Turned Away

With a lot of time on our hands now that I will be off until after the first of the year, Kris and I decided we would go see the new Star Wars movie.  We got a movie gift card for Christmas too, so the cost was pretty much covered.  Plus, I thought on a Tuesday afternoon, and since it has been out for more than a week now, we would have no problem just going and getting our tickets beforehand.  I thought an afternoon matinee would be perfect.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

I should note that I can't remember the last time we actually went to a theater to see a movie.  There are lots of reasons, not least among them that Hollywood has not put out any really good, blockbuster, have-to-go-see type movies in I don't know how long.  I also hate sitting in a packed theater, and the cost of a movie now is ridiculous.  So, with all that being said, we were originally going to plan on the 1:20 showing, and got to the theater about 15 minutes ahead of time.  The movie was already completely sold out, and the crowd of people there was insane.  It didn't dawn on me that kids are out of school, and many people (like me) had the day off as a holiday, AND it was $5 Tuesdays.

Since the 1:20 showing was sold out and we were already there, I thought we could just pick a different time and get our tickets for that showing.  We had an appointment at 4:00, so I thought that the 4:50 showing would be perfect.  The guy behind the counter said there were only two seats left for that showing, and they weren't together.  We decided we would just pick a different day this week and go back.

That made me realize another reason I hate movies now.  The theaters in the Falls are some sort of recliner seats and I think there may be a bistro in a couple of the theaters.  If I am going to a movie, I want to see the movie.  I am not there to sit at a table or a booth and enjoy a pizza.  If I wanted to do that I'd stay at home and be comfortable.  All I want is to be able to have the hugs screen and the thundering surround sound system.  Anything else is just an annoyance.  I am there to see the movie, not socialize.  Which leads me to the next thing.  Once I got home and looked at other times, and days we could go while we were both off I found out that in addition to purchasing our tickets online, I also had to choose my seats.  Really???!!!  So now movies are like concerts or sporting events where I am going to have an assigned seat.  What! The! Hell!??  This is why I would rather just sit at home and watch a movie on demand, or on a Blu Ray and avoid the hassle of the movie theaters altogether!  (After all that we're going on Friday).

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  Today, 12/25/2017, in the Falls, it is 5° outside and snow covered.

 

Just a year ago we were in Florida celebrating Christmas in sunshine and 80° weather.

 I must be insane to stay here!

Christmas Cookies

Kris wasn't going to make Christmas cookies this year because she found out that the girls don't actually like the ones she made every year that she thought the girls loved, the cranberry-pistachio ones.  So I was all set to not have cookies when Kris informed me that she had bought a cookie press and was going to make spritz cookies.  Apparently when she had said she wasn't making any, I said something to the effect of it wouldn't bother me as the only ones I really like are spritz cookies.  So I told her that I would help with pressing them out.  

With that being said, I didn't quite know what I was getting into.  I remember my mother always saying that making spritz cookies was a pain and now that I have helped make them, I can agree.  There was definitely a learning curve.  The first thing I learned was that the colder the dough, the better.  It pressed out into shape much easier when cold, but it was also more difficult to press out when cold, so it was sort of a challenge to find that happy medium.  Second, there was no way to tell how the dough was pressing out.  There were some that pressed out into shape, and then I had other ones that felt the same as far as pressing them out but they turned out much different.  

Overall, I think we got some good cookies, but it took quite some time.  I don't know how many I had to redo because they were stuck in the press, or were overpressed, or even underpressed.and then there were times where the dough got too warm and I had to put it back into the fridge/freezer to cool it off.  In fact, it took a total of probably about 6 or 7 hours start to finish to get everything pressed and into and out of the oven.  But we did get probably 12 or 13 dozen cookies, and plenty of lessons learned for next year.

Christmas Card Lie

I admit it, I lied.  Sort of.  I decided to put together a Christmas Card anyway, even though it is late in the year, and I am under the gun to get them mailed out and to their destinations before Christmas.  I happened to be going thru some things in my planner at work, throwing things out and getting ready to replace the calendar for next year when I came across the envelope that I keep all of our previous Christmas Cards.  I have one from every year we have done a photo card going back to 2003, and I started to feel like I needed to at least have one done until Alison is done with high school.  I scoured pictures and came up with a few to use that would give pretty good balance over all.  And I had a 50% off coupon from Walgreens so I was able to get it put together and printed pretty quickly.  It isn't a great card, but it'll do for now.  If I didn't get one sent to you, I apologize.  Merry Christmas from the Hahn's!

