Christmas 2008

Well it looks like the Christmas season has arrived yet again. We decorated the house yesterday with the few decorations we have. We are very grateful for the decorations Dani gave to us before moving out to Denver. That's pretty much all we had. Over the break Sara's parents let us use their fake tree. I once swore I would never have a fake tree but alas it sits in our living room. It was weird setting it up and not smelling pine (or getting pine sap all over your hands). But the tree worked wonderfully. At first it wasn't very sturdy. I thought about flinging more scrunchies on the ceiling and then tying a rope onto the scrunchies then onto the tree to make it more secure -- but I had doubts about the integrity of the rope. So the we found this 'spare part' that we discovered is not so spare and we put that on the stand and the tree became really sturdy. It's a little short so we put it on this big present to make it taller (and so we could fit more loot under there).

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We also had some white lights left over so we tacked it to the wall with thumbtacks and it looks pretty shnazzy. I also found a power outlet timer so we hooked both the cords up to that so we don't even have to worry about turning lights on and off. So, around here Christmas starts at 6:45 AM and ends at 11:00 PM. (Anytime between then is St. Patrick's day as far as I'm concerned.)

Sara has an extremely nasty cold. She is down for the count! She tosses and turns all night and coughs and sniffles all day. Our cold medicine drugs are useless against it. Hopefully it will go away before finals. Plus -she is not the only one who ends up losing sleep.

Our dishwasher has been having problems. Namely the dishes are not getting cleaned. It's really old and crappy to begin with so I figured it was about to bite the dust but then I got looking closer at the water-shooter at the bottom and discovered pieces of glass..... glass!, plastic, and candy wrappers in the holes in the shooter. So I got to work and tried to pull them out with pliers, tweezers, fingers but nothing worked so I resorted to breaking the glass into powder and then I would turn it on and blast it out. (The real problem is I couldn't get the shooter to come off the thing it's mounted to.) At the last minute I had my good buddy Jon come over and look at it. He looked at it for 2 seconds, turned this, lifted that, and vuala! the shooter came off and we got the glass out like a dream. And this is what came out.

I pulled the big piece of glass out from underneath the shooter but everything else came out of the actual shooter-arm. It seems to work considerably better now. We had some problems with our glasses breaking in there but had no idea what it was doing to the dishwasher. At least we got it out now.

And it looks like we won't be having a second honeymoon in rock springs. The company I do drafting work for out there hasn't got word on whether they got their bid for the new project. Even if they did get it by say next week they wouldn't have enough time to get the drawings setup so I could draw them before I go back to school. Too bad so sad.

Dead week

It's been some time since I last posted. We are still alive - just barely. School is working us over. We spend almost all our time between school or work or homework. We live for the weekends. And then they are over too soon. Or we end up just sleeping through them (see Frank & Amy's blog). The big news around here is that Sara went to the instacare the other day. She cut her wrist really deep on a piece of glass and had to get stitches. It is healing really well and she will get them out tomorrow. I wasn't here when it happened so I didn't see it. Sara had also lost her phone so she couldn't call me. She gets them out tomorrow and has a new phone now. My classes are killing me. Aside from the time we got to spend with Frank and Amy for conference, I was trying to figure out a design problem for one of my classes. I never figured it out. I ended up just giving up and turning what I had in hoping to get some partial credit. This class is the advanced version of a class I took last Fall and I did really well in it and I enjoyed the material. Now I am just hoping to get a C out of the class. I can continue on in my degree with a D. I'd lose my scholarship either way. Very stressful.

A month or so ago I had a couple minutes and fixed our dishwasher. The supports for the door are weak or just broken so it hangs down low like this.

So I got some 100 lb test wire and rigged it as shown. I have to admit I'm pretty impressed with my work. The problem now is that when you shut the door the wires stick out. But there are no sharp edges that will cut you, just the coiled wire. We figure it was worth it.

And I realized that we don't have a picture on the blog of one of the selling points of this apartment -- the toilet! Or as I like to call it 'The Throne'. I don't think any explanation outside this picture is necessary.

You feel like a little kid again because you feet dangle when you're on it.

Other than that , I did end up going hunting last weekend with our cousin Andrew but we didn't see anything. I might go this Friday but I'm not sure. It's hard for me to do homework on Fridays (for the full day anyway). I'm just so burnt out by then that all I want to do is sleep or do anything else but homework. This week is 'dead week' in school. Next week I have a test in all my classes and I would bet it's the same for Sara. Then...... Deer Huntin'