my dad lectures me on swamp coolers

Today I was talking to my parents and my dad said he had checked out my blog yesterday regarding my fixed swamp cooler. He said he had a suggestion on why my swamp cooler was acting up. Since he's a world famous engineer I was all ears:

Me: So what do you think is the main problem?
Dad: Well, you called your swamp cooler an asshole.

That was unexpected.

Dad: Your swamp cooler is alone, up on the roof, in all the bad weather, and not only do you call it names but you also write blog posts making fun of it. Is that very nice?
Me: Um, no. But, uh, I lubricated the bearings.
Dad: Well, that's better than an apology.

This post may only be funny to people who know my dad. Apologies.

the intern, redux

In 2008, in the middle of dealing with an annoying dirt bag climber who was living in my house for free and a visit from my dad I got an email from my friend Gadget saying he offered my house to a woman in his church who was looking for a place for her son to stay. The son, Jonathan, had gotten a job as an intern with CNN to cover the democratic national convention.

So I did the best I could reorganizing my two bedroom house to support 3 guests. And I was a little worried when Jonathan showed up. He's super religious and I don't usually get along with those types of people. But in no time we were all on the back porch drinking, smoking, and eating buffalo burgers. I admit that during the time he stayed here I may have loosened his rule set a little.

I lent him my bike which he rode to the convention every day. At the end, to thank me, he took all the left over batteries for the cameras and shit and gave them to me. And his mom sent me a very generous gift certificate for REI.

As is typical, people show up in my life suddenly, disappear, and I figure I'll never hear from them again. And then I hear from them again...

This morning Jonathan called me. He and his wife are here in Denver celebrating their 2 year wedding anniversary (side note: I'm impressed by anyone who manages to keep a relationship going for that long). We texted back and forth on places to go and places to eat. I just got a text from him that they love the restaurant I suggested for their romantic anniversary dinner. Which is good because I'd never been there before (picture me in a "romantic" restaurant - even I can't do that and I'm fucking creative).

He said he wanted to come here for his anniversary because he had so much fun when he was here for the convention (besides drinking and talking late into the night we also had a farting contest and Jonathan accidentally knocked my work desk down a flight of stairs and one night all the interns, 21 year old guys, not sure how many of them there were, showed up at my house for dinner and didn't leave until 2 in the morning).

I figure some day Jonathan will be famous (he worked for Anderson Cooper at the DNC) and may be a potential source of free batteries for the rest of my life. Glad he made the trip...

I forget the legend of the croco-diamond

In February I started writing a prologue to a children's book I wrote called the colossal cringle crisp caper. I did that because I was advised by Jeff in my writer's group (of which I'm no longer a member) to do so.

I came up with an idea for a short croco-diamond story that would be the legend of why they are lucky (if the croco-diamond isn't lucky, so some "logical" people say, no one would put up with his shit...though I know a lot of people that put up with shit from other people so whatever). I then researched it to make sure the idea behind the legend I was writing would be scientifically accurate. I started writing the chapter and then, literally the next day, got side tracked.

Anyway, I just sat down minutes ago to finish writing the prologue and I can't fucking remember what my idea was. For fuck's sake. Maybe I should just start over...and yes, I did complete this book more than a year ago, and wrote a subsequent story about the croco-diamond for a friend's daughter, and still haven't done a fucking thing about getting it published. I did enter it into a contest but judging from the winners it was the wrong contest (a book about the "huggy momster" won - I almost fucking puked typing that).

Oh well. I'll think of something:

The Legend of the Croco-diamond

From The Legends of all the Creatures in all of The Worlds, by Baron Joseph von Noseworth-Socks and Dr. Mimsy A. Crumbles:

In the time of the time in question, which is much earlier than time is now, there existed a King Muckles-string who oversaw the kingdom of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea (though in truth it was just close to the sea). And the King had a terrible problem.

