For the past several years, we have done the same thing for my birthday with the family: gone to boxcar arcade/bar to play games. It has become a pretty fun tradition.

It was just a simple idea Taylor had a few years ago, and it works great: the kids get a chance to go and do whatever they want, and, for the first time ever, Mercy was old enough to allow us to sit, and just…take it easy.

But there is only one thing that really matters during this particular night:
SKEE BALL.

Every year Taylor and I play; and every year, she wins. Last year we were fighting neck and neck for a final score of the evening:

Taylor: 230

Luke: 220.

This year was going to be different; this year I was feeling lucky; this was my special night after all.

For Taylor’s first round, she had a new PR: 270.

Im done. It’s over. It was fun, but it wasn’t fun. Taylor won, and I gladly accept defeat, this year!

Also, for what it’s worth, Evan got 280!

One of these two ladies does ballroom dancing, the other does not:

Ci Ci met her match with Amelia on the dancing game. It really was amazing to watch.

And Rosie and I have our tradition of playing the Simpson’s game: it is super easy (just two buttons) and she knows I used to watch the show as a kid:

Here are a few other fun pics from the night:

Hyderabad

Guess what? I’m going to India! The company I work for, storable, does software for physical storage facilities. Our team has hired some people in India, and I will be going to help train them on some of the software we have written.

India is one place I would love to go, but would never pay my own money, and Taylor has no interest in going, so it will be a lot of fun to scratch the itch of wanting to visit some place different and eat some weird (and great!) food.

The trip isn’t for a few months, but it is time to get the tickets, and start learning a bit about the city; and, plan for the “work” part of the trip as well.

Hours Wasted

This past Friday the local news showed a short clip about a guy in the area that brought his snow-making expertise with him when he moved to Greensboro, and began making his own snow.

What a great idea! The forecast said it would not get above freezing over the course of the day, so making snow would be a great way to spend an otherwise very cold, very boring, very inside kind of day.

All I had to do was hook up my pressure washer, and spray, and it will make snow.

This is the pressure washer my friend Hernan Torres gave us when he moved; thanks Hernan! But, it wouldn’t start. The hoses were frozen. But that wasn’t a problem, I could just defrost the hoses for an hour, and it would be fine.

An hour later, the hoses were defrosted: but I accidentally knocked the pressure washer over, and it wouldn’t start. No problem! I had to go to the small hardware store anyways, so I asked some advice: all I had to do was take the 13/16″ spark plug out, pull the cord 10 times to clear it, and it would start right up.

Finally, at 11:20 am:

It wasn’t snow. All I had was an Icy sidewalk for the mailman to slip on (the mailman did not slip on the ice though). No problem! Back to the drawing board.

Every other year in our marriage, Taylor would have been pretty open about how this was a silly idea, and there were better ways to spend my time. She would have been right, but there is something fun about working through and trying to solve a problem.

The articles I read online said that in order to make snow, the water source has to be cold. How can the water be very cold. but not frozen? Often a stream as a water source would work. I didn’t have a stream; but I did have a kiddie pool. All I had to do was fill the kiddie pool with water, let it freeze, and use it as a conduit to get cold water. Just run water from spicket, to the kiddie pool with ice; then, another hose feeds the pressure washer from the kiddie pool. Voila! Cold water supply.

That’s when Taylor opened the door and saw me with a hose filling the kiddie pool with water when it was 24 degrees outside, and I realized my idea was silly. But, undeterred!

It didn’t work. I failed to account for the gravity-fed nature of kiddie pool as a water supply: the kiddie pool would have had to have been on top of the trampoline in order for the water to flow to the pressure washer as a water supply.

By this hour, we were running out of sunlight. It was fun; I have a feeling I was really close. It was a low-risk (not expensive!) thing to try. Maybe next time….