One of the great things about living outside the city is having a house with a yard. One of the great things about having a yard is that frequently you’ll see animals outside your windows. Hopefully they’re not trying to burrow their way in to get at your food, like the raccoons who occasionally dropped in on Jen’s old apartment, but coexist peacefully in the suburban microcosm that you call home. For us, this means chipmunks burrowing around the tree roots in our backyard, and a helpful neighborhood dog who enjoys digging out great patches of our lawn to try and roust them from their holes. We have squirrels who probably could take on the worst of Central Park’s crack-addled fauna—One morning, while sipping our coffee peacefully on the couch, we saw two local squirrels chase a hawk the size of a dalmatian from the branch of one of ‘their’ trees. We have a feral neighborhood cat with no tail or ears who enjoys beating the crap out of any animal unlucky enough to get close to it, and who dines from our garbage cans.
We also have a pair of cardinals who visit the side yard outside our kitchen window. Back when the Doctor lived there, he had a pole-stand birdhouse in that yard next to a sundial, and when the house changed hands both found their way into somebody’s car or the dumpster they filled in the driveway. The cardinals came by every morning last fall and sat on the scrubby apple tree, waiting for the bird feeder to reappear. Then one morning, they were gone. Today I was cleaning out the coffeepot and looked up to see both of them again, which was a relief. The gray female flitted about in the gray underbrush, looking for something to eat, while the red male sat on the branch looking magnificent, bored, and useless. I’d like to think his presence was the portent of a warm, enjoyable spring right around the corner, but I’m sure his mate was looking in the window at me saying, “make with some birdseed, you cheap prick.”
Another Jungian Test. Jason sent this over to me this morning, and the results were different than the pre-Cana test Jen and I took a few weeks back: ENFJ. Funny how the results change based on which test you take.
Wow. I want to go here. I love finding things like this collection of pictures, not only because they’re aesthetically beautiful, but because I have about a million different stories I’m writing in my head about the subject.
the bel-loc diner, towson md, 2.19.04
Y’know, all this talk of weddings and stress has sort of blinded me to something that’s been not-so-quietly happening out in California. I looked at this site and suddenly remembered that there are people who can’t get legally married here in America, and that our right as a heterosexual couple is something I take for granted. Go take a look.
Dissapointingly, most of the WMA -> MP3 converters I’ve tried thus far make files with the fidelity of a drunken brass band underwater. Which is a shame, because I’ve suddenly got a reason to use one.
All Quiet. Much like Todd’s post yesterday, work has been pretty dull lately. So I’ve been enjoying the workbench project at the house this past week. As of this morning the frame is set up and leveled off (not an easy task in an 80-year-old basement) to the back wall under the stairs; I have to finish the top of the bench and put in the bottom shelf, then rip the old Bell Systems switchbox off the back wall and rewire the local outlet to supply power to the lights (there will be lights under the cabinet and over top of it—no more fumbling around in the dark for tools I can’t find.)
Meanwhile, this weekend I’m going to attempt to make some progress in the Office upstairs. First up is removal of the kickplates, then pulling down the drop ceiling to see what the rest of the plaster looks like (shudder.) Then, gently pulling the plaster away from the floorboards and running yet more wire. We also have a Saturday appointment with the priest who will be officiating our wedding—you know you’re in good hands when the Father tells you to knock twice on the back door of the rectory and ask for “Louie”. We went to his service last Sunday, and he is the spitting image of my Uncle Dave, from the white hair to the ruddy Irish complexion, which will make the service that much better.
Hopefully Jen and I will be able to get away on Sunday for a day of non-wedding fun in DC; we had plans to hit a museum on the Mall last weekend but didn’t make it before the weather turned cold. I’m really looking forward to a day alone with her.
I got a freelence check for a whopping $75 the other day, which paid for a USB interface and two adjustable lamp controllers to test out a home automation system. The Indigo software is beautiful and intuitive (30-day trial download), and I’m excited to set up something that will make our huge dark house look like somebody actually lives there.
Webmonkey, the online help site Wired put together back in 1996 to help morons like me learn how to code HTML, is no more. Terra Lycos, who bought Wired Online’s assets, pulled the plug and fired the remaining staff last week, which is a shame. Many a day I was hunched over the keyboard attempting to learn Javascript or figure out the maddening rules of frames, and Webmonkey was the place I looked for answers.
Mike Lee posted a link to a new article on the O’Reilly MacDevCenter about home automation, which reminds me of a previous post; there’s some good juicy info in this article with more to come. (My thought was to pick up three or four outlets and the software to control the lights while we’re away on our honeymoon.)
Tonight I was alone, as Jen was at a work pow-wow, so I picked up some more 2×4’s and started building a workbench in the basement. I’ve been making do with a leftover bench from the garage—’bench’ only loosely defines this collection of planking, nails and scrap wood—and it’s gotten to the point where stuff is piled on the floor in heaps. The plan calls for an eight-foot long bench three feet high with one large shelf underneath. I had enough wood and deck screws to get the main frame built but I need more of each to finish the job. Dad will be happy to know I used his laser level to get the thing close to stable, but sad to learn that one of the two leveling bubbles is cracked and empty, which means I will have to test the Sears return policy.
This morning Jen and I made the first preliminary plunge into weddinghood by opening a joint checking account at the bank, which means that we actually have to save some money to put in it. Today we’re venturing out to a few places to look at bridesmaid’s dresses and wedding bands so that we can cross those off the huge list of Stuff We Really, Really Need To Get Done Quickly.
