Yesterday, Berta and I spent all day putting together Riley's crib. When we got Abby's real bed, we took apart the crib and somehow misplaced the hardward that held it together. As it turns out, it used a lot of specialized stuff.

There were these crazy bolts with hex heads and a large flat top. They were very long and sunk into odd little nuts that were inserted into holes in the crib frame. We lost these bolts, and could not find replacements.

Berta ordered some replacements from the manufacturer, but they don't sell this particular crib any more, so the hardware they sent didn't match. Mom ordered some bolts for us from Rockler, but the longest bolt they had was not long enough. I ended up ordering more of these and drilling new holes into the crib frame to hold them.

Then we needed washers because some of the new nuts were too close for the length of the bolts. And then we realized that we didn't have a hex driver that could screw in the bolts, so I got a set of those. And then we needed screws to hold the gate on. And then we needed more screws to hold the gate on than we realized. And then the springframe needed a different screw than the ones we needed for the gate. I couldn't take the fifth trip to Home Depot - I had to send Berta.

So finally the crib is assembled and sturdy. And I have a more complete toolbox. Added to my collection of tools yesterday were handheld English and metric hex drivers, hex drivers for the drill, a case for all of the new hex drivers, a case containing large drill bits (we used the 3/8 and 1-inch bits to open some holes for the wider bolt heads in the crib), a staple gun (for a different project I need complete before Friday), a screw/bolt/nut/pipe-measuring doodad, and a ton of 1/4-inch washers.

How do you like the results of our labor?

I was looking around here the other day for a post about our trip to Palm Springs. As it turns out, I never wrote it. Combined with a demand from Berta to organize our photo collection for her availability, I decided to look for our photos from the trip. That's when I discovered why I never wrote a post about Palm Springs.

There are 255 photos from our Palm Springs trip according to Picasa. The truth is that I know I used two CDs for our pictures because I ran out of space on the first one. So there are plenty more photos on one of these other mini-CDs. I have a little GameCude binder with more CDs in it that are supposed to fit. Some are labeled, some are not, and most CDs have sessions that were not closed. Since I don't have a packet driver for my CD-R (or at least, one that is compatible with these disks), this is causing problems.

Anyhow, I'm going to have to sift through this stuff and come up with a way to get all of these photos online quickly. Wouldn't it be cool if the blogging tool you used to display the photos online also came with a desktop application that cropped, resized, resampled, sharpened, color-corrected, and uploaded the file to the blogging app? Yeah, that would be pretty sweet... Heh.

/me whistles to himself innocently.

I've been somewhat neglect in posting photos to the site. That's one of its core reasons for being, right? So here we go...

I was thinking during my drive home last night that it might be nice to take Abby out on her new sled, which was provided by her Aunt Maryann and Uncle Ryan. I don't think I realized what I was in for.

We don't really have anyplace special to go sledding, and we should probably correct that. After dinner, I took Abby out for a drag around the front yard and down the neighbor's sloping open lot. It wasn't too bad, since most of the time I just kicked the sled and it moved quite a distance. Actually, the sled and snow did a good job of keeping Abby moving. It was the trip back up the slope that was tricky.

I didn't think of it until after we had gone inside and Berta suggested it, but I probably should have carried the sled back up the slope. Instead, with Abby still on, I put my hands on either side of her on the sled and plowed yher back up the hill. After the third time I was ready to pas out. Well, at least she enjoyed it.

We chased each other around the front yard, like we usually do when there's no snow, and Abby made a couple of snow angels. The better of the two is pictured here.

In the back yard we looked for the sled with the rope for pulling, but couldn't find it. Instead, we drew letters in the snow and kicked a ball around. I really think that Abby needs to get outside more, even if it's cold. We'll have to work on that.

And then she did something - I can't remember what - that she needed to take off her gloves for, and she got her hands wet. And that was the end of that. She said she was too cold, and that she had to go inside to get hot chocolate to get warm. Uh, ok. :)

Well, I did not put much effort into it yet. Everyone else in the house is currently sleeping and I don't expect that to last for long. You'll notice that several things remain undrawn. This is because I expected to draw the remaining bits when it got into the computer. This I have not done yet because the color banlances between each scan are screwey, and I wasted a lot of time trying to fix that. Maybe again soon.

Anyway, I wanted to share the preliminary composite drawing. So here it is. Hopefully I'll get back to work on it some more and be able to produce a cleaner version than this rough, almost-just-the-pencil-sketch version.

In case you were wondering, yes, this is my little family. And yes, my wife is that hot. ;)

These pictures weren't necessarily taken in 2005, but they are the first ones I've posted in 2005.