Christmas 2 Random

Anyway

Seems like a lot goes on, doesn't it??? Yesterday I had it in my mind to change the master cylinder on the Maverick, as it seems to have developed a leak past the seal. I've been considering various destinations for this coming Summer vacation, and they were having the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure show... down in LONG BEACH!!! So, I was thinking that if I got through the master cylinder job I might go down and check that out.

As plans often change, my wife wanted go go to the Golden Star restaurant in Long Beach for breakfast. It had been a while, and sounded pretty good, so instead of wrenching on the car, we headed there instead, then to the travel show after.

My younger boy was going on quite a while about My Little Ponies. I had to come up with my OC, original character, and I came up with Apple Core, a Pegasus-Unicorn hybrid who launches apple cores at other ponies from his horn. Today I did the drawing & spent entirely too long modifying it in PaintShop Pro.

On the way between those destinations, they had several streets to the West blocked off. Found out, on the news that evening, they were having the MLK day parade. The parade looked pretty ghetto. MLK would have been proud.

For the most part, I found the travel show to be a bust and a waste of money. Did, however, discover that for driving into and out of Canada, you can get by with a Country of origin drivers license or some such instead of having to have a passport, so this may open up a possibility...

A few shots of the final 2011 Christmas celebration with my parents, or the Best Christmas Ever. My older boy got a gorgeous acoustic guitar, and the younger got an AirHogs Hawk Eye RC airplane. I 'shopped my arm out of the picture of it.

Funny how they have the MLK day parade on the Saturday before. Is that for the people who would like to attend, but actually have jobs where they have to work on Monday??? Like everyone who doesn't work for a bank or government???

Discovered something quite interesting while checking flight and lodging prices. From here, it costs very nearly the same to fly and stay in Oahu, Hawaii, as it does to fly and stay in Iceland!!! Mind blown!!! Iceland hadn't really been on my travel radar in any serious fashion, but now it really is!!!

I didn't get a chance to finish this post off the day I started it, so some of the references to yesterday and such aren't going to come out exactly right, unless you time travel with me.

The second to the last picture is my mom's ICD implant. Funny thing, all the pictures I took of her showing it off, she's got her eyes closed in. It seems to be suiting her well, but as you can see, it's fairly prominent on her. The heart medicine they've got her on makes her "woozy", but she's getting her strength back, walking around the neighborhood and the park and stuff. The burn on her leg is getting better, but it remains a pretty serious burn. Third degree, it was.

Today I wore a shirt I got from my parents for Christmas for the first time. It's a tie-dye look, but with incredibly vivid colors, and a picture on the front of a smurf (Brainy) sitting on top of a bunch of mushrooms with spots & stars whirling around his head. I call him mind expandy smurf. It got a lot of comments, somewhere around 18, and everyone really liked it.

As always, I'm sure I'm leaving out more than I can remember.

Oh yea, the second picture scan!!! It's just a piece of paper I found with some weird doodles on it.

DropShip Like it's Hot!!!

I had meant to include this one in last night's post, even to the point of expressly posing these pictures before I did, but then completely spaced. That's OK, give me a chance to get a jump on starting this year off. Besides, I think the last post had plenty going on.

This was one of the items high on my younger boys' wish list, the Mega Bloks UNSC Pelican Dropship from the Halo series. Not only is it pretty massive, it's pretty cool and pretty detailed.

Of course, I ended up being the one doing most of the construction. Lego does a much better job of organizing the parts, and much of the assembly process was akin to a jigsaw puzzle where you spend more time searching for the right piece than doing the assembly.

Unfortunately, I was just getting the sick when we started. Went for an hour or so, and my headache became unbearable. The ticking of the animated clock decoration on the Christmas tree and my wife's application of Rapture perfume were both exacerbating this condition. I showered off, then soaked in a hot tub of water, then went to bed for several hours. Woke up in the middle of the night and did a little more, then went back to bed.

Did a lot more the next day, and wrapped it up on the third. By that point I'd gotten a clue and was building both sides of mirror image parts, that worked out much better.

