Life has been good. This weekend was really fun; We went to a great rooftop deck party on Saturday night with Jason and Shelly and drank and talked about non party-safe things. We also got the south planter filled and planted (temporarily) with flowers; lantana and another high-heat resistant breed I can’t pronounce.
Driving through beautiful Highlandtown this weekend, I was interested to see a pile of burned-out drum equipment laying outside the pawn shop on the corner. Seems the whole second floor started burning and when the firemen showed up, they pitched all the burning debris out the window. The owners took the time to board up all the second-floor windows, but left all the crap on the sidewalk.
I am shocked, amazed, and happy to find a website with my old amigo Pat Finlay online; it’s through his old art collective SimpArch (and the contact information is very old.) I have to get some kind of contact info for him that is newer and better (he’s at a boatbuilding school in Berkeley right now, and I don’t have current contact information.)
I’m not going to post any new photos online yet, but I got the gravel into the planters this weekend, the PVC cut and installed for the lighting, and the brick over the outflow pipe by the back gate put in. I also have a plan for the pergola roof, but I need to get permission from Dick, my neighbor, to drill into his wall in order to install the bases. It will be a much easier solution than digging holes, leveling posts, pouring concrete, and topping them from there… I hope he’s cool with it.
As perfect a two and a half-minute long song could be: a shimmering, beautiful, melancholy paean to growing older: Mermaid Smiled, by XTC.
Some new pictures of the backyard, from 6.11.
On my way to work this morning, I had the windows down (it was about 60 degrees this morning, but due to rise into the 90’s by noon) and took my customary route out of Canton to get to I-83 north. On my drive, I had the pleasure of smelling, in sequence, the salty air blowing off the harbor, fresh bread from the H&H bakery in Fell’s Point, followed closely by bacon, waffles and syrup from a restaurant with its doors open. When I got to the onramp, I smelled freshly cut, damp grass from the wide median downtown. I got onto 83 and all the smells blended together as I got up to speed.
Found out that we’re getting paid ½ our paycheck this month. Yay.
I found a great utility called snapGallery for posting online pics; it’s a free VBS script (boo- no Mac support) but it works very well, and obviously was designed by somebody who posts pictures frequently. I think we will use this from now on.
Jen and I got a bunch more Christmas shopping yesterday after doing the Jingle Bell Run; 5 miles from the mighty Bohagers Party Shack, around past my block and back again, dressed in a Santa hat, red sweatshirt, bike tights and Gap carpenter shorts. What a fashion plate I am these days.
Happy Fun Things To Do Department: We visited Dave at his tree stand last night, and found him in Carhart bib overalls and lumberjack shirt, smoking a pipe and handling the merchandise. Pulling in we found Clifford the Big Red Truck, a Ford F-350 Super Duty extra cab, a year old with 30K on the odometer. Dave let me take her for a spin, and I loved it. What a beautiful truck. The three of us went over to the Forest Diner and had some dinner, and I wish to god I had brought my camera, because we sat and ate yummy hamburgers in a true 50’s silver-car diner listening to X-mas music, decorated well, and almost empty. Dave looks good and sounds like he’s doing well, and he was happy to get a tin of gaulettes (sp?) from Jen.
Today is the day of jackhammers and heavy machinery. I woke up this morning to the sweet, gentle strains of a backhoe-mounted reciprocal pick chipping out the concrete in the back alley behind my house; both cats looked at me wide-eyed like I was, perhaps, calling the apocalypse unto them. I got ready for work and left the house, and upon arrival at work found another backhoe lifting great sheets of the pavement in the parking lot into a dump truck. Now the seat under my butt vibrates like Joey Buttafuoco’s pager ringing a ‘007’ from Amy Fisher.
Oh, Martha, I have found a gorgeous, sad, wonderful song: Trouble by Coldplay.
Hmm. What’s new in the boring world of Bill this friday? My basement is really coming along; with the exception of the shelf in front of the window and the area around the top of the closet, all the woodwork is done, stained and installed. I’m going to be refinishing the stairs this weekend, as well as getting rid of all the garbage down there and in the backyard; hopefully then I’ll be able to move around enough to add the valves on the water supply and then move the washer to the back. Once that’s done (and some general cleaning is complete) I’ll be able to move the junk upstairs back down the the back of the basement. I’d really like to get all that done.
