Fun USA 250th graphics for the Fourth of July

City Barbecue on the left and Graeter’s on the right. Two stores right next to each other twice (Centerville and Beavercreek), a good combo too!

The fun and beauty of Julie’s fish tank

 

Zoe thinks Chloe should put more effort into playing with her!

Devolving into feats of strength

Andy and Zac tried out figure jousting… hahahaha.

Cheyenne and Chris had a good idea for a birthday party

A blind taste test from our various favorite pizza places.  It was fun to pull out the Kmart Lille Caesar’s bags from 20 years ago.  Andy got the most of them right and won a prize.  They all took it seriously. It was  fun listening to their commentary and ratings along the way. 

More memories!

We came across these pics of Janice with her dad Vernon (Julie’s granddaddy who went by Duff) and her mother Faye(Julie’s grandma).  Also pictured is Janice’s brother Larry who died around the age of nine from brain tumors.

Julie’s dad had a great view of Dayton growing up.

They used to ride their soap box style go-karts down the big hill!

Visiting Steve’s childhood home

Going through Julie’s parent’s memories made us want to go see the house that her dad helped his dad build in East Dayton.  She found a slide (lower left inset) that showed the house and the intersection off Fourth Street.  We headed over and enjoyed seeing what it looked like these days.  She pointed out all the features, where all the rooms were and her rough memory of the layout.  It’s nice to see it well cared for.  It’s solid as a rock too.  Her grandpa built things SOILD.  Why use two screws when nine will do…?!  That was always her dad’s philosophy, now I realize where he got it!

Interestingly, Zac and Chloe are renting a house only a couple blocks away from this same intersection since they recently moved back to town. Small world!

Jeep tinkering…

I was hearing a noise in the passenger rear wheel and getting a wheel sensor error code after my last GOAT trip with John. When I took the wheel, caliper, and rotor off, I these parts rolling around in there.  At some point the parking brake adjuster spring had come loose.  It was replaced, but apparently the original one was still bouncing around inside the rotor.  It eventually took out the new adjuster spring, one of the parking brake springs, and the wheel speed sensor as well.  Good news, it was a cheap, east fix, and I already had all the parts.  

I was also getting a cruise control error that suggested my clock spring might be bad… The error codes and suspicions we confirmed when I removed the steering wheel (lower left pic) and the clock spring fell apart in a mess of plastic parts and cables (center pic), lol!

To get it apart, I had to grind down one of the spare extensions for my impact driver to get it deep enough into the holes in the steering wheel trim (top right pic).  

You better believe I was treating the airbag removal like a ticking bomb… I had just finished removing it in the lower right pic.

It’s always something, but the good news is I got it all back in working order and got my cruise control back just in time for my Windrock trip a few days later just before July 4th week.

Can you run your chronograph watch as a GMT…?

First, the pic on the left shows the nice detail in my retirement watch. I really like the colors, detail, hand design, and the clean look!  I thought you’d want to take a moment to appreciate it haha.

Second, I figured out a way to make it work kind of like a GMT watch that’s designed to show two time zones.  If you start the chronograph (stop watch) at such a time that it is noon or midnight in the second time zone you want to track, then you get the advantage of having the hour counter hand (right pic) showing you the time in another zone.  In this example the watch is showing it’s quarter to ten in my home zone, and that it’s almost 2p in the second time zone (lower left circle, singe hand just above the 6 o’clock position).  That happens to be universal coordinated time (UTC) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) which is four hours ahead of us currently.  So I started the chronograph at 8:00:00.  You get the added benefit of the chronograph second’s hand acting like a sweep second hand for either time zone too instead of it being stopped at 12 o’clock when you’re not running the chronograph (like it’s shown on the left pic). 

Just a fun little hack I figured out. 

I kept this perfect little tea cup

We had so many Sunday lunches at China Cottage with Steve and Janice so I kept this little cup to use and remind me of those fun memories.  The lid keeps your tea warm while it’s steeping and doubles as a coaster or place to rest your used tea bag while you’re drinking.

Ran across Steve’s plumbing permit drawing

Andy found it interesting since he has to do these for living now.

Just a pretty day to take a break by the pond :)

A lady bug tagging along on my walk❤️

There’s no such thing as a five second rule…

…when you have a three second dog and a two second (visiting) cat! Zoe missed out on licking the leftovers in the bowl since Shadow beat her to it! Zoe looked at me like, “Wait, what just happened?!” Hahahahaha!

