Last weekend, we put a coat of white, reflective paint on the flat roofs on the church property. I set up a GoPro in the corner of the roof on a tripod because I can’t even do manual labor without geeking it up.
By the way, if you want to see more stuff like this and photos from the work days that I organize at church, you can friend the church on Facebook. In addition to doing the property maintenance, I’m also the self-appointed social networking guy so I’d love to see our numbers go up!
Have you ever used Ikea cabinets? I’ve heard really good things about them and I’m thinking about using their cheapest version for a project in the man cave. We’re going to make an entire wall into a bunch of storage and a long desk. Playing around with Sketchup and a premade library of Ikea cabinets gave me this rough idea:
This is probably going to be one of my big projects for the month of September when I’m home on paternity leave. Next steps are to finalize the design and pick up the cabinets. I’ll get those installed and then figure out how to make a desk top and the shelves. If you’ve done anything similar and have advice for me, I’d love to hear it.
While I love the design and quietness of the newer slim version of the Xbox360, the infrared receiver on it isn’t very good. You have to be pointing your remote control directly at the box to get it to register. Since we use the 360s around the house as our Media Center Extenders to watch TV, we spend a lot of time accessing them via remotes. We were having particular trouble in the living room so it was time for a little change.
I picked up an infrared extender for $17 on Amazon. It’s a very simple IR repeater. You plug the transmitter onto the receiver of the 360 and then put the new receiver somewhere that’s more visible. We stuck it onto the bottom corner of our TV. The whole thing is powered via USB which would be super convenient if our TV had USB power (it doesn’t.) The new extender works much better and it’s very rare to have trouble registering a command from the remote.
Happy two month birthday, Elijah! It’s hard for me to leave the house each morning* and know that I won’t see you again until the evening. In these past few weeks you’ve started to smile a lot and you’re beginning to have some control over your crazy arms that swing everywhere. It’s exciting to watch you discover your world! I look at you and think how tiny you are, but then when I look back at your first photos, I’m reminded how much you’ve grown. There are already big stacks of clothes that are too small for you.
Your mom and I haven’t slept through an entire night since June 14. I think we’re starting to adjust to the lack of sleep, or at least we are smarter about going to bed early with you to piece together enough sleep to get through the next day. For now you’re sleeping in a rocking bassinet in our bedroom so we have easy access to feed you as soon as you start waking up. On a good night you’ll go 3 hours between the start of each feeding session and then you fall back to sleep pretty easily. Other nights you need to eat a lot more and/or you have a hard time going back to sleep.
Tyla and I are both looking forward to the month of September when I will be on paternity leave and won’t have to work for the entire month. We’ve started giving you bottles every once in a while which let’s Tyla get out of the house for a bit. We’re so thankful that you are completely content taking room temperature milk from a bottle. I’m guessing that Tyla has a lot of ideas for things she wants to do in September while I’m at home and feeding you with a bottle!
We don’t have much personal experience to compare to, but I think you’re a pretty good baby… for now!
*Ok, that’s not completely true. On those days when you have a huge diaper blowout, I don’t mind missing the cleanup. I think you poop above your weight class.
My Subaru is nearing 100K. Hopefully I’ll get another few cheap years out of it, but then I’ll have a decision to make. I’m really interested in the possibility of getting an all-electric car. My commute is ~12 miles each way which seems easy for almost all the electric cars out there today. There are lots of free charging stations around the area and there are so many Teslas and Nissan Leaf’s around here that you hardly even notice them anymore.
The costs are really coming down and you can make a fairly convincing argument that you’ll finally break even on the cost after the life of the car (though people on either side of the argument will still say that’s either too conservative or too unrealistic.)
There seem to be two design ideas on the market:
Tesla is making cars people really want to drive with good recharging capabilities and everyone else is following an agreed-upon standard. Who’s right?
The more I use SkyDrive, the more I like it. It’s an easy way to share files between computers and devices, and it’s a great way to share files with other people. On top of all that, it’s free. At work we use the professional paid version of SkyDrive and I keep all my work documents out there.
If you’ve been using it or thinking about using it, SkyDrive will soon be disappearing. Sort of. The service will continue and the features will be the same, but the name has to change. A British company called Sky won a trademark case against Microsoft and the result is that the SkyDrive name needs to change.
We don’t yet know what the new name will be, but don’t be alarmed when it changes. It’s still going to be a great service.
Seattle generally has great summer weather, but this one has been extraordinary. The forecast every day is 80 and cloudless sunshine. That generally starts in July but this year it started in early/mid June. If you want to read all the details, check out Cliff Mass’s blog post, but here are some highlights for the entire month of July:
While “the best” is hard to quantify, this is probably “the best” July most Seattle residents have ever experienced and that’s saying a lot because July is usually so good anyway.
The fantastic weather isn’t set to end anytime soon. The long range forecasts from the national climate center are showing continued dry, nice weather for at least the next couple weeks.
Happy Birthday to the incredible mother of my son! I know it’s a little weird to say that and then use a picture of Tyla and Oskar, but I thought she’d enjoy the photo (from just after we met in 2008.) I wonder how long it will be before Elijah is as big as Oskar?
Our little man is now seven and a half weeks old and he’s not so little anymore! He’s gaining wait at a good rate and seems to be very healthy. He can hold up his head while laying on his stomach and is just starting to give us some of his first intentional smiles. When we’re out and about, we keep him in the Moby wrap most of the time because it both keeps him really calm and quiet (or sleeping), and it helps us avoid passing him around a lot. Pertussis (whooping cough) is still at crazy levels, and I just heard that there are a disturbing number of cases of measles appearing in the area and he won’t get that vaccine for quite a while. So we’ll be the over protective first time parents and keep him in the wrap.
Nights vary widely from feeding every 60-90 minutes to feeding every 3 hours. The latter is obviously a lot easier to deal with! We’ve gotten in the habit of going to bed around 8:30 which usually gives us enough sleep throughout the night. The other night I had to chuckle as I wished the 5 year old kids outside would be quiet so I could go to bed.
Tyla is doing a fantastic job staying at home with him. She has a good schedule set up to get out of the house and meet with other moms. It’s a ton of work for her, but she’s a great mom!
We’re experimenting with pumping and bottles so that Tyla can get a few hours out of the house. So far that’s going pretty well but we haven’t pushed it very far yet.
Parenting is an unbelievable amount of work but it’s so rewarding to look down at this little guy. We love you Elijah!
Treehouse Masters
If you only watch one episode, check out the finale called “Love is in the Air.” Pete builds a treehouse on their own property so he gets to do exactly what he wants and wow, it’s a whopper of a treehouse! What’s even cooler for us is that we saw them building this while we were there. The film crew wasn’t there that day, but they had gotten the metal bridge supports in and were working on the main treehouse building. Pretty cool!
I’m so thankful that we stayed there last summer before this TV show hit. Even then it was nearly impossible to find an opening 6-8 months into the future and now they don’t even offer online booking or prices. You have to email them. I imagine they are flooded with requests!