Blog Number 307

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well it is Father's Day but the kids are not up yet so I do not know yet what my present will be.  According to my wife (and my mother, and my brother, and my friends and any co-worker who has had the unfortunate luck of drawing me in a gift exchange) I am very hard to buy for.  So I am not pumping myself up for this year's gift as it will likely come to me with an apology along with the phrase (excuse), "You are hard to buy for."  I told my wife this morning that I wanted to be treated today like she was treated on Mother's Day, namely to sit on the couch all day with pillows and have people do everything for me (including bathing).  Of course for Mother's Day she was in a cast and neck brace and had a 4" cut on her head and in a lot of pain but still, turnabout is fair play.

I think I have mentioned lately that we are playing a lot of Boggle.  As we get better and better, we take chances on words that might exist.  As far as I can tell, there is no penalty for having a fake word (no matter how real it sounds).  We might have to do so as the wife has taken to writing down many words that sound like words.  We tried implementing a "you have to use the word convincingly in a sentence" rule but that just turned into a comedy-fest.  Last night the wife introduced "feebly" and "stably".  I asked her to say the word "feebly" 10 times quickly and she could not (neither could I - try it, it just sounds funny).  I also suggested that Feebly and Stably might be the 8th and 9th dwarfs that Snow White never talked about.  It turns out both of these are actual words.

feebly: adverb - in a faint and feeble manner; "the lighthouse, flashing feebly against the sleet-blurred, rocky backdrop of the coast of north west Norway"
stably: adverb - in a stable solid fixed manner; "the boulder was balanced stably at the edge of the canyon"

Later, I countered with "eos" and "soe" (note they are palindromes).

soe: noun - a large cask, a tub, a large wooden vessel for holding water; a cowl.
eos: noun - the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn

We did not look up any of these words until after the game was over.  I did mark mine out (not counting them) but the wife stood by her words (and, it seems, rightly so).  In the end, I won by more than enough points that these words would not have effected the end results.  As the son picks up more and more new words, the games take longer (since you only get credit for unique words that no one else writes down).

Well, I think the kids are getting up now so it is time to find out what my Father's Day gift is.  Here's hoping!

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 306

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So the big news is that we now have a van.  It is incredible how powerful of a weapon it is to walk out on the car salesman without budging for before noon the next day he had called me back and told me that he had approval to accept our offer for the 2006 Kia Sedona.  The wife was out test driving other Kia's when I received the call so she quickly stopped and headed home very happy.  After we bought the 8 year / 85,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty and you added on the 6.25% sales tax and you subtract the $10,000 we had from the insurance company for our old van and you through in the Texas inspection tags and license plates (the dealer took care of all of this for us) we ended up having to finance about $8,000 at roughly 6%.  So we have a $250 payment for the next 36 months but hope to pay it off before then.  Although it is time consuming to buy a car even when you walk in with an agreed upon price, the kids did great.  This is due in part to my stern warning that their behavior at the dealership directly determined where we ate dinner that night.  One small threat of taking them to eat Chinese (which they both hate) and they were angels for the 90 minutes it took for all the paperwork and we ended up at Mcalister's (kids eat free on Tuesdays and Thursdays).  Typically there is an argument about who gets to sit by dad so to stop this I told them that whoever wanted to sit by me had to ride home with me in the Buick and not in the new Kia.  All discussion ceased and their loyalty to me evidently can be bought for only the opportunity to ride home in the van for 5 miles.  With Father's Day around the corner....oh well.
Well the coffee is done (I can smell it from clear back here in the bedroom) so it is time to go but I still have time for...

Random Bad Quality Pictures With My New Cell Phone

On the way to work each day I pass this horse ranch.  There have been a few ponies out there lately but this picture does not show them.  Hey, its hard to drive and take pictures at the same time.  Granted, I was only going 10 miles per hour when I snapped this one as traffic was a little bad.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 305