In other news, yesterday got a shipment of things I'd ordered from Focal Price for Christmas. Didn't think I'd get it in time, and I was right, but that's OK, everyone liked their swag. Bought lasers for all the guys, a green one for the youngest (very intense beam, and it goes through the batteries), a purple one for myself, and a red one for the first born. The red isn't too exciting, I know, but it has a second button that gives the presser an electric shock. Got more headphones for the older, as he seems to go through them. Got an MP3 player for the younger boy, he'd been wanting one, and it seems to be pretty nice and fairly rich featured. Found a nice watch for my wife. Focal Price has some great deals and free shipping from Hong Kong. I've already thought of another order I need to place with them!!!

Maybe This Year Will Be Better Than the Last

SO much to blog!!! I keep thinking I'll do better, but there's always something else, it seems. Oh well, it is the way of life.

Welcome to my year end wrap up!!! If I finish before 12 tonight, I'll have one more in for 2011!!! I'll go over a little of this & that interspersed with the pictures from this year's Christmas.

Completely unrelated thought, know how some stores (most, I would estimate) shun using the actual word "Christmas" in any of their advertisements and promotions??? Perhaps all us consumers should thusly shun doing any of our actual Christmas shopping at their establishments...

I like the way my son caught my wife giving me the sideways eyes in the first shot.

I think I did all my Christmas shopping online this year...

Bought our cat a catnip apple for Christmas. It's always lost. He never tells where it's at, if he knows.

Seems like work was busy all year. Goodie day came and went, and our department didn't do the T-shirt exchange that we usually do. Kept me from having to find one for a co-worker, usually with only a week or so of shopping time. Gravy day elicited a roar of approval from packing when it was announced to them, moments before our department. Biggest one I've ever had, bigger than everyone was thinking it was going to be, much to our delight. Not too far below the amount it was the one year prior to my arrival that the employees ended up shutting down the local branch of the bank the checks were drawn on because they ran out of cash!!! Signs so far tend to indicate this coming year will be at least as good!!!

Too much zoom in the shot of my wife getting the DVD set of Dexter season 5, boy. Actually, it came out a pretty good effect, though!!!

Now, to get on to non-Christmas related news, and in relation to the post title... Two weeks ago today I was actually up fairly early for a Saturday, when I got a call from my dad. He found my mom keeled over & unresponsive when he got up. She was already on her way to the hospital, and he was heading over.

They managed to bring her around, and the thing everyone (including myself) goes to is a stroke, so that was what they were treating her like. Turned out not to be the case. Arrhythmia and cardiac arrest was what was actually going on. Of course, we visited her that day, but she was heavily sedated and had, among many others, a tube down her throat. Somewhere between 13 and 30 times they've had to defibrillate her to get her going again. THEN she gets infected where they had the IV inserted in her hand, so it was later before they could implant the ICD... Pretty impressive device, they're able to externally adjust it, which they had to do a couple times in the next days. She seems to finally be in fairly good shape.

One bad thing, though, there's been illness within my household, so we haven't been able to visit much. I've called my dad most every day, and my mom several times also. My dad's been there every day, of course. Best Christmas ever, he says. I agree. My oldest sister has been there a lot, too, which is also a good thing.

I'm sure I could say much more, but don't want this post to be nothing but. I think I've covered most of the salient points. Oh, a little insult to injury, she went out with her leg on the little electric heater. Looks nasty, but it's healing up. Oh, another one, one of her rooms at the hospital got flooded out by the toilet. My dad was the one who discovered the extent of that one.

Got my boys a night vision viewer with video capabilities. It's pretty sweet, for the money I paid. I think they managed to delete the one pretty hilaras video of the older boy spooking the younger by coming forth from the darkness.

Massive windstorm last month. Knocked out power for something like four days and blew a sizable branch off the tree, narrowly missing the Falcon. My wife finally finished the book she was working on for a year or more. Had to use watches and phones to wake up. It was an adventure. I was very glad we have a gas heater.

I don't think I saw a single movie in the past year, with the exception of the documentary "Born to be Wild" when we were vacationing in San Diego at the Science Center's domed IMAX theater, and that was included with admission. It's about orphaned orangutans and elephants and the people who rescue them. It was narrated by Morgan Freeman, which was pretty epic. The movie was pretty decent, but you could tell it wasn't designed to be projected onto a dome, it didn't come out right around the edges. Much like facial piercings, I found that to be... distracting. They had another movie coming on after that one that I'd wished I'd opted for instead about storm chasers (which may have been the title of the movie, as well).