 

MFHS Blood Drive

This year, Alison is in the Health Care Career Academy at school.  Essentially that means she takes elective classes that focus on a career in the health care field.  Every year, the academy sponsors a blood drive, one in the fall semester and one in the spring semester.  Today was the fall semester one, and since I try to donate blood when I can if we have a local blood drive, I thought I would help her out by volunteering to donate.  I thought that since the drive was going on in the morning and early afternoon, they would have trouble finding donors to fill the slots.  Was I ever wrong!  

I had Ali schedule me at 11:30 figuring that I would take an early lunch and just drive home, donate my pint, and then head back to work.  Nope!  I got there at 11:20 for my 11:30 appointment and had about 20 people waiting in front of me.  Apparently, there were a lot of students who volunteered to donate blood too that didn't schedule their appointments ahead of time (why not, after all, you get out of class to do it).  Ali had sent me a message at work saying they were running behind, but I didn't realize how far behind.  I waited around until about 12:30 when I asked if someone could give me an idea of how long it would be yet, and was told that it would probably be at least another 45 minutes.  Unfortunately, I couldn't wait that long.  Even if I would have waited, I wouldn't have gotten back to work until about 2:00 at the earliest.  The good thing is that the kids had a very successful blood drive.  And we have another blood drive going on at work on Wednesday, so hopefully I can still register for that one.

Driving Lesson

Since Ali passed her classroom portion of driver's ed over the summer, I thought it was probably time to take her out for a driving lesson.  She actually can't get her learner's permit until February, and every time I have asked her if she wanted to go out driving in the past she had said no.  She did her "classroom" work online, and actually when it comes time to get her temp license she'll have to retake the written test she already passed in August (I have no idea why).  Hopefully she will still remember everything she learned, or maybe there is a refresher that she can go over before going to take it.  

Anyway, I figured it was about time to let her get behind the wheel of a car and get the feel of it at least.  So we drove over the the high school into the empty parking lot at the football stadium and I had her drive up and down the rows to get the hang of the gas pedal, braking, turning the wheel and staying in your own lane, and getting a feel for how fast the car feels.  There is a big difference between riding and actually being in charge of the throttle.  She thought she was going really fast and at most we were doing 20 mph.

I let her go in circles for about a half an hour, and she didn't do too bad for her first time.  I think the biggest thing she needs to work on is controlling her speed and how to turn smoothly.  It was a good thing we were in a parking lot, but when it comes time to finally get out on the road, I think she is going to be surprised at how fast 30 mph feels.  Plus, if she drives like she did in the parking lot today, we'll be getting horns blown at us left and right.

 

The Giving Tree

This year at work we were doing a "Giving Tree" for some of the needy/underprivileged  kids in the city of Brown Deer (which is where we're located).  Maybe we had one last year, but I don't recall.  Either way, this year I decided to grab a tag off the tree.  We are only supposed to spend $20-$25 on the gift, and the tag I grabbed was for a 12 year old girl.  It makes me sad when I see the list of things they want and it is things that we all take for granted.  This girl wanted Sharpies, a nail kit, a blue blanket, and Jolly Ranchers.  I remember years ago Kris had one at the hospital and some of things that people were asking for seemed a little outrageous to me, so it really brings things into perspective when you see someone who wants things as basic as a blanket, and candy.  We spent a little more than what we were supposed to, but not much, and we were able to get the girl everything she asked for.  I hope she enjoys them and has a good Christmas! 

No Christmas Cards

Since it is getting a little late in the season, and my time is running out, I talked it over with Kris, and I don't think we'll be doing Christmas Cards this year.  I started looking for pictures to use, and it looks like there are slim pickings this year, unless of course the girls or Kris want to send me pictures from their phones to use.  After thinking about it, it is sort of a waste since I wonder if anyone really cares about them.  They just end up going into the garbage the day after Christmas, so it seems like an awful lot of work and messing around for something that no one really cares about.  Maybe we'll do one again next year, or maybe I just skip it from here on out altogether.  I'll have to see what I feel like next year.

