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In November of 1981 I was 12 years old (nearly 13) and living in Houston, TX. My favorite bands were Rush, AC/DC, Judas Priest, Styx, Queen, Van Halen, The Cars, Ozzy Osbourne, and several more that I can’t remember. Journey’s Escape was the #1 album in the country at the time and you couldn’t swing a dead cat in Houston without hitting someone blasting “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Stone in Love” or “Open Arms” on their car stereo or “ghetto blaster” (hehehe). Though I wasn’t a huge Journey fan, especially of the wussy ballads such as the latter song, the former two songs were and continue to be among my favorite songs of all time, along with the title track from Escape, easily the best Journey song period. (Those who know me well might scoff at such a statement, however, as I have undoubtedly counted thousands of songs among my “favorites of all time” over the years. If hyperbole were a crime, I’d be doing time.)

So, back in those halcyon days there occurred a semi-regular argument in the Cole household regarding the appropriate age for an adolescent boy to attend his first rock concert. This argument flared up, not coincidentally, immediately upon every announcement of tickets going on sale for a performance by one of the above-mentioned bands, and it can be summarized like this: Me: “Mom, Dad, can I go and see AC/DC/Van Halen/Styx/Ozzy Osbourne?” Mom/Dad: “No, you’re too young.” This was repeated probably a dozen times before I reached the “age of consent” (14) and was finally allowed to see Rush (on the Signals tour) in March of 1983, albeit with my father as chaperone. (And no doubt my Dad was astonished to discover that complimentary joints and vodka were not given out as we passed through the turnstiles, and that random strangers didn’t force cocaine on me during the show.)

So while that Rush show was a seminal moment in my development into a music junkie, equally seminal in a reverse direction were the many shows which I was not allowed to attend: AC/DC on the For Those About to Rock tour, Van Halen on the Diver Down tour, Judas Priest on the Screaming for Vengeance tour, and the most painful of them all, Ozzy on the Diary of a Madman tour (with UFO opening!) only ONE MONTH before Randy Rhoads died!! (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!) Despite the fact that many of my friends were allowed to go to concerts at an early age (the name Mike Mayfield sticks in my mind as someone who managed to see every show I wasn’t allowed to go to!) my parents never wavered on that 14 number and there was simply nothing I could do to change things, other than to live long enough to turn 14.

What made missing these shows so painful was that seemingly everyone at Memorial Junior High, especially my buddies, showed up the following day wearing the kick-ass tour jersey from the previous night’s show. You know them, the baseball-style jerseys with the colored 3/4-length sleeves and cool graphics with the tour dates on the back. Each subsequent wearing by my friends was a reminder of the exact dates that I was miserable at home, my only solace being another spin of Moving Pictures on my Realistic turntable. This may all seem a bit silly but in the early 80’s in Houston, listening to music and going to concerts (and playing arcade games) were pretty much all my friends and I wanted to do. And I really remember how upset I was to miss these shows. Even after I saw that Rush show I remember missing several shows that I wanted to see, perhaps because they were on school nights. The Police, Def Leppard, and Van Halen on the 1984 tour come to mind. And I couldn’t have known this at the time, but coming of age as a hard rock fan in the early 80s I was right in the middle of the single best 5-year period of music ever (in my not-so-humble opinion). Albums released by all the above bands (and others) between 1980 and 1985 still comprise a huge chunk of what I listen to on any given day, regardless of whatever contemporary bands I happen to be into at the time. I just wish I’d been a little older back then or had parents who cared a bit less about their kids being exposed to second-hand pot smoke.

But back to 1981, and Journey. I REALLY wanted to go to the Journey show at the Summit, but it was not going to happen. Well, I dscovered something funny recently. Apparently this exact concert in Houston was filmed by MTV (which had launched just three months before the show) and was eventually shown on the channel, though I only vaguely remember seeing it broadcast way back when. Now, however, with record companies scrambling to make a buck on their back catalog, those MTV tapes have been dusted off and released as a DVD/CD set, Journey - Live in Houston 1981, The Escape Tour (1981). It actually came out last year but I only recently found out about it, and of course, I bought it immediately. According to the liner notes, the tapes went through an extensive remastering process and the sound was remixed to 5.1 channels, and the results are simply superb. I’ve got dozens of classic rock and metal concert DVDs and this one is easily in the top 5 in overall audio-visual quality. The sound is simply awesome. The song selection is awesome. The filming style is great, as it pre-dates the whole millions-of-two-second-edits trend - the camera actually stays on each performer for long stretches so you can really get a feel for being at the show. If you’re a Journey fan and especially if you’ve got a nice home theater with 5.1 sound, I highly recommend this DVD. You also get the concert on CD, all for $14.99, less than what you would have paid for a concert jersey at the show.

