Chapman Kids Blog

"In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." –John 16:33

Lorena’s office

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On Sunday, March 30, 2025

In Technology

We are in the process of setting up and office for Lorena. We ordered the printer from Walmart (cheaper than the same model at Ebay and Amazon) and it arrived today–on a Sunday nonetheless, right after we returned from after-church lunch in town. The most amazing part it that it was ready to print out of the box over wireless without anything other than connecting to the network. I installed the Linux (Xubuntu 24.04) drivers that I downloaded from the internet in about five minutes and then the scanner was up and running. I am very pleased with our new monochrome laser printing, color scanning, wireless Brother HL-L2465DW printer. I hope this is the last printer I ever have to buy.

Mrs. Fixit

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On Saturday, March 29, 2025

In House and home

I think Lorena is actually going to be kind of sad when the house is all organized. Right now she is playing Mrs. Fixit. First, she wanted to water the lawn, but the hose ends were loose and leaky so we ran down to Home Depot and bought a couple of repair kits to fix that. Then, she wanted to set up her computer desk in the master bedroom so we pulled the beautiful walnut desk we are keeping for Christian and is not, quite happily, putting that together–I get to set up the computer when that is done, but she will not let me touch anything that has to do with screw drivers, wrenches, pliers, and hammers. She is just amazing. Who knew I was marrying a plumber these many years ago.

Setting up the offices

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On Saturday, March 29, 2025

In Technology

Christian helped me pick out a new printer/scanner today. I found a Brother wireless monochrome laser printer/color scanner with Linux drivers on Walmart for $4 less than the cheapest thing on eBay. It comes with a 700 pages toner which means there is some very good chance we will never have to buy another one.

With our new plan for Lorena to start taking over a bunch of the financial management stuff, we have decided to set her up with her own office/desk/computer in the bedroom. To that end, I got the little i3 Windows laptop running that I use for those few things I cannot do on Linux (do Windows builds of the GRIME2 Open Source software package and update the firmware on our Garmin watches). Hopefully I will be able to get our file server and a Linux computer running so we can implement the plan. With our Starlink setup I am still pretty sad with the upload speeds, but very happy overall with the service.

We are getting close to having a somewhat cluttered but operational house.

New Garmin VivoActive 5 and the postal service

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On Friday, March 28, 2025

In Health

I wanted another Garmin Instinct 2 watch after my old one died. I had it for six or seven years and absolutely loved it. The only issue I had toward the end was that it only held a charge for about a week during my normal usage. When I checked out the pricing, I found that the VivoActive 5 did everything I wanted it to do and more, had way better battery life, cost quite a bit less than the Instinct 2, and was on sale. When I ordered the watch, I accidentally entered my Health Savings Account debit card rather than my regular debit card, but it was accepted. That means I was able to buy the watch for pre-tax dollars! All and all, I was quite pleased. Lorena has that same watch and I was already pretty sold on it. Actually having it on my wrist was further confirmation.

When the post office tried to deliver the watch to our mailbox it was just marginally too small, so the mail carrier took it back to the office which is only about a half mile away. I had a nice talk with the post office lady who told me that if the mailbox was less than a half mile to the house, the mail carrier would be able to deliver that oversize stuff directly to the house, but they are required to “officially” do that. We are less than a quarter mile away from our mailbox, so we are glad for that!

Happy birthday Kelly!

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On Thursday, March 27, 2025

In Family

Lorena and I are grateful for our beautiful daughter every day, but on her birthday, we love to reflect on that spectacular spring morning drive to the hospital and the events that followed. She was born with a full head of dark hair and the bright blue eyes that have never changed. We like to think we did our best as parents, but really, Kelly’s optimistic and energetic disposition made it easy. We pray for daily and thank God that he gave us such a beautiful gift. We are so much more thankful that her love of God continues to grow along with her kindness and good will toward others. Kelly, we love you so much and are so proud of you, not so much for what you have accomplished, although that is pretty spectacular, but for who you are and that you continue to face your challenges with vigor and thoughtfulness.

Starlink installed and running

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On Tuesday, March 25, 2025

In Technology

Our Starlink internet is now installed. We are getting 15-20 megabits upload speeds, but an amazing 350-400 megabits. We hate to be paying half again what we paid for fiber-to-the-house in Texas and about four times what we paid in Mexico for the same speeds, but we are thankful we had any option at all and also thankful not to be using Comcast or Xfinity.

Star Link

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On Monday, March 24, 2025

In Technology

Lorena and I drove to the Gum Spring Dollar General on the way home from the train station to pick up our new Star Link antenna. A guy is coming to the house tomorrow to put it up on the roof, run the wire into the house, and set up the modem. I really need good broadband to do my job well because there are such large amounts of data involved. Star Link is kind of a bare minimum, but I think it will be fine. We have heard lots of good reviews from people we trust that it works great.