On Our Way!

We found out tonight that Ali's team's video performance that was submitted was accepted by UCA and they received their bid to the Nationals at Disney in February.  They found out before the girls basketball game.


Guess what everyone--Menomonee Falls Cheerleading from Dennis Hahn on Vimeo.

Now we just need to get our travel plans finalized! 

Update On Nationals

When Alison got home from practice today she told us about the UCA qualifier from the past weekend that they skipped.  She said she is unsure if they are going to get a bid.  Only 6 of the 18 teams competing actually got bids to Nationals, and only one of the teams in their division.  That is completely unlike last year when just about every team that competed received a bid.  I asked if she thought that teams were that bad or if they tightened the scoring/requirements for teams to get bids.  She seemed to think that UCA tightened their standards.  The only thing that still has me hopeful is that the one team that did get a bid was at the Indian Invite, and that based on the scoresheets from that, The Falls had a better performance.  That isn’t saying a whole lot since I didn’t see the performances, so the other team could have improved and had an awesome, flawless routine at the qualifier.  Or it could be that the video that Ali’s team submitted would still be better than the other team’s performance last weekend.  Either way, it sounds like the girls are a little worried that they might miss out on Nationals this year.

Jammed Washing Machine

After finishing the dryer ductwork and feeling pretty good about it, Kris calls me downstairs to look at something.  I stick my head in the washing machine to see that there is a piece of fabric sticking out of the seam between the washer drum, and the bottom agitating plate.  After looking closer, I noticed that it wasn’t just a piece of fabric, but it was the corner of the shower curtain liner with the magnet sticking out, which meant that the entire liner had somehow worked its way into the seam and under the plate.  And it was wound/jammed/bunched in there so tightly that I couldn’t remove it.

My first thought is that the plate must pop up a little when the drum is filled in order to agitate the water, so I started running an empty cycle so I could watch and see what was happening.  After the drum filled and the bottom plate started to move, it sounded as if the motor was going to burn out.  When it did move, it sounded like there was something grinding underneath the plate, although there were times when it did move the full turn at least.  I wish I could have reached in while it was moving to see if I could pull it (dang safety features!).  Kris brought me my laptop with a tutorial of how to take it apart.  It was a general tutorial, not quite specific to our washer, but it was enough that I could sort of figure it out.

I did manage to find a video on YouTube of how to take it apart, and this was specific to our model.  The problem was that when I got center cover popped off and the bolt removed, the bottom plate was supposed to just lift off.  Well it didn’t.  And I couldn’t see how else to get it up since there were no other screws or bolts to remove.  So with that in mind, I grabbed a piece of the fabric and pulled.  I got the drum moving around, then pulled sharply back in the opposite direction.  This began to get things moving.  So a couple of inches at a time I would pull as the drum spun, and after about 15 minutes, I finally managed to get the whole thing out.  Unfortunately, it had been shredded.  I actually seem to remember this happening once before with another shower curtain liner, but that was just a section of it, it wasn’t the entire curtain.  I really can’t fathom how the entire thing had been pulled under the plate. 

So I got everything put back together and it looks like everything is working fine.  I don’t think that we’ll be putting any thin, fabric shower curtain liners in there again, unless of course I have it stuffed into a large mesh bag.

Dryer Duct Update

Since I had absolutely no interest in watching the Packers this week, I spent the afternoon trying to fix the dryer duct coming out of the basement window.  From what I had done the day before, I had the end of the ductwork sticking up out of the window well like a chimney.  I had a cover on it, but it was turned vertical so the opening was exhausting horizontal to the ground.  After thinking about it, I didn’t think this was going to be a good idea, since it would allow water to possible fill the opening, and once the cold weather actually arrives (according to the weatherman, in two days) it could freeze shut, or fill with snow.  So, I had to come up with a different idea.

After some thinking, and going to Menards to see what sort of options I had at my disposal, my plan was to get a clear cover for the window like all of the other basement windows.  Then I would line up the duct, cut a hole in the plastic to fit the end of the duct out, and then put a cover on the end that would blow the exhaust down toward the ground, thus preventing snow and rain from getting in and also keeping the window well covered and keeping any moisture out. 