So I’d been meaning to write this blog entry for a few weeks now, but of course have not had the time. So today I happen to glance at SFGate and what do I see? A long article by Peter Hartlaub proclaiming that Escape is a fantastic album that still holds up after 25 years despite being flamed by critics since day one! My thunder has been stolen! Not only was it stolen, but this is one of the best record reviews I’ve ever read. I completely agree with everything this guy wrote, and at the risk of boring the last two people who may still be reading this, I’m going to quote my favorite excerpt, if only in hopes that having such witty writing on my blog may rub off on my future posts:

The album begins with “Don’t Stop Believin,’ ” a song that just may have magical properties within its opening piano signature. Seriously, lock yourself in a room right now and listen to that keyboard part 35 times in a row. Sick of it yet? If you said yes, then you’re a filthy liar.

Now here’s the mind-blowing part. As any serious “Escape” fan will tell you, that’s only the third- or maybe fourth-best track on the album. The next song, “Stone in Love,” is even better — and part of Journey’s master plan to tease you with a fast song, then a slow song (”Who’s Crying Now”), another fast one (”Keep on Runnin’ “) and another slow one (”Still They Ride”).

After that, you’ve reached “Escape,” a five-minute, 16-second track with only four intelligible phrases. (They are: “They won’t take me, they won’t break me,” “He’s on the streets breakin’ all the rules,” “I’ve got dreams I’m livin’ for” and “This is my escape, yes I’m on my way.”) And yet it still prevails as the best song on the album — maybe on any album.

Listening to the song “Escape” is the equivalent of getting a personal two-hour life-coaching session by Tony Robbins and then smoking PCP. Each time “Escape” finishes, I am completely convinced that I can dunk a basketball, break a 2-by-4 in half with my bare hands and eat 25 hot dogs in a minute.

As a former freelance rock journalist, I would have loved to have penned those words. Good stuff! The article also reminded me that Journey is a Bay Area band (Escape was recorded in Berkeley), and I moved to the Bay Area less than three years after that fateful Houston concert. Ironically my family landed in Lafayette, where Journey’s bass player Ross Valory happened to live at the time (and may still for all I know). I guess he had a little money and he built his own private street with a big house at the end. Maybe I should drive over there and see if he’ll sign my DVD case.

One last comment about the DVD: possibly my favorite feature is the crowd shots, thousands of teenagers in their red-sleeved tour jerseys, rocking out to “Stone in Love”, swaying to “Who’s Crying Now”. And if you look closely you can even see the ushers passing out beer and weed to all the underage kids! I guess Mom and Dad were right after all.

Justin’s grandmother, Susan’s Mom, certainly is great, but in this case I’m talking about Justin’s literal Great Grandmothers. Until recently both were still alive, though he never met Granny, my grandma, and unfortunately he will never get the chance. Anna Katri Aalto passed away on February 3, 2006, in her hometown of Mikkeli, Finland, the same little town she was born in on the 4th of July, 1917, nearly 89 years go. Though she had been ill and her passing was not a surprise, for me it was quite a shock to lose her, especially since she was so far away and I was unable to see her one last time and say goodbye. I am very thankful though that we did get to see her fairly recently, in 2002, at my cousin Jenni’s wedding in Germany. There Granny got the chance to meet Susan, and we spent a wonderful week in the Black Forest with lots of family around, some of whom I hadn’t seen in twenty years. Here are a couple of pictures from that great week, and if you ever plan to visit the Black Forest do yourself a favor and stay a few days at the Berggasthof Linde, which is owned and operated by my cousins Kati and Jenni, their husbands, and their families. (Hi Kati, Jenni, Klaus, and Jürgen!)

