One night last week, our dishwasher decided it was next in line to need repair. I had come home from work and the dishwasher was running. I thought it was odd since Jenny usually runs it in the afternoon or at night, so I commented about it to Jenny. She said she had started earlier but that it should have been done. The dial on the front was half-way through the hot start phase and when we opened it up we found suds and steam. Uh-oh, things didn’t look good. Just to be sure, I reset it and started it running while I watched it closely. The dial clicked around right to where it had gotten stuck before and sure enough it just sat there. Problem confirmed.

So I disconnected the power and removed the back of the door. OK, those of you who know might have guessed that I didn’t actually disconnect the power but I did turn off the light switch that provides power to the dishwasher and told Jenny not to turn it back on. Your basic dishwasher is really pretty simple. It has the guts down underneath including the pumps and valves. And the brain/timer is a metal box inside the door that the dial attaches too. The timer for our model costs $75. I was tempted to show Jenny just how efficient I am and order it online right then so that I’d have it fixed within a few days. Instead I decided to mull it over a bit since if you turned it past that spot it seamed to work correctly.

The next night I asked Jenny if I should crack open the timer and see if I can fix it. Smartly she asked for odds. I knew inside was a plastic ‘gear’ that had groves that turned switches on at the right time. Chance were that a tooth on that plastic gear was broken which is why it got stuck at that spot and it would be near impossible to fix. So I told her there was a 15% chance I could fix it, and a 50% chance I’d break it worse. She gave me the go ahead anyway. It turns out it was a more complicated (and interesting). There were actually 2 plastic gears that work like something out of Da Vinci’s notebooks. After studying it for an hour I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t broken. Yep that’s right.

We had never really paid attention to the dial on the dishwasher but it is supposed to ‘pause’ there for about 20 minutes with the dial not moving. So the next question is why the dishwasher was still running that day and why was it full of suds and steam? I suspect that it had a little bit of help from mischievous little Olivia.

But I still claim victory. I took it apart and put it back together and it works. Now I know my sister Lisa will take issue with my claim of ‘fixing’ the dishwasher, so to appease her I’ll only be claiming half of the price replacement timer, $37.53, for my wish list gadget fund.

It may be a rough day today with the Huskers coming down here to play UT this afternoon, but we are still wearing Red.

<

This afternoon, while we were playing in the front yard, we spotted a beagle loose in the neighborhood. We watched a girl a few houses down try to get his attention but he wasn’t interested in her. Being a dog person, I like to help out stray dogs and contact their owners if they are wearing tags. So I sent the girls in the house and had Red speak (bark) a couple of times to get his attention. Sure enough he came over looking to play. This guy had a collar but no tags. He was cute and bounced side to side and then spun in a tight circle trying to get Red to play, but he wasn’t interested in me. It didn’t take too long, though, before I got Red to coax him over near me. By then Livy had escaped the house and Jenny followed her out just in time to see me gently slip my hand behind him and grasp his collar. The instant he felt the slightest bit of pressure on his collar he lost it. The playful beagle turned into a snarling beast. I was prepared for this, but Jenny and Livy weren’t. Livy knew something was wrong and started crying while Jenny grabbed the dog mace off the back of the stroller and asked if she should mace him. We had a full fledged circus on our hands. I could just imagine my loving yet paniced wife inadvertly macing her entire family while the beagle gnawed my arm off. Not losing focus on the task at hand, I quickly picked him up off the ground by his collar so he couldn’t get leverage to turn and bite me and replied, “No thankyou!” to the dog mace. Luckily, she wasn’t trigger happy and they just stood back in shock. He wasn’t that big of a dog so I knew I could handle him, but handling a stray dog who is displaying an aversion to people isn’t advised. I got him into our portable kennel and we both survived unscathed. Then we moved him out to the end of the driveway where Livy used her sidewalk chalk to write “Lost Dog” with a little help from Mom. Between his people aversion, not having any tags, our neighbors saying they’d seen him around loose for the last month or so, and his smell I’m pretty sure he’s been on his own for a while. You’ve also got to wonder if he belongs to someone when he has a collar and no tags. But I always say that if for some reason Red was loose without her collar and tags that I’d be happy if someone took her to Town Lake Animal Shelter. They accept lost and unwanted pets 24 hours a day and at least I’d know that she was safe and somewhere I could find her. They even let you search their current found pets online – it’s kind of sad how many they have. When we dropped him off we filled out the form of where he was found so that if someone is looking for him it will be easier to find him. Unfortunately for this guy I don’t think anyone is looking for him. Good luck buddy!

Before moving to TX, we inherited a comfy set of white armchairs from JR’s college buddy, Mark (Thanks, Mark!). They served us well over the last 6 years filling up empty spaces in our first apartment and our then spacious house. Now that we have two little girls and a dog, the house is not feeling very spacious at all so we needed to find a new home for the two white armchairs. I listed them on Craig’s List at 4:51 this afternoon and by 5:11, I had a young lady offering to come by the house on her way home from work to check them out. She is moving into an apartment this weekend and needs some “filler” furniture. She was here less than 5 minutes before she decided she wanted them! So sometime this weekend, we will deliver the armchairs to her new apartment and collect $50. We have purchased things from Craig’s List before (most recently, our kitchen table & chairs), but this is our first sell. It worked so well that now we’re searching the house for more things to sell!

