Chapter 290

One last Superbowl picture too good not to share. We went through some old jewelry I have and Kyanne liked this blue and green brooch with matching ear-pinching clip-on earrings. Coincidentally, they matched her Superbowl crown. Since the brooch is very old to start with, I hope it gets many more years of use with Kyanne.

Since JoAnn is totally foot loose and fancy free nowadays, she has been in Washington making the rounds and spreadin' the love. One of her stops was to visit Carissa and Reagan. She couldn't believe how much Reagan has grown since she saw her last. Here's Reagan with her first Jaguar, "E".

Bear always sits with the visitor of the house. Today JoAnn is his target. For some reason, he always has hopes that the visitor will spirit him off to a place far better than this. I keep telling him that it doesn't get any better than what he's got. 

 We went to lunch and Reagan is selecting her lunch from the menu.

Remember when batteries used to die slowly?  Unless it was really cold, the battery would just crank slower and slower until it finally gave up. If you played the gamble right, you could get a few more starts out of it while you shopped for a good deal on a new battery.  Modern batteries just crap out. Done. No more. All of a sudden one cell goes bad and you are forced to buy a new battery wherever you may be. Last week we stopped at the toxic dump recycling place to drop some stuff off and that's where our battery died. A hike to Walmart and a stolen cart later, the truck was up and running. 

This week it was the PT Cruiser. It started fine until that one time when I'm no where near home and it's dark and rainy. Then it quits. Fortunately I got a AAA jump and made it home. One of the perks of my job is that I could order a battery and have it installed at work and I'm good to go.

My view while I waited for AAA to arrive with their magic cables.

The evil culprit that caused all my late night problems.

Wednesday, I went for a back injection to see if I could regain some of the feeling in my feet. I've had mixed reviews on how bad the procedure is and so I arrived at the surgical center optimistic but wary. They snapped the billing band onto my wrist and I was ready to go. 

The doctor arrived in my room casually carrying a demonstration spine complete with floppy silicone nerves like the one below except no stand.

Although the doctor's accent was really strong, I got the general idea of what he was going to do to me based on where he was jabbing his pen into the model with, what I thought, was excessive vigor.

The procedure went well and after a drive-by stop in recovery, I was back to work. My optimistic side won that battle. Phew!

 We have a volunteer that works in our shop each Wednesday. Unbeknownst to me, he has chickens that make really pretty eggs. I had forgotten what farm-fresh eggs look like since I haven't been out to collect eggs since I was a kid on the relatives farms in Indiana. Now I have to decide what yummy recipe I'm going to use them in.

As you know, it's been raining very large cats and dogs this past week. The construction of the new school is going well, and is mostly covered, but our car cage has yet to be constructed. It seems odd that we can just roll up the bay door in the Small Gas Engine shop and there's the constructions site. This student was texting and had wandered out into the dirt area without even noticing he had left the shop. 

Fred and I have been predicting a classroom flood of epic proportions due to the 3 foot difference in elevation of the new building and us. We planned ahead and had sandbags at the doors but some water came through this door anyway. The students had punctured the  the sandbags by the other two classroom doors and I had to remove them so tons of water came blasting in through the cracks.

The construction workers stand in water over their boots outside out window while they try to get the pump working and stop the carnage. What you don't see in this picture is all the students standing around watching the principal mop up the massive amount of water that had flowed into the room, all the while complaining our mops don't absorb anything because they are all oily. Well, they are, after all, auto shop mops. That's what they do is collect oil. 

So the rainy weekend arrived. So did the flu bug. Chris, Carissa, and Reagan came for the weekend since it was Chris' drill duty and Carissa didn't feel well. Bob didn't feel well either, so Chris went off to drill feeling helpless and I did what I could to keep everyone comfortable, fed, and free to nap.

After a while we were all feeling confined. Bear wanted to be out chasing crows, Reagan just wanted to be entertained, and Bob and Carissa just wanted to sleep.

Reagan was NOT in the mood to nap today. So she crawled around and cranked. She found the diaper bag and started disemboweling it. Since she was quiet and happy and no harm was being done, I let her go at it. 

While Bear, Reagan, and Nitro stared outside longingly looking for sunshine, the clouds broke and we made a run for the outdoors to wear everyone out. 

Everyone was really happy to get outside and get some exercise. I though Bear was going to explode into little black furballs if he didn't get some exercise. We walked down to the little park in the area which Bear is very familiar with and he had to visit all his favorite trees and posts.

Spring is on it's way!

Just chillin' with her toys.

Back from our walk!

For some reason, she loves, loves, loves, the tiger table and will crawl through the length of the house talking all the way to see it. Funny thing is, when she gets to him she won't touch him. Just sits and talks to him.

I threw any toys I could find at her to keep her occupied while Grampa and Mom slept. 

Grampa playing with Reagan before he was struck with the plague.