Dog Stairs 2.0
May 4, 2008
Ever since we moved out of Rice I’ve missed having dog stairs. After a good amount of work I rebuilt the stairs for this apartment and we put them out this weekend.
They are awesome. Since the new stairs are so much smaller I was left with a good amount of leftover wood so I built some stairs for inside and he seems to like them too.
Bottom Line: I like building stairs for the dog.
Topics: Crap I Built | No Comments »
Fun With My Car
April 7, 2008
I’ve had a good deal of success working on my own vehicles in the past and this last weekend was my biggest undertaking yet. My car had a leaky heater core so the first half of Saturday was spend disassembling the dashboard. Once I found the heater core, I drained the coolant and replaced the heater. Next I went after the timing belt. To get access to the timing belt I had to un-mount one side of the engine and jack it about 5 inches out of the car. Once the belt was off I took out the water pump. It was getting dark out so quit for the day and went back at it Sunday morning. Reassembly went a lot faster than disassembly. I put the new water pump in, aligned the engine and installed the new timing belt.
After that I remounted the engine, rebuilt the dashboard and refilled the coolant. I started the car and everything worked, which is always good. All that would have cost just under $2,000 at a shop. All it cost me was my weekend and $300 for parts and tools.
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S10 Starter
March 31, 2008
Back in November, the starter died in my truck but I wasn’t willing to dish out $400 to have it replaced. I bought a starter on eBay for $30 and waited for a weekend warm enough to install it and yesterday was it. It took me 4 hours, most of which was spent trying to loosen a single bolt, but I finally got it. Now that it’s running, I’m going to sell it before it breaks down again.
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Cookies
March 24, 2008
So I’ve only lived in central Minnesota for about a year and a half now and I just recently discovered the biggest reasons I hate it down here (there’s no lack of things I dislike about this part of the state)
The Girl Scout Cookies
Girl Scout cookies are expensive, but they are also delicious so when I get the opportunity to buy them, I do. I bought a few boxes last week but was disappointed to find that every time I ate one I would throw up all over the place. After some research I found out that they don’t sell the same cookies here that they sell up north. The boxes look the same but the products are very different. There are two companies that make Girl Scout cookies and they both have their own recipe for each cookie. Once I realized what was going on I got a hold of some of the good cookies from up north and did a little comparison.
If your Girl Scout troop sells cookies made by “Little Brownie Bakers” you’re better of just going outside and eating a handful of mud. They’re seriously nasty.
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New Alternator
March 11, 2008
I took Jenn and her sister to the airport Wednesday Last week so they could meet up with their cousin and go to New York City for spring break. It was business as usual while Jenn was gone except I had to work all weekend. I left work Sunday around 4pm and picked up Jenn and her sister at the airport then headed home. Once we got home we unloaded the car, had dinner and went to sleep. The next day, I went out and got in my car to go to work and it was completely dead. It turns out the dome light was on all night because the trunk didn’t get shut all the way. I waited patiently for someone else to come out and start their car so I could get a jump. I was already late, so as soon as the car was running I took off. This proved to be a mistake.
Since I didn’t let the battery charge I ended up burning out my alternator and getting stranded on an off ramp just a few blocks from work. I could have fixed it myself had I made it to a parking lot, but being on an off ramp I had to call for a tow. It ended up costing just under $500
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Trip to Duluth
February 11, 2008
Jenn and I went to Duluth this weekend for our three year anniversary. The first thing we did was go see our old house in proctor. The place looked like hell, just like it did when we lived there. Then we went and checked into our hotel and headed to east Duluth to see our old apartment. The front door was locked but the back door was open, as it was when we lived there, so we went in. We found our way into the laundry room and I was surprised to see that the hangers I left there over two years ago were still there
I thought for sure someone would have taken them by now.
We went to breakfast the next day with Rod and Heather. I wanted Tara to come out too but she lives in Ely (two hours from Duluth) and hates me so she stayed home =/
Spackle came with us but didn’t have much fun since he spent the majority of his time in the hotel watching HBO
Topics: Places I Went, Stuff I Saw | No Comments »
Monster Trucks
January 20, 2008
Jenn and I were bored yesterday so we went to the Metrodome to see monster trucks.
It was nuts!
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A Super Post
December 17, 2007
Since leaving Freeze I never really took the time to write out why it sucked so much to work there. Luckily for you, my former co-worker Chris did. You can read all about it if you Click Here.
Topics: Stuff I Saw | No Comments »
A Very Long Thanksgiving
November 25, 2007
This year we decided to spend thanksgiving in South Dakota with Jenns family. Jenn, Spackle and I left for Sioux Falls Thursday morning and went to dinner at Jenns grandmas that evening. On Friday Jenn and I left around noon to go shopping and left Spackle at her brothers house where we spent the night. Later that day around 5PM we got a call from Jenns sister In-law, someone had left the door open and Spackle ran away; In the middle of the city, at the beginning of rush hour, two blocks away from an interstate. Jenn and I drove back and started looking for him. We searched until 2am without any luck. We went inside and made a flier and spent two hours posting a hundred of them around town.
Dead tired, we slept for maybe two hours and went back to searching and posting fliers until the sun came up. Once 8am rolled around we went to the shelters and animal clinics to see if maybe someone had found him. No one had. We went back to searching. Finally around 4pm (23 hours after he ran away) animal control called, they had him in custody. We picked him up and he was in pretty rough shape so we took him to the vet and they fixed him up with some bandages and a new collar
Spackle’s pretty pissed about the cone; I figure it’s a good punishment for running away.
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School is Complicated
October 22, 2007
I just finished a week long training thing at work. It was pretty intensive but in retrospect it probably wasn’t as hard as it seemed. Here is my fridge:
On the right is a paper Jenn had to write for a college class and on the left is a paper I had to write in my training class.
So Yea.
Topics: Places I Went, Things I Did | No Comments »