Garda and her teeth

I was brushing my teeth before bed the other night and had a revelation.

Those who knew my mother, Garda, knew that she took good care of her teeth. It was almost an obsession with her. She would floss every day and the brushing took five minutes. She was very thorough.

And she always worked a toothpick after meals.

Even in those last few days of her life when it was a chore just to walk a few steps to the bathroom, she enjoyed brushing her teeth and the way her mouth felt afterwards.

The revelation I had the other day was the “why” of this life-long habit.

I thought perhaps it was because Dad had his top teeth pulled in his early 40s and had uppers. That probably wasn’t too fun or romantic. Surely it was expensive.

But that wasn’t it.

Garda’s mother died when she was only ten years old. It was a vivid but painful memory for Garda and her sisters to become orphans at such a young age. (Grandpa died in 1925.)

It was never clear to the girls what killed Grandmother Malinda, but it was a long and painful illness for a woman of 43. Speculation is that it was perhaps undiagnosed diabetes. She had her gallbladder removed. The immediate cause of death is believed to have been blood clots on the brain. Who knows? Medical science in Southern Utah in 1933 was rather primitive.

Anyway, back to Garda and dental hygiene.

A few months before Malinda passed away she had all of her teeth removed because it was believed they were causing an infection throughout her body.

Just imagine the impact that had on a 10-year-old girl. You come home from school to see your already-ill mother made worse by having all her teeth extracted under little or no anesthetic. And she would never recover. She died in December of 1933.

Call me crazy, but I think Garda saw bad teeth as a sign of death. She didn’t want to go through all that pain (or make her family endure it) so she kept her teeth clean and healthy.

Name brand merchandise

I'm a bit sore about brand names and support.

Several years ago I bought a new faucet for the tub. I paid more and got a "brand name" faucet because I wanted to be able to walk into a store and buy parts for it.

So, I installed an American Standard tub faucet. It has serve us well until this week when the seals began to leak. And off I went with the old cartridge in search of a new one, or some new seals for mine.

Home Depot - Didn't have it.
Menards - Didn't have it.
Ace Hardware (2 different stores) - Didn't have it.
Han's Plumbing Supply (a guy who had been in business since 1954) - Didn't have it, but could order it for me.

So, Amazon had it for $12 plus shipping and it will be here by Tuesday. Meanwhile, it is leaking so I shut the water off at night and when we're gone.

Why did I buy a name brand? I would have been better off to buy the bargain brand and just replace the whole thing every three years.

I'm at the store today and I notice an electric blanket with the Sunbeam logo and some tag line like, "Your trusted brand for 100 years."

Except Sunbeam has been gone for 20 years. It has been bought and sold a few times. There are no Sunbeam engineers or manufacturing plants. It's just a name; a familiar logo.

If you read the fine print on the bottom of the box, it says the company is Jarden Corporation and the blanket is made in China. I pity the poor suckers who buy the hype and believe they are buying an American product.

We bought a TV. It says Westinghouse on it. You think about Westinghouse and you think about those giant generators inside Hoover Dam. Westinghouse and apple pie.

Here's what the website for Westinghouse Digital says about the company:
"About Us
Who We Are
Westinghouse Digital is one of the leading LCD TV Manufacturers in the U.S. We offer a complete line of innovative LED and CCFL backlit LCD displays for the U.S. consumer market. Westinghouse Digital’s award-winning HDTV line includes a complete family of 720p and 1080p eco-friendly LED and LCD TVs. Westinghouse Digital has made a strong commitment to producing eco-friendly, energy-saving displays with their greenvue, greenvue + and LED product lines which meet Energy Star and California Energy Commission (CEC) Tier 1 & 2 standards.

Westinghouse Digital is headquartered in Orange, California."

Wow! Sounds American to me. The box says "Made in China," as does the data plate on the TV itself.

It would be strange if it weren't made in China, since even RCA is made there. Even the Japanese brands aren't made in Japan.

