Monthly Archives: May 2009

Baseball Game

Eddy got free tickets to see the Akron Aero’s play this past Saturday, because he served on Safety Patrol. Patty did the same thing when she was in the elementary school. To sum up what they do the kids get to school early, put on a bright yellow florescent strap that goes around their waist and shoulder, they also have a badge that goes on it, and they escort other kids across the street. It is a great little pick me up for the kids, but they don’t seem to have anything like it at the middle school.

Eddy’s time to retire came here in the last two weeks of school, because that is when they start to train the 4th graders who will be on Safety Patrol next year. Patty did not really finish the year out, because she had a bit of a problem with waking up on time, but Eddy did, and he does not mind getting to sleep in for the next few weeks. With the weather as nice as it has been he has even rode his bike to school.

I would have taken them to the game, but their Mom came and picked them up for the weekend, so she took them instead. What worked out great is that he got four tickets so Michelle could go too. I guess they had a good time, until about 2 hours in where the Aero’s were losing by a bunch and the kids had enough of baseball for a day. I guess their Mom took pictures, and if I ever get those I’ll go ahead and put them up here.

Contest

I’ve had pretty good luck with contests over the last several years. I won a contest, well technically I don’t suppose I won, but nevertheless I did get a pair of Nike shoes for Michelle. I have not been able to say anything about it, because I wanted it to be a surprise, but at the end of the movie Coraline it says “For Those in the Know: Jerkwad”. None of us knew what it meant, so I went home and did some google searching and found out that it was the word you needed to enter a contest on the official website.

The short story is that we won. I gave the pair of shoes to Michelle today and got a few pictures.

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Picture Editing

I spent some time working on the website. One of the things that you might have noticed is that the font is a bit bigger. I did not believe that the old font size was really all that readable if you have a larger monitor and use a high resolution. I also got some help adjusting some images and made the page about 100 pixels wider to accommodate not only the larger font, but pictures with frames around them. I really think that the pictures stand out now and look neater. I also spent time resizing all the images for thumbnails on the picture pages, because they weren’t loading all that well. I knew that the images were retaining their original size, but for some reason I never remembered long enough to correct that problem.

There are some more changes that I want to make to this theme, but for now I’m quite happy with how it looks. The other changes I plan to make is either removing or at least reducing the size of the orange bar that appears underneath images when you hover your mouse over them, and I would also like to get an image, instead of the current word art, for the title of this website.

I got Shozu to work with my ftp site, so now I can upload pictures when I take them with my phone directly to the ftp, which should make it far more convenient to post pictures that I take on a daily basis of things I see around town.

Patty’s Bike

I got the bike up and running. I did not really “need” a new front tire, but the one that was on there was showing some signs of wear, so I thought it was best just to replace it. I also had to replace the front rim, because the other one was rusted out pretty good. The new chain wasn’t a problem at all to put on. The brakes didn’t end up needing anything more than adjusting. I also got a new plastic piece for the back wheel, since the old one was cracked. I sent Patty out to ride it around to make sure that everything is in good working order.

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Amy and Ken

My sister Becky arranged a family get together to celebrate my sister Amy getting married to Ken. Amy and Ken just got married about a week ago, and since that happened in Texas we were not there. This was our way of meeting Ken and getting together. I didn’t actually attend the event, because unfortunately I came home after the bike auction and fell asleep on the couch. I thought I was only going to take a nap, but I didn’t wake up until after 5. Lucky for me Amy and Ken were driving out this way anyway to see someone so they stopped by.

I haven’t seen Amy in over six years and I had never met Ken before, so it was cool getting a chance to catch up some. I had to get her new name, which I’ve had to try and memorize before when Becky got married. I already had their address. I promised I’d actually try and send letters on the holiday’s, which is something I had been meaning to do, but I’m absolutely horrible about this sort of thing. It was great seeing them both and I hope to see them both again.

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Bike Auction

I went to the city bike auction today. I ended up getting two bikes. One boys bike and one girls bike. They both need some work, which is fine. Neither of these bikes need to be ridable right now, so I have time to assess what I need to do to them and get to work on it. Just from looking them over I can tell I need the brake assembly for the front and the back on both of them, new chains, and a new tire and rim for the one. I will probably find more problems when I get around to taking them apart and trying to fix them, but for right now I think they are certainly worth putting the money into. I will probably need some new tools while I’m at it. It should be a fine adventure.

Last Day

Today is the last day of the Spring semester for the University of Akron. I do not have my grades yet, but I am sure that if I check in on that next week they will all be there. I am really excited to see how I did considering the number of classes I took. I am heading into the Summer semester in another week, so I only get a short break here before I’m heading off to classes again.

Users?

It seems that I lost all the users (people who registered to be able to make comments) so if you could please go ahead and register yourselves again that would be great!

Mowing the Lawn

I finally got out and mowed the lawn with the lawn mower I bought from Sears. It worked like a charm. I can’t find the blower attachment (I think that is what that attachment is called?), because I wanted to use that instead of a bag. I think I left it in Jo’s trunk. My trunk was not big enough when I bought the lawn mower so it is a good thing that I had him along with me when I went.

I did not use the mulching feature of the lawn mower, because honestly I didn’t want to go through mowing twice. It is a good thing I took the easy way out, because it actually started raining shortly after I finished. I did use the front wheel drive feature though, and that made it a little easier. I really only got a lawn mower with front wheel drive so that when I decide to teach Eddy and Patty to use it they can.