Shoveling Snow

I went in to work for a few hours this morning, and it snowed a bit so when I got home I had to shovel (there wasn't enough to fire up the snowblower). However, to my surprise, Sarah was awake, and she says when I walk in the door that she will shovel for me. I was a little surprised and had to make sure I heard it right. I told her to go ahead, but I figured I would need to go back and redo it but I was still surprised. Hopefully this will be a regular thing so that I can have a little more time to do something else, like sleep, or watch TV.

Interesting Evening

Well Kris and I had an interesting evening yesterday. I got a call around 2:15 from Kris saying that her dad had fallen at his apartment and was complaining of a headache, and was also shaking. After a short talk, we decided to have him transported to the ER via ambulance and I would finish my work and meet her at the hospital as soon as I was done. We ended up beating the ambulance to the ER.

After running a bunch of tests and taking an x-ray, three and a half hours later the doctor told us that everything was normal and that they couldn't admit him unless we wanted to transfer him to nursing home care. Well, we ended up driving him back to his apartment. While walking him back down his hall he came dangerously close to falling again.

We managed to get him back to his apartment and got him down in his chair. Luckily there was a nurses aide that we came across on the way back who helped us out with getting him in and getting things straightened out in the apartment, including getting his walker out, though the problem is making sure he'd use it. But at least for the time being we have had the crisis averted.

Had a Day Off

I had an unexpected day off today.  Why you might ask?  Well it was because Kris has been dealing with some pain in her back for the past two weeks.  Last night was the last straw because when I got home from work, she was laying in bed unable to move because of the pain.

This morning when she got up for work, I told her to just call in sick and I would take her over to the urgent care clinic to get looked at.  We got in late morning and the doctor diagnosed her with a herniated disc.  Kris got an anti-inflammatory and a pain killer prescribed and is supposed to stay off her feet for the next few days.

It remains to be seen how she will follow orders, but for now, we are not planning on doing anything this weekend, so hopefully it will do her some good.  I also hope te girls will cooperate this weekend and help me out with getting things done.

Back on Track

In the gif below, Mr. T represents work, family and other obligations. The shark represents my attempts at keeping my blog updated.


Quite a nice metaphor don't you think? Anyway, things are hopefully going to lighten up a little bit so I am going to try and keep up very soon. Sorry about the complete lack of content the last two and a half months.

Christmas Fireworks?

Here we are sitting watching the last bits of the Eagles/Cowboys game and we start hearing a bunch of bangs. I stopped and looked at Kris and Sarah like, "what is that", figuring that Alison had knocked something over in the basement.

Sarah looks at me and says "oh yeah, that's fireworks". One of her friends had sent her a text message saying that his church was going to be having fireworks tonight. It just so happens that the church is about 100 yards from our house and they must be shooting them off in the parking lot.

Those crazy Methodists! Because when you think of Christmas, you think of what? A Christmas tree? Mistletoe? A nativity scene? Nope. A bunch of fireworks. What commemorates the birth of our Lord better than shooting off a few shells and rattling the windows?

It reminds me of Bull Durham, when Nuke LaLoosh was shaking off Crash Davis call for a curve because he wanted to bring the heat and announce his presence with authority. Launching the fireworks was like the Methodists announcing Jesus' arrival with authority.

Good job Methodists!

Sad Day

It is a sad day in the Hahn house today; and probably not a very good day to pick up writing things on here again, but today we needed to make a difficult choice. We had to put our cat of 17 years to sleep. We got him as a friend for our other cat at the time as a 1 year old from an ad in the paper. We paid $20 for him (I think, Kris would probably remember). His owner at the time was going through a divorce and had a couple of cats already and didn't have room for Gizmo. I remember him saying that he figured if someone was willing to pay for him he would be assured that he was going to a good home.

Gizmo started acting strange on Thursday night, and by Saturday he hadn't gotten any better so after Kris and I talked it over we decided to see if the vet could see him on Saturday morning. The vet ran a couple of tests and said that the initial diagnosis was kidney disease, but the tests would tell us to what extent it was. Based on how Gizmo was acting I didn't think it was going to be good news. We got the confirmation today. His kidneys were shutting down, and it was just a matter of time. I am sure we did the right thing.

We were blessed to have had Gizmo for 17 years and he never had any sort of illness other than a kitty cold here and there. He was fun, and lovably stupid. He never did figure out how to push open a door. You could be on the opposite side of a door, looking at him thru a crack with an open can of tuna, and he would walk in circles, meowing because he couldn't figure out how to get thru the doorway for his treat.

Alison is particularly sad. We tried to explain to her that it just just Gizmo's time. She said she already misses him and he has only been gone for a couple of hours. But with each day that goes by I am sure it will become easier for her. She was already talking about going to the humane society to look for a new kitty.

When Punken died a couple of years ago, Ali had a dream that he came to visit her in her room one night and that made her feel better. Hopefully she'll have a similar dream with Gizmo to help her feel better.

The 2011 Jack O'Lanterns

First, please note that this is being posted a year late, and I am backdating it to fit into place in my timeline of events.

As I was putting up pictures of my Jack O'Lanterns from 2012, I realized that I never posted pictures of the 2011 ones.  So first let me apologize.  I won't get that into describing things since this is a year after the fact, but here are the 2011 Hahn Halloween pumpkins.

Ali really liked the funny Frankenstein face, so even though we had done it previously, she wanted me to carve it again.

Sarah thought this one was cool.  I thought it was going to be lame, but it turned out better than I thought. I think it's all in the spooky eyes.

Kris tried to find a spooky one, and this is what she came up with.  I think it was a combination of a couple of jack o'lanterns that she came across.

And finally mine.  I tried to make it look like it was on fire with flames coming out of its eyes and mouth.  Not great, but not bad.

Overall, my evaluation is, they were jack o'lanterns, and did the job.  But not the best I have ever done by far.