A Weekend Visitor

Friday, as I was walking out the door of my office building, my phone rang.

"Hey Oliver, it's Matt. I'm heading home right now to pack then I'll be hitting the road."

"Oh, you're coming down?"

"Didn't you check your e-mail?"

"No."

"I'm coming down."

"Cool! When will you arrive?"

I then checked my e-mail and, sure enough, there was a message from Matthew as well as one from Kristin asking, "Is Matt coming down this weekend?"

Matthew is halfway through a move from Michigan to Pennsylvania. Halfway means that he is in Pennsylvania, his wife and family are still in Michigan. And with no one else around to hang with, we offered a warm meal and a place to sleep should he decide to head south. We're so glad he took us up on the offer.

Matthew is an engineer. Actually, he may go beyond mere mortal engineer to minor engineering diety. As a teenage, he would take apart the lawnmower and, when he put it back together again, if it still ran and there were pieces left over, all the better. When he was here for my father's retirement celebration, he helped me fix a leaking shower. So this time, he made a list of all the things that were in need of repair, took me to Lowe's, and had me buy a bunch of stuff so he could fix it all. He truly embraces that old Boy Scout saying, "Leave an area better than when you found it."

• Toilet in master bathroom no longer leaks
• Toilet in guest bathroom has new flushing mechanism
• Door to garage no longer sticks
• Door to waterheater closet correctly latches
• 50' coax cable no longer trailing through two stories and three rooms in my house

That last item is the amazing one. When we moved our TV to our middle floor, we had to run a long coax cable through the house since we don't have a cable jack in our living room. Matthew figured out that by cutting a hole in the ceiling of our garage he could drill a hole in the subflooring, the poke a hole in the carpet and run the cable from the cablebox in the garage straight into the the living room. It was executed perfectly. Now we have a simple wire coming out of the carpet next to the in-floor electrical outlet. It looks so nice. And I now own a keyhole saw.

Not only did he fix the house, but he is always wonderful company. At Stake Conference (definition of Stake here) today, Matt even took Clara for a little while so Kristin and I could sit and listen to the talks. He also got us a new carseat for Clara from a clearance sale at his new company. We're so excited that he's now only three hours away. I believe we're going to try to head up to he new house when his family joins him in a couple of weeks. Oh, and feel free to call me if you need to borrow the keyhole saw.

Clara and Daddy "help" Matt with the guest bathroom toilet.


Matt sawing a hole in the ceiling of the garage.

NOTE: Matthew is not trying to pull a Lemony Snicket. The pictures just came out this way.