Title of Post

Occasionally I think back to parts of the year when I was riding my bike like I had nothing else to live for. I was riding to work, train stations, races, you name it I was riding my bike.

Now I'm on another kind of endurance kick, though I don't know what to call it exactly. From chores, travel, weddings, puppies and more chores, I'm running non-stop.

I wanna new drug.

I wish it were that easy.

In the meantime, here's more of the same old same old.

Went to the Stove Shop yesterday to finally get our replacement thermostat replaced. Granted they were REALLY busy (who's stupid enough to buy a stove now? apparently a lot of people), but I still think the owner 's kind of a jerk. He asked for a third time if I'd wired it correctly. "Duh I think so. I mean it's only three wires and uh the connections AND the wires are color coded." Then he lets us in on a little secret. Apparently the control board for our stove has been sort of recalled and they're handing out replacements. Now he asks if I'm "handy". Just a second ago he's implying I can't wire a thermostat, but it's probably ok for me to replace the control unit inside my stove? This is the control unit --> Mechanically speaking it's just a bunch of wires and plugs (uh, you mean like a thermostat?). Luckily all the plugs were unique so in reality it's a square peg in round hole sort of game. He also left us with the old thermostat saying we should try it again, but with the new control unit. Guess what genius? No dice. The thermostat still doesn't work and I can't say I saw much difference with the new control unit. The thing still puts out heat. It just seems to be the extra amenities like an icon telling me the door is open or the hopper is erroneously empty that's not working. Luckily I have eyes, so I can deal with those things for now.

Onto happier more festive things. This is the third holiday season that we've been in our house. The first year we were busy tearing things apart, so we didn't get into the spirit of things at all. Last year I think we put up some garland outside. This year it was time to step it up some. I had this great, cheap, and easy idea to stand up some boards in the yard with string and wrap them with lights to look like trees. Jen was really skeptical, especially when she saw this in the yard.
I admit it looks pretty crappy in the daylight, but our yard is pretty far back from the road. Unless you know what you're looking for, you'll never see this driving by. Another positive is that it was cheap, didn't take much time, and won't take much space to store from holiday to holiday. But the best positive in all this is how it looks at night. Yes Jeff, they're all LEDs. Pretty cool huh?

Ok back to work inside. Maybe this should have gone with the stove, but we've been trying to manage our heat distribution a little better. There's this little fan above the doorway from downstairs to up that's supposed to help with this. We hadn't used it till now. It appears to be working, but only somewhat, so we decided to get a bigger one (this is America isn't it?). Something more like this





Just to complicate the matter we added a programmable switchand programed it the same as the stove. Now all we should have to do is sit back and be warm - as long as we don't care that the little icon says the hopper is empty when I know it's full.



Wow! It's like a marathon isn't it? I told you so. Go ahead take a break. I'll wait... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...


Better?


Took Gretchen for another hike. We took the shorter route this time, though it still seemed to put her down the whole day.

Maybe it's just the new comfy bed she can't resist?

Yeah. I finally got tired. I could go on about my trips to Target to buy socks and Lowes to buy thermometers, but really, who cares? I'm just white trash who could never appreciate such things.

- b