There was a building central to the town where all the raincoats, back up raincoats, raincoats for future use, and previous raincoats which could no longer be worn were stored. It rains quite frequently in New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea. The building was called The Raincoat Keeper and, as it stored all the raincoats of all the times, it was stuffed full of raincoats. The building was a rather old, and, truth be told, wobbly.

In any case, one day the King had arranged a parade for all of the heavy things in the town. He was trying to promote fitness. So the townsfolk dutifully gathered up all of the heavy things and loaded them onto carts for the parade. There was a statue of a camelsaurus (the King was quite fond of dinosaurs) and Mr. Elmsberry’s fish tank which contained, among other rare species, a leafy dragon eel. Also in the parade was a giant sack of pennies that the elder Mrs. Fungalstinn had spent her life collecting, a model of a volcano used at birthday parties, a giant egg whisk made of solid metal that commemorated the mention of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea in book nine of the poggly woggly adventure series, the local cat that ate all of the rats, and finally the De Confetti family’s collection of bricks.

The Parade of Heavy Things was meant to start at the edge of town, circle The Raincoat Keeper, and then proceed to the other edge of town. But as the Parade of Heavy Things began circling The Raincoat Keeper a terrible thing happened.

The building shuddered, sighed, and then all of the walls and the roof collapsed into a pile of dust as if the Raincoat Keeper had never existed. Raincoats began to blow around New Dunsley Clackyshire. People were seen walking down the street with red children’s raincoats stuck in their hair, yellow crossing guard’s raincoats plastered to briefcases, and blue fishermen’s raincoats caught on the bottom of shoes.

As New Dunsley Clackyshire is in a valley, the raincoats blew in a circle around the town. Pretty soon everything was covered with raincoats – the sidewalks, the houses, even the camelsaurus. If one saw it one would imagine it was just a giant coat rack and not an esteemed dinosaur. The people of the village picked up the rain coats but had no where to put them and, in any case, more blew in to take the place of the ones people picked up.

Around this time a Croco-diamond came to the village. He seemed out of breath as he arrived. One might have thought he had been running though Croco-diamonds aren’t normally known to hurry. He was dragging behind him what appeared to be a large corked bottle. Something grey and cloudlike was swirling around inside it.

“Greetings good people of the town of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea! What a fine town you seem to have! I am amused by your decorations. Perhaps it is Raincoat Day? I do love holidays. Especially ones that last a week. Why just the other day I was telling King Ramsley of North Cuffsley…”

Just then a breeze picked up and blew a pink polka dot raincoat onto the Croco-diamond’s head.

“Well, I see I have now joined in your raincoat celebration. I thank you, the good people of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the…”

More raincoats landed on the Croco-diamond, sticking to the jewels on his spine and tangling around his finely manicured nails.

it worked!

Tightened this screw and the pulley stabilized. What's weird is it was completely loose. Not sure how it loosened itself up. Maybe I should put some loctite on it...

I was told by someone who knows a fuck lot about machines and shit not to touch this screw for any reason. Well, I did. And used a tree branch under the motor as leverage (it's hard to adjust the tension on the belt alone because you have to hold the motor with one arm and bend around and turn the screw with the other).

Every once in a while I can hear a chirp from the belt but otherwise it's working. Think the belt may be slightly damaged from when the wheel loosened up. Fuck it. I'll replace it in the fall. In the mean time if anyone wants to come over to my house and turn the swamp cooler on and off for me so I don't have to keep climbing up and down from the roof feel free. I'd like to make a few more tweaks to the belt tension.

youtube swamp cooler porn

This morning in a VERY boring meeting I think I figured out how to fix my swamp cooler by watching some youtube vids on swamp coolers.

I think what happened is over the years the upper pulley was adjusted because the belt was stretching out over time and there was too much tension on the belt. So I fixed that. But I realized fixing that that the lower pulley was sliding randomly around. So I did some further research and found something about a set screw. I think I've found the set screw.

Hoping that's a set screw...

