sump pump apparently died on vacation. we thought it smelled funny when we got home but chalked it up to a stale, messy house that needs cleaning. this morning though, I went downstairs with E to play with some toys and found that the inch of standing water in the basement explains the smell..
trying to figure out the next move but wading through as I try to clean up, I may as well start a running total of the damage:
all my records (labels waterlogged anyway, stuck to the LPs and to depressing to clean right now)
All my Lego boxes
Tv stand
All power strips that were on the floor
update- I spent the last 24 hours clearing the basement and sucking up what I can with the wet/dry vac. also talked to the insurance and kinda doubt we have sufficient coverage. it goes without saying but this latest development will further delay my epic vacation post.
Happy new year.
update 2- contractors just here. I expected him to say that things aren’t as bad as they seem, maybe get some reassurance.
contractor took one look, eyes went wide and I knew we are in for it. at this point I’m pretty sure the basement is a write off, sewage will do that :(.
sitting here having our last hotel breakfast, I don’t think I can stomach more of their eggs and cheap breakfast meat. luckily I have leftover ramen from yesterdays lunch to polish off before we go.
I found my authentic LA birria experience.
I had all these intentions of keeping up my posting but we have done so much, stayed so busy and I’ve taken so many photos/video that this vacation recap is going to take some time. that’s ok though because this trip is going to take a while to sink in; every single moment has been as close to perfection as I can imagine. M, the boys, Dad, we are all coming home on cloud nine.
75 minutes of line only to see this once we get to the front. I heard rumors that they let about 15 standby folks in per 100 lightning line, pretty much matches what I’m seeing. for some context, what you are seeing is the stream of lightning lane guests they let through after letting a single group from the standby lane, and I only hit record once frustrated so I missed about half. I mean we are having a wonderful time but man, this place won’t let you leave until you’ve exhausted every last dollar. I just couldn’t bring myself to pay yet again to ride and in general the lines weren’t bad; still spoils the magic a bit.
while it’s not as busy as I expected, we are definitely not the only ones visiting Disney this holiday season. we had to take a plane here, really curious what all these folks who arrived from the 90’s took.
several times today I’ve tried to hide my tears of joy from my family, some dad instinct I have no idea where I picked up. several times I’ve failed to keep them hidden and I know it makes them happy to see, I might be fighting back a few right now.
no joke, this Christmas is magic.
we packed so much into this day, yet we had next to nothing planned. the only thing we could think of was to find a Los Angeles drive, so why not go check out Mullholland.
best I could do, I drove so barely took pictures.
should be a heck of a video but I’ve got very few photos to share. G pictured here with the new 360 degree nerd gadget; so between it sticking out the sunroof, and the hyperlapse with my little action cam, it should be an epic video. anyway, either due to the rain, or it’s just closed these days, because we couldn’t get very far from the 405. nonetheless, M found another great road where we stopped to check out a familiar sight.
better photos coming, first I could find.
next, M had another fantastic idea, so we headed for the walk of fame. we parked right by a famous theater and had an absolute blast finding some signatures of some of our favorite stars. I’m not much of a star-gazer but it was a perfect LA moment.
what an intro.Cher’s Christmas album has been in the rotation.
we took an absolute ton of star photos, going to make the digital frame back home a lot of fun.
I mean, M and I have the Simpsons partly to blame for us being together.ice cream lunch won’t help the weight loss 😉‘tis the season
dad was having so much fun, he even let us have ice cream for lunch. M got pictures of it all but sadly I have none (update- stole her phone and found a masterpiece) we had a great time, so much holiday spirit around the city.
I don’t like mint and chocolate but at Christmas this was PERFECT.photo doesn’t do it justice but the theater behind the tree was a great visual.
man, I’m getting tired and the good stuff is on other devices so I’ve got to get some sleep. this only touches the day, there’ s so much more to go. we’ve got a huge day planned tomorrow so we’ll see what else I manage to post.
for now, this has been a perfect, amazing, wonderful day. I can’t wait to share more of it.
update- we’re up early, hitting the road for today’s activity, but more on that in another post. now, where were we…
more beaching.
ah yes, we stopped at Seal Beach for more careful and relaxed fun with three cleanly, calm and somewhat bored children.
audible gasps from the locals as the MN children dove right in.🫠 enjoying these under the pier shots.
we had laundry to do and a boat to catch so we headed back to the room before grabbing some local specialties.
3×3 animal style. what can I say, vacation after weight loss so why not :).
next, we boarded a random schoolbus in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I’m so glad we did though because this might have been the moment that put me over the edge. I was worried that we weren’t going to give the kids a real Christmas but, I had nothing to fear.
don’t we do this every morning?I’ve got to pause here again.
More to come…
it’s Christmas Eve, we sit at Denny’s after failing to find an open taco place (what kind of dope am I, expecting to find an one on x-mas eve 🤣). so, while I wait for my Moons over My-Hammy I may as well finish this up.
M found Huntington Beach’s version of Bentlyville, and it was amazing.
would be nice to have this kind of money 🙂
what a perfect end of the night, what a perfect Christmas vacation moment. I’ve been worried that this escape would feel like one, and that we were going to miss out on the holiday. it’s been the most Christmasy Christmas ever though so far, can’t wait to see what’s next.
we even had hot cocoa on the boat.
these pictures don’t do it justice, it went on for about an hour, maybe 10, I honestly don’t know. what an amazing night, what an amazing start to our Christmas vacation; and to think, it’s only just begun.
I had an ambitious plan to post a detailed recap of each day. let’s be honest though, holiday travel with three boys, in a busy new place is enough responsibilities.. I’m supposed to be relaxing, so I’m just going to do what I can do.
it’s December 22, the first day of 2024. happy new years. got in late last night, December 21st – new yeast eve, stayed the first night at the embassy suites. 2023 had to kick us once more and so of course it turns out the 24 hour shuttle service closes at 11:00. in the end, it all worked out and we enjoyed our extended wait for the car rental in El Seguendo. I managed to remember my wallet.
some dramatic weather greeted us when picked up the ride.
picked up our rental, ran a few errands and decided to go and beach. I mean, we are staying in Huntington something or another, after all.
took this just because it felt like such a California drive.
we had a wonderful time at the pier, spent some time playing with my new 360 degree camera. walked up and down, made a few friends and hit the beach at the perfect time.
I can’t wait to see the video, this guy and his friends were fascinated by the camera.
sunset, below the pier, while the boys played in the ocean. honestly, this is perfect, I am taken aback at how perfect this is turning out.
a perfect nightcouldn’t have had a better 1st night of 2024.these three Minnesotan’s were the only ones in the water without a wetsuit.
from there we headed to our next hotel to clean of all the sland (A coined it tonight) before getting a wonderful ramen dinner and some sort of fishcone dessert. those pics shall have to follow as we’re all crashing early for a big new day on our LA adventure.
this is why I don’t trust online services that I don’t control. I’m sitting on 20ish TB of data that I’ve collected over the years. I’m willing to put it in the cloud but only if I have a physical backup.
see, this is why I build my own cloud. yesterday I decided to spin up an EC2 instance on the free tier, decided to setup a price alert and set it for 1 cent. I wake up this morning to find my instance blew through the price cap and deleted itself.
I get the cloud, heck, part of my job is migrating to the cloud but it’s not the only way, nor even the best way to do everything. snand is all about self hosting and reclaiming control over my own (and maybe help others with their own) connected services.
now, excuse me while I go submit this 7 cent PO to the snand accountants.
in case any of you click on the other links, I should probably say hello. this is my hobby/family/homelab site. it’s also the best site on the internet, at least the best one at this IP.
feel free to make fun of me for it next time you see me in person (behind my back is fine as well). forgive the mess but feel free to poke around. hope you enjoyed the show 🙂
A recently crossed over from Arrow of Light to a Scout. For the ceremony I volunteered to put together a brief photo show. I didn’t realize 2023 would continue to slap me around as much as it did, so I was far less ambitious than I intended. wound up being a complete hermit basically; let our fantastic Scoutmaster do the communication and I just collected what came my way in the shared google photo site.
nevertheless, I think I managed to pull off something nice, I enjoyed it anyway. sure was fun working through the photos, reliving all the memories and seeing the kids from the other parent’s perspective. it really wound up being a fun challenge to try to build a narrative, I don’t know that any of it came through in the end but I accomplished what I set out to do. as a bonus the music choice, which I agonized over, turned out to not only be just the right tone (M told me “something that will make the moms cry”), but the timing felt like I’d planned it from the start (I mean, I did line it up but there were a lot of happy lyrical accidents).
point of this post is though, I’ve been keeping ol’ snand here close to the chest; been hosting on a capped home internet plan and, well, it’s snand. tonight however, I just put out the first public facing link to people not currently in this living room. not to any site content mind you, but a protected link where I’m sharing my little photo compilation. this weekend I finally upgraded to an uncapped data plan and this little chunk of coal has been in steady operation for most of the year, so what the heck.
I predict fire.
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