Doing the Sprinkler Dance

Our old home, built in 1904 has room and rooms for improvement. Yet somehow we inherited, of all things, a sprinkler system. A previous owner had strange priorities or just a simple disdain for yellow grass. A couple of the sprinkler heads had broken over the past year, and I finally made the time to fix them. This, like most recent home improvements, was a new venture.

First, I dug down to the corner connector thingy majigy and removed the broken sprinkler head.

This proved tricky because half the thread on the sprinkler broke inside the corner connector and I literally had to cut it out.

After I removed the broken piece, I had room to screw in a new sprinkler head, test it and fill in the hole.

I may or may not have skipped a few steps of trials and errors and multiple trips to Home Depot to change out wrong-sized replacement pieces. Nevertheless, I’m making it rain now in the front yard. Let’s all celebrate and do the sprinkler! For those who don't know the move, here's a quick lesson.

Photos: Playing Fetch at Lake Washington

We took Gianna out for her first swim (to determine if she could swim) at Luther Burbank Park on Mercer Island after attending Baby Berto's first birthday party.

The good news was that Gianna could swim. She was hesitant at first -- probably by a chilly Lake Washington -- but once she got comfortable she was in it to win it, or at least continue to fetch tennis balls.

The bad news was that she didn't want to stop the fetching game and got a little wild after she realized water time was over. Fortunately, she crashed just as hard as she played on the ride home.

The light wasn't amazing for photos where we were at, but the dog can swim, so I'll call that a win.

Ladybugs to the Rescue

Amanda and I try to go to at least one of the Tacoma Farmers Markets every week. We usually pick up fresh flowers and produce and an occasional baked good. Recently, Amanda had an ulterior motive for our farmers market outing: Ladybugs.

Ladybugs apparently eat whatever makes dark spot on our roses, so Amanda dropped $10 on what must have been 500 of them. They lived in an old salsa container with sprouts, and the vendor at the market told us to keep them in the refrigerator to keep them in a cold coma and limit their mobility.

Our first stop after the market was a Mexican restaurant for lunch, so they warmed up like fajitas in there, and I was preoccupied thinking that they'd blow the lid off the container and infest the restaurant.

Lunch went without a ladybug outbreak, and we made it home OK with our new friends, which I placed in the refrigerator in the garage. They stayed there for a few days and when I went to retrieve them so that Amanda could release them to our garden beds, something terrible happened.

They died.

Or at least they looked dead. I know what dead bugs look like, and when I saw nearly all 500 of them upside down, I thought I was in the dog house for sure. The fridge was too cold, and I froze them to death.

Not the case. I nearly froze them to death. They came alive within an hour of exposure to room temperature. Whew. The release ceremony could begin, and our roses would soon be spotless.

Here's Sergio questioning Amanda's sanity.

Go, ladybug, go!

The Warby Parker Experiment

Sometimes I forget about blog posts that I start. This is one of those gems.

Early this summer, Amanda and I got to thinking about buying new glasses frames, refreshing our faces. That's just what geeky couples do. 

I had read about Warby Parker, an up-and-coming boutique frame shop out of New York that has a unique online purchasing model. In short, you shop frames online and Warby sends them to you, five at a time and cost-free, to try on at home before purchasing with lenses. Very hip. You can't apply your vision insurance to the purchase, but every frame is $95, lenses are included, and shipping is free. I can dig it.

Like Tom's Shoes, Warby Parker also has a "One-for-one" program where it gives a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair purchased. Does everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside?!

Amanda and I took a couple days browsing the site and all of Warby's frames. The styles range from classic to hipster, and colors from conservative to bright orange. We each picked five frames to try and in just a few days we received them to try-on at home.

The only issue we ran into with the process was that many glasses are unisex, so when we thought we were ordering his/her frames by the same name, we actually just ordered the exact same pairs.

Though we decided not to buy at the time, Amanda liked the Roosevelts and I like the Digbys. I'm sure those will be our next glasses purchases -- for the cost, style, service and concept of Warby Parker.

Why I Decided To Subscribe to A Dead-Tree Newspaper

I finally broke down after 10 years of adulthood and subscribed to my local newspaper, The News Tribune. I ordered the weekend editions through January for $20.

Why? I hadn't regularly read the newspaper since journalism school, and that was because my professor required it at the time. I enjoyed reading the paper (The New York Times then) but was of course affected by free and easy access to online editions of every paper like the rest of the world. Not just that, but I was growing professionally in an online industry that discouraged print editions and viewed them as less valuable. That's still true. I picked up the weeklies, still do, but to pay for a dead-tree subscription was damn-near uncivilized.

I recently found a few good reasons why it finally made sense (and cents) to order the paper.

1. Community. I'm finally settled in a home and a community -- personally and professionally. I care a lot more about the quality of community life than before and the local newspaper, plus the right Twitter hashtags, provide that. Though I could still access those stories online, I also want to support the vitality of the newspaper as an institution. A dedicated news source is an inherent pillar of community. I shell well more than $20 a month at my favorite local bar for the same reasons. The newspaper subscription price is a steal in that respect.

2. Coupons. I could care less, but ever since Amanda saw an episode of Extreme Couponing, she thinks she can transform our grocery budget. I think this will soon turn my garage into a storage bin of household cleaning supplies bought in bulk, but I digress. Here's Amanda in her first couponing binge.

3. Fetch. I'd like to teach the dog to fetch the paper in the morning. That combined with the start of a tobacco pipe habit and more regular robe-wearing and I'll be well on my way to middle age.

4. Fires. Paper burns. Duh.

5. Inspiration. Long before the rise of the Internet and the democratization of information (big concept!), people bitched and moaned about editorial prejudice and the general notion that journalists and editors had too much power and authority over information. The news funnel was too small. In some ways, the Internet freed access to information. In some ways, social media reversed that freedom as people "subscribed" to the friends and sources of information that appealed to them, shackling the scope of information they exposed themselves to and creating fragmented echo chambers of opinion. I find myself guilty of that, hearing the same things from the same people.

I'm often most inspired by news I wasn't looking for or finding conflicting points of views. My lack of control over what I see in the dead-tree newspaper is the dynamic that I've been missing. I want to turn a page and not know what will be there. That's a funny thing to write as that was the only option pre-Internet. I'm willing to pay to limit my choice of news and think critically about what others think is important to publish, a rare opportunity these days.

A good example is the editorial "More partners, more news". If I hadn't seen the story in print, introducing a partnership between the News Tribune and other local papers, I probably wouldn't have seen it otherwise. It wouldn't have been "Like"-worthy in my online networks, but the story mattered to me. The editorial spun the efficiencies of combining resources, eliminating reporters from multiple papers attending the same events for cost-saving. I saw through that message and realized the lack of competition and differing perspectives that the public will miss. Without the attendance of multiple reporters, quality of reporting will worsen and alternate perspectives will be non-existent. One voice. One source. No alternative. That's a disservice to the community.

I'm watching closely the negotiations between the teachers' union and Tacoma Public Schools, a hot-button issue, because the paper alerted me. Or, it was nice seeing a child recovering at one of the hospitals I work for on the front page of Saturday's paper. For all of the reasons above... OK, just #1 and #5, these things matter and justify the subscription. They justify stepping away from the multitasking temptations of the bright screen and looking at the dull print.

On a side note, I hope everyone likes the new blog layout! You know I can't go without changing the blog every year or so. This new template provides a lot more flexibility. Yes, some old links will be broken, but pretty sure that I'm the only one looking at my archives.