Susan and I had been hoping that Granny would recover and hang on through the summer so that we could visit Finland with Justin and see her again, but it was not to be. I’d still like to make my first trip to Finland since the late 70’s, I think it was, but my Uncle Kimmo and Aunts Kaija and Eeva are visiting this summer so we’ll wait a bit, maybe until Justin is old enough to remember a trip like that. We shall see.

In remembrance of Granny I’ve combed through the Colevault photo archives for a few classic pictures. Since we’ve always lived a continent apart all my memories of her are necessarily confined to vacations, either us visiting her in Finland or her visiting us in California or Texas. My parents took me to Finland during the Summer of ‘69 (cue the Bryan Adams!) when I was roughly 9 months old and we were living in Amsterdam, and I have some great photos of me with Granny, my uncles Kimmo and Antti, and my 27-year-old parents. (27?? What the hell was I doing at 27? Nothing noteworthy, I can assure you!)

I also saw Granny during the Spring of 1981 when she visited us in Houston, soon after we’d moved back there after a short stint in Illinois, just across the river from St. Louis. According to the photographic evidence available to me right now we did the following during her stay: visited Johnson Space Center (where Jason and I climbed all over the displays), celebrated Jason’s 11th birthday, swam in our pool, had a big party on our patio (featuring plenty of drinking and smoking! Mmm… second-hand smoke!), went to the beach, washed the cars, and took a day trip somewhere, possibly San Marcos, with my old friends the Hafners. We also took a road trip back to Illinois for my Mom’s graduation from SIU Edwardsville, where she completed her journalism degree just prior to us moving back to Houston. During that trip we visited some Civil War monuments, which Jason and I climbed all over. Without supporting photographs I would not remember anything about any of this. The whole camera thing was a pretty good invention. Anyway, I have scanned many photos from these two trips and you can find them in the Misc album in the gallery.

Note: during the late 70’s, I’m going to guess it was 1979 (cue the Smashing Pumpkins!), the family took a trip to Finland but I can’t seem to locate photos or negatives from that trip. All I remember is eating Granny’s homemade apple sauce and fresh raspberries that we picked ourselves and playing soccer with some local kids outside Granny’s apartment building, despite a significant language barrier. That event is marked by me running full speed, presumably after the ball, not looking where I was going, and slamming my head into some sort of construction barrier that was blocking off part of the field. My forehead swelled up with fluid to the point that it looked like I’d had a water balloon implanted there. I think I blacked out too. Oh, and let’s not forget Jason and I traipsing through a bramble of nettles, not having any idea what they were, and spending the next several days in agony nursing painful sores all over are legs and arms, our only medicine being fresh apple sauce and raspberries. The above-referenced Wikipedia article says that nettle stings “are rarely seriously harmful” while earlier mentioning that a New Zealand variety of nettle has “been known to kill horses, dogs, and at least one human.” Let me assure you, though it may be lesser known, the mutant Finnish strain of nettle eats New Zealand nettles for breakfast. I don’t know how many dogs and horses have succumbed to the dreaded Finnish Nettle, but Jason and I were THIS CLOSE to becoming its first human victims. (Isn’t it interesting that the only clear memories I have of this trip involve serious bodily injury?)

These are just a few of my memories of my grandmother, Anna Aalto, better known as Granny. May she rest in peace.

On the other side of Justin’s family is Susan’s Grandmother, remarkably still going strong and celebrating her 97th (!) birthday today. It’s easy to remember her birthday as it’s always tax day - almost as easy to remember as Granny’s 4th of July birthday. Halmoni (the Korean word for grandmother, pronounced HAR-MU-NEE) is truly a GREAT Grandmother, still mobile and lucid and feisty, and not in the least bit shy about voicing her opinions. I’ll always remember that she was nice to me from the day Susan introduced me to her extended family back in ‘97, when Grandma was a spritely 88 year old. Justin is her third great grandchild, after Emily and Lauren, the daughters of Susan’s cousin Henry and his wife Kathy. She has two more coming too, as Susan’s other cousin Yun and his wife Jinhee are expecting twin boys soon. (Yikes! Good luck with that, guys!)

Tonight there will be another in a long line of giant Park family dinners to celebrate Halmoni’s birthday, at a Korean restaurant in The City that we’ve eaten at about 300 times. Everyone will eat way too much kalbi and kimchi tchigae and naeng myun and Susan’s eldest uncle will give a speech about Halmoni and the noble and illustrious history of the Park family. And knowing Grandma, we’ll probably be doing the same thing three years from now for her 100th birthday when Justin will be old enough to remember his great Great Grandmother. Boy, will that be a party! Happy Birthday Halmoni!!

