JP was out of town for St. Patrick's Day, so the G's took me with them to the big party downtown at Mc Kinney's. Last year it was scorching hot and sunny. This year it was in the 40s and cold, windy, and grey. Nonetheless, we had fun.
Saturday, March 24, 2018
La Paloma
JP & I went to a fundraiser at La Paloma (84th & Holdredge) for our friends' brother's cancer treatment. The Mexican food was second to none. JP wouldn't let me take a photo with a sombrero, so I had to wait for an opportunity when she went to the restroom.
Monday, March 12, 2018
Oven Cellar
Saturday night, we went out with both our current and former neighbors to The Oven; it's an Indian restaurant down in the Haymarket. The food was amazing! I had something that was bright red and super spicy. Not sure what it was, but it was tasty. Afterwards, we discovered that they have a really cool wine cellar in the basement. The girls all enjoyed the wine vending machine.
C
This weekend we focused on CP's programming class. He's learning a programming language called "c". It's the same one I learned 30 years ago. We spent six hours Sunday afternoon working through his assignment. V helped hold papers down.
Rat's Nest
The cables in the music room finally got to an unmanageable knot. I spent the entire weekend rearranging everything and cleaning up the cable routing.
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Gnawing Suspicion
The buttons on the washing machine stopped working last weekend. We've had an abundance of mice this year, and JP was convinced that one was to blame for this. She was right! As we popped off the front control panel to get a view, I spied a little grey friend hiding in the panel. I was able to put the panel back in place before he jumped out, but JP saw me shudder and she let out her mouse scream that could be heard in Omaha.
After I cleared her out of the room, I tried to catch the little guy but he got away and under/into the dryer. That night, we put out a trap and put up the dog food. In the morning, our friend neatly put himself in the mousetrap for us.
Fortunately, the mouse had only chewed through one of twenty little tiny wires. If he had chewed any more, it would have been tough to figure out which one went where. It took all of five minutes to fix the wire, but half an hour to clean out the mess the mouse left in the washer. He had been feasting on dog food and had amassed quite a stash in his nest.
Pickin & Grinnin
For my B-Day, I had a guitarish theme. We took our friends out to a new bar & grille behind Campbell's, called The Local.
Thanks SB for the cool Iron Maiden guitar picks at Christmas!! I love them and they have made me a better player, too.
I pooled my b-day $$ and hit the used guitar shop and picked up a sweet used Orange tube amp.
I feel like I missed out on dealing with high-voltage vacuum tubes and TV repair, so I'm looking forward to fooling around with the innards of the new amp. Nothing like 400 volts DC!
The tubes really make a difference in sound, so it was also time to reconfigure the pickups on my Strat. Trying out some Fender Highway Ones.
CES
For years I've dreamed of attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
This year I got to go!
The realm of autonomous vehicles is here. This is a car that participates in the Robot Racing League. The company that runs it makes graphics cards for the kids' video games. Turns out that the processors are also really good at driving cars. All of the major automakers were showing autonomous cars and saying that kids born today probably will never learn to drive.
Gibson Guitars had a huge tent full of their axes. I got to play a $13,000 guitar.
Yamaha was showing off their road racing robot as well as a self-balancing bike and crop spraying robotic helicopter.
Leadbelly Nachos
Our favorite place downtown is Leadbelly. They have an awesome menu and a great atmosphere. After dropping CP off at the dorm, we stopped in to fill our bellies. I broke down and tried the nachos. It was way too much food.
GP got the Cuban Burger.
Brice Canyon
We really got lucky with the weather while we were in Utah. There was no snow at Brice, which is unusual for this time of year for most places above 8,000 feet.
JP & I hiked down one slot canyon and back up another. At the bottom, we stopped a father/son and asked how much further to the split in the trail. That's when we noticed what their shirts said: "Lincoln Southeast High School." No matter where you go, there are always fellow Huskers out and about.
4 Wheelin
Grampa built a sweet offroad Suzuki Samurai for his desert explorations. CP LOVES it! We went out in the desert for a few miles of dusty 4x4 action.
Old Cousin
While in Utah, we caught up with DP and his plane. JP & I haven't seen him since we lived in AZ.
26 years? How time flies!
Saturday, February 03, 2018
Snow Canyon
A trip to St. George could never be complete without a day at Snow Canyon. The weather was much better than mid-summer.
Utah Petroglyphs
For New Year's, we headed west out of Omaha to stay a few days with G&G. We hiked around a bit in the desert and looked at some really nice petroglyphs.
There are quite a few unexcavated ruins in the area, and plenty of pot sherds on the ground. Yes, yes, they stayed behind; they are just fun to look at.
Nixie Tube Clock
CP got a nixie tube clock for x-mas this year. Nixie tubes were used in the 50s - 70s before LEDs took over. The tubes are brand new, but were probably made in Russia 30 years ago. It came as a kit and it took him an entire day to solder all the components in place. The whole thing is run by an Arduino-compatible microcontroller that came pre-programmed.
There are some blue LED's under each tube that make it look really cool at night.
Old Neighbors
Our old neighbors stopped by over Christmas. A is going to school in Switzerland studying hospitality management and is going to spend a semester in Taiwan at a swanky 5-star hotel. C is still living in southern California. We tried talking her into moving back, but she likes the beach.
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