No more dead battery (fingers crossed)

Few things are more frustrating than turning the key to your car and nothin'. Maybe you hear just click click click click. Either way you aren't going anywhere. It's happened to me with the van several times. Until the last time the van has always been sitting in the garage. Here I have a plug in charger/starter. But the last time me and boys were out at night... and it was a bit chilly... and Kathleen was out of town. Fortunately I was able to get a jump and the van quickly started.

I've had the van checked out and I'm told the charging system and battery are okay. I think the boys have left on dome lights and the battery has slowly drained. This last time I was sitting for an hour with the radio and DVD playing. Parker and I were waiting in the church parking lot while Payton was in church prep class.

I purchased and installed a gizmo to stop draining my battery. It is called PriorityStart. It monitors the voltage in your battery. If it drops to around 11 volts or so it disconnects the battery. The idea is to leave enough charge in the battery so that it will still start the car. I tested it by leaving my lights on. In about 5 mintues the PriorityStart kicked in - lights out. Hopefully I will never have this problem again.

Pizza and Bingo

Payton's school had a fun night for all the kids and families. Both the lower elementary (K-2) and the upper elementary (3-6) gathered at the upper elementary cafeteria Friday night for pizza and bingo. The pizza was pizza and the bingo was bingo, but more importantly Payton had fun with his school friends.

Our young basketball star

Payton's first basketball season is nearly over. It's been fun watching him and the other boys play their games this winter. This weekend will be the end of the season. I'll tell you, the different sports around here don't step on each others toes. One sport ends and another begins. Soccer starts up after basketball, then baseball, the football. The leagues don't overlap. Is it like this everywhere or am I being pessimistic?

Stuck

Today was a very nice day around these parts. It got up into the 60s. I went outside and tossed the basketball up at the hoop a few times. After one shot the ball didn't come back down!

Our house modeled in 3D...revisited

Google notified me that my 3D house model was rejected. All models require photo realism. I'll have to take some pictures of the house and stick'em to my model. I haven't done this before, but I know there are some tutorials on line showing how. I'll work on this and try again.

My original post on this can be read by clicking here.

Laundry room make over

Kathleen says I gave her a honey do list this weekend - tile the laundry room back splash. Well if this is true she gave me one right back - finish painting the laundry room drawers. Now I really didn't give her a honey do thing. I just suggested she stop by Home Depot to pick out tile. She goes by one to and from work.

She picked out a nice looking tile mat. Instead of using mastic to glue the tiles up, she tried a newfangled product; an adhesive mat that first gets applied to the wall and the the tiles are stuck to it. It worked really well and the tile went up super easy with no mess. By late Saturday night she had it all grouted. Her project is about 98% finished. I'll do the last 2% this week by putting up a piece of molding to hide the gap at the top.

And I did get the drawers painted as well thank you very much.

Sitting at my computer

I took this self portrait sitting at my computer. I was trying different exposure and flash settings.

Two Payton's

Our house modeled in 3D

I mess around with Google Sketchup every now and then. Today I attempted to model our house in 3D. It turned out pretty well. I submitted it to Google to put in Google Earth's 3D Warehouse. If accepted you can see my model in Google Earth. To see it, and other 3D models as well, you have to have the 3D Buildings layer turned on. Here is a what it will look like.

Can't take the Cincinnati out of the kids

Yep, some of Cincinnati is still in the boys - and me too. Payton and Parker still love Skyline chili. I'm fortunate that I can get this wonderful stuff shipped to me by the case. Believe me - because no one else does - the stuff is that good. Just ask my boys!