We have A/C............

Yesterday Sid and I installed the ceiling fan and the A/C Mini-Split. Both are working beautifully and we are feeling pretty spiffy. We are ready for the final inspection and expect to complete the floor over the long weekend.

Meanwhile the fridge has been repaired and the last of the Sharma's belonging have been moved in here. We are within sight of restoring order to our lives.

Preselect Soccer?

Sheela has been invited to join a pre-select soccer team in the fall. She's still too young to play select (a more competetive game than what we are doing now). But apparently those that take their soccer seriously can't be held back by age limits. The practice coaches would be former winners of the World Cup from Argentina. The game coaches would be parental volunteers because we'd be playing in a volunteer league. Practices would be held twice a week -- this is in addition to the twice a week practices for her regular team and the regular games for both teams. She's really excited about it but I think that she's going to get real tired of soccer really fast at this rate.

Sid finishes cutting the edges in on the accent walls.

We finished painting the ceiling Monday night and then stayed up way too late painting the first two walls. The drywall was unprimed and the paint was, er, aged so it took many more coats than we'd anticipated. Luckily or neighbor Brenda dropped by around 10 PM and stayed for hours helping us get those two walls done. Since we used so much of the paint getting good coverage on those walls we decided we needed to get more to finish up. So we choose a new color for the remaining two walls and finished them up on Tuesday night. It's rather a soft brown and came out to be very pretty and it looks great with the streaks in the tile in the entryway. The satellite dish has been installed so we have TV and Computer capabilities in this room already (and we are working around the TV and the laptop). The refridfgerator repairman is due today to fix the short in the new fridge (which we've also been working around). Tonight we'll either install the A/C mini-split or tackle the wood (laminate)floor.

The kids seem to be pretty happy about having Grandma and Grandpa move in. 

We have actual dining room furniture in the actual dining room.  

Sid finished the ceiling texture while Dr. Sharma and I worked on the wall texture. We should be ready to paint by tomorrow. 

Comcast

Our cable connection went on the fritz last week (both internet and TV) and the best Comcast could manage was 10 days for a repair man to come out. So we cancelled both services. We are getting a satellite dish Tuesday anyway and the TV we were getting wasn't worth the effort. However less than 24 hours after the Sharmas put in their request for a new internet connection the guys had come out and installed it. Of course to do that he had to replace the damaged line so now we have both service again. Even the technician said that the company only cares about bringing in new business.

Soccer and Refrigerators

We decided that we really do need two refrigerators to keep us supplied with cold drinks and perishable foods so Sid bought a used fridge on his way home with what he thought was a van full of last minute items from his parents house. The guy was unable to deliver the fridge any time soon so Sid rearranged the van load and wedged it in. Unfortunately it shorts out when we try to plug it in. Back to the drawing board.

Sheela has another soccer game today. The back up goalie didn't show again so Sheela had to stay in goal the whole game. That's three games in a row, she'd like a little bit of a break. They lost this game 4-2, but it was one of the best played and most exciting games they've had. Their opponent is placed 1st in the league and the Stingers have now dropped down to fourth. They have a week off for 4th of July and then playoffs will be the 9th.

Chaos reigns

Almost everything has been moved physically in to our house from the Sharma's old house. We mostly lack the contents of the pantry and the refrigerator. Since the new family room is not yet habitable, almost everything has been piled into the living room. So really, now there is no place at all to sit downstairs. Normally we'd choose to go sit upstairs in the game room, but both the internet and the cable are out so the game room has lost some of its appeal. Things will be more settled soon.

Moving Day

Our family is getting larger today, Dr. And Mrs. Sharma are moving in. I hadn't really thought about it before I got to work today, but I'm getting out of most of the work of moving them. That is one of the hidden perks of working for a living.

I've cancelled our Cable Internet. It's been out since Sunday night and the best they can schedule is five more days for a service call. We are going to get rid of cable TV too. With the extra TVs in the house the better deal will be satellite TV.

McKinney Food Bank

In the name of charity, we had our annual summer cook-out at work yesterday. This year we coupled it with a food drive and silly games. We were more or less required to participate in the "centipede" race. Teams of five people and four beach balls running 50 feet -- no hands allowed to keep those beach balls in place. My team nearly won all three times -- and yet we didn't. The first time I wiped out scuffing most of the skin off of the right side of my body, but the other teams dropped a ball or two when they stopped to watch, so we all had to run back and start over. Again every team dropped a ball and we had to do it yet again. Just as we crossed the finish line one of our team reached back and touched the ball behind him. Oh well it was fun and the bleeding stopped fairly soon. Then we had a water balloonl toss and a three-legged race. The balloon broke on me once and on Barbara once but it felt pretty good. It was over a hundred degrees here yesterday and humid to boot. I skipped the three-legged race in favor of eating popcorn and cotton candy. Then we spent a few hours dunking our managers and VIPs in the dunking booth. Next came a fajita lunch and ice cream sundaes.
We didn't get much work done but we collected almost $1000 plus a ton of food for the food bank. And a good time was had by all.

