Caiden's Volcano

Caiden made a volcano at school the other day and brought it home to show us how it works.

American Ninja

My brother Russ and I Had some good laughs on Monday, recalling our fixation and fascination of ninja movies and being a ninja, in the 80's. One movie we would rent almost every weekend for a long time was the American Ninja series, which lasted about 4 series I believe. Here is the plot:

Joe Armstrong, an orphaned drifter will little respect for much other than martial arts, finds himself on an American Army base in The Philippines after a judge gives him a choice of enlistment or prison. On one of his first missions driving a convoy, his platoon is attacked by a group of rebel ninjas who try to steal the weapons the platoon is transporting and kidnap Patricia, the base colonel's daughter, who happens to be along for the ride. Joe rescues Patricia and gets her safely back to the base, but everyone else in the platoon is killed, leading his superiors to conclude that Joe is guilty of cowardice, collaboration or simple incompetence. At the same time, the rebel leader vows revenge against the serviceman who disrupted his plans, and sends an army of ninjas to assassinate him and bring back Patricia. If he wants to survive and save the girl, Joe's going to have to draw on every last ounce of his training.


Can anyone else tell me if there was a better plot for an 80's ninja movie??? Was there ever a better name for a lead star playing an American Ninja than "Michael DUDEikoff"??

80's skateboarding

My brother Jeff sent me this link that showed a "competition" of sorts among skaters who were big in the 80's, but are all now in their late 30's and early 40's. Most of them are still involved in skateboarding one way or another still, but it was funny to see them ride this ramp and do tricks from that era. Tricks nowdays are so much more evolved, but Tony Hawk did comment that back then the boards were so much bigger and heavier that it makes the tricks actually tougher to do.

Watching this brought back some memories for me. From about age 9-13 I was really into skateboarding. I wasn't very good at it at all, but it was my identity for a while. I bought all the videos, magazines, and tried my best to get good at skating. I couldn't drop in on a ramp, I could barely ollie. I could kind of grind my trucks on something, but for the most part I was a poser and just rode my skateboard around trying to look cool or something. Seeing this video made me ponder on my skateoboards I had over these few years and I started to search for them on the internet. Here is a run down on my history of skateboards:

My first skateboard was actually a "Kamakazi" skateboard, which was a generic brand that Costco sold. I thought it was the bomb. After wearing that one out, my parents bought both my brother and I matching "Nash" skateboards. We were happy to have anything, but we wore through those so quickly. When we were both able to save up enough money each (about $50), we went and bought Tony Hawk skateboards. We didn't get matching colors though, because that would have been gay (but my Hot Pink deck was NOT gay)


The thing that kind of sucked the most about having the money to buy a nice deck was not having enough money to buy nice trucks, bearings, or wheels, so we used our old trucks and wheels off our Nash decks. They were heavy and they were hard and not forgiving against cracks and rocks.

Eventually I earned up enough money to buy some Independant trucks and some Bullet wheels.

On a side note, one of my best friends from that time is the person that got me into skating. His name was Raleigh and he is now an airline Pilot for Skywest (I think?) here in Utah (useless info I guess). I was impressed because when I met him, the dude owned TWO skateboards, but only one set of trucks and wheels, so he'd switch them from deck to deck now and again. He was a "Vision" guy and only rode these two Vision skateboards:

Mark Gonzales (on the left) and the Psycho Stick (on the right; most decks back then were associated/designed by the rider. I'm not sure who the rider of this deck was)


My friend Raleigh moved away when I was 11. Raleigh was a good skater and a really good artist. He had plans of going pro and would even draw his ideas for skateboard decks. I thought they were so cool. I don't remember the name of them now though, but one had some clocks on it with some dollar bills too.

My next few decks were a bit blurry. I remember buying this Steve Caballero deck:



Then agreeing to trade it for this crappy Mike McGill deck. Stupidest thing I had ever done. It was in crappy shape and even had stress marks. I remember trading it with this dude that was older and really popular among the skaters I rode with. I think I just wanted him to think I was cool or something.


