Ted Hardy

A Very Flushing Christmas

There are many different ways to celebrate Christmas, but dropping $5,000 on a new sewer line isn't one of them. Our house was 50+ years old and building standards had come a long way during that time. We had updated the HVAC, windows and insulation. We had

Pig Heads #tinychallenges

December brought two yearly events at my maternal grandparents. The first, and probably obvious, was the Christmas Day celebration, where my mother, her brother and their families gathered to exchange gifts and eat way too much food. The house was small, so we packed out the old farm house. The

Blow-out #tinychallenges

The car was dying and it only had a little less than 150,000 miles on it. The 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid was a bad choice in a commuting vehicle as the battery was undersized and wore out rapidly. The car had 60,000 miles and a dead hybrid battery

Ted's Lounge #tinychallenges

I've been in the professional workforce now for almost 19 years. During that time, I've been fortunate to work with a great number of amazingly talented and amazingly good people. Its hard to look back at a career that has spanned even this relatively short amount

Joining the Borg Collective #tinychallenges

Google Glass was a terrible product. No, I don't say that just because I'm an Apple guy, I say that because it was without a doubt, a terrible product. But still, I had a pair of them, not by choice, but because we wanted to see

Waiting for my first iPhone #tinychallenges

Wow, was the line ever long. It was release day of the second iPhone; June 2008. This was in the time prior to being able to preorder a phone from your house and it arrive for you to set up whenever you wanted to (basically, immediately). No, this was back

Having my eyes fixed #tinychallenges

I always hated wearing glasses. My first pair were acquired sometime in middle school and they were almost immediately relegated to the desk drawer. True, my eyesight was poor enough that I should have been wearing them, but they irritated me to be on my face all the time. After

Flying the Friendlier Skies #tinychallenges

In 2013, I had a unique opportunity to fly around the country in 4 days. We would be leaving Louisville, heading to Atlantic City, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Indianapolis, all in 4 days. At first, I thought I was going to to have to do all of those cities flying

Sand the floor #tinychallenges

It was my second day as a homeowner. My father and I rented a floor sander and refinished the floors in my brand new (to me) home. They had not been cared for in years (decades) and were in severe need of a little TLC. The first thing we discovered

The flooding basement #tinychallenges

I have a distinct memory of reading the sellers disclosure when I purchased my first home in 2000; it said that there had never been any water in the basement. Liars. This was a pretty obvious lie, too. The unfinished basement was only about 2/3 underground, was essentially a

Bedding in China #tinychallenges

The silk factory in Beijing was impressive, if for nothing else than the way in which it pointed out what an American I really am. Our local guide, Maggie, was having a much easier time than her usual days. Instead of 20-30 people under her care, she had only my

The endless drive around Paris #tinychallenges

My first trip to Paris was memorable for many reasons, but the first memory was not the one I ever wanted to have. The flight was (thankfully) uneventful, even for 2004 and all the crazy "security" measures which had been implemented in the years following 9/11. It

Real beer comes to Lexington #tinychallenges

I've only attended the Lexington Fest of Ales once, but it was one of the most memorable. It wasn't that I found a particular beer there that I loved; I didn't. It wasn't that I enjoyed being crammed into a small space

My first beer #tinychallenges

It tasted awful. I couldn't believe that anyone would drink this stuff. Even the small taste of Everclear that I had sipped half a year prior wasn't as awful. My arch nemesis, American Light Lager, and I had finally met, and our life-long struggle would begin.

Standing on the cubicle #tinychallenges

I really hated working in tech support. It wasn't that I was bad at it; in fact, my call stats, both calls taken and bouncebacks, were some of the best in the company. I learned quickly, I answered correctly and I wanted to jump off a bridge every

Watching Curtis play guitar #tinychallenges

You could hear the strumming echo across the grassy lawn as you walked up the hill, but you could see him as far away as the viaduct (if you had your glasses on). He sat on the edge of the low brick wall that made the large patio possible, given

My first ride in "The Car" #tinychallenges

It was 1987, my sister's high-school graduation party and I was all of 10 years old. My parents had presented her with the keys to her new car during the party and I got to tag along in the back seat with her on her inaugural drive home.

Picture with the "movie star" #tinychallenges

In the spring of 2006, I traveled with my sister on a two week trip to China. For her, she was adopting her fourth child while I was along for moral support and a (relatively) cheap adventure in a country I had never been to. We started out the trip

Grills Gone Wild #tinychallenges

The worst thing about my college experience was the administrators, but the SECOND worst was the cafeteria. We had an entire list of names for the TJ Roberts Memorial Dining Hall: * Fork & Bucket * Choke & Puke * Che Roberts (said with a snooty French accent) We also had a theory

Setting Lake Erie On Fire #tinychallenges

My friends Forrest & Vicky are saints to put up with my antics, especially the ones I perpetrated at their wedding. Its surprising that, not only are we all still friends, but that I survied the weekend and they didn't end up in jail. When Forrest first asked

The phone call #tinychallenges

My older sister and I have had a great relationship, once we both managed to age out of high school. It wasn't that we hated each other as children, but 7+ years in age difference, along with me being very much an extrovert and she being an introvert,

Recycling old toilets #tinychallenges

What do you get for your close friends who are getting married and already have everything they could ever need or want? Why, an old toilet of course! For the life of me, I can't remember anymore who was the first couple in our friend group to receive

5th Birthday Pizza Party #tinychallenges

What does a five year old want more than anything else for their birthday? A party with friends at the local pizzeria / arcade. In our town, that would have been the relatively short-lived restaurant Paraquet Pizza, and I would have been that newly minted five year old. No, the image

I want a baby #tinychallenges

(There is a whole bunch of irony in the headline for this post; no one think that I missed it!) This is a phrase that never passed my lips, but it was said to me once when I was a teenager. My job during the last couple years of high

My earliest memory #tinychallenges

How far back does your memory go? Mine goes back quite a way into my past; all the way to the tender age of three. It was 1979, the first weekend of May. My family was in the middle of building a new house and in preparation for the move