Kelly’s birthday party

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On Sunday, March 23, 2025

In Entertainment, Family, Friends

The main reason Lorena and I traveled to Washington, D.C. this weekend was to attend a birthday party for Kelly thrown by her amazing friend group. It was an amazing assembly of highly credentialed and connected people of great good will. The amazing part was the goodness of the will rather than the highness of the credentials and connections although that was impressive, too. We left the party at an appropriate time in concert with my advanced age and Lorena’s predilection for smaller groups, but not before we got a chance to talk to many. We were grateful for her friend group before the party based on the little we knew about all but a few of the attendees. We were much more grateful after the party because we saw that Kelly is very much far from being alone and lonely. That has not always been true in her short life. We arrived home with a great sense of gratitude for that new knowledge.

To D.C. and back by train

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On Sunday, March 23, 2025

In Family, Travel

We just returned from our first train trip from Richmond up Washington, D.C. to visit Kelly and back home. It went swimmingly. We are looking forward to doing it again soon. The next trip, though, is a plane flight up to New York City to visit Christian. So far this is all working out well.

Ashland to DC: First trip

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On Friday, March 21, 2025

In Family, Travel

Lorena and I got on the train in Ashland, VA just now and are headed to DC. We are both convinced it will probably be easier next time to start from Richmond. Really looking forward to spending the weekend with Kelly and her friends.

Making some important connections in Virginia

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On Friday, March 21, 2025

In Cooking, Entertainment

We found a spectacularly good Italian restaurant right up the road from us. We hope to be there often.

Happy birthday Tío Lynn

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On Thursday, March 20, 2025

In Family, Mexico houses

Christian took this picture from the front of the house on the hill in San Pedro, looking out through what we hope will be a two-car garage at Tío Lynn’s car parked on the street in front. It should be noted that that the car is just as beautiful on the inside as on the outside. We loved our time in Mexico with Lynn and love working with him on the houses. Here is wishing him a very happy birthday!!!

First floor up the hill

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On Wednesday, March 19, 2025

In Mexico houses

Here is an image of the first floor on the house “up the hill” in San Pedro in its current state, just for reference. The plan is to finish that first floor to the point where it is livable and safe from the weather, then move down to the basement to finish that off so we can both have a space for ourselves and for visitors while the rest of the house is being completed.

The house on the hill

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On Wednesday, March 19, 2025

In Mexico houses

Tío Lynn is working hard on the house on the hill to the point where the first floor is almost livable. Really, this has become and art project for him and we could not be happier about it. The range of skills to create this project is broad and, by the nature of the building, sometimes it is necessary to go back a step or two when unforeseen things are discovered or when a new idea requires some adjustments to previously complete elements of the house. We have figured out that this project is going to take two to three years to accomplish, not so much for lack of resources, but so there is time to think and let the ideas percolate between steps. I will put up some images of the house in progress over the next few blog posts.

Lorena la plomera #2

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On Saturday, March 15, 2025

In House and home

Lorena has moved from fixing toilets to installing washing machines and she owes it all the the fact that I am too fat to sit on the washing machine without denting it. She did a fabulous job.

Missing México

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On Friday, March 14, 2025

In Mexico houses, Mexico life

Man, I miss México. It was an awesome thing to have Lynn with us many if not most evenings to describe México and cultura Mexicana. From life in the working class Mexican neighborhood of the apartments, to the doings of the cartels in places like Culiacán, Durango, Jalisco, and the individual neighborhoods close to us, to the culture of the albañiles who remodeled the apartments and are remodeling our house on the hill to the neighborhood convenience store that was willing to sell us a single egg or a single stick of celery. We are grateful for our seven months in México and are very much looking forward to spending some months every year with our family in Nuevo Leon.

Tío Lynn and chuletón

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On Thursday, March 13, 2025

In Mexico life

We are missing México right now. Especially we are missing Grandma Conchita, Tío Lynn, and all the really cheap red meat. That one inch thick steak Lynn is holding is all of the ribeye and an additional strip next to the ribeye that we bought for around $5/pound. Most of all we miss Lynn’s stories about his legal work and his encyclopedic knowledge of all things related to the culture and current doings of the Mexican narcotrafficantes.

Narrow staircase

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On Wednesday, March 12, 2025

In House and home

The one “feature” of our house that we have not really figured out yet is the narrow, no-landing staircase that leads to the second floor. Putting big stuff up on the second floor would require us to get a lift or a boom of some kind and passing them through an upstairs window because some of the stuff we have will not fit through the stairway openings. It is hassle more than cost, but it made us realize that there are only two of us and it makes sense to live on the first floor and use the upstairs for visitors. To that end, we have decided to eliminate a few things, put up a couple of walls to create a downstairs office, finish out our bonus room upstairs with a mini-split so that we can cool and heat a single room rather than the entire second floor, and then just use the upstairs for when the kids come and to maybe do exercises and watch movies in the bonus room.

The stuff arrived

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On Tuesday, March 11, 2025

In House and home

The truck from Texas arrived and was unloaded yesterday. As always, there was a lot of broken stuff. With so much experience moving around, you would think we would have this all figured out. Actually, maybe we do have it figured out. Things will go wrong. At any rate, everything is in the house and in the garage. Now all we need is a few months to get everything put into place.

Viral tweet: Dad art

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On Tuesday, March 11, 2025

In Art, Cooking, culture

Kelly got over 100,000 likes for this tweet. Enough said.

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