Misc - Mark Asbell

Dalton Bombing

October 20, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Many of you probably already heard about the bombing in Dalton, GA (where my parents and siblings live). If not, here’s a news snippet:

What you probably don’t know is my brother was among the first firefighters allowed in the place. I won’t go in to all the details as he told it, but I will share a pic – Matt is the one to the far right – that’s his buddy AJ in the flourescent vest and gym shorts. AJ obviously manned the truck gadgets on the safe end of the hose rather than going into the flames in that attire. We’re proud of these guys for the job they do.

Here’s a link to more pics of the scene:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cmcconkey/sets/72157608123581467/

Many prayers for the people and families affected by this tragedy.

Filed Under: Family, Misc

Vacation!!!

August 15, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Last week was vacation (8/2 – 8/10). Yeah baby! A week of mostly no phone calls, mostly no emails, and mostly no stress (we did still have the kids with us so there was still just a little bit of stress). It was very fun and relaxing. Here’s the highlights from the week:

Sunday – drove to Montgomery, AL (which is halfway to our destination) to stay the night before proceeding to Gulf Shores, AL. While there we went to Circuit City because we had noticed the Wii was on sale for $249 (which is the best I’ve seen it). We’ve been talking about getting one for our family for Christmas, and I had already put the money aside for it, so we did it (yes – we’re already shopping for Christmas, but the Wii probably won’t wait til Christmas befor we use it).

Monday – drove the rest of the way to Gulf Shores (more precisely Orange Beach, AL – just down the road from Gulf Shores). You might be asking why did we go there. The answer is we know some people who own a condo there and Shawna’s mom had been given a free week to stay there, so she let us take advantage of the free week with her – thanks GG (Grandma Grace). After we got there I took the kids straight to the ocean and after about 10 minutes they wanted to go straight to the pool, so we did.

Tuesday – slept in. Went to the pool and ocean again (ocean a bit longer this time and more than once, but still spent more time at the pool). Lost my sunglasses in the ocean. Bought some new ones for an outrageous $10 at ‘Surf Style’ (that was $5 too high for my taste because I can get sunglasses any weekend at the Jockey Lot for $5). Relaxation deluxe – all day long. Ate good. Had TCBY ice cream.

Wednesday – got up at 6am and walked the beach. I knew the tide would be low and wanted to find some sea shells for the kids because they hadbeen looking for them since we got there. I happened to find 3 pairs of sunglasses washing up with the seashells. One pair is Oakley and the other two aren’t bad either. They’re a little scratched but not too bad. Took the kids to the pool and ocean again. This time we stayed at the ocean for quite a while because I bought them some sand toys to play with. I built a sand castle and Devin immediately tore it down with the shovel I got him. Went to Lambart’s (http://www.throwedrolls.com/). What an experience. They literally throw the rolls to you. Excellent food.

Thursday – took Devin to the National Naval Aviation Museum. Another wonderful experience. There are so many planes on display. Devin loved getting in the cockpits of several different types of planes. We also saw a pretty cool Imax movie. Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to go do that again when Devin is older so he can learn more about the planes and their history.

Friday – The girls went shopping which left Devin and I without transportation and with little interest in going to the pool or the beach by ourselves. So we made an adventure out of it and walked down the beach about a mile to the nearest souvenir shop where I bought Devin a snorkel and goggles. Then we walked back. That was as close as I got to a workout all week so I’ll have to pick up the slack now that we’re home.

Saturday – Pretty much all day was spent at the beach. Someone in our building pulled the fire alarm so the fire trucks came. That was interesting. But we spent most of the day playing in the sand and enjoying the ocean that we rarely get to see. It was nice and relaxing but at the same time I was already starting to dread the packing up and driving home.

Sunday – We drove all the way back home in one day. We stopped probably 5 times in the first 5 hours (3 hours of it was actual driving time) to get souvenirs, get snacks, pee, etc etc, then stopped to eat at Cracker Barrel. Then after we ate we drove 5 hours straight without stopping. Home sweet home.

What a wonderful vacation. We really enjoyed the gulf coast of Alabama. It’s really quite nice for family vacationing and we’ll most likely do it again. I’m sure there are so many details I’m not thinking of at the moment but I don’t want to delay posting something about our vacation any longer. When I think of more stuff I’ll write about it.

I’ll upload a bunch of pics for the next post.

Filed Under: Family, Misc, Relationships

Melted Vinyl Siding

July 31, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Have you ever lit your grill and left it burning on high for a while to get good and hot before you start cooking on it?

When I grill I normally don’t let it heat up for too long before I turn it back down. A few weeks ago I fired up the grill and left it on high and then got distracted by something and let it burn on high for too long – and too close to the house.

I didn’t think anything of it because I was a few feet away from the side of the house and it had never melted the siding before. But I had never left the grill on high for so long before. When I went back outside I noticed the siding bowing out from the house.

Needless to say I was ticked – at myself.

