Always room for improvement

The family has been immersed in "A Christmas Carol" for the last month or so. My oldest is in a community theater production of the timeless classic. I've seen the performance 3 times in the last 4 days, so I feel like I'm in a position to offer some suggestions to freshen it up.

1. The Tiny Tim character is a bit depressing. He goes from being a scrawny kid with a limp to a scrawny kid without a limp. Everyone celebrates like it's some kind of miracle, when in reality he probably just sprained his ankle. I propose trading out Tiny Tim for Spud Webb. He can go from blowing out his ACL to dunking over Scrooge.
2. More swearing. Scrooge shuffles around with his signature "Bah, Humbug," but what if he channeled his inner Samuel L. Jackson? Nothing spices things up like a few f-bombs.
3. Fewer Christmas Carols, more Lady Gaga songs. Then again, maybe not. She's crazy.
4. Midgets.

In closing, I'd be remiss to not mention the star of the production. Mady was the consummate professional through the late night rehearsals, multiple role changes, and agreeing to play a boy. She hit all her cues and from everyone we talked to in the cast was very impressed with her. And she requested I mention her in this blog because the online review didn't mention her by name. I informed her that being a "street child" usually doesn't warrant a mention, but I would be glad to include her in my review. Well done Mady.
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How not to fix a garage door opener

My garage door opener croaked last week. I did the responsible thing and called a local business to fix it. It appeared to me that the chain was loose and just needed some adjustment. They came out the next day informed me the main drive gear was stripped and I’d need a new opener at a cost of almost $500. Well, it’s only about 6 years od so I decided to do some investigation. I found the gear that needed to be replaced for $8 online. I also needed the part that tightens the chain (the turnbuckle) as it had broken while I was trying to tighten the chain. Total cost plus shipping was under $20. I could tell the wife was a bit skeptical that I’d succeed in this repair adventure.

It started out ok. I had the opener disassembled so all I needed to do was replace the part and re-assemble. The gear was easy to replace, then I had to thread the chain and tighten it. That was a little tricky as it’s a lot chain to squeeze through some tight spots. I got it tightened and all I needed to do was adjust the door so it would open and close correctly. Problem is that is a lot more difficult than it looks. I had to keep starting and stopping the door manually to make sure it didn’t go too far. Unfortunately I didn’t react fast enough and the sprocket that I had just replaced tried to eat the turnbuckle I had also just replaced. The result was the turnbuckle broke again and I said a lot of bad words with my 4 yr old son looking on in disbelief. After composing myself, I surveyed the damage and realized I still had a part that I could use to fix it again. I went back to threading the chain through while cursing just under my breath. I was looping it around the sprocket when the chain got away from me and hit the exposed circuit board. That wouldn’t have been a problem if I had remembered to cut the power to the opener. The opener made a audible pop and the lights went out. Naturally, Zach was still in the garage with me but luckily he didn’t freak out. I made my way to the door and brought Zach inside to find a flashlight. I reset the breaker I had tripped, but the opener still wouldn’t power up. I don’t know exactly what was wrong with the opener at this point, put I was pretty sure I was not going to be able to fix it.
I had one more shot to get the opener fixed yet that night. My next door neighbor had stopped by a couple days before because he heard my garage door opener was broke. He informed me he had one just like mine that I could have. He replaced his with a belt drive opener and the old one was free to a good home. I thanked him for the offer, but said I had parts on order and I thought I could get it fixed. Which is why after fighting my broken opener for over an hour I called up my neighbor to see if the free opener offer still stood. Within 15 minutes of my calling him I had an operational garage door. And I felt like a complete idiot for not taking him up on his offer earlier. I do plan on paying it forward. If anyone is interested in a fried garage door opener, I have one available for the low price of free to a good home.
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Parasailing-Marco Island

Parasailing looks exhilarating from the beach. Unfortunately, it’s not as cool as it looks. You go way up the air, but it doesn’t feel like you’re that high. That’s probably because there isn’t any scale. Water looks the same size no matter how far away you are. The other boats in the water looked small, but they weren’t very big to begin with. I’ll give it a 2 on my “was it worth it scale?” I can’t see myself doing it again, unless I can do it for a lot less that the $80/person price tag this came with.