Everyone here at Colevault.com would like to wish a very special Happy Birthday to Jason Cole, who turns 36 today. I couldn’t find a decent/recent photo of Jason, so here’s one from a few years back. As you can see, the brothers Cole were already getting their drink on, Galveston, Texas-style, back in the early 70’s. (In case there’s any confusion, I’m the clown with the hexagonal dork glasses, and apparently I’d recently been to the hospital for God-knows-what and thought it would be cool to keep the ID bracelet on.) Jason, thanks for being a great brother, brother-in-law, uncle, and buddy. And by the way, when do you think we should comment on the rampant rumor circulating around the blogosphere that Colevault.com might soon have a guest columnist? Can you say Crazy Uncle JJ’s Corner?

Like most people, I really like having a clean and tidy house but I can’t stand doing housework. And now that we have started putting in light-colored hardwood floors throughout the house it is much easier to see the dust and hair build-up than it was with carpet. And Justin brings home his fair share of dirt, Pigpen-style, from day care, although less so now that he mostly walks rather than crawls. So our nice new clean bedroom had started looking very lived-in very quickly.

Enter Ike. Ike is our new Roomba. A Roomba is a robotic vacuum cleaner developed by a company call iRobot, after the Isaac Asimov novel, hence the name Ike. (And there was much groaning.) Roombas are like Tivos: until you own one you just can’t appreciate what a paradigm shift they represent, whether in TV watching or vacuuming. You are an ideal Tivo customer if you have limited free time and you enjoy watching TV. You are an ideal Roomba customer if you have limited free time and you’d rather be watching TV than vacuuming. If this is you, I highly recommend that you buy one. Full disclosure: Colevault.com does not own any shares of iRobot … but my Dad does.

Rewind to last Christmas. The three of us visited my Dad and his family in San Antonio. My Dad has a very big house, 2 Welsh Corgis, and 2 teenagers. Their floors used to be coated with a fine layer of dog hair and the detritus of teenaged boys, but then they got Robby. Robby is also a Roomba, possibly Ike’s 2nd cousin. They liked it so much that they bought another one for the upstairs. (The iRobot guys are pretty good but they haven’t yet perfected the jet-powered levitating Roomba.)

My Dad is an interesting character. When he discovers a product that he really likes he invariably buys stock in that company, and then supports that company unequivocally for as long as he is a shareholder, which is usually forever. (And he’ll go out of his way to avoid products made by competing companies.) For example, he invested heavily in Gillette, probably back in the Carter administration, and has bought nothing but Gillette razors and Duracell batteries ever since. So once he discovered iRobot it was inevitable that he would buy some stock, and though it doesn’t look like it’s done much in the last few quarters I think that the concept can and should catch on.

The model we got is the Roomba Scheduler, which we got for $264 at Bed Bath and Beyond ($330 - $66 with a 20% coupon), and there’s also a $50 rebate from BBB right now. If you’re going to get one of these, getting one without the scheduling option doesn’t make much sense. With this you are able to program the Roomba to run on a set schedule so you can come home to a clean room or area of your house. We’ve got ours set to run every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 3:00 in the afternoon. It’s nice to come home from work to find the bedroom and bathroom floors freshly vacuumed.

Now, you do have to do one thing before you can let Roomba loose in a room, and that’s coil up or somehow conceal power cords, speaker cables, extension cords, phone cables, etc., so that the Roomba doesn’t get tangled up. If that’s not possible Roomba comes with two “virtual walls” which transmit infrared beams that will prevent Roomba from crossing into areas with cables, or falling down stairs. We elected to use this as impetus to force us to keep the floors tidy, clothes and shoes in the closet, and cords nicely organized, otherwise we might come home to a find Ike buried in pile of dirty laundry, spinning its wheels, with an overheated radiator. The biggest change that needed to be made was for Susan to stop using the area under her side of the bed as a file cabinet, so if Ike can accomplish that then the vacuuming is gravy.

