This weekend was a busy one. My sister Renie came down Friday night to stay with us and help work on the house, and we had a heck of a lot for her to do. Saturday morning we got up and fed her fresh muffins and coffee, and before she was done she had a paint roller in her hand. Between the three of us we got the Anxious room and the Pink room rolled with two coats of white paint, the closet in the Anxious room cleaned, mudded and ready to prime, and the closet in the Cream room painted. Renie also brought us a beautiful oak dresser she hasn’t had time to work on, which we’ll finish refinishing, and a huge red rug for in front of the fireplace.
breaktime lunch on the back lawn, 10/11
In other news, this is probably the most brilliant waste of time ever. Thanks, Nate!
home anthology, pre-opening, 10/11
We broke at four to take Renie over to Home Anthology, a favorite antique dealer of ours, and see their new space. Luckily they were there, and let us in a week before the grand opening of the new location. Todd and Heather were also there helping arrange furniture, and we walked the length of the space amazed at the collection. From there we took Renie to our favorite Thai restaurant to have dinner.
Sunday morning we got up and Renie decided that we needed to see what was under the carpet in the Pink room. We pulled it up to find newer padding (foam) and relatively virgin hardwood underneath that. It took about an hour to clean that room, and then Renie convinced us to pull up the hallway carpeting. Unfortunately, the Doctor had put linoleum down at some point (the same linoleum that’s down over the original hexagonal tile in the bathroom) in the hallway…over top of a sheet of mdf plywood. So pulling the linoleum up was relatively easy, after we got under the plywood. Luckily the plywood saved the floor underneath, so we continued…down the stairs. As of today there’s no more carpet upstairs, or on the stairs. They look pretty good—the risers are one-piece planks, and they’re beat up, but still in good shape. After spending hours pulling staples and nails from the floor, we washed it good and put Jen’s blue rug down in the upstairs hall. The pink room looks cleaner and larger, and the hallway looks brighter and warmer. I’ve posted a series of pictures here for you to look at.
My pop sent a picture of our old house in Jersey to my sister and I. I lived there from 1st to 5th grade, and I mostly remember this house as the one I grew up in. It looks a lot different—they cut down the weeping willow tree I fell out of and broke my arm under; they resided it with white clapboard (or a reasonable facsimile); they put a basketball hoop up in the driveway and got rid of my Dad’s circular flower bed in the side yard. Other than that, it looks really good, like the family who lives there takes care of it. I think every so often about that house, and whether the pool we dug is still in the backyard, if there are still matchbox cars buried in the driveway (it was dirt when we lived there) or Star Wars figures under the grass in the backyard. I wonder if anybody I know still lives there, and what ever became of the kids we played pickle and flashlight tag with.
Jen Rocks The World. That is all.
Grrr. I was able to figure out what the deal with dyndns was this morning, after spending about an hour laying in bed feeling like I was going to hurl. Internally at the house I can see the web server and mount the shared volumes but I’m still not able to see it from work. Perhaps I have to wait until the DNS is updated throughout the land. I watched a funny old-time movie on AMC while waiting for a killer headache to go away and enjoyed two cats sleeping on either side of my chest. Not a bad way to start the morning.
I’m moving all the Dyndns stuff to a different page, so that it stays off this log- you didn’t want to read about all that boring crap here anyway, right?
I finished the ceiling, and put a coat of semi-gloss white on the trim in the sticky cream bedroom. Covering over the varnish/oil paint/nicotine/Kilz is slow going, but we can see progress already. Not satisfied with that, I cut the ancient all-weather carpeting into quarters and tore that out; underneath was some highly flammable fiber-based padding that was left over from the Civil War. After inhaling several centuries worth of the dust of the Pharoahs trying to get all this crap into a couple of Hefty bags, I pulled the carpeting strips out and we swept up the dirt. The floor is pretty beat up but still in decent shape. There are a few spots where the floor took a beating from the bedframes, and a square by the radiator where someone cut the flooring to repair the pipes. Overall, the room looks warmer and (to me) larger in the sunlight. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow.
My Mom has been reading my log for the past few weeks, and her main comment is that I complain a lot. My apologies, mom; I’ll try not to bitch about everything so much.