Note to Mark: You now have $50 in hospitality credit here in Texas, but with the way the Huskers are playing maybe it was a good decision not to come down for the football game tomorrow.

Every day, I get to play “Identify the Mysterious Liquid.� We’ve already gone three rounds today and all the girls have participated. The rules permit the use of all 5 senses, but I rarely go beyond sight & smell!

Round One: Livy Drool
Round Two: Molly Poo
Round Three: Dog Barf

How many rounds will we go today??

When the brakes on the car started squealing, I knew it was time to change the brake pads. It wasn’t surprising since it recently hit 75,000 miles. Just to be thorough Jenny called Midas to get an estimate and it was over $300, without machining the rotors. There are other brake places that advertise a complete set of pads replaced for $99, but it would still have been a hassle for me to find time to take it and it wouldn’t be any easier for Jenny during the day with both girls. So a quick trip the auto parts store and I had the replacement pads to do it myself. If you’ve never replaced disc brake pads, it’s probably easier than you’d think. Basically, you remove the tire, remove two bolts to remove the caliper, slip out the old brake pads, compress the caliper with a C-clamp (I leave the inside brake pad on to do this) and then remove the C-clamp, slip in the new pads, and reassemble. It took me a little over an hour to do it and it was pretty uneventful. The only problem I ran into was that the bolts attaching the calipers were metric and the only metric sockets I have are 3/8 inch drive. And since my 3/8 inch ratchet is only 8 inches long it didn’t provide enough leverage. Luckily my dad taught me that you shouldn’t have to pull that hard – you just get a longer pipe. By ‘pipe’ I’m referring to a ‘cheater bar’. In case you didn’t know, this not recommended. I especially like the following regulations from NASA:

“Use the approved tool for the job. Makeshift arrangements such as the use of a screwdriver as a chisel, a pair of pliers as a wrench, a wrench as a hammer, or overloading a wrench by using a pipe extension (cheater bar) on the handle are not to be employed.� (Source)

Good thing my dad doesn’t work for NASA because those are pretty much all standard operating procedures for farmers. I actually didn’t have a pipe, so I improvised a little further. I used the box end of a 7/8 inch combination wrench. Jenny was debating whether the ratchet or the wrench would break first. I wasn’t worried since they were both Craftsman and guaranteed for life. Neither broke and we made out just fine. The brake pads cost me a total of $66 so that means I get to put the $234 I saved towards my next gadget wish-list item. Oh, and a set of ½ inch drive metric sockets is on my Christmas list too.

We have finally arrived. At the stage in life where we have a child old enough to provide comic relief, that is. Here are a few of Livy’s latest:

Livy really enjoys music and following the Responsorial Psalm last Sunday, Livy clapped and shouted, “Yeah! I want more!” Everyone turned to look at us and laughed. I told her we had to listen to a story before we would get more music.

JR put Livy’s carseat in the front of the truck (we can shut off the airbag) for a recent trip to the store. She has learned to pay attention to the traffic lights and started saying, “GO! Go, go, go!!” when we stop at a Red light.

JR taught Livy to shrug and say “I don’t know” one night at dinner. Now she uses it all the time. “Livy, where’s Molly’s pacifier?” . . . “I don’t know.” “Livy, who did that?” . . . “I don’t know.” She even uses it on her own. When she wakes up from her nap and can’t find Red she says, “Led (Red)? . . . I don’t know.”

I really wish I could accurately describe the adorable way she pronounces any number of words, especially please and thank you. Please comes out more like “pea” and is always accompanied by the tilt of her head. Thank you sounds like “tiku” – super cute. She also uses two complete sentences – “I want more” and “I need more,” and she accurately differentiates between the two by saving “need” for when she’s truly desparate. While some things about having a toddler are not so fun, we are really enjoying Olivia’s budding personality and her monkey see, monkey do attitude.

This year I’ve gotten much more physically active. I started out by running the Capital 10K and plan on running a half marathon this spring. Eventually I’d like to do a full marathon. Sound crazy? With me the crazier the better. So recently when I heard about the BP MS150, I thought it was crazy – right down my alley. “The BP MS 150 Bike Tour is a two-day cycling adventure from Houston to Austin that raises funds to help people living with MS.” How far is it from Houston to Austin you might ask? The bike route is about 170 miles. I don’t even want to drive from Houston to Austin so I’m not sure why I wanted to bike it, but I was pretty excited about it. Now on to problem #1. I don’t have a road bike. Road bikes aren’t cheap either; an entry level bike is around $700-$1000! Plus there is the $75 entry fee and the $400 fundraising commitment. But if there is something I’m good at, it’s talking Jenny into things and I got her to agree to let me get a road bike. Now on to problem #2. I’m sure the National Multiple Sclerosis Society does a lot of great things, but… unfortunatly they support embryonic stem cell research and actively lobby in favor of it. That problem is a showstopper for me as I’m morally and ethically opposed to embryonic stem cell research. So as excited as I was about riding 170 miles in two days on a bike, I’ll be sitting this one out.

I won’t go in-depth into the debate about embryonic stem cell research. There is a lot of debate about the promise, or lack there of, of embryonic stem cell research versus the existing benefits of adult stem cell research although in my mind the decision has nothing to do with potential benefits. I believe human life begins at conception and as thus, embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of a human life. This is something I cannot support under any circumstance.