Wow. Another fairly busy weekend, or at least Satuday was. Do they ever slow down?

Saturday morning: Changed the oil/filter in both the Minivan and Jeep. Oldest son & I took about 7 gallons of used motor oil to the city recyling station. Got home and did a little yardwork, raking up old leaves & trash that had accumulated in the yard over the winter.

Saturday afternoon/evening: At 1pm leave to take my 7-year old to Coldwater, MI where we will meet up with his Grandma. He is staying with her for a few days over spring break. Made a pitstop on the way to check out my parent's house (they are in AZ. for the winter). Got to Coldwater about 5pm. Had dinner. Got back home around 9pm. My oldest son is headed down to Florida on a RIM (Retreat in Motion) bus for a 5-day trip with the church youth group. They are making stops at the Smokies, working in an Orlando soup kitchen, going to Disney world, hitting the beach, and coming home on Thursday. The bus pulled out at 8pm, so I missed it. Kinda wanted to be there when he left....

Sunday: Ran the video machine at the morning church service. Spent the rest of the day lounging around and playing NFL Street & BF1942.

Now that I've typed this, I guess the weekend wasn't all THAT busy. I guess the 300 miles worth of driving I did on Sat. makes it seem so........

Got into work at 5:30am today. Normal start time is 7:30.

The reason? Need to leave work around 2pm so I can drive about 45 mintues south to Indy to get stuff for the pack meeting on 3/16. The scout shop doesn't close until 6pm, but it's downtown, and I'd rather get in and out before rush hour begins. But hopefully I'll only have to make this drive a couple more times. I plan on stepping down as cubmaster at the end of the school year......

Oh, and before going to Indy I have to stop and pick up a couple parts for the refrigerator. Dang thing is frosting up again (it's a frost-FREE frig). Currently the freezer is staying cold enough to freeze water, but not much colder than that.
Had the defrost timer replaced about 2 weeks ago but that doesn't appear to be the problem. The defrost heater appears to be working OK so I'm getting a new set of gaskets and a defrost thermostat. Hopefully that will fix it......

Oh, and I have a 6pm meeting tonight at the church.

Could be a long day. But an ample supply of caffeine and reading /. may help.

It was tough for me to root for one team or the other considering I now live in Frankfort and am a Maconaquah graduate.

It was a close game up until haftime, but Maconaquah pulled away for a 61-51 victory.

Story links:

Frankfort's Cold Shooting Leads To First-Round Exit

Maconaquah Advances

I don't know yet it I'm going to the second round game on Friday. The Braves play the Western panthers, a team that beat them earlier in the regular season. Should be a good game......

A couple of the photos are not in order, must be a quirk of Yahoo photos or something. Oh well.

Putting down the floor is definately NOT as easy as the tell you in magazines, how-to videos, etc. Due to the layout of the room, I had some kind of special cutting to do on 75% of the rows I laid down.

But the result was worth the effort. I ended up about 3 feet short on quarter-round, but I plan on picking up some tonight and finishing it up.

Next on the plan: new kitchen wallpaper.......

This high school: Watersmeet has been getting some press recently because it's mascot is the 'Nimrod'. If you look it up, it's not really the derogatory term most of use have come to associate the word with.

There is also a rather old (1986) list of 'best high school mascots' floating around. Here's the list:

1. SYRUPMAKERS of Cairo,GA
2. BEETDIGGERS of Brush, CO
3. NIMRODS of Watersmeet, MI
4. IMPS of Cary, NC
5. ATOMSMASHERS of Johnson Prep, Savannah, GA
6. ANGORAS of Clarkston, GA
7. FLIVVERS of Kingsford, MI
8. SQUIRRELS of Winslow, AZ
9. PEGLEGS of Stuyvesant in NYC
10. DOTS of Poca, WV

Now some of these names IMHO don't really deserve to be there. Squirrels? Angoras?

I think some of schools in my home state of Indiana a deserved some credit for creative mascots. Here's a few of my favorites:

Delphi Oracles

Logansport Berries

Northeast Dubois Jeeps

And of course the town in which I reside, the Frankfort Hot Dogs

Any other good mascot names out there?

Things have been moving along, kinda slowly, on the various home renovations we have planned.

Completed wallpapering and putting up new trim in the front room a couple of weeks ago. Since then we have finished painting a large china cabinet and replacing the glass in the doors with fabric. This was my wife's idea, and it worked out really well. Also finished re-painting a small wall-mounted bookshelf that had been laying around in the basement for a few years. I mounted it in the front room above the cd-player as a place to put various CD's.

Last night started painting a small bench that my monther-in-law gave us over a year ago. This will go in the front room as well.

The big thing was that we purchased the laminate flooring and other sundries for the kitchen floor last night. One of the local home centers had it on sale so we went for it. Thank goodness for income tax refunds.
The problem will be finding a weekend to install it. Might not until April or so..........

Heard this on the radio on the drive into work this morning:

"The cost for a ticket to Super Bowl I cost $10. The program for this year's Super Bowl costs $15."

I wonder who it is that actually goes to the Super Bowl? Surely not the middle class, with reports of cheap seats in Reliant stadium going for something like $3k.

Friday night at homecoming they defeated conference rival Southmont 52-28.

Story link: Southmont Not Able To Handle Frankfort's Defensive Pressure

On Saturday the Hot Dogs travelled to Lafayette Jeff and pulled out a rare win at Crawley Center:

Story Link: Pickrell's 20 Points Helps Frankfort Beat Lafayette Jeff

The Braves had a disapointing Friday night losing to conference foe Western 63-57 at Western.

