The Cox Chronicle

I really can’t wait till August this year. Usually I am not too enthusiastic about it because my birthday is in August. I’m get a little uncomfortable “celebrating” it. But this August is different. We are going to Lake Tahoe. We rented a house on the Tahoe Keys that is waterfront with a dock. We are going to trail our boat up there and stay for the week! We’ve invited family and friends to come up as well and stay with us and I plan to have a great time not going to work, relaxing on the water, on the dock, fishing, and inside the house.

Here is a Virtual Tour of the house and grounds.

If you’re interested in coming up please let me know. I’ll check with Laura and see what rooms we will have available.

The reality on how to buy a BBQ grill is JUST BUY IT… It seems that there are so many options in grills but there are really only a few makers. They seem to be contract manufacturers for each other so the differences will be pretty minor. A feature here or there will be missing but the overall factor seems to be the quality of the burners and their warranty.

You’ll see grills with BTU ratings that seem like they are off the charts. Then there is the question of NG (Natural Gas) or LP (Liquid Propane) Here is what I found out about BTU’s and Propane Tanks…

So in my shopping we decided to turn to consumer reports. We found a Kenmore Grill, which I am pretty sure is made by Char-Broil with a top pick rating. Consumer Reports had it listed at $800.00 which is above our budget, but we figured we’d check it out. While at Sears though we came across this grill

this one is pretty cool because it gives the island look, but we determined we wanted our grill to be NG since we have a NG hookup out back. Of course they didn’t have it, and it was over $1300.00. Much more than we were willing to spend.

So we figured the grill with the consumer report rating was the best option.

Turns out it is a 2007 model grill and there were only four left. Sears was selling them off at less than half the original price!

The hard part came with the NG conversion. Sears doesn’t have the required kit. And Char-Broil sells four different kits with similar part numbers and no clear reason why they are different. I finally picked one, installed it and am now using the grill. I’m pretty happy with it, but realize, I may have been happy with any of them…

So hopefully I can explain this in writing so it will be as funny to you as it was to us.

Laura, Christopher and I drove to a nearby shopping center and parked, like normal. I noticed a couple walking down the aisle of the parking lot as we exited our car. I walked around to Christopher’s seat and Laura was standing outside.

I was reaching in trying to unbuckle Christopher and I heard Laura telling someone that we would be just a second. Meanwhile, Christopher was asking me to unwrap a piece of candy as I was unbuckling him. I told him no. He asked “why?” I told him somewhat loudly “you just have to learn to be patient!”

Then I heard Laura saying “no…not you!” to the people who were patiently waiting to get into their car while I was pulling Christopher out of ours. I wish I could have seen their faces when I said that, I’m sure if they didn’t realize I was talking to a toddler there would have been an “incident” in the parking lot.

Luckily there was no incident. Instead everyone pretty much got a good laugh!

Durango is our gray kitty that not many people have seen. She moved around our house like a gray ghost. She was completely silent, except for when she wanted to be heard.

It took us a while to figure out how long it’s been, but I’ve had Durango for about 13 years. She has moved with me from my 120 square foot room at a Fraternity house, to an apartment, to another room in a house etc…

Lately Durango has been sick so we took her into the vet. She was diagnosed with heart failure. We took her to a second vet for a second opinion. In the end we opted to try a surgical procedure to help her. She was uncomfortable, and my personal belief is that it is better to die trying, than not try at all.

Unfortunately the surgery was less than successful.

Durango is gone now, and it’s hard to believe a person could miss a cat so much. For the last 13 or so years, everytime I lay down on my bed, Durango would meow and chatter, jump up on the bed and straddle my arm and start kneeding on it. She would nuzzle her noze into it and sometimes even lick my arm. She would purr and purr and purr. Without fail, she would do this EVERY TIME I lay down on my bed.

It’s weird now to lay down and not have her jump up, even though it hurt I miss those sharp little claws digging into my arms, her wet nose and her drool on my arm or sleeve. I have scars to remember her by.

I guess I’ll just have to get used to it.

I finally got a Wii. I just happened to be in Best Buy the other day to look for some speakers for my patio. And I figured I would look at the video game section to see if they had any Wii’s in stock. Now… for the last few months I would go into a store already knowing that they did not have any and I would ask the clerk (I don’t call them sales people because they really aren’t!) if they had any Wii’s. The clerk would inevitably tell me they don’t have any. I would then just continue about my business.

