Thanksgiving

This year was supposed to be the year that our kids come home but nobody does that anymore. Sarah and Sam hung on the longest and for several years were the only ones who came home but now with his job as a Highway Patrol officer it is difficult for him to schedule holidays off. Lately however Alycia and Trevor have been coming home and they were planning on coming this weekend. Unfortunately with Covid some of the places they wanted to go to while they were out here are closed.

The one place they really wanted to see was Legoland and when they learned that it was closed they decided that it would be easier for them to just stay home and fly us out there. They suggested that we get together with Brandon and Serene and that would allow us to see ten of our seventeen grandkids. We figured it was a pretty good deal.

We arrived at Brandon’s place late on Tuesday night, visited with Brandon and Serene for a bit and then hit the hay. The next morning I was lying in bed when all of the sudden a bunch of kids piled on top of me.

I had my head under the covers and apparently they thought that was kind of funny. I then suddenly jumped up and grabbed which ever kid was closest and gave them a big hug. I think I scared them to death. It’s been a while since I’ve seen these guys so it was great to see them again.

Before the day got too busy Brandon and I went to his gym to work out. He about killed me and I’m still feeling my arms and shoulders this morning. I think I like running a whole lot better than I like working out in a gym.

 

My first order of the day was to make a couple of apple pies. I’ve always had a kid or two willing to help me out but it’s been a long time since any of them were home. Now I’m able to talk my grandchildren into helping me out and it is great. Haley made one pie almost entirely by herself and Sydney made a good portion of the other pie. They tasted delicious. Later in the day Alycia and her family arrived and we were able to all visit with each other. It was my first chance to see June since she was born and boy is she a well fed child. She is also a very content child and usually quite happy. Friday we visited the Stock Yards in Fort Worth. We’ve been there before but it was a lot more fun now that the kids are getting bigger. That was probably the best part of the whole trip.

Sydney and Hayley are truly young women now and it is so fun to have a grown up discussion with them. At the stock yards we watched the cattle drive and after that we saw a gun fight. We then went to the Fort Worth water gardens which were pretty cool.
I wasn’t to hip on that but they were taking Sydney and Hayley. I love being with all the grandkids but I really enjoyed being with the older kids so along I went.

Thursday we had thanksgiving dinner and the Quinn’s. They had a good crowd over there and it was good to see them all. It was fairly late in the day when we all headed back to Brandon’s but we left Brandon behind.

He had made earlier arrangements to go on a trip with Paul Quinn and they left right after we did. They went lawn Bowling in Arkansas.

Saturday Lisa really wanted to go and see the Magnolia place in Waco.

The stores at Magnolia are not child friendly so I played outside with the little kids while Lisa and Serene checked out the shops with Sydney, Hayley and Rosalie.

It was not my choice of things to do but it was still fun. After Waco we headed straight to the DFW airport and following a tearful goodbye Lisa and I were on the plane. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip but it was wonderful. Thank you Serene for hosting us and thankyou Alycia and Trevor for getting us there.  

 

 

Admiral William Bleigh

I learned something very interesting today. We had the Elders over to visit tonight and Lisa was sharing with them the Family History 21 day Challenge that she is doing. That conversation eventually led to us seeing if we were related to them. My genealogy is so extensive that I am related to pretty much everybody but this time it was a bit of a surprise because one of our Elders is Tongan. Well actually is mother is from New Zealand and he was raised in New Zealand but his father was Tongan.

I was very interested to see how our genealogy would connect. Our common ancestor is thirteen generations back but in the late 1700’s one of his lines jumps back to England through Admiral William Bligh. You may have heard of Bligh since he was the Captain of the Bounty in “Mutiny on the Bounty”.

So the story, as Elder Langi tells it, is that cousin William was set adrift by the mutineers along with his loyal followers. Miraculously they eventually made 3,600 miles to Australia, in this small 20 foot launch loaded with 18 men. Only one of the 18 men died at the hands of a some native on one of the islands they stopped at. 

At some point in his career Bligh ended up in Tonga with a woman named Lesieli Taufa Tofua and they had two kids, a boy and a girl. Both of these kids were born while Cousin William was married to Betsey back in England. Elder Langi, my thirteenth cousin, descends from one of Lesieli’s kids. For some reason I found this story fascinating.

My Smart Home

I may have mentioned before that I love to use “to-do” lists to keep me focused  on the important jobs that need to be done. They allow me to prioritize what  I do and help prevent me from getting side tracked. Today was a pretty productive day but at some point in the mid-afternoon I got to a job where I was to install a smart dimmer switch in our family room. There were actually three similar jobs, the smart switch, a Ring doorbell and replace a light fixture in my closet. These jobs have been on my list for months because I keep bumping them thinking that I can do these kinds of things in the evening after dark. I try and do physical work in the morning so I’m not too tired later in the day. These other jobs I could do when I’m tired.

 

So I got around to my smart switch around the mid-afternoon and had the switch wired up in about 15 minutes. I went to fire it up and it didn’t work. I got checking things out and realized that my dining room light and my kitchen light (both smart switches) didn’t work either. Well if working on one switch messed up other switches then it must have been that power to those lights came through the switch I just worked on. I double checked and I had it wired correctly so then I checked to see if I had power. Since the neutral wires had a wire nut on them I just checked the hot wire and sure enough, there was power.

