So, in October I (Jo) gave a big ol’ story about how I would post more since we sold our house and we were moving into a new house. Turns out I am just now coming out of the hole of my life. I will recap the past few months at some point. Not today. I just wanted to say I am back and I am going to try to chronicle our life in a more meaningful way…like we have done for years. I won’t beat myself up for the past several months. Life happens.
Well Co is turning 2, and Jo did what she does best. Through a great party to celebrate. This year’s theme was “Our little buckaroo is turning two”. Here is a little movie of some of the highlights. You can find some more photo’s of the party on flickr. Also a big thanks to my brother Joseph for taking such great photo’s.
Its Easter, and if Jo does anything like a pro its get Cole dressed to the nines. A quick run down of the day. Easter eggs for breakfast, 4 hours of church. Then a nap, and ham for dinner. You can find more photo’s of our Easter on flickr
I’m a bit of a coffee drinker. I have been ever since my early teens. As a kid I also had trouble sleeping, and therefore also had trouble waking up. My parents found that coffee was a good way to get me on the bus during my high school years. That being said, I kind of love coffee.
A few years ago when I worked for Viz it was decide that we needed a new espresso makers. And with some research and a few trails we ended up getting a Jura. Which was a great machine, easy to use make, ok coffee. The thing is the guy that sold it to us really wanted to take out old machine. I think to resale, but he would never really come clean to that. Me being a coffee lover and a bit of a husler explained to my boss. “If he is just going to hull that thing off and take it to the dumb then just give it to me I can fix it.” and she said ok.
The guy that sold use our new machine was pissed. He started pulling parts off of the “broken machine” assuring that it did not work. Fast forward 2+ year. I no longer work for Vizwerks, I have my own design office (well its just me in my office, but I do design things). And I’m a proud owner of a La Pavonia P3v2.
I have been lugging this very heavy, non functioning machine around for years now, and this week I deiced that I was going to get it working. I’ve been in touch with Stefano at Stefano’s Espresso Care. Who according to the internet is “The Man” when it comes to fixing espresso machines. And he has said about fixing my machine that;
I’m not interested in touching such an old machine too many variables that can turn into a can of worms
Sincerely
S
So I’ve got that going for me. Bottom line, if you know anything about rebuilding 80′s espresso machines, or just want to hang out in my garage and drink beer as I try not to blow up my new house. Drop me a line at markoku at gmail dot com.
Okay, now I am just being an overachiever, but here are some pics of the boy from this Fall…really from September and October. More to come soon!
I (Jo that is) have not posted to our blog in 3 months…almost 4. Once my sister moved in our life has been in a whirlwind. Here are the highlights from the last few months:
- My sister moved in.
- We put our house on the market.
- My mom put her house on the market.
- My mom’s house sold in 15 days.
- Our house sold in 45 days. (There was a lot of staging and work that went into our 45 days…thanks to my husband).
- We found a new house in SW. We put an offer on it and got it! It is Raleigh Hills and it is giant and fabulous.
- My mom did phone interviews for a job here.
- Me and MKU raised two kids…tough times.
- My sister started school here and turned 16 years old.
- Me and MKU worked and tried to keep it all together.
- MKU and his brother drove to move my mom across country with my mom’s sister (my Aunt).
- My mom and her plethora of animals moved into our tiny house with my sister, Co, Mo, and me…and our animals.
- We are finalizing everything to close on our current house and our new house on the 10th of November.
- We continue to try to keep it all together.
Needless to say, it has been nuts here. BUT below are some pictures of our darling boy from the summer. There are a ton of cute naked photos from the summer (he was mainly naked the entire summer), but we want to respect his privacy…for now.
I am going to get back on track with documenting our family…I am just going to get back on track period.
You know those actors that aren’t really acting. The actors that your positive would talk, walk, and act the same if you met them on the street someday. Just as how they talked, walked, and acted on their TV shows. I mean actors like:
The Cole Trickle (Co’s name sake) era, Tom cruise might have made the list. But he is so damn nuts, he has to turn off the crazy when he shoots. Thus disqualifying him from the actors that aren’t acting list. For some reason these type of actors have always appealed to me. I mean come on I’m willing to bet that if Vince Vaughn ever owned a stereo store and started a frat at a local collage it would be just as dope as Old School. I think that maybe these actors appeal to me because they make me feel like I could act. I would just have to want to do it. And for those who know me, know that I’m a know it all. So people that feed my know it all-ness always get high marks from me.
So I know what you are asking, Mo who is at the top of your actors that does not act list. And I’ll tell you, it is Richard Dean Anderson. Honestly I did not know this until today. I really did not even know that there was a list of actors that don’t act. But at 6 am this morning, with Co seating next to me on the sofa, waiting patiently for Elmo as I try in vain to get the media center to work. Co and I decide that since the media center is a no show that we will watch some Netflix. Right now, we are currently watching season 1 of MacGyver. And when I hit play, and saw Richards face on my TV, it hit me like a ton of bricks, Richard Dean Anderson is my favorate actor that does not act.