In the meantime, I took pictures of the heater, thermostat and irrigation systems in the greenhouse this morning so that I could research the builders and figure out of they’re still in business, but I forgot the PCMCIA carrier at home. So, no photos of the party until tonight. Sorry, everyone. I did bust out the white trim paint and put a first coat on about 30% of the south window in the sticky cream bedroom this morning, and it looks pretty good so far. I have to return the 5-gallon drum of ‘white’ paint I bought a month ago, because ‘white’ actually means ‘sort of beige’ to Glidden, apparently. I have to look for ‘super-ultra-bright-gleaming-ivory white’ or some such crap like that. And try to get my money back for an open drum of paint- ha ha.
Oops, sorry, I was complaining.
Verizon called us this morning to let us know we have DSL connectivity. After a not-so-quick online setup process, I was able to set the SMC Barricade and the Airport Base Station up to provide wireless access throughout the house. Thank God.
Jen braved the fumes yesterday and put a coat of Kilz on the Sticky room walls before she was overcome; I followed her up there with a coat on the cieling and then on the walls in the Anxious room. Both rooms look about a million times better with an even coat of paint. Next, we patch and sand up the cracks in the plaster, pull the baseboards to upgrade the electrical wiring, and seal the trim. Boy, it’s going to suck to paint the whole house with that crap.
In sadder news, this past Monday Renie had to put Bear down for his own good. Everybody say a kind word for the god who watches over dogs.
Stuck in my head this morning (after I forcefully kicked “We’ve Only Just Begun” by the Carpenters to the curb. Don’t ask, because I don’t know how it got in there): “These Are The Reasons”, by Soul Coughing. Not that I even know that’s the name of the song, or what it could be, because the S-C website is offline and the site linked above has no record of this song title.
So sick, it’s wrong. Jen has obviously missed broadband connectivity
badly in the months she’s been out of work. Today I got these
instructions from her: “Do an image
search on Google for Corey Haim and look at the third
picture.” Pardon me now, while I attempt to staunch the
flow of blood from my burning eyesockets.
The Scout woke with a throaty roar—on the first start. Problem solved. The old battery was new to the truck when I bought it (it was stamped 10/97) so $60 later I have a new Exide 6-year battery in there and the starting problem is gone. So now I just have to get the exhaust fixed before the Man pulls me over for a noise complaint.
We are off tomorrow for the day to Jen’s parents’ place to do the Family Birthday; please send her your good wishes. She and I are going to order a bushel of crabs Sunday, throw some paper on the coffee table (or, maybe, in the backyard), crack some beers, and enjoy summer in the city. Hopefully I can catch the ice cream man out front too.
Break it down. More thoughts on Strays, the new JA album. Why is it that Dave Navarro, an otherwise outstanding guitarist, has to include some kind of break in the middle of an otherwise excellent song? Back in the day, JA used to be able to pull this off expertly (see: Three Days) but in 2003, it’s getting irritating. The tune Riches, which is a rip-roaring good time in the beginning, gets watered down in the last minute and a half or so with a buzzkill down-tempo coda. Another one of my favorite Navarro-written tunes, Transcending, off the RHCP disc One Hot Minute, began with a captivating Flea bass riff, building into a woven tapestry of guitar, drums, and vocal. At its peak, the song fell apart into a down-tempo sludgefest with an annoying chorus. Why? I ask you. Why?
Memo to this simple son of a bitch: Don’t come back, punk. I’ll buy a gun and shoot you for being a dumbass.
(thx to Todd for pointing this page out.)
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Everybody say Happy Birthday to my sister Renie today!
Jen and I have been doing some work with a friend of ours for the last year and a half, and we started on a new project with him a few months ago. I IM’ed him last night and he told us he’s sending us this cool phone for payment of services so far, which is very cool. This is no ordinary phone; it’s a VoIP (Voice Over IP) phone built by Cisco and made to plug into any broadband network around. You pick up the reciever, and as long as you have a fat pipe, you call out as you would normally, without paying exorbitant long distance fees. Thanks, John.
Proof positive that there are about seventy ways to skin the cat: Todd helped me figure out how to do the thing in 3DSmax that was beyond my ability yesterday. It took all of two minutes to show me, and now it looks great. I need to get past my dependency on looking at this application like I would Adobe Illustrator, and embrace the 3D. The trick is to not get as discouraged as I did yesterday, to the point where I just want to go home.