I went up with Abby and her friend Avery. A lot went into that decision. At first it was just Mady going with her friend Belle. Then Abby said she wanted to go, but Avery didn’t so I was going to go with Abby. Then Avery decided she would go. We thought we were set and just the four girls would go in pairs. Then we found out the two younger girls weren’t heavy enough to go by themselves. Our next idea was for the siblings to go as that would have taken care of the weight requirement. Of course, they didn’t want to do that because they are small women and prone to be difficult. In the end, I went with the lighter girls. Partially to help them reach the weight requirement, partially to but their nerves at ease, and partially because I’ve always wanted try it. And because they are siblings, the older girls made me and the younger ones go first to try to freak us out. Thankfully that backfired.
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Jet Skiing-Marco Island

I found Captain Ron’s Awesome Everglades Adventures after a little searching and it looked right up our ally. We have a guide taking us through the 10,000 islands (I have to trust them as that was a few more than I wanted to count). It’s a little pricey at $210 for two hours, but I’m the type that’ll spend a little extra to do something that I don’t normally get to do.

On the “was it worth it?” scale I’d give it a 7 out of 10. The guides took some time training us how to operate the wave runners and they were great at spotting wildlife. There were four wave runners in our group and I was the only one with passengers. The other 3 were a couple in their 50’s and their 20-something son with unfortunate facial hair. The wife in the group had a bit of a lead foot (or finger) so she and I took turns following the guide while the other two guys brought up the rear. In between finding dolphins and manatee we could let the jet skis rip. The website said they normally go about 20 MPH on the tour. Thankfully that was a lie. In between checking out the wildlife we were going full throttle, which on these Waverunners was about 40 MPH. We weren’t setting any speed records, but it was a lot of fun. They also gave us a cd of pictures, I’m attaching a few. You’ll see what I mean about the unfortunate facial hair.
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Marco Island-2011

We just got back from a week in Marco Island, FL. We rented a house that we found on vrbo.com and it worked out great for us. I’m feeling fairly disorganized, so I’m just going to type and see where this goes.

First off, it’s a long haul. The whole family went and I didn’t feel like shelling out $1500-$2000 for airfare. Add on that we still would need a car or van to get from any airport to Marco as the closest airport is almost 50 miles away. The drive is about 1400 miles and took us 22 hours to complete over 2 days. It took Zach about 30 miles to ask if we were there yet. At one point coming home he started in and I answered him about 5 times that we weren’t almost home. Then I decided to ignore him and I counted how many times asked before getting tired of it. 45. That’s how many consecutive “Are we there yet's?” he asked. Then he changed the subject for 15 seconds and started in again. Damn he’s persistent. It was becoming obvious that the subtle parenting wasn’t going to work, so I took the direct approach. I told him he’d get a spanking if he didn’t quit asking. I didn’t want to have to spank him for something so stupid, but he was driving me crazy. Thankfully for both of us, he got the message. We chose Marco for a vacation largely because our friends have a timeshare there. We could have rented a condo in the same complex as them for about $2500/wk, instead we opted for the house at a cost of $700/wk. They were on the beach and could watch the sunset every night. Not that you can put a price on sunsets, but for me I know the price is less than $1800. And quite honestly, once you’ve seen one sunset over the gulf, you’ve seen them all. Next up-jet skiing.
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Addiction

I haven’t blogged for awhile because I’m dealing with a very serious addiction in my home. I didn’t realize how serious it was until I did an intervention about a month ago.
It was a Saturday morning and the house was empty except for my four-year-old and me. We were playing Lego Star Wars and I decided to take Zach to the raptor center (birds, not dinosaurs). It’s a good way for me to kill an hour with the kids while getting them out of the house. Plus Zach needed some time away from the Wii. Zach had no idea what we were going to see, so I explained we’ll see eagles, owls and hawks. Here’s the ensuing conversation:
Zach: Ewoks?
Me: Hawks. Not Ewoks.
Zach: What about the Ewoks?
Me: There are no Ewoks. Only hawks.
I thought I had conveyed the situation until we got to the raptor center. We were walking around and Zach kept asking about the Ewoks.
Zach: Where are the Ewoks?
Me: There are no Ewoks.
Zach: But you said there would be Ewoks here.
Me: There are no Ewoks.
Zach: Why aren’t there any Ewoks here?
Me: Because there aren’t any Ewoks. They aren’t real.
Zach: But you said there would be Ewoks here.
As you can see, this is a fairly serious issue. Zach is totally addicted to anything related to Star Wars. He plays Star Wars on the Wii for about an hour per day to feed the addiction. He has watched all 6 of the movies several times and watches the clone wars cartoon religiously. We are at the end of a weeklong vacation and Zach hasn’t had too many withdrawal issues, but we’ll see how he handles his addiction once he gets in contact with it again.
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How much to borrow your dryer?