At the hardware store I started looking at power tools. Sure, the off brands are made in China, but so are Skil, Black and Decker, a most of the "name brands." B&D adds a little statement that their tools are made in a Black and Decker supervised plant in China.

Bosch makes some of their high end tools in Switzerland.

What's my point?

1) You can't tell country of origin by the logo

2) Read the fine print on the carton to find out where it is made. They make an effort to conceal it by putting their US address first and at the end of the paragraph finally fess up where they made it.

3) Chances are most of what you buy was made in China or another Asian country.

4) Save your manual if you ever expect to find parts.

Second-hand ADD

I grew up with the Marlboro Man. It may seem strange today, but I remember smoking sections on airplanes. As a result, you always expected to smell like cigarettes when you took a flight anywhere.

People smoked at their desks, in meetings, at restaurants, in their homes, in cars…just about everywhere.

Finally, they figured out that non-smokers didn’t want to smell your fumes; and that inhaling them might not be good for those around you.
Living with someone who has ADD can be trouble. The trouble ranges from jealousy to watching a loved-one suffer.

At the outset I must admit that being a victim of second-hand ADD might be more difficult for me than for most. I’m more than a little anal-retentive. I enjoy structure. A schedule puts me squarely in my comfort zone.

With that disclaimer behind me, I’d like to suggest some self-destructive behaviors I have observed in my ADD-afflicted friends.

1) Social activities – You love parties and going out. The social scene means lots of background noise. You are able to pick from a number of distractions. There is variety. There is no time limit. You can bounce from dancing to games to eating to conversations for hours.

2) Video games – Lots of movement, lights and sound. You are required to monitor a half-dozen elements of the scene at a time. And you are good at it.

3) Chats and phone calls – There is no performance expectation here, just hours of avoidance

And we lose sense of time when we engage in such behaviors. Note that there is nothing inherently wrong with any of the activities above. The problem comes when we engage in them in high doses.

Stephen R. Covey made millions talking about the Law of the Harvest. Essentially he taught that the things we invest our time in will determine our “crop” in life. And perhaps most important to our present discussion, when we say “Yes” to one thing in our schedule, we are automatically saying “No” to everything else. No matter what, the clock wins every time.

ADD-sufferers are prone to one or more of these self-destructive behaviors:

1) Lack of sleep

2) Lack of exercise

3) Skipping meals

4) Poor study habits

5) Poor work performance

The Law of the Harvest requires that we pay for our lack of attention to the above areas of our lives. To be sure you can cheat any or all of them for a time, but in the end you will pay what you owe.

If you have ADD, please keep an eye on them. Force yourself to devote adequate time to them. They will bring you misery if you don’t give them their due. You must sacrifice some of your discretionary time to them.

Giving your studies the scraps of your time will not cut it. You won’t get away with it.

Going to work exhausted is not fair to your employer.

And Mother Nature will remind you if you don’t take care of your body.

OK. I’ll leave you alone now.

Xoxo,

Dad

The bird album

Mine-mine-mine!!!
From the Facebook intro of the faux-eagle, here is the bird collection.
You go, gull!

Winter approaches

We've enjoyed over a week of sunny days in the 70s. Cold and rain approach.
I took a walk over by the Fox River today and snapped a few photos. It was a beautiful morning.

I also learned something. Trout Park was an amusement park 100 years ago. Situated along the river, it had a rail line that took it from downtown Elgin to the park. It closed in 1919.

http://elginpostcards.tripod.com/trout_part_amusement.htm

Outstanding in our field

Web watching

Through the magic of Google Analytics, I am watching the traffic of viewers to my pen collection website.
Check out the map:It's kinda fun, don't you think?

Baked bacon

You know how cooking bacon can be. It spatters and you have to drain the grease.

I've tried that microwave rack "As Seen on TV" but you spent 20 minutes wiping down the inside of the microwave.

