Month: June 2008

  • Baltimore Orioles at National Park

    Chewy and I were able to see the O’s play the Nationals in their new park last night.  Other than a hour long rain delay due to severe weather, it was a great game because the O’s won!  Some thoughts about our night at the park:

    • The National fans like to “Boo” during the National Anthem.
    • The nice thing about Nationals Park is that they incorporated several “local” restaurants to be the concessions such as Ben’s Chili Bowl, Noah’s Pretzels, Five Guys, Giffords Ice Cream and a bunch of others that I can’t recall.
    • I had Ben’s Chili Bowl Original Chili Half-Smoke and a side of chili cheese fries.  The half-smoke was pretty small and only so-so.  The chili cheese fries on the other hand were really good.  Chewy had a stadium half-smoke with peppers and onions.  That was almost twice the size of what my half-smoke was and looked better.
    • For a snack we had a salted ‘W’ pretzel from Noah’s Pretzels.  The pretzel was good or very good according to Chewy.  The story with Noah’s is their big thing is autism awareness.  Their lone store is in a mall close to us but they decided to be in Nationals Park to help spread the word about autism awareness.  The thing is they are pretty much breaking even on every pretzel they sell at Nationals Park.  That’s gotta say a lot about how much rent is at Nationals Park!  Even still, if you’re watching a game at Nationals Park, have a pretzel to help this local business out – it’s for a good cause.
    • After being spoiled by Camden Yards, Nationals Park is extremely bland looking – or industrial as Chewy said.  Concrete and steel.  Concrete and steel.
    • The Nationals mascot is named Screech.
    • Navy Yard metro stop is extremely close to the park.  And people don’t abide by the “Walk on the left and stand on the right” rule.
    • Half of those that attended were Orioles fans.  We were in an Orioles section.

  • Stuff you don’t see everyday: Part 1

    Stuff you don’t see everyday: Part 2

  • jenga!  Jenga!  JENGA!

  • Random Articles I Found Interesting Over the Past Few Days …

  • Do you remember? …

    • January 28, 1986 – The day the space shuttle Challenger exploded
    • August 1992 – The day Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida and surrounding states
    • September 11, 2001 – The day the Twin Towers fell
    • August 2005 – The day Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana, Mississippi and surrounding states
    • Finally, what about the Great Flood of 1993 – the what?  Flood?  1993?  Where?  What?  How?

    It’s interesting to try and follow the current flooding issues happening AGAIN in the Midwest.  Why you ask?  Because you CAN’T!!!  It’s been well over a week and there’s little news coverage on this (at least in this area).  Do you really think people are going to remember the second 500-year flood that happened 15 years after the previous 500-year flood (that being the Great Flood of 1993).  And for the record, I do not remember the Great Flood of 1993 but I do remember the others.

    Why is that?  Personally, in this town I blame the liberal media.  Think about it.  What made Hurricane Katrina so interesting to follow before it actually did anything.  There was a really cool looking weather graphic.  Look at the nice swirls and that nicely formed eye moving across the ocean.  We knew it was going to happen.  We knew it was going to be bad.  We had a great looking graphic to show everyone.  What does the flood have?  It’s been raining for awhile, now the rivers are surging and the levees might get breached.  We know its going to happen but possibly not and no pretty graphs to help tell the story.

    The next thing about Katrina was the poor decision making by the local and state governments.  Their failure, though it was made to look like they were the victims, showed how people stayed and huddled in the Super Dome or the New Orleans Convention Center.  They knew the dangers and decided to not leave.  The local and state governments did nothing and then the Federal Government reacted too slowly.  Now that’s news.  People in trouble because they did nothing or decided too late to do something and well it was too late.  All forms of government look stupid because they did nothing (but remember the state and local governments were the “victims”) 

    The last thing I could think of were all the celebrities.  There was an outcry from the those who like to mock the government and their faces and words were all over the airwaves.  From criticism to photo ops in “helping” to rebuild after the devastation, there were celebrities on the scene to show the plight of those afflicted.

    Look, I’m not trying to trivialize those who were affected by Katrina.  It was horrible.  Poor decision making was made all around and the evil of people really did come out.  But look at the differences between our last National disaster and our current one.  One was made to be news worthy and one just isn’t – yet both are and should be news worthy.

    You look at the local and state decision making and they actual are doing the correct things.  The government working and for the people?  That’s not news worthy.  People are being displaced and some have died.  Still not on the scale as Katrina mostly because people listened!  Still not all that news worthy.  You hear stories of people, prisoners, anyone helping to sandbag and make the levees higher to help save towns and the surrounding area.  That’s news worthy but in a make-you-feel-good-way so that’s not front page news.  Lastly, have you seen any celebrities sandbagging?  Any on the tube helping out or making public statements.  Nope.  Nadda.  Zilch.

    As good as it is to hear that those in the Midwest are coping and working together to help prevent further damage, I wonder if this is really the state of America?  The fact that we don’t care except when we can see the failures of others (for some reason the first few weeks of American Idol comes to mind) and/or the helping hand of our celebrities?

    Seems kind sad. 

  • Thinking about getting a new car?  Don’t think hybrids are cost-effective.  Think again. Think again.

  • This is cool.

    This is not.

  • ooooooooooh! (part 1)

    IT’S SO EXCITING!  

    ooooooooooh! (part 2)

    Take that Apple!  

  • It be HOT, HOT, HOT

    Looks like the years first heat spell is upon us.  This fact lead to an interesting conversation at work yesterday.  My co-worker, who is having some problems with his AC unit, typically sets the house temperature to 72 degrees.  He was surprised to hear that we have set ours to 78 degrees.  (Don’t worry we usually turn it down if we have guest – well that is if we remember )

    So the question is, what do you set your air conditioner temperature setting to? 

