Raincharm’s Weblog

When we bought our Prius 5 years ago it was the fanciest car we had ever owned. It has keys that you don’t even need to take out of your pocket to open, get into and drive the car. I have fully adopted this trait. But you don’t have to keep it in your pocket. You can put it anywhere in the front area of the car, and there is even a slot to put it in if you want to.

Because of the proximity feature, we wondered early on if it was possible to lock your keys in the car. But we never formulated an experiment to try and accomplish this goal.

This morning when I went to the car it was unlocked. That happens now and again, somebody forgets to lock the car. When I got to work I got ready to get out of the car, and after opening the door I hit the “lock” button inside the car. That way I don’t have to fish around in my pocket to find the key and hit the “lock” spot. 
But when I closed the door there was a distinctive “unlock” two beeps. So I reached in and hit the lock spot on the key.

When I left work this evening the proximity function was not working. I could not just walk up and be greeted by an openning door. So I hit the unlock spot on the key and it opened up for me. After arriving home and once again locking the car from the inside button the car “unlocked” when I shut the door.

Carl left later that evening and could not find the 2nd key. So he took my keys and left. Much later he called to say he found the 2nd key in the lower cup holder. This solved our initial question. Can you lock the key in the car? Yes, but only if you have another key.

This morning was the BIG race. The Jingle Bell Run. Big as in lots of people. It was actually a very relaxed race as they go. Up early and trying to decide how many layers to put on. I ended up with 5, but 4 for the actual “running.” In the 30’s and no precipitation. For the record I started off running, and finished running. The parts in between, more running than not. Maybe I will actually train for one of these so I can look relaxed and ready to go even further.

The Jingle Bell Runs around the country raise money for the Arthritis Foundation. To honor my Mother-in-Law I wore a Christmas sweater she made several years ago.  It was one-of-a-kind, and fit the theme perfectly.

Jay, Asea, Devany & John

The start was uphill, for several blocks. I did not do any warmup or stretching ahead of time either. (Although we did go with the wave that left 15 minutes before we had originally planned, so that will be my excuse.) I went quite a ways up the hill, but then decided I really needed to not burn out on the first bit, and walk/stretched for a bit, ran for a bit, walked a bit, and then jogged. That is until the 2 lane part of the tunnel, where I could walk as fast as anyone else was moving.

The next part I jogged, and the game of deciding where to run kept me occupied. Moving around walkers and slower?!? runners, deciding on whether to stay on the main pavement (most crowded) the flat shoulder (with a few hubcaps) or in the ditchline (with who knows what). After quite a while I decided to walk for a bit again, and then got into a 100 strides (counting both feet as 1 stride) running and then 50 walking. This seemed to serve me pretty well, and I could have gone longer on the running each time, but rules are rules. There was a block long steep up-hill near the end, just before the 4 block downhill to the finish line. Luckily my 50/100 put me into the walk phase about 1/3 of the way up the hill. And of course, I had to run the last bit. I knew Carl would be along that stretch and had to put on a good show.

Jay's first finish in about 20 years

Now, finally putting together the futon. I think you get what you pay for, and I did not pay too much for this frame. Both of the end pieces say “inside left” on the sticker. Only one of them is correct. Guess which one I chose first. And partway through I found a design flaw. Which I decided to ignore as it was not a fatal flaw. Of course when it was time to put the long pieces (actually 2 short pieces bolted together – hence the smaller than expected box referenced a week or so ago) onto the frame, the incorrect “inside left” made itself known. It was about a 1/2-hour error. Here is the finished product.

The Frame (#2 try)

Trying it on for size

Carl helped a bit on the frame and really helped hefting the futon onto the frame.

I do. For many years we used dial-up, when everyone else was moving to DSL, Broadband, whatever was faster. It was fast at work, so I would do tricky things there, after work, of course. But for the last year we have been connecting to our neighbor’s fast connection. With permission, paying for a bit of it. This was after we bought a laptop that had a wireless card that made it easy.

