Pictures

I've had several requests for more recent pictures of us (the most recent on here is of all of us is an old Halloween picture). I do have a family picture from our trip to Las Vegas last year, but it's still not recent... I'll work on getting some modern images up here. :)

I forgot to mention

I also got my hair cut over the holiday break. It was far too long and getting in the way of everything. I got it cut to just under my shoulders. I love it!

My Gifts

As I mentioned I would do in my previous post, here are some of the things we got (mostly I got or have since comandeered due to lack of interest from the giftee...). Some are really liked by the giftee and I just had to show them here. :) I admit that I didn't take any of the pictures as they are all easy to find online and in much better quality than I could ever create - I'm a horrible photographer.

My Roomba 560

ScumBuster

Sennheiser RS 140 Wireless Balanced Headphones

Red Vines

Microcontroller Experimentation Kit

Jordan's "Precious"

Halo 3 Laser Pursuit Plasma Weapons

This is long because I've been slacking... sorry

I got involved in the holiday season and didn't update my blog at all. Here's what's been going on with us:

Jordan finished his first quarter in 6th grade. He made the honor roll with a 4.0 GPA. Good going, J!

Jeff and Jordan both had roughly two weeks off from work and school. It was a nice break for all of us. We watched a lot of movies, played games, and visited with extended family.

For Christmas I got some great gifts. I got a new Roomba from Jeff. Jordan got me a ScumBuster. I know that most women don't enjoy getting cleaning supplies for holiday gifts (the implication isn't very nice) but I requested the ScumBuster on my wish list. I had been eyeing the new Roomba for a few months but since I still have my old one (I can't find the charger for it), I opted to not ask for a new one. I was content with just buying a charger after the holidays were over. Now I have two and I can have one on the ground floor and one upstairs. The basement is so small and unused that there's no need for another vacuum down there.

Anyone who knows me knows that I hate to clean. I like things to be clean, and I like it done my way, but I hate doing it. Jeff always tells me that if I hate cleaning so much, I should just hire a cleaning company. But I'm embarassed by my messes and would end up cleaning for the cleaning crew. Plus, I like my cleaning supplies - the chemicals, the tools, etc. When I clean, I know I do a good job. When I use my own dirty bathroom, I know that the filth is my own. Letting strangers come into my house only leads to uncertainty of whether they actually cleaned what I wanted them to and whether they availed themselves of my facilities. I don't care to imagine that someone else used my toilet without my permission. So, with such uncertainty, my house remains dirty until I get around to cleaning it myself.

My new Roomba is so wonderful. It has a scheduler on it so I can set it to clean daily and not have to worry. I haven't used the scheduler yet, but I've had a great deal of fun running Roomba almost daily. I would much rather take the vacuum apart than actually use it for its intended purpose, so Roomba and I get along. I love to do the maintenance on him (Roomba is always a male to me). The maintenance involves emptying the collection bin/filter and cleaning the brushes. iRobot has made this Roomba so easy to maintain that it is a pure joy. I haven't had to use a screwdriver yet, which I am used to doing. The new cleaning tool for the brushes is so easy to use that I don't have to spend over an hour trying to get my stubborn hair off the brushes. I love it.

My ScumBuster is great, too. I had researched it quite a bit to make sure it did what I want. My bathtub has a permanent grip built into the bottom (basically a raised criss-cross pattern in the fiberglass) and dirt gets stuck down in there and is very tough to get out. The bottom of the tub is always much darker than the sides. I've tried all sorts of chemicals and tools to clean it out, but to no avail. I thought that Comet, being so abrasive and strong, would do something, but it didn't. Scrubbing with all my might never worked. So, I thought this device would, since it has bristles and is powered (very strong spinning motion). So far I have been pleased with the results. The tub isn't perfect yet (I ran out of battery after about 45 minutes), but the spots I focused on are nice and clean. I will have to clean it over several sessions to get it where I want it. The ScumBuster did a marvelous job on our bathroom counter & the sinks. Grime that I thought was permanent damage to the sinks came out. Nice!