    Electricity is to oil as oil is to …

    Just found these two articles about oil pretty interesting.  I don’t totally buy the argument but hopefully with the high oil prices that will help curve some of the oil appetite of the United States.  As for the second article, why do people just look for short term solutions?  Either way it’s interesting to note how we think, how we want to protect the “here” but not the “over there.”  How we demand things of others for our interests but do nothing here.  *sigh*

  • Ugh …

    Wicked storm, eh?  It almost seemed like a scene from part of John’s Revelation from God.  All of a sudden it got REALLY dark and then the Forrest Gump described rain started to fall.  Very wicked.  As a home owner there’s always this sense of paranoia in my head.  It’s stuff I really shouldn’t worry about since I have no control over it; yet I still do.  High winds, waterfall rain, reports of rotating clouds put a bunch of us at work in a tizzy.

    By the time I got home, it had stopped and was actually pretty sunny out.  Saw a bunch of people out of their homes and figured that the neighborhood was without power since all the street lights going home were out.  Yep, no power.  No biggie right?  The sun doesn’t set until 8-ish these days and the rain made if feel nice and cool.  The only visible damage was that a neighbor lost a decent sized tree branch but all in all the neighborhood looked fine.  I decide to do a visual inspection of the house from the outside and everything seems fine.  Haven’t been in the attic in awhile and with all the sever storms we’ve had over the past month I figured it was a good time to do so.  (There’s no electricity so what else am I gonna do?)  Got into the attic and noticed I saw a decent amount of sunlight.  That can’t be right.  After carefully, maneuvering myself over the studs, trying to be careful in not putting a hole through the floor with my leg, I see where the sunlight is coming from.

    What the!?!?    How the, did that happen?  Seems like there’s a piece of wood missing.  There doesn’t seem to be any water marks and this hole is actually in an odd portion of the roof.  This is freakin weird!  WAIT!  There’s a HOLE in the roof!  What you don’t see in the picture is a small hornets nest.  Thankfully, I have some hornet & wasp spray.  Traverse back to the attic access panel, down the ladder, to the garage for a small piece of wood to put over the hole and the can of hornet spray which is almost empty.  Errrrrr great.  Oh well.  Aim well.  Back up the ladder, traversing the attic to where the hole is.  The hole is near the front slope of the roof so I’m on my knees bent over straddling the ceiling studs so I don’t fall through the floor.  Aim.  Spray.  Wasp is still moving.  It’s seems half-drunk.  Ooooh, it’s starting to fly towards me.  That’s not good.  Spray more.  Now it’s not flying but crawling towards me.  Ugh, out of spray and all I got is this bag of sealing putty that I was gonna try and use to close the hole.  Okay, smack the hornet with the putty on top of insulation.  Doesn’t quite work.  Eventually it does works.  No more hornet.  No more panicking and falling through the floor.  Hmmm, this spare piece of wood is too big.  It’ll have to do for the night.  I wedge the piece of wood in to block the hole and call it a night. 

    Still no power and the sun’s already setting so I take a quick shower and find something to eat.   It’s getting dark fast.  Luckily, Chewy got some blem candles from church, now I just need to find something to hold them.  Unfortunately, I can’t find anything and all the candle holders that Chewy normally use don’t actually fit these candle sticks.  I’d hate to use a flashlight all the time and end up like Tom Hanks in Cast Away so I rig this burnt out candle to hold the other candle.  Not totally safe but it should do the trick, at least for a little while.

    Eventually, I go to bed and the power is restored overnight.  There’s still a hole in the roof.  I take the day off and formulate a plan to cover the whole.  Off to the Despot for supplies.  They open early so that’s when I’m there.  I get some sheets of flashing, roofing caulk, the smallest piece of plywood available and another can of hornet & wasp spray.  I should have taken pictures of what I was doing but working in basically a two foot wide by two foot high space made me want to finish patching this hole as fast as possible.  I basically caulk the roof flashing and the sheets of flashing together to form a solid vertical wall.  Caulked the outside, then the inside exposed portions.  No one will be able to see this from the outside so I don’t really care how it’ll look but more worried about getting coverage.  Once set, I nailed the plywood in to give the structure more strength.  Again I would have taken a picture but all you would have seen is a piece of plywood. 

    In a different part of the attic, that is even harder to get to, I wanted to check to see if things was fine.  This particular area has a air vent with a mesh screen to help cool the attic.  In this air vent were several hornet nests!  (Yes, pictures would have been nice but it was getting pretty hot up there)  After further inspection, I notice the mesh screen has several holes in them.  Errrrrg.  Fine, need to get rid of the nests – I have spray! – and replace the screen.  Another trip to the Despot for supplies.  Mesh screen and wood screws.  Looking at how the original screen was put into place, I knew I wouldn’t have the time to totally replace the screen so I’ll just put the replacement screen over the old one.  Screws make replace it easier in the future.  Unfortunately, the screen is just out of arms length so fortunately, I have a magnetic head bit on my drill and was able to put in a decently tight replacement screen.  Before doing that I spray the nests and poke the nests out of the air vent.  Time to get out of the attic.

    All in all, it wasn’t too bad.  Mostly because of the following:

    1. God’s protection and blessing of our house
    2. Having a Despot close to the house
    3. For God giving me all those hair-brain ideas
    4. For the head lamp my brother-in-law gave me this past Christmas, even when I asked for nothing

    There are probably a dozen more reasons but those are the first to come to mind.  It’s over.  Now, we’ll just have to see how things hold up after the next big storm.