Story link (free reg. required): Parker fuels WHS win

Teams in Indiana are heading into the 'home stretch' of their schedules with only about 7-8 left until sectional time. Should be fun!

p.s. I normally try to link to the Peru Tribune when posting stories about Maconaquah because Peru is located in the same county (Miami) as Maconaquah H.S. This time I couldn't because the story seems to have been rotated off. The Kokomo Tribune I try not to use because a) It requires free registration which is a PITA, and b) although the overall quality of writing in the KT is usually better than the PT, they have such a pro-Kokomo and Howard county team bias that reading the stories usually pisses me off.

HomeImprovement

I could probably find a better place than Yahoo photos to host them, but I get about 250megs free with my SBC DSL.

Anyway, most of the pics are of the front room of our house, with a couple of the kitchen trim that I painted. And the geek in me of course had to take a pic of the old pc in the basement running Fedora Core surrounded by painting equipment.......

Consider this story: Roadway Incident Has City Employee Seeing Red

I don't know what to think, other than to chuckle. The person pulled over lives on my street about 4-5 block north of our house.

I especially like his comment about being singled out because he has been pulled over to DUI a couple of times in the past. Well that combined with being a public servant (he sat on the city council for several years before taking the street deptartment job) means you are held to a different standard, and people are going to talk about it.

Frankfort had a good weekend, getting wins on both Friday night vs. Western Boone and again on Saturday vs. county rival Rossville. This puts the Hot Dogs records at 5-6 for the season

Game links:

Frankfort Wins Emotional Game Against Western Boone

Frankfort's Catron Too Much For Rossville To Handle

My alma mater also won over the weekend to arch-rival Peru in convincing fashion. After a loss to Eastern last weekend the Brave's coach called the team 'soft' in a newspaper interview. This seemed to get Maconaquah going as they pounded the Tigers 77-34. This ups their record to 6-3.

Link to story: Braves stomp Tigers by 33

Maconaquah also had a Saturday game vs. Blackford postphone due to weather.

I truly believe the phrase "When it rains, it pours".

Last night I was in the basement and noticed a puddle of water around the 5-year old furnace. I discovered that the furnace was leaking water (probably condensation) from right below one of the motor housings. I checked the drain pipe that runs to the floor drain. It was't clogged. I cleaned out a 'condensate trap', that although filled with water, didn't have a lot of dirt in it.

Still leaking. So I jury-rigged a system where the water would drain into a bucket on the floor instead of all over the furnace itself.

This morning from work I called a local HVAC place from work to have them come and take a look at it. Right after I hang up, the phone rings again. It's my wife. "Honey, you know the washing machine you fixed a month or so ago? It stopped working again. It's making a high-pitched whining sound and the water won't drain."

Sigh. I was planning on heading back home when the HVAC guy arrived anyway, so I headed home. By the time I got home the repairman had arrived and was dismantling the furnace.

This guy was pretty good. He found a drain tube that I hadn't checked was clogged and cleared it. He also discovered that the motor housing that helps to draw air from the outside was half-filled with water from the clogged drain. He cleaned it out and had the furnace back together and running in about 45 minutes.

Now to the washing machine. This is the third time I've had to fix this sucker so getting the hoses off and drained went pretty smooth. The only bummer was this time I had to scoop out about 10 gallons of water by hand since it wouldn't drain.
I also had a pretty good idea of what was wrong after consulting the net (thank you Google!). I tilted the washer on it's side so I get to the motor and drain pump. I removed the drain pump and sure enough found the offending article that was clogging it: One of my wife's breast pads (she nurses our six month old son). I put the washer back together and ran a test load. No leaks, and it drained just fine. Mission accomplished.

Now we just need one of those mesh bags to put small stuff in so this won't happen again.

On the home improvement front: This past weekend we finished the wallpaper and I installed the trim around the ceiling. We just have to install some border and we are done with the front room! At least for the walls. We still have a china cabinet my wife wants to paint..........

After about a year off of doing any serious home remodeling projects, 2004, at least the first 1/2 of the year, looks pretty busy.

It all started when my wife and I decided to replace the floor in the kitchen with wood laminate. We've been looking and deciding what kind to get. Of course before the new flooring goes down the door and window trim needs to be repainted.

So I scheduled the repainting over my Christmas break. I started yesterday, and as I'm happily scraping away at the old paint my wife proclaims: "You know, new wallpaper in this kitchen sure would look nice." Next thing you know she's off to the wallpaper store.

She comes back a while later with wallpaper and border for the entire kitchen and wants me to go back later with her to look at wallpaper for the front room. The wallpaper place is having a 'buy one get one free' sale so it's a great time to buy.

This morning we went to the wallpaper store and bought a bunch of paper to do the front room. All in all, we spent a little over $150 for wallpaper for two rooms. Not too shabby.

I guess I know what I'm doing with my nights and weekends for the next couple of months.....

Frankfort at Logansport. The Hot Dogs lose a close one 39-38. This drops their record to 2-3.

Link to story: Hot Dogs lose hearbreaker to Logansport

Maconaquah at Wapahani: The Braves win 58-45. They pretty much led the entire game and even their record at 2-2.

Link to story: Prep Basketball roundup

Saturday Dec. 13th

Oak Hill at Maconaquah. Maconaquah wins 63-60 over a pretty good Oak Hill team. Things seem to be staring to click for the Braves as they have won 3 in a row to improve to 3-2.

Link to story: Braves shoot down Eagles

Frankfort Wins Fifth-Place Game at Hoops Classic

Next game: Dec. 12th at Logansport.