the way she’s just randomly pushing buttons while things light up.  She’s a natural.  If she could play pool as well as she plays pinball, we’d have one hell of a hustler on our hands.

Baby Xander

One of the main reasons we went to Chicago was to visit Pat, Stacy and Baby Xander.  Kasia has been talking about going to see Baby Xander for weeks (and to her, it’s never just Xander.  It’s always Baby Xander).  Well, when we all finally got together, Kasia was in heaven.  She loves babies.  She loves baby dolls, but more than that, she loves real babies.  So when she got to hold little Xander… sorry, I mean Baby Xander, she was loving it.  She gave him the little Tigger rattle that she had picked out for him, and was all about showing him how it worked. 

She’s going to make a great babysitter one day.  And then the money will really start to flow in. Cha-Ching!

A Drive to Chicago

The gods must be crazy, because for some reason, Kara, Kasia, and I decided that it was time to take a really long drive… a really, really long drive.  And since we’re going to be driving for a really long time, we may as well go and visit the clan up in Chicago.  Pat and Stacy just had little Baby Xander, and since we hadn’t seen him yet, it seemed like the logical place to go.

This time though, we learned from the mistakes in our past.  First, we decided not to drive straight through.  While the 16 hour drive is possible to do all at once, what usually ends up happening is that we get to my parents’ house in the middle of the night.  Then Kara and I want to crash and go to sleep, but Kasia (who has been sleeping in the car the entire trip) is wired and wants to play.  So if we stop half way there, we avoid all the pains it causes.  Also, to keep her awake during the trip, Kasia’s wonderful Ama and Bupa got her a DVD player for the car so that she could watch movies and DVDs during the drive.  This worked like a charm, and she hardly slept at all during the trip.

Some observations about the drive.  First, Washington D.C. has the worst traffic ever imagined on this planet.  Who would actually want to live in such a place?  Now at least I know why all politicians are crazy.  It’s because they probably sit in that idiotic traffic every day.  All total, it put up three hours behind on our first day.  Whereas we should have made it somewhere near Indiana on day one, we barely made it to Pittsburg.

Another observation is that I think the reason the traffic is so horrible in D.C. is because everyone is texting on their cell phones while driving.  Now, I kind of expect this when I see some girl in her early 20’s driving in her VW Beetle, but I get really disappointed when some dude in a Ford pick up, or some lady my mom’s age, is too busy texting on their phones that they fail to realize traffic is moving again.  All total, we counted less than ten people in all of D.C. who were not on their cell phones.  I actually made Kara grab her phone and text something just so that we would fit in.

Also, I noticed that the Pennsylvania Turnpike (which is one of the most famous of the turnpikes) is a horrible road that is overpriced and always under construction.  I also noticed that every time Kara drives, it immediately starts to rain/snow/hail, or the rapture begins.  Because of this, I think it’s best if maybe I just drive from now on.

And lastly, I noticed that there are far too few gas stations on the Ohio turnpike.  This led us to almost run out of gas in the middle of nowhere.  It was on day two of our drive, and after all the traffic we encountered on day one, we were so thankful to have nothing but open road ahead of us.  We were making great time and Kasia was just about to fall asleep in the back.  We had just over a quarter tank of gas left (about 120 miles worth) as we passed a gas station.  The sign said it was the last one in Ohio.  Not a problem, we thought.  We’re making great time, we’ve got plenty of gas, we’ll just fill up at the next one.  Well, we kept driving, and driving.  I kept looking at the gas gauge getting lower and lower.  Kara kept saying that I was worrying for nothing.  Then the light popped up saying that we were low on gas.  No problem.  The next gas plaza was in 24 miles… and according to our trip computer, we had 32 miles of gas left.  Then we hit the toll plaza and came to dead stop.  Eventually we crawled out of there, and saw a gas station next to a Burger King.  Awesome!  Sadly, it was closed. 

The gas plaza was now 12 miles away.  We had 15 miles worth of gas left.  We were in the middle of nowhere.  I mean, if there was a farmhouse a mile away, we were lucky.  But we kept limping along.  Finally, after a lot of sweating (because we had to turn the AC off) we rolled up to the gas pump.  They were charging 50 cents a gallon more than the last gas station (total gouging) but we made it.  With three miles left, we made it. 

I have since decided that Ohio and their turnpike both stink.  I will avoid them as much as I can in the future.

Oh, and we did eventually make it to Chicago.  We suffered through Chicago traffic, but it was not nearly as bad as Washington D.C.