J&C Plumbing

One night a few weeks ago we were driving home after I picked Chelsey up at her photography class. It was a little after 10 p.m. As we turned down our alley, we were frantically waved down by a woman outside the house on the corner. She said she had a water leak and needed help getting the water turned off. I went and parked the car while Chelsey tried to help. When I came back the woman was trying to get Chelsey to help her turn off the water from the street, using an access point in the alley. I don't think it is really meant for civilians to turn the water off and on, and so it wasn't working.
After abandoning that plan, Chelsey and I followed the woman inside the house. There was a young boy there, and the woman was videochatting with some people, possibly the home owners, via an iPad she was carrying around. The whole thing was a little hysterical. It turned out that the hot-water tap in the bathroom sink had snapped off, and water was shooting like a geyser up from the tap. It was hitting the bathroom ceiling and then spraying all over, creating a flood 2-3 inches deep out of the bathroom door and into the hallway.
Chelsey decided to run home and get a tube from our vacuum, then used the tube to direct the water into the bathtub where it could drain, thus alleviating the flooding situation. While she went home, I went poking about the house trying to find a main water valve or the hot water heater or something. I didn't find those, but I did look under the kitchen sink and find the valve on the pipes there. Thus, when Chelsey came back and got the geyser under control, I crawled under the sink and was able to shut off the water to the tap in question. Whoo! Crisis resolved. At least temporarily; obviously they were going to have to deal with the flooding and broken tap at some point. But I thought that seemed like a job for a professional plumber. Then again, maybe we should think about a career change...
-Jason

oh my

The following is an actual email that I received from an author/professor/client this week. He had written me to ask if I could update his book's posting on Amazon. I wrote him back and said I would. Then I received this:

Thanks Chelsey, I hope you included the dedication in the sneak preview.  The dedication talks about love.  Every Sunday I drive right past your office on my way to La Mesa.  I go there for a meeting of our church.  We are to be the bride of Jesus Christ and in order to be the bride of Jesus we have to live in love.  All transactions are to be done in love, not money.  Imagine if the world lived in love and not money.  No more football games or popcorn, no more tv or movies and no more drugs or rock and roll.  Just math problems to stimulate critical thinking skills as we prepare to live in eternal life.  And eternal life is all about love.  ((client name removed)) 

I write math problems for the American Math Competitons, it says so on my book.

 

Xmas

More housecleaning: here are some pictures from Christmas at my sister's house. Ethan is a little bit bigger now.
-Jason

glad they cleared this up

Czech ambassador clarifies that Czech Republic is not Chechnya

Borrego Springs Half Marathon

 We're still catching up on the blog, but no one will want to have missed an update on my running, so here's a report on the Borrego Springs Half Marathon that I ran back in December.
This was the first race I had run since the disappointing Coronado Independence Day 15km in July. Borrego Springs is a small town over an hour into the mountains between San Diego and Imperial County. It was the closest half marathon I could find that month, so I decided to give it a try.
It turned out to be a nice little race. It started and finished at the local high school and consisted of two laps on relatively flat roads. It wasn't a very big race; maybe 50 people total. The race organizers hadn't bothered to close any roads, since there were so few runners and such little traffic that it probably wasn't worth the bother.
My race got a rough start; I tried to stay with the lead group, since there weren't a lot of people to run with, but that turned out to be way too fast for me. I ended up right on my target pace at the halfway mark, but I could tell I was starting to struggle a little. I was concerned about the second lap. It did end up being slower than the first lap, predictably, but I was actually fairly pleased with it: given the rookie mistake I made at the beginning of the race, I was happy that I was able to hold it together as well as I did and still end up with a respectable time. It was a little lonely on the second lap, though; I had a six-minute gap on either side of me, so I didn't see anyone except Chelsey cheering for me. Even that was interrupted when she was distracted by the sea serpent crossing the road.
I mostly ran this race because it was the only half marathon near me, but it ended up being quite enjoyable. After the race, the organizers served us homemade peanut butter sandwiches. Very nice.
-Jason

battle of the marching bands

One of the events in the lead-up to the Poinsettia Bowl was a battle of the two schools' marching bands through downtown.They eached marched in from opposite ends of the street, then had a faceoff at an intersection. San Diego State was creative and had the hometown advantage, but BYU held their own.

Jason & Tessa

I am sure that our siblings love when Aunt Chelsey and Uncle Jason teach their kids fun things like "here's how you put a spoon on your nose."Then we get them all wound up and run around the house. (Sorry the video is sideways ... blogger won't let me rotate it.)