Hello again. I
figured I wouldn’t wait so long to send out another update this time
so here goes!
April had us
finishing the rock portion of the front yard xeriscaping,
racing, and visiting friends.
-Apr 16 – I took a
half-day off to finish the spreading the rock on the front yard. It
snowed some in the morning so I had to shovel the section where the rock was to
go. The delivery truck showed up anddumped the rock on the
driveway. The minimum delivery is two tons which happened to be around
40% more than we needed. Thus I put the extra rock on the path running
along the side of the house. Getting the rock in place was a huge weight
off my shoulders. In total we used 10.5 tons of rock.
-Apr 18th weekend
– We attended the second rallycross event of the season at the United States
Truck Driving School (USTDS). Rain was threatening all
morning and finally arrived right as we broke for lunch.
Luckily for Susan and myself we didn’t have to drive immediately
after the storm passed as the fresh mud made for very slow times for the first
run group drivers.
It was at this point
that an unhappy medical emergency occurred when a driver had a seizure while
waiting for his turn to drive. It was a scary situation but luckily we
had two EMTs that also were racing that day. Ambulances arrived shortly
thereafter and whisked away the now dazed
driver and shortly after we were able to continue the event (much to
everyone’s relief he was fine and went home from the hospital later
that night).
We had just bought a
new video camera the week before and got to mount it to the car while
we raced. It’s different than our older cameras in that it has GPS built
in and can overlay fun data on the screen like speed,
g-forces, and course layout. It’s not perfectly accurate but
added to the fun once we got home andwatched the videos (click here to see a video of Susan driving). We both drove well with me coming in
3rdfollowed uncomfortably closely by Susan who came in 4th out
of 23 drivers in our class.
The next day our
college friend Matt Newcomer, his wife Jana, and their little girl
Elle (pronounced “Ellie”, don’t ask) came over for lunch and a
chat. It was really nice to see them and visit. Elle was
shy but liked petting the pugs. Jana is pregnant with their second
child and is calling the procreation thing quits after he is
born. Matt has recently been promoted to Sergeant allowing Jana to become
a stay at home mom. Jana is very dedicated to her new
role and filled us in on many of the nuances involved. Matt was
largely silent during much of these exchanges as I imagine he’d probably heard
most of it before. They are a cute familyand we’re sure their kids
will grow up to be awesome adults.
-Apr 24 – We attended
a miracle berry party at our neighbor’s house (the Tiedemans). This was
our third experience with the berries (thanks Em!) but the first which had us
eating tablets instead of the actual berries. Susan and I
agreed that the effect was slightly less miraculous but lasted a lot
longer. There was a plethora of different fruits and other food
to eat which all tasted great. The strangest thing to us was our wine
which became almost too sweet to drink. For the first time in quite a
while we played dirty books. Although the house rules were different
Susan and I managed to destroy the other two teams (thank you cruise
marathon training sessions!). Of course we all had a good time.
May had
Susan and Kari installing plants in the front yard, another race
(with a shocking but not-so-shocking-to-me outcome), more fun with the
neighbors, and a temporary foster pug named Emerson.
One the Saturday of
the first weekend of May Susan and Kari bought a bunch of
plants to put along the path next to the driveway. Previously
Susan and I had found several heavily-used industrial steam table
containers (I originally wrote “mixing bowls” but that’s not technically
correct, right Susan?) at Arc Thrift which were perfect to hold the plants
(they also appealed to our hipster hearts). While Susan and Kari
filled up the containers with interesting plants I did my part by keeping them
entertained with philosophical banter. Sophie got to hang out while they
worked too as she was very unhappy knowing Susan was around but not in her
immediate vicinity inside the house. The plants ran out before the
containers but nonetheless, just before dark, they placed the bowls along the
path (if the neighbors ask about the pots with just soil we’ll tell them there
are seeds in them). Susan and Kari did a great job!
The next day was
another rallycross at Colorado Off-Road Extreme. We raced in the lower
course and I had high hopes of winning. In this regard the day
started off well but I eventually undermined my performance with overaggressive
driving resulting in a lot of penalty cones being hit. Susan, on the
other hand, drove very well and BEAT ME handily for 5th place and was
only a whisker from getting 4th (I came in 6th).
Susan got much earned applause when I read off the results to everyone after
the event.
The next Friday night
had us at the Tiedemans again for shepherd’s pie, dice, and Sushi
Go. This was our first time playing Sushi Go with
them and everyone took to it well. The shepherd’s pie was very
tasty (we were worried).
One Tuesday the 19th Susan,
Kari, and myself went to the Ogden theater to see the band
Streetlight Manifesto. They play “ska” music (kind of like punk with
horns) and put on a great show. Susan’s work has indoor
parking and is only a few blocks away from the venue so we parked
there. After the show Susan then gave us a tour of her office. The
only bummer of the night was knowing that we all had to get up early the next
morning for work. Otherwise it was a lot of fun.
The next Sunday had us
driving to Aurora to pick up a foster pug named Emerson. He is a pug mix
of some kind originally from Louisiana who then went to Texas before being
transported to Colorado. He has heart worm (the reason he was given
up) and is only one year old. Emerson stayed in our care for
only two days but it was enough to once again convince me our decision to not
take on any more foster pugs was a good one. He is very much still a
puppy and generally terrorized the other older pugs wanting to
play. As he is a male he also marked around the house. Emerson
immediately bonded with Susan and would flop onto her
lap and nuzzle her face whenever she sat on the couch. He is
very adorable and sweet and we’re confident he’ll be
adopted quickly after he is cured of the heart worm.
On Memorial Day the
Tiedemans invited us and a few friends over for a
BBQ and games. As we’d seen them twice in the past month we
turned them down. Just kidding; we went. Our friends Jeff,
Ken, andRandy along with Randy’s parents Bob and Mona also were
there. Bob and Mona collect Volkswagen buses from the
60s and we learned a few of their virtues. We were treated to
gigantic hamburgers with traditional sides. After we ate Susan went
home and brought back Cabo which we played for the rest of the
evening. We all love Cabo a lot. Everyone had a fun time.
This last Friday night
had us making our own wine at Ken and Randy’s house. We had
been given a wine kit several months ago and Ken’s pestering of us to
make it finally paid off. Ken and Randy brew their own beer and make
wine on occasion so it was old hat to them. There was a lot of cleaning
of implements andsome stirring. In a week we’ll go
back and perform another step and then I think we wait six
weeks to it to ferment. After that we played Cabo and Golf
(card game) with them along with some friends of theirs for the remainder of
the evening. Much fun!
The next day I decided
to finally install an aftermarket electronic boost control on our rally
car. It should not have taken me most of the afternoon but did.
Once I figured out what I was supposed to do it was, of course, relatively
simple. The car’s computer needed to be tuned so the engine wouldn’t
experience catastrophic failure so we drove (very gently) to
Alvin and Kari’s house so he could perform the necessary
changes. John and Karen Puskas were also there helping Alvin
mount new doors on their shed so we picked up BBQ stuffs and ate
dinner with them.
Yesterday I decided to
wash off the rally car’s engine and get gas. It was about
halfway through this epic journey when the engine got very upset. I
managed to get home and after checking several things found out that
in cleaning the engine I somehow got water under the ignition
coil and on top of the spark plug. I’m not exactly sure how
this was possible (it was under the engine cover and protected by a
rubber seal) but there was no doubt about what happened. We were already
having issues with the ignition coils so decided to finally order new
parts. Fortunately no lasting damage was done and the car should run
better after installing them.
Other stuffs:
The pugs are doing
alright despite the shock of having Emerson live with us for a couple of
days. In the lastupdate Tweetie had tweaked her
back and was on pain medicine. I’m happy to report that she
seems to have fully recovered as is back to running up and down the
stairs on her own without any pain. Satchel is still
surly and Sophie is still enamored with Susan. Bella is so
lick-crazy she licks my guitars after I play (so gross). This has nothing
to do with the fact that I leave a couple of guitars on the couch for the sake
of convenience.
I decided to break up
my newly named band Sledgicide citing irreconcilable differences. Charles
wanted to try and “make it” while I just wanted to have fun. It
was an amicable split and I hope to see Charles on stage at a music
festival this next summer (though I wouldn’t make any bets on it). In
other music news I traded in my old practice amp for a new practice amp.
Susan was tired of hearing me complain and told me to “get it over
with and just buy a new one.” Thus I did. My playing is
sporadic (I won’t play for a few daysand then I’ll have a four hour
self-jam session) but I’m still loving it. One of these days I’ll start
recording again.
Both
Susan and myself are still employed and like our
jobs. For some reason I can’t explain well I decided to stop working out
about a year ago and I’m just now getting into a new routine. I
am very sore right now, to the point where my shoulders hurt while I rest my
arms on my desk as I type this update. It’s a good soreness
though. When my arms are so tired I can barely reach up to wash my hair I
figure I got a decent workout.
We hope this finds you
happy and healthy!
Max and Susan
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