Kitchen Light

Well, since we moved into our house a little over a year ago, I have been trying to do the little projects that just fix the little issues that were in disrepair around the house. One of those items was the kitchen light, which had a broken cover and really wasn't big enough to give good lighting to work by.

We had gotten some coupons from our electric company for $20 off fluorescent energy star fixtures, so we went to Home Depot to check them out. We ended up with a 4 foot light fixture that had 4 bulbs in it. Since the old fixture was basically the 2 foot version of the same fixture, we figured it would give enough extra light.

Well the short story is that we once installed the light got the nickname "the sun". It was so bright that the white cabinets we have in the kitchen just glowed. Aimee loved it, but did acknowledge that it was kinda bright. It was that way for about a day when I decided to take two of the bulbs out to see if it would be less brilliant and found that it was going to be sufficient with just a two bulb 4 foot fixture.

I just bought the two bulb fixture and some other smaller fixtures for the back bedrooms from Home Depot and got the new one for the kitchen installed, the 4 bulb fixture installed in our new office (which is a little larger space without white cabinets and works much better) and one of the smaller ones installed in the room we are now using as the office. We are going to be switching our guest bedroom and office in the next week or so to utilize the larger space for our office that now will be very bright.

One thing I have notice with the new florescent fixtures is that the light is much brighter and definitely whiter, but at the same time not as hard on your eyes. Things just seem crisper with these lights. And when you have the right size fixture for the room, it is quite nice.

New Grill I got

Well, Aimee agreed that the grill was a good investment, especially since it was discounted another $50 when we went to HomeDepot to get some other stuff. They were selling them so fast they didn't have any assembled, but it was probably a little easier to get it home in the big box than assembled anyways. I had to borrow my neighbors truck to go get it since it is so big it wouldn't fit in the car.

It took me this afternoon to put together, but we had steak on it that night and it worked great. It is so nice to have the stainless steel burners, they distribute the heat well and the cooking surface is pretty consistant temp across the whole thing. I also only had to use one side so there is only one grate to clean. Some of the other nice features are a removable drip pan that slides out the back and empties into a grease pan, 4 casters so it is easier to move around on the deck, the two hood design that makes using only part of the grill easier, and the electric ignition switch that used a AA battery to make the arc that lights the propane.

Aimee even brought home a cover for it that day so now it is able to be tucked in at night and kept nice sitting out on the deck next to the old one until I get around to discarding it. Maybe someone would want a overused grill with a fairly new burner.?.

New Tow Hitch

I just got a new tow hitch put on the car. I am wanting to start working on the back yard and will need to remove a bit of dirt from the back yard, so this will make it possible for me to get a trailer to haul it away. I don't think I have enough space back here to just move it around, so it will have to go to the yard debris place.



I didn't have enough time to find the trailer I was going to buy for towing, but went to look at a couple after getting the hitch installed today. The guy tried to sell me on a 2 ton model that had a 3 ton axle and was like $1500.


I asked if they had anything smaller and he showed me some smaller ones that had a 1 ton capacity, which is the most my car can pull anyways. Now I just have to decide between that $750 one


and the one at Fred Meyer for $200 that folds up, is basically just a frame, and would require me to build on a floor and sides to hold stuff.




I didn't get a ball for the hitch since I didn't know what size the trailer I got would take, and it looks like I am going to have to get the guy to rewire the light connector since the trailers I was looking at today all had the same connector as you see in the picture above. I saw him deliberate about which one to put on, but figured his two months at this shop not enough time to give him that insight. The hitch does seem pretty secure though and it looks like he did a good job otherwise. I will have to find time to take it back this week after finding the right trailer.


I was kinda wondering how it would attach to the underside of the car, but it is a pretty clean connection. It seems to just connect with 2 bolts into the frame on either side.

New Grill I want

I have had the same small old weber grill for over 5 years now and have gone through like 3 burners in that time. I have been loathing the use of the grill because it is quite frankly rusting apart, the wire grilling service included. I tried to find a picture of me grilling something withing the past 3 years since we got our digital camera and didn't find a single one. Just goes to show it isn't anything for show since it is in such bad shape.

We got my Dad a new grill a couple years ago for Father's Day and I have been kinda jealous ever since. It is stainless steel outside with the stainless steel burners, like the new one I want, but his is a little bigger, I think.

This is the new grill I am wanting.