So after this boring meeting is over I'm going to go back up on the roof and see if I can somehow tighten that screw and get my swamp cooler working again. If not no one can come out until 11 July. Thankfully it hasn't been very hot but that could change at any minute. And I'm having guests...

colorado here we come

I may not be able to fix my swamp cooler but I was finally able to fix my upstairs shower head which was leaking. I did that because I'm going to have visitors! My Aunt Sarah and her husband are coming into town in July. She's a jock and just had knee replacement surgery (overall she's happy with the reduction of pain but not as excited about not being able to play volleyball and basketball anymore).

My Aunt Sarah wrote:

I am finally taking a vaca after 2 years of hard work. We are coming to your state, despite the fires, and will be near to Denver. We were wondering if you would like a visit from the clan ( Dave and me)? Our very good friends have a place in Walsenburg that DIDN'T burn-up, thank goodness, and we will spend most of our time thereabouts. We had planned on camping on their mountain property, that DID burn-up, but those plans have ,naturally ,changed. We are pretty flexible, if you want us. We leave Louisville on Friday, July 5 and don't return until the 15th. We could drive in to take you to dinner, or we could just stay for a day- whatever. Don't feel obligated- we just thought we'd like to see you, and the now famous kitchen renovation. We could talk string -theory, knee replacements, park development, Mars rover, the role of exercise in fighting addiction, etc.. Just let us know what you think.

 I wrote:

Yes, a visit sounds great! I just looked and Walsenburg is about 2 1/2 hours from Denver so if you guys want to stay here I have a guest bedroom. My cooking skills haven't really improved but there's plenty of places to eat within walking distance of my house.

I'm not traveling much these days and will be around for the time you're here so any time you guys want to come is great! If you're interested I live about 3 miles from the Denver Botanic Gardens which are fantastic if you like that sort of thing...

(I haven't been to the Denver Botanic Gardens with company since before christmas...I love the DBG so I try to get people to go with me when I have them captive - I mean, when they're visiting me)

She wrote:

Oh goodie! We will be consulting with our friends to see how they want to arrange things. I think we should head straight into Denver, then go to Walsenburg, but Dave thinks breaking things up in the middle of our stay with our buddies would be a smarter way to go...we don't want our friends to get too sick of us. We could make you sick instead!

I am approaching this whole trip with wide open arms and no expectations, just needing a change of scenery and getting out of Dodge...  I haven't been to Denver in 29 years! Some "gentle" mountain hiking would be welcome- NOT like you and your Dad are famous for. I would enjoy the Botantical Gardens or any other site-seeing that is within walking distance. After 22 hours in a car, I will be ready for walking, biking, swimming, hiking etc.

Psyched! Wonder if I can talk them into doing some climbing...

dear swamp cooler: you are an asshole

I keep doing things, like rubberizing the pan, to keep my swamp cooler from breaking. But the fucking thing keeps breaking.

There's no way it can leak anymore, like it used to, because the pan has 5 coats of rubber on it. I just replaced the belt and the water pump (in a thunder storm, which, in retrospect, wasn't very smart), so those can't break. The main pulley was welded and reinforced so it should last forever.

I think the problem is the belt replacement. The belt is obviously tighter than the old one (which was barely holding together). At first everything was fine and then last Monday I woke up at 5 am because my swamp cooler sounded like a 747 taking off on my roof. Someone with proper tools and a knack with engines came over and did some work on it and it was fine. Then I turned it off on Thursday. Friday it was fine but this morning it was making a racket again. I tried tightening shit and lubricating shit but nothing is working.

the asshole

So now I've decided to just hire someone to fix it. I give up. I think the pulley is out of alignment and it wasn't obvious with the old belt because the old belt was so loose. I have no idea how to realign a pulley. Of course, I've called a couple of places this morning and apparently a lot of people have broken swamp coolers and ACs. Hopefully someone will call me back before the summer is over.

