I wish I could claim that I spent my vacation day away from the computer, but I didn’t. Between a new freelance project and the house, I spent much of my day running from the basement, where I built a custom ripping jig for the table saw, to the office, where I was building a presentation for the client. Both projects were fruitful, though—the medicine cabinet door is now officially hung, and the client gets version 1.0 of the presentation at lunchtime for review. I also took time to finish cleaning up the paint job in the guest room and continued cleaning the paste off the walls in the hallway. Jen and I are enjoying the “Tuscan” effect of the stripped plaster out there—it’s oddly satisfying in a postmodern design sort of way.
Penn, Day Two. The Prozac seems to have calmed the guy down somewhat. He’s a lot mellower, and only talking when he’s really hungry.
Change Of Heart. For the past four or five weeks, while I’ve been building 3-D models, I’m very happy here at work. Which is a very, very satisfying feeling.
Heh, heh. This is funny. (via matt)
Gulp. As you’ve read here earlier, Jen’s Mom has been recovering from the side effects of chemotherapy for the last couple of months. Having walked right up to the edge of death a few months ago, she’s not up to cooking, cleaning and getting ready for all five children to descend on the house in December. Jen’s brother none-too-subtly suggested our house as an alternative, which was the unspoken understanding between Jen and I since July. Last night we got the official endorsement from the Boss, which means we’re hosting the dysfunction on our own turf.
This is a good thing, because even though we will be running around like mental patients for the two weeks surrounding Christmas, we will be able to crush any dissent among the rabble, make other people do the dishes, and sleep in our own bed. (The time to upgrade the Full to a Queen is upon us.)
This weekend I took advantage of the freakish warm weather and mowed the lawn for the first time in about two months. It was looking like a shag rug under a spilled box of Wheaties after the tulip tree lost its leaves, and I was ignoring it for as long as I could. After I bagged up a bunch of next year’s mulch, I grabbed a paint can and climbed out onto the roof above the atrium to paint the last street-viewable portion of white siding. Now, as far as you can tell, the whole house is blue. Meanwhile, Jen is making welcome additions to the guest bedroom—the whitewash has been covered by a cheery new color, we have designs on a rug, and it’s beginning to come together. Meanwhile, the medicine cabinet door is still in progress. After deciding that the first placement of the hinges was wrong (the door opened only about 80°, which was less than optimal), I pulled them off, filled the mortises with wood filler, and got it ready for Plan B. Stay tuned.
“There is no underwater camera system that is right for everybody.”
SSI Guide To Underwater Photography. Courtesy XLT. (I would have left this as a comment on his site, but Blogger’s comment system sucks ass.)
E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N R-E-F-O-R-M. Four more years of shite. Thanks a bunch, middle America. I’m glad, at least, that I live in a state that didn’t carry him. And, what’s all this bullshit about “moral issues”? Who gives a crap about banning gay marriage when the economy is in the toilet and we’re occupying a foreign country? Come on, people!
Ch-ch-ch-Changes. I moved the home page of the namesake site over to a CSS-based design, meaning there’s not a table to be found in it. Now, that’s not that big a deal considering it’s two images and an image map, but for some reason I can’t get the CSS equivalent of the ol’ <body align=center> tag to work correctly in Mozilla. (Nor, for that matter, do the popups in the design section work in Mozilla. Dammit.) The eventual goal is to have the whole damned thing in CSS, but that’s a ways off. Baby steps here, baby steps.
This article, on surviving IKEA, is written just like a walkthrough to DOOM, circa 1998. It will make non-gamers laugh and gamers howl. I wish I had thought of it.