I then tore apart the dining room and kitchen switches. That was a nightmare because they were two fat switches packed into a double box with a mess of wires going through it. It is a very tight fit. So I pulled those switches out and they also had power. Very confusing. I then disconnected the switches and remove them so all I have is bare wires. No fancy electronics with WiFi radios in them, just bare wires. The hot wire had power but when I touched them to the switch wire nothing happened. It didn’t seem possible.

It was then that I noticed that the lights in the computer room weren’t working either. It was on a dimmer switch so I started getting worried. The four switches that didn’t work were all switches with fancy electronics. Was it possible that I had created voltage spike and had fried all the electronics. That thought was compounded when I realized that a lamp in the front room (on a smart plug) didn’t work either.

As I thought it all out I realized that couldn’t be the problem because I had removed the kitchen and dining room switches altogether. No electronics.

After scratching my head for a while I decided to go back to the source of the problem, my new dimmer switch. I remove it entirely and looked at the wires I had left. I had a hot wire coming in and a hot wire going out. The two neutral wires for those hot wires and then I had a wire going to the light. I checked power in all the wires and confirmed that the hot wire was hot and I connected it to the wire leaving the plug for the kitchen etc. It had to take the power to the kitchen but nothing. I then connected the light to the hot wire and it worked so that was progress.

It was so confusing that I was considering calling an electrician but this wasn’t rocket science and I knew an electrician would do the same thing I was doing.

Finally, after playing with these wires for at least three hours I was pulling on one of the neutral wires and it wiggled. That was weird, these are 14 gauge solid copper wires, they are rigid and they don’t wiggle. Upon closer examination I realized that about three inches down the copper wire was broken. I have no idea how that could happen but an intermittent open circuit like that can make trouble shooting very difficult.

It took another 20 minutes to wire everything back up and get them stuffed into their boxes and Alexa was back in business. As of now every single light in my downstairs is controlled by Alexa except the computer room (its next), the laundry room, the bathroom and my office. My thermostat and television are also controlled by Alexa. Lisa listens to her radio station on Alexa and I have various playlists programmed into her. I have Christmas music, Sunday music and a “Freds Favorites” playlist. Alexa even tells us when we have an Amazon delivery. I think the next thing after the computer room will be the kitchen faucet. They have a faucet that will dispense exactly the amount of water you need. No more measuring cups. Do you like the sign Lisa got for our laundry room?

Memorial Day

Today was Memorial Day. I guess Ancestry is letting everyone use their military data bases for free this weekend. Lisa has been busy all weekend looking up the recruiting documents for all of our ancestors. She has found all of our ancestors who were in world war 1 but she hasn’t had much luck with those Canadians in the second world war. It looks like only the American soldiers are available. It may have to do with the fact that many of the WWII vets are still alive. Well maybe not many of them but still some of them are

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This morning I was planning on working for most of the morning and then Lisa and I were going to go do something fun in the afternoon. I did get some work done but eventually I gave up and went for a run. I ran through the tunnels and some of the Del Mar Mesa trails. I love those even if they do have a ton of hills.

This afternoon Lisa and I went for a walk along part of Lake Hodges. It was a beautiful trail and there were quite a few people out. We did our best to keep our distance.

----------trivia----------

France was still executing people with a guillotine when the first Star Wars film came out.

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Mach 5 Fusion

My razor is a Gillette Mach Fusion 5. It has 5 blades and uses a battery to vibrate when you shave. In theory, the blades move back and forth allowing the 5 blades to cut several times and you drag is smoothly across your face. There is a small Teflon pad that reduces the friction so much that the razor literally glides on my skin resulting a shave as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

The other night at about 4:00 am I awoke to a loud bang followed by a loud reverberating rumbling sound. It was quite alarming. I jumped out of bed trying to imagine what could make such a racket. I was convinced that something horrible was going on somewhere inside my house.

I ran to the bedroom door but when I got to the door I could tell it was coming from the direction of the bathroom. Of course there was nothing in the bathroom that could make a racket like that so I figured I had a window open and something outside was terribly wrong. I went to the bathroom at which point it was obvious that the noisy wasn’t from outside but from inside the bathroom.

It sounded like it was from inside the shower so I opened up the shower door and there in the middle of the tub was my razor. It was vibrating around the tub and the noise coming from this tiny razor was unbelievable. The vibration from the razor was obviously causing he metal tub to act like a sounding board greatly amplifying the sound.

I turned the razor off and left it on the bathroom counter trying to figure out how it had fallen from the window sill in the shower where I normally keep it into the tub. All I could figure is that I had inadvertently left it on and the vibration had eventually caused it to vibrate off the window sill. That just didn’t make sense through because a) how could the battery last all day and most of the night and b) I’m sure I would have heard the vibration.

I went back to bed only to wake up again around 7:00 from a loud vibration coming from my bathroom counter. Not nearly as alarming as the bang followed by the reverberating tub but still it woke me up. Somehow, my Mach 5 Fusion was randomly turning itself on. Weird.