./janella.com

A belated Happy New Year to all!  Welcome to Twenty-Ten! This is the proper way to say it, right?

Again, I blame the Winter Break for not doing this post earlier.  But here I am, a little late to the party, trying to summarize blog postings and happenings from the last year:

• Kayla started playing volleyball.  This prompted my sister to get into DSLR photography. She is doing great taking photos, and using the plenty of tips on photography from family and friends.
• This past Christmas Eve we did our first Skype call with my sister and her family in Nebraska. I think it surprised my mom, who was happy to see them on screen even though she had just seen them in person less than a month earlier. Ah, technology.
• Two new additions to the extended family this past year: Kaleb and Kaelin.
• We did a few concerts this year: Paolo Nutini, Dane Cook, Rex Navarette, and Tori Amos.  Farrah also saw No Doubt at Shoreline.
• We saw the King Tut exhibit and went to the California Academy of Sciences.  I didn’t blog about King Tut, but will probably do so in March.
• We bought our first LCD TV and took the dive into blu-ray.
• We, and everyone else bought the iPhone 3GS. It’s been a very good phone for us.
• Once again, the state of this blog has fluctuated this year.  The blog has bounced from Wordpress to Wordpress.com to Tumblr to Wordpress again. I also pointed the domain (Janella.com) directly to my Smugmug account to start a new site alex-is.com. And once again, with my manic web life, I’ve decided to shut down alex-is.com and blog back at Janella.com. Confusing, huh?  Even though everyone seems to be on Facebook, I believe I will continue to blog here. I want to avoid getting stuck in a walled garden.
• My uncle passed away last year.  It was tough to take, even though I hadn’t seen him in so long.

Ok, now onto my New Year’s resolution list.  I know, you really don’t need to wait until a new year begins to make a list of goals. You should be able to do this any day of the week. But I suppose New Year’s Day is an apt occasion to think about what you’d like to change. Wait? Wasn’t New Year’s Day about a week ago?  Yes, it was, and I’ve listed “less procrastinating” as one of my goals.

I present here, in this blog post, my “More or Less List.” Should be a straightforward read.

In the coming year, I would like to do more:

• Reading: I do plenty of online reading. I’d like to read more books. I started two books last year, American Gods and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I got halfway through both books. I need to finish those first, then find other books of interest.
• Writing: I’ve been trying to write an hour a day, write like a stream of consciousness. I’d like to continue this. I’m hoping this leads to better blog entries or at least more interesting entries.
• Taking photos: As I’ve said in a previous post, I’d like to take more pictures and to be more creative.  My understand lighting and depth-of-field seem to be growing more, but I don’t think about it often on-the-fly. Also, following some of these resolutions would be good.
• Watching movies: There was a time when I would devour movies.  But my ability to sit through a film waned a few years ago.  I’ve been able to watch a few movies the last several months.  I hope to continue the trend.
• Exercising: I took a month or so off for the holidays.  I need to desperately jump back on this horse.
• Cooking:  I need to bust out the pots and pans more this year.>

I probably should do less of the following:

• Dining out: Too many restaurants too often. But it does help with my Yelp reviews. I should be cooking more though.
• Playing video games: I’ve already conquered the world (Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution), won 15 Super Bowls (Madden 10), beat Arsenal to a pulp (FIFA 10), and saved the world - for the time being (Call fo Duty: Modern Warfare 2). Time to cut down the hours on the PS3.
• Giving in to treats: I need to eat less chocolate, drink less soda, and cut down on my Starbucks Mocha consumption. Of course, if we receive a care package with chocolate in it, well, I’ll probably breakdown. I’ve been successful in cutting down on the mochas, so far.
• Spend less time on Facebook, Tumblr, etc.: I’m thinking of just logging in once a week instead of the multiple times a day, onto these networks.  Just a thought.
• Procrastinating: Yes, I just need to get things done!

How did I do compared to last year’s list? Considering that I have many repeats on this list, it seems I didn’t do well.   I probably should assess how I’m doing by the middle of the year.

I wasn’t here during the Loma Prieta earthquake 20 years ago. I was out of California, doing my stint for God and country. I remember when the quake happened. It was my day off. I had set the VCR in my bedroom to tape the third game of the World Series. I brought back takeout from Whataburger. I’m pretty sure it was a double-meat Whataburger with jalapenos. I remember setting down the bag, turning on the tv a little after 7 in the afternoon, and then seeing just a green screen with the words “World Series” on it.

No audio, no nothing.

Then I heard Al Michael’s voice come on. He didn’t mention the word earthquake, but what else could it be. I had a feeling it was pretty big considering there was no video on the television screen. I tried to call home several times but wasn’t able to get through. The video finally came up on some channel, I’m not sure if it was CBS, NBC, or ABC. I think I switched back to ABC to watch the complete coverage. I still wondered if everyone was all right at home.

Later in the evening I finally got through to my parents. Everyone, for the most part, was ok. I think there were a few bumps and bruises, and something about the big mirror in the living room possibly coming down. But thankfully, everyone was fine.

Wow, 20 years ago, huh? I wish, just a little bit, that I was here.

I am not really a handyman, but for the past several months I’ve had the urge to fix. I’ve attempted to fix things that I normally wouldn’t think twice about hiring someone else to repair. For example, I replaced a car battery, changed our front and back door locks, and fixed a leaky faucet. I know, I know, I’m not rebuilding a car engine, but for someone like myself who is not mechanically inclined, these are quite surprising feats.

As I’ve mentioned before on Janella.com, we bought a new washer and in dryer. They both initially worked great, but the dryer stopped doing a great job in drying several weeks ago. By going through the troubleshooting steps in the manual, we figured out the problem was with the dryer exhaust hose. The hose connects from the back of the dryer, runs underneath the house, and exits through the side of the house.

No Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock here. Lucky me, I get to go under the house! The last time I was under house was four years ago. It was an unpleasant experience. I think I may still have a few scrapes from that last adventure. As a kid, going under the house was fun. When we had plumbing problems that required someone to go under and check on “the pipes”, I readily volunteered. Of course I was much smaller and slimmer back then. But now as a larger and more phobia-straddled adult, going under the house is not much fun. It was also once fun to climb up to the roof of the house to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. Now the only reason I go up on the roof is to clean the gutters before the next rainfall.

For this trip down below, I was intent on being prepared or as best prepared as possible. I bought a pair of coveralls at Sears (on sale!). I also bought a pair of hardy knee pads at Lowe’s, in hopes of counteracting any beating my knees might encounter. In hindsight I should have also purchased gloves, as my hands can take quite a thrashing under the house as well.

To make a long story short, with my wife’s help, we were able to replace the dryer hose and fix the problem. The dryer once again works as advertised! I know it’s not rocket science, but it just goes to show that all it takes is a little research and hard work to fix certain problems around the house. I’m not sure where this “urge to fix” has come from - perhaps from all the DYI shows on television. But with the help of the Internet, with all of its self-help websites and videos, you can do almost do anything. I don’t think I’d tackle rewiring the house, but as for the smaller jobs, leave them to me.