Archive for May, 2009

Need something to do?

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

If you are constantly bored I have the perfect solution for you. Buy an domestic car and do the maintenance yourself. If you can find a 1996 or so blazer go for it. You’ll have to take the whole grill off to swap out head lights. You will also have to remove a cross brace just to change tranny fluid and filter. I’m pretty sure I know why the American car companies are doing poorly. When you only have a little money you aren’t going to throw it away on something that gets bad gas mileage and will have huge maintenance costs. If you’re thinking, hey I have a domestic vehicle and it’s not expensive to maintain then go read your owners manual and tell me when the last time you did any of the required maintenance is.

The problem is most people oblazernly worry about things when they break. It’s more expensive that way. Also figure out how much money you throw away paying someone else to work on your vehicle. I called around just to see. New brake pads somewhere would cost about $90 installed for a 96 Blazer. My cost is $15 and 15 minutes. There is not only finical savings but time. Think about it, you have to drive to the garage. We’ll say you have a mechanic 15 minutes away. That 30 minutes there and back. That time alone you can more than switch out some pads. And who wants to waste their off time sitting at a garage? Plus the $75 in your pocket is nice. That’s why it gets me when you hear someone pulling up to the mall with there breaks sounding like junk.

What brings all this up? I did a tranny flush and fill with new filter. My cost was less than $50 and that includes an $11 bottle of lucas. Cost at a garage is about $140. What should I do with my $90 bucks?

Puppy play time

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Every Saturday Petco holds Puppy play time. We went and it took us 36 minutes to get “warmed up” then this happened:

pptWe got in a tug of war contest with a 3 month old puppy. It’s cool how she knew the dog she was playing with was young and didn’t pull as hard as she could. That little puppy had a lot of energy in him. Near the end of the hour most of the dogs where laying down relaxing and that little puppy was still running around barking.

Notice anything different? I slightly modified the default template that comes with word press to come up with this. I think I’m going to come up with a few more themes and then make them available for download.

Spring in SD

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

dscf0013After a winter that included 3 blizzards in 2 weeks and record snowfall it’s nice to have to cut the grass again. When we first moved into our house there was no landscaping. The flowerbeds looked like no one had done anything to them for a few years and the yard was full of weeds. Seeing as flowers are cheap we decided to hook things up last year. The “flowerbeds” were just red rocks with lots of grass and weeds growing up and red brick dividers that were laying on the ground. My wife started picking up the red rocks while I was deployed but was over whelmed and gave up until I got home to help. We pretty much ripped it all up and reburied the red brick divider straight. I really wish I would have taken a picture to give you a good before and after shot. So then we planted three flowers to finish it up. Now this year we added 2 more plants and our nice neighbors hooked us up with some mulch. Today while at walmart shopping for a tomato plant we spotted some of those solar powered garden lights. Usually I think these are cheap but these appear to be nice and if they aren’t rest assured Walmart will get them back.

New puppy

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

So about a month ago my wife called me from school and asked it we could dog sit for a week. She said please please pleasNorae and promised me the dog would not eat my cat. I agreed because I enjoy dog sitting. It’s like being a grandparent (I guess). You get to have a dog for a little then send it on its way. As it turns out this dog is super cool, super nice, and a lot of fun. She likes people A LOT. Right now she is sitting by my feet. Now you may be wondering why I still have this puppy after a month. The owner of this puppy decided she liked not having the dog around and didn’t want her anymore. I couldn’t very well let this dog go to the humane society. So we took her. She didn’t get much attention from her past family. We gave her a bath and the tub was covered in hair when we got done. Then we switched her to a food that doesn’t have byproduct in it. Her food was so gross our cat didn’t eat it. Every time I went to pet her she would have an accident on the floor she was so happy. She is finally over all that. She is strong and fast. Only two problems to note, she digs in the yard and pulls on the leash but oh well! enjoy the pic of her!