We took Uberbike out on her maiden voyage this evening in search of ice cream. Apart from some wobbling on startup and an occasional wander brought on by her top-heavy orientation, the bike and new seat did very well. Finn seemed to enjoy her vantage point from the rear, and tolerated her new helmet better than I’d hoped. Plus, there was ice cream!
Wow, what a busy weekend. I feel, this morning, like somebody beat me up with a baseball bat. That’s not to say it wasn’t a great weekend—in fact, it was fantastic. Saturday was our sixth wedding anniversary, and in a rare display of forward thinking, I had a day of fun planned for my bride. Finn and I woke at our usual time, went out on a hike for food, and then returned home to Mama to share breakfast. We then spent some family time in the backyard working in the garden and assembling our new adirondack chairs before Aunt Christi arrived to take over babycare duties.
Jen and I then drove out to Lisbon to have some tasty lunch at the Towne Grill (fantastic smoked barbecue and sweet potato fries, YUM) before exploring Sun Nurseries for landscaping and gardening ideas. You may laugh at our romantic idea of alone time, but it was some of the best time I’ve spent alone with her in ages. It’s also nice to carry on a conversation without interruption for more than five minutes.
In the late afternoon, we had dinner reservations downtown at Cinghale, Cindy Wolf’s newest restaurant, which is billed as authentic country-style Italian and feels open and friendly inside. Taking the opportunity to dress up like adults, we ordered cocktails, selected from the Presto Fizzo menu and had a sommelier pair a light chianti for the meal. Everything was superb, from the service to the food, and if you go, we recommend the duck.
After dinner, we had tickets to an evening with Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert at the Hippodrome theater, where we sat in an audience filled with adoring foodies and listened to the two chefs talk about food, the restaurant business, fame, and famous people. I liked Bourdain before—I’ve caught his show a couple of times over the years—but having heard him talk I think we may seek his programs a bit more in the future. (I have a general dislike for cooking shows, mainly because I can’t taste the food myself, but I like the format of No Reservations, which is a mixture of essay, travelogue, and restaurant review).
After the show we walked through the lobby, where tables were arranged with all manner of different food for tasting; as it was only 10PM, we got a drink at the bar and sampled some chocolate before meeting up with some new acquaintances of Jen’s from her yoga class. It was about this time that a woman stopped over to check our wrists for armbands… apparently there was a more expensive ticket offered which included the tasting and a meet-and-greet with the chefs that we were not invited to, so she bounced us! I guess there’s nothing like a little lawbreaking to spice up an anniversary.
Sunday morning I cruised over the Bay Bridge to wrench on trucks with Mr. Scout, who is so tantalizingly close to being finished with his project he can taste it. During the course of the afternoon, we got the passenger’s door hardware completely installed (the driver’s side regulator was broken), chased down a bad wire in the temperature gauge, mounted the license plate holder and light, mounted the Tuffy console, and a myriad of other small things I can’t remember. We even fired it up and took it for a brief spin down the block, which was fantastic! He plied us with delicious tuna steaks and homebrew, but I somehow dragged myself away to boogie home in time for the LOST finale.
Overall, I was happy with the way they wrapped things up. I don’t share the hate some people have expressed for the final church theme, and I liked how they explained the flash-sideways construct in relation to the whole mythos of the show. Each of the sideways awakenings were handled pretty well (Juliet/Sawyer was really good, as well as Claire/Charlie), and I was happy to see characters from the first seasons come back one last time. The final sequence was good too; I liked how Vincent came back to be with Jack at the very end to close the circle. It’s not often I invest heavily in a TV program, and I’ve had my moments of doubt with LOST over the years, but I’m sad to see this one end.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Our neighbor is a real nice fellow, and his driveway faces our backyard, so we usually see him at least once during the weekend—usually as we’re humping bags of mulch or dragging hose from one end of the yard to the other. Saturday afternoon he flagged me down as I was mowing the lawn and asked me if I was a “fixer”. When I asked him to elaborate, he asked me if I like to fix things. I pointed back at our house and said, “Well, if the house counts, then yes.”
He pulled a huge green bicycle out of his shed and asked me if I could fix it, and if so, would I like to have it. I took one look and fell in love.
It’s a two-seater Columbia tandem that’s at least forty years old, if not more. When I guided it onto our back lawn, it was covered in dust, grease, bird droppings, and a light coating of surface rust that begged for a scrubbing with some brillo. He’d mentioned it had problems shifting, and that the front chain had a tendency to drop off the sprocket, so they’d laid it up in the shed, and there it sat.
Sunday afternoon I gave it a quick scrubbing with some auto detergent and a shoprag after airing up the tires. The dust came off quickly, and most of the rust scrubbed off with a little more work, so steel wool should shine up the chrome almost immediately. I tightened up the chain tensioner at the bottom, returned the front chain to the sprocket, oiled the running gear, adjusted the brakes, and took her out for a quick spin on a flat stretch of road across the street. Like butter! It shifted through the gears effortlessly, and the front brakes gripped almost immediately. The rear brake is a setup I’ve never seen before, and it took a minute to recognize it for what it was: a big CNC’d drum.