I also needed to put a small section of screen over the opening, under the louvers to keep out any “intruders”.  It actually turned out pretty well.  The only thing that I think I will need to do is to keep the window cover on year round.  Otherwise it may look pretty stupid having the end of the dryer duct just hanging over the edge of the window well.  It really should be cut thru the bottom row of siding rather than coming out of the window/window well, but sometimes you just have to work with what you have.  Hopefully this will be it, and then in the spring, I can repaint the window frames, and maybe replace the panes of glass with some glass block.

Dryer Duct

Today I tackled the dryer exhaust duct.  I don’t remember what it looked like when we moved in, but I am pretty sure that it always vented out of one of the basement windows, or where there was a window at one time.  Years ago, we had a problem with it and I remember replacing it.  I just cut a thin piece of sheet metal and caulked/glued it into the frame where the glass would normally go.  Then I cut a hole for the duct to fit thru and used some liquid nails to adhere it to the sheet metal.

It was always cold around that window and I am sure the .060” thick piece of tin (or whatever metal I used) didn’t have many insulating properties, especially when the temperature dropped below freezing.  After seeing what was happening last weekend, and wanting to keep from ripping the frame out of the foundation, I thought it was time to fix it.  Amazingly, the old caulk just ripped/pulled out.  Like I said, the insulating qualities couldn’t have been all that good.  I managed to rig up a pretty sweet set up with some rooftop exhaust flashing and a piece of 1” rigid insulation.  It took a bit of trimming and cutting, but I got it to fit perfectly in the frame, and caulked it into place.  Then I rigged a couple of elbow joints to come up out of the window well rather nicely.  I think I still need to finish it off a little better, but at least the exhaust is coming up away from the house so all the moisture isn’t collecting under the siding and around the window frame.  I think I may ever be able to keep it from fogging up the window in the den.  I need to be careful not to get too proud of myself, because as soon as I do, that usually means something is about to break and cost me a few hundred bucks to fix.  So for now, I will just be happy I was able to modify the exhaust the way I wanted without having to make 15 trips to Menards or Home Depot.

Not Competing

In addition to the good news we got about Kris’s dad, we also got some bad news about Alison’s cheer team.  Because of some health issues with a couple of girls on Ali’s team, they are not going to compete tomorrow in the UCA Qualifier in Milwaukee.  Ali’s Flyer has had concussion symptoms since October after falling and hitting her head, so she is out and they have had an alternate filling in for her.  Another girl, perhaps their top tumbler, is out due to having her tonsils removed.  I guess she has been out for a couple of weeks, since right after their Indian Invite performance.  She is not recovering as quickly as they had hoped and would be in danger of ripping her stitches out if she competed.  They were trying to have another alternate learn their routine in two or three days.  Add to that the crappy week of practice from a couple of the other girls who were just consistently not hitting their moves/stunts, and their coach just decided it was too much and pulled them from the Nationals qualifier they were supposed to do tomorrow night.

So the big question becomes, how do the girls qualify for nationals if they are not competing?  Apparently, UCA allows the teams to submit a video of a performance from review.  Form what I can gather from the notice, they have to petition to do it, and give a good reason for not actually competing in the qualifier.  So citing the health of a few of the girls, they were allowed to submit the video of their Indian Invite performance as consideration for getting a bid to the National competition in February.  The good news about that is that at least their petition was accepted.  So now we just sit back and wait to find out if they get a bid.  And actually, their Indian Invite performance was not too bad.  They had a couple of flubs, but for the most part it was pretty on.  So we are keeping our fingers crossed.  I hope we find out soon though since I need to get flights booked if we are going!

Good News

We finally got some good news regarding Kris’s dad.  The facility he is at currently called to say that a room opened up for him there and he can move in next week.  So all the worrying about whether or not we were going to still end up having to move him someplace else is over, or so it seems.  With the way things have been going for us this year, we are still a little bit apprehensive to actually feel good.  It just seems like something is still going to pop up and we’ll end up having to still find him a new place to live, like what happened in August when we thought we had a facility for him, only to find out the head office had denied it.  He gets to officially move in on Tuesday next week, and we can go check things out, figure out what we can bring, or not bring to personalize his room any time before then.  Hopefully we’ll be able to go check it out over the weekend.  But for right now, things appear to finally be looking up for him.