I’m looking for some kind of Neon how-to guide and source for parts out there; I picked up a trio of neon letters at State Salvage a few weeks back, and I’d love to hook them up to a transformer and get them working. Unfortunately I don’t have any of the electronics and it seems to be impossible to find a local supplier who carries parts. I’ll have to keep looking.
Meanwhile, the fans for the 3Com hub arrived today; besides a little tinkering with the clips inside the case, installation was a snap and this machine is currently networked through the hub with no problems. The fans are rated for 12 volts of power, but considering the originals were rated for 5.5, I think it should be just fine.
Macintouch has a good tip on reviving seemingly dead Powerbook batteries: boot up into Open Firmware (Command+Option+O+F) and type “reset-nvram” and “reset-all”. Then type “mac-boot” to boot normally. Theoretically, this should reset the Power manager and allow you access to the battery (if one day it shows up as dead to your machine.)
red, white, and blue, 6.04.03
Yesterday: 85 degrees. Water about 75. Sunny blue skies, Harry Potter and a can of cold beer. Barbecue at the farm, fresh cut grass, twilight, fireflies, breezes cool off the cornfields. Blankets on the side lawn, beer, fireworks drifting over the silo, and laughter. Happy Fourth of July, everyone.
flowers at wilderness lodge, orlando, 6.7.03
The weekend was long and tiring, but lots of fun. The Lockard Reunion was a rousing success, and we left Disney the way we found it. Jen’s aunt Jane brought a bin full of old family pictures as well as a current geneaology, and the documents were the source of a lot of conversation and memories. One of the cool things we learned was that at one time her father’s family owned a good portion of the businesses in their hometown. Some of the pictures showed huge advertising signs with the family name that she’d die to have now.
Ty and Lorie are doing very well, and Bonny was just as cute as a button. They have a beautiful house set back by a lake and old trees (a rarity in most of Orando, I’m told.) I think I took more pictures of their baby than of the Lockards, because she was just so photogenic. And to keep the streak alive, Ty showed us Heavy Metal Parking Lot (our last visit in Houston, we screened The Dancing Outlaw) which I’ve heard of but never had the privilege of seeing. And it was as funny as I thought it would be—it brought me right back to high school, and I could laugh at these people without getting the crap kicked out of me (the folks in this video made up about 70% of my high school population, no lie.)
Jen and I spent our Saturday afternoon at MGM Studios, which was not the showcase of gay pride we were expecting, but still fun. We got our pictures taken with Buzz, Woody, and Jesse the Cowgirl from Toy Story; we rode the Aerosmith roller coaster (good ride) and the Tower of Terror (merely alright). We got rained on twice, and ate plenty of fried American foods. In the evening we met up with the fambly at the Wilderness Lodge, then boarded a bus for Epcot, where they had arranged an ice cream social for us after the fireworks at the lake. The family mingled and told stories until 11, when they took us back home. Sunday was spent in one of the side lounges at the lodge, where we looked through pictures and had barbecue.
I’m currently about 30,000 feet above Georgia on my way to Orlando for the Great Gathering of Lockards, where Jen’s father’s people are reuniting together for the first time in years. I volunteered as the Dutiful Boyfriend to accompany her for moral support (and to prevent her from killing any of her family while she’s there.) The occasion is made all the more interesting by the fact that this is indeed Gay Day at Disneyland, so the arch-conservative Waltons from backwoods Pennsylvania will be surrounded by thousands of happily queer folk. I am bringing camera with fully-charged batteries to document the looks of disgust, incredulity, and finally, resigned acceptance from her father, Captain, USN (Retired.) Oh, kids, this is gonna be great.
I’m also coming up with righteous reasons why I shouldn’t have to wear the Lockard T-Shirt, only rumors of which I have heard. (I have mental images of an ultraviolet XXL shirt with a muddy photo surrounded by some huge bubble lettering.) The occasion is also made great by the fact that we are not staying with The Mouse, but with Jen’s good friends Ty and Lorie, who recently added little Bonnie Rose to the world.
Interesting phenomena: I did a Google search this week on french striped grunts and the sixth or seventh hit was from my own site. Sweet!
Observations on flying three times in the past two months:
- USAir gives you pretzels. I hate pretzels. Southwest gives you Air Crisps and peanuts.
- USAir’s seats are more cramped. But their planes are cleaner. (and not as ugly as Southwest’s.)
- The cattle-call method of seating sucks, unless you’re on a 2/3 full flight.