The wife and I try to be good neighbors. Maybe "try" is too strong of a word. We accept that we're not rich enough to own a huge plot of land so we could build a moat filled with sharks. Sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. But I digress. Maybe I should just say we try not to piss off anyone that lives around us, especially if they own firearms.

Last weekend we got a call from a neighbor to use our dryer as theirs had quit on them. They had one load to dry so we let them use it. We even sent our kids over to pick it up and deliver. Obviously, we did this with no assumption of getting paid or getting anything in return. As the wife was loading the laundry into the dryer, she noticed a small paper bag. In it were 5 small boxes on yogurt covered raisins. She asked the girls about it and they said the neighbor gave them for the inconvenience. So, for future reference, if you ever need to borrow someone's dryer for a load of laundry the proper payment is 5 boxes of yogurt-covered raisins. And no, I don't know why this struck me as funny. If you see fit, file this under "informational" as opposed to "humor."
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$14 water bottles

For some reason Camelbaks have become very popular. Several months ago the wife decided we all needed these $14 water bottles, including me. I admit I do have a use for a water bottle. The water at work is terrible so I bring my own. I've always re-used a regular plastic water bottle. I use it until I lose it, it gets destroyed, or it gets visibly germy.

The Camelbak is supposed to be far superior to the my old, re-used water bottles for several reasons they conveniently put right on the water bottle. First, it's BPA free. Unfortunately, I have no idea what BPA is. Maybe it's something I really need in my diet? I've had a cough for seemingly months, what if the cause is BPA deficiency? Can I get BPA supplements somewhere?
The brilliant people at Camelbak claim I can "Drink up to 24% more with the Camelbak patented Big Bite Valve." The big bite valve is a chunk of soft plastic with a slit in the middle. Does the Big Bite Valve somehow force extra water down my throat? You have to bite on it to open the slit, then suck to get the water. It's one too many steps for me. Also, using the big bite valve makes me feel dirty. I feel like I'm performing a sex act on the water bottle. I like to keep this blog PG-13, so I'll just say the sex act I'm talking about rhymes with "snow bob." I solved this by removing the Big Bite Valve, but now the bottle will occasionally leak. Also, how in the hell can they claim you'll drink 24% more? I drink less than I used to because I always brought a liter of water to work and the Camelbak is only 750ml. Add that to the daily leakage and I'm slowly dehydrating. And I'm missing out on my BPA.
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Monster Trucks and Smelly Guy

My 3-year-old son is all boy. He pretends everything is a gun and makes a lot of sound effects. Recently, we watched Monster Jams on TV (probably the Speed Channel) and he loved it. So when I heard the advertisement for a monster truck show in Cedar Rapids, I knew Zach would be all for it.

I drug my feet on buying tickets because a)the weather in February in Iowa can suck and b)Zach's favorite, Grave Digger, would not be there. I kept an eye on the forecast and when I was fairly certain we'd be able to make it, I pulled the trigger on buying tickets. I figured correctly that Zach wouldn't really care if Grave Digger was there, as long as there were really loud trucks he'd be fine. We went with a couple friends and the 4 of us got balcony seats in the middle of the arena.
With any advance ticket purchase you get to go into the pit before the show. I thought this would be cool so we got there about 6pm for the 7:30 show. We had seen everything there was to see by 6:15. There were 6 trucks, and that's about it. We picked up some hot dogs and drinks before finding our seats at 6:45. As we walked up, I saw there was a fairly rough-looking family in our row with 6 seats separating them from the aisle. I left 2 seats between me and them, even though I knew our seats were right next to them. As luck would have it, the two people with the aisle seats did show up so I was forced to sit right next the huge patriarch of the trash family.
The first thing that hit me was the smell. This "gentleman" was in the neighborhood of 5'8" and on the light side of 3 bills. A mane of hair hung out of his dirty ball cap and he had a full, bushy beard. From the smell of him, I guessed there was probably a small woodland creature dead in his beard. Maybe something the size of a raccoon or a wolverine. Here was our first conversation as I moved next to him:
Smelly Guy: You in the wrong seats?
Me: Yeah, we were 2 seats over.
SG: Huh?
Me: We were 2 seats over.
SG: You were in the wrong seats?
Me: Yeah.