I’ve been thinking about this all day. Thinking about Richard and how he has impacted my TV watch habits, and also my life. Its very common knowledge that Jo and I are crazy Sci-Fi fans. Our entire relationship is based off of lies we would tell each other so that we could go watch Star Trek, Next Generation. About 4 years ago we started watching Star Gate, and were hooked ever since. I mean we really got into Star Gate. We could name all the characters, tell you there back stories. Tell you what weapons they use. Tell you the back stories of their weapons. etc. etc. etc. And guess who the star of Star Gate is:
It hit me today that the reason that we loved Star Gate so much is not that we think moving around space and time through manmade wormholes is great. It’s because Richard Dean Anderson carried that show. So what has Richard Dean Anderson taught me about life. I think I can sum it up in one sentence. Khaki baseball hats look really good on guys with salt and pepper hair.
Let’s raise a glass for Dean…
So today, while house hunting I decide to try something new. Well mostly new, new to me. After the failure of Roadee I wanted to try and redeem myself to Johanna. When we go looking for houses we will offten email ourselves a list of addresses, then when we are driving around we simply go down this list. Now our vehicle of choice, a 1998 Ford Explorer, gets about 14 miles to a gallon of gas. Needless to say we do what we can to conserve gas and minimize driving. That is until we started looking for houses. Its not uncommon for use to get driving around, using the above stated email list, and have the following events take place.
- Drive to house number 1 on our list, we decided we hate the neighborhood and take off for house number 2.
- Arive at house number 2 only to find its more Wiskey Tango, then the first house and decided to jump to house number 3.
- Drvie to house number 3, THAT JUST HAPPENS TO BE 1 BLOCK AWAY FROM HOUSE number 1.
And that there is our problem. We don’t have a way of seeing all of the houses that we want to look at, at once, on one map. Until today. So I did a little noodling and a lot of cut and paste work and was able to make a “my map” in google maps called “Fav Houses”, that has all of our proposed houses on it. It was everything that we were looking for in a map.
Our Fav houses all in one place.
I quickly hit the send button. Emailed it to our iPhones and headed out the door to gloat make up for yesterday’s Roadee mishap. I jumped into the running Explorer and whip out my phone and said to Johanna some cocky line about how great I am and them I hit the link in the email from google to show off my new map and got this bullshit.
Google Maps in Safari on the iPhone.
I was like “What the H?” So with the car still idling in the driveway. Cole fully strapped into his car seat. I went back inside to fix this. Apparently you can’t send “Feature Map’s” to the iPhone. They just give you the city your in and none of the waypoints that you added. But I did find out that you can get the KML data from your “My Map” and manually input that into the google maps app on the iPhone. So it turns out a guy by the name of Andrew de los Reyes build a little web app that does this for you, called MyMapsHelp. You simply right click on the “view in google earth” button in google maps and copy the link then past it into Andrews web app. Then it will generate a new link that you simply email to your iphone and wham. You get this:
Success! I made a bookmark for the link, then added it to my home screen. So now any time I want to see a map that contains all of our favorite houses I just have to hit a bottom on my home screen. I might be losing the war with my tech, but I feel like I’ve won this battle.
I loved my old iPhone, as most people that know me will attest. It was a very loved and well used phone. I traded up from a reliable, but lame blackberry 7000whatever to the iPhone. I waited in line for the this phone, just 21 days after I hurt my eye. I spent a lot of time on the couch face down after my injury and the iPhone was a great tool for keeping me occupied during my recovery. So when they announce the 3GS it took me a little time to decided to upgrade (about 4 days). One of the main reasons that I upgraded was the GPS. I dont have a GPS in my car or truck and we dont have a Tom Tom or a Nuvi. The KU are GPSless or at least we were until we both got 3GS’s (?).
When Apple announced the 3Gs, they had Tom Tom demo the up and coming app. I was sold. I rationalized getting the new phone based off how much money I would save NOT buying an stand alone GPS. So I waited, and waited, and waited. There has been a few nav apps available on the App Store. But I passed them up waiting for the Tom Tom app. And I wait. And waited. Then two days ago the Tom Tom app dropped…. for $100. And suddenly my entire rationale for getting new phones was out the window. For $100 I can buy a Tom Tom unit, that comes with a suction cup mount. If I buy the iPhone app I still would have to hold my phone in my hand and like it idiot. So getting to the point, I’ve started testing GPS app alternatives. Starting with a $1.99 app called Roadee.
I had high hopes for this app. I mean I spent almost 2 dollars on it. And its kind of open source, and I think that’s cool (I live in Portland, so I kind of have to). It uses OpenStreetMap.org maps, so I figured that if it could not give me good directions at least open source way finding could possibly be exciting. I have to admit I got kind of smiley when I first launch it and pulled out of the driveway. I mean it figured out the best way for me to drive and them recalculated the route for me as I decided to go east instead of west (still pulling out of my driveway). However after the 3rd intersection I was ready to throw it out a window. The problem was that it was having to download the map while giving directions. So it was not able to keep up with my driving in normal traffic. I kept missing turns, much to Johanna’s delight. The quote form her tonight, as I tried to incorporate Roadee into out evening of house hunting was: “You alway rely on new technology, and it alway lets you down”.
Story of my life.
I’m going to find a $5 GPS app and try it next. Baby steps.