How the International Space Station ruined my Wednesday morning.

Remember a few weeks ago when the White House issued the "This isn't the petition response you're looking for" response to the request that the US build the Death Star?  I was reading it, and laughing, when my older son asked what was so funny.  He is a Star Wars fan, so I read part of it to him.  He was pretty interested in the International Space Station, so we followed the links in the response to NASA's page, where we learned how to see the Space Station in your own back yard.  It turns out NASA will e-mail or text you when the Space Station should be visible in your zip code.

My son was thrilled.  He received a much-wanted telescope for Christmas, and was just certain he could use it to get an even better look at the space station.  We are learning how to use the telescope, but I doubt our ability to capture a moving object, so I suggested the first time we received notice the Space Station would be flying overhead, we just try to find it with our naked eyes.  We live near an airport, and he insists that every plane he sees flying above us must be the Space Station.

Tuesday night we received our first e-mail that the Space Station would be near us.  The e-mail detailed that the Space Station would be visible for four minutes, appearing in the northwest, and heading towards the southeast.  All starting at 6:25 a.m. Wednesday morning.  Unfortunately, it was raining Tuesday night, and the cloud cover was forecast to last through Wednesday.  I told my son I'd wake him up, and we would just have to see what we could see.

I had dreams of going to watch the Space Station all night.  I dreamed I was back in the house I grew up in, gathering my neighbors to watch.  I dreamed we watched from our back deck in Boston.  It was sort of nuts.  I woke up at 6:15 and checked the cloud cover.  There were a lot of clouds, but you could see some of the sky, and some stars, so I thought it was worth a shot.  I went to my son's room, and told him he had to wake up to try and see the Space Station.  He shot straight up.  This never happens.  He is a terror to wake up in the morning.  His pleasant reaction did not last long though.  He tried to get out of bed, and immediately started crying because his foot was asleep, and he couldn't walk.  He started crying that he was going to miss his only chance to see the Space Station.  I told him I'd carry him down the stairs.

We turned off the house alarm, and headed outside.  He saw that it was cloudy, and started crying again.  He was never going to see the Space Station.  It wasn't worth it!  (Still not sure what he means by that.)  He went back inside, where he said he wasn't going to eat breakfast or do anything else.  I tried to convince him to go back outside with me, explaining that by staying inside, he had a zero percent chance of seeing the Space Station, but if he went outside, his chances could only improve!  He was having nothing to do with logic.  I said fine, we'd try again next time, but he was convinced it would be cloudy again then.  He will never see the Space Station.  I told him if that was going to be his attitude, I'd turn off the notifications, and we wouldn't worry about it.  He proceeded to pout through breakfast.  As he was getting ready to go out the door for school, I asked why he looked so sad, and he almost broke into tears again, and said that I said I was going to take away his telescope.  Goodness gracious child, I said nothing of the sort.  Nothing would convince him that I wasn't going to take away his telescope.

And then I got into a fight with my husband over the shirt my son was wearing because we were all short tempered from dealing with the Space Station spotting debacle, I was pissed off my whole commute in, and ended up packing absolute crap for my breakfast and lunch because I was just throwing food into the bag.

So NASA, my son has a request.  The next time you make the Space Station fly over our house, can you make sure it isn't cloudy, please?

2012 Book 26; 2013 Book 1

I did not meet my goal of reading 30 new books in 2012; I made it only to 26.  I didn't want to read just to get to the goal though, and I finished the year on a book from a series that I really enjoy.  Book 26 was Cold Days, by Jim Butcher.  My father-in-law introduced me to this series several years ago, and I love it.  I also appreciate that the author releases new books in the series on a regular basis, but doesn't seem to rush so much that the quality of the story telling declines.  I did find the pop culture references and Harry's ha-ha, aren't I funny side comments to be a bit too much in this book though.  I think the editor should have reigned that in a bit.  