So on his first run Ike sucked up a pretty scary amount of dust and hair. Now, the room hadn’t exactly been swept regularly prior to that, so we expected the next run to yield a lot less dirt. Well, 48 hours later, after his next run, the dust chamber was nearly full again - just as much dirt as the first time. Each cleaning cycle takes an hour, though there’s a “Max” setting that goes longer. It covers every inch of the room, gently working around furniture guided by its front bumper/sensor. And it gets to places you’d never get to with a normal vacuum: all the way under the bed, under the nightstands, and under the dresser. It goes on and off rugs with ease and crosses the threshold onto the tile floor in the bathroom, though we had to pick up the rugs in there. When it’s done it finds its way back to its “garage”, the charging station which we’ve installed out of sight under the dresser. The entire concept, design, and execution of this thing is flawless, and they’ve even copied Apple’s slick packaging. Last but not least, I was also able to hack it, install Linux, and program it to fetch the newspaper, bring me beers, and babysit Justin. There’s isn’t much not to like about Ike.

OK, so the Yankees ruined the A’s Opening Night celebration on Monday with an absolute demolishing of Barry Zito and the A’s, to the tune of 15-2, with the added insult being a grand slam from A-Fraud. Thankfully I watched that game on Tivo (actually on bush league Dish Network wanna-be Tivo) from the comfort of my bed, compressing the misery into a nicely manageable blur of 30 second skips. (The Big Hurt’s homer in his first at bat as an A was pretty cool though.) The beauty of baseball though is that the A’s could come back the next night and again tonight and win both games 1-0, take the series 2 games to 1, but be outscored in the series 15-4. While that’s not what happened, the point is that a 15-2 ass kicking doesn’t really matter over the course of a 162 game season. As the saying goes, in baseball you need to have a short memory. I’m sure Zito put on some velvet pants and Elvis sunglasses after the game, went home to the Marina, fired up some John Mayer, lit some candles, and maybe wrote a song or two. He’ll worry about Seattle in a couple of days.

I rarely go to Opening Night because the tickets are hard to get, traffic is bad, etc., and it’s usually the same night as the NCAA Championship game. But I did get tickets to game 2 on Tuesday and game 3 tonight. Last night I went with Brad “I don’t read blogs” Lipscomb, who along with Mark “Attorney at Law” Le Clerc, are my A’s buddies. Crappy weather all day on Tuesday gave way to partly cloudy skies in time for the game and I met Brad at the Coliseum at around 6:30. A great pitching matchup between Stanfurd’s Mike Mussina and Rich Harden was on tap, and while there’s no point in going into great detail about the game (you can read the recap here) the highlights were obviously Harden striking out Sheffield, A-Fraud, and Giambi with 2 on and of course Scutaro’s clutch walk-off hit in the bottom of the ninth. Despite the rain that had begun by then I had stuck it out until then, and I’m glad Scutaro saved me from having to decide how long to stick around in the freezing rain on a school night.

Mark was at the game with his Dad and brother Chris, so about the 6th inning we headed over to their seats to hang out for the rest of the game. That portion of the evening was highlighted by the debut of Mark’s sweet new Iron Maiden ballcap and Dr. Le Clerc’s discovery of ticket stubs from 49ers playoff games in 1992 and 1996 in his jacket pocket! Perhaps if he had dug a little deeper he might have found some weed he bought at the University of Michigan in 1965.

Game 3 was tonight with my bro’ Jason “what’s a double play?” Cole. Thankfully I got my quota of baseball discussion the previous night with Brad because, well, let’s just say that Jason and I didn’t discuss whether Dan Haren should throw a breaking ball to Sheffield with a 3-2 count. But I did get to hear all about Jason’s recent trip to Nashville and his rubbing elbows with some bigwigs in the songwriting industry, as well as hanging out with Richard Marx and Gunnar Nelson. I also got to check out Jason’s new beard, which was not any planned new look but rather a result of him leaving the charger for his shaver at home and then spending a week in Nashville.

So, quick game summary (read the real one here): A’s get down 4-0 early, rally back to tie it on a big hit by Milton Bradly, then score 5 runs in the 8th, capped off by a bases clearing double from the Big Hurt that was very nearly a grand slam. Utter pandemonium! Then Street shuts the door in the 9th. What a great game. So, skip the first game, they get blown out. Go to the next two games and see a walk-off win and an 5 run tie-breaking 8th inning on successive nights. Not too bad.

Go A’s!

