Superkids

In third grade, my teacher had an incentive program called superkids. Every time you did well on a homework assignment, or test, you were awarded a superkid certificate. Once you collected ten or so of these things, you could redeem them for a pencil or an eraser.

This program did not work on me.

My birthday occurs right at the beginning of the school year, so each year I received more than enough school supplies for my birthday to last me the entire year. So, each time I got one of these certificates, I saved it. I wondered if possibly I saved up enough, I might be able to redeem it for something amazing by the end of the year. That was a nice thought, but mostly I just didn’t know what to do with them.

The teacher’s policy for handing them out was perhaps a little too liberal, as I ended up with a lot of these certificates.

By the middle of the year, my teacher was getting rather puzzled about why she had to keep making more and more copies of these certificates. This all came to a head one morning when I was pulling out a sheet of paper for a test, and the teacher saw a massive pile of the certificates crammed into my binder. That wasn’t even with the two stacks of them that I was now leaving at home because they were breaking my binders.

“Michael!” she asked. “What are you doing?”

I had something of a frugal nature. I would use the same sheet of paper for multiple assignments until there wasn’t enough room left on the page for anything else before going to another sheet of paper. I really took that whole ‘Reduce Reuse Recycle’ mantra to heart.

At this point, I became the bank of superkids. Whenever the teacher needed to give some out to other students (she didn’t bother giving me anymore), she would come to me and I’d give her a stack of them from my cache. At the end of the year, I gathered up the plenty I still had and gave them all back to her.

I sometimes wonder if she, assuming she’s still teaching, uses that same method. If so, does she still have any of those superkid certificates left over from that year. She certainly had plenty!

Molly

?/?/2000 - 07/29/2008
A great dog, very much loved, very much missed.

Molly

Ryan and Becca

First off, many congratulations to Ryan and Becca. Everyone has said it, but you've truly begun a new life together, and I wish the best for you both. It would take many pages to enumerate the many advantages, both subtle and obvious that committing myself to Julie has done for me. To date, no drawbacks have manifest either. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I'm happy, and I feel very confident that you two will be as well.

The wedding led to an interesting conversation between my wife and myself. Nothing like two friends going through a life altering event for you to reflect on some aspects of your own life. Here's a VERY hypothetical that was fun to play out. Let's say some other girl had an interest in me. She liked me for who I am and wanted to be more than just friends, perhaps even to try to steal me away (like I said, VERY hypothetical). But the fact is, Julie and I have been married for 3 years. Even in that short amount of time, we have both changed drastically to better complement each other. Most, if not all, of the aspects that some other girl might find of interest in me is due in no small part to who I'm with. If I left Julie, I would lose the very influence that caused me to have the behaviors this other girl would like about me. Quite the fun Catch-22. You've also got the violation of trust issue, and a whole heap of other things that just makes the entire scenario impractical. Needless to say, Julie and I are in it for the long haul. It's best for us and the rest of the world.

To say that you will change in a relationship is very true. If it's a close relationship, I think change is far too weak a descriptor. Malcolm Gladwell details this briefly in one of his books. When a person is single, they have to manage every facet of their lives and understand details about anything and everything that could effect them. You must have full understanding about your finances, nutrition, work life, social life, quiet time, etc. When you entire into a full fledged relationship, you get the oppportunity to split those things up. Divide and conquer. Julie has some insight into the finances, but I'm the one that balances the checkbook each week. She's not concerned about what percentage of our spending is going towards household goods and what percentage is going towards dining unless I notice that we're straying from the budget we'd set for ourselves. Conversely, Julie handles planning out meals and preparing them, which is good, because she's a much better cook than I. We both have insight into everything, but not the level of detail that's needed than if we're single. As such, we've got more free time as we're not busy managing absolutely every aspect of our lives.

Nuts, can't come up with a pithy closing line.

I spoke to soon.

Many things, mostly good. More to come later perhaps. For now, must hurry!

Time flies

Events back in March started a chain reaction of events that has only recently begun to subside allowing the concept of free time to enter my thoughts. In fact, I don't have free time, but everyone needs a break now and then.

While in China the judgement processing on the home foreclosure whose auction we'd won finally cleared, thus allowing us to finally close on the house. This pushed our schedule up as we'd been planning to not close until April and now had to find some homeowner's insurance fast. I must admit, it's fun to call up insurance folks who ask you to come in and fill out some paperwork and tell them: "I'm sorry, I can't at the moment as I'm on the other side of the planet, how about you email it to me instead."

The trip to china was eventful, complete with getting sick the night before I flew out, which I'll save for a more disgustingly graphic post at some point later. We got back, closed on the house, moved into the house, proceeded to finish painting, purging old broken appliances, buying swank new appliances and getting them delivered, cleaned, scrubbed, replaced 2 toilets (1 completely on my own!), learned the new area, and finally ran out of energy and money to continue renovations.