Christmas Lights

Since I have updated the Christmas tree to LEDs, I have 1500 or so mini-lights left over that are not being used.  So this year instead of putting out the grapevine snowmen and reindeer, my outdoor decorations are going to consist of plain, white lights wrapping the shrubs.  I like to have something out front, because it helps makes the season less depressing.  Face it, getting dark shortly after 4:00 just stinks, and having some lights helps to make you forget that you’re in the dead of winter.

Last year when the lights were put away, every single string of lights were working.  And just like every other year, as soon as you take them out of the bin to use, there are strings that are out.  I thought that I would have plenty of lights, however, I ended up with just enough to cover the shrubs.  This is because I had 5 strings of lights where half of the string was out.  I was not about to go thru the strings to find the bad one, or ones, that were causing the whole bunch to be out.  I got lucky though because if I would have had one more string not working, I would have had to run to WalMart to get more.  I think that they are made to not work so that you need to get more every year.  If you get more than a year out of a string, you’re lucky.  Now I just have to hope they make it thru the season, because if god forbid one of the strings goes out before the Christmas season is over, I’ll be running to get more.  I may go get more anyway, just to have on hand.  Because they’ll get used, and the longer I wait the fewer there will be.  Maybe I’ll think of some different sorts of displays for next year so the front of the house isn’t so plain.  But I also think I need to have something that I don’t need to worry about getting buried in snow. 

Christmas Prep

As has been the tradition for at least the last ten years, the weekend after Thanksgiving is the time to get the Christmas tree put up.  This year I really wanted to move the location of the tree from the back corner of the house, to the front of the family room.  Ideally, I would have been able to put it in front of the front window so you could see the lights with the shade down.  Unfortunately, the tree from the last few years was just way too big (wide) to fit.  So this year, while shopping for supplies for the Indian Invite at Sam’s Club, I saw a tree that was thinner, and thought we could possibly fit that one in front of the window, or at the very least slide it into the front corner of the room, which would also help with the heat in the room and not prevent the thermostat from turning the heat on in the house.  It was also pre-lit, so I thought, great, I am NOT going to go nuts this year and put 2000 lights on the tree because it takes too long, gets the room too hot, and totally jacks the electric bill for December.  Also, if it is already lit, then I won’t need to do anything other than put on the ornaments. 

After getting it home and trying to rearrange the furniture in the room, I determined it wasn’t possible to put the tree in the front of the room (BOOOO!).  Unfortunately, our furniture is just too large.  So we need new furniture in addition to moving the tree (actually I have known that we needed new furniture for some time).  So this means that we need to put the tree in the back corner once again, slide the dining room table against the wall, and move the chest/hutch in the basement; just what I was trying to avoid. 

Once I got things moved and the tree in place and plugged in, both Kris and the girls said there weren’t enough lights on it to view the ornaments.  So then before the decorating could begin, I had to run out and get some more lights to wrap around the branches, though I didn’t do nearly the job I usually do with wrapping them around to make sure every branch has a light.  And instead of the regular mini lights, I had to find LEDs, and they had to be a particular color, Warm White, so that they matched with the “pre-lit” lights that were already in the tree.  This year the total of lights is 1600, 600 pre-lit lights and 1000 on strings that were wrapped around, which is still less than normal. 

The only thing I don’t like is the glow from the tree.  They just don’t have the same warm, yellowish, golden glow to them.  Instead the light coming off the tree has a slight bluish tint, and it looks more sanitized.  It just doesn’t feel the same.  Maybe next year I’ll just quit putting up a tree at all and plan on going to visit my parents in Florida and not worry about who wants to go, or who wants to be back in Wisconsin when.  It’ll just be much easier.  Just call me Scrooge!  Humbug!

Basement Cleaning

Now that all the Christmas stuff is out and up, it was time to get things cleaned up in the basement and straightened out.  We also had all the things that were displaced by the Indian Invite stuff to put back as well as the Halloween decorations since there wasn’t room to get those bins back out with the Indian Invite mess.  As I started getting things moved, I also began to do some cleaning up in the floor joists.  They were full of cobwebs and dust.  I actually can’t remember the last time I cleaned this stuff up, so it is probably a good idea that I started.

