Nats v. Mets Saturday Night

Steven and I went to the Nats game Saturday night at RFK. Wanted Steven to see the lovely RFK before the Nats move to their new stadium next year. Turned out we saw a nail biter of game with Jerome Williams (ERA 7.78 going into the game) pitch a no hitter through 5 innings.

This next picture is just before I expected the Nats to win an upset over the Mets. Its 2 outs bottom of the ninth with the Nats closer Codero on the mound. He's facing 49 year old Julio Franco. Everyone is standing a cheering and then... Franco rips a hit driving in the tying run. Off to extra innings. We made it through the end the 10th but then left, only to hear about the Nats losing it in the 12th. Steven was happy.

Ball Play

With Uncle Steven here this weekend we hit the park for some basketball and then worked off the baseball tee at home.

Reuben had to give Steven some pointers. But then I think Steven got the hang of it.

As for tee ball, Steven was playing with Faith inside while the boys took batting practice. Reuben has a real nice swing and hit pretty well. Jacob can hit the ball hard, but needs some work on his form.



Steven and I went to the Nats vs. Mets game last night but left in the 11th inning. It ended in the 12th. Great game, lots of excellent defensive plays and some really close umpiring calls. Stayed tuned for a couple of pictures from the game.

The Best Birthday Gifts

I got some nice birthday gifts, but these were the best!!!



Karen took some great pictures.

Happy Birthday To Me

I got serenaded this evening with Happy Birthday when I got home from work. It was very nice.

Uncle Steven is also now here for a visit. I'll post some more pictures tomorrow.

The Weekend We've Been Waiting For

Can't ask for a nicer a day. Low 80's, not a cloud in the sky. The kids decided to go to IHOP this morning so Karen and I followed along. Afterwards they wanted to plant some flowers, so we stopped off and each kid picked a flower. Jacob picked a red Gerber Daisy, Faith picked a pink flower that resembled a small Peony, and Reuben struggled to find a blue flower to his satisfaction. Nothing was really blue enough. I tried to explain that blue was not a normal flower color, but purple and lavender were pretty close. In the end he picked a blueish petunia.
These are the pansies from last week.	One of my azaleas is now in full bloom.
And of course Tipper joins us while we garden.
Later in the day, Karen and the kids came to watch some of my softball game. It was good that they came, because at least there was something to be happy about. We got spanked. It's never is fun to lose. But at least the kids were amusing.

Oh, The Guilt

After I got an email from my Dad on the beautiful family picture from Fudds yesterday, the guilt got to me. Recently I found a tutorial page on using gimp for photo editing (like photoshop). It really helps. Gimp is very powerful, but not intuitive at all.

So following the tutorial about using the mask feature, I put myself in yesterday's photo.

Here is the photo that I was in:


And here is the photo I put myself into:


The only difficult part was that my right arm did not come down far enough down in the second picture. The table cut it off in the first. So I cloned in more of my arm to meet up with Faith's wrapper.

Final Picture:


I could have improved it a little more by lightening my layer a bit before anchoring it to the picture. The flash in the photo with Karen was stronger (or Karen was further away) than in the picture with me.

Nice Day

Faith and I went to synagogue this morning. A friend had a daughter about 10 days ago, so today they had its baby naming. The place was packed with a big Bar Bitzvah and this baby naming. The boys and Karen went out to Bristow, VA for a birthday party so Faith and I were alone. Faith was pretty shy at the temple without her big bodyguards and didn't want to go to the toddler service. She stayed with and was very well behaved through the whole long service.

Afterwards Faith and I went to Toys R Us to get a wiffleball tee and a soft bat to start practicing baseball in the backyard. Later in the afternoon we played a little with it and each of the kids had some good hits. We'll be back at it tomorrow and hopefully I will take some pictures.

We rushed through our batting practice, because Karen was dying for Fuddruckers. Not sure why since we haven't been there in over a year. But it was very good and the kids were well-behaved and ate just about everything. Grilled cheese for Faith and Jacob and a hot dog for Reuben. Karen and I had hamburgers, what else at Fuddruckers!

Rumor Has It Spring Is Coming

The thermometer keeps ticking upwards and yo ucan see in the background of this photo that my grass seed has finally germinated. Its a little spotty I think because of the big storm last week. But, at least its starting to come on; I'll fill in the spots later. My first softball game is this Sunday and here it may be 80. Can't wait!!  