The tools of the estate trade…! Hahaha

I’ve lost count, but I think the current number is 10 houses/estates/relatives I have helped through the process of culling their personal affects.  It’s fun to relive memories, discover new facts, preserve the antiques, and re-home some of the stuff.  I’m practiced at it enough that I enjoy it these days. ❤️ But you do need lots of totes for the process.

I kept this cool Tea set of Janice’s!

We found this locket

It was from her mom’s side of the family.  Might be Julie’s great great great grandmother 

It’s engrave with MLP.  Mary L Peay perhaps? 

It’s a glass-type picture and lock of her hair.  From the 1850s.  Pretty cool!

“Why won’t Shadow play with me?!”

210 year old bible!

We found this among Julie’s Nanny’s belongings.  Pretty cool and in readable shape in spite of the years and binding issues.  It even has some books like Judith for instance… 🤪

Wind in her face 🐶

Zoe discovered a new experience. She kinda liked it but also wasn’t too sure about it. That ear though!  

And yes, she’s strapped in and at the limit of her free length in that position. 

Taught my jeweler something…

I like delving into various topics and/or hobbies, learning about them, becoming an 80% expert, then moving on to something else.  I’m enjoying that process with watches currently.  One thing you have to do with a mechanical watch is “regulate” it.  This is the act of checking how well it keeps time and tweaking a tiny lever inside, much like you do a pendulum grandfather clock.  You can check it each day, jot it down on a piece of paper then average it.  Or you can use a fancy instrument that measures it accurately in a minute or two.  The instrument is expensive, but the jotting it down process takes days and several trips.  I found some apps that use your phone microphone to give you a relative idea how well it’s doing in about a minute.  I showed it to my jeweler and we used it to get mine regulated to within less than three seconds in only a few tries during one visit.  For a mechanical watch anything better that +/- 5 seconds per day is considered properly regulated.

The only catch is you need to be somewhere quiet and free from vibration.  What I found works best is inside a car in a quiet part of town away from busy streets. Interesting.  

Speaking of memories and heirloom pieces…

I’m THRILLED to have had the chance to get these rings cleaned up and sized properly!  They look SO good and remind me of my dad’s and mom’s whenever I wear them.  I like to rotate around all three depending on where I’m going and what I’m doing on my current adventure and which side of the family or my career path it relates to the most 🤪

Taking in my memory shelf and whole watch collection…

It means a lot to me to have these pieces that represent four generations of wearing coming down both sides of my family (Julie’s and mine).  Two grandfathers, two dad’s, several of mine, and even ones worn by my boys.  The other random relatives, gifts, memories, stickers, names… I’m really blessed in the relationships and time I’ve had with my relatives (ancestors, kids, and nephews)❣️My wife too! She supports, and even encourages my hobbies, collections, relationship time with my kids and relatives, and the many things we enjoy doing together.  A lot of that is represented here too!

I love you all!

It’s funny to see and think about all the brand history of the watches too.  Boutique Swiss, Timex, Seiko, Casio, Citizen, Apple, Garmin, etc.  Ultimately I’d like to add a nice clone Rolex.  Currently playing around reading up on that subculture, hahahaha.

We had a visiting black cat…

We got to watch Shadow while John and Savannah made a trip to Boston.  It was fun having her back in the house again.  She warmed up to us again after a day or two.  Zoe REALLY thought Shadow should play with her!!

We made it back to the new fish store

It was closed early for Father’s Day the first time we stopped, so we came back and enjoyed browsing.

She fell asleep after she asked me to rub her belly…

 

I found another Swiss watch!

Imagine my surprise when I was going through the old stuff of Julie’s grandparents in our hutch that we got from their North Carolina house… I was looking at her granddaddy’s old watches and found THIS among the other Timex pieces.  He even had a couple spare straps and one of them fit.  I cleaned it up, wound it, and sure enough, it runs.  Another one to have serviced.  I’m amassing quite the collection from my ancestors! :) ❤️

John’s birthday/Christmas present…

…and our little project.  We’re gonna see if we can get a seaworthy Cowan Lake fishing boat put together from this? Another case of being too much like my dad…

Getting Steve’s watch fixed back up

I managed to open it up, clean it out, straighten the dial face, tighten the bracelet back up, and size it so I can wear it again.  It runs, has limited power reserve since the capacitor needs replaced.  I am thinking about having my jeweler refurb my heirlooms one at a time. :)

Julie knew I would love this beverage from Jungle Jim’s!