As I was moving things, such as the washer and dryer, and the freezer to clean all the dust under them, I was able to notice that there was a hole in the duct coming from the dryer as the base where it joined with the dryer exhaust.  This lead me to start looking up where I have the dryer duct exiting the house and I noticed something.  There appeared to be water stains on the wood and the caulk around the window frame seemed to be deteriorating to the point of needing to be replaced.  As I looked closer, I found that the caulk that I had used to fill the crack between the top of the foundation and the house frame was loose, and easily removed just by pulling.  I concluded this was due to the years of having the dryer vent into the window well and that over time the steam and exhaust had settled in the window well, even possibly up under the aluminum siding (which could be trouble with the frame, or at least the old siding that is under the aluminum).  I think this is what is causing the water stains on the wood as well as the paint peeling from the outer frame and any deterioration of the caulk. 

The first step was to get the old caulk out, which didn’t take much effort.  I still had a couple of cans of expandable foam crack filler from the yellow jacket incident this summer so after going outside to see what the possible extent of the problem might be, I just sprayed a line up into the space figuring if there was a gap there, this would definitely fill it.  This is, I am sure, also what was leading to finding yellow jackets in the basement a couple of months ago.  Now that the gaps are filled (or refilled) I will need to see what I can do to get the dryer exhaust away from the window well, and above grade so it doesn’t migrate up under the siding, or around the window.  I have some ideas, so I will have to see what I can possible get done.

Leaf Clean Up

Since we are now done with the Indian Invite for another year, I can focus on what is really important, getting rid of the leaves and mess outside before it snows.  It was actually a not too bad outside, so it wasn’t a big deal getting the leaves and sticks that blew into the yard and up against the house the last week or so.  It always amazes me at the number of people who decide to get out and rake up all their leaves into the street the day AFTER the village comes around collecting the piles.  All that happens then is the next good wind/rain storm we get, they end up blowing into everyone else’s yard.  Then again I suppose anyone could make the argument that if they don’t have trees on their property they shouldn’t have to rake.  It bothers me more than anything else because I take the initiative to take the stuff I collect to the landfill for composting rather than putting them into a big pile to blow around. 

So… that being said, our yard has some serious wind tunnels where the leaves seem to just collect.  So in a way they are already collected into a single spot, and it is just a matter of vacuuming them up and bagging them.  I think that this is going to be the final week that the Village comes around to collect leaves, but I am going to haul them to the landfill myself anyway, just because I don’t know when they’ll come around, and I don’t want to have to do this again.

Indian Invite 2017

We didn't get to see Ali and her team perform since we were stuck in the kitchen.  Luckily one of Ali's friends was able to record it.  The scorecard they got was pretty good.  If they actually had been competing, they would have taken first place.

 2017 Indian Invite from Dennis Hahn on Vimeo.

Indian Invite

Another Indian Invite has come and gone without a hitch.  Well, not exactly without a hitch, but we’re done and overall I believe it was a success.  We had about as many teams as we had last year.  Concessions (our area) went smoothly, there were no major disasters, we managed to set-up and clean-up quickly, and the girls did their exhibition routine rather smoothly.  Now we start planning for next year.

At least next year if we do the kitchen/concessions again, we’ll have a little better idea of what to get and how much since I like to think we improved our record keeping.  Now Ali starts to work preparing for their nationals qualifier in two weeks!

Day Off - Competition Prep

Just like last year, the Friday before Indian Invite is preparation day.  Last year we spent all our time after I left work until we got to school to set-up running around and then a good three hours or so at the school getting things set up in the kitchen.  This year I decided to take the day off so that I had time to do all the necessary running around getting the last minute items before going over to school.  We needed to go run to Sam’s Club and get the things that needed refrigeration, but had to more or less be fresh, such as shredded lettuce, and a few other last minute items.  I also needed to pick up some bakery items that were being donated (thank you very much Kwik Trip).  Overall, things went much smoother with taking the day off, so if we have to do it again next year, I think that is going to be the way to go.  Now we just have the completion tomorrow and then we can relax.