So, on to 2013.  The goal for this year is 25 new books.  Book 1 is A Memory of Light, by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan.  My husband introduced me to the Wheel of Time series right before our wedding ten years ago.  I think I reread the first 15 pages or so three or four times before finally sitting down to just read it.  I remember confronting him the next morning that he hadn't warned me about the trollocs, when he knew that I was going to just read a chapter or two before going to sleep.  Who can sleep in the middle of a trolloc attack?  I stayed up way too late reading that night.  I read through book 9, Winter's Heart, by that summer.  I then suffered through Crossroads of Twilight, and despaired of the series ever ending if this little plot advancement was going to happen.  But then Knife of Dreams was wonderful.  And then Robert Jordan died.  I always read for the story, and was excited when Brandon Sanderson was named to finish the series, as I though his Elantris was a wonderful work of story telling.  I suppose telling someone else's story takes a slightly different skill.  The characters weren't quite the same, the story wasn't quite the same.   But I'm glad it was finished anyway.  Even though when I finished, I put the book down, looked up at my husband (who hadn't finished reading it yet) and said "Lame."  I know Jordan wrote the epilogue, and Sanderson can't be blamed for it, but I can't help but wonder if the way Jordan would have written the final chapters before the epilogue would have made a difference.    

The Chess Table, aka When DIY Goes Wrong

Once upon a time, I bought a chess table cheap off Craigslist, and attempted to refinish it all on my own.  Sometimes things just don't work out according to plan.

 It all started with this little guy.  Cute, structurally sound chess table in need of a home and some love.

I totally misread the Craigslist ad though, and overlooked that it was only 15 inches tall.  That's barely taller than our kitten, Thor.  Thor is unimpressed.

At first I was in denial.  Certainly I could just find some short stools or chairs, and this would still be a great table!  Alas, my thrift store hunting left me empty handed.  I found one chair that would work, but chess is better played with two.  So then I had the brilliant idea to just get new legs.  A search of Home Depot, and I came home with four of these poplar 26 inch sticks.  The pre-made table legs all seemed to grand (read expensive).

I also walked out with two small jars of stain.  One in a color called Kona, the other Golden Pecan.  I started sanding, in preparation for application of what I thought would be beautiful new stain.  I sanded and sanded, and developed a new callous on my thumb.  Someday I will invest in a hand sander.

So the color on the can of Kona looked like a dark brown with darker areas of the grain almost black.  When I opened the can, I thought "wow, this looks really dark, I wonder if I should trade it for a different color.  But I want to stain this now! I'm sure it will be fine."  Someday I will learn that it is better to get it right than get it quickly.  That stain was black.  The instructions said to wipe off in 10-15 minutes, I started wiping in off after 5.  You could barely see the wood grain.

I carried on though, thinking that once the lighter squares were the Golden Pecan color, it would look better. It didn't.

Google told me that stain stripper likely wouldn't work on new stain.  I tried anyway.  It sort of worked.  It lightened the stain at least.  My options were to leave the thing in the garage for a year and try stripping it again, re-sanding the whole thing, or just carrying on.  I chose the later.

I went back to Home Depot and chose Black Cherry.  It looked like a warm dark brown.  I opened the jar at home, and the stain looked purple.  Having totally failed to learn my lesson with the Kona, I applied it anyway.  Yep, purple.  Argh.  At that point, I decided to just stick with the Kona.  The Kona over the Black Cherry ended up looking ok though.  I pretty much started wiping the stain off as soon as it was applied, but the purple under the black ended up looking fine.

I attached the new legs, gave the whole thing a coating of polyurethane, and called it done.  I'm calling it the daddy long legs chess table.  I suppose not every project can work out.  After the holidays, I may start cruising Craigslist for a game table again.  This time, we'll just put our existing board on top of it.

How we used our parents' night out

The kids' daycare hosted a parents' night out last night.  For $45, they fed the kids dinner, played games, and had a party, until 10:30 pm.  Not a bad deal for all three kids!  We were going to go to a movie, but there wasn't anything at our local theater that we really wanted to see, and we were too lazy to go farther away.

Instead, when we got home from work we changed our clothes and went running.  We weren't sure if the park where my husband usually runs was lighted or not, so we just ran a loop around the neighborhood.  I loved seeing all of the Christmas lights.  We went running together on Veterans' Day as well (day off for us, but not for the kids!), and that was the first time I'd been running since the Too Hot to Handle race in July.  I am getting lazy.

I signed my husband up for the Too Cold to Hold 10 mile race, but wimped out and signed myself up for the 5 mile course.  I just want to run a race all the way through, without stopping to walk, and I know I'd be setting myself up to fail if I singed up for 10 miles.  I'm looking forward to the race though, and hopefully having the race to prepare for will encourage me to get off my ass and run more than two times in five months!

We did 4 miles, and my slow pace, but it was a nice run.  I could have made it another mile, but had set 4 as my goal, and was looking forward to going out to eat without the kids!

2012 Reading Challenge - Book #25

Book #25 was The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart.  We bought this book for my oldest son last Christmas, and started reading it in February, after we finished a How to Train Your Dragon book.  We didn't read this book every night, but we also didn't take many breaks from reading it either - it is a long book to read aloud!  It was a change for us, as the How to Train Your Dragon books are clearly written with the idea that they are likely to be read aloud by the adult.  The Mysterious Benedict Society  is not as suited for reading aloud, but I also think many young readers would struggle to read it independently, so I'm left a bit unsure as to what age group the book is intended for.  My son, who was turning 6 when we started it, and is now almost 7, was able to follow along fairly well, although he did forget some characters who are prominent in early chapters and then disappear until the final chapter.  The characters are well developed, and my son found the children's plotting and tricks hilarious.  He is eager to start the next book in the series, but we have convinced him to take a break with this series, and we'll come back to it in a year or so. 

My son wants to read The Chronicles of Narnia next.  I'm excited to read them to him, but am also a bit disappointed that I won't be able to count them towards the 2013 Reading Challenge, as only new reads count.  My goal for 2012 was 30 books, and it doesn't look like I'm going to make it. 

Craigslist find turned homework desk

Two or so weeks ago, I was searching Craigslist for a table.  We want to put a chess table in our developing game room, but really don't want to spend several hundred dollars.  I'd seen one on Craigslist that was just a regular end table, but had a hand painted chess board on top.  They also wanted $500 for it.  It gave me the idea of maybe buying a card table or larger end table, and painting on the chess board myself.  I hoped to find one with a drawer or two, so we could store the chess pieces there when we weren't playing.  My husband was less sold on the idea, but wasn't going to stop me from just looking, and I was sure I could convince him to at least let me try if I found a cheap enough table.  So as I'm looking, there is an add for a desk/table that catches my eye.  It was only $20, but wasn't what I was looking for in a game table at all.  But I do need a desk in our study, and thought it might make a nice table in the entry way too.  I thought about it for a few hours, then mentioned it to my husband.  He rolled his eyes and told me to just get it.  For $20, it was worth taking a shot.  I texted the seller, and arranged to pick it up after the kids' afternoon sports were over.

 This is what it looked like when we got it home.  You can't see the color really well here, but the bottom was painted a greenish blue, and the top was a lightly stained wood.  There was a spot on the top that looked like something hot had been left there, and the stain sort of melted and was peeling away from it.  The paint on the legs was a bit cracked and peeling, so even if I wanted to keep the color, a paint job was called for.  But then my plans were derailed by my older son.  He saw it, and immediately asked if it could be his homework desk.  I am a sucker, so I said yes.


 I asked him what color he wanted to paint it, and first he said rainbow stripes.  I told him that was beyond my painting skills.  He asked if we could do stripes at all, and I conceded that stripes on the top might be possible, but the bottom would have to be all one color.  He chose black, white, and grey stripes on top, with a black bottom.  First though, we had done a google image search for striped desk, and found this one.  It satisfied my son's desire for rainbows, but made me want to cry at the thought of taping off all those stripes.  After reading the blog, and learning it was all done with tape, I was almost willing to give it a shot, but decided that without a glass or fake glass top, the edges would get gummy too quickly in our house.  So on to black and white it was.  I took the desk outside to begin sanding it down, and found some bonus items in the drawer!  Potentially useful items included several lighters, some mini-cigars, and a screwdriver.  Neither of us smokes though, and the lighters were empty, but hey, the screwdriver works!  And I have always been of the opinion that you can't have enough screwdrivers.  There was also a lonely poker chip, and scorecards from an unidentified game.  Off to the trash went everything but the screwdriver.

 I went to Home Depot, and asked for a sample pot in black, and one in white.  As they were mixing the black, I wandered over to the "oops" paint shelf.  I should have looked there first!  There were quart sized cans of black and an off-white for $2 each!  The sample pots are only $3ish, but they are a lot smaller.  Lesson learned.  Always check the oops shelf first.  I always wonder how cans end up there.  The custom mixed stuff always comes with a "not returnable" label, and the paint guy is always careful to remind me that they can't refund me if I don't like the color once it is mixed.  Are other customers just more pushy than me?  Are the oops cans ones that customers left behind or forgot about while they were being mixed?  Or are they really oops cans, where the computer added the wrong amount of a colorant, or the employee used the wrong brand/size/finish paint?

I chaperoned my son's field trip one morning, then had the rest of the day off, so started things off.  I gave everything a good sanding, and then just jumped in.  The black took 3-4 coats.  The white top took 3.  I sort of messed up the white top at first, when I inadvertently went back over a coat that wasn't all the way dry.  The brush pulled up some of the paint, and there were gummy paint strings all across the top. I walked away for about an hour, then came back and sanded those down, and started the next coat.  When my son saw it, he was immediately mad, thinking I was not going to do the stripes.  I explained that it was easier to do the base all one color, then paint the stripes on that, rather than try to do stripes of every color.  He seemed satisfied.  He also changed his mind about the grey, and decided just black and white would work.

After a bit of discussion regarding how wide the stripes should be, he decided they should be exactly the width of the painter's tape.  Made it easy for me, as I just cut two small tabs of tape that I then moved down the table as I added strips of tape across the desk.  No tape measure needed!  I started painting, and my son was skeptical.  He thought it would all end up black.  He liked it when we pulled off the tape to reveal the stripes.  There were some areas where the black paint bled under the tape, but nothing too bad.  Some of the spots I touched up a bit with a small brush and the white paint.  If I knew I was doing a stripes project again, I'd go with the heavy duty painter's tape, but I just used the roll I'd bought when I painted the door.

With the paint on the top and base done, it was time to paint the drawer.  I thought I'd paint it white, and do the pulls black, but my son disagreed.  He waned the drawer striped too.  I was not about to try to paint vertical stripes on the drawer -- too many curves and corners for me to feel confident about taping it.  Then he asked if we could do the front rectangle face black, and the surrounding area white.  That seemed much less labor intensive, so I agreed.  He wanted the pulls black too.  I think they blend in a bit too much, and doing them white, or going to the store and choosing some silver or white would have been a better choice, but as he reminded me, it is his desk, and his choice.
I put a few coats of polyurethane on, and was surprised how hard I found it to get the coats nice and light.  No matter how thin I tried to apply it, I ended up catching drips off the side.  I may try a spray-on poly next time.  But the end result was nice and shiny, and I hope it will help make the desk more cleaning friendly.

I moved the desk in to the living room, and now we are on the hunt for a chair to go along with it!  I hope my son will enjoy his striped desk!

Book #24 - The Tourist

Book #24 was The Tourist, by Olen Steinhauer.  It was a fun spy thriller.  And I love finding a series after the author has already written a few books - the instant gratification of being able to pick up the next one in the series is great.