Progress. This morning Jen got up at 7 to shower, and I roused myself to find the TV remote for the bad news. It wasn’t as bad as I’d hoped, but not the surprise I was praying for. Jen tried some new paint on the wall in the guest bedroom, and I made coffee, anxious to get outside and take advantage of the warm sunshine. I should back up and give props to Dave, who brought Clifford by and hauled off the pile of brush in the driveway I’ve been collecting since June. He helped clear the way for the car cover I bought from Sam’s Club a few weeks ago, which I put up in about an hour. Unfortunately, the cover isn’t rated for snow (a fact I couldn’t find on the less-than-helpful website) but with some carefully made modifications, I think I can get around that. Also missing on the website: the fact that the tent does not come with tiedowns—although the instructions helpfully note, “Caution: Once you erect your tent, it WILL become a giant kite!” Lacking any tiedowns, I decided the next best thing would be attaching the cover to the closest 3200lb. weight I could find, so I jump-started the Scout off the Jeep, backed it under the cover, and tied off the center poles to the roof rack. The overall effect is very ghetto, but considering it’s the first time Chewbacca has been under cover since 1998, I’m certainly happy.
A quick rundown, so I can get some work done: Renie came into town and helped us strip some wallpaper. I designed a tattoo for a friend of ours. Jen finished the dining room painting and we’re almost done with the linen closet. We had about 20 kids for Halloween this year, an increase of 20%. Every muscle in my body aches. That is all.
Smile. Submitted to the Mirror Project last week.
I want this BAD. It’s way too much money, and it’s so perfect for my everyday life, but I can’t justify it (I’d rather have a year-old refurbished TiBook instead.) More info over at Gizmodo.
Tireder Than I Used To Be. Our linen closet is moving closer towards completion, and small things around the house are getting done. The cabinet still needs shelves, the access door needs to be cut down and hung, and the kickplates need to be painted. That’s all fine, and I can accomplish that. Last night, though, I had a bit of a meltdown at 11pm trying to patch part of the dining room wall. During the upstairs renovation I had to pull the kickplate in order to run cable, and as with any plaster and lathe house (especially one as poorly plastered as ours) some of the wall comes out as well. While trying to pull out some of the ring shank nails left over from the crappy paneling job, I yanked six inches of plaster off the wall. By that point, my knees and legs were sore, my patience was gone, and I was running on determination. After sending the hammer on a little trip and banging the paint cans closed, I sat on the couch and shut my brain off in front of The Family Guy. It was the first time since we moved into the house where I felt defeated by it, like it had actually called me out in the playground at lunchtime and kicked the snot out of me in front of the whole third grade.
Of course, being the stubborn Mick that I am, I’m ready to go back at it this evening, but last night was the first time the sheer size of the house got to me. We have about ten open projects right now, all in various states of completion (or not, as the case may be) which await things beyond our control: warm weather, completion of another project, the Bag of Money, etc. and the disarray is getting to both of us a lot more than I thought it was.
This morning, friends, I am feeling like I went ten rounds with Hulk Hogan. As blogged elsewhere, Todd held the first annual Bamboopalooza on Saturday, and by the time I got there (about twenty minutes late), ¾ of the stand was laying on the grass, ready to be cut up. We spent a good portion of the day cutting everything down to manageable sizes, and then lit into the stray shoots which were escaping into virgin territory. Heather made us a tasty lunch and gave us beer, which made the work go faster. By the end of the day, we had collected about thirty yard bags of bamboo, cut back some of the encroaching oak trees, and killed a twelve-pack.
Sunday Jen was feeling better so we got our grocery shopping finished early and picked up supplies for the day’s activities. I continued working on the linen closet, getting everything primed, painted, and cleaned, while Jen made food for the coming week. We also enjoyed a drop-in from the Cauzzis, who were getting their snack on over at the Han Ah Reum. All this food talk made working hard—by six o’clock the combined aroma of Shiner stew and bolognese sauce for lasagna had me gnawing on the drywall. After slurping down a bowl of stew, I continued working until I realized it was eleven o’clock and had to stop before the neighbors started throwing dishes at our windows. (P.S. Shiner is making a killer Hefeweizen this year—we highly recommend it. Also, if Shiner made a T-Shirt with the old-time logo on it, I’d buy that puppy in a second. Alas, all their merchandise is standard beer fare.)
Unanswerable Question Of The Day. Why does Windows Media Player suck so damned bad?
Ha ha SOX!
This morning, while sipping coffee through slitted eyes, I noticed a pair of bluejays anxiously pecking at the bird feeder, which made the two of us smile.
So this afternoon I left the house for work late, waiting for two very nice men to come drill holes in the doors and walls and put little electrical gizmos throughout the house. Because of the recent spate of breakins around us, Jen and I took the plunge to have an alarm system installed. After having put it off after the first incident, we decided that twice was too much. We didn’t go crazy with all the bells and whistles, because the shark-filled moat, hunter-killer robots and tear gas dispensers were all expensive. (Prospective thieves, beware: we did have the electrified dartguns installed, and they’re aimed at belt-buckle height.) The keypad is nice, the units are small and unobtrusive, and the siren is loud enough to peel paint from the walls. At some point I’m going to have to replace our basement windows, which date to the house’s construction, with thicker, modern versions, or glass-block. I’m going to have to beef up the physical security around our first-floor windows, and reinforce the doors, and do lots of other things I don’t want to have to do. I told Jen a long time ago that living in a house where you need bars on the windows is not living, and I refuse to do that. I guess I’m just pissed that we need to have this in our house at all—not that it’s any better anywhere else—but if people would just keep away from our stuff, and take care of their own stuff, none of this would be necessary.
Pledge week on NPR. Ugghhh.
The medicine cabinet is finished on both sides and just about ready for a coat of paint. I followed the pattern throughout the rest of the house and milled down a smaller-scale version of the framing on the bathroom side. The next step is to build a beadboard-faced door and install that on the bathroom side with a latch. Then the whole thing gets a sanding, priming, and then we’re ready to paint.
Seen on a bumper sticker on the way to work this morning:
We are making enemies faster than we can kill them.
Amen, brother.
Close…But No Scout. I took a drive to Sterling this Saturday to look at a Scout for sale, in the hopes that the tub would be good enough for donor status. On further inspection, the A and B pillars were perfect, the hood and front fenders were almost stock, and the top was sprinkled with surface rust. The rear quarters, however, didn’t hold a magnet, and a very rudimetary bondo sanding job was visible under the paint. The tailcaps were completely shot, although he had a pair of clean replacements to go along with the truck. She started up and ran well, and I considered the deal for a long time before deciding to pass. With all the work needed to clean up the rear of the tub, I’d rather buy a fiberglas tub and never have to worry about rust again. So, the search continues.
So I focused my sorrows on something else: Three more storm windows were installed, the east side windows got their final coat of paint, and ½ of the medicine cabinet is fabricated and ready for installation. I’m hoping to finish the inside and put the door on this week—then we can paint and the linen closet will be complete.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Our house, since we moved into it, has been a dark stain on an otherwise bright street. We have a streetlight out front which lights the sidewalk, and two lights on a timer beside the door, but other than that, our property was darker than an alley in Calcutta. Yesterday evening I got a spotlight installed on the east wall, which means that you can actually find your way to the front door from your car without tripping over the curb. Hopefully this will also make the house look like somebody lives here, as opposed to strangers using the driveway for parking and wandering down to Bar for a drink.
After a long day of getting things done around the house, nothing could have been better last night than grilling a thick steak, steaming some corn and fresh beans, and cracking a bottle of red wine to share with our friend Sara, who we haven’t seen in a long time.
I spent most of a rainy Saturday consulting for some friends, who just bought a shiny TIBook and an Airport Express; unfortunately, the Apple-suggested alternative to 1st-gen Airport cards proved to be less than successful (the now-discontinued cards have recently spiked in price on the second-hand market) prompting another visit.
Sunday we took advantage of the sunshine and worked outside on the house. I got half of the atrium windows painted and prepped for storm windows; I also made a hole in the atrium wall in preparation for installing a security light over the driveway. This house is made like a tank: there’s ¾ sheathing on the inside of the walls and ¾ on the outside, which means the bolt that shipped with the light is too short, and the light isn’t installed. Meanwhile, our neighbors’ house was broken into Friday afternoon in broad daylight—a neighbor called the police and the burglar barely escaped—but an alarm system has bumped its way up to first place on the priority list, followed closely by glassblock windows in the basement.