It, the neighbor’s wi-fi, was not there last night, or this morning. So I unplugged the phone and found the phone plug-in on the computer and was off and running. It is slower, no question, but not as slow as I remember. Then, again, I have been getting lots of little chores done this morning. Hit enter, go empty the recycling. Hit enter, take out the yard-waste. Hit enter, wrap a package. …

So – that is all for now. Will try to figure it out later. Am also remembering to check for voice mails on the home phone every now and again, since it is currently playing second fiddle to the computer.

Cold and Tired are two words that are often seen together.
I think I know why. Just being cold wears me out.
I work inside, but my office is not quite toasty. I have worn gloves at least a few days this week at work. I can type with them on, and it works better than when I am sitting on my hands.

I left a little early to get a shot and buy a Christmas Tree (and wreath) yesterday afternoon. So I took some work home with me to do in the evening. However, I found I was so tired, that by 9 PM I could barely keep my eyes open.

It was not the tree and walking through Candy Cane Lane with two small children that made me cold, I was wearing two jackets and nicely warm. I think it is the never really getting to warm over the majority of the day, when I am inside. And I generally wear a sweater, and yesterday had a scarf on all day as well.

So – in addition to trying to work last night I was going to see how early the Olympic Bus Network site was open. We are going to Cypress Mountain to see Women’s Ski Cross during the Olympics. You have to take a shuttle bus – which is good. You have to buy tickets for the bus, and they are for specific times. Ashlan & I figured out what would be a good time, and I want to make sure I get that time if possible. The bus ticket sales for our event open up on the 11th, today.

Anyway, I just could not make my self stay upright so I pulled a blanket over me on the futon and promptly fell asleep. Promptly at midnight I woke up. Went to try the Bus Network site, and no change. It was not letting me in. So I retired to the warmth of a real bed.

Tried to buy the tickets first thing this morning. Still no luck. Finally followed a link that said when the site would be open (and it is actually in Pacific Time Zone time). So I will be scheduling a break a little bit later this morning.

And speaking of breaks. Funny thing yesterday. After I left work, the Water District sprung a leak. One of the pipes entering the building in an exterior wall of our mud room burst. Apparently the heater in the room had gone on the fritz. But we fixed it yesterday, and then the pipe warmed up and “pop”. So they made an announcement that nobody could use the toilets until it was fixed. A customer at the front counter asked, “Has anyone had called the Water Department?” (‘Ha, ha, ha’) To which our Customer Service Rep said, “Yes, but no one is answering their phone.”  A little work humor (very little). One thing nice about having a field crew that works with water pipes, is that it only them a short while to fix the leak. Of course, what it did point out first was that not everybody knows where our meter and master shut off valve is located. Next staff meeting discussion possibly.

Not ours, at least not yet.
I know the weather in the upper midwest has been frightful.
Around here it has been merely cold. Really cold, for several days in a row, and it doesn’t usually get that cold around here.

So people are not always prepared, or more specifically, their houses are not always prepared. Like disconnecting hoses from hose bibs, possibly covering hose bibs, blowing out irrigation systems, keeping plumbed spaces heated … The list goes on.

The water side of my work got very busy yesterday when the sun started warming up certain pipes that had frozen. You see, when the water freezes in the pipes it expands. This sometimes breaks the pipe, but it is not always apparent that has happened right away. The frozen water is acting like a plug in the pipe. But when the ice thaws, all of the leaky spots come to light. Of course this usually happens when the sun is out, which is when people are at work and school. So mid-afternoon on there may be a flurry of calls asking for help. I wonder if our on-call person got any rest in the evening.

At one point we had the fire department in the office. I think it had to do with ice on ponds and ice on the roads (from broken pipes in houses), but we were telling them about half-built multi-family developments, where the fire sprinkler systems are all tied together. Unfortunately, the un-half built buildings do not have heat, or walls, or anything above the slab. Only exposed pipes with water. To stop the bleeding spraying water we had to turn off the feed to all of the fire systems, the occupied buildings too, not just the non-buildings. So inform everyone you can and hope the developer does the right thing and gets some plumbers/contractors on the line.

