Liv's First Birthday & her first encounter with Bubbles!!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
A Day at KWS
Liv is becoming quite the little helper! She can be very industrious! This is a quick glimpse of a few of the things she gets into while I'm doing other things!
Happy Birthday!
Happy First Birthday, Liv!!
We had some friends over for cake & ice cream, it was lovely!!
(I was so proud of my butterfly cupcakes!)
The four letter "W" word
I have been working a bunch. It is what we refer to as "outage season" in the power plant biz. The plants in my region need to shut down at least twice a year for maintenance. Typically the work is accomplished in 8 to 10 days. The schedules are aggressive and work is done around the clock. I recently was in Oahu. Usually after stating this everyone says "NICE". But.... when you are working 13 to14 hours a day from dark to dark it really does not matter where you are. As long as the bed is decent and the food OK I could be in the middle of a desert.
If you have any interest in power boilers read on.... else Emily will be loading up some new pictures of the midget soon.
The picture below was a good find. You can barely see the cracks running horizontally across the weld repair that was done years before. We ground the crack out and this tube was extremely close to failing. Finding these is equivalent to a needle in a hay stack. There are 54,000 linear feet of boiler tube and this problem is only 6" long. Compound this to the fact that I have only 48 hours to find these problems so that they can be repaired quickly to stay on schedule makes for a challenge to say the least.
Frequently there are large areas of tubes that require repair. Below is a picture of a swath of tubes 22 wide and 8 feet tall that were in rough shape. Already repaired once several years ago by building up the thickness of the tubes with weld beads. The white marks are thickness readings and there was no way these were going back in service. Some were thin as a pop can. In fact the boilermakers worked all night trying to weld on these and made about 20 holes in them. Went to plan B and replaced the whole section.
There will be five boilers down for repair over the next two weeks. Requiring 350 mile night drives between a couple. Off to Minnesota again as well. Minneapolis is a nice city. More for those technically orientated later, will be safe. Life in a respirator, ahhhhh, bliss.
If you have any interest in power boilers read on.... else Emily will be loading up some new pictures of the midget soon.
The picture below was a good find. You can barely see the cracks running horizontally across the weld repair that was done years before. We ground the crack out and this tube was extremely close to failing. Finding these is equivalent to a needle in a hay stack. There are 54,000 linear feet of boiler tube and this problem is only 6" long. Compound this to the fact that I have only 48 hours to find these problems so that they can be repaired quickly to stay on schedule makes for a challenge to say the least.
Frequently there are large areas of tubes that require repair. Below is a picture of a swath of tubes 22 wide and 8 feet tall that were in rough shape. Already repaired once several years ago by building up the thickness of the tubes with weld beads. The white marks are thickness readings and there was no way these were going back in service. Some were thin as a pop can. In fact the boilermakers worked all night trying to weld on these and made about 20 holes in them. Went to plan B and replaced the whole section.
There will be five boilers down for repair over the next two weeks. Requiring 350 mile night drives between a couple. Off to Minnesota again as well. Minneapolis is a nice city. More for those technically orientated later, will be safe. Life in a respirator, ahhhhh, bliss.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Walking
Liv's really cruising now... Here is a short clip of her outside the shop while we waited for UPS this afternoon. There's nothing super cute or funny or impressive... but an idea of how she's getting along!
Here's what is going on around her: first she points at the flowers (next to where I'm sitting). Then she gets distracted by a low flying helicopter (which you can hear). Then she's looking past me to a person who is walking up the sidewalk towards us & behind me.
Finally! New Olivia Pics! :)
Here's Livvy Helping at KWS
A good helper!
ok...
maybe we're not quite ready to self-spoon feed yet.
maybe we're not quite ready to self-spoon feed yet.
Thinking we might have a couple more teeth on their way.
Happy Kid, playing outside!
I'm hoping to get some video of her charging around posted up here for everyone. Her balance has improved enough that she was "dancing" at sing-a-long the other day!! WHAT A HOOT!!!
Strawberries!
Sorry it's been so long... our little girl is keeping me running!!
She had her first Strawberry at the Farmer's Market on Tuesday! (Yay, Spring!) Wasn't too sure at first... they are a little bit sour, but after that first bite, she was hooked! Here are a couple shots of her enjoying one at home.
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