Every time I think I'm done with projects in my house something always seems to break...

highs and lows

A friend of mine has a daughter who has just released her first album, called "highs and lows":

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/highs-lows/id628052295






He wrote:

"As a Dad it is wonderful to watch one of her dreams come true.  I recall her at home when her legs wouldn't touch the floor sitting on the piano bench and picking out melodies with one finger on the piano.  She's written 100s of songs over the years as this gift in her has grown.   Great to see it result in something of this quality that can be shared with others."

Nice to see kids doing something besides shooting up schools or bombing shit. Check it out!

chicago

I flew to Chicago on Tuesday to pretend to be a sales person so I could go to a conference and see Soldier Field.

I like going to baseball stadiums when no one is there.

They were doing a tour of Soldier Field but that sounded boring so instead I met my friend Trina (the creepy foot doctor) for drinks.

I'm hunching weirdly because I'm almost 6 feet tall in my sandals.

Trin's husband Todd is going to make me biscuits and gravy next time I come here since this was a very short trip.

climbing the catslab and the floating shit show

On Saturday I went climbing in clear creek canyon. Fun!

I'll wake up early for overhangs.

Point where I realized I was off route and had to move left a few feet. Fuuuuuck.

Then later in the day the fun hog and I went out on his boat, which, it turns out, was tied up to two other boats, forming what the fun hog called "the floating shit show".

Drunk cops + dog + "there's fucking kids on the boat???" + teenage girl in a bikini + other boats with girls in bikinis sailing by + boat drinks (3 olives grape vodka and diet soda - too disgusting to drink unless you're the popo) + cooler filled with beers and tzatziki + T'Pain "I'm on a boat" = the floating shit show

annie oakley

This weekend the "fun hog" (so called because no matter how much fun you're having, he's having more fun - some how he's made a career out of always being on vacation somewhere cool doing something fun like a hut trip or dirt biking in Moab). We were checking out a new mountain biking / dirt biking / climbing area.

The climbing area was closed. The mountain biking was epic, but fun. Even more fun was being on relatively deserted BLM land where we could shoot guns.

It looks like an elephant gun, but it's not. I'm just small compared to the gun.

I accidentally screwed up the scope by knocking it around with my armpit while I was trying to cock the gun so we took it off.

I managed to hit this bottle cap from 30 feet away first try. Then I drank more beer and couldn't hit small stuff anymore. I don't think it was the beer. It's my bad jew eyes.

Text to my dad:
"Drinking beer and shooting shit. Target practice with dinner plates!"

His reply:
"Beats having to clean up the plates!"

Safety and efficiency are my motto.

more mazatlan pics

I will be writing more about my trip, but in the mean time I've had some requests for pictures...

Crashing through the white water to get out to the break at Olas Altos...

Most of the time you don't want to be surfing the white water.

Gross. These jelly fish showed up in the afternoon almost every day. Miraculously I did not get stung.

Part of the historic district of Mazatlan, as seen from Olas Altos.

This is sort of what it looks like while paddling out to the surf break. But scarier. I almost drowned just trying to get out to the break.

This isn't even the big gun. Imagine me trying to get this thing out through the break.

"Hey, I think there's someone with a hat who might want to buy another hat!"

P discovered my kryptonite. I am a total neat freak but for some reason I always ended up a sandy mess. No matter how often I rinsed my feet or shook out my clothes I ended up covered in sand. The nickname for the Mazaloans is "pata salada", sandy feet. So I guess I must have some Mazaloan blood in me somewhere...

I LOVE mangos!!!! These awesome mangos were carved out by the mango man at Playa Bruia and they're covered in chili sauce. SO GOOD.

Mangos post consumption. Those cookies are from the Playa Bruia restaurant. They were presented to P and I with a flourish which implied they were tasty. They actually tasted like sand and sugar. I'm imagining the mango pit on the left saying to the mango pit to the right "hm, I wonder where these cookies came from." Kind of like my room service art.

Best happy hour is on top of the best western. Beautiful balcony, amazing view, but the elevator doesn't go up there so it's not overly crowded.