On Saturday Susan, Justin and I went to visit our friends Kevin and Hyun-Joo Laws and their very cute 3-week-old daughter Hana Elizabeth. We picked up a Zachary’s pizza on the way and we had lunch and chatted and cooed over Hana. (OK, Susan cooed over Hana). Like Justin, Hana is half-Korean and half Euro-mutt, and they were born almost exactly a year apart. Other similarities between our families: we each got married just a month apart back in 1999, Hyun-Joo and I were both born on 12-28-68, albeit on opposite sides of the globe, and Kevin and I work together at Vast. (You’d think I’d get enough of Kevin five days a week at the office!)

So we got to hold Hana and see her eyes open and interact with her a bit more than we were able to at the hospital the day after she was born, when she was understandably a bit groggy, tired, and presumably quite confused. She seems to be a pretty low maintenance baby so far - I don’t think she made a sound the whole time we were there. And she even did a full 5 and a half hour stretch of sleep one night this week. For the Laws’ sake, I hope she turns out to be as good a sleeper as Justin is.

When Justin was born he looked almost 100% Asian but has since morphed into a pretty even mix, whereas Hana does not look particularly Asian, or particularly like either of her parents for that matter. According to Kevin she looks like his sister Virginia when she was a baby. Hana has light brown, almost reddish hair, while Justin’s was quite dark at birth and has been getting lighter ever since. When you have a mixed kid it’s a pretty common parlor game to discuss the ever-changing balance of features between the two ethnicities as the kid grows, maybe because it’s easier to tell which features came from whom? Maybe in one more generation there will be so many mixed children (and children of mixed children) that the distinctions will become irrelevant. One can hope!

We took a few pictures of Justin and Hana together (so we can embarrass them when they’re teenagers) and some photos of the Moms with the babies. Our other friends Ming and Sherman also dropped by, along with their little girl Emma, or Ariel. We’re not quite sure what her name is because we won’t officially meet her for a few months yet. But she certainly seems like a nice enough baby, judging only by Ming’s belly and the fact that she’s in great spirits, although that’s not the least bit unusual for Ming. And Justin really enjoyed having Uncle Sherman toss him up in the air, an excellent fatherly skill that Sherman has mastered several months ahead of schedule.

So it was great to see the Laws and the “Mermans”. With Susan instantly falling asleep during the car ride home (presumably dreaming of having a baby daughter as soon as medically possible) I was able to drive even faster than normal in order to catch the second half of the first Final Four game and all of UCLA thoroughly dismantling LSU, only to have the same can of whoop-ass served up to them by Florida two nights later. For me having UCLA in the title game was a win-win situation: if they had won, it would have been great for the Pac-10 and West Coast hoops, but since they lost I was also happy, because I hate UCLA. Hey, wasn’t this post supposed to be about babies? Oh yeah, for the record Ming and Sherman, we’re voting for Emma, not the Little Mermaid.

Just like most people are either Coke or Pepsi, there are also Letterman or Leno people. Or more accurately, there are Letterman people and then people who don’t know a damn thing about comedy or entertainment. And one of the many great recurring Letterman sketches is Will it Float? which involves models dropping random items in a tank of water while the audience tries to guess whether they will float or sink, usually while a scantily clad “Grinder Girl” stands to the side shooting sparks off herself by using a power grinder on a piece of metal. If that doesn’t scream comedy, I don’t know what does!

Well, in keeping with the previous post’s theme of mischievous Justin hijinks, our little boy decided to play his own little game of Will it Float? on Sunday. I turned on the tub faucet for Justin’s weekly bath (no comments please, we’re pretty busy) and went off to do something else while the tub filled (it takes 5-10 minutes to fill). Justin was in the bedroom doing his usual Justin thing, ambling around with a remote control in each hand, alternately banging one of them against a piece furniture and chewing on the other. Then he wandered down the hall and into the bathroom, and I immediately knew what was about to happen, but I was just a split second too late to stop it.

By the time I got to the bathroom there was already a remote floating in the tub like a sleek silver rubber ducky. (Yes, thankfully, remotes do float rather than sink.) And which of the two remotes he was carrying did he decide to toss in the tub? The one from my 15 year old Onkyo receiver which we don’t even use any more, or the one for my less-than-a-month-old Panasonic plasma TV? Is there any question? I think someone named Murphy passed a law relating to these situations. So despite the fact that the remote was floating it was still full of water. After mercilessly beating Justin about the head and neck (err, hugging him vigorously and asking him kindly not to do it again) I shook all the water out and gave it a good blow dry, then let it dry for a few days. Today I put the batteries back in and it works fine.