DVR Upgrade

Last week I ordered a Terabyte worth of hard disk space. I just love saying Terabyte. I got two 500MB USB/eSATA drives from buy.com, $129 each ($149 with a $20 rebate). So tonight I hooked up one to my DVR (SA 8300HD) and quadrupled my TV recording storage. We went from 77% capacity to 17% after hooking it up. Just what I need more TV ;-) What was especially nice was that it worked fine right off the bat even though this is an unsupported feature from the cable company.

The other 500MB I need because our current main external drive is almost full. So I think I will copy all the stuff off to the new drive (mostly pictures and movies), then store the old one in my fireproof safe as a backup. In addition, I already have a second external drive acting as a live backup. Who would have thought you would need a terabyte of storage in your house.

Comedic Genius

Will Ferrel is definitely a genius. You've probably already seen this video, it says 3 million views, but I just saw it. Classic!!! http://sjl.funnyordie.com/v1/view_video.php?viewkey=3efbc24c7d2583be6925

Blow Me Away

Strange day. First, the cold, miserable April continues. This time its cold temperatures and WIND; 60 mph gusts. Karen was walking with the kids and the wind almost blew Faith over in the parking lot. Sounded funny to me, but Karen said it wasn't funny. Later I heard about the VA Tech killings. My office has lots of graduates (including recent grads), parents of students, and other friends or associations. Fortunately, I don't know of anyone whose been personally affected. I got my graduate degree from Tech, but never actually stepped a foot on the Blacksburg campus. I got my degree from their NoVa campus. So, then I get home this evening and I see my garbage can hanging from my fence in the car port. Apparently the wind blew it across the car port and into, and then onto, the fence.

Its actually hanging there. Its about 3” off the ground. The wheel you see is on the fence door, not the garbage can.

New Furniture

With all the rain, we figured it was a good day to finally get to Ikea. We've been wanted to get the kids chairs versus their bouncy seats that they've been using since they were two. I put them together during rest time and they were happy to see them when they came downstairs.

It rained most of the day today, but it certainly was not as bad as predicted. We probably got 2.5" of rain. Watching the news it looks like my brothers in NY are fairing much worse. Looks like they've got 5" of rain and its still coming.

Out Before The Storm

I'm really getting tired of saying how cold it still is. Where is spring? Tonight we are expecting a storm to move in and dump about 3” of rain over the next 24 hours with temps in the low 40's. We'll see how the basement hold up. Karen did let the plumber have it. They're coming back next week and will fix it with no labor charge. That deal came after they offered to come back and only charge us $48/hr (vs the normal $96). That's when Karen let it rip!!!
So before the rain Jacob, Faith, and I took Tipper for a walk and went to our local park. It really wasn't that cold, but still only about 50 degrees. Reuben went out with Karen on some errands and a quick stop at the doctor. Tipper is getting pretty good with letting the kids “walk” her. She's actually walking them, but she's good at letting the kids think they're in charge ;-)
What a poser!!! We did have a lot of fun at the park	Jacob loves to climb.
Tipper was very well behaved at the park. There were several other little kids and their Mother at the park who played with Tipper while she was tied up. Tipper even let the kids grab her tail without getting mad.

Plumber Bummer

We had another plumber over today, this time to fix a leaky valve under our sink. Its the valve to the outside water faucet. This is actually the second plumber having a crack at it and the second one failing. The first plumber was the one who told us to call a basement guy about the flooding basement. While he was here evaluating that, Karen had him look at the valve. He said the packing nut was loose, so he tightened it (no cost). OK, with no fee I was not too upset when I found water under the valve that night. On to the the next plumber, who we have used in the passed with good success. This time he was called over specifically for this valve. His assessment... the packing nut was loose. He tightened it. Fortunately, Karen questioned what he did and told him the last plumber did the same thing and it still leaked. So he check it again. Packing nut now tight. Fixed. Karen knowingly put the bowl we've been using to catch the water from the leak back under the sink. And 'lo and behold, a couple of hours later... water; it still leaks. How many times can I tell them the valve is bad. This time we paid $96. So now I'm mad, but even worse Karen's mad. Plumber's beware.

Anyway, while bad plumber #2 was here I asked Karen to have him look at the drain outside the basement door and potentially snake it. Well, 'lo and behold, the drain is not so much a drain, but rather just the entrance to a hole (and not a big one at that). Its not connected to the storm sewer; its not connected to anything. There's no pipe. It essentially goes nowhere, but now explains why the water level in that area was so such a good measure of the ground water table. So now the next step is an outdoor sump pump right in the corner of that well. I think I may go back to the basement guy to do it.

