Symphony of the Goddesses

Every now and then the Houston Symphony puts on a video game related show. We haven't gone in the past but this time it was Specifically a Legend of Zelda concert. I've always enjoyed the Zelda games. I've only played the Gameboy/DS ones but I watched my brothers play the NES and SNES ones and watched Brandon play one on the Wii. The music is great, but in a full orchestra concert, it was AMAZING! I decided to splurge a little and buy some really nice seats and it was totally worth it. They played several medleys spanning several games. They did a few specific songs. Then to top it off we got 3 encore songs! Yay! It was fabulous. Brandon must have liked it because he bought a t-shirt and wore it the next day, WITHOUT washing it first. If you know Brandon, that is saying something. I think next time they do a video game concert, we'll go again.

Happy 4th of July, Texas Style

For my fireworks deprived friend and family in Maryland, Utah and Arizona: Brandon burned enough pyrotechnics for all of you.

We had a great holiday filled with friends, family, food and fireworks. The 4 essential Fs of Independence Day. Many thanks to all those who did fight and continue to fight for the freedoms we enjoy as Americans.

100 Posts and 7 Years Ago

I thought it would be fitting to make my 100th post be about Brandon and my's 7th anniversary! I count my blessings every day, and my fabulous, handsome, wonderful, amazing husband is always at the top of that list!

Happy Anniversary to my Darling!

Happy Birthday Brandon!

Brandon turned 31 yesterday and although he had to work, we did celebrate together as a family when he got home. We went out to eat at Monterrey's Little Mexico. Spinach Enchiladas were really good! We thought we would be able to get into Pappasitos at 5:30 but just from the looks of the amount of people waiting outside the door it was probably an hour or better wait to get a table. When we got home we had a little party. Zoey helped me make a cake. Red Velvet with cream cheese frosting and sprinkles. Lots of sprinkles, mostly right in the center of the cake.

The kids are intensely intrigued by the lighting of the candles. Zoey was really anxious to help Brandon blow out the candles. I wasn't sure I would have enough candles since when I pulled out the ones I had, I found that most of them had been chewed up. I assume they were wrongly identified as candy.

Zoey also helped me wrap a few gifts for Brandon. He got a nice heavy bench plane and a circular saw guide to make straight cuts without a table saw. Am I pushing for more wood projects? Maybe. Or it could be that those are just tools he doesn't have and everything else he wants, he just buys when he wants it.

The kids still have room for cake and ice cream. Brandon and I were stuffed. Mom came by at 7 to babysit so we could go out to Dave and Busters and play games. That was a lot more fun when you're not constantly keeping tabs on two little ones trying to keep them interested. Bran's favorite game was Deal or No Deal. He never takes the deal. I think our biggest ticket win on that one was 270. My favorite game was a kind of block stacker sort of tetris game. Each time I played I was basically guaranteed 200 tickets. We amassed 3078 tickets, one giant stuffed horse and two smaller plush animals, one of which Brandon gave to a guy with a little boy and the other some random person stole from us while we were playing Deal or No Deal. So we picked some prizes with our tickets for the kids and came home. I think it was a nice way to spend the evening. I love spending time with my Husband, he's the best. Happy Birthday Bran!

A Whole Bunch of Crock

Brandon has been working for ExxonMobil now for 5 years and that company is not called the golden handcuffs for nothing. They really take care of their workers. Benefits are great, compensation is fabulous, and they're always offering gifts and incentives. For Brandon's 5 year anniversary at Exxon he was allowed to choose a gift from a pretty large catalog. Most of the stuff was meh ok, but there was also a pretty nice crock pot in the mix. I have one pretty old, small crock pot that I got from a couple in our ward when we first got married. I was always kind of interested in getting a newer one with a removable bowl and a few more features. The day after Brandon brings his gift home I decide to take it for a spin for dinner that night. I found a well reviewed whole chicken recipe, prepped it up and set it to cookin' on low for 7 hours.

The verdict: meh, it's ok. Brandon really liked the chicken, but I sure wish I had used my usual baked chicken recipe. It was very tender, like stuff in a slow cooker should be. I need to work on my crock skills. Every time I make something in there I never really like it as much as I'm expecting to. I'm asking you, what are your favorite slow cooker recipes?

Adventures in Woodworking

Brandon had mentioned before in the past that he might be interested in learning to do woodworking. I have always hoped to encourage hobbies other than video games. I don't have much against video games, they're good stress relievers and fun to play, but sometimes you need a hobby that is enriching to your mind, has useful skills and invokes a real sense of accomplishment.

For Christmas Santa brought Brandon a new drill, hammer drill, and a nice ratchet set. The first thing he asks is what should I build with my new tools? Some brainstorming went on and we decided on making a bench to put in the hallway to organize our shoes and make a convenient seat for putting on shoes. For years we've had just a large wicker basket to hold our shoes and up until recently, all the kids shoes plus the 4 pairs of shoes Brandon always wants in the basket, it just wasn't enough room and Ian had really taken to dumping out all the shoes so he can flip the basket over and stand on it to reach things on the counter (who teaches these kids these things?!).

We both came up with a general design we liked and then Brandon worked out all the measurements and details and purchased the materials. The bench is 18"x16"x6' has 6 cubbies on each end and a large open space in the center. Each cubby is large enough to fit an adult pair of shoes side by side. Brandon decided to make it from solid pine with oak cubby dividers and stained in pecan. He wanted a darker stain like cherry, so I don't know why he chose a pecan stain. I guess he figured the soft pine would absorb more stain than it did. It looks fine anyway. The whole assembly is grooved, glued, and screwed. It's not gonna fall apart anytime soon. We learned after the fact how to route a straight groove through the center of the piece of wood so he had to do a lot of wood filling to close up the gaps in the seams. It's not too noticeable unless you're looking for it.

When it came down to sanding it before staining, it sat in the garage un worked on for several days. I know how these projects go when you get to your least favorite part of it. After the excuses kept flying, I went ahead and did all the prep sanding myself so Brandon could get right to staining and the garage could be restored to order. It really bugs me when things are out of place and especially half finished! So he spent all day Saturday staining it up, the most beautiful day ever. It was like the perfect spring day. Seriously, is it really winter? While he was doing that I went out to find just the right set of baskets for the center space. After digging through and measuring about a billion baskets at Michaels, I found the perfect pair. These baskets were made just for this bench. Better still they were 50% off. When it was all done and put together, we brought it in and it fit the space perfectly. The shoes fit in just right, the kids were so excited to use the new peice of furniture that they both went running all over the house to find every shoe possible to put in the bench. When Zoey asked what the baskets were for, I told her they were for socks and hats and gloves and the like she immediately went upstairs to find socks to fill them. So funny. I just hope its a while before Ian realizes he can take those baskets out and dump them out and flip them over to reach things on the counter :-P

Funny thing is he only briefly used his Christmas drill, but no other Christmas tools for the project. I think it cost about $140 for the bench. Pretty good price for a solid piece of custom furniture. Brandon is pretty proud of how it turned out ad I really like it too. For a first project with no prior experience, it's downright amazing. We learned a lot, I see plenty of future projects. I intended to take pictures of the whole process of the bench building but somehow that didn't happen so here's the finished product.

Brandon probably should have wrote this blog himself, be he said men don't blog, so check the comments, I'm sure he has something to say for all this.

Bedknobs and Brandons

A couple days ago Brandon wakes me for morning prayer as usual...

B: Do you remember me trying to take the bed knob off the bed last night?
M: uhh no, I was sleeping pretty deeply. What do you mean?
B: I had this dream that I needed to take the bed knob off of the bed and I half woke up stretched across the bed unscrewing the bed knob. It was almost off so I just finished taking it off and put it on my night stand and went back to sleep. I had trouble turning off my alarm because the bed knob was in the way and I thought, oh I  guess that wasn't a dream.
M: BAAHHAHAHAHAHHA!!!! Why did you need to take off the bed knob?!
B: I don't know!