Lucky me I can’t just buy one or two sheets of siding to fix the ones that are messed up. I have to buy a whole box. I’m putting that off for now. I’ve got some other priorities around the house to spend money on before that.

Don’t burn the grill too close to the house!

Filed Under: Misc, Stories

Holler Ain’t Necessarily Redneck

July 28, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

If you’ve lived in the south for more than 2 minutes you’ve heard somebody say the word ‘holler’.

“Holler at-im tu git ovur hier” (modern translation – Holler at him to get over here).
“Holler at dem yungins” (Holler at those young ones – aka children)
“Quit hollerin at me”…..

See -you’ve heard it.

I personally don’t use that word unless I’m being silly and intentionally speaking more southern than I normally do (I’m 100% southern but non-southerners can at least understand my normal speech).

So I was writing an email to one of my cousins who lives in Florida. He’s on the Asbell side of the family, of which mostly resides around the Cairo and Thomasville areas of south Georgia, therefore he understands redneck. So at the end of my email I started to type ‘Holler back soon’ to throw a bit of southern lingo in to the message. I fully expected to see the red underline under ‘holler’ as though there was a spelling error. Didn’t happen. I was curious and decided to check to see if holler is considered a proper word, and it is. That sparked an interest in me to check other ‘southern’ or ‘redneck’ terms.

Southerners ain’t so stupid after all (it says ain’t isn’t a standard word, but they still defined it). You folks from over yonder just ain’t as cultured as you thought you were. If you’d listen more closely you wouldn’t get hollered at.

Filed Under: Family, Misc

Matt’s Married!!!

July 14, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

If you know my brother Matt you might have thought it would never happen. Well, believe it or not he is married. It all went down a couple of weeks ago. I got to be the best man, and I had the best speech at the reception.

View pictures here. There are really pictures from the whole week leading up to the wedding, so there are plenty of pictures of our kids, family, and fun stuff other than the wedding. My sister took a lot of the pictures but Skyler took several of them too. You can tell which pictures Skyler took because they’re all from a 3ft tall point of view – but they’re actually pretty good.

Congratulations to Matthew & Kristen Asbell. May they be blessed with many years of happiness.

Filed Under: Family, Misc

GM Dex Cool

February 21, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Recently I noticed a little scent of coolant coming from my car. I got under the hood to check because usually that means a leak from any number of possible broken parts throughout the complex cooling system. It wasn’t hard to find – right on top of the plastic inlet tank there was a tiny crack letting fluid leak ever so slowly.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to fix that one myself so I called Gerald’s Radiator here in Anderson. I met Gerald on one other occasion and he seemed like a pretty professional good ole boy who knows what he’s doing, so I decided to take my repair need to him. The bill was way better than what I would have had to pay the Cadillac people, but even more valuable than that was the lesson he gave me about Dex Cool.

He showed me articles about Dex Cool clogging up and corroding cooling systems which eventually breaks critical parts all over the engine and transmission because they all depend on the cooling system working properly. I was intrigued because I drive a Cadillac Catera – which comes with Dex Cool in the system. There were pictures of broken and corroded parts all through these trade magazines he had. I was convinced – get that crap out of my car and put in regular antifreeze.

After Gerald was done working on my car he told me he had to unclog one third of my radiator because it was stopped up with sludge that Dex Cool causes. That would explain why in the summer my car would out of the blue run really hot until I turned off the a/c then it would cool back down. I was probably on the verge of major breakdown. I just hope there aren’t any corroded parts that will break later on.

I decided to just do a general google search for what’s out there on the net regarding Dex Cool. There is a ton of stuff about the problems, the lawsuits, and even the good intentions GM has for using it. The hard evidence is convincing enough to me. Good intentions or not – I think Dex Cool is a bad product. I mostly just read the consumer affairs writeup on the Dex Cool issue, and I also read some of the consumer complaints about it.

The article says not to replace Dex Cool with regular Antifreeze, but Gerald was confident it would be ok. I just hope he flushed it out good enough that they didn’t mix because it seems that is the concern with changing to regular from dex cool – they don’t mix well. But it’s a catch 22 – if you don’t change it you’re stuck with a chemical that will eventually tear up your car, and if you do change them you risk mixing the new with the old and having a bad mix in your car. I’m living on the edge I guess and going with the changed fluid that hopefully is pure enough to keep me running a lot longer. I’ll just have it flushed more often to be sure.

Thanks to Gerald for looking out for me. If anyone else has Dex Cool in your car you might have some decisions to make – or at least get that crap flushed often. Whatever you do don’t go by GM’s non-warrantied statement that Dex Cool is good for 100,000 – 150,000 miles because that just isn’t true.

Filed Under: Misc, Money

Birthday Pictures

February 1, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

If you didn’t read yesterday’s post scroll down and do that first so you know that these pictures took place on my birthday and then on my party day.

IT SNOWED on my birthday (white birthday). Actually it sneeted (snow/sleeted), but in the south that is considered snow. Any time we get the white stuff of course we have to play in it, so here is Devin…

Devin played.