Jen came outside after changing into some warmer gear, and the two of us took it for a spin around the block. Riding/driving a tandem takes some getting used to, and we developed an alarming wobble early on until we got our pedal synchronization down. The other major issue is that of mass and speed: the bike itself weighs a ton, and with the two of us onboard it takes a lot of effort to slow down. So some upgraded brakes are in order. As is a basket for the front handlebars, and a child seat off the back fender for Finn. I have a vision of the three of us pedaling down into town to the Farmer’s Market on the weekends for vegetables, bread, and other goodies, and it makes me smile.
We here at the Lockardugan compound like to pack a lot of stuff in on the weekends. It’s not unusual to have a couple of trips planned, some kind of home project involving gas-powerd or rented machinery, at least one dinner with friends, a grocery run, and visitors to the house—which then requires a housecleaning—all packed into two days’ time. This past weekend was no exception, and because we had Grandma and Aunt R. coming in from out of town, we decided to celebrate by spending Friday getting our taxes done!
For most people, this yearly routine simply requires an hour with a copy of TurboTax and a cold beer, but because at least one of us has always been self-employed, we (wisely) seek professional help. This year I was a little nervous based on my spreadsheets, but it turned out that we’re in pretty decent shape, which is a huge relief. Huge enough, in fact, that we can finally exhale and get a few things done around here, including some preliminary work on the side porch.
In the meantime, we had a fantastic visit with aforementioned family. Finn was a little unsure at first but warmed right up to Grandma, who has been twitching for some baby time since we left her driveway in December, and she showed off her talking, running, reading, and stairclimbing skills all weekend.
And while Aunt R. was here, I took the opportunity to shanghai her into helping us till the garden—lifting a rented tiller is a two-person job, but not for two people and a toddler—move compost, and pull a water pump from the Scout. She was good-natured about getting mud and antifreeze and crud from the floor of the garage on her jeans, and so we made sure to reward with a diner of shish kebab and homemade blueberry pie. Inside, Grandma got some long awaited hours of one-on-one Finley time, and at the end of the day I don’t know who went to sleep tireder.
Sunday we bid goodbye to the family and took the girl off to her swimming lesson, and to her credit she braved the cold water very well. So well, in fact, that she didn’t cry once! She enjoyed splashing, swimming, floating on her back, and even having her head dunked several times underwater. When we got home she was so whupped she slept for three and a half hours, allowing us to get some work done for a friend.
I always get bummed out when family leaves town. At one point Sunday afternoon, I asked Jen if it would be ok for me to go wake up Finn just to give her a hug, but we quickly agreed that might be a bad idea.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
So, our post-snowpocalypse weekend was quiet, productive, and fun, and not necessarily in that order. I went into the office on Friday to clean some things up, and got a good quiet day to work on a new homepage concept for work, which went very well. I also packed up my iMac and brought it home to downgrade back to OS 10.5 from Snow Leopard; our work server (some sort of snap server running a Linux variant) and Snow Leopard weren’t seeing eye to eye on permissions so I couldn’t actually save files remotely.
Saturday the girl got me up super-early and we enjoyed a quiet breakfast together. After Mama joined us, it was off to the grocery store to restock for the next promised snowstorm. We actually had a bunch of food left over from the first, but we felt it would be prudent to replenish in case we had to go all Donner Party on the cats. So: organic market, discount store, Trader Joe’s, grocery store, then home for a nap. After unloading, I spent the afternoon in the driveway with a shovel to widen the lanes, and seeing my labors, our neighbor took pity on me, came outside with his snowblower, and helped me clear a lane all the way back to the garage. Then, I showed the Jeep off to an old work friend, who is keenly interested in buying it from us, which is awesome. We’re going to have it checked out by an independent mechanic and then settle on a fair price in a couple of weeks, but for now I’m hanging onto it until the snow stops flying. Then it was back onto the front porch roof to shove 2′ of drifted snow off into the bushes before it dropped through the ceiling into the new office. Sunday evening we took advantage of Netflix’s lame selection of on-demand movies to watch The International, which was interesting if only in its faithful recreation and subsequent destruction of the Guggenheim Museum.
Sunday Finn and I got up early again, and after we had some breakfast she helped me make a valentine, cook breakfast, and deliver it to Mama in bed. Then she got her pretty holiday outfit on and we did what everyone else does on February 14th: We went shoe shopping! The girl loved to wander the aisles of the DSW and make friends with everyone she saw—I don’t know how two misanthropes like us could have spawned this child; she has no shyness at all. Between shifts as goalie and chaperone, Mama found a new pair of sneakers and slippers, and I found a cheap pair of lowtop sneakers to replace my dead Chuck Taylors. Then we stayed out for some lunch and let the girl nibble on our burritos while she was making eyes at the little boy a few tables down. After a week being cooped up inside, it sure felt great to get out of the house, but we had to return to the safety of the quiet, warm crib for a nap.
