DanLog the ramblings of Daniel Pettit

Today was our 19th wedding anniversary. We had an early dinner at P. F. Changs, did a little people watching in the mall and some “Joan Rivers-ing” and then picked up some Oreo Mudslide cheesecake to-go, as there was a decent wait for a table, from The Cheesecake Factory next door . On the way home we picked up a movie. Much to my amazement the cheesecake was NOT amazing. It always had been before. I later found out that Lauren experienced the same thing. Was it because we took it home and it was at room temp when we ate them? Is their fancy to-go box toxic? Did we just happen to get a bad batch. Are the restaurant slices fresher than the bakery’s? Still ate the whole thing but the thought of not crossed my mind more than once. Oh and BTW in the past our leftover cheesecake has always been divine.

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I drove me mum to her grand nephew’s wedding. The ceremony and reception were held at the Grand Tradition in Fallbrook, which is in North San Diego county. Took us about an hour and half to drive there. Didn’t hit any traffic until just a few miles away from the site on the two lane country road that leads to it. It was devilishly hot there 91° in the shade, it was just a tad warmer sitting in full sun in a navy suit. Thankfully the ceremony was short and sweet. Bryce only had to sponge off his head 5 or 6 times during the nuptials.

We sat with Kathi and her friend Del and Sharon’s half-sisters. Kathi looked good and we both thought her hair style was cute. Pretty typical wedding reception stuff though they did do some things out of the traditional order. They did violate rule #77 of “The Rules of Wedding Crashing” which was pretty annoying. But that was not the only thing broken that night. They also set a new Guinness Book of World Records for the thinnest slice of wedding cake ever recorded, I could almost read a newspaper through it. It was if Cosmo Kramer was slicing up the cake in back with his deli slicer set to “invisible” . As the server was plunking down shavings for mom and myself I felt this urge to just slap my slice on top of hers and ask for another one. To add insult to “injury” on the table behind us another server was placing huge ( easily 6 or more of ours) chocolate slices (ours were yellow) at an unoccupied (at the moment) table. I was close to doing something about this injustice but the DJ had gotten into full swing and the music was really bothering mom’s ears, so we left. Oh by the way those few precious morsels of cake we did receive were very tasty.

Later I was musing on how I would have responded if I happened to be a large stereotypical black woman: With finger waving no-no-no, I’d be saying “Oh no you don’t, you call that a slice of cake? You trying to tell me something- are you saying I shouldn’t have any more cake than that. DO I LOOK LIKE I’M ON A DIET, ARE YOU SAYING I SHOULD BE. Listen here sista you’d better be flowing me a real slice of cake lest I’d be smacking you up side the head with this pantyliner of cake slice.”

Well cake drama aside it was a nice affair in a spectacular setting.

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Our dishwasher stopped draining the wash water a few days ago. I finally got around to pulling it out to check out the problem. I’d already determined it was most likely the drain pump was bad. I didn’t find anything clogging up the drain line. So I basically had to pull the entire unit out from under the counter, after I used my shop vac to empty the wash tank. This task is made much harder as the wood floor installation created 1.125″ lip. So I have to pry up the counter top with one hand and pull the washer with the other. I’m going to have to raise all the cabinets when we redo the kitchen to take that higher floor into account. Anyway after much jiggling I got the unit out. It was quite easy to disconnect the the drain pump. I tested the pump and it fired up a first but then sputtered out, so I’d found the culprit. I picked up a new pump at Orange County Appliance Parts OCAP in Garden Grove on my way home from Holly. A couple hours and $40 bucks and were good as we were anyway. Beats getting a new washer.

My niece got into a car accident today. Here is my my sister’s rendering of the facts, “she got in a car accident yesterday after work. She was going through the intersection of Termino and 4th in Long Beach when a guy ran a red light driving on 4th. He T-Boned her into the drivers door and back door. Both windows shattered into a bizillion shards of glass. The other car pushed her car about 30 feet til it hit the curb. She is at our house and is very sore but very lucky. I just spoke with the guy where her car was towed and he said it is BAD…probably TOTALLED. I had to come to work today but GrandMa is on standby. I might need to take her to the doctors to get her checked out better. She mainly has small cuts and her neck and chest are VERY SORE. ”

At least as far as I can tell