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This photo was in the Fairmont Times West Virginian recently.

That’s my Gramps (D.J. Romino) on the left listening to Sen. Byrd play the fiddle.

So last Sunday in a spurt of motivation I had glass cut to repair the two windows in our garage. I managed to get one in last weekend. But then I ran out of steam. Mostly because I had to pull the window sash apart and do some repair work. And that never goes fast.

Well today, despite the evil heat and humidity, I managed to get it in gear and replace the window. Not that it was easy. And not that it ended entirely well.

First I had to scrape the window a bit because the 24″ x 24″ piece of glass would not fit in the slightly larger than 24″ x 24″ window.

Sure, I do all my home repair work in a sun dress, don’t you? Seriously though, I’d been out and about (and trying not to die from the heat – 90+ degrees) and in my typical form decided once I got home that  I’d work on some projects that needed finishing. Well why in the world would I change clothes? I was, after all, ONLY going to pop that glass in the window and secure it, right?  Oh and maybe paint an ammo can and perhaps paint the Wheel of Morality (the 5th Great MEAT-n-Greet at Coopers Rocks is coming up soon.)

Well after all that scraping, which turned into me sanding and scraping and then getting out my wood chisel. Which of course I could not find. But after digging it up I was not surprised to find that it needed sharpened. Which mean I had to find something with which to sharpen the chisel before I could make any progress. I was trying to not lose my patience since this was becoming quite a large pain. (The first window – predictably – went in without any drama, scraping or fuss.)

I think I must have put that piece of glass in the window about 20 times and it still did not fit. Of course it wasn’t me working non-stop. I had a few respites thanks to intermittent thunderstorms which were rolling through. But once they stopped coming and going and I no longer had to run for cover I finally (thought) I won! Yes the glass went in. The glass was secured. And then….the glass cracked. But you know what? By that stage I really did not care. And it was only a tiny crack. And the window is in the back of the garage.

Oh, did I mention I also had to tie on the weights for the bottom window? Well I did. And I had to free the windows from many years of paint. At the very least I know that the trim on the house used to be blue before the current mauve.

And so you are probably wondering why the heck anyone should care about me putting in a new window in the back of my garage. Well it’s a valid point to ponder. And so I’ll come clean. That particular piece of glass that I just installed is a particularly evil piece of glass.

Because yesterday while I was out geocaching with 89SC at The Jug WMA that evil piece of glass had a devious plan which it managed to bring to fruition. What was the evil plan you may ask? Well it just so happens that since glass is fragile I had placed this evil piece of glass on top of a small cart in the garage. And there it sat in wait, concocting a plan. Waiting…waiting for someone oblivious.

And since Chad lives here too, it didn’t have to wait very long. Sometime around 2:00 pm Saturday that evil piece of glass lured Chad in and sliced him up. Oh yes. It did.

And how did I find out? (Because remember I was out in The Jug where there was no cell service.) I found out via a short text message that Chad was at MedExpress. And that was IT. No more information. And why did this freak me out? Because Chad and Dad were at home with an industrial wet saw cutting flagstone.

Nicely played Mr. Evil Piece of Glass. Nicely Played.

WARNING! GRAPHIC PHOTO of Chad’s Injury coming up next. Not as gnarly as my summer destroying injury of June 2009, but still slightly unpleasant.

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Chad and I went to a CITO event up in Pennsylvania.

It just happened to be on April 24. No big deal. Except that’s our annivesary.

Because nothing says Happy Anniversary like picking up trash.

And then we had dinner at Apple Annie’s in Point Marion.

Do we know how to live it up or what?

Back in March we took a trip up to Canada (or Cranada if you happen to be amused by the label on your Canadian friends’ sink & toilet) to see the rest of Team Kuclick. It’d been a long time since we headed North and we’d not seen the rest of TK since New Year’s.

It appeared that all the planets were going to be in alignment for our trip. I had no problem getting my vacation days approved. I was organized. Both our cars were inspected.  AND We were promised Canadian SUMMER temperature. Which confused me since the forecast was for 55 degrees Fahrenheit and we all know that MY concept of Summer involves 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess going a few degrees North in latitude changes ones perspective of appropriate Summer temperatures. (Yeah, I still packed my long john top.)

At any rate we headed out after work and since Chad was making such good time on the road, we figured we may as well drive straight on through instead of stopping in Buffalo as earlier planned. We arrived at the TK homestead in Canada sometime around midnight or so, after encountering the sole rude Canadian (at the border no less, what’s up with that?) and promptly crashed. After all, we had a BIG day of summer-like temperatures ahead of us.

As promised, the next day dawned with Canadian Summer temperatures (and even what I’d consider called WV Late Spring temps at one point). The sun was out, the wind was NOT blowing and it looked to be awesome out. Which of course means that we set out on the traditional Team Kuclick pastime of geocaching. We also took the opportunity to begin instructing W & R in the fine art of re-hiding the geocache so as not to alert the general public that under THAT cleverly stacked sticks / bark lay an awesome treasure.

After a brisk day of caching, marching through a marsh, pulling small children and generally enjoying Canadian Summer Temperatures we headed back to the TK headquarters for nourishment and regrouping. After all, we had plans for these Canadian Summer Temperatures. Big Plans. We were foiled, however, in our late afternoon (BIG) plans which involved sun & refreshing beverages since the early  Canadian Summer temps dissipated into a gale force wind (not really, but it was windy).  Please note, however, that this in NO way prevented certain menfolk from engaging in a rousing game of golf, where the golfer who was losing had to pull the cart. As you may imagine, playing in such windy conditions was a bit trying.

There was additional geocaching in non-Canadian Summer Tempertures. In fact, it began to flurry. But ha! We see your flurries and LAUGH in your general direction. (And the much anticipated endless sushi. Oh endless sushi….why do you not exist in West Virginia?) The geocaching involved epic fail geocaching whereupon PMD & I left the men folks with the kids and said “Oh we’ll be right back.” which are generally our famous last words. But the men folks, being accustomed to that muttered something, but were not quick enough to prevent our running off. Mostly because they knew what sheer joy geocaching brings PMD & me (or it could be because we didn’t really give them much choice…)

Halfway up this possible mud-flume of doom, while she is stuck in some shrubbery and I’m trying to figure out how to get around a tree, PMD looks at me and indicates that this was possible not the best idea of all times. And I say, “Eh, I do this stuff all the time.”  (and mostly because I have no common sense or people to make me stop) Despite some misgivings we made tit to the top of the possible mud-flume of doom and realized that A. We had all the kid supplies and B. PMD actually had kids. The latter being important since if she fell down mud-flume of doom, there would most likely be a child-rearing problem. While me…well I figure sidekick could handle the 2 ferrets and 4 cats by himself.  After a cautious (for PMD) descent we headed back, willing to accept our DNF.

Probably the best part of the trip (for me at any rate), however was when PMD and the girls took me and Ping on surprise trip to visit some of Ping’s relatives.

And so ends my late, short & lame post about our visit North.

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