In the afternoon, taking advantage of a little Finn downtime, I ran out to the garage and tightened up the shroud on the Scout. Long story short, she’s running again, and I pulled her out of the garage! I wrote up more details over here, but this is a huge relief and makes me very happy. I have to do further testing to see if the overheating issue has been solved, but this is a long overdue step forward.
After Finn woke up, we had plans to take her to the pet store at the Mall to play with some puppies, but we found that they close very early on Sunday nights. She was not happy about the situation, but tolerated our singing the A-B-C song long enough to get home for some dinner, and then it was off to bed.
Yep, that’s right. That right there is our new babyhauling chariot. That’s sixteen months of waiting and saving and cursing silently as we hoisted poor Finn into the gaping maw of the Jeep, praying we wouldn’t blow a disc or pull a muscle while simultaneously twisting, stretching, and lifting her into a rear-facing carseat. Now we’ve got four doors,bitches! Four doors and more airbags than a political convention. We waited and watched and saved and compared and test-drove, and when it was time to move, we marched on that Carmax faster than ants at a picnic.
Actually, I bought Jen and I some lunch first. But then we marched into the showroom with a printout in hand, featuring that pretty silver car, with low miles and a stick shift, and said, “This one.” Arthur, our salesman, really didn’t have to do much other than hand us the keys and take a siesta in the back seat. He knew we were there to party. He was professionally mortified, however, when we pointed out the red Sharpie drawings on the back of the C-pillar plastic, and he had their service guys remove it as soon as we finished the test drive.
Did I mention this thing has a table in the back? A fucking table. It’s the cover to the rear well. It’s got legs that pop down, and you can pull it out and use it for tailgating selling lemonade.
When I told Arthur we were paying with a check, he didn’t blink an eye; he just said, “Ok,” and tried to ignore my shaky hand as I wrote out one of the biggest dollar amounts I’ve ever spent (Yes, the down payment on this house was orders of magnitude more expensive, but that was all done by the real estate people, and all I did was sign a paper that said “move this money there.”) It sure did feel good to have done that at least once in my life.
So, power everything, a sunroof, cruise control, 6-disc CD changer (?!?) and enough room in back to comfortably hold a carseat with the LATCH system and not bungee cords. The seats fold and tumble down into a space the size of a deck of cards, unlike the Jeep’s mattress-like bench, which only folds when stood upon. And a stick! It’s not like the stick in the Saturn, which has a clunky, open American feel to it, or the Scout, which is like driving, well, a truck. This has the Honda-style stick which feels miniaturized somehow, and on a spring: The distance between 1st, 3rd and 5th is about a quarter-inch, so one has to be careful not to accidentally downshift when looking for fifth gear merging into traffic. At least the sweet spot is larger than my last Honda. It will take some getting used to, but it’s the kind of getting used to I’m prepared to do for the next 150,000 miles.
Well, Finn’s second snow has been a righteous one. Mama stocked up on supplies, so we’re waiting out the end of the storm with black bean soup, fresh cornbread and butterscotch brownies, a warm fire, the latest Harry Potter movie, and plenty of cold beer. Page me when the roads are clear—I’m not coming out.
I’m back at work after a lovely four-day weekend with my ladies, where we didn’t go far from the homestead but got a lot of important things accomplished:
- Drained and cleaned one of the water barrels
- Moved the remaining container vegetables inside the greenhouse
- Took Jen in her inaugural first trip in the Scout
- Spent money at the Home Depot
- Mowed and edged the lawn (again, a three-week lapse)
- Mulched the flowerbeds
- Patched the side of the garage where critters have been entering and making nests
- Cleaned up the backside of the garage (moved large auto parts into the eaves)
- Brought in the lawn furniture
- Moved our brickpile from the driveway to under the porch deck
- Fixed the tailgate latch on the Scout
- Took the girl for a 1.5 hour hike with Mama
- Removed one of the legacy phone jacks in the dining room
- Battled an angry wasp infestation under the ledge of Finn’s front window (more on that story from Mama)
- Cleaned the front gutters
- Covered two open outlets upstairs
- Sprayed a radiator cover and the bifold doors to the pantry with two coats of bright white trim paint
- Finished trimming and caulking the new iceroom window in preparation for paint
- Started wrangling the data cables in the basement into one group and adding them to a punchdown block
- Fired up the furnace for the first time this fall
- Looked for used radiator covers at Second Chance (no luck)
- Cleaned the first floor of the house
- Picked apples and pumpkins with Finn and Mama
And just for the record, those are the best apples I’ve ever eaten.