Halloween, Boo!

Can bloggers get writers block? And what does that block look like? Is it wood or concrete?

Today at work we dressed up for the Halloween Holiday. For those of you who do not already know, I work as Substance Abuse counselor at a residential treatment center for teenagers. I work with a number of good people, who truly care about kids. My co-workers try to get into the spirit of the various holidays, in an effort to have fun and to show the teenagers that it is possible to have good-clean-sober fun.

After work, Lori accompanied our friend Carol, who lives on the near east side of Athens (it is a booming metropolis), to greet tricker-treaters and to give out candy. The weather was a little sour, rainy and grey, but the mood seemed jovial and light. I stopped by to visit them after practice. We were greeted by witches, princesses, dragons, superheros and jedi. One little boy, probably age 7 or 8, was dressed as a Cleveland Browns football player. His helmut was orange with a traditional brown stripe and a sticker of the old fashioned Cleveland Brownie Elf!!! Go old school.

You tube

In case you haven't been to the website, You tube. Now is your chance to go. We have a favorite, you should check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBXal1GAA4A

Eddie Murphy's brother, Charlie Murphy, does the voice for Mr. Spock. It's very funny.

The Ultimate Halloween in Athens

Team "Ultimatoes" went 4-0. Wahoo! What a great combination of Ohio University grads ranging from 1995 - 2006. Plus a few honoraries for the day. Thanks to everyone who showed up.

"The Village People" had a great representation though the numbers were down. They did have enough to play and beat up on some college teams. Great job OU alums.

As you can guess from the photos, we had our annual Halloween Ultimate tournament here at OU. Weather didn't cooperate, but it didn't rain all day. And that howling wind just added to the atmosphere of the celebration of Halloween.

Overall it was a great weekend. As mentioned above, we had representation from the class of '95 to present. Some women came out of the woodwork, like Beth Mazur and Karen Kloman. Great to see you ladies and everyone else who showed up!

Dug looks hot in his headdress!

"Please officer I didn't do anything wrong"

OU students and alums pose for a post game photo op.

Little Trucky

Here's Kent in the little trucky at Forked Run. I want to get more pictures of it up, but Kent's been taking the truck to work, so I can't get a picture in the daylight. But this one is decent. Grandpa Gromen would be proud if he saw the truck today!

The Furnace Continued...

We spent forever trying to get the pilot to light. After giving up, I happened to have an epiphany. I called my buddy Dennis, who re-built my Triumph motorcycle. Dennis is a good guy, part hippy, part Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, part bad-ass. He knows plenty about cars and motorcycles, along with houses and building. Dennis built a log cabin on his property in Meigs county….by cutting the trees, milling them, and stacking them by himself. He’s ripped and darn strong for a guy who is old enough to retire. When Dennis talks, I listen. Dennis suggested that I take a look at the THERMOCOUPLE.

I thought that he made the word up. I asked him to repeat the word. Then I asked him to spell the word. He encouraged me to examine the THERMOCOUPLE, noting that the coating might be corroded and could benefit from a gentle file. Not knowing what the heck this object is, or what it does, I proceeded to follow Dennis’s suggestion.

Slightly informed and with a renewed pepper in my walk, Lori and I headed back to the crawl space. As Lori was squirming her way into the crawl space, the trap door, which had been delicately propped open with a stick, accidentally came crashing down upon her head. The crash upon her head was a little painful and frustrating, especially considering that the trap door had a window….or should I say broken window. Lori appeared ok, with no signs of blood. Interestingly, later in the day, after Lori had left work and had attended an evening meeting, she discovered a piece of glass in her head.

After that fiasco, and a few more failed attempts to light the pilot, Lori was ready to head to her day job. I was on my own. It was me, the furnace, and my fears of snakes and spiders. After trying to light the pilot unsuccessfully, I decided to take some serious steps. I proceeded to tear apart the face of the furnace to remove the THERMOCOUPLE. On a whim, I thought that this little sucker has got to be replaced. But, prior to doing so, I decided to look up THERMOCOUPLE in Wikipedia. Go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple

and check it out. Ahh, the internet.

