Die Buchwalds

My cousin Beth graduated from high school at the beginning of the month & today is her graduation party.

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Ratzi would have done this:

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My previous ideas regarding time-dilation have failed to manefest super powers within me. While I’m not completely surprised about this, I am a little disappointed that I cannot actually shoot lasers from my eyes, despite claiming otherwise on numerous forums and such.

This year I found that it’s a lot harder to work out a topic for a paper that I would have otherwise thought. Finding other papers with interesting topics proved difficult, as just about anything related to the field I was looking at went way over my head. Presently I’ve been reading through my old college engineering texts, reestablishing fundamentals, etc. It’s amazing how things make more sense the second time through. So much from Circuits II suddenly tied in with later work that it was sort of an epiphany.

I’m switching a goal into “be a better person.” I’m not yet sure what all that means or involved, but it sure seems like a good thing to be. Sort of like a cranberry turning into a blueberry. Much tastier. I know, I know, somewhere along the way in this paragraph I completely lost the point.

Work has been fun, in various flavors of fun. I prefer the zesty ranch. Ay the end of June, right after we moved everything into the house (literally right after), I ventured off onto my first big project startup, where I learned that it really is possible to do four things at once while three people are trying to talk to you. When I first got there, motion control was the company’s priority (even though it shouldn’t have been), and since I did the motion control, I got flung right into, “make it all work right now” mode. Which was okay, becaues I made it work right then. More or less. Problems consisted of the electricians wiring the motor phases incorrectly (fun!), and a few little sequencing issues, along with one motion latch that somehow ceased to exists from the time I programed it to the time I got there. Whatever, it got moving quickly, and then they shifted their priorities to other things. While I tweaked the motion user units a bit, their priority bounced rapidly between heating and quenching, making things generally more complicated than neccesary. I ended up being in charge of the quenching part of the process, even though I did not do the code, purely luck (bad luck?), because when they mechanical guys needed something done, I knew how to do it. Also because if I didn’t do it, we had no spare engineers to do it. Luckily, I had gone through the code before, and it turned out well. Over the course of the startup, I got to work about19 straight 12+ hour days, including 14 hours on my birthday! At least it was holiday pay. All in all, it went well, and for the most part I was told that’s about a- busy as things can get, so if I can handle that, it should be good.

Next, I got to work on a machine that dresses grinding wheels in various (potentially complex) profiles. It was quite fun breaking out the ol’ trigonomety and learning CNC code do do the job. Since then, I’ve been working on some other projects for that company, including some ring millers that cut out crank pins in one rotation. I’ve been constantly amazed at how quickly I can leran C++ things when necessity arises. I found that I really like doing UI (user interface) design, even though it’s stressful at times trying to figure out what is easiest to use from a user standpoint. I feel a little bad admitting it, but the greatest tool I have is to stop and think, “If I were a total idiot, what would make the most sense to me?”

Taking care of a house removes a remarkable amount of time from life, but every time something needs to be fixed, I get to learn how to fix something, so my the time I’m say… 50 years old, i should be an expert, right? So far I’ve gotten to install a utility sink, do some kitchen sink repair (our kitchen sink is now a Frankensink, since it’s got one platic pipe and the rest is chrome), reattached the garage door to one of its supports, and installed a litght in our bedroom, among others.

The biggest projects was before we moved in Amy thought it’d be nice to have her dad refinish the hardwood floors (some spots were worn down to the wood) before we had all our furniture in the way. He suggested that I try it, and told me what he had done in the past, giving me some suggestions. Let me tell you, the work is exhausting. We rented a floor sander (orbital sanding pads), and I went through the living room, hallway, and bedroom ]five times, each time stepping down to a finer grained sandpaper. It was after 11pm that day before I finally finished. The sander itself probably weight more than me; at the end of the day, I’m not sure how I got it outside, down the steps, down the hill, and back into my car. The belt sanding around the edges took me the next two nights (I would go to this house after work and stay over night), and the hand sanding for the very close edges seemed to take forever. After all that, I learned that I never want to touch tack cloth (sticky webby stuff for getting up all the sawdust). I also learned that I should have done the polyurethane coats with a hand brush, as it was way too easy to inject air bubbles in with the floor brush. The coats also ended up a little thick and took forever to dry. Some day in the future (10 years? 15?) I’ll sand down the remaining air bumps and do a fresh coast, but it came out looking beautiful anyway.

Amy has been the most wonderful wife ever. Without her, things would be so much harder, and I’ve come to find that her work at home has been a true blessing.

I still don’t have anyone else to mow the lawn, however.

I’m going to let Amy’s goals also be my goals, but I’ll add two:
1) Paper
2) Continue my quest for super powers.
3) Get in better shape.

Or three.

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Happy third anniversary to us! As I sat down to write this entry, it occurred to me that a LOT of third things are happening this year. Spider-Man 3, Shrek The Third, Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End, Beth graduating from high school (she’s the third grandchild to graduate on that side of the family), Maddy’s third birthday, Abby’s third birthday and of course our third anniversary. Next Easter will also mark the third anniversary of the day Matt became Catholic!

I looked back over our last two anniversary reviews and saw that it was right around our first anniversary that we finished watching Star Trek: TNG Season 1. Two years later, we have Season 7 in our queue. We <3 Netflix.

This last year has been nothing short of a great learning experience. I learned how to survive all by myself in a relatively strange place in our new house – just me and the cat – for three whole weeks. Matt learned the hard way what project start up can be like. We discovered that mowing a 3/4 acre sloped yard with a pushmower is a lot harder than it looks and we found out that there is such thing as too much snow and sometimes you really do have to shovel out the driveway.

Our year has had quite a few car mishaps, too. Matt’s radiator cracked in August, right before his warranty expired. Then, my car needed quite a bit of work in order to pass inspection and now it’s broken again. It started leaking anti-freeze this past Saturday and we’ve been (and will continue to be) too busy to really figure out what’s wrong with it. Until life slows down a little, we’ll be experimenting with single-car living.

Having two cats has been wonderful. Linus came to us in September as a housewarming gift from the Hirth clan. He’s still such an imp of a kitten but he and Ratzi are great company for each other. As is par for the course, Linus is the “neglected” second child… I haven’t uploaded any new pictures of him since December. He has changed so much in these last 6mos… and the pictures exist… I just haven’t put them in our gallery. He is very much the spoiled second child as well. He follows us around begging for our attention and visitors dote on him because, well, he insists on it. He’s still naive enough that he lets 4-year-old JJ pick him up, carry him around and just generally abuse him as only a 4-year-old can. Ratzi, on the other hand, has decided that Matt and I are about the only acceptable humans. He runs for cover when he hears the door bell.

Matt has now had just about every type of medical imaging test. In January, his foot mysteriously became swollen. After numerous tests and a few different prescription drugs, his foot is still just a little bit puffy and all the doctor has to say now is walk on it & call him if it gets worse. Thankfully, it hasn’t gotten any worse.

We’re really enjoying becoming involved at our new parish.

I went back to teaching 5th grade because I’m just not ready to do Confirmation prep with the 8th graders. I had a great group & can’t wait to meet next year’s class. Sister Genie, our DRE, is trying to talk me into grad school with the idea that someday I can have her job. She’s supposed to be getting me some information about getting full scholariship from the diocese. I’m not sold on the idea because we all know I drive into Pittsburgh as little as possible, but I told her I’d look at the information.

I attended my 12th annual March for Life with the group from our parish and I think I might finally be ready to do more than just fill a seat on the bus. After 12 years I’m starting to feel confident that I can at least help coordinate the trip a little.

Together, Matt & I are going to try to attend World Youth Day next July in Sydney Australia. Our parish is ogranizing a group of about 60 people from three parishes. Beth is planning to go, too, and we’re really excited about sharing this experience with her. We’ve been selling hoagies like crazy people to try to fundraise.

Last night, we started our celebration by going to the drive-in to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Today, we’ll have donuts, maybe some waffles, too, and watch The Princess Bride as usual. Later we’re going bowling and to Outback Steakhouse for dinner.

And now it’s time to recap my goals from last year:
1. Thyroid is mostly fixed… my bloodwork results still aren’t quite where I think they should be but I feel OK and the doctor thinks the numbers are good so here we are.
2. No job for Amy! As it turns out, when one is careful to create a manageable budget, money seems to appear out of thin air. Sometimes the extra income would be nice, but we’re both much happier with the current arrangement, so I’ll continue as a domestic engineer until we have a reason to re-evaluate.
3. Matt spent his Monday nights working on the paper while I taught CCD, but it’s still not done :(
4. I’ll have to find the house goals post & see how we did, but I’m sure our plans changed at least 10 times.
5. Ratzi has a friend! He’s still a little pudgey but he’s not fat! Yay!
6. Still workin’ on it.

Goals for Marriage Year 4:
1. Fundraise enough to pay for our WYD trip
2. Be a more organized & effective CCD teacher
3. More house projects – another post for another day :)
4. Get back to scrapbooking – I have no excuses to not scrapbook
5. Get caught up and stay current with gallery pictures
6. Continue saving money to replace my car
7. Get our mortgage ready to have the PMI removed
8. Get life insurance
9. Start really saving for retirement
10. Continue to encourage Matt to finish his paper
11. Plant something in my flower bed next spring
12. Walk a lot to get ready for the big hike in Sydney
13. Top Secret Project yet again

P.S. Matt is the best husband a woman could ask for.

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