My newest product line -- OsteoMax. This is essentially the same product that I was making ten years ago. Thankfully I don't have to make this one -- I just push papers for it. 

The four versions of OsteoMax 

Delivery Techniques - yes, these are my hands 

Acetabular Reconstruction 

BladeRunner Trigger Finger Release Device

This is one of the new products that I released this month. I helped develop the manufacturing procedures and specify the parts and materials used to make the device. It is being used on live patients for the first time today.... so let's hope for the best. I was not the hand model used in this flyer.

Just in case anyone feels like explaining the procedure to your friends.....

Haircuts

We took five inches off of Sheela's hair over the weekend. She looks just the same and it's still long enough to pull back in her prefered ponytail but now it's short enough for her to brush it herself. This is better all the way around.

Sunil and Sid both got their hair buzzed again too. I like it short, they both look great and Sunil let's me play with his head.

Tile and more....

Mark did come over and put the tile down in the entryway yesterday.
He also floated the walls for us. Last night Sid put in the grout.
No we have to figure out how to patch, texture and paint the walls and the
ceiling, put down the wood floor and seal the grout before
Friday. Sid has to take care of some repairs at the rental properties
today, plus the tax protests. Wednesday is a full day of wine
deliveries. I might be able to work in a day off to help, but if he
isn't there I wont be much good. We may not have the room ready for
Friday.

Brian - It was nice to chat with you. I love checking in on all of your adventures too.

Instead of stressing about it we went swimming with Rick and Ericka
and then let Rick cook us dinner. A pretty good plan all the way
around if I do say so myself.

As an official kick off for Summer it's supposed to be 101 degrees
tomorrow, with humidity around 70%. Welcome to Texas. We will
celebrate at work with a fajita lunch, ice cream and the opportunity
to dunk our managers in an icy cold dunking booth.

Spaghetti Squash

The compost/dirt that we threw into the old whiskey barrel has started to produce produce. The squash plant has trailing vines nearly six feet long with at least 20 flowers and we already have five squash growing where the first five flowers were. The watermelon vines have produced only three or four flowers but we have high hopes there too. The tomato plants are growing taller and need to be moved to a different pot so that we can stake and cover them. Dr. Sharma brought us a large pot for just that purpose we just didn't get to it over the weekend.

Drywall

The drywall is finally up, but not yet taped or plastered. We ended up doing that ourselves too. So far the only thing Sid hasn't had to handle was the extra electrical outlets. It's looking good but taking up way too much of our time.

Sid and I did manage a night out Saturday night. We went to Paparazzi, one of my favorite Italian restaurants and one that is just starting to carry Sid's wine.

Third Place

The Stingers appear to have moved into thrid place in the girls under seven league. Its still not official but I'm not sure why. They only have one more regular season game before the playoffs. They have two very short Summer seasons. Sheela would like to play the next round too but she will be out of town for most of it. We'll play that by ear.

Dinner cruise on Lake Lewisville

Sid's brother-in-law, Brian, won a dinner cruise for four on Lake Lewisville but was unable to get here for the night. Brian and Sushama live in Longview which is about two hours away. We got the cruise by default. The boat was basically a two-story party barge that had seen better days. It held about 50 people, half either worked at the radio station (the Word, 100.7 Christian Talk Radio) or were paid sponsors of the radio station, the other half off us were winners. The dinner was catered from Johnny Carino's Country Italian and was great. The weather was perfect. I enjoyed a chair massage and we won tickets to Six Flags.

I've been invited to the vine-cutting ceremony for the Dallas Zoo's new Tamarin exhibit. I think that I will play hookey from work and take Sid as my guest.

The turkey vulture came back for breakfast.

The turkey vulture was having rabbit for breakfast this morning in the park across the street. He's almost as tall as Sunil and has a wing span as wide as my arms. Both the kids came out to watch him for awhile. We haven't seen him much this year but last fall he flew right over us a few times so that we could appreciate his full size.

The team has been built.

Today was our (the Operations Team) annual team building excercise at work. Operations consists of the manufacturing personnel, the quality inspectors, failure analysis, purchase/planning, shipping/receiving and manufacturing engineering (that's me). We ended up with 82 people. We had a buffet lunch, and hour of bowling, a basketball free throw tournament, a skeeball tournament and laser tag. It was all moderately fun except for the laser tag which was awesome. I haven't gotten to act that much like an idiot in a long time... it was great. If I hadn't shot my own teammates about ten times too many I would have had the high score in our match. I will definitely go do that again. It's $8 per person for a 12 minute match. Teams can be as large as 16. We played 5-8 member teams.

We passed the inspections and Sid finished the siding and insulation. We still need to trim it out and paint. The drywall should go up inside tomorrow. 

Sid had a big day today.....

The garage door is down. The framing is complete. The electrical work is finished. The doors and window have been installed. We are ready for inspection.

I've learned a new skill.....

This post was sent via email. Color me talented, or at least no
longer totally inept.

Sunil is still pretty little and yet......

he has the imagination of three children wedged into that little body. I should probably say three animals, he still spends the majority of his time as a tiger. This particular tiger can morph into a dinosaur, puppy, house cat or lion just by blinking his eyes or taking a deep breath. I'd bet that he talked for nearly six hours today without stopping and every fifth sentence started with "let's pretend I'm a....."

Another busy Saturday is done....

The soccer game was a tie, 2-2. This was pretty good, last week we got shut out by the same team. Sheela had to stay in the goal for the whole game, the other goalie is out of town.

Ericka, one of Sheela's good friends is spending the night tonight. Sheela has only been asleep for an hour and Ericka just now fell asleep. It's 11:30! Sunil has been out for hours but has already had two nightmares. This has the makings of a very long night.

Dad, thanks for calling, it was good to talk to you!

Home Depot Kids Projects

It's only taken us four years to actually take the kids to the Home Depot on the kids' craft day. Today they were making CD crates. This activity sponsored by the movie Madagascar.

On to something new...

It's nearly 10:00 PM and Sid and the electricians are just getting started downstairs. I should have a few uninterrupted hours to read. The latest book is Hoax by Robert K. Tanenbaum. This is the last in a string of 15 books covering the life and career of a New York County DA. I've read them all since Christmas (some of them I'd read before). There is nothing more economical than a library card!

The rabbit appears to have moved in under the shed.

The shed is nearly finished (still needs vents) and is fully loaded. 

The garage has been emptied.

Okay, it's not empty, but the only items that remain are the freezer and stuff related to the remodeling. My next goal will have to be to bring order to the inside of the shed. Luckily I've only an hour of daylight left after the kids go to bed so I'm not working too hard. Sid, on the other hand, has to rip down the drywall, arrange for the electrician, take down the garage door, frame the new wall, install the doors and window, buy the a/c unit, etc.....

The outer wall framing has been exposed. June 9, 2005 

Sid removes drywall in order to add insulation and more electrical outlets. 

Book of the Day

I started a new book last night, Motorcycle Ride On the Sea of Tranquility, by Patricia Santana. It's set in 1969 San Deigo, CA. The narrator's favorite brother returns from Vietnam, but he isn't the same brother that she remembers. There's just enough Spanish in there to keep me on my toes and not so much that my weak linguistics will interfere with the story.

Just about the time I was really getting in to it, Sid wanted me to help move the garage junk into the new shed. Sure, it's still 90 degrees, humid and dark.... the perfect time to move junk in to an unventilated box with no light. Actually, we got quite a bit done and it was starting to cool off. We should finish up tonight and be ready for the garage remodeling to begin whenever they can get going.

Blake, Sid and Sunil get a little bit wet. 

Water is good. 

Sheela and Sid enjoying a rainy day. 

Climbing Partners

Boldering July 2004 (Exposure Rock Gym)

Sheela started to climb with me last July and we just haven't been able to fit enough of it in. But we both really love it and we like that it's a sport that we can do together so we will make the effort to go a little bit more often. Sheela isn't quite strong enough to belay for me so either it's a whole night of her climbing or we have to bring along some other friends. She's growing taller and stronger all the time, pretty soon it will be just us.

Speed Racer or Superman? 

Speed Racer

Sunil's first comment upon waking this morning was that he'd had a really nice dream. He wakes up slowly in the mornings and tends to burrow back under the covers. He went on to describe his dream about race cars. He was driving a red, yellow and blue car with numbers on the sides. He wasn't on a track but was driving on both streets and sidewalks. Apparently he won the race but he was most excited about being allowed to drive.

The whole family. This picture was taken in March of 2005. 

Welcome

I'd like to spend some time bragging about my children, and then a little bit of time just catching up on the little things that make our life our life.

Right now my husband, Sid, and I have two of own children. Sheela is seven and a half (that half is important to children) and Sunil has recently turned four (he has asked to be five tomorrow but we can't seem to work it out). Until last week we had a foster son too. His name is Blake and he lives with his mother again now. In the Fall we should be ready to have another foster child... a girl this time, maybe five or six years old.