I also got some great headphones from Jeff (he got himself a pair, too!). They are wireless and the transmitter plugs into the television. Now I can watch TV or movies (or listen to music on the network) and not annoy others. It's great for when Jeff and I want to watch something and Jordan is in his room and doesn't need to hear it. We have a great TV, but there are two odd things about it. 1) Some strange connection thing causes the TV (and TiVo) and console games to be nice and loud, but any DVDs or BluRays played on the same consoles to be really quiet. So, for watching TV or playing games, we have the volume turned up to 25 or 30 (out of 60). For watching movies, we have to turn the volume up to 60. Also, the shape of our living room is such that the sound goes up into the loft (toward the office and Jordan's room) more than it goes to the couch. So, from the upstairs, the movie is absolutely deafening. From the living room, it is comfortably pleasant. So, these headphones are working wonders to direct the sound at the intended recipient. :)

Another good thing about the headphones is that I can now watch shows that don't have captions. With my hearing loss, it's tough to understand what is said. I need to read it to get the full meaning. And that's the other strange thing about our TV. DVDs that come with subtitles work great. The subtitles are built into the DVD and don't require the TV to do anything special. Captions, on the other hand, use the TV to display them. Our TV doesn't allow captions from DVDs or BluRays to be shown. Subtitles work great but captions don't. We've researched this and found that the TV simply lacks the ability. :(  TV shows work fine with captions, but our movies don't. So, for movies that we have that don't have subtitles (or poorly captioned TV shows), we've been avoiding. This is sad, as I like all our movies (well, most) and I want to watch them. It's just a pointless activity for me to sit down to watch a movie and not understand the dialogue. This means that most of the plot is lost on me, as well as various relationships between the characters. I'd rather clean the house than attempt to watch a show that I can't follow.

So, with the headphones, I can watch our subtitle-less movies. We can also stream movies from Netflix (free with our current account) and not worry that they have no subtitles. It's wonderful! I watched Heroes and had no problems, even with Mohinder's wonderful accent.

For a quick run-through of my other gifts, I got a tub of Red Vines from Jordan, some gift certificates from friends/family, some new books, my ever favorite package of crackers, and some other small things.

Technically I got Jeff & Jordan several "together" gifts - a microcontroller, some RFID gadgets, and Halo laser tag guns. However, the microcontroller has gone to Jeff and I (we had a blast programming it to do fun things), and Jeff loves the RFID stuff while Jordan is rather bored with it. I tried. The Halo guns will be fun, but we haven't really used them much yet.

As an early present, we gave Jordan a "Lord of the Rings" ring. Just before the holiday break we watched all three movies and he kept saying how much he wanted his own "precious" and so I got him one. It has the elven letters on it and he wears it everywhere he goes. I was surprised that he liked it as much as he did. He's never been one for jewelry, hats, watches, etc, so I was sort of expecting to inherit this ring (I made sure to get a size that fits both of us, just in case). So far, I've only had to tell him that he isn't allowed to take it off at school. I explained that people who suddenly feel the need to protect their belongings (jewelry, cell phones, purses, keys, whatever) end up losing them while in the process of protecting them. If they had simply kept the item in its location, no harm would have come to it. This is easily seen when someone drops their ring down the sink - they take it off to keep it safe. Or when someone decides to move their cell phone from their pocket to a shelf and drop the phone in the toilet. Dumb moves which result in the very consequences they were originally trying to avoid. So, with his new ring, I said that if he doesn't feel he can keep it on his finger (and wants to put it on a different finger or in his pocket), it shouldn't go with him in the first place. I'd hate for him to be on the bus, take his ring off, and have it roll away.

Sorry about all the rambling. I'll have to get some pictures of my new gifts to post. Maybe in the next post. Happy New Year!