Thanks to the snow, Cary and I suffered from a sever case of cabin fever this weekend. Aside from a walk Saturday afternoon, we had been cooped up in the house all weekend. Cary is very susceptible to Cabin Fever; I’m usually immune to all but the most virulent strains, but this one hit me pretty hard, too. So on Sunday, Cary suggested that we walk to the local church (our usual church is in Chapel Hill, and out of walking range)a couple of miles away, and grab some lunch at one of the nearby shopping centers on Highway 54. Mass was at 11:00, so we gave ourselves plenty of time and left at 9:30.
Cary found an old pair of Gortex-treated hiking boots in the closet — a pair she had owned since she was 16, but hadn’t used in several years — and decided that this would be a good day to wear them. We bundled up and ventured out.
About 30 minutes into our walk, Cary noticed that her left shoe was making a popping sound — she figured the steel shank was flexing a bit too much — it didn’t bother her, so we trudged on. By the time we reached the church, Cary found out what was really making the noise: the rubber soles of her boots had dry-rotted, and the sole of the left shoe was separated from the boot from the heel to the middle of the arch. The popping sound was caused by the rubber heel slapping against the bottom of the shoe as she walked. There wasn’t much we could do about it at the moment, and the waterproofing of the shoe hadn’t been compromised (her feet were still warm and dry), so we continued on to church, and I decided we would figure out what to do afterward. I figured we should be able to repair the shoe long enough for her to make it home.
Leaving the church, Cary realized that her sole of her right shoe was also starting to separate.
We walked over to a Roses department store (one of the few left in existence, I think) where I bought a roll of duct tape. We sat down on a clean spot of the covered sidewalk outside the store, where Cary removed her shoes and I implemented one of the myriad established uses of the miracle adhesive:
Picture the two of us, wrapped in cold-weather gear and me with a substantial growth of facial hair — having not shaved in a couple of weeks — sitting on the cold cement outside a Roses, wrapping Cary’s shoes in duct tape. If there had been more people out shopping that day, I’m pretty sure at least one person would have tried to give us spare change.
After finishing with Cary’s shoes, we walked across the street to a pizza restaurant, ate lunch, then started back home (Google Maps tells me the trip from there to our house is 2.1 miles).
The duct tape held fast, and the only downside to the repair was that Cary’s shoes had slightly reduced traction, and she would occasionally slide on the ice as we walked. But for the most part, the fix worked like a charm (the above picture was taken after we had arrived at home; the duct tape held firm).
We were about 3/4 of the way home when I reached into my jacket pocket to pull out my iPod to check the time. No iPod. I checked my other pockets. No iPod. Somewhere during our walk, I had lost my iPod. I remember using it briefly at church (before mass had started, of course). I was pretty sure I had used it while we were sitting outside the Roses, but it had remained in my pocket after that. So I had either left it at church, or set it on the ground while repairing Cary’s shoes; or it had fallen out of my pocket while we were walking.
By the time I realized I had lost it, it wasn’t logical to backtrack on foot, so we decided to walk the rest of the way home. Arriving at home, I decided to drive to the places we had stopped and search for the iPod. I drove back along the route we had walked, scanning the sidewalk for any sign of the iPod. I had no luck finding it at the department store or where we ate lunch. On the way back home, I decided to stop by the church to see if maybe I had left it there; no luck. So I headed for home again. On the way home, I decided to check my Blackberry to see if I had any e-mail from work. I had only received one e-mail, and it said, “Have you lost an I-Pod touch? If so, I’ve found it on Crooked Creek! You can call me at XXX-XXXX my name is Billy!”
I called Billy back and made arrangements to meet him — luckily, he lived pretty close by, and had been walking along the same route Cary and I had taken, and had spotted my iPod lying face down in the snow on the sidewalk. Based on where he said he had found it, it seems did indeed drop it when taking off my jacket. I thanked Billy for calling me; some people might not have turned in a lost iPod.
So all in all, not a bad day. Cary’s feet stayed dry, duct tape once again proves its efficacy, and I saw firsthand that there are still honest people in the world.
Pictures on my Flickr site:
Cary says this is the only grown-up way to eat a candy apple:
Rutabaga, Potatoes, Turnip, Carrots and Onion:
A big hunk of meat:
Chopping vegetables and seasoning the beef. This would make a good back-cover photo if Cary were to write a cookbook:
Flouring the beef:
Tomato sauce with spices:
Into the crock pot:
And ready to cook:
And 8 or so hours later, it was done. If you don’t like the taste of nutritious vegetables like turnips and rutabagas, just cover them in tomato sauce and let them cook for 8 hours. All in all, a very tasty meal with very tender beef. Yum!
Cary and I started on the Couch-to-5K running plan more than a month ago. We’re almost done with week 6, so there are three weeks left. By the end of the plan, we should be able to run a solid 5K (just over 3 miles). The plan does a good job of gradually acclimating the body to sustained periods of jogging/running. Until last week, every running session was broken up by periods of walking. Last Saturday was our first sustained run for about 20 minutes. The final day of week 6 will be a 25 minute run. From now on, we’re doing nothing but a 5-minute walk followed by a sustained run. No more walk breaks. We found that it actually seemed easier to run for 20 minutes than to run-walk-run-walk-run for 2o minutes.