I have had my eye on this one for about a year. When I saw it last summer, I thought it was cool that it had two cooking areas that you could control separately. I would be able to just use one side when it was just Aimee and me, or fire up the whole thing when we had more to grill.

The reason this is coming up now is I just got a notification from Home Depot that they have new lower pricing on their grills, so maybe I can talk Aimee into letting me get it. Unfortunately, there are no holidays or birthdays coming up which are designed for giving me gifts. Doh!!

The front sprinklers

I did the front sprinklers after I did the back yard ones in the last post. They were a little more tricky since I decided to replace the half inch PVC pipe that was fed off the irrigation pump with 3/4" pipe. This fed into the new manifold for the front sprinklers, which I had to modify to add a fourth branch for an new spigot by the front corner of the garage. I always had to fish a rather long hose from the back of the house to use the irrigation well water on stuff in the front yard; it was cumbersome and hard to manage. Not any more...

The project turned out to be more than I bargained for since it ended up needing a lot more than I expected. I had to buy an additional control valve for the spigot since the timer would only let me turn on the pump switch when it was turning a zone on, so I made the spigot a new zone. Now I can manually run one of the programs which only turns on that zone; run the pump for the time I need to use the spigot and then turn it off. This ends up working for both the front and back spigots since the one in the back is branched off the supply line for the back yard sprinklers.

Here are the pics:




The biggest setback I had while putting the front sprinkler controls in was that I snapped a connecting piece in the PVC pipe that went from the pump to the well while I was trying to reposition things for the new 3/4" pipe connected. I will post that story tomorrow.

The only thing that leaked when I turned it all on was the additional control valve I added for the spigots since I forgot to tighten it down when i was dry fitting all the pieces together. It started spraying everywhere and would have been much easier to tighten up if I would have added a coupler above it, like I did below it; something to add later. Otherwise it ended without a hitch and has been running for several weeks now without issue. I just need to add a rain sensor to shut it off when it rains like it has the past week.

One of those tasks

One of the tasks I had put on my list, just so I could mark it complete, was putting in automatic sprinkler valves for the existing sprinkler system. I had completed it before the July 4th holiday so we wouldn't have to worry about watering while we were gone for the weekend, but I wanted to be able to track that I had completed it then. Well, it actually isn't completed yet, since I still have to burry the control wire and finish routing the wiring in the garage so it isn't hanging in the middle of the garage door access.

Here are some before and after pictures:

Digging the (big) hole to expose the pipes.



Then, voila, the new access cover and piping is finished!!!



And the timer that still needs the wiring finished so it doesn't block the door:



I was even impressed the way I was able to set the timer up to turn our irrigation well pump on before it started the schedule for watering, and then turn it off when it was finished.

I will have to split the task for installing the control valves and doing the wiring of the timer so that I can mark the control valves completed and then have another one to mark completed when I finish routing the wiring! :)

Keeping track of life

Since I have been working on a lot of projects around the house, in the yard, on my computer, etc. I decided to try to list it all out and have a place I could go to mark them as completed. Well, it ended up being a little more of a list than I thought. I ended up with almost 100 tasks!!! It was a little intimidating, to say the least, but at least there are several small ones I can complete quickly so I can show some progress.

Needless to say, I will have plenty to cross off my list when the tasked get completed. Maybe now I can seem like I am getting stuff done over time; which it just hasn't up to this point.

You know how it is, you seem to be busy all the time and when you look back on the past month, several months... year, it just doesn't seem like you have really accomplished a whole lot. Time just seems to be going by and leaving a bunch of stuff left undone. I guess it defeats me at times, cuz I just get tired of the "walking in sand" feeling; more like "walking uphill in sand" feeling... for every couple steps you take, you end up loosing a step due to sliding.

Now I have a means by which to measure my progress and that is probably the best way to identify progress. If you don't have a stake in the sand, it is hard to realize just how much progress you are making.

Syndicate

Check out an old Win95 game called Syndicate. I got it for my brother back in high school and we played it for hours on end. It is a really cool game where you control cyborg commandos and do missions to dominate the world. Muhaha haha.

Ruptured Disc - Part 2

Here is the image of the two lower discs for comparison. You can see that the large ovoide, the disc, in these images is seperate from the smaller ovoid below it, the spinal cord.

They said it was a 10 x 20 mm rupture; about half inch by 1 inch. Here is the MRI image of the ruptured disc; it is the L3-L4 disc. Counting up from the tailbone the vertabrae are named S1 then L1 through L4 (L stands for lumbar), then the next set starts which I not familiar with. See the next picture for reference.