After that, I bought this Lance Mountain deck. This was one of the best decks I had ever owned. It had a HUGE tail that made it easy to ollie.



I traded the Lance Mountain deck with my friend Jeremy for a month or so. I rode his Natus Kaupus deck, which I could actually ollie the highest on (about 12", which was HUGE for me).



My Lance Mountain deck was stolen and I knew who it was because I saw the dude riding it. I was the only person in friggin' Eldorado County that had this deck (at least I thought I was) and this dude was riding it. He was the son of a group of Hells Angels (and probably in prison now for murder), so I didn't dare mess with him.

I then made my best deck purchase my last. Chriss FREAKING Miller. I had no idea who this dude was, but I saw the deck and it spoke to me. It was made by Schmidt Stixx I think? (by the way, all the decks I have spoken about were made by Powell Peralta, except the Natas Kaupus, which was made by Santa Monica Airlines; I had considered myself a "Powell Peralta" guy up until that point). This deck was perfect for me. I felt so much more free on it, I could ollie well, grind well, even could go higher on ramps than I normally could. Next to the Lance Mountain deck, this was the best deck by far.



I eventually saw the writing on the wall and all my friends started to ditch skateboards for BMX bikes. I followed suit and I think I ended up trading my board for some bike rims or something.

Those were great times though. I remember being so frustrated because we lived in the "country" so there wasn't a lot of hard surfaces to ride on and if they were blacktop or cement, they were usually covered with rocks and gravel. I remember how stoked we were when my parents paved a part of their driveway in front of the house. We had so much skating surface, it was unbelievable. Every once in a while a friend of a friend of a friend built a half pipe, but I was too chicken to ever try dropping in, so I'd just ride up and down from the middle. It was lame, but that was the best I could do. Russ was a stud though. Dude wasn't afraid to try anything and he was always good. I think he might be part of the reason I ditched skating; I couldn't compete. The funnest times was having one of our parents drop us off "downtown" placerville so we could go find a parking lot to ride on, or just ride down the sidewalk along main street.

I now leave you with a nice picture of me in my skater era mullet, cool skate shirt with a bird riding a skateboard. Enjoy:

Boring

Alene and Bailey are out of town at a funeral. Caiden is with his mom. I'm bored.

I got a ton done today, most notably something I thought was pretty much impossible without a torch. I moved our old gas fire stove from the basement to the garage, into the back of the truck. My guess is the thing weighs a good 600-800 lbs (I'm not kidding). Russ came over to help. We accomplished it by me building a "sled" of sorts for it to fit into and slide on. We attached a couple of tow ropes to both my truck and around the stove. We then proceeded to move the truck 12" at a time as we dragged the sled up the stairs, allowing time to get the front lip of the sled up over the next step. It was tedious, but we finally got it up to the garage.

Then we had to figure out how to get it into the back of the truck. We thought about borrowing my brother's friends engine hoist, but we would have had to buy additional chain and it would have taken a long time. I thought I'd hit up my neighbor, who owns a 4 wheeler, to see if he had any ramps. We lucked out. He brought over his two ramps and we slid the thing up into the back of the truck. Mission FRIGGIN' accomplished. I've been wanting to get that thing out of my basement for SO LONG.

Now I have to deliver it to Castle Dale, where the buyer has offered to pay me an extra $100 to deliver it. However, I'm getting a little nervous as I've called him for two days and he has not returned my calls. I'd be pissed if he backed out (after completely committing to buy it) and ignored me. Then I'd have a giant metal stove in the back of my truck.

BUT, I did just (finally) finish fixing the water pump issue on the Chevy. I ended up needing to get a new water pump, which was fairly cheap ($50). The issue though was that I could not get the fan clutch off the old water pump. It was on there VERY tight and it was an awkward thing to even grip in order to give it enough force to remove it. I finally went into Auto Zone and asked the dude behind the counter if he had any advice. He toyed with it for a bit, thinking it would be easy, then he started to get pissed (just like I had the past 3 nights, throwing tools and yelling at Alene and Caiden). After 20+ minutes, he finally get it to break free. I could not thank him enough at how gracious he was. I'm going to call the store and just let his manager know how much I appreciated him and I will always go to Auto Zone for my car needs.

I have a few small regrets, but I'm not sure I could have done anything about it. The wall got scuffed up a bit on the stairway up. Nothing that a small amount of drywall mud patch and some paint will fix. I also damaged the door frame going into the garage as the tow rope rubbed against it on the way out. No big deal really, I can fix that too. In fact, nobody will likely notice it.

Here are some pictures of us moving the stove:

This is the base I made for it. It was really heavy, with 2x10 boards along the bottom, 2x4 frames, and some melamine (slippery) boards along the bottom to help it slide.




Pulling it up the stairs with a tow rope


More of the rope going to the truck. I used some climbers webbing doubled up at the very end. That stuff is STRONG.


In the back of the truck. I covered it with a tarp and used some straps to tie it down.




I've completely gotten off topic. Boredom. Most men would probably relish this time, and there is a bit of me that has, but in the end, my life feels empty when I don't have my wife or children near me. It has made me dwell on my belief that families are eternal and I want to be with my family beyond this life. I cannot imagine a life without some sort of hope that we can be together beyond this life. Why even try to stay together if you cannot imagine the possibility? I mean, I understand the "seize the day" attitude, but can't you have both?

I've been really mean to Alene lately. Just short with her, mostly stupidity on my part because of my frustration over a simple fix that I could not "simply" fix. It was eating at me every day and I could not sit until it was fixed. I really miss her and bailey and caiden.

I'm killing my time by watching movies and Season 1/2 of the office on netflix via my xbox 360. It's kind of nice to watch something without interruption, but I'll trade the interruption of my crying daughter, or my son talking about pokemon, or my wife needing me to listen to her ANY DAY now. A day alone is long enough. Come back Alene (I know, I'll see you Sunday).

Better than Billy Idol

If you've seen the Haka before, this is it times 10.

My wife's husband

I sometimes think that my wife's should-be husband was born about 40 or so years too young. He's the guy she referred to in this post and I've had the honor of meeting the guy a couple of times. Once at our wedding reception when he told me very bluntly that I better take care of Alene. The second was on a trip to Portland Alene and I took.

When I first met Alene, she told me about her belief in God and how this man and his wife helped Alene understand what it meant to be a true Christian and one that is loving, forgiving, and tolerant toward others. She said previous to that she had never understood it until living with them.

When she spoke of H, her eyes would always light up and she would smile about how great of a husband, father, and grandfather he was. She was so impressed with the life he lived in both the military and as a teacher in Alaska. She said he worked so hard to support his family and was everything to his grandchildren (who helped raise). He was devoted to his family and his church and in retirement, volunteered at his grand children's school.

The way she talks about him is the way I would want her to think about me. I think any man would want his wife to feel the same way about him in the way Alene talks about this man.

When I hear her talk about him, I reflect on myself. I think of the people that I want to emulate and be like and I'll always say it's my own father. I want nothing more than to let him know he is and was a great influence on my life. With that said, I feel like I'm half the man he and H are and I've got a lot to catch up on. I'm 31 years old, I still have not finished school, and I don't spend enough quality time with both my wife and my family. I kind of suck, but I know I can do better.

I didn't want to ruin this post on a down note. H was great to spend time with and he reminded me VERY much of my own father, who is loving, tolerant (VERY tolerant from the crap I did as a teenager), and forgiving. He also worked VERY hard for his family (and continues to). These are both great men that I would use as an example to anyone I met as to how to be a man. I love my wife very much and I want to be a better husband and father so she could so proudly think of me the same way she thinks of H.

Caiden playing army with his Hamster

Caiden can be kind of hard to understand. Often times when we make him stop playing video games, he'll say in a sheepish voice, "Then what can I do?" Being that we want him to be creative and think of things to do, we tell him to "be creative and think of something to do". He gets frustrated and often times says he can't think of one thing to do.

Same with school when his teacher would have him free-write about anything. He would have a blank piece of paper after 20 minutes stating that he could not think of anything to write.

Then, there are times where he's consumed for hours with something. I'll go into this room and find 1000 tiny green army guys all lined up in formation facing 1000 chess pieces, or maybe empty bullet shells stacked up on end as if they're some sort of action figure. He'll play with them for hours, then want to spend 30 minutes describing the battle that just took place. It's cute, but very time consuming and often tries my patience, but I know he needs someone to listen.

Well, last night after Alene cleaned Henry's (Caiden's hamster) cage, Caiden had been watching him and wanted to continue to watch him. He had a "battle" that involved henry. He kept Henry at bay with food and water under one of his army helmets. At first his tiny army guys were attacking Henry, but then they became under attack from a larger force, so they turned around and started fighting back with Henry. Pretty intense.

Here are a couple of pictures (this particular battle was actually very small-scale):

Changing a water pump

I have a '97 Chevy CK 1500 truck that developed a water leak of sorts in August. I have not driven it since because I had the Dodge and I was pretty busy the past few months fixing the basement. Russ came over and helped me out. I used to really know how to work on cars and all their components, but I've since become a dunce. Russ has all the "Car" tools while I have all the "construction" tools, so it's a good partnership we've formed.

We pulled the water pump off and inspected it for cracks. Nothing, but we noticed the gaskets were pretty much gone, so it was safe to assume we just needed new gaskets. We've got them now and I just need to put the sucker back on. I'll probably do that tomorrow.

One of the most annoying thing about the water pump is the fact that the fan is connected to and IMPOSSIBLE to remove before taking off the water pump, so you have to take the whole thing out.

Here is a picture of where the water pump/fan should be:



Here is a picture of the water pump with the fan attached

Temple Square

We did the annual Temple Square night to check out the Christmas lights along with my brother Russ and his wife Randa. We were especially curious how Bailey would respond. She seemed to be very curious and observant, constantly distracted by all the lights, but she was VERY good.

I like going down to Temple square to see the lights. As much as I know what to expect, it's still a fun feeling getting bundled up to go out with the family. We purchased a cute fleece outfit for Bailey to wear, which covers here completely from head to toe. When we got to the car she was still toasty, except for her cheeks.

Here are some pictures from the night (as usual, you can click on the picture, then click "all sizes" to find a size that shows more detail):

Bailey and mommy all bundled up:



We got there just as the lights were coming on



So Joseph, Mary, AND Baby Jesus could all walk on water????



Another shot with their reflections



Waterfall



Caiden



The Temple

Blood Oranges

I bought my first blood oranges the other day at the store. I didn't know they existed until I saw the opening sequence to the TV show Dexter.

Dexter is one of my favorite shows. It's on Showtime for a reason (language, graphic violence), but it's an odd idea for a show.

The show is basically about a forensics dude named Dexter Morgan, who uses his job as a cover for what he really is: A serial killer. He kills people that are guilty and get away with murder. He is very careful about ensuring they are guilty before doing what he does. He's very detailed and consistent with the way he does it. The show has everything: Comedy, Drama, Thrills, Intensity, Though-provoking, etc. I really love how they show Dexter struggling to act normal in society with a girlfriend, job, sister, etc. while he suffers with this urge to kill. It flashes back a lot to his youth and his father (a police officer) discovering his son's urge to kill and how his father taught him how to blend in with society, and how to use his urge for good.

I'm not an advocate for vigilantism and I do believe (for the most part) in our systems of courts and juries to sentence people, but this show, for the most part, is pure entertainment, but makes you think sometimes.

Here is the opening sequence to the show that introduced me to the Blood Orange. You'll see where the blood orange comes in: