Washington D.C.

Now that I have made the trip back to "Blog land" I decided to stay a while and tell you a little more about what has been going on with me. Last month I went to Washington as a Chaperon with Hannah and her orchestra from school. I had never been to Washington so I decided it was a great opportunity to see the sites and spend some time with Hannah and it turned out to be a great trip. I would say the only down side to the trip was that the travel agent packed so much into the trip that we never had enough time to enjoy what we were seeing because we were so rushed. All in all though it was great. We did all the war memorials, the Lincoln Memorial and that kind of stuff on the first night we were there and it was cool to see those things all light up at night.






Because it was at night most of the pictures were not that great but here is a good picture if good old Abe. We also had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe which the kids all loved, but for me it was just another burger and fries that we wolfed down in a hurry. The next day we saw Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier and we got there just in time for the changing of the guard and a wreath laying ceremony. That was very impressive.







From there we got to go on a tour of The White House which was also very cool. Since the Obama administration took over tours have been hard to come by but our travel agent, who is a former teacher from Duluth High School once taught a girl who is now in the military and her job is to arrange all tours and events at the white house so we got lucky as scored a visit.
As it turns out the Obama's were lovely hosts and we had a wonderful visit although had I known ahead of time that I would be meeting the president that day I would have dressed a little different but hopefully nobody noticed my poor choice of shirts.





As it turns out we hit it off pretty well and I was invited back for dinner, but I did manage to spruce up a little before dinner.





If you are wondering about the microphones in front of us, it turns out the Obama's have started a tradition they call "karaoke desert" and just to show their were no hard feelings about the tee shirt mishap earlier in the day Barak and I teamed up for rousing version of Ebony and Ivory that brought the house down. I would say a good time was had by all.
Ok, I admit I made that last part up, but we did tour the white house and Barak was in Mexico at the time. We also went to the Smithsonian Institute but again we only had about three hours to cram in as much as possible and that's just not enough time.



On our final night in Washington we got to go to The Kennedy Center and see The National Symphony perform. We were told ahead of time that our seats were behind the stage where we would have a good view of the conductor which was great for all the kids in the trip since they are in the orchestra at school. what we didn't realize until we got there was that there are only three rows of seats behind the stage and we were actually on the stage. At one point you could hear the conductor breathing and I would have to say it was an amazing experience that I will never forget.
So I guess that's it for now but I will talk more later.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Let me start by saying that I am not going to promise to blog more often because I always say that and I never do so I will just say I'll try, but no promises.
Now on to the story that the title is referring to. As some of you may be aware I have taken half of my basement and turned it into a work shop for all the little projects that I am constantly working on around the house so i don't have to set up all my tools in the garage every time I want to get something done. Every little project ended up with two or three hours of setting up tearing down and cleaning up and I never got enough accomplished because of it. Now I have a place all my own to leave my tools set up and everything is at my fingertips as I need it and not tucked away in the back of a cabinet behind the lawnmower. So one of the last things I added was dad's old radial arm saw that he has had for years.




It's most recently been at Dennis's house and he was nice enough to bring it over because he was not using it anymore. When I got it I went on line to try to find the owners manual so I could get familiar with the saw, and to my surprise I found a bunch of recall notices for that saw. I decided to investigate and it turns out that with a click of a mouse I had a new safety guard on the way free of charge. Then I saw a link to the "users guide" so I downloaded it and after looking a little closer something was a little funny. The manual was about sixty pages long which seemed about rite, but as I looked closer I realized that this manual was just for the installation and use of the new safety guard I just ordered. Sixty pages to explain a plastic guard to go in front of the blade? That's when I first started to wonder, What have I gotten myself into? About a week later I came home from work and was greeted by the "guard" I had ordered. As I suspected the box, much like the users manual, was huge.







So I waited until Saturday and decided to dive into this thing with both feet. After opening the box I found, you guessed it, more boxes.






After unboxing everything I discovered a ton of new parts and accessories and I am proud to say that I managed to disassemble and reassemble the saw in just about an hour and now it looks and works like a brand new saw.






The boxes included a new table top as well which is something I was going to make myself because the old one was pretty torn up so I'm glad the gigantic box of parts arrived before I took on that little project.
Now that I have the saw and my workshop, or as Heather likes to say "the man cave", completed, I have on more excuses for avoiding the projects Michelle has for me to do, but those projects are what I live for. Just don't tell Michelle. That's all for now. I'll try to write something again soon.