How's Your Day? - August 2013

Gunnar would definitely try and eat them.

 

Without garlic and clarified butter? Barbarian.

 

Post-facial escargot @Panchango's!

To quote WeeperWarrior,

 

My place o' business is hosting a large social event this Saturday night: an outdoor BBQ & family movie night as sort of an outreach to the community & their families.
Deal was folks in the church were asked to participate by reserving a table for 8-10 people and invite neighbors, co-workers, friends, family—mostly those without a church home. Our church provides the BBQ & beverages; the table hosts bring the side dishes to feed their table. We were praying for 50 tables reserved—we wound up with 101 reserved! So come Saturday night, over 1000 people will descend upon our campus! We've lined up about 85 volunteers to assist the 25 on staff. 3 jumpy houses & petting zoo, too. I'm manning one of the 4 large BBQ grills.
Needless to say, this has been a rather busy week! By midnight, we hope to have things back to 'normal' for 9:00am sunday morn service.

 

What a great problem to have. God's blessings to all!!

 

I had something weird happen to me today. I was going around yard sales and junk stores on my way home. I saw a sign on an old closed down gas station that said "Inside Yard". I figured "sale" had fallen off so I stopped, It was in the middle of nowhere and had a maze of couches on their end in front with tarps over them.

When I got to the start of the maze, out pops a German Sherherd showing his teeth and growling at me.The dog is 5 feet in front of me. My car is 20 yards behind me. I'm wearing boots and the parking lot is gravel, so there is no way I'm making it back to the car. I realize I'm going to have to fight this dog, the only thing I have close to me I could use as a weapon is a pocket knife. All this is going through my head for what seemed like an hour but was probably really only a second. I realize I don't want to hurt the dog or have the dog hurt me for that matter.

As my last and only hope of getting out this horrid situation. I say in my best baby talk voice "Who's a good boy!". The dog suddenly stops growling and starts wagging all over. Runs up to me and I petted him for awhile, he ran and got some kind of stuffed animal. We had a good tug of war with his toy. I made a new friend I think.

The store ended up being closed!

 

^^Phew! My heart was racing by the last paragraph. Great thinking, Weeper!

 

(except for the part about the store being closed )

 

The back of the dryer..lol. No it's a quantum singularity, I'm certain..

 

How's my day???

a] Bought two new tires for my car yesterday. Found out the driver side front wheel had a faulty bearing and needed serious work. Repair cost $500+
1.] 5th and last day of VBS was today. approx. 80 kids at my church today. Fair amount of drama but no real problems.
1.5] I taught the Bible Adventure Station. The kids were tired. I was tired. We all survived each other.
b] a church member's loved one passed away yesterday and I've been fielding calls from the family regarding a memorial service throughout the day, esp. during the morning.
3.14159] post VBS cleanup involved more drama but resolved with no injuries.
0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55] Finally heard from the family member I needed to talk to.
9.8m/s^2] Came home to find that my 5 y.o. daughter has a friend visiting and the wife needed to go grocery shopping, leaving me with four kids to manage.
ABV= (OG-FG)/.75] BGGDAAAAA

 

Today I won the battle with the dishwasher. It stopped draining last weekend and when I called for a price, I was quoted $400 plus parts. If I am going to spend that much, it won't be on my existing unit. I figured why not try and fix it. If I pooch it, I have to buy a new one regardless. In the last week, I learned all about dishwashers, learned to read a multimeter, took apart a couple pumps and replaced the faulty drain pump and re-installed the dishwasher. Fired it up and it started working and I was feeling pretty good about fixing it for $35 when water started pouring out all over the kitchen floor. I quick opened it up to stop it and noticed that I never attached the far end of the drain hose to the sink... A quick two minutes later and all was right.

 

Boy, does this sound familiar around here! The joys of DIY are the big $$ savings and the satisfaction of a job well done. The little 'oopsies' that happen come with the territory!

 

Speaking of DIY oopsies:
Replaced a friend's ipod touch battery today. Unfortunately it's a solder on type. Not that I mind soldering - I'm apprehensive of soldering on system boards and/or logic boards, because so much more rides on the line than just a simple wire or component.
Anyhoo, I did my research before hand, saw the size of the connector - with its three individual pads - the cable narrower than a Q-tip - and knew I would need a finer pointed soldering iron.
And, I've wanted an actual soldering station for quite awhile.
So....
Took apart the ipod, removed the screen, heated up the iron, touched the tip to the solder to remove the battery....nothing. Huh. I know it's hot, I just tinned it. tried again. Nope. Turned up the heat, knowing that the machine soldering at the factory was probably hotter - and more precise. Still nada. A little more hotterer (tis my reason for wanting a station, not just an iron)....a little more...a little more...well, that stinks. I'm not going above 400 on a logic board.
Then it hit me...turned the iron so that it's more on the side than the point - solder got a bit loose. Yay, but no yay. Need the fine point, and there's just not room to do all the work from the side of the tip.
Drug out the old trusty iron. This is going to be tricky, if I can just barely have the tip of the tip touch the solder, maybe it'll be okay, if it gets hot enough. It's quite larger and blunter, as long as I can keep from shorting out the points.
A few minutes later....old battery removed, new battery installed, looks pretty good. Reassemble, Stephanie, reassemble...
Turned it on...Success! Battery works, all is well.
Sorta.
I did mention in Sentence 1, Line 1, an "oopsie"....
Very first pry to get the screen off...."Crack". Not that that's uncommon, but still. The most frustrating part about it - it could have been prevented. I came thiiiis close || to ordering a screen with the battery, just in case. That would have guaranteed I wouldn't have needed it. I could have hit it with a 24 ounce ball peen hammer and it would be blemish free. But nope, didn't order it, took my chances, and....oops.

Told my friend, he said no problem, got the new screen ordered (pretty easy, it was already in my cart, saved for later ).

 

Last night my wifi and Bluetooth crapped out on my phone. I'm pretty bummed about it. You have to love hardware that dies 2 years in.

I'm debating on replacing it with another for $150...but then again for a bit more I could get a way better phone to use as a replacement.

 

I should mention, I have an interview next Friday, and I got an email today from an energy company in town requesting an interview. things are slowly looking up!

 

Lots of luck!! I hope you will keep us informed.

 

I CAN'T FIND MY HONE!!

 

Steve, phone hone?!

 

Ummm...yeah....