Minivan

So Lindsey and I are now the not-so-proud new owners of a minivan.  We had been talking about getting one at some point and had even looked at a few of them.  The Caliber is just not very compatible with our family, by the time you get Jonathan and all his stuff in there, there’s hardly room for anything else, even for overnight or weekend trips, let alone if we have to take the dogs along (Mickey gets car sick so he has to be in the kennel so that he doesn’t puke all over the car).  We’ve had to pack around J several times and Lindsey usually ends up with a bunch of stuff aroudn her feet or on her lap.

Well, about a month ago, my brother bought a Grand Caravan on an online auction because his lease on his van was about to expire and Chrysler wanted way more than it was worth to buy it after the lease was up.  Long story short, a couple days after he bought our van, the dealer called him and said that Chrysler would take a significant amount less than they originally wanted.  So…he had an “extra” van that was very close to what we were looking at for considerably less than the ones we were looking at.  So after dragging our feet on actually going up north to pick it up for about a month, we finally went and got it on Friday.

It is obviously much roomier than the car, so getting all our stuff in shouldn’t be a problem.  However, the stigma of owning a minivan with take some getting used to.  It will be practical, but definitely not flashy.  Hopefully what everyone says will be true.  Everyone we know that owns one says that once you get over the fact that you own/drive a minivan, they wouldn’t trade them for any other vehicle.  Hopefully we agree, and hopefully we don’t catch TOO much crap from our friends (we expect some, so feel free to let us have it).

Driving Tips

So I decided that I am going to start a Top 10 of sorts. Whenever I see some bonehead driving do something stupid or something that a lot of people do that drives me nuts, I’m going to add it to my blog. I figure its part of my duty as a transportation engineer. So here’s the first one:

If you are driving on a multi-lane roadway with low traffic volume, DRIVE IN THE RIGHT LANE! You do not need to be in any other lane other than to pass. Get out of the way so that if someone wants to go faster, they can. If you need to make a left turn, you do not need to be there a mile ahead of time. Wait until you get within a reasonable distance and then move over so you don’t disrupt the flow of traffic. Of course, this rule only applies to a certain extent when traffic is on the heavier side, but if you can, you should still move over. It’s amazing how much better traffic would flow if everyone followed this practice.

Two Stall Garage

When we first started looking for homes, one of my few requirements was a 2 stall garage. I despise scraping off my truck in the winter before heading to work. It’s not so bad any other time of the day, but I’m usually in a hurry in the morning and its cold outside, etc. so it’s on my list of least favorite things to do. This worked out well until this spring when we wee contemplating putting our house on the market and started using our garage to store some extra things that we didn’t want in the house if people were going to be walking through it. So 6 ish months after we converted our garage into a storage unit, we now have a two stall garage again. After working a couple Saturday’s to get one side cleaned out, we were able to get one car back in the garage, but the other side was still packed full of stuff. Hmm, lets take a guess whose vehicle gets to go into the garage. If you guessed the pregnant lady who drives the brand new car, you’re our lucky winner. Don’t get me wrong, I would rather have Lindsey be able to park in the garage as it’s probably safer than her parking on the street, not that our street is terribly dangerous, but still. Also, obviously we’d like to keep her car out of the weather as much as possible and keep it looking new (even though Lindsey thought it would be a good idea to drive it into the back end of a truck that’s too big even for me). So…Lindsey has been parking in the garage, Darrell has been parking in the driveway and/or on the street. Well, it’s begun to snow so my mission for Saturday was to get my truck back in the garage. Well, after working on it all day, and managing to re-organize an entire stall worth of junk, I was successful and got both our vehicles back in the garage as the freezing rain began. The only thing left is to bring a few things inside that belong in the house, but I didn’t want to bring in during the freezing rain. Good luck to anyone who wants to get a single other thing in our garage though.

Squirrels are Cool

So I have realized that my life is pretty boring. This is my second post in like 1 1/2 weeks which leads me to believe I have nothing to talk about. Or maybe I am so busy that I don’t have time for this. Lindsey would probably say that I’m just a poor communicator. I have a tendency to think a lot and not say much. I guess all of the above have something to do with it. Regardless, here is me being not boring, not too busy, and not a poor communicator.

