Reading Rainbow

Reading to each another is a favorite pass time of ours. Combined with the fact that we don’t have TV and went on a fair number of road trips this year we got a respectable number of books read. Caution: Dave was laughing so hard he couldn’t see while we were reading Cheaper by the Dozen. He was driving at the time. This required us to put the story down temporarily to keep us from flattening some poor lady crossing the street with a stroller or other like vulnerable pedestrians, duck crossings, city lawn maintenance men and such.


Lemony Snicket 4-13 (Read the first 3 during Christmas last year. We were captivated.)
Sea Wolf
New Moon
Twilight
Eclipse
Cheaper by the Dozen (Highly recommended. And where we got the inspiration for root beer)
Belles on their toes
Harry Potter 7
Wicked
A Walk in the woods
The life and times of the Thunderbolt kid - (Dave shared most of it with me through bursts of laughter)
Swiss Family Robinson (Not really what we were expecting.)
The Lonely Moose (Thank you Stephanie)
Panda Cake (From Dave’s childhood. He just had to find it.)
The Once and Future King
Kite Runner (started)
The Golden Compass
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince and the Pauper


These are in no particular order and do not include the books we read on our own. Most of these were fun to share together. And if I forgot any hopefully Dave will add to it.

Now Broadcasting From...

Beautiful, sunny Bagram Air Field!
Or BAF, as it is commonly known as. I like the sound of that- like a punch in the face from Bat-Man. "BAF! SOC! POW!"

Anyway.
I've been here for a few days and am getting to know my way around. There is only one road here named Disney Ave that makes a circle around the airfield. We got DQ, Pizza Hut, Burger King and a Columbia outlet. No joke. And there is a few little junk stores that we ignorant westerners call hadji-shops, where I bought a $20 broken watch the other day.

I'm living in a very nice hangar with a very colorful history. I think it was built by the Russians, because I doubt the Afghans had the money. But at some point the Taliban invaded the base, lined up all the enlisted dudes in the street and mass executed them all, then hung the officers from the rafters of our hangar and set them on fire. Scorch marks on the ceiling repudiate this. Supposedly there are even some photos lurking around here somewhere but I haven't seen them yet.

The place is probably haunted.

But I love it. We have so many nice things that most army guys here don't. Like on-site phones, hot showers, flushing toilets, individual rooms, gym, and soon we will even have a rock climbing wall. Its way better accommodations than my trip to Iraq. I am so thankful to not be living in a ditch or a cave or in the back of a tank like my fore-fathers.

Tennessee Winter

The snows have come to Tennessee.



I don't think I'll be digging out my snowshoes just yet.

Tongue tied

Last Sunday while enjoying church Dave leaned in very quietly and whispered, “I just realized something.”
“What is that?” I whisper back as reverently as possible so as not to encourage the surrounding children to increase their ongoing screaming.
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Me at a loss for words.


Google Earth has some nice images of Bagram airbase and the surrounding mountains such as this one. 


Wikipedia has an interesting map as well.

Over the Rainbow

While visiting family on our vacation Dave was introduced to color coded bookshelves. Within hours of our first day back from the trip I discovered Dave had all of our books in piles around our home sorted by color. Here is the result:



The other evening a few friends pointed out that with the chromatic change James Talmage “Jesus the Christ” was located next to Dan Brown “Angels & Demons.”




Dave went so far as to differentiate between bookshelves. One dedicated to manuals and textbooks vs. Novels and everything else. Thus we have two rainbow effects in our living room.




The only thing spared this pigment classification was our Lemony Snicket series. It was afforded this privilege due to the display box created for them back in April shortly after we finished reading them to each other (our favorite pastime).



It even has the Lemony Snicket logo on each side. Thanks to the Army’s generous handouts of camo face paint. Go Army! Or something.



 

Birth of a Bedroom

O Holy Crap. That was the theme of our "get the bedroom ready for company" Christmas. So much work and so little time. The week before my Mom and Dad came to visit was one renovation headache after the other. The most traumatic phase was just agreeing what color, style, texture, combination, paint, carpet, ceiling to go with. It took multiple trips to Home Depot amounting to several hours of looking at different samples, tiles, colors etc. Compounding the frustration was my endless indecision paired with my normal good-natured wife's deteriorating patience. And no thanks to the paint desk dudes discreet martial advice. 

Which didn't help either of us in the get-in-a-good-mood category.

And then there was the real work.

