It took $65 to confirm what I’d suspected all along: My eyeglass prescription hasn’t changed one bit in 10 years.
Would that I had $4900 laying around, I would so totally buy this 2005 Airstream Bambi trailer. That’s about $20,000 of awesome in a 19′ package. And it would look good behind a Scout.
Embarassing disclosure: I’ve had the chorus to “Party in the USA” by, of all people, Miley Cyrus in my head for the last two days. I place the blame squarely on the Party School episode of This American Life (which is fascinating and humorous, by the way). Damn You, Ira Glass!
In a related bit of music news, my boss sent along a great hack to be able to use Spotify in the U.S. (it’s a streaming music app that’s based in Sweden, where the licensing and distribution rights have been negotiated completely differently). The service is really good, the music streams immediately, and there’s a great radio feature that allows for discovery of new music via genre and decade.
I did a bunch of research this evening on MacBook Pro displays and found that the issue I’m having might not be with the entire LCD itself (an image on which is faintly visible) but with the inverter board, which powers the backlights. In a $40 experiment, I ordered one on eBay from a reseller in England (there was nobody here in the states with the model number I need), and when it comes in I’ll finally crack the case and see if that’s the issue.
Conan O’Brien Says He Won’t Host ‘Tonight Show’ Following Leno. I can’t think on anything more screwed up than the position NBC has put itself in, and I fail to understand how they haven’t fired their head of programming. To screw around with the traditional Late Night timeslot in order to accommodate Leno is sort of like chopping off your own foot because you think your knee might walk better; you’re never recovering from that. What a bunch of retards.
Mr. Scout drove over from the Eastern Shore this Sunday to help me with a two-part project: making the front porch/office warmer and habitable during 30° weather.
Recapping quickly, when the ceiling went in two years ago, I put R-19 insulation between the joists and another layer of R-19 on top of that for a theoretical insular total of R-38, which should have been good enough to seal up that space and impossible to view one’s own breath while sitting at a desk. In the basement room below, I sealed the cracks in the foundation with hydraulic cement, put in a kneewall with R-13 around the foundation, and installed a new window to replace the original 1925 equipment. All of that work had no effect. After some consultation and inspection, Mr. Scout theorized that the sill plates were uncovered and leaking massive amounts of air (which they were) and that the insulation above didn’t reach all the way out to the soffits, meaning cold air was leaking in through the ceiling.
Last week, I bought a package of Tiger Foam from the manufacturer, and Sunday morning he and I pulled all of the insulation away from the sill plates in the ice room. After he donned a Tyvek suit and fabric mask, I followed him around with the tanks as he shot expanding foam across all of the sill plates, exposed cavities, and dead spaces in order to stop the airflow under the floor.
The second step was to remove the top layer of insulation from the attic space and replace it with blown fiber, making sure we filled the soffits up front with as much insulation as we could. I’m quite sure the “carpenters” who built this porch were more than just drunk; I’d bet they were truck drivers or ditch diggers or college faculty by profession—meaning they had no fucking idea how to build a structure properly, based on how half-assed this whole thing actually is.
After we wrestled a big green washing machine into the side porch, I donned the paper suit and crawled into the attic while Mr. Scout opened bales of insulation and fed the hopper. I shoved the hose as far forward into the soffits as possible and we filled the spaces with as much insulation as we could before it choked the machine. Working backwards, I filled the soffits around the perimeter and then backfilled over the open areas, adding about 6″ to 8″ of coverage over the first layer. When I finally crawled out of the space, I looked like a snowman who’d survived a volcanic eruption; tiny fluffs of paper were everywhere, covering our clothes, the area around the machine, and everywhere we walked.
After returning the machine, Mama served the four of us a delicious dinner, and we tested the new insulation with anticipation—but there was no joy to be had. To our dismay, the room remains as cold as it ever was. The basement room below is (and has been) reasonably warm, which doesn’t explain why the floor in the office is ice-cold. The insulation in the attic is now thicker and covers much more than before, which doesn’t explain why the heat is escaping so quickly.
I guess the the next step, after a few more stiff drinks, will be to commission a home energy audit to see where we’re leaking and how we can stop the bleeding.
Snow fell last night in a perfect stillness, in contrast to the howling subzero winds we’ve been suffering through since mid-December. In the early morning light, it was all still sitting on the smallest branches and twigs, shining brightly as the sun rose behind the trees. Shoveling off the cars took about three seconds, as the snow was the most fluffy, dry powder I’ve ever encountered on the east coast. It was so light, I could have blown it off the car with my breath, had I been so motivated.
This morning I dropped Finn off at daycare so that Mama could run some errands and take care of a doctor’s appointment. Our route takes us down I-95, where one section crosses over a valley of the Patapsco State Park at high treetop level. Everything in sight was dusted with snow in the perfect natural approximation of a Bob Ross painting, and for about an hour, Maryland was the most beautiful place on earth.
His last album was, shall I say, underwhelming, but this new video from RJD2, for a track called Let There Be Horns, could be a pleasing return to form. Hopefully the new album will be as good.