Chasing Santa

Yesterday Monya and I tagged along with the mermaids and The Mommy and The Daddy to downtown Seattle. La Grande mermaid performed in several dances with her performing group at the Center House at Seattle Center. While we were waiting for La Grande's performance, The Wee One and I explored. There was a wonderful toy train in a complete miniature village with snow on the ground. Then The Wee One spotted Santa Claus sitting in his chair, talking to children.

The Wee One wanted to go talk to Santa but we had to go watch the dancing. When the dancing was finished Santa was gone. Needless to say there were some tears.

The Daddy found out the reason why Santa wasn't at the Center House was because he had gone downtown to see more children. Outside the Center House, at the foot of the Space Needle, the ever resourceful Daddy found a monorail station where we could catch a ride to Westlake Mall.

After arriving at Westlake we had to struggle through the crowds of people to find a line where they were waiting to see Santa. Each time we found a line we discovered that the people there were waiting a long time because Santa was in a different place. He certainly moves fast!

Finally we found him at Pacific Place and the line was very short. When it was the mermaid's turn, La Grande happily sat on Santa's lap but The Wee One was too shy. She hid behind The Mommy.

I don't have a photo but The Wee One finally did get bold enough to hide behind her sister, close enough that she could talk to Santa.

Note that both girls are wearing very nice dresses. The Wee One is also wearing her brand new rubber boots with fluffy pink trim.

Speaker Repair

Last weekend we noticed our stereo speakers were rattling when a loud bass sound was being generated. Taking off the grill cover we saw that the foam ring around the perimeter of the speaker had deteriorated, and was mostly missing. There were crumbs of the foam in the bottom of the grill cover.

I ordered a pair of foam speaker ring repair kits on line and repaired the upper 12" speakers last night. You can see in this photo the upper large speaker has been repaired, but the bottom speaker still has a hole in the foam ring.

Here's a close up photo of the bottom speaker so you can see where part of the foam ring is missing. The foam on the upper speaker was about 90% gone, but the lower speaker is only about 10% gone.

Here you can see I've taken the lower speaker out, but where is the wiring? Where is the voice coil on the back of the speaker? Apparently I was ripped off by Sony when I bought these speakers 25 years ago. They made it look like there were two big woofers in the speaker cabinets when in fact the bottom "woofer" is just a paper cone.