This room has been the storage area for the past year. Everything was pulled out and relocated (in a very optimistic sense of the word) in other places in the house. Because of the shortness of time I was trying to mud, tape, sand and texture all at the same time. It doesn't work. But I did the best I knew how, even though I sometimes sabotaged Valli's well-laid plans. My hope was that we would have the room cleaned out, have the floor prepared for carpet, and have the walls painted just in time for the carpet installers to show up Wednesday morning, pick up and assemble the bed Wednesday afternoon, and have dinner ready for the folks early Wednesday evening. And something like 4 days to do it. Okay- no sweat.

And then we decided to use leveling concrete on the floor. More trips to Home Depot. Which we discovered had to have a primer coat. "Oh, and by the way", needs to set for 12 -24 hrs.

Then we found that when an aerosol can of spray-on orange-peel texture says 110 sq. feet it really means just 10 sq feet. So we figured it would cost about six hundred thousand dollars to buy enough cans of texture. So we needed to find an air compressor to borrow, and learn how to use it, and buy mix-yourself texture, and learn how to mix it, and buy/learn to use a texture gun. Which means more trips to Home Depot.

When we were about halfway through leveling the room we simultaneously ran out of auto leveler AND discovered that not only are these "square footage per bag" also hopelessly optimistic, but so is the term "auto" in auto-leveling. So, the result was more scrambling to fix the newest disaster and of course, more trips to Home Depot as the first couple batches were drying and being put down by Valli.

Next came the texturing of the walls- before we finished sanding.  But I didn't care.  I just wanted the room to look done.  I could go back and fix that stuff later.  So on went the first batch with our brand new spray gun and borrowed air compressor (note- one trip to hardware store to but adapters, another trip to return them and buy the right adapters).  The first batch went on really nicely.  I was actually really buoyed up by this- that something actually worked the way I wanted it to.  Did I mention that this is the night before the folks get here?  I thought maybe- just maybe-  I could finish texturing in the next hour, let it sit for 6 hours with the floor fan on high blast, spray on the primer, let that sit for 6 hours, and spray on the base coats of the actual paint right before the carpet installer show up Wednesday morning.  Oh yeah, and somehow go to work, too.  But the next batch of texture was too runny and started sliding down the walls.  So Valli and I trowelled off everything and started over after we went back to Home Depot and bought more texture.  The next time, only a quarter of the texture ran off the wall.  And it had to be removed again, and more texture mixed again (really good at this by now).  But the problem was that the wall was too wet by this time and nothing would stay on until it had dried for at least 6 hours.  But if that was what the box says, then it probably meant to say six days.  Anyway- I finally had to concede that it just wasn't going to get finished.  The only positive thing now was that at least I didn't have to stay up all night, and no more trips to God-Bless-America Home Depot.

The next morning Valli called me at work to announce- with happiness and joy that rival the angel of the Lord, long ago in Bethlehem-  "(Hey! Unto you a Child is born!) Honey, we have carpet!"  The bad news is that since that floor has been raised by cement, pad, and carpet, the bedroom door no longer opens or closes.  It's an acceptable compromise.  

Once I got home from work i spent the rest of the day picking up and assembling the bed, wiring the new light fixtures wrong so that neither of them work and plunged the room into darkness, and making a last trip to Wal-Mart for floor lamps and a new lock set for the bedroom door- to install once Valli finishes cutting an inch or so off the bottom of it.  Turns out the door was built with a metal sheet in it.  That explains the slow process and black smoke billowing from the circular saw.  Oh well.  We threw the last bits together with an hour to spare before company arrived and haven't done a productive thing since.


It's as finished as it is going to be for a good while- and its beautiful.

And we love you Mom and Dad!

 

The finished product!

A "soda" but not really, Christmas

Valli had the fun idea to make a crapload of cream soda and give it away to our friend’s and such around the neighborhood with the following poem.

Some people are soda crazy, fun to be around.
Some people are soda cheery,
making others smile instead of frown.
Some people are soda neighborly, taking
interest and lending a hand.
Some people are soda superior when it comes to
being a friend.
So at this Christmas time, we want to celebrate by telling
you that we think you’re soda great!

So a week and a half ago she made 3 gallons of cream soda and left it to brew. Last night she typed up the poems on pretty paper and sanitized 30 or so bottles that have been collecting dust, ants, goo, and other yuckies for the past couple months since we switched to kegs. I didn’t really do much work, I just advised on the sanitation process since that has traditionally been my job. Everything was going great until we opened up the soda jugs and discovered that they were nasty. It was the first batch that we have ever made of cream soda that wasn’t delicious. The bottom line is this- No soda for you!


Oh well, we have had a great Cristmas holiday anyway. Its great to just be together. And wait till you see what we've done in the bedroom!


Not that- sickos.


Merry Christmas Everyone!