As I sat in this guy's stench zone for 30 minutes before the show started, I made a few more mental notes. The guy had finger tatoos that spelled "love" on one hand. I was fairly sure the tattoo had been done in a correctional facility. I couldn't see his other hand, but I assume is said "crak." He was also in the possession of a camera that was far too expensive. It was a nice Canon digital camera with a healthy-sized zoom lens. The group he was with (hard to tell if it was his family) consisted of a hard-looking woman who was somewhere between 40 and 70, a dim-witted boy of about 12, an older guy who looked fairly normal, and a teenage girl with multiple lip piercings.
I was hoping for very little conversation as the noise from the trucks was deafening. However, it didn't hinder my sense of smell. At one point he tried to tell me about some vehicle he had put together. I heard "350 big block", "42 inch tires", "tires squealing" and "police stop" between the roar of the engines. Shortly before intermission he decided to take off his reflective coat. It's the kind of coat highway construction workers wear. Underneath the coat was his finest XXL Bud Light t-shirt. Unfortunately, it was a couple X's too small as a few inches of hairy belly was exposed.
After intermission my new friend decided to show off his camera. He had some picture of motocross bikers doing tricks. He scrolled through a half-dozen pictures of bikers doing jumps and then got to a topless woman with a tiger hawk body painted on each breast. I made some type of approving comment, at which point he decided I needed to see the other 100 pictures of topless (and sometimes bottomless) old biker chicks. I don't think words can describe how uncomfortable I was at that point. Maybe I should have told him I wasn't comfortable looking at his amateur porn, but the guy had finger tattoos. His dimwitted son probably could have whupped me. Toward the end of the show he made some comment about the trucks being "gear drive." I nodded approvingly, as I'd done all night. Then he said "You probably don't know what that means." I thought about it and the answer seemed fairly clear that it means the truck is driven by gears. I carefully measured the risk and rewards of disputing his assumption of my mechanical knowledge and decided to let him explain it to me. Believe it or not, it means driven by gears as opposed to belt or chain driven. At that point I was really glad I had been given the opportunity to sit next to this wealth of knowledge and pornography.
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Day 7: Thanksgiving on the road

It was brought to my attention by one alert follower of this blog (the same one that also lives in my house) that I hadn't posted about the trip home. The highlight was a visit to Waffle House, if that tells you anything about how exciting the 15-hour drive home was. So without further ado...

Once again, we got off to a slow start. The ship docked early and we were at breakfast when they announced our floor could disembark. With a 15-hour drive ahead, I had hoped to be off the ship quickly to get on the road.
We hustled the kids and Gimpy through the disembarking process and got to customs behind roughly 12,000 other passengers. We got ushered to a customs line that actually moved faster than I expected, so we got on the road around 9 am.
Zach had been asking for Chicken Donald’s (McDonald’s to most people) for the entire vacation, and he finally got his wish on Thanksgiving Day. We stopped somewhere in northern Mississippi for lunch with temps in the 70’s. By the time we got to St. Louis for dinner it was below freezing and when we got home the temp was hovering around 10. My personal favorite part of the drive home was the greatest of all southern food, the Waffle House. From their picture menu for the illiterate to the insane calorie count, that place is all-around awesome. After gassing up next door to the Waffle House, we high-tailed it home and pulled into Iowa City around midnight.
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Day 6: The gales of November came early

Ok, so the gales of November weren’t really early since our cruise was in November. However, it was really windy and I’ll take any chance I get to quote Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Cozumel back to Mobile was rough enough that the staff hung up barf bags around the common area, especially by the elevators. As I had been doing the entire trip, I continued to self-medicate to fend off motion sickness. I was fairly successful at this. We spent a good portion of the day on the deck enjoying our last full day of warm weather until June. We took in one of the below-average production shows that night. Maybe I expect too much, but I think a cruise ship should be able to do better than a junior high talent show. The girls said good-bye to the friend they had made and exchanged addresses with her. They had lost the address by the time we got home and we haven’t seen any mail from her. So go vacation friendships. We went to bed early and plotted out how we were going to get up early, grab breakfast and be ready to disembark the second our floor was called. At least that was my plan. Read more on this article...

