36 thoughts on “July 16, 2018: Jason”

  1. The jalapeno's final baseball game of the season is tonight. It was supposed to be last Thursday, but that got rained out. The team had an optional practice yesterday afternoon (since the season was supposed to have been done already), and every single kid showed up. They've got a great coach, and the whole season has been a great experience.

    I think the kids are handling everything well, but as a parent, I am surprised by how much playoff games stress me out. Maybe it's because this is the first time he's participated in a sport where something was at stake at the end of the season? I know (and have told the jalapeno) that whatever the outcome, I'm proud of him and his team. Guys who've been through this more than I have, please hit me with your best tips for managing your own nerves during games!

    1. Our season ended yesterday with my son's team winning the championship. They went into the 5-team, double-elimination tournament as the 3-seed, caught fire, and didn't lose a game. Definitely the most fun I've had as a "sports dad" for him.

      I try my best to put as little pressure on my kids when they play sports, my parents were pretty tough on me with baseball and I really didn't like it. I tend to sit back away from most of the parents and just take the game in quietly, encouraging my son when he does something good or bad. But I was pacing yesterday, snapping a pair of gloves together and apart over and over, couldn't help it!

      It is his first real trophy and so fun to experience it with him. He took that thing everywhere yesterday, posing for pictures with everyone in the family, the cat, his bowl of ice cream, etc.

  2. My daughter was under the weather yesterday and so we were watching HGTV on demand. They have a show called "Lottery Dream Home" where people who win a big prize in the lottery have this dude come in and help them buy a house. One of the episodes was a couple from Minneapolis, who won a $1 million prize and bought a house in, yes, Eagan, MN. They filmed part of the episode at the Mason Jar restaurant, which is about 2 1/2 miles from my house and another part at Lone Oak Grill, which is about 4 miles from my house. We enjoyed that.

    I should also note that the host of the show was from Minneapolis originally, so he talked about "coming home" for this episode.

    1. I wish there was a directory that would let you search shows like that (and travel/restaurant shows) by city.

    2. I shared a flight with the host, from Minneapolis. This was back when he was hosting his first show I think.

  3. So, dishwasher is installed and it looks great...but it doesn't work. It fills some water, does nothing, and then drains. I've ensured the obvious things weren't wrong and made sure it wasn't in demo mode, and at this point someone's going to have to come out and look at it. Crap.

  4. Clothes Dryer decided to make life....interesting last night. Linds and I were already tired from working outside all day, and we still needed to do four loads of clothes. Everything seemed okay for a while, but then the dryer decided not to dry anything. I'm assuming that the exhaust ductwork is clogged with lint, since I checked the exhaust port on the house, and there isn't much air coming out of it while the dryer is on. Anyone have any experience with this? I'm going to take a look at the dryer tonight, but if there's a "likely suspect" place where the lint could have built up, I'd love to know now.

    Anyway, we basically just triple dried every load throughout the night, waking every 90 minutes to get everything dried so we'd actually have professional things to wear today.

    Then the cat decided to throw up under the bed around 4:30pm.

    1. Do you have the flex tubing coming out the exhaust port? Those are terrible for build up. I converted mine to hard pipe a couple years ago and its been great.

      Otherwise, try to take the panel off around the lint trap. There might be some good build up there. The louver panel on the outside of the house is another troublesome spot. (which reminds me). There is also a good chance you blew the thermal fuse, which will not allow it to generate any heat. If that happened, you may have gotten lucky and only need to replace the fuse. When it happened to me, the fuse didn't go early enough and the whole heating coil was ruined so I had to just replace the whole damn thing.

      1. Same issue for me recently.
        Previous home owner went for high end appliances. Thermal fuse replaced last month for $150 ... plus the mandatory trip & diagnosis cost of $100 for the ‘certified’ repair co. Plus side, I first did a deep cleaning on the exhaust system & associated ductwork and this thing is running better than it ever has.

        1. We have Home Service Plus. It costs five bucks a month and over the years we've more or less broken even on it. The most dramatic time was when Younger Daughter was a newborn and our furnace blower motor died when it was 20 below zero. Having the service and a baby put us at the top of the priority list, though I had to be pretty, um, assertive with the scheduler.

    2. The tubing from our dryer to outside clogs and needs to be cleaned out every few years. Whoever designed the house decided it was a good idea to run the tubing down through concrete, with 4 right angles along the way. Ugh. Whenever the dryer stops drying, we have an a/c and duct company come out and clean it out. Costs about $150 per time, but we don’t have anything that could snake through the whole run.

        1. I’ve had guinea pigs big enough, but I’m sure none of them could have ever been motivated enough to be of much help.

    3. I haul the ductwork outside and run a line with a weight thru it, then tie a plouffe-sponge to the rope and pull it through, and repeat a couple of times. Also good to check inside the dryer where the ductwork attaches, as I have found a lot of lint in there as well.

    4. Our dryer is more than 20 years old now and still going strong, but every four of five years I have to take it apart and clean out all of the internal duct channels. Also, I can't get my wife to stop piling folded clothes on top of the dryer, which can cause heat to build up and damage the electronic components in the control panel. I used to nag her about it, now I just put whatever's there away myself because I like being married to her.

      1. That last sentence is absolutely gold - I’ve learned to insert a great many things after “now I just...” and before “...because I like being married to her.”

  5. I know we have the FZ for a reason, but what happened today is really not normal or good in any way, right?

    1. I mean, we'll finally be able to answer those hypotheticals "What if so and so had won the war", so there's that.

      1. Won't you try some of my purple berries? I've been eating them for six or seven weeks now -- haven't gotten sick once. Probably keep us both alive.

    2. It's been hard for me not to constantly be thinking "WTF" today. Add in a crappy, unproductive work day and I'm in a pretty awful mood.

    3. 'Spoiler' SelectShow
  6. Chattanooga just scored five runs on two hits in the third inning. With two on and two out, the next four batters walked, followed by a hit batsman and another walk. The Lookouts lead 6-1 after three.

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