The Day That "Brown Santa" Came

This was the sight I was greeted with the day Santa pulled up in his big brown truck and came to our home.

The Fallout

Hi, Various Critters!

Did you miss me?

We did it! The big, hairy, wonderful and scary move went down Saturday and it was like bringing an atomic bomb to a balloon fight. Chaos, fire, and brimstone, everywhere. There were scrapes, drops, falls, groans, slips, skinned knees, sore muscles, banged heads and bruised arms. Our poor Motrin had to work overtime, as five-alarm calls were breaking out all over our bodies. As close as I can calculate, I expended somewhere between 3 and 4 million calories. Everyone was exhausted and fully spent after the 12-hour day.

But thanks to our tenacious and sweaty crew, we did it!

We awoke Sunday morning to a house stuffed full of boxes. It was like a recently stomped-on ant hill, and we slowly began the process of rebuilding it one grain of sand at a time.

We took time Sunday to go to IKEA for a few (dozen) things, and spent the rest of the long weekend, holiday-BBQ-less, as we unpacked.

It's a big responsibility unpacking into a new home. You need to pick the best place to put all your stuff, and if you chose wrong you might hamstring yourself for years. But if you do it right, you can really improve your overall efficiency.

Like the kitchen for instance. We put some effort into trying to arrange everything for the best possible workflow. We have a sort of mini-factory now, where the food flows from the fridge or pantry to the stove (where spices and wooden spoons await) to the counter (where we have a giant permanent trivet) to be put into serving dishes ("more than Crate & Barrel"), to the next counter where serving utensils and plates are, and then on to the dinner table. It's all in a row, like a glorious assembly line of food. That's what you get when an engineer and an occupational therapist combine process and labor-reduction techniques. :)

We made a decision to set up a scaled-down version of our AV system in the living room, with an eye towards our future purchase of a wall-mounted flat-panel TV. I have only set up the TV and DVD player (Apple TV and Cable DVR will be next). All the rest (Receiver/Amp, big speakers, surround speakers, center channel, more wire than the space shuttle, and various black boxes and selectors) I will sell and get new, more compact stuff when we upgrade to the hang-on-wall flat panel TV.

Other tasks done so far:

Temporary dog fence is up, made of plastic chicken wire and metal stakes. It keeps the poop off the back yard lawn and keeps the dogs out of trouble. Like Coco, this was a hairy bitch to put up.

I "upgraded" the two shower heads, with a hose-extension type in the kid's bath and a multi-pattern-spewing luxury unit in the master bath.

Washer, dryer and stove are all in place and working. Fridge is almost done, we just need to hook up the water, which is more involved than it deserves to be.

Next up: Hack into the nice new garage wall and install the doggie door. We are tired of carrying the jackals outside to pee.

Things are changing fast, check back for updates. We don't have cable TV or internet yet, but expect it sometime this week.

Until next time, take care of yourselves...

Wild Cars, Episode 2: Vitamin K

In our relentless drive to be super-cool, and just coming off the studliness of the Plymouth Horizon, we ordered one of the very first K-Cars, a shiny red 1981 Plymouth Reliant. As we were told by every car magazine, this was the car that would save Chrysler. This is what they spent all that loan money on. And it did save them...the first time. Chrysler has been saved a few times since then of course.

Our Reliant is pictured here, on the street behind our Charger 2.2, as it tends to look better as background scenery for cooler cars.

The first indication that we had a brand new car in its first week or two in production made by a company circling the drain was the missing emblems. Not sure what happened there, but my guess is:

Chrysler Manufacturing Engineer: "Sir, we're all set to start production on this car that will save our company but the dang plastic emblems haven't come in yet!"

Chrysler Manager: "Ship the damn things without them then you friggin' idiot! Nobody will notice."

And this car had worse issues. It was totally and completely uncool, to the point of actually oozing big drops of uncool onto the road. It was so square it made a brick look sleek and sexy by comparison. Even the trimmings of the high-end model we had couldn't hide it's anti-coolness. As they say, you can't polish a turd.

And it was severely, even dangerously underpowered. You did not want to pull out into heavy traffic in this car. I remember the first time I drove it I thought it was slow compared to the Horizon! I guess that was a blessing in disguise though, because it had really bad torque steer that would have been much worse had the engine produced any actual torque. In the winter, the airbox would often ice up and further reduce the power. I remember not being able to top 35 MPH once on the freeway. In Motown, that is a scary situation.

But it was good on gas, and my dad was all about that. And aside from all this bad news, it turned out to be a pretty reliable Reliant.

The one K-Car story that sticks in my mind is the time my father didn't realize that Brian was not yet in the car and drove over his foot. Brian was yelling and screaming and going on about it and my dad, a little embarrassed at having run his son over, just reminded us all that this was a pretty light car and that one corner couldn't have weighed much more than 7 or 8 hundred pounds. I'm sure that made Brian's foot feel better, knowing that.