Tonight I went bow hunting. I saw a buck, a little one, but a buck nonetheless, and a doe. Unfortunately these two deer were on the trail to my treestand as I was talking out to it. So I made a failed attempt to loop around them and call them to my treestand. I tried pretty much everything I could think of to lure them in, but to no avail. I think most of the problem was that I made a fair amount of noise climbing my tree because I am not the most nimble person around. I am bending my body in ways it doesn’t want to bend, hanging almost perpendicular to the tree at times all because I put a couple of steps in bad spots. So after giving up on trying to get the two deer to come back, I was sitting in my tree on a very quiet evening, just sitting, thinking, looking — maybe this is why I like to hunt so much, because I really don’t have to do anything and I get to just sit there and think. I think about all sorts of stuff, mostly insignificant things, but sometimes I have REALLY deep thoughts (typed with the utmost sarcasm for those who don’t know me real well). Anyway, as I’m sitting there thinking about whether or not pigs will ever actually fly – remember that at one time we couldn’t fly either, but now we can – I hear tsch, tsch, tsch (the sound of leaves being trampled). So as the good hunter that I am, I think, here comes a big buck, but really in the back of my mind, I know that it’s not a buck, but probably a squirrel because deer tend to make one step at a time whereas squirrels tend to make several jumps at a time. At any rate, I slowly turn my head, peering as far in advance as I can with my eyes so that just in case it is a deer, it won’t see me move. Sure enough, there is a squirrel hopping along on the ground. It’s not just an average squirrel though, its a black squirrel, pretty cool I thought, not every day you see a black squirrel. I mean, they’re around, but not incredibly common. So anyway, I start watching this squirrel as it hops back and forth from the top of a stump to a log laying on the ground etc. No big deal. I then climbs a tree. Again, not uncommon for a squirrel to climb a tree. So I continue to watch as this squirrel climbs to the top of a 30 ish foot pine tree. At this point I start to think, “If I were a squirrel, I probably wouldn’t have had such a terrible time getting into my tree and I probably would have been able to get the deer to come back. And really, if I was a squirrel, I would have never had to do all that in the first place because I would have been able to walk up to the deer and they wouldn’t have even cared if I was really a squirrel.” Like I said, some really deep stuff goes through my head when I sit in a treestand. So I continue watching this squirrel as it begins to make its way from behind me to about 50 yards in front of me, all in the tops of these pine trees. He doesn’t bother to come down and just walk over there, he jumps from tree to tree on branches the size of your pinky. Not only does he perform these acrobatic feats, but he does it with incredible ease and he doesn’t even seem to care that he’s 30 feet up in the air and could plummet to his death with one snap of a branch or one miscalculated leap.

So he’s making all these jumps and finally decides to come down one tree trunk toward the ground, but as he gets to about 3 feet off the ground, he leaps to another tree like he was before. He does this like 5 more times before he finally goes down to the ground. At this point I start to think, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just go down the last 3 feet and walk over there rather than leaping like Superman from tree to tree.” And that’s when it hit me…the most profound thought of the night…Squirrels are Cool.

Rookie

So this is my first blog.  Yeehaw!  I figure if I do my own blog maybe I’ll read other people’s more often.  Only problem is that I don’t really have anything to write about today.  Lindsey and I went to her former employer who, in addition to being an accountant, is also a financial planner.  We went through insurance, education, etc.  So after all that, we determined that we cannot afford everything we would like.  Hard to imagine.  So I decided that what we really need is for her to figure out a way for us to double our income.  On an unrelated note, today is our dogs’ least favorite day of the year…the day when countless small children knock on our door and yell Trick-or-Treat!…Halloween.  Kaya is generally fairly well behaved, but Mickey dreads this day.  If it were up to him, no one would ever come to our house except Lindsey and I.  On top of this, they are locked in the kitchen all night so that they don’t run down the street.  So Mickey, not to be forgotten, howls pretty much non-stop all night.  Thrilling.  So, this is my first attempt,  unfortunately nothing funny like some of my siblings, but maybe there will be more to write about next time.