No Dirt?!?

The Mrs. has been taking her licensing exams for a while now...I can't believe how many of them there are! Up until the last one, I figured it was the better part of valor to let her study on her own. After all, I would only get in the way (and confused) when it came to drawing and construction documents.

But this last test seemed like it would be pretty interesting. It was supposed to be about excavation, soil types, drainage, zoning, and other pre-design stuff that I kinda like (I still like to play in the dirt). So I got her to let me go through some flash cards with her. In the process, I got pretty invested. I was quite proud of myself for learning some technical architect stuff like angles of repose, soil particle sizes, terms for shoring material, letters of zoning codes, and even a little bit about project budgeting (including inflation estimation!).

When the Mrs. finished her exam, I was, of course, very interesting in how she felt about it. But I also wanted to know how "I" did on the exam..."tell me all the dirt questions!"

Shockingly, there were no dirt questions. In fact most of the stuff the three study guides said would be on the test wasn't on the test at all...and a bunch of stuff that wasn't supposed to be on the test was. I feel vicariously cheated and mislead! How am I going to get credit for knowing that clay has a particle size of .002 mm or less? And that wet clay has an angle of repose of 30%? The Mrs. would have nailed all those questions, and way more, but they couldn't be bothered to even ask. The nerve!

The Mrs. Can Drive!

The Mrs. picked me up on her way home today. We took our usual route...most of the way. When traffic got a little backed up, the Mrs. took a favorite short cut down T Street, right near North Capitol.

Now I like T Street. I was at the northwest corner of T and North Capitol for church most Sunday nights for a couple of years. And Mr. D and Termite used to live right there, so I 'd get there during the week pretty often too. I was nearly arrested there for suspicion of drug purchasing and possession one time (turns out possession of a Veggie Tales video tape with intent to distribute isn't a crime so I was let go), but otherwise, that block has good memories for me.

But this afternoon it wasn't a good place to be. When we had driven about 3/4 of the way down the street (to a spot right across from the boys' old house), we heard "crack, crack, crack, crack, crack, crack." Time kind of stopped then. How long ago was Fourth of July? Who's around? Where's the noise coming from?

The Mrs. noticed more than I did. I saw a guy on the northwest corner of T and North Capitol. I somehow figured he was the shooter. She saw him too...and noticed a car ahead of us and another guy in red walking toward the guy on the corner. I didn't actually see the gun...the Mrs. saw a long rifle with a black strap hanging down.

Then time started again and we were barreling down the alley between T and Seaton. I've driven down that alley before, and I always go pretty slow since it is so narrow. The Mrs. took it at about 30 miles an hour!...and still managed not to run down a group of kids running at about 25 miles an hour in the same direction. It felt like a cop show or something...but Cagney's got nothing on the Mrs.!

Somewhere between T and Seaton I reached the nice folks at 911 and yelled "shots fired!" After describing what we saw, we took a slightly longer route home. We stopped at one point to talk through the window with a policeman in a car...he mentioned he'd heard something happened. But there were no sirens...not then or five minutes later or ten minutes later. We saw an ambulance go by later, but it didn't stop and appeared to be on the way to somewhere else. We're guessing nobody was injured.

The curious (and stupid) part of me wanted to go look for shell casings and find out what kind of gun it was. The guy was probably long gone, right? The Mrs., in addition to being a great driver, has more common sense than I do...we went home.


(Please note, the Mrs. used my account for the previous post...honest!)

accessories

The Mr. has been very busy the last few weeks...something about the economy...so he found a way to save time...less shaving!



He looks pretty cute- but I am a little biased!

Mr. D Turns 13!

For the past five years or so, Mr. D was very aware that he was not yet 13. Actually, he was very aware that he was 12 or under.

The typical conversation would go as follows:
Me: "Hey, D. Good to see you...hop in!"
Mr. D: "Can I sit in the front seat."
Me: "No. And why not?"
Mr. D: "Because the airbag will pop my head off..."

Well, according to visor in the car, Mr. D is now safe since he is no longer 12 or under. He's finally 13!

And from here on out, thing speed up. It took five years to sit in the front seat. In less than 3 years, he'll be able to sit in the driver's seat...yikes!

While Mr. D and I were driving to see the Simpson Movie, the Mrs. took a little break from her exam prep and whipped up a fantastic chocolate oreo cake. And the Mrs. is a way better cook than Marge!

Passing

Passing is a such a great thing to do. Think about it...you're stuck behind a slow-moving car. What do you do? You pass. Or somebody offers you a venison casserole made from meat their step-brother shot last season...you pass. Or you eat the casserole and feel terrible...well, you get the point. Passing is good. And my wife, The Mrs, can pass with the best of them. Exams, I mean. She blew through her most recent licensing exam like a bad casserole. Go Mrs.! She is so smart!

Now just 7 more to go.

Kaizen

This last weekend was a nice 207 weekend. We managed to make progress on a number of fronts. Not the least of which where two long-simmering projects.

The basket dresser that was started two (or more) months ago got its final coat of poly Saturday and went into service:


And the back bedroom, which was painted dark blue by former housemate Whitey while I was out of town, got a new coat of paint chosen by my favorite interior designer:

Risk

We humans are an odd lot when it comes to taking risks. Economists love to study this. For instance, what do people do if they are offered a chioice between A) flipping a coin and either winning nothing or $10,000, or B) getting $5,000 with certainty. Statistically they are equivalent and thus you should be indifferent. What would you do? Some people opt immediately for the coin flipping, others for the certain payoff. People seem to have very different levels of risk aversion, as economists call it (for the math geeks, people who love risk have negative risk aversion).

What is harder to understand is how some people seem to have different levels of risk aversion for different areas of their own life. Take, for example, the following two pictures:

In the first case, we were willing to pay $50 (Dad actually paid...thanks Dad!) to take a 1 in 125,000 chance of dying while white water rafting. How risky was this? It was 182 times as risky as taking a plane flight.

In the second picture (an external hard drive in a fire-proof, water-proof box), we spent about $150 to mitigate the risk that we would lose our digital pictures. The pictures of our previous risky behavior are now safe just in case our Mac hard drive dies, our house burns down, and water from the fire department floods the charred remains.

Hm. So in one case we paid to take a risk with our lives. In another we paid even more to protect pictures of our lives. What does this say?