Hail Storm

Yesterday evening strong thunderclaps boomed throughout the sky, some of the loudest I've ever heard. Not long after we were assaulted by golf ball sized hail stones which sounded like we were being pummeled by meteorites. https://youtu.be/bOaOeIkJjXc.

The Branch Graveyard

For the past several days I've been outside cutting up all the branches that we had to clear away to do the fence repair. We had dragged all the branches to the side of the house where the pile got to be about as tall as I was and twice as long. The branches were all too small to use a chainsaw so I used my branch lopper. I cut them up small enough to place in an 18 gallon recycling bin, used my weight to compress them, then dumped them out on the rocks creating a graveyard of dead branches. After getting all the ones on the side of the house I went back into the dog run where there were a ton more waiting for me. I filled both of our 50 gallon green waste bins then kept cutting until I could make my back to the new fence sections (previously I had to hop over the metal dog run fence to access it).

ADA Toilet Install

Yesterday I installed a Kohler ADA height toilet in our master bathroom. I pretty much knew what to expect from installing one in the front bathroom but that didn't make the process any more enjoyable and I still ended up at Lowe's twice because I either misplaced or it didn't come with the nuts and washers for the bolts that attach the tank to the base. This was a free curb score off Craigslist and the toilet is in excellent shape except for the tank lid (model #1086929) which is cracked, but still functional. I would like to get a replacement lid eventually but first I have to figure out what color this is because it's definitely not pure white. It's more like some kind of gray. I sent a message to Kohler with the serial number so hopefully they'll be able to tell me. Update: They got back to me super quick and were able to determine the color is Ice Grey, color code 95.

Hawaiian Vacation!

Last month Treese and I embarked on a Hawaiian cruise with my parents, a high school friend of my mom's, and her husband. It was a nice vacation with the ship stopping at five islands and Ensenada, Mexico. The weather was a tad chilly throughout the entire trip and rainy on a couple days. The one excursion Treese and mom were eagerly looking forward to was their helicopter tour but that got canceled last minute due to bad weather, so while dad and I were on a little city tour all they got to do was watch a safety video and then get back on the ship. On the day that we all went to Waikiki beach the sun was shining and we got a great spot right near the water, but the water was a bit cold and the wind didn't help matters. Mom and I both got sunburned despite putting on sunblock. Still, it was a great trip.

I stayed with my parents for about a week after we got back while Treese headed home after a few days as she had work. I rode back with  Ryan, my brother-in-law, and he helped me repair the three sections of wood fence that got crushed by the fallen trees during the snowstorm. He was a huge help and we got it done in only three days whereas it probably would have taken me a full week to do it on my own. It was also nice just to be able to hang out and chat with him. Since he lives in Colorado we don't get to hang out very often at all.

Ryan headed home on Sunday then today we got a text from him saying something went seriously wrong with one of the wheels where it started to wobble and make an awful metal-on-metal sound. Thankfully it didn't fail completely and he was able to make it to a town and get into a shop. Apparently the damage was pretty significant. He had taken into Vallejo Nissan not even a week earlier to get it checked out because there was an obvious sound coming from the tire but they said it was nothing important. We're all just glad that he's okay, as if it had failed without any warning while going 70mph on the freeway he certainly would have crashed.

A Weird Pre-Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! For my beloved I got an elongated ADA 18" high Kohler toilet... how romantic! I got and installed it on Tuesday and it took way longer than all the videos I watched had led me to believe. One reason is because I tried using Fluidmaster's Better Than Wax toilet seal instead of a wax ring for the seal and spent well over an hour trying to get it to fit right, but no matter what I did I could not get the toilet to sit flush with the floor, it always had some wiggle to it. So I eventually gave up with that and tried Korky's Wax-Free gasket, another wax-free alternative. This thing worked great, fit just right the first time with no wiggle. Then another thing that slowed me down was that the 9" water line we had didn't reach the tank so I had to go to the store and pick up a 16", but when I got home and tried to hook it up I realized I had picked up a sink faucet water line. I had definitely been in the toilet repair area when I picked it up so someone must have just thrown it in the wrong box when they went to put it back, thus I had to go back to the store, return it, and buy the right one.

Yesterday turned out to be a weird day. At 4AM our power had gone out, and we knew the exact time because when it happened the alarm on our UPS battery backup started wailing like someone was trying to kill a bag full of angry cats. There's supposed to be a way to turn the alarm off but it doesn't seem to work so I just turned off the UPS. I had noticed it was snowing outside before heading to bed and in the morning everything was covered in like 10 inches of snow. Also, the giant oak tree, which was more like two oak trees attached at the base, had fallen over. So no more oak tree :(. It hit and crushed the metal dog run fence in several spots but I can't see if it did any damage to the wooden fence further back as there's too many branches in the way.

Due to all the snow, Treese couldn't get to work so she got to have a snow day. Unfortunately, the power outage lasted until 5pm so it wasn't the most enjoyable snow day. It was really cold so we tried to keep bundled up and used the gas fireplace for heat which we haven't used in a long, long time (after taking out the fake fire log of course). We also used that fire to cook some canned raviolis since our gas stove doesn't function without power, which is a terrible design flaw. Who designs a gas stove to not work without power? It was around 5PM when the power finally came back on which was nice because it was beginning to get too dark to do anything. Once the power came back our living room clock started making a loud buzzing sound from inside, not like an alarm but like there was something wrong, so I unplugged it. I plugged it into a different outlet but the buzzing persisted. I tried to set the time but it was unresponsive so I think it's toast. Also, the cooling fans in our NVR got really noisy so I think I'll have to replace those. I haven't noticed any other problems yet so hopefully that's it.

ふんふん なんだかいいにおい, Page 2

The second page of the Japanese children's book ふんふん なんだかいいにおい is:

おおいそぎで ごはんを たべると どうなりますか。
さっちゃんの くちのまわりは たまごのきみで くわんくわん。
てのひらは いちごジャムで べたべた。
エプロンは とりのスープで しみだらけです。

The first line is "Ooisogi de gohan wo taberu to dou narimasu ka" and I know all those words except "dou narimasu" which apparently means something like "what will happen". So that sentence is "What will happen if I eat a meal urgently?" and the next three sentences appear to be the answer. The second line is "Sacchan no kuchi no mawari wa tamago no kimi de kuwankuwan". Here "kuchi" is mouth and "tamago" is egg but I don't know "mawari", "kimi", or "kuwankuwan". According to the Internet, "mawari" means "around" but "kimi" has different meanings and "kuwankuwan" is a complete mystery. The next two sentences don't get any easier, something about strawberry jam on hands and soup on an apron. I didn't expect a children's book to be this challenging!

Memrise Update

Memrise, one of the apps I use for Japanese language practice, recently did a major update. This update introduced a rather annoying bug where instead of showing the translation of a kanji it just shows the kanji itself, thus, no way to know what the kanji means! This update also sees the removal of a feature I really liked which was that when typing an incorrect translation of a given English sentence in Japanese, the app would show the correct Japanese and then underneath would show what you had typed and highlight the part that was wrong. Now it no longer shows what you typed. One change I do like is that they finally fixed the Speed Review so it's now possible to finish. Before this update it would give you less and less time on each screen until finally you had like one second to read the English then read all four choice boxes of Japanese and choose the right one. That was tough for individual words but for screens with complete sentences it was impossible. I couldn't even do that if everything was in English, there just wouldn't be enough time to read the choices. Now you get the same amount of time on each page and so for the first in over a year I was able to complete a speed review.