My breaks have been super squeaky for some time now so I thought it was about time to get them checked out. Most places do this for free so I went to the closest place to my office, a local chain called Alton’s. A couple of hours after dropping it off I got the call. It needed a front end break job- new rotors, pads, and calipers. This would cost me about $500.

Since things are already tight financially right now I thought I’d get a second opinion. I picked my car up from Alton’s and dropped it off at Les Schwab for another free inspection. A short time later I got the call - my brakes were squeaky but great. They could spray some anti-squeak stuff on them if I wanted for $25. What the…?!

I saw this a couple years ago and I still think it’s hilarious.

In the not too distant future I will be spending the better part of a day on an Airbus en route to the city of Beijing. This will actually be one of the shorter flights (around 11 hours) I’ve taken to China because it’s direct from Seattle.

The year was 1990. The Gameboy was in full effect but I was much too poor to own such a hi-end piece of tech. My substitute was the hand held lcd video game available at Radio Shacks and K-Marts across the country.
(see one of my favorites below)

For some reason I was reminded of these cheap little marvels the other day. After a little google action I came across an awesome sight for feeding my nostalgia. Check out the Handheld Museum if you were a handheld O.G. like myself.

This weekend was my first ever attempt at painting the outside of a house. After nearly a month of prep work - spackling nearly every nail hole, caulking seams, sanding, priming - Friday was the day. I rented a sprayer from Home Depot and busted the whole house out in about 5 1/2 hours. Saturday, Jess and I along with our friend Grayden spent hours painting the trim and we’re nearly done with the whole thing. While I wasn’t that stoked to do this project, looking at the end result makes it very worth it.

Yesterday after church we had our final meeting with our China team and we leave in less than two weeks. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to blog safely while in country…we’ll see.

Is the term ‘coming of age’ as it relates to movies just another way of saying low morals and vastly inappropriate?

If anyone isn’t doing anything this Friday and want’s to have an amazingly fun time helping to paint my house then give me a shout. Seriously, you won’t have this much fun for the rest of the year.

Someone told me when we were getting ready to buy a house that the work never ends and I’m starting to realize the truth in that lately.

Now, don’t get me wrong I feel incredibly blessed to own (or should I say in the 30 year process to own) my own place. After years of living in rentals and either not being able to change anything or knowing that any changes I did only benefited my landlord it’s great to work on ‘my’ place. Since we’ve moved into our place we’ve fixed tons of random little things, painted the whole inside and are in the process of painting the outside. It’s actually very satisfying doing these things on our own place that we plan on living in for a while.

Jess informed me today that some giant spring on our garage door snapped and she couldn’t open the door and for the first time I wished I could call my landlord and have him fix it. No dice. Hmm, I haven’t used that term since the 90’s. Anyways, upon closer inspection I was greeted with ominous warnings about severe injury if I attempted to mess with the spring (called a torsion spring) without professional knowledge. This giant spring is apparently the main thrust in opening my two car garage door and so it carries quite a punch. So tomorrow I’ll make the decision to either call a professional for help or take my life into my own hands and install a spring. If you don’t hear from me in the next week or so you’ll know what happened. In the meantime send your landlord flowers.

Another weekend has flown by and things are increasingly busy these days. Besides the busyness of church life we’re getting ready to head to China in a few weeks and I’ve been prepping our house to paint for around 4 weeks now. It’s amazing how long the prep phase of painting can take, especially when you’re painting the outside. I am hoping never to paint the outside again so I’ve been going the extra mile, caulking and spackling every seam and nail hole. I’ll throw up a before and after pic when I’m done in a week or so.

One of my all time favorite songs.