As you can see from the previous images, the disc is really crowding the spinal cord. In these images you can see it from the side. The black stripe up the middle is the spinal cord. The discs are dark and the vertabrae are lighter. The bulge with the blue arrow pointing to it on the 4th image over is the part of the rupture that was really pinching the nerve that went to my right leg.



Hopefully that is pretty clear. I had a little bit of trouble trying to figure out what was what the first couple times, but if you study it for a little bit and know a little bit about the structure of the spine, you can figure it out pretty easily.

Well, long story longer... I ended up having surgery the next day after seeing the neural surgeon. It took about one and a half hours and I hated waking up from the anesthesia; like not having control of your senses. It is actually what I imagined being really drunk was like from how they portray it in the movies; I havn't experienced that kind of drunk. It makes sense why people I have seen come out of surgery are out-of-it; I can understand now.

It was 12 days after that fateful lunch when I left the hospital and I was able to be pretty much pain free and only on ibuprofen for keeping the surgical swelling down. I was flat on my back resting for another two weeks, but I was able to get up and around from time to time. I didn't get bored though, since I had my Star Wars books to read. I almost finished every one I had at the time. I should figure out how many books I read during that time; I will post it when I figure it out. I did get a little stir crazy by the end of the second week after surgery; but by that time I had gone for two checkups at the doctor's and had taken some short errand runs with my wife to the store to stretch my legs.

I ended up going back to work after 3 weeks and did a month of physical therapy to start my recovery off. It turned out that I recovered pretty quick and after 2 and a half months, I really felt like I was back to my old self, physically. I felt a lot more solid and not like I really had to be totally conscious about my back all the time; not twisting, no lifting, etc.

It has been almost 4 months to the day now and I am doing quite well. I still have to be careful not to lift things too heavy or lift incorrectly and bending over alot or working out in the yard for a couple hours makes me sore for the next day. I wouldn't want to have to go through it again, but I am doing well now; dispite the rupture disc and surgery.

Ruptured Disc

Well, I guess it is time for an update on my life. The most impressive thing that has happened over the last 4 months, and something I have been dealing with and coping for the same amount of time, is a ruptured disc in my lower back.

It happened June 2, 2006. I was home for lunch after being at a chiropractic appointment that morning. I was being treated for a low back strain that I had gotten the weekend before; and was feeling quite a bit better, with just residual muscle pain from my back being out of sorts for the week.

Well, that all changed when I went to set my plate of food down on the table and my back decided to give way. It was like my back back bent in a place it wasn't supposed to, about 6-8 inches above my waist, where peoples backs normally don't bend like that. Anywho... it was the worst pain that I had ever felt in my life, including breaking arms, slamming fingers in doors, droping heavy things on my toes, or even what I remember of almost amputating my toes with a shovel when I was a small child. I could barely breathe, the pain was so intense, and my first thought, was; "Oh, crap. That's not good".

Well, long story short, I ended up in the ER that night. I was given pain drugs and told to stay on my back for the weekend and go see my primary doctor on Monday, which I did. My doctor had me on my back for a week to see if it would resolve itself, and when I was still in pain while on the pain drugs the following Friday, I was scheduled get an MRI on my back that day and to see a Neural Surgeon on Monday.

It took the Neural Surgeon about 5 minutes to show me the ruptured disc about 4 vertibae above my tailbone and explain to me that it was one of the biggest ones he had seen. My options were to wait and see if the ruptured disc corrected itself or correct it with surgery, which was his recommendation. There was a very small chance a rupture of that size would correct itself.

Gotta go for now... to be continued... with pictures.

Thanks for the support

well, I guess this is the reason a lot of people like these blogs. They get supportive comments from people, maybe even people they don't even know. I was surprised to find that people had even replyed to my frustration at starting this blog. Anywho... I guess it is time to give it a try again.

What a bunch of falderal.

This is quite frustrating... I created an account to be able to see what this whole blogging thing was all about and post comments on my wife and mother-in-laws blogs, but when trying to name my blog, I kept getting the message that the address was not available. THEN...when I finally got through all the form for the new blog sucessfully and goto the dashboard, there are like 20 blogs in my listing... the ones it said I couldn't create cuz the address wasn't available. Whatever... this seems kinda dumb right now, but maybe I am too technically minded and making it more difficult than it needs to be.