Brandon has been known to sit up in bed and spout gibberish or even get out of the bed and stand at the side of it before getting back in, but nothing I know of this cognitive. The bed knob he took off in his sleep was the one at my foot, he certainly had easier and closer choices, but it makes it even funnier to imagine him stretched caddy corner struggling to unscrew the bed knob in his sleep. I wonder if any of his dream revolved around that old movie "Bed Knobs and Broom Sticks" maybe he was trying to get us to fly somewhere. hehehehehehe.

Check out minute 6:14 to get to the real bedknob action.

No AC or DC

That's Air Conditioning and Direct Current...does the band AC/DC actually stands for Alternating Current/Direct Current?

So Saturday night as I'm enjoying some quiet time before bed, so excited that Brandon is coming home from Brazil super early in the morning, I notice it feels a little warmer in the house than it usually is at that time of night. I don't think anything of it and go to bed. I have got to have my house at like 68-70 degrees to get a decent night's sleep. I wake up at like 1 in the morning and am sweltering, check the thermostat, and it's set right, but it is 80 degrees. Awesome, the AC is broken and we're in the hottest summer on record, 100+ degree days as far as the forecast can see.

On Sunday we check the coils just to be sure it isn't another Freon leak like it has been the last two times the AC went out. Coils are fine. We make it through Sunday without sweating too bad since we have two units, one to cool upstairs and one to cool downstairs. The other unit is compensating and with the fans on in the house, it stayed about 77, which is bearable.

My thought: lets just call someone in the morning, we'll survive.

Brandon's thought: I can fix this! Didn't I ever tell you if I didn't do IT I would have done HVAC, there's money there!

My thought: Oh boy....well, 2 other people we know have ACs that just went out and I know it isn't a freon leak which we couldn't fix ourselves anyway...I guess I'll let him try.

It was with some reluctance, but I did step back and let Brandon give it a whirl. Now you gotta know, when Brandon gets it in his head to do something, he is super persistent. Like so much so he will sacrifice sleep, and it basically haunts his every thought until he accomplishes his goal. That can be great, but it's really not necessary to stay up til 11:00 at night on a Sunday to diagnose an AC issue.

Truth be told, he did figure it out that it was a busted capacitor and he stayed home from work on Monday to install a new capacitor..which he had already done before the kids and I even got up. Now there's some dedication. The catch is he wound up blowing a fuse that took the rest of the day to figure out why the thermostat wouldn't come on even though the new capacitor was working.

So 43 dollars later, I admit, my husband fixed the air conditioner. Kudos to you Bran Bran!

And just because I am a little geeky, here's a little information on capacitors. A capacitor is basically a primitive battery. It has two plates separated by a certain distance. A charge gathers on one plate and at a certain capacity, the charge will jump to the other plate and release the energy. The capacitor in the AC system is a little smaller than a soda can. It is used to basically jump start the fan on the condenser system (that's the unit outside your house) when the thermostat tells the AC to turn on. It works very much like the battery in your car to jump start the engine.

The first indicator the capacitor was bad is that Brandon could hear the condenser fan motor receiving energy, and if he gave the fan a push with a stick through the grate, it would run with no problem. The second indicator was the capacitor itself, when it's "blown" it actually appears to have "exploded" from the inside, there is some bulging on the top or sides, and in some cases a leakage of fluid. Ours was just bubbled up on the top and the terminals on top were no longer exactly perpendicular.

And just in case you are curious, the reason we knew it was unlikely to be a Freon leak is that almost always once the volume of Freon reaches a certain level, it doesn't move through the system like it should without the pressure and the condenser will get very very cold and ice over from condensation. Last summer we had two Freon leaks and the condenser was covered in ice both times.

Hopefully you don't have your AC go out in such horrendous weather, but in case you do, maybe this will help you do some self diagnosis before spending hundreds on an AC repair man!