The couple of pretty good books I got in this year were one we'd got from my mom, John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany". Had that for a long time before I got to reading it. My wife started on it, but found it too dark. Got Stephen King's 11/22/63 when it came out, and went through that in fairly short order. It ended, I though, surprisingly upbeat for a King novel. I certainly enjoyed it. I'm currently going through Douglas Adams' HG2G books. I'd long ago gone through at least the first three (and in the middle of the third is where I currently at) but know I never made it through the final one. A couple years back, I think it was, I bought the five in one ultimate one for my first born, and that's the one I'm currently in. The one the seller shipped at first was a collectors edition with photos and such, but not all five books. They made it right, though.

Hey, it's already 2012 on the Eastside!!! Happy New Year!!!

Car news. The last week my wife was working this year, the traitorous starter on Janice went out again, less than three month later. Do NOT buy your starters from Auto Zone, their rebuilders suck. That was what I was going to be doing the weekend my mom went down, so that was delayed. Oh yea, we had been planning on doing the family Christmas the following Monday (I had it off, along with the Tuesday after Christmas as my last personal days) so needless to say that has yet to happen.

The Wednesday following THAT, Baby started showing some problems... First sign was she stalled right after starting up!!! That never happens... Had to two-foot her when coming to a stop and such. Checked forums and it sounded like (along with a previous symptom I'd noticed) a bad coolant temperature sensor. Bought a new one, as well as a fresh set of plugs and wires, the next day. When I went to install it, made the mistake of giving it one too many cranks tightening it down and snapped it off down in the hole.

Didn't want to try and get it out in such an awkward area, so I JB welded it back together. That seems to be doing fine, and it seemed to be working fine until it warmed up, then it was worse than before!!! Limped her home again, and popped the hood and heard what sounded like a major vacuum leak. Turns out both ends of the PCV hose has elbows that were both cracked open. Of course, no one makes anything like that, so I've fabricated a lengthy section of hose and an elbow from one of Janices' repairs. So far it seems fine, but I've yet to drive her any distance. At this rate, that won't happen this year!!!

Counting Crows' "A Long December", in case you didn't get the title reference!!!

And, finally, a little Christmas something for all you that read or happen across my low traffic blog, a shot of my wife's boobs (or at least cleavage) in her Christmas Victoria's Secret push-up bra and pajamas!!!

And to all a good night!!!

Pepper Jack!!!

First time in a while that I've made the time to do some artwork on one of my cups. This one may require a bit of explanation...

At work, there's several different way to get a difficult order. You could get a cut, a big count, something bulky, or something heavy. At some point a month or two back, one of the guys started to announce when he'd get a heavy order by announcing something to the effect of "I got a 122 pounder... With cheese!!!" Kinda like a quarter pounder with cheese, is the idea, if you didn't get that.

So, that became a thing, where a few of the guys would say that. I decided I was going to start calling out all different types of cheese whenever I'd get a bad order. Limburger!!! Gouda!!! Deep fried mozzarella (I particularly liked the way that one rolls off the tongue..)!!!

Then I threw out "Pepper Jack!!!" That struck a chord!!! A play on the term "jacked", and now whenever some of us would get a bad order, we'll say, "I got pepper jacked!!!"

One day I'm working on one of the printers where you're likely to get a difficult order, and I penned this on my cup. Several people got it right off, but some aren't quite clear on what was going on. A couple of people wondered, "what, no funfetti cake???" No, no, I love that stuff. A couple of people thought it had something to do with the Green Bay Packers. Ha ha, closer but no. I'd have used my highlighter and yellowed it some for that.

I used this cup for more than a week.

I like the way the picture I took of it came out, with the shadow and light. This is on the end table I have next to my recliner now, since my older has moved a new desk into the corner here. He's got the best seat in the house, I think.

The connotation attached to pepper jack is unfortunate. I rather like pepper jack.

Gotta Find a Geekier Neighborhood...

So last Monday was Halloween. As we often do, we went to my parents' neighborhood to trick or treat, as it's much flatter lands with sidewalks there.