Day 5: Cozumel

We got off to a bad start. Our plan was to get off the boat as soon as it docked and catch a cab to the park where we had reservations for the girls to swim with dolphins. We couldn’t get off the boat when we wanted because another boat was docking. When we finally got off, Abby got wrangled by some guy dressed in aboriginal garb for a picture. A real man would have grabbed his fake spear and beat him with it. Being a lesser man, I just complain about it in a blog. We found the taxi stand and had to take 2 cabs to the park as there wasn’t a van available for the 6 of us. When we got to the park, the cabby “conveniently” didn’t have change. I made him wait for our other cab and got exact change, as opposed to way over-tipping. We got into the park and made our way to the dolphin experience, where we discovered our reservation was for 2 days later. We momentarily panicked, but the customer service person let us change the reservation to that day at 1pm. We had a couple hours to kill, so we hung out in the pool. Cozumel turned out to be the best part of the vacation by far. Zach really enjoyed the pool as it wasn’t crowded like the ship’s pool. The girls loved the dolphin experience and I took some crappy amateur video of it. They charged me $5 to be on the pier near the dolphins, which was cheap compared to the $75 it would have cost for their video. We wandered around the park for awhile and checked out the scuba area and the beach. We didn’t spend much time there as the boat leaves the dock at 5pm and we needed to do some shopping. I take that back, there was nothing we needed. Just a lot of stuff we wanted. Shopping at Cozumel was more pleasant than Progreso because the harassment was more low-key. However, the prices were a lot higher. I’m not exactly sure what we left Cozumel with, I think the girls got sun dresses and Zach was the big winner with a green turkey made out of a gourd (I’m not making that up). We got back to the boat in plenty of time, unlike some of our fellow passengers that had to get called a few times. Read more on this article...

Day 4: Progreso (not the spaghetti sauce)

By the time we got to Progreso, we were more than ready to get off the boat. The pier is 5 miles long for absolutely no reason at all, so you have to ride a bus to get to the city. I had done some research on Progreso so I had some idea what it would be like. I told the kids to stay close and ignore the harassing vendors. I was surprised and more than a bit annoyed by the vendors. Our goal was to go to the beach, and on the way we were constantly getting stopped. We stepped into a restaurant for a drink and vendors came to our table and tried to sell us crap. The restaurant owner/manager told us not to give the vendors any money, but never kicked them out of his restaurant. To cap it off, he tried to charge me for a drink we ordered but never received.

After our brief stop at the restaurant, we continued to the beach. It was, by far, the dirtiest beach I have ever seen. It’s a good thing you can buy penicillin over the counter in Mexico, because after being on the beach for awhile I felt an infection coming on. We walked down the beach for awhile and a guy that works for a restaurant on the beach offered us a table for $10. He said he’d bring some chips and salsa and we could get some drinks. It seemed acceptable, we were going to need a place to put our stuff and it provided some shade. Of course, we never saw the guy again. I don’t know if the tables actually belonged to the restaurant or if he really worked there. If that had happened to me in the states, I probably would have done something about it. Instead, I just chalked it up as a learning experience. And naturally, we still got harassed by vendors.
The same guy that tried to sell us balloon animals in the restaurant tried his luck with us again. People were selling t-shirts, bootleg DVD’s, kites, cloths, cigars, small children, hypodermic needles, herpes and massages. And yes, the herpes and massages go hand in hand. We hung out at the beach for a couple hours before heading back to the market to catch the smelly bus back to the boat.
On the way back, we stopped at some guys tent (I’m not making that up, it was a tent) who was selling jewelry. He first had to prove it was real shells and not cheap plastic jewelry by trying to light it on fire (Again, this really happened.) He wanted $25, here’s the conversation the followed:
Pyromaniac vendor: $25 for the necklace
Abby: I’ll give you $10
Pyro: $20. It’s real shells, didn’t you notice it didn’t start on fire?
Abby: $10
Pyro: $15
Abby: $10
Pyro: $13
Abby: Deal.
Pyro: How about $20 for two non-flammable necklaces?

Abby looks to her sister to see if she wants a necklace for $10, she says no so Abby buys one for $13. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of her. She stood her ground in the face of a flamethrower and when he tried to sweeten the deal by adding the 2nd necklace, she refused. She only wanted one necklace, and that’s what she got. I could give a short dissertation on opportunity cost now, but I don’t want to lose my 11-member audience. I’m pretty sure her and I are the only members of the family that would have done that. Gimpy would have walked away from the tent with 40 necklaces.
We wandered around the market and bought a couple more cheap souviniers. Zach got a t-shirt and we bought some flammable necklaces at the bargain basement price of 6 for $5.
We caught the stinky bus back to the boat and had a great sit-down meal that night. Our waitress was awesome, probably the best service we encountered the entire trip.
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