Yay!! Hot tub will be fixed soon!

For about the last year, our hot tub has had a slow leak, and as a result we have not been able to use it. Well, I finally got my rear in gear, had them pick it up and diagnose it. They found several small tears in the liner, which is not too surprising, given it is 10 years old. I told them to reskin it (this time the inside will be blue instead of black), in which case we will have a "almost good as new" tub again.

I can hardly wait! Winter is almost here, and I am getting tired of taking baths!

Finally completed - Chuck "classic" blogs now on this site

The blog you are reading now is not the original blog I had. I changed over from blog-city to blogspot about a year ago, because this site is a bit more progressive and FREE. But for a long time, only the new entries were here. Now I've finally moved the old "classic" entries to this block. Just check out the archive - there are actually some pretty amusing posts there. Hmm was my life more interesting then, or did I just have more time to burn?

Sorry if the formatting and details are not perfect - I just moved the HTML and prayed.

SNOW!!

First snow of the year! When I left home, it was lightly drizzling, but as I approached Rochester, I noticed the droplets had changed into white streaks - very wet snow. None of it is sticking, but I will mark this as first snow of the year.

Doggie Play

The standard Chuck Smoothie

Several years ago David S. introduced me to the concept of a smoothie, sold at the U/R coffee bar place. For him, a smoothie was routinely his complete dinner (don't know where he got his other 2200 calories).

I was always too cheap to buy the things, but David, like many college students, was on a "declining balance" plan, and would have "use it or lose it" money left at the end of the year. With the prospect of free food, I got addicted to one type - the one with just fruit, and no dairy products.

I then started buying them on business trips, where others were paying the tab. I have never been willing to spend my $4.50 for one with my own money. But then, Gwendolyn encouraged me to abandon my reservations about unnecessary household appliances, and buy a blender.

The rest was history...

I have tried a number of variations, with different degrees of precision in measuring ingredients (just don't ask - I have all the lab equipment I need). In the end, I use the rule of thumb method, as follows. This is to make one medium-large (about 500 ml, or 17 oz) black raspberry smoothie. It works like this, and takes very little time:

1. Take the blender jug, and add a combination of frozen black raspberries and frozen red raspberries, until it comes up to the 500 ml mark.
2. Add about 60 ml (2 oz) of lemon juice (the normal sour stuff)
3. Add about 2 tablespoons (30 ml dry) of either sugar or Splenda
4. Add cold water until the water comes just above the surface of the frozen fruit
5. Start blending at medium speed - if the blender does not mix properly, add a bit more water.
6. Once the frozen chunks are broken up, move to high speed, blend until smooth (about 45 seconds to a minute, usually)
7. Sample the mix, if too sour, add some more sugar or Splenda

Tango's revenge...

I have been sitting down here alone with Tango, obsessing in Photoshop on the computer. The puppy is wandering around. I can't hear him chewing anything, and in this case quiet is good.

He likes to hang around under the desk exploring. Sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he explores - you sort of forget about him if you don't hear him chewing.

Then I hear a beep and my computer screen goes blank. He found the switch to the computer's uninterpretable power supply! Then, a two second pause, another beep, and the computer starts to reboot. Just what I need - Tango has found a new variation on the old-fashion squeak toy - just hit this button and you get a nice beep.

Nice.... NOT!

Fall Peak!

This fall is the latest I remember in a long while. It is always hard to call a peak, and this year many of the leaves on some trees have dropped off while some of the trees are still green. But I will call that peak today. Here is our back yard, photographed this morning.

Interesting volleyball experience

I had one of those eye opening opportunities this evening. On Thursday night, we play pickup volleyball. Usually the two courts self-organize into "better" and "worse", but once both courts fill, you often get a mix. Sometimes this mix (especially "worse" on the "better court") can cause some frustration.

I was playing on the "better" court, and we were having a good game of 5 on 5 - the other court was full with 6 on a team. Then two people walked in, and they couldn't have looked more different. The first was a very American looking guy, probably about 45, 6 foot tall (182 cm), and just didn't look like a volleyball player. With him came a very slight, very Asian looking girl, and 4 foot 10 inches (147 cm) at the tallest. She probably weighted 38 kg at most, and looked somewhere between 16 and 19 - hard to tell. I didn't quite get her name, something like Lana, I think. I later verified that she was his daughter, presumably adopted.

Well, he joined the other team, and Lana joined ours. After a few points, it was clear that this was going to be a problem. He had no volleyball skill, and was sort of randomly moving obstacle just waiting to cause an accident. Lana was different. She was a very directly moving massless particle, fearless, but, well, massless. She would hit the ball, and more likely she would get knocked over herself. She would try landing for the hardest spikes, intercept the ball (which would go careening off into the ceiling) and go rolling over. Her serves were hilarious at first, since she didn't weigh much more than the volleyball. For her first two serves, she tossed the ball, reached up, missed it, and flipped upside down, giggling. And then got up and did it again!

Eventually her Dad dropped out and watched, but she kept playing. And improved. And improved. She quickly learned where to run to intercept the ball. She copied others and learned how to underhand "bump" the ball. After some spectacular and amusing complete misses, she tried to floor spike some balls. We taught her how to set, and she started doing that.

By the end of the night, she was still at the bottom of the hierarchy, but she fit in. Everyone was cheering her on, and her learning curve was very steep. We all invited her back next week, if for no other reason to see what starts happening then. Probably by then she'll be doing floor dives and rolls.

Seriously, though, I really enjoyed watching her learn, watching her figure out the physics so she didn't get knocked over, and her fearlessness. Go girl!