spring break

This week was not just another week, but it was spring break, which meant our son came home from Emeryville, CA. It started out bad as he was supposed to be here last Friday but when his flight was canceled due to bad weather in NYC, it actually took him 36 hours to reach our house. He left this morning and hopefully will have a better experience getting back to school as this time he is going through Dallas, TX. However, I just checked the weather and the only place in the country that has bad weather is a region around Dallas! That is really pretty amazing as it was the same story when he tried to go through NYC last week.


My daughter was really hoping that this week would be better than the last time her oldest brother came and she was very disappointed in the lack of time she got to see him. This time was much better as this brother was around more and actually let her use his nice Apple laptop the last couple of days and even took her to the beach with him. Actually all of the kids went together to see my wife's parents in Wilmington and spent the night on Thursday night. It was the first time in over 20+ years that we were in the house without children. It is interesting how much of our lives revolve around our children as it was odd not hearing around the house that evening. Other than the beach trip they did not do anything special but just hung around each other. On the first day he was in the house they were all sitting on our middle son's bed talking, which unfortunately I did not get a photo of scene as it was a classic. Last night we went out to eat together at a local Japanese steak house in Fuquay and the food was really excellent and evening was entertaining as the cook prepared the food in front of us and definitely amused us.


The final event of the evening was the family bonfire as my middle son had been preparing a perfectly stacked pile of wood all week long, for the final evening together. The photo I took came out really cool as it looks like a fire breathing dragon coming up out of the midst of the fire pit. It was a relaxing memorable week, of which I am sure we will hear memories discussed around the dinner table in the weeks to come.

Kwangju, South Korea

This is a blog about the place in South Korea where my wife grew up. Her maiden name is Dietrick:

Kwangju, South Korea

This is the house where my wife grew up:

food in Army

On the first night that our oldest son was home for the Christmas holidays, my wife fixed meat pot pie, which was always our son's favorite. I was really very tasty and nearly perfect in every way. As we sat at the table, he asked if this was all we were having. This was kind of odd since we have always eaten like this with simple but nutritious meals. Last year at this time, when he came home, he was starving from living on his own and a home cooked meal was all he dreamed about. So I asked him why he spoke like this about his mother's wonderful cooking and what the food was like in the Army. He told us of their multiple course meals three times a day. There were many varieties of everything to choose from at every meal. He did not overeat but always looked forward to each meal and made the decision at that time as to what he fill his plate with. He was select a meat, a couple of vegetable sides, always dessert. He was describing a super buffet selection for every meal. No wonder our single dish meal was a bit too simple for him.

home repairs

One of the nice things about having a home is that you have a yard and some land that you can call yours, or in our case we like to think it is ours but actually the bank owns it for us. One the other side is it means you have extra headaches when things break down.

Last weekend our upstairs A/C broke as the water pipe got clogged and when that happens an automatic switch turns off the A/C, which is a good thing as you don't want water running through your ceiling. I called my favorite repair man at Bar-Co mechanical, who happens to be a close friend who I can trust with my $200 that I handed over to him. While we were amusing ourselves at King's Dominion, he fixed our A/C for us so the house was back to the normal coolness when we returned. It always seems like something is in need of repair.

For the last three weeks we have done without a clothes dryer. The button to turn on the dryer did nothing at all. I searched on-line for a timer as that was the indication a bunch of self-repair web sites noted could be the problem. I bought a timer as I could not locate one locally. We waited for it to come and last weekend while we were away, my eldest son took it upon himself to try to install the new timer. When we got home, although we were glad to find a cool house, my bubble quickly burst when he told me he could not get the dryer back together. I was pretty angry as we had waited two weeks already for the timer and now it looked like I would have to call the local appliance repair man. After putting the dryer back together as best I could, I finally gave up and called M&H Appliance. They came out at the first of the week and told me the motor had failed and we had put the timer together correctly. At least we had one thing going for us. I then tried to locate a motor for our dryer. I called Maytag to find the part number, but they would not give it to me, even though I had just the week before called them to get the part number for the timer! I called a local parts distributer, who gladly gave me the part number even though I did not buy it from them. I searched the web and found a new one for $75, whereas from Maytag or locally the same part was $150. The motor arrived yesterday and was waiting for me as my wife announced when I got home. I think she was tired of taking the laundry to the nearby laundry mat every day! I called the man who had come to our house from M&H and he told me how to take the dryer apart to get to the motor, which was nice of him as I had paid him $50 to diagnose the problem, but this was free advice. After a couple of hours, a couple trips to Home Depot and my daughters help for a couple of hours, we got it back together and working by 8:30pm. I already have the next problem waiting for me.

As I crawled under the house to check on the dryer exhaust vent I saw water standing under the house. I wanted to finish the dryer so continued on that task, but after we were done I went back under the house. The downstairs A/C is leaking under the house, so I have to call Bar-Co back today and tell them I have a new emergency for them to take care for me.

Such things remind me of other long term problems we have suffered as home buyers:

1) When hurricane Fran hit this area in 1996, we lost our power for one week. That was not much fun as it was in the first week of September and it was pretty hot at the time. There was nothing we could do except wait for the power company to fix the electricity. After a week of being hot, we went to Greensboro for a night to get a good night's sleep in A/C.

2) We bought a new refrigerator when we switched to a larger house and then it failed within a couple of months. We called for a replacement and it took two weeks to get another one. We used a large cooler packed with ice instead of a refrigerator. They did give us $100 to buy a small refrigerator but that can only hold so much as it was the size most college dorm students use.

3) During the last drought in NC our large-bore shallow water well went dry. That was a pretty big deal, so I called a well driller and forked out $4500 to drill a 400 foot deep well. It only took a couple of days for him to complete the work.

4) Our heat pumps went bad in that same house and since they were 25 years old, there was no hope in repairing them. That little inconvenience cost me almost $10,000 as the whole heat and A/C systems for upstairs and downstairs had to be replaced. Although done quickly the lost of that much money hurt.

There are many, many more house repairs over the years, but those are all of the major ones I can think of that had a lasting impression on the family and myself.