If we can finish out the plan without faltering, we should be in good shape to run 5K. At that point, I’ll have to decide if I want to stick to the 3-times-per-week running plan, or try to run more often. For now, I’m happy to stick to three times per week.
One of the things that Cary didn’t like about our kitchen was the spice cabinet. We kept our spices in a narrow cabinet above the stove. The cabinet was rather deep, and had only three shelves. The problem with keeping small spice jars here was that the smaller jars were stacked on top of each other, multiple rows deep. So finding the right spice required pulling other spices out of the cabinet.
So as my first woodworking project, I thought I’d make a spice rack for Cary. Here are the plans I drew up in Google Sketchup after talking with Cary about what she wanted in a spice rack:
This is a pretty simple design consisting of two vertical pieces of 28.75″ x 3.5″ x 1/2″ wood sides and six shelves. The bottom two shelves are 3.5″ x 1/4″ x 12″, and the rest of the shelves area more shallow 2.5″ x 1/4″ x 12″. I also used 3/16″ diameter dowel rods as a sort of “lip” at the front of the shelves, just to keep stuff from sliding off. I’m not sure what kind of wood the dowel rods are made of, but the rest of the wood is poplar.
I decided to round off the top edges of the side pieces just to make the top of the rack a bit more interesting. Here’s a close-up of the half-way decent curve I made with a jigsaw and some preliminary sanding:
I planned to take more in-progress pictures, but I don’t think they would have been very interesting. Here’s the final result:
I’ll probably get around to painting it eventually, but I don’t think it looks too bad as it is.
I’ve been using a Canon Digital Rebel EOS 300D since around 2004, and I’ve taken a few thousand pictures with it over the years.
I decided that it was time to get a new camera, but which one? That’s not the kind of purchase I take lightly. It took several months of research before finally settling on the model I wanted.
I had thought about upgrading from the EOS 300D to the newer Digital Rebel T1i (the 500D), but then I found out about the Pentax K-7 which was just released in July. Normally, this camera would be outside my price range, but because the company I work for has a business relationship with Pentax, I can get employee pricing for some of their cameras. That put the K-7 within my budget and allowed me to get a few accessories.
Saving several hundred dollars is nice.
Unfortunately, the K-7 is in high demand right now, so it’s technically back ordered. I have no idea when I’ll actually get the camera. I received one of the lenses and a battery grip a few days ago, but they’re not really useful without a camera body.
With the special pricing, I managed to get the following equipment for less than the retail price of the K-7:
- Pentax K-7 Camera (body only)
- Pentax DA 55-300mm Lens
- Pentax DA 18-55mm Weather Resistant Lens
- Extra D-LI90 Lithium Ion Battery
- Pentax D-BG4 Battery Grip
I thought long and hard about which accessories to get with the camera, and I think I’ll make good use of all of the ones I got.
I really like the idea of a battery grip. The Pentax battery grip adds some extra bulk to the camera, but it enables the camera to run on AA batteries or an extra lithium-ion battery (in addition to the battery in the camera itself). The grip also has a duplicate shutter button so that you can easily snap pictures with the camera turned sideways. It’s a handy feature to have.
The 18-55 lens is often called the “kit lens”: it’s the standard lens that is usually included with a consumer-level DSLR camera. It’s versatile, but doesn’t provide any real telephoto capability.
Having the flexibility of multiple lenses will be great. An 18-55mm lens (which is the standard lens included with most consumer-level DSLR cameras) works great in most situations, but not for taking pictures of wildlife. The 55-300mm lens will give me the zoom I need. Zoom lenses tend to make hand-held shots more difficult, but the K-7’s built-in image stabilization should help.
I’m excited to try the K-7. The reviews have been really good so far.
No words necessary.
In addition to the Bull Moon Ride, Cary and I spent this weekend doing house work. First, we replaced our kitchen sink faucet:
The old faucet was somehow hampering water flow…I had initially wondered whether there may be a problem with the water pressure in our house, because the kitchen faucet produced a pretty weak stream, and the sprayer was all but useless. It appears that it was the faucet all along. The new faucet works great. After replacing the faucet, though, I found that we had a new leak. I think it was caused by the old hoses under the sink. One of the hose connections was rusted, and moving it around probably loosened up a corroded rubber seal. So a quick trip to the local hardware store fixed that problem:
That was the big project for the weekend, but I also managed to buy a bench vise for the garage along with the hardware for mounting it to the workbench:
This will come in really handy the next time I need to, y’know, squeeze or bend something.
This Saturday, Habitat for Humanity of Durham held their 2nd annual Bull Moon Bike Ride, a charity bike ride that started and ended at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. The ride is a 17-mile route through downtown Durham, with a smaller 8-mile optional route. Cary and I decided on the smaller route since this was our first time, but after we were finished, we realized that we probably could have completed the 17-mile route if we REALLY wanted to…but we decided not to push it.
It was a fun night. There were lots of volunteers along the route, including Durham Police who were stopping traffic and marking the route, and every mile or so, we were treated to music from local musicians, from solo guitar and saxophone players to a mini orchestra. The strange thing was that during the ride, random people dining outside local restaurants along the route would clap and cheer…I think many of them thought that we must be in a race; I can’t blame them…it definitely looked like a race, especially considering we all had our own number.
The ride is already over, but if anyone would like to make donations to Habitat for Humanity, you can do so via this link: