Fairview Farms

Located in Plano, TX, right in the heart of restaurant row.  Kinda bizarre actually.  We’d seen this place before a couple of times after eating at Carrabbas and Shady Oaks BBQ.  So after another lunch at Carrabbas, we gave it a look.

Before though, at Carrabbas, they’ve got a new thing going.  After we ordered, the waitress offered to bring out some uncooked dough for Owen to play with and then said he could make his own pizza and they’d bake it for him.  Pretty cool I thought.  We opted out of the toppings part and just took the dough.  He loved it, like it was PLAY-DO or something.  Anybody that knows me of course has already guessed that I had to participate in this fun, which of course I did.  I made a heart shaped dough for my wife.  We didn’t do the baking part, but it was fun to through it around at the table.

So, the farm.  They had pony rides, a petting zoo, pumpkin patches, and hay rides even horse back riding [you know the kind of horse that Owen is almost taller than.]  I know, you’re starting to think that’s all there is to do out here.  Owen seemed to enjoy it though, and at one point he tried to free all the goats from incarceration.  Then we fed some horses and pigs.  Later we saw another goat by himself making weird noises.  Owen tried to imitate and I was unable to record the audio.  Maybe next time.  It was a cross between an old lady sneezing and coughing mixed in with a little “ney”-ing.  Even funnier, later Owen fell down and a goat tried to eat his shoe.

We ran into a lady carrying a very cute jack russel terrier, white with black paint that perfectly split his face.  I later caught the same woman carrying a giant turkey under  one arm like a pillow, guess that’s how you do it. 

The Big Orange Pumpkin Farm

This weekend, we took the boy to his first pumpkin patch.  This was not the pumpkin patch I remember growing up, either of them.  The first one I remember only had pumpkins, in a field, for you to pick.  That was it.  The second one I remember being well air conditioned and had everything else you would expect to find at the grocery store.  This place blows all that away.  It’s a zoo.  It’s a farm.  It’s a hay ride.  It’s even a cowboy ranch camp for kids.  There were goats that would climb up a bridge just to get food on the other side.  You could walk under the bridge, but I would recommend checking for falling debris first, if you know what I mean.Of all the things to stimulate the eyes and ears, Owen was most fascinated with the giant fan four stories over our heads.  He did enjoy the hay ride, but was not impressed when we were giving the feed to the animals instead of him.

For the admission, we received two medium size pumpkins and two cups of feed.  [click to  enlarge]

Owen wanted to take this big one home instead.

They also had lots of farm equipment for the kids to climb around on and this of course provided great photo ops for us.

Here’s one of Owen singing “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.”

We’ll definitely be going back to this place as he gets older. 

He’ll only enjoy it more and more as he can do more and more.   Hopefully by next year he’ll learn the goat feed isn’t that appetizing.

Random quote of the week:

Jess after eating dinner and getting up to do the dishes.  “Aw crap, there’s a lawnmower in the sink.”

Josh’s Stage 85 Drought Regulations

Before we get into my regulations, let’s view the current stage 3 regulations here in Mc(don’t have any water in)Kinney.

No washing your car/truck/SUV

Water only on trash day between hours of 6pm-10am

No outdoor fountains.

Josh’s Stage 85 Drought Regulations:

No using the windshield washer provided with your vehicle.

If your cooling system goes dry, you are not allowed to refill it with water.  Find something else.

Everyone using a gym will be required to put their excessively damp towels in specially marked receptacles.

If you own a truck with no topper, tonneau cover, or means of draining water that may accumulate in the bed, you must drive to one of two water reclamation facilities here in McKinney.  One of these is located far away from your home.  The other is even further.  No, you may not have a pool party in the back on the way to the facility, we’ve been getting calls about this.

 Everyone will have a county issued still suite to be worn for the next six months.  The Fremen will be available for fitting support.

 Anyone owning a camel must turn them over to the city so their water can be confiscated.

Kool-aid is outlawed.

Tuna will no longer be canned with spring water.

Any pictures in public places that display a body of water will need to come down as we don’t want people even thinking about water.

All private pools will need to be drained and water transported to city of McKinney at owner’s expense.  See locations above.

Car washes have to close their doors.

If it rains everyday for the next six months, all of these rules will still be in place.

Picnic Table

Home Depot offers a picnic table kit for $40 that comes with a prebuilt top and all the hardware.  I would be hard pressed to get all those materials for that price, plus they’re pre-cut, so I’m saving time too.  So the box claims “Average Construction Time = 60 mins.”  Easy enough.  Yeah, that doesn’t count the two coats of sealer it recommends prior to assembly.  Lucky for me, my garage came complete with a barely used gallon of Bear water sealer.  The can says it’s good on any wood and has a red oak flavor to it.  This will go nice with the Southern Yellow Pine wood of the table.  So that’s taken care of, and let’s see I’ll need a brush.  Ah, here’s one.  I used to use it to dust off the gas distributor in my grill, that’ll work.  Now, I’m no Bob Ross, but I think a nice strawberry-blond with just a hint of black ash will make a nice picnic table color.

The first photo is of the wood right out of the box.  Wait, did you think you could just jump right into the staining and sealing?  No.  There is much sanding to be done.  Gotta knock down some bumps and take all those nasty ink marks off the sides that will be facing up.  All in all, it’s about 3 hours of labor sanding, sealing and resealing over three days.  The second picture was taken after one coat of sealer.

One more night and one more coat and we’re ready to begin the estimated “60 minutes” of assembly time.  I guess it’s my fault for not reading the whole sign.  This story gets interrupted by another project.  Hanging the storm door.  This will have to wait another day to finish as that’s the only day the neighbor helping me was available.

No good compliment goes unpunished

A quote from Josh not 23 minutes before everything went wrong:

“I really like that Lawn Boy mower.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  It starts on the first pull, every time.  I mean, every time.  And it’s like 30 years old.”

 You can imagine the rest of the story.  But first the back story.  It’s Sunday evening, around 5, and I’m about to light the grill.  So we fire that up and I move to the mower, I figure I’ll knock the front yard out while the coals are getting ready.  This goes without incident.  The grill is ready, the steaks go on and then we’re all set.  Dinner goes fine, I’m enjoying my fine beef tenderloin as is my son, and this is the part where I make the infamous quote.  Now dinner’s over and it’s time to finish the back yard.  One great pull on the cord and immediately I can tell there was something wrong.  No resistance.  I practically through my arm across the driveway.  “That’s not right,” I could be heard saying.  So I bend down, check around and pull the chord a bit to see what’s moving and what’s not.  The gear was spinning, but not engaging anything.  My immediate conclusion was that I must have really got a hold of it when starting the mower for the front yard and completely broke off the engaging gear.

So begins the search for the missing part.  As I’m perusing the front yard, the neighbor notices and offers to help.  Don’t you love it when the neighbor happens to see that you’re wondering around your yard aimlessly and wants to join in?  I say it’s fine, and I’m not really sure what I’m looking for anyway and give up shortly thereafter.  Now the part where we have to start tearing of the cover, removing gas lines and really getting into it.  After all this, I find the issue is a spring that will of course need replacing.  But I can get through the weekend without it just fine.

So everything goes back together, EXCEPT for the part where I knock the primer pump line off its connection, without noticing it of course.  By now it’s way too dark to finish the back yard, so I start the mower once just for a second to make sure eveything’s fine, and turn in for the night.

Monday after dinner.  Mower starts just fine on first pull, after I engage the gear, (this has to be done prior to every pull, good thing this baby starts on the first pull, right?)  I get like two laps around the yard and now we’re smoking.  What the hell is smoking?  I try to make it back to the garage when it shuts off.  Out of gas.  COME ON!  Add gas.  Re-engage gear, pull starter, we’re off and running, then more smoke and now we’re bogging down.  Back to the garage.  At this time the wife and child make an appearance to see what all the commotion is about.  I start priming again, and the sound is not changing so I poke around underneath.  Re-engage gear, pull starter, nothing.  Bend down, re-engage gear, pull starter,nothing.  Bend down, re-engage gear, pull starter,nothing.  This repetition is agonizing and you’re just reading it.  While I’m doing this, my son, not even one yet, is laughing his ass off every-time I pull the starter cord.  I’d say I got at least ten good giggles out of him.  So finally I find primer line not connected and reconnect.  Now the primer pump sounds like it’s doing something.  Bend down, re-engage gear, pull starter,wait for it…   … whoa hooooo.  Success.  Owen didn’t think the loud noise was so damn funny either.  Ha.  Laugh at Daddy now why don’t you.

After all this I have decided not to make any comments about any of my tools good or bad, and if any of them ask why they get no recognition, I’ll tell them to talk to the Lawn Boy.

To be clear, the mower is truely awesome.  I don’t want to sound like I don’t appreciate it, as it was a gift.  It’s back to starting on the first pull and I’m thinking that I can simply remount the spring if it’s not actually broken.  I just thought this story was really funny and needed to be shared.  It’s more about me interacting with the mower than the mower itself.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Since becoming a homeowner, I’ve been trying to flex my handy-man muscles.  So far, I think I’ve replaced a few light bulbs, attempted to patch a hole in the trim off the front of the house, and mended the fence, several times.  Oh, and I did patch a hole in the guest shower.  Not a lot, having lived here for nine months.  This is not feeding my appetite for projects.

“Appetite for projects, what’s wrong with you Josh?  You should be so lucky to not have anything to repair, replace, or ‘re-buy’.”  You don’t understand.  Before moving to Texas, my job was to break stuff.  Everyday, 8 hours a day, breaking stuff, with no outlet for building or constructing.  This leaves an imbalance in the human psyche that needs attention.  Granted, my new career doesn’t require me to break anything, not yet at least, [side note: I will begin testing of systems soon, and that may offer multiple opportunities to break stuff, you people who know me well, know what I'm capable of], but I still have five years of imbalance to catch up on.

“When it rains, it pours,” right?  I started out this weekend working on a toy truck I’m making for Owen’s first birthday.  That’s all I had on my plate, so I thought I had all weekend to work on it.  WRONG!  Let’s go ahead and throw building a picnic table, installing a storm door, and cleaning the motorcycle.  Don’t’ forget you still have to mow, edge, trim and still try to spend time with the family.

Josh’s quote of the week, “Don’t start ‘Weekend Projects’ on Sunday.”  They’re not getting done.  I’m gonna go off on the picnic table later, not exactly ‘as advertised.’  And the storm door will hopefully be installed Tuesday, I conned a neighbor into helping with this.  He claims to have done it before, so I have high expectations.  So I’ve spread all this out over a week.  But that’s all I get.  Owen’s party is this weekend, and naturally, all this must be done by then.

I’ll have some pictures of all this as each project gets done. 

Walking on the Moon

The house is getting smaller by the day.  The boy’s range already encompasses every room without a door.  And he loves to go in the ones with doors and close them behind him.  Guess he already wants his privacy.  Two nights ago, he woke up at 11 pm screaming bloody murder and was inconsolable.  We’re not sure why, possibly a nightmare.  Jess stayed up with him for 3 hours, bless her heart, trying to make him feel comfortable.  He finally calmed down and she got him asleep in the crib.

The next day, I recorded this with the webcam.  It’s not that great-a-quality but it’s good for a teaser.  I’ll get some more with the other camera soon.  I better hurry though, he gets better by the day.

You should pause this when it starts, and let it load like half way, then hit play to let it get ahead of you. 

History of the Ace of Spades

Hi, my name is Josh, and I’m a History Channel-aholic.

 [All other uber-dorks together now, "Hi, Josh."]

Hi.  Jess had a hair appointment last night, so that left me and the boy to ourselves.  After fits of schizophrenia, going from hysterical laughing to uncontrolled screaming (I know he has more teeth coming in, but I’m gonna blame it on Mommy not being there), I changed him and put him to bed.  Jess hadn’t come back yet, so I flipped on the tube and found this show on the “History of Playing Cards”, not to be confused with the “History of Card Playing” or even the “History of Playing Cards” meaning the same.

It started with the whole history of the Chinese and Indian and even Egyptian involvement in the paper making process.  Blah, blah, blah.  Then it gets to the part wherein the cards begin to be taxed by William III.  The tax begins at six pence, which is like five dollars today, for one pack of cards.  Then it goes to two shillings and six pence, or twenty-five dollars.  The packs didn’t even cost that much themselves.  Reminds me of cigarettes.  So that sounds interesting enough, but it’s the way they were taxed that brings us to the Ace of Spades.

Before the packs began being taxed, there were many foreign cards coming into England, which of course had to be stopped.  To ensure this, the king ordered all incoming packs to be seized and destroyed.  All local printers were to provide their own seal on the printed side (will come back to that) of the Ace of Spades.  The group given the charge of running all this was called The Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards.  That doesn’t sound at all Masonic.  So you could buy a pack of cards, minus the Ace of Spades, but if you wanted the Ace, you had to pay the tax and it had to be stamped on the face of that Ace.  So in that sense, the Ace of Spades was literally the most valuable card in the deck as it was really the only thing you were paying for.

Naturally this led to counter-fitting operations which led to people being hanged for such illegal activities.  Believe it or not, gun slingers in the old west weren’t the first to lose lives over playing cards.  Again, that’s “playing cards” the noun, not “playing cards” the action.

So back to the “printed side” story.  Initially, cards only had print on one side, the face.  This left the other side totally blank and provided a great canvas for letters, art, coupons, advertisements, anything.  As expensive as the cards got, this was still the cheapest paper most people could buy.  Later, back designs were added to prevent cheating.  Most packs of cards today still use standard pictures for all the faces of the deck except the Ace of Spades.  It’s the only card face that manufactures really make their own.  And it all had to do with taxation.

I enjoyed the show, learned some new things about cards.  Hope this wasn’t too exciting for you.  Since you made it all the way down here, here’s something for ya.  Jess put new pics up last week of Owen being silly at La Hacienda and in front of the dish washer.  See the link at right called “Family Photos”.

Second Saturday doesn’t deserve Second Place

This Saturday was the second Saturday of the month.  Earlier in the week, Jess had seen that the downtown square was having and event called “2nd Saturday on the Square”.  Now my experience with these night time town square events is limited to the Friday Fest of Melbourne, FL.  This happens on the last Friday of every month and takes place in the historic district.  So far, the similarities are pretty obvious.  This event was sponsored by the City of Melbourne and the restaurants and bars in the district.  There was always a stage at one end of the street, with a band playing cover tunes and lots of vendors lining the sidewalks selling, food and adult beverages, and maybe a few non-alcoholic libations, maybe.

So naturally, this is what we expected when we heard “Second Saturday on the Square.”  We couldn’t have been more wrong.  As it turns out, the whole event is sponsored, not by the City of McKinney, but the local Art Institute of McKinney, which I learned today.  The description says the event is setup to attract art collectors to the square, which would explain why only the art stores and the wine store were open.

I guess we at least expected some sidewalk vendors.  I say vendor[S] because there was one selling hand made jewelry.  I also expected jazz music per the description.  Instead there was a band of “gypsies” they called themselves playing on one corner of the square.  They had a folky sound made up of a guitar, upright bass, violin, and I swear I heard a clarinet in there.  They were covering “I Will Survive” as we approached from the parking lot.  You can only imagine.  The gentleman on guitar made sure the audience knew “CD’s were available.”

So we made our way ’round the square [that just sounds wrong] and noted to each other how we honestly expected more people.  I think more people were there to see whatever was playing in the downtown theatre.  Who knew we even had a downtown theatre?

I don’t think we’ll be going again anytime soon, unless we pick up art collecting as a hobby.  I can only hope “Scare on the Square” next month is more enjoyable.

I’ve named this post “Second Saturday doesn’t deserve Second Place”, but since I only have one other event to compare it to, it will have to live there for now.

Bench Stool

Months ago, a friend unloaded a work table from his garage he no longer wanted.  It was all wafer board top with 2×4 legs and supports.  I already had a work bench so I didn’t need it, but I’m not one to turn down free wood.  So for about the first week it lived in the “shop”, it remained a table until I could really get to it.  I hacked it up nice and removed all the hardware he had stuck in it.

Now with all this material, I needed something to build.  By this time, I tired of always having to stand in front of my work bench.  So I decided a stool would be perfect.  I drew up some plans and made sure that when complete it would fit under the work bench out of the way when not in use.  I had originally planned to make a back rest for the stool, but material ran out for that and now I think it serves as a great storage place for the extention cord.