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

The long road to purchasing a vehicle to replace our minivan that was totaled almost came to an end tonight.  Before I explain about the vehicle we almost bought tonight, first let me tell you about the journey.  The plan was simple, create a short list of vehicles that met our criteria, test drive them, and then buy one.  But, what ones should make the list?  Not wanting to miss something I decided to start with every vehicle on the market even though some of them were not ever going to make the final cut (like say for instance the Hummer H2 or the Porshe Cayenne).  This amounted to 298 vehicles.  Our first level of criteria was safety.  We were only going to consider cars with 5 star ratings for front and side crash tests and 4 star for rollover crash tests (there were only 2 that had 5 star rollover rating).  I researched all 298 vehicles at SafeCar.gov and started a spreadsheet.  This narrowed down the list to only 54 choices.  Some vehicles dropped off due to poor ratings (like the Chevy Trailblazer - 3 star front driver side rating; the Volkswagen New Beetle - 3 star rear side crash rating, or the Lincoln Navigator - 3 star rollover crash rating) while others dropped off due to lack of crash data (like the Jaguar X-Type Wagon, the MINI Clubman, and the Audi S4 Cabriolet).  The only other safety rating we considered was rollover percentage.  We decided on 17% to be the cut off point and this narrowed down the list to a mere 44 choices (losing the Hyundai Tuscan and Mitsubishi Outlander which each had a 19% rollover percentage).  Once we had the safest cars listed, then we focused more on the financial end of things starting with gas mileage.  I researched this on FuelEconomy.gov.  We decided the cut off line was 23 mpg which narrowed the field down to 34 choices (losing the Acura MDX at 20 mpg and the Suburu Tribeca at 21 mpg).  Only at this point did we consider sticker price (as listed on the manufacturer's website).  We stopped at $25,000 starting price and just like that we were down to 22 safe, fuel efficient and reasonably prices cars (losing the Acura XL at $46,280 and the Buick Enclave at $33,995).  Of these 22, 14 were sedans, 5 were SUVs and 3 were minivans.  From the very beginning (when there were 298 on the list) the wife was leaning toward the Honda CR-V and I was leaning towards the Chevy HHR.  To our joy, each made the final cut.

Once we were to our short list, the wife proceeded to test drive as many as she could starting with the manufacturers that had the most number of vehicles on the list (Hyundai, Chevy and Suburu each had 3 in the cut).  Meanwhile I filled in some of the gaps that could be tiebreakers like insurance costs.  The wife would dutifully grade each after a test drive and give me a number between 1 and 10.  She quickly decided that a sedan was not for her and just like that we were down to 8 choices...

SUVs

Chevy HHR
Honda CR-V
Hyundai Santa Fe
Mazda CX-7
Suburu Outback

Vans

Dodge Grand Caravan
Hyundai Entourage
Kia Sedona

The wife was doing well and dealing with all kinds of salesmen.  She was giving each one a fair rating (even though my beloved HHR got only a 4 out of 10 due to poor visibility) and all was going well until she drove the Hyundai Entourage.  It was at this point that the search came to a stand still.  Evidently when she took this vehicle out for a test run a few things happened...

• A bright light shown around the van
• A band of angels came down round about the van and began to sing softly
• Jesus himself appeared in the passenger seat and during this epiphany he told her that he personally had selected not only the make and model but this exact van for her

I received the phone call 12 seconds after she left the car lot and I knew I was done for.  Still I encouraged her to continue on down the list and she did manage to make it through to the Kia Sedona (which is made on the same assembly line as the Entourage) and a quick test of the Mazda then just like that the Suburu and Dodge were struck from the running without even a test run.

So anyway, we found a 2007 Entourage and a 2006 Sedona that were to our liking and I actually went out tonight with every intent of purchasing one of them.  A quick call to the Entourage dealer and we found out that it was sold on Saturday so we went to the Kia place and found out that since the test drive, the price had come down $2,000.  I test drove it and it is really nice (though there were no angels that I could see) but in the end, the salesman would not budge on his price so after investing about an hour of my life, I walked out without the van.  There are 20 other Sedonas with in 20 miles of my house and 4 or 5 of them are about 9 miles away so the search continues for now.

It is a little inconvenient to only have one car right now but it is cost effective despite the $4 / day it costs me extra in gas to have the wife drive me to work, return home, drive to my work to pick me up and then drive home.  I am saving about $2 per day in insurance and am making about $1 per day in interest on the $10,000 I have ready for a down payment.  Figure in that the wife is onely driving me to work 4 days a week and I am breaking even overall.  In summary, I am in no hurry to buy a new vehicle.  Phew, what a long post but I still have time for...

Random Bad Quality Pictures With My New Cell Phone

This past Sunday our ABF had parking lot duty.  We get to wear these stylish yellow vests and tell big fancy cars when to stop and when to go.  Our goals are simple.  We are to ensure no one is killed.  Bonus points for no one being hurt.  As you can see, it was really windy but I still had a good time and we will not have this duty for 3 months or so.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 304

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Last night I had a meeting between 5 and 6 with some folks in Australia.  I still have trouble grasping the concept that I am the funny sounding one in those kinds of meetings.  After the meeting and a quick dinner, we all hopped in the Buick and headed to the church or more specifically, the church parking lot.  There the wife did something that she has not done in 58 days, namely get behind the wheel of a car and drive.  I will admit that we were all a little nervous but after a few laps around the biggest parking lot, she pulled out onto the road and drove us home where we arrived safe and sound and none the worse for wear.  She had quite the look of freedom written across her face and even the kids were excited as they are basically stuck at home all day with no vehicle and no one to drive them anywhere even if they had one.  As I write this blog, the son is in the shower and the wife is readying herself to drive me to work and keep the car for the day.  Some sense of normalcy is creeping back into our lives again.

Our focus will now shift to picking out another vehicle to replace our totaled minivan.  In a future blog I will have to detail the process that we went through to narrow our search but I will tell you now that crash test safety ratings played a big part (safecar.gov).  A little warning about that site, don't go there if you would be afraid your current vehicle did not fare well in their tests.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.  I think we might have talked about these crash ratings a little too much lately as yesterday the son had his toy cars out and had them separated into 2 rows.  One row contained those cars with high safety ratings and the other row contained those that (now that he has been in a crash) he would never ride in again.  He seemed a little frustrated with some of the cars as they were not replicas of real models and therefore there were no safety ratings for them.  He could not understand why we could not research the safety rating of a funny car drag racer or a monster truck.  So those cars he just threw back in the box, better safe than sorry I guess.

Well it is about time to be driven to work.  Today while I am there, the wife is going to go look at some of the vehicles that made our short list.  Once she narrows down her choices then I will be allowed to look at the finalists.  I will keep you posted but until then...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 303

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Today we made the trek to the clinic again.  This time our appointment was early in the morning so we were hopeful that it would not turn into the marathon waiting session that our last two visits have.  We made it back to the house in record time and while we were there the doctor gave the wife the "all clear" on her neck.  It is still sore but it is more of a tired muscle feeling than anything else.  She is free to get a massage (woo hoo) and to drive (uh-oh).  We are going to wait until after next Monday when the cast comes off before we get serious with our car shopping.  I am sure you will hear about it here.

We have played quite a bit of Boggle recently and now that we know the rules a little better (2 letter words don't count) we are getting seriously competitive (even more so than normal).  We did almost come to fisticuffs the other day over the following incident.  As you probably know, in Boggle you have 3 minutes to come up with as many words as possible but you only get points for the unique words in your list.  Once the 3 minutes are up, each person reads their list and the others mark off the words that are on their lists.  Once everyone reads their list you tally up the score.  Everything was going fine (i.e. I was winning) when we were reading our lists after a middle round.  The son read the word "does" (the 3rd person singular of the word do).  I had this on my list so I marked it off.  When the wife read her list she listed the word "does" (the plural of the word doe).  She then had the audacity to claim this was not the same word and insist that I count the word.  After a heated discussion (and a threat to call Hasbro for a ruling) she relented and marked her word off.  In the end the game was decided by more than one point so it was irrelevant whether the word counted or not.  Moving on, it is time for...

Random Bad Quality Pictures With My New Cell Phone

I am a creature of habit when it comes to parking at work.  I get there early enough to have my pick of the choice spots but I pick one closer to the exit of the garage than to the entrance of my building.  About 6 months ago, a truck started parking in the spot next to mine.  The truck arrived before I did and was usually there when I left.  The truck was almost always parked next to or on top of the yellow line dividing the two parking spots.  I thought for a while that the truck was there in some sort of long term parking but it would not be exactly straddling the line each day, just most days.  The above pick shows how close it is to my space.  These are standard width parking spaces so the truck has about 2 foot of play on the other side.  My spot is at the end of a row so it is not a problem to park just like the truck so I have room to open my door at least.
Well it is time to give the daughter a shower and maybe get some Boggle in before bedtime.  I will let you know how I do and how the wife does (that is does and in how she plays the game, not as in how her female deers are doing).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 302

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We have owned the game of Boggle for quite some time now.  If I had to guess it would be going on 2 years, maybe longer.  Up until this week, we had yet to play it even once.  Oh, the kids got it out of the box and the instructions are missing along with the 3 minute sand timer but the shaker and the 16 dice are still there.  We used the stopwatch feature on the cell phone and played it last night and this afternoon.  The 6 year old daughter has slightly modified rules in that she can use any letter anywhere without having to have them connected.  Also, since she just finished kindergarten, she gats credit for any alternate spelling that makes sense to her.  Also, it really does not even have to be a word (e.g. blont, kimb) in order for it to count.  The rest of us follow the normal Boggle rules and it is really fun.  The wife has beat me by the narrowest of margins every time so far and so tonight over dinner as we were discussing playing again I informed her that she had better throw a few games if she knew what was good for her (and my ego).  We will see.

It has been a pretty normal / boring week really so I am going to jump right into...

Random Bad Quality Pictures With My New Cell Phone

While shopping at Sprout's today I came across this sign.  20 years ago this sign would have made no sense at all.  I mean, what different kinds of water could there possibly be?  Nowadays though it is not the case and hence the above sign makes perfect sense.

While the wife was shopping at Fashion Bug, the kids and I walked down to some other stores in the same strip mall.  We stopped at Petco, Game Stop and also Staples where I snapped this picture.  This presents one of life's paradoxes.  What happens if you use a stapler remover inside of Staples?  Ok, maybe it is a stretch but I was really bored and I made it a point to go down the staple aisle just to take this picture.  Like I said, it has been a boring week.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 301

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

The wife really enjoys jigsaw puzzles.  The kids enjoy them too as long as they are 100 pieces or less but if we are working on a puzzle as a family (meaning that the wife does the bulk of the work and the rest of us find a piece or two here or there) we usually stick to those that are 1,000 pieces in size.  My father did many jigsaw puzzles when I was a kid but he leaned toward the huge ones (2,000 or 2,500 pieces).  Anyway, I was considering the concept of 1,000 pieces and trying to do the math.  Since AREA = LENGTH x WIDTH it follows that number of pieces on the left (or right) side of the puzzle times the number of pieces on the bottom (or top) of the puzzle should equal 1,000 exactly.  1,000 only has the following factors...

1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 20, 25, 40, 50, 100, 125, 200, 250, 500, and 1000

This means that the only possible combinations are as follows...

1 x 1000 - 2 x 500 - 4 x 250 - 5 x 200 - 8 x 125 - 10 x 100 - 20 x 50- 25 x 40

To me the most logical choice is  25 (h) x 40 (w) but as I counted the pieces on the current puzzle there were only 37 pieces across the bottom.  Also there were only 27 pieces up the sides.  Now 37 x 27 = 999 so this (my friends) is false advertising.  I am not suggesting that the puzzle box actually say "999 piece puzzle" but it could say "1000 piece puzzle*" and somewhere in the fine print elsewhere on the box it can say "* puzzle only contains 999 pieces**" and yet somewhere else "**get over it".  I am fine with that.

Since the wife cannot drive right now (her shorter cast does not come off until June 9th), I have been both driving the son to school and picking him up from school.  The one way trip is 9 miles making my daily mileage 36 miles.  I get about 24 mpg in the Buick so I am blowing through 1.5 gallons of gas.  We drive right by a gas station on the way so each morning I have him figure how much money we will save when school is out.  Gas was $3.799 per gallon on Friday so our cost for the day was $3.80 x 1.5 = $5.70.  Doing the math, in June we will have over $100 less gas expense.  His last day of school is this Wednesday and they only have fun things planned for both Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.  I thought about this a little and then made him the following offer.  I offered to pay him $5 not to go to school.  He wants to go on Tuesday as there is a field trip to a park but he is still considering my offer for Wednesday.

Today we have 2 things on our shopping list.  The wife wants (the word she used was "needs" actually) a Tempur-Pedic pillow and (since I dropped the 10 year old tea maker this morning and broke it) we need a need iced tea brewer.  I have racked my brain but I do not know of a store that sells both these items so it seems we will be traveling to at least 2 stores today.  Maybe I can grab some interesting low quality pics with the cell phone.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon