I had a birthday this month, and not just a little birthday, this was the big 4-0. A few days before my birthday the Associated Press published an article “Things that turn 40 in 2014.” On that list were things like, oh, cel phones, the ATM machine, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album was released…that’s enough to put it all in perspective.
On the Saturday before my birthday I was
heading to Matt and Renee’s house to feed their cats while they were out of
town, with dinner planned shortly after that with our friends Mike and
Marin. I pull up in the empty driveway
and open the dark house, head out to the garage for the cat food only to be
surprised by 25 of my closest friends.
It was all a huge surprise for me, and an excellent one at that. It had all the makings of a great party…good
friends, appetizers, beer and shots of Fireball, ping pong and air hockey, a piñata
and just to ensure a successful party, my own taco truck. Chandos Tacos, one of
our favorites at the monthly taco truck nights in Roseville, was sitting in the
driveway churning out all-you-can-eat tacos to us happy taco patrons. I have
the best wife ever, she sure knows how to make me happy. There were some excellent gag gifts too,
including custom-made plasti-dipped bi-focus safety glasses, something every
40-year man with a garage needs.
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| Sweet new bi-focus safety glasses with anti-loss chain |
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| chili pepper pinata |
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| Not everyone liked the mix of Fireball and Smirnoff Iced Cake flavored vodka. (Who's idea was that anyway?) |
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| The taco truck awaiting us. |
My alternating Fridays off have afforded me some time for
some projects around the house. I helped
Stuart add power to his 4Runner in the form of a new TRD Supercharger and he in
turned helped add power to my garage in the form of a 240V outlet for a new
charging station for our Nissan Leaf.
The electrical service panel is on the outside wall of the garage, so we
simply cut a hole in the sheetrock in the garage, pulled some 6 gauge wire from
the service panel through the new hole , installed the outlet box and wired the
outlet and landed a new breaker. I had
some gutter cleaning to do, which became pretty obvious last week when it
rained and all of my gutters were overflowing.
I seam-sealed the driveway, mowed the lawn for the first time in about
six weeks, leaf cleanup and finally dove into our taxes, oh joy.
Speaking of the Nissan Leaf, I am thoroughly enjoying this
car. It is such a pleasure to drive and
we have used it for virtually all of our driving. The car keeps track of our driving automatically,
and from January 18 (day of purchase) to today February 18, we have logged
1,172 miles and burned 276.5 kilowatts of electricity. At 10.8 cents per kilowatt, the cost for
driving that 1,172 miles would be $27.65, but we have done most all of our charging
for free at the public chargers at my office and near Hanna’s office. Electric cars are the future; I can already
see it.
We hiked Hidden Falls Regional Park (must come back here for
mountain biking) and an unmarked trail that looks down on the American River
from Ponderosa Road out of Colfax. I
also noticed a single track mountain bike trail off Highway 20 just outside of
Nevada City that I need to investigate.
(And yes, us 40-year old people need to write stuff like this down so we
will remember.)
