Lewies Blog

So I’m trying out Ancestry.com and having a heck of a time finding info about me and my family. It’s like, you need to rethink the normal way that you search on the internet. Tons of names come back, and the thing is, my name is rare. Or so I thought. How many people have you met with the last name of “Moten”?

Anyhow, I’m looking through some personal records that I have at home and look at my birth certificate. Nothing new there. I begin to put it back in the safe box and notice some faint writing on the back. A closer look gives me some sought out information I have been curiouse about for years.

9 lbs. 4 ozs. 4:40 am.

Woohoo! Now I can figure out a closer target for when I’ll be a billion seconds old this year. I’ll only be off by +/- 59 seconds at the most.

Saturday, February 03, 2007 6:26:40 AM

My brother came over tonight and brought me a skill saw and some garden lights. It looks like I’ll be remodeling the back deck soon I guess. I don’t know where to start, so I started to build a mockup of my current deck in SL. After all, SL is pretty much a CAD program that a bunch of people play in. I’ll have to get some “real” measurements tomorrow.

I now have a new nephew and now it is time for me to sleep.

My mother inlaw came over this weekend with my neice and spent the night.  I was constantly doing things all weekend.  Shopping for groceries, pet food, gardening supplies, and even took my neice to Toys ‘R’ Us so she could spend her allowance.  Thankfully, she didn’t spend too much time looking around at the toys.  She got a toy fishing rod with sea critters, and I found a pinwheel that she liked too.

I picked up some sand at Wal-Mart so that I could fill in some holes left behind from when I tore down an ugly fence between me and my neighbors house.  I saw some people were moving in next door with some kids and I figured it’s about time to make the neighborhood a little safer.  I also mowed most of my lawn.  I keep getting worn out when I try it out.  I ran out of gas on the front half and I got two large sections done in the back.  My back keeps aching from all that pushing.

Some bee-balm flowers arrived in the mail on Friday and I purchased some potting soil for them.  My wife and I were going to turn over the dirt in front of the house, but just a few centemeters under it we just kept hitting rocks. We are going to find a flower box and put the soil in there.  Bee-balm is my wife’s favorite flower.

My neice woke up early on Sunday and from what I heard, she kept asking if she could wake me up so we could collect rocks.  I told her on Saturday we could find some rocks and put them down in the old fence post holes.  Well, we soon went ahead and found some rocks.  We only filled one hole half way.  All the other holes were filled completely with sand.  It turns out that I had some extra sand left over in the first back, and one back not even opened.  I took the two bags into my back yard and dumped them into a pile in a bare spot where the grass doesn’t grow.

For about an hour, my neice and I built sand castles.  I taught her the steps to making them so that she fills the bucket all the way up, dumps it fast, pats the top, wiggle the bucket, and then slowly pull it up.  She got it perfect after her second attempt.  We also built a giant ant hill, and a house out the the sand.

By time the afternoon came on Sunday, I was so exhausted from being with her so much that I took a nap.  I was supposed to do a few more things with my mother in-law, but by time I woke up, she had already left.  There is always next weekend.

My brother came over tonight.  It’s hard to get him to come over since he is always busy on the weekends and in the evenings.  He picked up an electronic lab kit that I had purchased for him last month.  He expressed some interest in electronics a few months back and I thought that it would help keep him occopied if he was ever left with nothing to do.  Actually, his computer got fried today, so I imagine that he has plenty of null time to take care of.

Even in my dreams, my wife completes me.  It’s the common sense things and assertiveness.  I took her to the movies and it seemed that there were not enough seats.  I just stood there confused.  She brushed passed me and got some people to move there stuff out of some seats.  The movie screen showed a game of baseball and the audience was pretty loud.  I was doubting that our movie would come on at all.  She would just tell me to wait until it was time.  Exactly at ten of or according to the clock, the movie started and everyone got quiet.

Things are like that here.  I’ll doubt little things, but she knows them better then I do.  If we want something, she’ll make sure nothing gets in our way.  It feels odd sometimes.  Without her, I would probably avoid the things that I doubt.

It’s been a while since I blogged.  I tend to keep forgetting to do it.  I just don’t surf the internet much since I started playing SecondLife. Anyhow, a few things have been going on.

Today, I had (still have) a migrain head ache and chills.  I feel a bit weak all over.  I may be comming down with something.  Hopefully it passes quick.  One item I noticed is that I didn’t get the flu this year.  I get the flu every year and it is severe (way past Robotussin).  I usually take about 2 weeks to get over it, and I still have symptoms for a few weeks after, but nothing major.  This year I got myself a flu shot and boy, was it worth it.  I had felt a little bad about someone not being able to get it who may have needed it more then I did, as flu shots are very limited. I just never realized how much that “I” needed it.

Tax Blowout

Tuesday was tax day. I had done my Federal taxes very, very early.  I didn’t do state, though because I couldn’t afford it at the time of filing.  The procrastinator that I am just kept putting it off.  Between then and now, I had gotten a new hard drive and reinstalled my operating system.  I tried to hook the other hard drive up and boot up my computer, but the power supply had died (another thing I have been putting off).  I ran to two wallmarts, best buy, and comp usa.  The thing is, it was after 9pm.  Wall-mart doesn’t sell power supplies, and the other two stores were closed.