First up is the youngest. He changed his costume idea from Assassin's Creed to Minecraft. The diamond sword was the trickiest part of the costume to come up with. The rest of the costume was just getting the boxes cut to shape and colored. One other kid recognized it for what it was supposed to be.

Next up is my older boy. His original idea was to be a Halloween decoration. I thought that'd be great, to get a large circle, cut a hole in the middle and put a tablecloth on it and stick his head through the middle. He'd changed it to Discorda from My Little Pony, but finally went with Dr. Who. Bow tie, and a light stick fashioned into a sonic screwdriver, and he was set. He'd trick or treat, then tell people he was the doctor. Only one customer had the proper response, "Dr. who?" To which he responds, "Precisely!!!" I don't know if anyone got it.

For my own, I already had a mask (don't know where it came from or how long we've had it, but it's been a decoration in our basement for years) and was easily able to fashion a mohawk from the leftover foam I'd made the boy's diamond sword from. Used a piece of cardboard to make the name tag, and my wife had some beads to complete the look, and I was Geoff from Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show!!! A few people called me by name, but I'm not sure if I was recognized for the costume or the name tag. Balls!!!

Yep, definitely have to find a geekier neighborhood to get the references!!!

More Rage (At Work)

Another true story of real life adventures made into a Rage Comic. This time from my work life. Funny how you get into something like the Rage Comics, and suddenly you filter all your experiences through that filter!!! Once again, click on the image & hopefully it'll enlarge enough to be readable.

The Catalina Zip Line

What is widely regarded as the high point of our vacation this year was the Catalina Eco Tours Zip Line.







It was over $100 a person, but it's 5 different lines on the course, and some of the best scenery, so it's money well spent!!!






The younger boy didn't meet the weight requirement to go solo, so him & I went tandem. I was a bit concerned that he'd be too apprehensive, but he was the first to step up on more than one of the courses.



In the group shot, you can see the Casino in the background.





















The last shot is where the course ends up, the beautiful Descanto Beach Club. Five Stars!!!

Night of the Coyotes

Did I ever post here that my son got himself a pet chicken??? I don't know that I have, but he's had her since before his last birthday (actually, he bought her as a chick and she was pretty well full grown by then) and I may have a picture of her in that post.


Anyway, I made this Rage Comic up about the true story of how coyotes came calling one night & how I felt about our encounter afterwards. I've submitted it to that site, but I never even see my submissions on the voting pages, so who knows. I have a feeling the image may come out too small to easily read here, try clicking on it to see it larger!!! Better yet, hold your ctrl key and roll your scroll wheel up.

Zippy!!!

I've got more pics from when we went on the zip line, but I thought I'd post the on ride video that my boy shot. It's not a great video, as he couldn't hold the camera real well, but it gets the point across.



More to follow...

OM NOM NOM Every Day!!!

Here it is, almost a month after our vacation & I haven't posted any follow ups yet!!! Just tonight I finally copied all the pictures off my old camera, which my son has inherited.



One thing he did on a fairly regular basis while we were on vacation was to take pictures of what we ate. Just yesterday I got the charge card statement with almost $700 worth of meal charges on it, and this reminded me. Also, the interwebs were out tonight, so it gave me something to do. Never never NEVER get AT&T for a broadband provider, they SUCK ASS!!!






The first & third shots are of the Awesome Burger from Coyote Joe's right off the main drag in Avalon. It consists of three 1/3 pound angus burgers (LOL spellcheck wants to change angus to anus, hehehe). See his eyes glazed over??? He was running out of steam towards the end, but he triumphed.




The next couple of shots are from Antonio's right on the harbor in Avalon. Oh, it was good!!! Everything over there was rather spendy, but I was never disappointed.



Good thing he was taking pictures, I couldn't remember everything we had... We had a bucket of onion strings for appetizer there.







The next three shots are from the Descanso Beach Club, after we'd done the zip line tour. I'd seen a place right by the Casio that had Nathan's hot dogs, and had been wanting to try, but they turned out to have them there. If I'm not mistaken, we had nachos at four different places!!!