Again, like the hidden cell phone, this was not the first time he’s thrown things in the bath tub. And since he’s ALWAYS carrying a remote around the house you’d think we would realize, “hmmm, bath water is running, Justin has remotes in hand, we should make sure they don’t end up in the bath.” It was only a matter of time before this happened. We’ll just have to be a bit more vigilant so that next time it’s not the DVD player or the Tivo. (Note: this picture of Justin has nothing to do with this story, I just figured I needed to have a photo in the post, and I neglected to take a photo of the floating remote!)

A few weeks ago we bought a new A/V cabinet from Scandinavian Designs, and like Ikea furniture it came disassembled in boxes. I spent a few hours that Saturday putting the cabinet together and when I got to the final step, installing the adjustable component shelves, I was missing one of the aluminum support pins that hold the shelves up. I must have spent an hour looking for it all over the room, and I thought about contacting the store and asking them to send me a replacement. (Or going to the store and stealing one from the display model). But instead I just left it and forgot about it.

Fast forward to tonight. Susan needs to make a call on her cell phone but she can’t find it. Not in her purse, not in the kitchen, not on her nightstand, not in her coat pocket. So we do what everyone does when they lose their phone, call it from another phone. I dialed her number from my phone and we immediately hear the ringer coming from the new sitting area of our bedroom. But it’s not obvious exactly where it’s coming from. Justin has this great toy that was given to us by my former coworker Mari Woodsen, it’s kind of like a small 3-legged table, with a battery-powered flying saucer for a table top, which has flashing lights and plays different songs when you hit the various buttons on it. He goes nuts for this thing, we’ve gotten hours of quality Justin distraction time out of it. (Thanks Mari!)

So, the flying saucer piece can be lifted off like a lid and there are all kinds of different accessories for the toy that are stored inside. It soon became clear that the cell phone ringing was coming from inside this toy so we pulled off the lid and there was Susan’s Samsung A900! With a smile on her face Susan reaches in to grab her phone, but wait! What’s that small shiny metal thing in there? Hmmm. Yes, you guessed it, the shelf support pin from the cabinet! Justin had made off with it while I was assembling the cabinet and had stashed it away inside his secret toy compartment, where it had stayed hidden for 3 weeks! So we had a pretty good laugh. And needless to say this wasn’t the first time we’d found missing items carefully hidden in random places, but previously it had always been drawers. Now we’ll know where to look!

Well, well, well. Looks like I had a bit of a false start with the blog! I put this together back in early February but wanted to flesh things out a little before officially “launching” it. I figured a week or so to get it ready, finish adding photos, tweak the layout, and finally send out an email to friends and family. Then start posting regularly. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Well, after that initial flurry of activity, several things conspired to suck up every spare hour of the last 7 or 8 weeks. First, the remodel of our master bedroom and bathroom really ramped up and I had to manage various pieces of that process daily for several weeks, from specifying baseboards and crown moulding, to telling the plumber where on the bath tub deck to place the faucet, to coordinating the installation of the shower door, and on and on. Then when all that was finshed, the paint dried, the floor installed, and the lights wired up, we actually had to move back into the bedroom from our temporary quarters in the dining room. And when we had everything moved back in, I had to order blinds, rugs, closet organization stuff, photo shelves, a new A/V cabinet, and finally… the new TV, which will have its own post shortly. Then I had to install all of the above. Plus towel rods, some light fixtures, the in-wall speakers, the wall mounted surround speakers, and the hardware for the pocket door into the bathroom. And organize all our crap. And move all our clothes into the new closet from various boxes and other closets. And THEN we had to completely vacate the family room and dining room, moving everything into the living room. The living room is now basically a huge storage unit, packed from floor to ceiling, with a small area carved out in the middle for an office. (I had to drill a hole through the floor to wire up the DSL, there was no phone jack in the living room).

So you can see I’ve been a bit busy. Oh, and let’s not forget that during this entire period at least one of the three of us was sick seemingly every day, and for about a week I think we were all sick. Thankfully, Justin fared the best out of all of us, but it hasn’t been a good winter for us health wise.