I was able to hook the hard drive up to a spare computer I had as a secondary drive.  I had to take ownership of all the files since the file system was NTFS.  Otherwise I couldn’t read the files.  I found my tax file and was in luck.  I didn’t know where my TaxCut disc was, so I ran over to the site and purchased both the federal and state versions.  I was just hoping that it would be able to read my old file and as luck would have it, it did.  Things were pretty simple from there and I got my state taxes filed a little after 11 pm.

The next day I upgraded my old power supply from 340 watts to 500 watts.  I am hoping that the wattage is the main reason why my supply had burnt out.  Around here, power supplies go up left and right.  At least the hard disc’s don’t burn out like they used to on my older computers.

A little giant ladder 

Easter had come this past weekend.  I played a bit with my nephew and neice during there visit. We played hide and go seek, and just played a bit in the back yard.  My mother in-law came over and helped me look at some ladders that I saw at SAM’s club.  My eye was on a pretty tall one that would support 300 lbs.  The problem was that it was a bit too large for the van.  The step ladder next to it was just not high enough.  She looked at a third ladder there that looked like the Giant Little Ladder.

This ladder folds and unfolds into 5 different positions including a step ladder and a 17 foot high ladder.  I passed it over earlier that day due to the face that I couldn’t find its maximum load cappacity.  She found it and it was also 300 lbs.  The thing was very compact and fit rite in our shopping cart.  I was debating on buying the original Giant Little Ladder earlier this year with my tax return, but it was expensive for how often I would use it (over $300).  This little ladder was just over $100.  Someone even stopped us in the store to ask where we found the ladder.

I was finally able to replace two flood lights on the highest part of the house.  I am not a fan of heights.  Perhaps it may be the part where you hit the ground that I may be afraid of.  Anyhow, my hands were gripping that ladder so tight that it was hard to let go of one bar and grab the next.  Meanwhile, I’m trying to hold a lightbulb in the other hand.

Today we had some visitors on our doorstep. They were trying to reach my sister in-law who has since moved. Who were these people? One was the manager of an ex-employee who is also an ex-boyfriend. We’ll call him Mr. A. The guy was pleading with us for any information, anything at all to give to Mr. A.

Apparently, Mr. A. has been harassing him day and night with phone calls. Nasty phone calls. The manager tried to contact his phone company about it. They couldn’t give him the number or any information because that would invade Mr. A.’s privacy since he actively choose to block that information. The end result was that they suggested for him to change his phone number. This is not good for a small business.

So here I am on the doorstep with a man who can’t get a good nights sleep because of the constant calls. His cell, his home, his business. We had to put our foot down and explain that we had already gone through the same ordeal and that we would not give him any information.

As my wife started to change the subject onto an incriminating situation of his own, he turned and thanked us for our time. I’ll have to remember that little trick the next time I don’t want to talk to someone.

My brother and I headed on over to my dad’s place. We had some debates when crossing one of the bridges on his driveway. We kicked some built up snow to the side and crossed the river under it instead. Just as we arrived, three deer jumped across in front of us.

Dad has been building a new house since June. He has the foundation built up and is starting to work on the roof. We came up to visit and help him out. On Saturday night, he and my brother started boasting how powerful there cordless drills were. They put the two ends together and my brothers started to smoke. I tried to remind them that Grand mom told us boys to behave when we called her earlier on the phone.

On Sunday, we went to work. I am afraid of heights as soon as I get a few feet off the ground. Rather then work on the roof, I ran boards for the pearling. I also measured and cut them to size with a skill saw. My feet had gotten cold and wet with all of the snow. There was about seven inches of snow on the top floor of the house.

We would take breaks after each quarter of the roof was done. It took us the whole day to get the job done. My dad had an airgun that would nail the boards together in one shot. We were almost done with only a few boards left to cut. Our blade dulled up when my dad had run it through a nail. He was trimming some of the previous boards that were originally placed to keep the roof trusses together. We got another skill saw but the blade on it wasn’t meant for cutting through oak. We decided to call it a day.

In the end, we didn’t get any of the sheet metal up on the roof. This was the main goal of the weekend and the reason we needed drills. He has a box full of screws with rubber washers to prevent rain from getting into the attic. I’m a little concerned how he is going to get those sheets of metal up on the roof, but he always finds a way to get the job done.

Angel and I headed on up to my Aunts house for this Thanksgiving. I hadn’t been there in so long. As soon as we arrived, Angel went strait for the horses. I thought that they only had an old horse, but it turns out that they had three. They were not so old either.

Supper was great. They had green beans, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sour kraut, lama beans, and of course - Turkey. They had plenty of deserts as well. My favorite was grandmas’ strawberry cake. There was also some killer chocolate cake and some local homemade ice cream.

We all had a good time catching up on what everyone has been doing. My nephew showed off his albino ferret. One of my niece’s played the guitar while I relaxed in a nice soft chair and listened to the family chatter. There was a commotion breaking out when my dad tried to give his sister some money. He always does that for whomever is hosting the dinner. Grandma is usually the host. My aunt had a lot more energy and started chasing him around the kitchen trying to give him his money back.

Near the end of the event, we all went out to visit with the horses for feeding time. A few of my nephews played some basket ball on the side of the barn while we went into the horses pen. It was cold, windy, and little specs of snow could be seen here and there. When the feeding was done, my wife and I said our good byes.

I had a very good day today. Thanks.