Cotton candy, yum!!!! And some idiotic german kids. The girl in the pic above kept striking poses on the beach. Did she think she looked cool?

My birthday dinner was here. The inside of this restaurant is a huge courtyard. Very beautiful. The food was fucking great.

Mexican divorce? This guy is burying his wife in the sand.

My mom was asking about my pink hat. I got it at REI and it's for children 4 - 7 years old. I have a really small head.

Stone Island

The first day in Mazatlan P and I went to Stone Island to watch a surfing comp. We were accompanied by Willy, a local Mazatloan. Since it's late in the season, and beach conditions were not conducive to swimming, there were few tourists. We only saw some from the shore, on a booze cruise boat.

Beach at Stone Island. It was the calmest beach, but not exactly conducive to wading and swimming.

None of the restaurants were open so Willy found a guy with a cooler and bought beer. We had pacificos, which have more alcohol in them there than in the US. They also taste better.

As we were walking to a restaurant to have some ceviche I hesitated by the side of the road and asked Willy "Is it legal for us to walk down the road drinking beer?"

He gave me a quizzical look, then said "Franki, everything is legal in Mexico".

Isla de Chivos

On Wednesday, my birthday, P and I went to Stone Island for my second day of surfing. I managed to get up on the board and ride a wave in which was awesome. As I was exiting the water a woman stopped me and congratulated me on my ride. And an older Mexican grandmother gave me a nod and a huge smile. Pretty cool.

epic surfing - olas altos

Note to self: surfing during hurricane conditions is challenging

More updates on my vacation to follow. Here's a vid of the surfing conditions at Olas Altos:

And here's surfing conditions at Playa Bruia:

Mazatlan (can't make the thing over the last "a")

Ever wake up and think to yourself  "I'm fucking tired and burned out and need a vacation and I'm turning 43 next week and still don't know how to fucking surf"?

Me too.

That's why I decided on Thursday to go to Mazatlan to learn to surf. I'm leaving tomorrow. Luckily my manager and projects I'm supporting took the news well - normally I have to schedule vacation 6 months in advance. One project manager sent me an email that said "Look out sharks! Franki + surfboard = shark injury".

Ha. Ha. Ha. It's not easy being an uncoordinated jew.

I realized talking to my friend Cam last night that the last vacation I took where I didn't do any work related stuff was December 2000. But, I was on crutches and had just had knee surgery so it wasn't a super great vacation.

In other news I decided to buy a bathing suit since I don't have one and they're kind of critical to laying on the beach and looking good. I let Kristin at swim n sport talk me into buying a bikini (Cherry Creek mall, she is so awesome - figured out first try what size I needed and I bought the first thing I tried on). I have never, ever, worn a bikini. Chaos may ensue. But it's cute, hot pink with little ruffly flowers on it (I didn't buy this bottom though, I got this one).

I look like a fucking birthday cake, fuck yeah!!!!

My manager from two companies ago died unexpectedly of a heart attack on Tuesday. He was just a few years older than me, in great shape, and the day before he died we were exchanging emails about doing a century bike ride together in California (I'd like to think I was somewhat of an influence on his daughter, who is studying engineering).

Life is short. Fuck it. Take a vacation.

oops, got my aspie score wrong

This is the result of an aspie test a doctor had me take after a woman in my writing group, who's writing a book about asperger's, suggested I might have it:

I should never tell my friends I'm an aspie

Asperger's. Yeah. Great for engineering work. Not so great when you have friends and you read their emails really fast.

Friend:
Don't read the text, just quickly look at the picture and answer the question if which chocolate bar you would give the kid.

 

Me:
I picked the milky way. Don't know why. I think they're gross. Actually, the midnight ones aren't bad. But that puffy crap freaks me the fuck out. What is that puffy crap? It's in snickers too.

Friend: 
You're not too far on the spectrum of Asp., they don't know which one the kid wants... From a book on decision making I"m reading.