And through all this I somehow managed to go to work every day (well, some days were at home when I didn’t feel like inflicting my germs on my coworkers). And this is the other main reason the blog has been backburnered for almost 2 months. As most of my friends, family, and colleagues know Vast.com finally launched on March 13, late on that Monday night. The run-up to the launch was pretty hectic with a flurry of last-minute activity, and the pace has actually increased since then. If you’re curious about exactly what we’re up to you can read an excellent overview here.

So, it is now April and Susan and I are happily ensconced in our nice new , Vast is live, the remodel has been on hiatus for the last couple of weeks due to the ridiculously bad weather we’ve been having, and I think I’ll be able to find a couple of hours a week to devote to the blog, even if it’s just a few short posts.

So here we go, after a false start Colevault.com is now off and running. You might want to scroll to the bottom of the page and read the earlier posts, and don’t be afraid to comment. I’ll likely be adding some cool blog widgets over time, like the Radio Blog player which you see in the sidebar. This is where you’ll see a sampling of what’s on my iPod during any given week. Just click on a song and the rest will play in sequence, or click on the Zap! button to skip to the next song. If you want the player to run when/if you leave the site, just click on the “Popup” button at the bottom and the player will launch in a separate window. The rest of the Radio Blog features should be self-explanatory so crank it up!

That’s it for now. Welcome to Colevault!

Drinking establishments? Herbal remedies? Exotic plants? Nope, these are the paint colors Susan and I chose for our bedroom and bathroom, which were painted today. The closet, hallway, sitting area and 90% of the main bedroom will be Prickly Pear. We decided to highlight one wall of the bedroom by painting it a different but complementary color, Moss Green. (This is the wall that I am hoping to hang my plasma TV on - look for a subsequent post on how ridiculously hard it is to research and buy a TV these days, even with the web as research tool.) These two colors are considered cool colors by Kelly Moore. The bathroom is Tiger Balm, a deep warm yellow.

When we got home from work today and saw the painted walls, we both thought the Prickly Pear was a bit too gray and not as green as it appeared in the brochure. Perhaps when it’s completely dry and we can view it in natural light it will be closer to what we were looking for, but it’s not a big deal. The fact that they’re already painting means we are getting very close to being able to move back into our bedroom after living in our dining room since mid-December! Overall, the project is going quite well. (You can follow the progress by viewing the photos in the Remodel gallery, I’ll add photos of the newly-painted areas shortly.)

As you can see in the photos, the presence of backhoes and bulldozers indicates we’re doing quite a bit more than just remodeling our bedroom and bathroom. The majority of the house is currently being supported by two huge steel I-beams which in turn are supported by several massive wooden columns and a system of jacks. Once that structure was in place the whole rear foundation was demolished and 300+ cubic yards of dirt on the down slope behind the house was excavated to make way for a new lower level, directly underneath where we previously had a deck. The roof of that lower level will become a tiled veranda at the same level of the previous deck, accessible via the master bedroom, living room, and new family room, yet to be built. We decided to do the master bed/bath portion of the project first so we would have a nice new living space during the subsequent, more disruptive portion of the project. As soon as we’re back in our bedroom they will be literally razing the existing family room to the ground, boarding up the exposed side of the house, drilling 12′ deep pier holes for the new foundation, and starting on the new addition. Retreating to the sanctuary of our new expanded bedroom and bathroom will be most welcome during the chaos of the rest of the project.

And with the paint going up today there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday the radiant floor heating was installed in the bathroom and the tile will be installed over it tomorrow. The radiant floor is controlled by a thermostat with a timer that can be set so we’ll have toasty warm floors every morning! After the tile all that’s left are the bamboo flooring for the bedroom and closet, crown moulding and baseboards, doors and trim, window trim, trim painting, the cultured granite wall panels for the shower and tub surround, the tempered glass shower door and wall, the new faucets for the sinks in the bathroom, the electrical outlets, switches, and dimmers, and the new ceiling fan. Whew! Maybe “all that’s left” wasn’t the right choice of words. But you’d be surprised how quickly some of these things happen, and other things, like taping and texturing walls, seem to take way too long. But the net net is that by the end of next week we should be back in our bedroom, with the final touches in the bathroom finishing soon after. I can’t wait.