- You can’t have baggage with all kinds of straps hanging off it or they make you sign a waiver that makes it OK to lose the bag.
- I’ve gotten better at the preflight security check. I can have the laptop out of the bag and in the tray in five seconds flat.
- iTunes is a lifesaver. If I didn’t already have enough reason to buy an iPod, I have a good one now.
- Next flight: more DVD’s.
- Southwest’s customer service rocks. The phone did not ring once when I called to switch flights; when I was immediately connected, I started to stammer like I got caught passing notes in Chemistry class and the CSR had to wait for me to remember why I called.
- USAir’s ticketless baggage system is awesome. I’m hooked.
Media check.
The May issue of Scientific American has a very fascinating article on “scale-free” networks. Researchers have done numerous studies on the Internet and found just how similar it works to things like single-celled microorganisms and viruses. Great writing in this article, by the way. Lots of good information.
(Disclaimer: it was sitting on the toilet in the men’s room at work as bathroom reading. I don’t currently subscribe.)
atom heart mother, 5.25.03
Jen and I drove north to my folks’ place to spring the surprise on them this past weekend. We got in at about 10:30 Friday night, and when we told them my Mom freaked out and smothered us in a huge hug while my Dad laughed and grabbed a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Luckily my sister stopped by not too long after that and joined in the celebration. It was a great way to start off the weekend.
Saturday, my Mom had scheduled a tour through the Wells College Book Arts Center, a small program run by the school to teach letterpress printing and bookbinding. Jen and I geeked out completely on the boxes of letterpress slugs, the old turn of the century crank presses and the piles of beautiful broadsheets they showed us. There’s something wonderful about the tactile feel of a letterpress print job and a handmade bound book; Terry and Sarah were kind enough to give us a pair of books and a pile of broadsheets from their portfolio for an engagement present, so I have lots of frames to make. Thanks guys!
Saturday evening we got a pile of Dugans in one place (my parents’) with food and booze and had ourselves a real celebration. When you get a roomful (or a porchful, as the case may be) of my extended family together, you have to come with your A-list material, and be quick, because the thing goes down like a celebrity roast. Unfortunately Grampy was feeling ill so he stayed in bed, but the official good time was had by all. My Uncle Brian, a judge in the county of Cayuga, offered to marry us on the spot, then kept offering helpful suggestions (parasailing marriage, nudist marriage, etc.) to sweeten the deal. Wisely, we declined, but thanked him for the offers. I think both Jen and I went to sleep with our sides hurting from laughing so hard.
Sunday was rainy again, so we did some driving through the county to antique stores and walking by the lake. And some getting yelled at for taking pictures of old farmhouses by crazy-ass neighbors in trailer homes. (Yeah, that one was fun. Jen was about to leave my ass by the side of the road for Captain Angry to come shoot at will. Admittedly, I was choosing to ignore the seven posted NO TRESPASSING signs, but I was going under the assumption that they were optional.) Renie’s friends Dee and Tom were in town for the weekend, and Tom had expressed interest in driving a tractor while in farm country. Always one to oblige, Brian offered one of his to us for the afternoon, and we drove to the farm to get the tractor tutorial. After a five-minute crash course (no pun intended), Tom drove a John Deere down into the pasture past the dairy herd and did circles. Jen and I hopped up on the sideboards of another tractor and rode down with Brian to spread manure (yeah, I can show a girl a good time, can’t I?)
Tom showed me the controls of the tractor and I took a turn; Renie followed and got down from the cab with a huge grin on her face. Jen then jumped on board and took it out and over the hill out of sight—the smile on her face as she came back was huge. Dee followed Jen and took it across the rows, bouncing Tom into the cab roof as she opened up the throttle. Did you know that most modern tractors have air-conditioning, automatic transmissions (there is a clutch, but once you get her in gear, it’s not unlike the Tiptronic shifter in high-end Audis) and four-speaker stereos? That Deere had a better sound system than my house.
The evening was topped off by a trip to Pete’s Treats, an outside ice-cream stand up in Union Springs, for homemade hot-fudge sundaes on outdoor picnic benches. I don’t think anybody could dream up a more small-town American weekend.
I got the first prints back from the Apple/Kodak service bundled in iPhoto yesterday; they look fantastic, and the process was simple. I highly recommend it, and I’m probably never going to pay for 35mm negatives again. Can I just say again that I love my camera?