Cold Weekend

Cold Spring weekend in Virginia. We mostly stayed around the house this weekend. How cold was it...
This was Saturday morning. Yes that's snow! Sunday morning it was still cold so we went to see “Meet The Robinson's”. Good movie, though our showing was not in 3-D. It was probably better that way, considering that Reuben is still scared of movies in general. The 3-D probably would have ended any hope of him sitting through it. In the end, he “liked some of it.”	By the afternoon at least the snow was all gone.
On a Saturday I had a basement guy come in to evaluate the basement for flooding. We had a plumber in a few weeks ago who said he couldn't help us; he said we needed a basement waterproofing company. I was suspect because, as you can see if you followed the above link, the problem is related to the drain leading to the storm sewer backs up. The water doesn't come in to the house at that location but it indicates that the whole water table has risen and it starts coming at the corners of the house. So it was refreshing to hear from the basement guy that I should first try a plumber before spending all my money with him. He gave me a plumber's name that he works with who could snake out the drain and send a camera in to give a visual inspection. The visual inspection could be used, he told me, if my drain is clear. It then could be a county issue with their storm sewer. So stay tuned for what the plumber tells us. Also, I think the cold weather is inhibiting my grass from growing. So far 8 days and no germination. Here are some miscellaneous pictures from this weekend.
Our cold walk to the park.
Tipper, however, loves this kind of weather. We've hardly seen her this weekend. She's always in the yard.
	Faith is still is rarely ever out of her princess dress. The thing is starting to fall a part. Preemptively, Karen bought a second one which will likely be needed soon. The next faze seems to be this hat, which she insists on wearing all around.
Finally, when Jacob doesn't play nice with his siblings he now goes to his room for an extended period to play by himself. So far, he's spent quite a lot of time there ;-) My hope is that he starts to control himself, because he would want to play in a group. We'll see. Meanwhile, at least he showing some creativity in his room. Here is Jacob's cityscape. Our house is the one with the window.

Blast Off

Air & Space Museum – Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Karen and her friend Michelle took the kids to the Air & Space Museum. I was there with Karen and the kids once before and its an amazing place. This time the kids got to check out the control tower.
The kids on the right belong to Karen's friend. The girl in the green is in the boys pre-school class.
Then it was on to the Space Shuttle. It really is impressive seeing how big it is in person. In another room they a have a concord and the shuttle really dwarfs it in size.
Karen is just counting the days until pre-school is back in session. In the meantime, they did have a good time at the museum

Borowitzreport.com story - Politician Amnesia

It's about time we got to the bottom of this ailment.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=6721

Happy Passover

This is really the first sedar where the kids kind of followed what was going on. They asked a lot of question, especially about the plagues and Elijah. They hunted a long time for the Afikomen. I finally had to give pretty specific hints, like its under where you're sitting. Reuben wound up "finding" the first two I hid (I hid three). So I had to eliminate him from the search for the third one, but even then he found that one too, but then nicely left it for Jacob to find. As you see, we had our neighbor Hannah over. She was very daring with the Jewish food, even eating the gefilte fish.

Karen did a great job cooking, but the chicken soup was spectacular.




Jacob LOVED the chocolate passover cake. As far as Passover cake goes it was very good; a Wegman's speciality.

Farmer Barry

Busy weekend. First off, my fantasy baseball reserve draft completed today so now the final rosters can be announced. This is NL only, 5x5, keeper league (up 6 protected players). My team is obviously under the Barry column. I'm pretty happy overall, though I need another good season from Glavine. If the bold text is visible, they represent the players that were protected. As a result of having a keeper league, certain position players wound up with distorted valuations. At least that's my rationale for paying $22 for Brandon Phillips ;-)
Friday night I bought a “Garden Claw” preparing to take one last attempt at growing grass in an area of my yard that has been bare for sometime. This time I did it all: tilled the soil (with my Garden Claw), mixed in some peat moss, mixed in some high quality starter fertilizer, and got some quality grass seed from Merrifield Garden Center. The seed is for shady areas and is a nice mix of fescues with some rye and bluegrass. After visiting Merrifield and talking with some of the personnel, I will never go back to Home Depot for garden needs. Their stuff and quality is so much better, like night and day, at maybe a 10% premium.
Anyway, here is the now seeded area. Hopefully a week from now it will start to have some hint of green seedlings. You can notice off to the left some blue stuff. I'm also trying out in a small area the remainder of a bag of Scott's lawn repair. I won't hold my breadth for that area.
This morning we went to IHOP for pancakes, our last for the week of Passover. The kids were hungry!!!
Before After	Before After	Before After (Trust Me)
In the afternoon the boys had a birthday party, Karen cooked a lot for the seders tomorrow and Tuesday, and I'm working on our taxes. As always this AMT is driving me crazy, but its looking like a refund may be headed my way :-)