The Descanso Beach Club, it's AMAZING!!! There had been talk of building another five star resort on the property, but for now they've got the zip line there. The rest of the property is five star caliber. One of those places where, when we'd arrived, I kept expecting someone to come up and tell us "Excuse me, I don't believe you belong here".



The last couple of shots are the only mainland shots. This was near to the site of our breakdown, Joe's Crab Shack. Excellent food all around!!!



At our last hotel (actually, it bills itself as a resort, but I couldn't bring myself to type "last resort") the night we got there, they had happy hour going on there, and we were able to get four or five appetizers (more nachos!!!) at half price, probably the best deal on high end food we got the whole trip.

My boy was talking of starting a food blog. I either beat him to it, or have given him a template to copy with this post!!!

The Vacation Where Everything Broke

Back from this year's epic vacation, and it was (for the most part) excellent!!! We spent 4 nights on Catalina Island, two nights in Carlsbad (for the Lego parks) and 3 nights in San Diego. My logic in planning this year's trip was that usually we spend a few thousand just getting where we're going, as well as a day on each end in airports and flying, then spend a lot of the day just playing at the beach. Might as well stay semi-local and spend the extra money on better food & lodging!!! I think this worked out very well!!!




To get the part where everything broke out of the way, I'll lead off with that part. Once we returned from Catalina we were heading down to Carlsbad, and on the way there stopping in Oceanside to pick up these passes I'd gotten, good for admission to dozens of San Diego area attractions. We were travelling in Janice for the trunk space. As we were driving down a side street, the hangers for the muffler gave out and it started dragging!!! I had just replaced the hangers probably only 6 months ago. There was a parking lot right there, so I pulled off into it and stopped. As luck would have it, there was a Auto Club truck there already. Unfortunately, he didn't have any wire to hang it back up with, so we ended up having to get a flat bed out to haul her to a muffler shop. They didn't have the right hangers in stock, and didn't have time to fabricate new ones, so the guy did a very effective job of wiring up the tailpipe.



It was fairly late by the time we got out of there, so we headed back to the same parking lot we'd been towed from. There's a Joe's Crab Shack in that lot, and while waiting there we'd been discussing eating there, so we did. Cracking crabs takes a while!!! Headed out, and went to start the car, and nothing!!! I've seen this before, bad starter in the most inopportune time. Looked for a lug wrench to bang on the starter with, because that's worked before, and discovered that there is none in that car. Good to know before I have a flat!!! Called AAA again, and the guy had a jack handle that fit the bill. Got her fired up, and I'd been on the phone with my parents. They were good enough to let me borrow one of their cars for the remainder of our trip.



Didn't want to shut the car off again, so we drove down to our next hotel, and left the car running while I checked in and unloaded the trunk. Left the rest of the family, and did the night run back north then back. Made for a late night, but better than the other alternatives.



The next day we went to Legoland for the day. Afterwards, we went to the TGIF on the opposite side of the hotel. On the way back, we spotted a bunny rabbit. Of course, the boys are off chasing it. Unbeknownst to the older boy, there was an edge border by one part of the sidewalk, and he went down, hard. His ankle swelled up fairly nice (funny how you don't know how lumpy ankles are until you're inspecting them...) so I got ice and made up an ice pack. Ended up taking him to the Scripps emergency room, for my second late night in a row. I would have posted his X-ray, but I left the CD with those in my parent's car. Not much to see anyway, it wasn't broken, just a sprain. They splinted him up, and gave him a pair of crutches.



That's almost all that broke, if you don't count the rental wheelchair we got for him the next day at the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park. The screws were coming out of the wheel handles, and they'd click on the side. When they found out, though, they refunded the price of the rental, so it's all good.



Other than that, it was great!!! The zip line course in Catalina is the one thing that everyone says was the best part. The older boy & I went parasailing. The younger boy had wanted to go when we were in Hawaii, but we didn't end up having time, so I was doing that mostly for his benefit, but he chickened out.



Didn't make it to the new Lego water park or sea life aquarium, because the boy's foot was bandaged up for the former, and figured we'd see sea life at Sea World when we made it there. On the big breakdown day, we'd been planning on going to a paintball park, but that got scrubbed. The actual San Diego Zoo we missed, too, as well as Belmont Park.

I'll go into more depth-things we actually did!!!-in further posts!!!