It’s from their famous pickle barrels. 🤪

Found this in Steve’s drafting tools

It’s an old slide rule used to calculate the factors in an equation for selecting air and hydraulic cylinders.  Pretty cool.

Happy to have found my dad’s last watch again

I had bought it for him.  He was wearing it during his last days.  Andy had inherited it.  In going through some stuff he’d left at our house, I ran across it and added it back into my collection.  I changed the battery, and even found the original bracelet links for it fits nicely.  Just a simple Timex :) ❤️ That’s what he always wore.

My receipt book is used up…

45 sales over the years.

How dirty is your Jeep…?

I just happened to have this one little mud stalagmite growing on mine 😂

My presidential lunches

I was happy to discover that my lunch routine has presidential approval.  In fact, I think they’re modeling their diet after mine🤪

I don’t know if you noticed or not, but they are flipping the script on all the diet and health advice.  They’re figuring out that what they’ve been telling us for the last 60 or 70 years isn’t right.  They had it backwards.  We should be eating less carbs, more meats and proteins, basically turned the food pyramid upside down…

Splitting wood at the farm

They had some trees fall from the storms a few weeks ago, so we were tasked with splitting wood.  We need to fill all three sheds, so they have enough fuel for the boiler that heats the rec center all winter.  There was enough work to keep three of us busy, loading, splitting, and stacking… 

At the very left edge of the left picture, you can see the door into the horse barn (right under the Martin feeder).  In the picture on the right, you can see the gray side of the boiler.  This was our viewpoint when we were sitting and eating lunch.  I thought it was cool to see across the property from two different perspectives.  

Itty Bitty doing her best pillow pose

There’s a black cat on the pillow behind her, but she thinks she makes a better one ;)

Father’s Day at Jungle Jim’s

After we hung out with the kids, Julie decided to take me to Jungle Jim’s to get me some green tomatoes so she could make me fried green tomatoes. It’s always fun and interesting to see what we can find there.  This trip we found MONSTER morels and brought them home.  We also found these little crab snacks, but decided we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to try them… Yes, that’s a bag full of mini dried crabs…! hahahahaha

Father’s Day, memories, and the next generation…

As my kids and wife were treating me out for Father’s Day, and with going through some of our memories, it got me thinking about how much I value the relationship with my wife and kids.  I was chatting with one of John’s friends that was enjoying his first (in utero) Father’s Day too.  We’d all recently been to a Dragon’s game recently and it reminded me of my first Father’s Day where I caught this ball at Fifth Third Field.  Later, on another Father’s Day, Andy gave me this Babe Ruth Card.  It was a sweet gift since it was a sacrifice for him, but he knew I liked it and he could probably find another one…❣️

Anyhow, PSA, live a life that glorifies God, love your wife, treat your kids right, treat your parents right.  Help each other be the best they can be ❤️

All my rings out for service

With all my other rings out for service, I decided to bust out my high school ring.  It was fun to wear it again and remember Julie “stealing” it while I was dating Cheryl and then later wearing it as my girl during our early college dating life❣️

I had to try these…

…they sounded good, but weren’t that impressive. 

Random mayfly on me during my workout in our backyard

Do you draw blood during your workouts?

You might if you stop to pick berries along the way hahaha.

Finding Julie’s baby shoe again…❤️

Jeeps and the 4th… ;)

Don’t forget, they helped win the war! well, maybe not THAT war…? 

I even managed to get one of these limited edition celebratory badges to commemorate the day. Happy 250th USA!!🧨🎆

 

Toy Story

We went and saw the latest Toy story with Andy. It didn’t disappoint, especially the legions of Buzz! Always a good story!

I found gold 🎂

In sorting through the stuff from Julie’s parents, I found the recipe for Janice’s legendary poundcake in written form! :) She traditionally made one for each of Julie’s birthdays, much to our delight. You can see that it was actually her grandmother‘s recipe, Buddy, passed down.❤️

Fixing up my dad’s rings

I decided to get my dad’s class rings sized so I could wear them more easily.  I need to do adjust the size on my college  ring as well.  I thought it was pretty cool how they looked all laid out together when the jeweler was sending me my receipt.

Carrying the flag across the United States

My nephew got to participate in one leg of the flags, epic journey across the United States from west to east. You managed to get the peace that summited of the great divide.  Fitting!