Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Blinds and New Words

T-Bear and Monkey have settled into The Kid's room. All in all, Dork Boy and the Wife have done a fairly nice job of outfitting the room. It is very nice and cozy. However, there was one problem - no blinds over the window. This insured that T-Bear and Monkey were up nice and early. While they enjoyed that, they did realize that a more or less nocturnal Dork Boy, an infant, and early morning sunshine were recipe for disaster. To avert disaster the guys decided to order some blinds that Dork Boy agreed to install.

Things went relatively well at the beginning, the blinds arrive in one piece. Things sort of went down hill after that. The first attempt to install the blinds failed due to a small measuring error. The blinds were too large for the frame. Dork Boy took this remarkably well. Only a few bad words were used, and generally they were grumbled more than shouted.

Here T-Bear discovers a measuring error. The hard hat protected him from Dork Boy's Deadwood impression.

Dork Boy and The Wife then had a frank and friendly conversation with helpful blind makers. The blind makers assured Dork Boy and The Wife that the blinds were made to the requested size. The blindmakers were unable to actually find any record of Dork Boy and The Wife ordering the blinds, but that should in no way imply they may have made an error in constructing the blinds.

Left with no choice but to make the too long blinds work, Dork Boy and The Wife made a quick trip to the wasteland that is the local Home Depot. After a successful battle with the incredibly inconvientent, convient self check out kiosk, they had created some extensions for the window frame. Now they just had to do some screwing. Simple enough. However, they failed to consider that either Dork Boy has no handy man skills(the most likely explanation) or the front wall of the house is filled with some sort of screw clamping goo(the home inspector doubts this greatly). For whatever reason, and despite repeated and determined attempts, as well as some very inventive swearing, Dork Boy was unable to actually get the screws all the way into the wall. This made it very difficult to actually install the frame extensions and the mounting brackets for the blinds.

After taking a brief break to fully concetrate on the swearing, Dork Boy remembered the teachings of Grandpa Grumps - Duct Tape can fix anything. So Dork Boy set about deciding how to hang the blinds from the ceiling using duct tape. Luckily, The Wife arrived on the scene at this point. She managed to point out there might be a few flaws in suspending blinds above their child's head using duct tape, and that maybe a better plan would be to try the screws again, but this time use Fake Unc Challenger's more powerful drill. The Wife's logic, and a beer as bribery, convinced Dork Boy to give this plan a try.

With the new drill, Dork Boy managed to get the extension more or less secured to the wall. Then Dork Boy discovered that mounting brackets for the blinds were too narrow to allow the drill to be used. It was at this point that Dork Boy went completely Deadwood.

While Dork Boy spent his time describing various anatomical impossibilities,T-Bear and Monkey decided they would just finish the blinds. With a simple screw driver and astounding teddy strength, T-Bear screwed in the brackets by hand. Monkey then used his monkey climbing skills to actually install the blinds.

Some time around then, Dork Boy managed to calm down enough to admire the guy's handywork. He was impressed and quite happy the job was done. He then toddled off to have another beer, and contemplate his great hope that The Kid inherits his and Granpa Grump's ability to calmly accept and overcome these little handyman challenges.


Here we see Monkey making some last minute adjustments to the blinds.


Saturday, December 8, 2007

We have arrived!!

T-Bear and Monkey have arrived.

They made their arrival at a lovely swarae thrown by Fake Aunt Brooke Anne and Fake Aunt Work Wife. Sure the supposed purpose of the event was to celebrate The Kid's coming arrival, but as he never actually showed up, really the highlight of the evening was the arrival of T-Bear and Monkey.

T-Bear and Monkey are the direct descendants of the animals that helped raise Dork Boy and The Wife to be the fine individuals they are today. Now some may wonder how helping raise Dork Boy qualifies you for raising other children, but T-Bear the Elder would like to point out he did his best to limit Dork Boy's dorkiness, but there is only so much a stuffed animal can due to limit a child's true nature. And T-Bear the Elder would also like to point out Dork Boy doesn't have anything to do with World Of War Craft which must speak to some non-dorkiness in him.

Anyway, T-Bear and Monkey arrived with some fanfare, after an initial round socializing, got down to checking out the situation. They immediately discovered that Dork Boy was more or less useless. He was obsessed with watching LSU vs. The Evil Orange Creamsicles of JackDanielsLand. While T-Bear understood the desire to do what you can to stop the Evil Orange Creamsicles of JackDanielsLand, he also knew that there was a huge pile of baby crab that had to be cataloged and organized. T-Bear and Monkey quickly got to work getting all of the lovely baby crap packed up and in the car. Then, with the help of the lovely grandmas, they managed to get The Kid's room all set up. Dork boy managed to drink a number of Porters and cheer The Evil Orange Creamsicles of JackDanielsLand to defeat, so really it was a lovely and productive day for everybody. Below are some pictures of the results of T-Bear, Monkey and the Grandma's work.
















Here are T-Bear and Monkey at there post happily awaiting the arrival of The Kid.