At our house, so far so good. The hoses are disconnected, but I did not install the little hose bib houses. Fortunately they are directly off heated areas of the house, and I think our walls may let a little heat slip through.

Anyway – I hope your weather is staying manageable. Kind of rambling, but what is on my mind.

I had planned to do a little training last night to prepare for the Jingle Bell Run. Should take less than an hour overall, portal to portal.

But I had also planned to pick up a last present to ship, finish wrapping the last presents to ship, make sure presents to ship were in appropriately sized boxes, do our 2009 taxes, and eat dinner. Oh, and say more than two words to Carl.

All good intentions. But then did not get off work until 6 (Board meeting). Launched on the store thing – went very well. Home, traffic reasonable and light.(When is the holiday traffic going to kick in?) Present wrapping. Hit a bit of a snag. Not really a snag, just had to work on some creative packaging – Carl was helping. So I ended up cooking dinner, finishing what Carl had started. Eat dinner – check & check.

Back to the packages – this was taking longer than originally thought, but finally got things in gear, and finished. But it was probably after 9 by now.

Running? Don’t think this is happening. It would have been before dinner, and the timing was just not working out. That and the fact it was about 20 degrees outside. Brrrrrrrrr.

So, on to taxes. Had already loaded the program. Why now? Needed to direct where, and more importantly when, an additional paycheck was going to be deposited due to budget cuts. (This may seem counterintuitive, but from a business perspective it has to do with on the books or off the books and some other accounting things.) I was going to try and figure out if we had withheld enough to not create a large payment to the IRS due to extra income. In the end I got too confused and rushed, too much estimating this and that, and just decided to defer the problem to next year. That way I can put it into a retirement type fund if I want to shield it more….

But, on the bright side, I am loaded and ready to go when the real numbers arrive.

But yesterday evening felt like I have bits of segmented time, and whatever is scheduled to happen in that segment must get done or who knows when it will see the light of day (or dark of day depending on what time you call the end of day).

Losing one day of training shouldn’t be such a big deal, but I have an evening meeting tonight, so no training until Wednesday at least. And it is supposed to remain cold through Saturday, and the start to rain again on race day.

We received a St. Nicholas Day gift today. When retrieving our newspaper from the front porch there was an additional bag with the beautiful kringle from Larson Brothers bakery. The attached note simply said, “Happy St. Nicholas Day.” 

I think this is my carpooler, but whomever – THANK YOU. St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children, and we certainly have enough of those associated with the house, and one resident that has an ability to understand childlike tendencies from deep within.

Update: – 3 miles around the lake, but stopped at 1 mile to use the bathroom, stopped at 2 miles to walk – about 1/16th mile, then run 1/8th, then walk 1/16th, then run 1/4 mile, then walk 1/8th, then run the rest. Hey – I’ve only been training one day! Obviously need some more work before next Sunday.

I can walk forever, well at least a really long distance.
I used to run races up to 8 miles. Not for probably 20 years.
Now I run playing soccer, but that is at most 100 yards before stopping or slowing down, and usually more like 10-20 yards. This allows for recovery.
This morning I ran one whole mile without stopping. It may not seem like much, but it sure felt like much. A plodding sort of run, but just keeping the legs moving at a different sort of pace

My goal is to get to 3 miles. In fact I am going to try that tomorrow.
I have signed up (sort of) to run a 3 mile race/run next weekend. Somebody else actually signed up and now can not participate due to a romantic weekend trip to Victoria BC. So I am stepping in. The best part is any record of this attempt will not have my name associated with the results.

The color of the day is White!