Me:
So which one did the fucking kid want? If he wanted something else why is he looking at the milky way (weirdly, after you said I was wrong I looked at the pic again to see why I might have picked the milky way - I realized I hadn't looked at the kids face and was picking more due to the placement of the candy bars - but I must have subconsciously noticed him eying the milky way that he apparently doesn't want - fucking kids)? See, that's what's wrong with people. I would look at the candy bar I wanted. Doing anything else is illogical. Anyway, all those candy bars suck. I like gummi bears.

For the record, I'm a 220 out of 225 on the aspie scale and 25 out of 225 on the neuro normative scale. The doctor didn't believe me when I told him I was a consultant.

(note that I interpreted my friend's response as me picking the wrong candy bar for some reason - was distracted)

Friend:
You're good at hiding the differences.... That's from a cool book about decision making and how our heuristic processes work, cool.

Me:
But which candy bar was the right answer?????

You're killing me!

Friend:
You got it "right," the kids eyes were pointing toward it as you note!

(for some reason I interpreted the "" as not as right as I could have been) 

Me:

But it wasn't the right answer? What's the right answer?

Aaaaahhhh!!!

My friend has not responded. Maybe I drive my friends crazy.

flowers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ever since I moved into my place I've wanted to do a flower garden on the upstairs deck.

Done.

That only took 7 years. Sheesh.

I texted my dad because the line at home depot was insane. He told me that mother's day is the busiest day at home depot. Nice. Take your mom/wife to a hardware store on her big day.

Flowers in their planters. Not sure what's going on with flower number five from the end. It looks like it's retching. Too much to drink last night or maybe doesn't approve of my color scheme. I was in mad "just buy some shit and get the fuck out of here!!!!" mode so it wasn't until I got home that I really looked at what I bought.

There are some cool annuals. Can't believe I have to replant all this shit next year.

the BEST designer in the WORLD

I've teamed up with my kitchen designer Christine for my upstairs remodel. How awesome is she?

She's fucking awesome.

I wanted a vetrazzo slab for my upstairs bathroom to match the one in the downstairs bathroom. Of course I asked Christine to help me since she can do anything. At first she said I probably wouldn't be able to find a vetrazzo remnant. Then I got an email from her:

I saw these today and snapped a picture, thought of you.  They are remnants, one is Vetrazzo, the other is the sister to the smiley face one that was discontinued.  

Not only did she find me a vetrazzo remnant, she found the EXACT one I wanted.

 THANK YOU CHRISTINE!!!!!!! BEST DESIGNER EVER!!!!!

it's all my fault

Tonight I was in a restaurant with my nephew and he drew the following cartoon (based in part on drama because my sister put her dog in the car while we ate and my niece was worried about him - I tried to assure her that the dog would be fine and was probably driving around looking for a gas station). It's hard to read so I added captions (he drew it on the table in the restaurant):

"One day Aunt Franki let Max (the dog) drive"

Max: I'm going to a gas station, Me (off panel): OK

"He hot wires the car and drives to Washington State" (we're in Virginia, this is a map with the dotted line showing Max's trip cross country)

"Crash!" (obviously, because dogs can't drive)

I'm to the right of the panel saying "I thought you said you were going to a gas station!" Max is to the left saying "In Washington".

My sister is depicted to the left freaking out that Max has wrecked the car. She pointed out that she is drawn with abnormally long arms when in fact I'm the one with abnormally long arms. Max is in the middle saying "Aunt Franki did it!" I'm that potato shaped character to the right (for the record, I am NOT potato shaped) saying "Hey!"

me: How come you drew me in the shape of a potato?
my nephew: I like french fries.

Oh.

I ended the evening by climbing into the trunk of my dad's car because I was pretending to be a dead body in the trunk. My niece and nephew were very amused, the people in the parking lot were confused, and I ended up feeling car sick because I rode the whole way home in the trunk because I couldn't get it open to get out after I climbed in.