So, I saw where you can bake bacon in the oven. And it turned out great. And the smoke alarm didn't go off. And there wasn't a mess on the ceiling of the oven. And there wasn't much grease.

It is really simple. Line a cookie sheet with foil. Then remove the foil and crinkle it up. (Don't get too vigorous or it'll take you 10 minutes to un-crinkle it.)

Then put the foil back on the cookie sheet and bend up the edges a bit to create a little wall around it all.

Then lay the bacon strips on the foil. I cut the strips in half because I was making BLTs.

Don't let the strips touch each other.

Throw them in the oven and then turn it on to 400 degrees. (No pre-heating needed.)

Check it after 17 minutes. That should be about right. No more than 20.

Place the strips on a paper towel with a plate under it.

The bacon looked like it shrunk a little more than usual, but that could be the bacon itself.

Clean up was very easy. You just wait for it to cool, then roll up the foil and toss it out. A quick wipe-down of the cookie sheet with a paper towel and it's ready to wash.

She must be famous

DONE!

They set up the electric cement mixer after lunch. One worker cut the tops off the bags of cement with a finishing saw. They mixed cement and sand in the mixer. (The gravel is already in the trench.) Then they poured it in the hole (an open window in the basement) into a wheelbarrow stationed below.Then they dumped it in the trench and smoothed it over.
The workers were swept up and done by 2:30. They did a decent job cleaning up after themselves.
And off they go...

And on the third day...

Here's the vinyl liner in the crawl space. It mostly diverts any water in to the sump well rather than soaking into the dirt.Here's what the trim looks like installed. Only about 2" of it will show against the wall once the cement is poured over the trench.
This is a finished window well with gravel and a drain. Covers will keep out the leaves and the critters.
This is the trench dug in the back yard. It handles any water discharged from the sump.
This is what the discharge outlet looks like where it comes outside.
And here's the sump well, complete with two battery-back-up pumps. They take turns pumping.
So, they are getting ready to pour the cement today and that's the project.Then I get to install a new sink and plumbing, put up some new shelves...and put everything away (argh!).

Draining the Window Wells

So, you begin by drilling a hole in the wall of the basement from the inside.

When it comes through the other side it should be somewhere in the window well, hopefully well below the window sill.
Then you stick some pvc pipe through the hole......and attach a long pipe to it so the water can drain into the trench below.
Repeat the process for all six window wells.

Day 2 basement work

They are installing 4 inch perforated drain pipe around the inside of the footings. It is covered with a mesh filter to keep it from getting clogged.
Here it is laid in the trench.

Then they bring in clean gravel...

..and fill in the trench with it.

Full circle

By noon the workers had broken up the cement floor all the way around the perimeter.Here's Joe's room, back in the closet area.

And here's Emily's room.

Here's one of the workers. His name is Jack. Noisy but productive.

Here's Barney and his rubble.

Now they have to dig a pit and install the sump system. They also have to lay the drain in the trench and get it flowing in the right direction. And then there are the window-well drains.

Good progress for the first half day of a three day project.

The Digging Begins

Here are some pictures of the trench:

Basement project

The workers showed up at 7:30 this morning

I was ready for them. I had cut the drywall below all the windows. They are installing window well drains.

Everything had to be five feet away from the wall. They are using jackhammers to dig a trench all around the inside walls of the basement. This was where all the junk was stored on those wooden shelves beyond the pantry

Remember the old slop sink in the laundry room?

It's gone!We stored all the displaced junk in the TV room. It is packed to the ceiling and sealed off with plastic.

This just in...

And here we have a metal pen, tastefully done in USU blue, complete with the clock tower logo. Thank you for the lovely gift.

The Haul

I pity the fellow who gets ties and golf clubs for Father's Day.
Take a look at these beauties.

It had to happen. Someone gave me the finger.

The hostile Kermit is added to my collection

Shiny green barrel with jewels on the end.

The copper dragon. Makes me want to order take out.

And something to keep them in, complete with an inscription.

Thank you to all. you know I love them.