Frosty 12-06-09 Morning

It was frosty yesterday too. First morning I had to scrape the entire car, side windows too. Carl did help on the last bit of the front window when he brought me out my coffee. Yesterday it was dark in the AM. This AM it is late enough to know it is foggy, but still almost feels like a sunny day.

I just took a break to take out compost and recyclables. The lids to all of the associated vessels were frosted shut.

The excitement in our back yard reached a fever pitch among the rodents this week. I am visually hampered because, except on the weekends, it is always dark when I am at home. Carl doesn’t take the kids out back, so it is not always on his agenda either. But he specifically looked yesterday, and the precious little furry devils had been rolling up corners of the sod again, and moving some of the smaller pieces. It was cold enough that Carl had to wait for the middle of the day to put them back because they were so stiff in place.

This means we are moving to the next level. I went and bought some “landscape pins” on the way home. Who knew there even were such things. I also looked at some deer fencing that we could try. (Not installed vertically like you do for the deer, but horizontally, like a blanket.) I am going to wait for the next assault and pin any that get pulled.

I am a little more worried about the survival of our new lawn. It looked fine when installed, and we started watering per their instructions. Then the deluges hit. Then two “normal” days when we decided to let it dry out a bit to maybe a normal moisture content. And now the heavy frost, which is supposed to last several days.

But since you can’t control Mother Nature I guess we will just have to wait. And try to control the squirrels.

The excitement in our front yard was last night. Our street only allows parking on one side – the opposite side. But there is a popular restaurant at the end of the block and some popular people live here, so sometimes there are also cars parked on our side of the street, all the way up to our house. It makes for a skinny street. But last night that was not the case. I was sitting in the living room and heard sirens. This is not too infrequent as we are near a busy street. But then I heard the big engine noise getting closer. definitely sounded like a fire truck. So I opened up the front door, and a really big ladder truck pulled up in front of the house. No smell of smoke, and they went into a house across the street. An ambulance followed. We know the man of the house, younger than us, has had back problems in the past, so maybe that is all it was. “All?” To need to call 911 makes it more than a little thing. We hope they are all getting better.

More than a year ago our futon decided it was tired and only wanted to lay down. (lie down?- Mom, I am just confused. Maybe you can give me a pneumonic device.)

I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was a long time ago. Rey was still in school and had a few friends home on a visit. He graduated a year ago, so it must be more than a year past.

I took it apart and put it back together more than once. Took pictures of the gears, transmission, or whatever you want to call the moving parts. Measured them up and down. Searched the internet, searched Seattle futon stores (the one we purchased the frame from originally had closed), stopped in a few non-Seattle futon stores on travels, e-mailed some different sites that looked like they might be helpful. I even considered buying a set of replacement transmissions that did not look exactly like ours, but kind of close – decided it was not worth the $50.

Finally decided that it was just time to get a new frame. A week or so ago I ordered one. I don’t know exactly what I had started looking for on-line, but it was not a futon frame. But I got side-tracked and ended up pushing to purchase button. Then a few day’s later I was not even sure that I had really ordered it, except that I had the friendly “Order Received” e-mail.

The new frame arrived in a smaller than expected box on Tuesday. The old frame was in the kitchen (don’t ask me why – I don’t know). After dancing around the frame while making split pea soup I made up a “Free Futon Frame” sign, with an added note that it only worked in the bed position. Wednesday morning we shuffled the frame out of the kitchen, through the dining and living room, and out the front door. It was proudly displayed with the helpful sign on our parking strip.

By the time I arrived home last night it was gone. Carl said he saw a couple tying it on to the top of their car when he was coming home. Don’t know who they are, but hopefully they will get several years of use out of the frame, as a bed. I just hate throwing stuff that is still in relatively good shape away.

And now I have a project for tonight – putting together the new frame and finding out why the box is smaller than I expected (must have two pieces bolt together for the long run). And then we can sit side by side with a back to lean against in the living room. Next up – a new cover for the futon. The current one, which I love, has a rip on one side from so much use.