Flying W Things

Oklahoma's Political Landscape

I was discussing Oklahoma politics and the presidential election recently with some folks in the office and came up with this to describe the state:

Seventy percent of the population will vote for Bush next Tuesday. And the other thirty percent will wonder why there isn't a conservative candidate on the ballot.

I Am One Of Those Guys

I threw away a perfectly good pressure washer Monday.

A couple weeks ago I was reading an article in the paper about home improvement. The gist of the article was that lots of homeowners get in over their head on projects and end up calling in professionals to help them finish up. The subtext was that most of these folks end up paying more for these projects than they would have had they called in the pros up front, mainly because they screw things up that have to be repaired.

I chuckled to myself about these poor saps and their reliance on hired guns to keep their homes from falling into disrepair.

(Astute readers can no doubt see where this is going.)

Two weeks ago we had a fairly heavy rainstorm that flooded a good chunk of our back yard. A little research with the hose led me to the conclusion that the one drainpipe from our back yard to the street - which drains all our back yard and 2/3rds of our gutters - was blocked. As we were expecting another big storm, I wanted to get the drain unclogged as soon as I could.

I tried running a hose down the drainpipe from the backyard but that quickly filled up the pipe and started flooding the yard again. So I moved to the drain outlet in the curb, where I thought the nearby street tree's roots may be causing the problem. I found a pressure washer my father-in-law had given us, screwed three parts of it together to make a 10-foot wand, attached the hose at full blast, and started pushing the whole business up the drain from the curb.

Eight feet later, forward progress was halted. I gave a few tenative jabs with the pressure washer and then started to pull it out. (What do you know? It's stuck!) I yanked and yanked and finally it broke free. Unfortunately, while three sections went in, only two came out. I had wedged three feet of metal tubing in with whatever else was blocking the drain.

Sigh.

On Monday, Katy called a plumber who had fixed a similar blockage for some friends of ours. They plopped a roto-rooter type machine at the curb and unblocked the drains in short order, without needing to do anything other than turn on the machine and pay out cable. After removing the root blocks, they dug up the section of drain that I had clogged, cut out the pipe, removed the pressure washer segment, went to the plumbing supply store for replacement parts, replaced the drain section, and relaid the sod on the lawn.

I figure my weekend shenanigans tripled the bill. Nice.

And that, my friends, is why I threw the pressure washer away.

Minor League Baseball Fashion

This summer I decided I needed some new t-shirts. Let's face it, my t-shirt collection - such as it is - consisted mainly of free shirts from various vendors, trade shows, and employers. It needed a little elevation.

As a baseball fan, I decided to look for cool minor league team logos. Sadly, there weren't many well-executed logos to choose from. Most minor league team logos look like they were designed by a committee of sixth graders intent on using every color in their box of 64 crayons.

There were some exceptions, however. My favorites is the Montgomery Biscuits:

This is a great goofy team name with a good logo - team name, mascot, no clutter. And his tongue is a pat of butter! How great is that? Of course I bought the shirt.

Halloween Preview

Okay, trying to get my groove back here. First of all, thanks for all the comments on that last post.

This year the kids are dressing as a cowgirl and cowboy. I don't think this "matching costumes" business was steered by Katy but it did make fabrication easier. Here's a picture I took last weekend during the final fitting:

Katy (aka Super Mom) made the vests, Claire's skirt, and Cam's chaps. I continue to be impressed with her mad seamstress skillz.

Blog Doldrums

I got nothin'.

Brutal Honesty

I was cleaning Cam's ears the other day, and I gave him one of the standard parental lines: "Is that corn I see growing in there? Or beans?"

He still thinks this is funny.

Then he wanted to check my ears out. I asked if he saw any produce growing in there. His reply? "No. Just hair."

Ouch.