This time… as I walked into the Wii aisle the clerk looks at me and says “Do you want a Wii?” I was shocked! You have them? I said. Just as I said that about seven or eight people stood behind me as if I was the first person in line. Wouldn’t you know it, I was the first person in line. The clerk had just put them out! I also noticed there were only six Wii’s in the cage and the line behind me was getting longer.

I was shocked and did not know what to do. I was like a deer caught in the headlights. I got so used to them not having one, I did not expect to have to actually make the decision whether I really wanted one or not. So I get on the phone and called home. Laura says sure get it. So I did.

The thing is a blast. We had to get up early the next morning to take Christopher to daycare and the cat to the vet. But Laura and I stayed up until about 2:00 in the morning playing.

Good Times. I can finally Wii…

Well,

I haven’t worked in an office for over eight years now, but I remember it well. So I was cruising around YouTube the other day, (a new pastime of mine!) and I came across this video.

The funny thing is it is so true that it does not take much to grind office productivity to a halt. Where all it takes is one thing… and the rest of the day is shot.

At the office I used to work at we would all stop working at the drop of a hat. Especially since it was a magazine we could pretty much goof off until we came near press deadline.

Here is a YouTube video I found that describes office life to a T, and be sure to check out more of their videos, they are hilarious…

So I’ve played with the Nintendo Wii quite a few times and realized… It’s pretty cool and I want one. However I have been checking at stores for MONTHS, and they are never in stock. I am having trouble figuring out how this is really that great a strategy for Nintendo and it’s game makers.

It seems that even though everyone they ship sells, they only ship a couple at a time. It seems they could make quite a bit of money if they shipped a lot of them. Then more people would go in to buy games. But what do I know? I’m not a business major!

Here is a little video of Laura and Carmen playing Wii Tennis…

An Inconvenient Truth…

I’ve never been an ecologist, or considered myself “green” and I’ve never really bought into the whole “we gotta save the environment activism.” But I watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” a few weeks ago. I gotta admit… his presentation is pretty convincing when you take into consideration the things we see happening in the world today.

I remember when I was a child growing up in Boston, MA. The winter would come early, Halloween was colder than heck and their would be snow on the ground by Thanksgiving. I’ve noticed over the years there is less and less snow, the chill comes later in the year and the snow that does stick is gone long before spring.

We tried to take our boat out onto Folsom Lake and I could not believe how low the water level was.

The whole global warming issue has some merit to it. And I now believe that we should do whatever we can to reduce the “greenhouse gasses” AKA Carbon Dioxide emissions we release into the atmosphere.

About Gore…

Now regardless of what you think of Al Gore, I believe that some politicians really get into politics because they want to make changes and have an impact. Of course their motives become clouded over time and their original ideals falter when all the money and other influence comes into play.

Based on the movie Gore began his Global Warming crusade when he was in college. He supposedly kept his eye on the issue throughout his political career. The information he presented if shown to us by unbiased scientist and through other forums may have grabbed more traction through the years and we may not be in the situation we are in today.

The research seems sound and the information he presents as facts are easy to see with our own eyes when we look at the world. I do believe everyone should see this movie, and if you don’t like Al Gore, then try to forget about the messenger and just focus on the information.

More to come…

I’ll post more of my thoughts about this issue later, but I do believe we may be in for some serious trouble if we don’t address the global warming issue. The movie suggests these things to reduce global warming and slow the effects of our consumption.

1. Change a light - use fluorescent bulbs
   
2. Drive less
   
3. Recycle More
   
4. Check your tires - properly inflated tires increase fuel efficiency
   
5. Use less hot water
   
6. Avoid products with lots of packaging
   
7. Adjust your thermostat
   
8. Plant a tree
   
9. Turn off electronic devices
   

It’s really not a lot, and if these things can help… It’s worth it.
Check the movie out!

It’s pretty funny that Dunkin Donuts now has a commercial that makes fun of Starbuck’s naming convention.

I still feel silly asking for a Venti Coffee when I go there. I was shown this video on YouTube and think it’s hillarious. What is also pretty funny is that my three year old thinks it’s funny!

Have fun with it.

 

 

I think I have been asking Laura for as long as we’ve been married if we could buy a boat. The answer was always “we don’t need a boat…” She was right. When we lived in San Jose there weren’t many places to take a boat. Anderson Lake was close, but not that big, and anything big enough to take into the ocean in Santa Cruz or San Francisco was a bit out of our league. (more…)