In the news, here’s a good story about the Can Company building, formerly home of the Bibelot by my house. I’ll be happy to be able to walk down there from the house and grab a cup of coffee and sit to read for a few hours- I miss that. I won’t miss Bibelot’s high prices, either. And there will be a One World Cafe there instead of Donna’s, which seems to be waning too. I also heard that there are lawyers trying to sue Osama for damages related to the WTC bombings; there are other lawyers fighting these lawyers for first position- the guys who are ‘representing’ the folks hurt and killed in the embassy bombings back in 98. Lawyers…
This is a fantastic article that makes one stop and consider our current action-and responsibility-in Afghanistan.
The city is finally beginning work on my alley today! Jen and I woke up at about 7:15 and by 7:30 there were a bunch of guys out on the north end of the alley with a jackhammer busting up the concrete. I am so happy this is underway. I have to rent a sledgehammer from Home Depot and break up the concrete shelf around the old garage footings so that I can *ahem* throw the busted-up stuff on their carry pile. The only drawback is that trash pickup is out fron this next week- we’ll have to make sure the street stays clean.
The first coat of stain is on the shelving and the finish molding downstairs. I still don’t have money in my account from work, so I can’t go and buy supplies, but I have enough to work with for the next few days- getting the basement cleaned, installing the electrical board and the closet pole, fitting the last kickplate board, sanding and staining, and finishing off the shelving. I can’t wait to start on that tonight. I ran some steel wool over the stuff I sanded and smoothed it out- it’s going to look great when it’s done. I used polystain on all the woodwork; I hope it holds and does a good job. (it’s a stain and polyurethane all in one.)
Sometimes, we hold these truths to be self-evident department: Never buy or eat a grocery store-made sandwich. Yuck.
Hmm. What’s happening today? it’s a beautiful morning this morning. I woke up (that was hard to do today) and made some coffee, played with the cats, and straightened up the house. After a hot shower, I went downstairs to inventory what I need for the basement this week (which, given the camping trip, will be a short one) and just took stock. Hopefully the rest of the stuff I need will be inexpensive- the last big outlays I see will be the carpeting and the stairs. (maybe I can rip the stairs partially out tonight- hee hee!)
I have to call the guy about the Scout today and Mikey about the Tortoise as well; he hopefully has fixed both the idle and the pull to the right, which will be wonderful.
I have also noticed, that despite what could possibly be the best commercial for a convertible ever concieved, filmed, and presented, that nobody who owns a Volkswagen Cabrio ever puts the top down. What’s up with that?
I also found out last week that Cidera laid off another 40 or so people a few weeks ago. At this rate, they have five Senior Exalted Vice Presidents and a janitor left in their employment. What a mess.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
11:18 – Working on some scripts this morning, and I found all the old notes scripts from 2 years ago archived on CD. I also found most of the old sites I did at System Source on CD as well, except for the one I was looking for, The Jewish Times. It’s really good to see that I’ve not lost a lot of the reasoning and learning I did a few years back- I was able to identify problems I made two years ago and fix them, as well as look at some of the problems and begin to think about new ways to solve them. I’m really excited to get working on this.
Still no word from the Globe poster guy. That bums me out- I want a bunch of those.
I replaced cnn.com today on my links page with abcnews.com‘s news page; after a long relationship with cnn.com going back to about 1997, I can’t use their site anymore. it’s just too much hassle to find any news worth looking at. So I’m going to give the Mouse a try, and see if their newsfeed is any better. I might give the AP site a whirl after that, but other than those sites I don’t know who else has a decent online newsfeed.
As for other news sites, I can’t get over how much news.com and zdnews.com are the same. One REAL bad thing about this economic tailspin we’re in right now is that all the content portals have curtailed their reporting to the bare minimum- I fear in a few years that the only thing to read will be direct pulls off the AP newsfeed. Which is about all the current newspapers ever print anymore.
Baltimore-the City That Reads. Too bad the city newspaper, once home of H.L. Mencken, is now designed and written for a 7th-grade education level. No shit. Somewhere it was just published that this city is proud owner of the highest rate of syphilis in the country. Isn’t that nice.