During this time, the project at work took a radical shift in direction which required a lot of attention that I didn't necessarily have. Fortunately, they brought in someone with a lot more experience to help me out and between the two of us we managed to keep it together and on schedule.

Julie has started her garden and I've finally mowed my own lawn for the first and second time. The finances have started to stabilize and we have a better understanding of what we're up against regarding this mortgage thing. Our cats continue their dichotomy of peace and chaos, and I managed to go camping for memorial day. Huzzah! I think the world is once again downshifting into a manageable pace!

Funny story

In an effort to come to terms with my being an 'adult', I've attempted to take a more handyman role. I've got a background basic tools, internet access, and enough small problems around me that I often feel up to the task of at least one thing. I also have the advantage of renting at the moment, so serious issues that might arise can be dealt with by calling in the landlord. Admittedly he can take a while to get back to you, but that's an 'adult' risk right?
My first task involved replacing a classic mercury based thermostat with an electronic one where you can preprogram in temperatures for different days and times. This was a complete success.
Next, I replaced the faucet in the sink as one of the handles had gotten broken off. This, also, was a complete success.
By this point I'd begun to ride high on these successes. Perhaps I am an adult after all.
Then came the shower.
Our shower has two problems with it. 1) The hot and cold on the single dial are reversed, so hot water comes out first instead of cold, contrary to both the label and showers in general and 2) it occasionally has a slow leak. We don't pay for our water, so a slow leak wouldn't bother me except for the fact that we do pay to heat the water. Each drip felt like a penny falling down the drain.
At one point my in-laws come for a visit. We, of course, warn them about the shower so they don't have to experience quite the learning curve we did. Towards the end of the trip, my father in-law points out that fixing a problem like this is often quite easy. One can remove the handle with a single screw, and hidden behind it is a dial one turns 180 degrees to reverse the hot and cold feeds, restoring it to the way it should be. This sounds simple enough, so I took it under advisement.
About 3 weeks later, I actually found myself bored in the apartment. My wife was at her Spanish class and I began to hear the dripping again. Thus began my attempt at a hat trick.
The handle came off easily enough, but the dial was not to be found. So, I naturally venture online for some guidance. Sure enough, a handyman site comments that sometimes these showers have a second cap with a little screw between you and the dial, after the handle comes off. With that knowledge in hand, I return to my task, neglecting to notice that I'm on page 2 of the instructions.
Page 1 mentions the importance of first turning off the water.
As I begin to remove the screw, a small trickle of water beads down my hand. I think nothing of it, rationalizing that maybe some water was stuck in pipe between the tub faucet and shower head. Continuing to untwist the screw the water continues to trickle out, but it's so small it's hardly noticeable.
Then I get the screw out.

boom.


Within about a tenth of a second I am completely soaked. The blast of the water has nearly knocked me over and I quickly jump out of the tub. This now geyser of fluid is ejecting what seems like a shower's worth of water 4 times a second, and all through that tiny hole. What's more, it's not spraying it into the tub. We have a fiberglass shower stall with a curved back. The water is hitting that back, slaloming out of the shower, down the bathroom door and onto the floor.
I'll admit, I was a little awed by the sheer volume of water that could be pumped through such a tiny hole. I was tempted to ponder the philosophical meaning of such a thing, but this was no metaphor, and I had to get the damn screw back into it's little hole. Alas, the force of the water made that rather difficult. Plus, if you will recall, it defaults to hot water.
Several moments later, after a multitude of burns and a complete lack of success trying to re-block the water with my little screw, I opt for a new tack. Mostly I adjust the shower curtains to stop the water from shooting out of the tub and throw down all the towels to soak up what water that has begun to pool there. I then sit down for a moment to clear my head and consider my options.
At this point, I've got about 20 minutes before my wife gets back from class and has a bit of a nervous attack, mostly directed at me, for doing something so stupid. I could try to call the landlord, but it'd take me at least 20 minutes to find his number, assuming he'll answer, and assuming he'll get over here, it's safe to say that option will result in several hours of waiting, which would probably drain several great lakes through this tiny hole.
Finally, it dawns on me that I can, if nothing else, use the original handle to twist the water flow over from hot to cold. That way, while I'm still fighting the pressure to get the screw in, at least I'm not scalding myself.
4 tries later and some more swearing, I'm able to twist the knob. This does two wonderful things 1) The water does indeed go from hot to cold and 2) water now flows out the tub faucet. Suddenly the flow out the tiny hole drops to nothing. I race to put the screw back in and reassemble the entire fixture. I then mop up what water remains on the floor and gather up the soaked towels. This done, I collapse into my chair as I hear the front door open. The wife comes in to see me completely exhausted and soaked.
We've opted to live with our hot and cold being reversed. We're moving soon anyway.