For about $ 8.00 I was able to purchase a new Thermocouple. Job done. Furnace pilot lit. Heat on….Marital bliss. A warm Lori is a happy Lori!

The furnace adventure.

A couple of weeks ago on Labor day, Lori and I attempted to turn the heat on in our house. Allow me to clarify that last sentence. It was cold out and we tried to turn the thermostat up/on. Unfortunately, there was no response. Nada. Nyet. No heat. Which was disappointing….and meant that as a home-owner, I better find out what was wrong and fix it myself, or eat-it ($$$) if I call a repair-man.

Now to be honest with ya, my first instinct was to find someone to blame, which is a character defect of mine. (Maybe Rick broke it when we were out). Then I thought…maybe it was Lori, but then again, if I think about this long enough, 9 years of marriage has taught me better than to blame the old-wifey-sweetie. I don’t want any marital discourse over some crummy furnace problem (foreshadowing).

So, in order to diagnose the problem, one must break open our trap-door, which is hanging on with rusty old hinges, and then proceed to worm their way under the house into the dirty, dark, yucky crawl space. I nominated Lori. She nominated me.

My rationale behind nominating Lori is quite simple. She is much younger than me. Additionally, she is more flexible (from Yoga), and has narrower shoulders. Plus, she is not afraid of snakes and spiders. I detest both. I have nightmares about snakes. Lori is our designated spider person….meaning that whenever I find big-scary wolf-spiders in the shower I timidly yell “EEEK” followed by “Lori come get this +#&^---spider!” She then shows up, alas not as quickly as I would hope, and begins to talk pleasantries to the big-scary wolf-spider, making friends, and scoops it up into her hands.

The problem with me nominating Lori is two fold. One, she had to go to work fairly soon. (I had the day off from work) Second, I managed to piss her off. Furnace problems fall into that “guy category of problems”…..similar to cars, gutters, and bailing hay.

Lori is a Taurus, and they happen to be a bit stubborn on occasion. She also happens to not only have Italian heritage, but German as well. Where am I going with this? Yeah, ok, well, faster than you can say “Snoopy and the Red Baron” she has her boots on, a pair of MY old work-painter-pants, and is crawling under the house into the dirty, dark, yucky crawl space. Eventually, I joined her. (I had to make a decision of what to wear) Initially, I served as the flashlight holder and errand runner.

Fortunately, it did not take us to long to realize that the pilot light was off or extinguished. We thought, cool, all we have to do is to light the pilot. Unfortunately, our efforts proved futile. No luck. The pilot would not light... to be continued...

Weekend Update

It was homecoming for OU, this past weekend, which always brings a variety of things to do. Did we take advantage of this. Hell no. We skipped town to play a little Disc Golf down at the Forked Run course. Kent won by a stroke. We drove the little trucky down through the winding roads of Southeast Ohio. The colors were awesome this weekend.
We did catch 2 of the OU Volleyball games. They won. Of course. They frickin' rock. The cool thing about Homecoming is that you see random friends from long ago. This weekend was no exception. As we were walking to the game we get a honk from a pickup truck. It is Athens, so we wave. The guy backs up and it's Sarver. On his way to his old professor's house. A few years ago, we saw Mark Simmons (Feebs) at the parade. I suppose that is what's cool about still living here.
On Sunday, we did a little yard work. Raking and mulching the garden beds. All that fun stuff. And this is just the first attempt. We'll have fun again later in the fall as the rest of the leaves drop.

This is a church in Tralee, Ireland. There was a beautiful flower garden outside. That's where we are taking this picture from. We then went in the church. Very huge, typical Catholic church. And Jeff get this-They had a picture of Padre Pio in there. This guy gets around. It made us smile to see the Padre.

This is a scene near Kent's place of work.

Welcome

Hi everybody! We have decided that our lives are so interesting that others would enjoy hearing what's up with us. We will be posting every day, because that is how much stuff we have going on. Okay, not really. But check here often because we hope to post stuff. Especially pictures, because we have loads of them and what better way to push our stuff on to you. So let's get started.