I worked – on a large snowman.
Devin also took great humor in throwing snowballs at me while I worked. Actually they were iceballs – so it wasn’t all that funny – especially to him when I threw one back.

Here’s Devin and I beside the snowman. That center iceball felt like about 300 lbs, but it was probably really only about 150-200.

Here is Skyler with her own little inside snowman. She wasn’t feeling well so she had to stay inside.

Here we are with the little gifts the kids got me.

Here is the snowman probably 5 days later after all the snow was gone. I don’t know if this was snowman-inator or if it got all its indestruct qualities from the mixture of elements that was in it, whic included snow, ice, dirt, grass, and dog crap (compliements of Rascal – and I’m not joking I saw it getting rolled up in the snowball as I rolled it).

Ok, now to the party. Lots of peeps were there.

As a matter of fact, there were peeps from near and far.

Counting children and all there were just over 40 peeps.

Here’s me still in shock and I’m pointing at people who I should have known were up to something earlier in the week.

We had good food and fun.

More fun.

You see that guy at the very end of the table in the baby blue shirt? That’s Roberto – one of the owners of Fiesta Mexican Restaurant – one of our favorite places to eat. Roberto was in on the surprise too. I’ll have to get Roberto back somehow. If you don’t already eat at Fiesta please go experience the wonderful food and service Roberto and team have to offer.

Here’s my cake. If you can’t read that it is a picture of the grim reaper saying “Relax, I’m Just Here For The Cake”. All the jokes come out for turning 30.

And for those who got to come to the party after the party here is an exciting game of Pounce. If you don’t know what that is you don’t know what you’re missing, but it can be stressful if you get too serious. I had won 3 times in a row playing on different nights one game at a time. This was the second game of this night and my partner and I came in last. I guess I just couldn’t take that much pressure in one night or something.

It was a blast. Thanks to all who came. If you couldn’t make it I understand but you sure missed a great party. Sorry if anyone was overlooked on the invite. Shawna put this together in a week and had to do it without me knowing it. I was very impressed. Unfortunately there are no pictures of my beautiful bride in all these but that is because she was working so hard making all this happen – and she is nine months pregnant. Before we know it there will be new baby pictures on this blog…

Filed Under: Family, Misc, Relationships

January 4, 2008 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Time for my once every other week blog post…

Shawna had another ultrasound a few days ago because the last one showed something they were worried about. Everything is just fine and we got some new pictures (the most expensive pictures of Kylee we’ll ever pay for until her wedding). Here’s the best one in 3D of her face (amazing how they can do this):

We had wonderful holidays and hope everyone else did too. We have so much to be thankful for. Here is a picture of all of us:

I’m coming up with some more stuff to write and get back in the swing of this blogging thing. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

https://markasbell.com/222/

Filed Under: Family, Misc

What I’ve Been Up To

December 11, 2007 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Things have been crazy busy for me lately but it has been a good thing because it looks like I am going to meet my work goal for the year. I’m so close. We have added a lot of new capabilities to what we do at work so I’ve been on the road quite a bit lately spreading the word to clients.

From Friday 11/30 to Friday 12/7 I traveled over 2400 miles by car and aside from an average of 5.5 hours of sleep each night the rest of the time every day was probably 85-90% work time. If I had time to think of all the experiences I had along the way I’d be sure to write about some of them. Maybe later…

Someone asked me the other day what I want for Christmas. As I was staring at a mirror in my hotel last week, missing my family, exhausted, thinking about my inbox full of catch up work to do, smelling the coffee beside me… I thought for a second, “hmmm, just what do I really need for Christmas?” At that moment staring in the mirror I did this funny face I do that shows my teeth and realized… ALL I NEED FOR CHRISTMAS IS A BIT MORE SLEEP AND A LOT OF TEETH WHITENER. Obviously my coffee dependency is taking it’s toll.

Filed Under: Misc

Round Trip Ticket to Space Please

October 23, 2007 by Mark Asbell Leave a Comment

Does anyone else remember Apollo 13 the movie? If I recall correctly the astronauts were put through hell just to be accepted to the astronaut training, and in training they had to pass tests of immortality. Maybe I’m exaggerating but it seemed pretty stringent.

Oh how things are changing…

The World’s First Spaceport
It’s tourism meets Star Trek. Architects have started preliminary work on the design of Spaceport America’s 100,000-square-foot terminal and hangar facility in New Mexico. It will be the primary base of the Virgin Galactic spaceliner, which, starting in 2009, will whisk travelers into space for a short trip into orbit if they pony up for a $200,000 ticket. The spaceport, expected to reach completion by early 2010, will also be the headquarters of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.
(Source: Space.com)

I’m curious to know the details of how they can make such an offering to the public, but I have no intentions of ever paying $200k for a ticket. Maybe by 2040 the price will come down – like computers and cell phones. But by then there will be something even cooler – like studying abroad on Mars or a ticket to meet aliens in person.

Filed Under: Misc