Jul 11
There was a pretty significant fire in Spokane Valley that started last night. There were 40 MPH winds when the fire started and the humidity was below 10%, so it grew quickly.
We’re not affected, except for some smoke overhead. The fire is about five miles from our house. I spent the night at the county emergency operations center answering phones — mostly telling people that they couldn’t go home.
After almost fifteen years there are still things you never knew about your spouse.
I was putting some of the wall plates back on the wall now that some of the painting project is complete when I found out I was putting them on incorrectly. It turns out the screws all need to be horizontal. Here is a faceplate Jenny installed so that you can see the proper technique.
A properly installed wall switch faceplate
Perhaps there’s just a little teeny bit of OCD about faceplate screws in my spouse.
The Kirby vacuum folks have been calling for a while about the free prize we won: free shampooing of one room of carpet. Actually, it turns out there were two different offices running the same promotion. I had made arrangements with one office to call back on Monday at 6:00pm a couple of weeks ago and someone called at 4:45pm, so we made an appointment with them. When the original office called back at 6:00pm, she was surprised to find I had already made an appointment.
Since they went through about six months of housebreaking with the puppy, we have been talking about cleaning the carpets. This seemed like a good time and we could look at whatever they were selling if they would clean our living room carpets. We didn’t buy the vacuum, but we did get the carpets cleaned. The carpet cleaning turned out to be a better sales promo than we got from the Filter Queen salesman in mid-April.
The salesman finally came on Tuesday, so we moved all the furniture into the dining room so he could give the living room a good cleaning. We (Jenny) decided (I agreed) that we might as well paint while the furniture is out of the living room, so the furniture is still in the dining room.
Here is the first of the paint going onto the wall. It’s a departure from the typical off-white/light tan we’ve always used. We’ll see how we like it!
Jenny starting to paint the living room wall
Zach trying his hand at painting the living room
Jun 23
We had a big event at church on Saturday, so we didn’t get Jenny her cake and present until tonight.
Jenny blowing out the candles on her birthday cake
If you look carefully, you can see some sparks coming off the candles. Two packages of sparkling candles worked out to be the exact number I needed. Here is a picture with a longer exposure, so you can see some of the sparks flying.
Jenny's birthday cake with sparkling candles!
Jun 21
The vampire was at our stake’s emergency preparedness fair this afternoon, so I gave a half liter (and some change). Evidently the blood bank has gone metric.
It was a lot better than I remember, but it’s been a while since I’ve given blood. They did have this fancy T-shirt as part of my parting gift package.
Steve in his summer 2008 blood donor T-shirt
Jun 21
Who could ask for anything more?
Aubrey after shish kabob and Kool-Aid
Jun 17
Hi.
Jun 15
Happy Father’s Day to our dads and grandpas.
 Zachary, Steve, and Steve |
 Grandpa Gould |
 Grandpa Scott and Jessica |
 Grandpa Ed and the Kids |
Jun 11
We had our first thunderstorm of the season today in the middle of what Jenny is calling “Junuary.” It has been cold and rainy for a couple of weeks and generally not spring-like. WSDOT even ended up getting the snowplows back out this week.
Today the weather held long enough for play day at the elementary school (which Jessica called “fantabulous”) and then the thunderstorms moved in late in the evening. It was a pretty serious storm — there were 11 separate notices from the weather service in two hours. We had one bolt of lightning within 1/2 mile (two second count) of the house. The flash was bright enough you could see it with your eyes closed and the thunderclap rattled the walls along with the windows.
Here is a picture I got from the front yard just before the rain started:
Thunderstorm on 11 June 2008
May 18