Yesterday I was iced in at the house and got some more work done in the Blue bedroom. Now that the demolition part of the rehab is over with, which is the easiest part, I started cutting shims for the plaster and replacing the baseboards around the room. The doorframe is back in, and the sections of plaster that fell out have been replaced with patches of drywall, which will require seventeen applications of mud and sandings—this after I thought I was done with all that crap.
In more optimistic news, it looks like the patch job on the roof over the upstairs office is holding firm. Two solid days of icy rain, thawing snow, and general moisture have failed to leak through to the wall below, so I’m going to chalk that up in the ‘fixed column’ and prepare to start the long repair job.
winter (via my beautiful fiancee), 2.4.04
It could just be my brain playing tricks on me, but this morning I woke up and the house was positively balmy. For the past two months, I’ve been wandering from room to room layering and unlayering like a Vegas stripper due to the unequal climate zones in our house. The first floor is barely heated because many of the radiators were moved out to the enclosed porch, which is barely insulated. Our clothes are stored out there (long story), and there have been weeks where picking out that day’s wardrobe meant hopping from foot to foot and peering through the fog of one’s own breath. Making coffee in the morning started not with cleaning the pot, grinding beans, or getting the milk, but opening the lower oven door and cranking it up so my feet weren’t frozen into blocks of ice, ghetto-style. Meanwhile, the upstairs rooms are a faithful recreation of the Sahara desert. Jen has been positioning herself directly over the humidifier to stave off splitting sinus headaches due to the total lack of moisture in the air.
Today I was grinding coffee beans and looked out at the thermometer in the kitchen window. It read thirty degrees, which was enough to send me into spasms of chills a month ago. This morning, I casually considered wearing shorts to work.
Q: Is It Gonna Make Me Sweat? A: Yeah! I learned this afternoon, in doing some research on steam heat that if your radiators are noisy (e.g. the radiator in Jen’s bedroom, or the one in the living room), you should place a small, thin block of wood under the side without the pipe to off-level it slightly for better water circulation. I also found out that in steam heat systems, cleaning or replacing the air vent can wake up a dead radiator—close the shutoff valve at the bottom, unscrew the air valve, boil it in vinegar and water for a half hour, and replace it. And finally, using the shutoff valves to regulate the amount of heat won’t work in steam systems; you need an adjustable air vent instead. All of this is good information.
Welcome To The Jungle. Li’l Gn’R. I shit you not.
Today I looked at a free comment service called HaloScan and signed up for a membership. It seems to be pretty easy to use; the code is clean and doesn’t muck anything up on the page, so I’m going to test it out over the next few weeks to see how I like it. So let me hear what you think, people! If I write something stupid on here, tell me about it. If I write something good, let me know. You’ll see a small ‘Comment’ link at the end of a post if I’m interested in hearing feedback—but I probably won’t be adding one for each.
Fambly. This Christmas my Mom asked me if I could scan and retouch a picture for her; in a story involving a Coach purse, some guilt, a picture frame, and an anniversary, she’s hoping I can take a beat-up Polaroid of my late grandfather and clean it up to the point where we get some new prints made. I scanned the picture in at 400dpi, cleaned and sharpened it, and looked at the results. The resolution was not up to snuff, so I rescanned at 800dpi and enlarged by 200%, hoping the extra information would be enough to extrapolate good pixels from bad. This time I got better results, and I’m almost done cleaning to the point of cropping. (Mom, I’m going with the one you don’t favor, because your father is actually smiling in this one.) Once I’m done, I’m going to import it into iPhoto and send out for prints, probably tonight.
I don’t have a whole lot of information about my biological grandfather, only short anecdotal stories; I know that he was a stonemason his whole life, supporting his family at a very early age, and he built his own house. He had big hands, and played the piano. He didn’t like having his picture taken, which is why this is a big deal. He died a month before I was born. Maybe my Mom will write me with some more information about him that I can share here.
Oh, Well. The ice storm that was supposed to shut the mid-atlantic area down never materialized; it’s raining outside but of course they shut every school system down within a 100-mile radius. I’m considering home schooling for our future children, because it seems that the local public school systems will cancel classes for a strong breeze. Jen and I were hunkered down last night rubbing our rabbits’ feet, hoping we could make some inclement weather happen; she was hoping for a day to catch up on sleep and I was looking forward to a solid day to concentrate upstairs. As it was, she was asleep by 10:15 and I got a bunch of drywall installed in the Blue room. It’s going to be a long slog to repair the plaster, because it’s been beaten on enough that it’s brittle, but I think the Pink room will go a lot quicker—the plaster in there came off a lot cleaner.
I have not seen one bottle of Pepsi in this area featuring this promotion. I’d drink yer damn Pepsi if I could just find a bottle.
We have tuxedos and bridesmaid’s dresses, which is very good. We both have new haircuts, which, in my case, is very good. (I was looking like a member of Kansas for a while there.) We’re entering our christmas card in a design annual, which could be very good.
God Damn it, does the Windows Media Player suck ass. I’m playing a WMA file locally on my PC (dual 1gig Intel chips) and the stupid thing keeps skipping. What a piece of shit. I’m going back to my iPod.
Saturday we met with the priest who will officiate our wedding, and we both left feeling very good. This guy could easily be a ninth uncle on my Dad’s side. Besides going through the Catholic pre-wedding requirements, we found out a little more about the neighborhood and some of the people in it. I’ve also narrowed down the wedding music playlist, which I’m posting here for review or comment (and no, the Chicken Dance, Hokey-Pokey, and Macarena are not making it on the list.) This list does not include the traditional wedding classical I’ve gotten lined up and still have to sample for the first hour of dinner music.
Ceiling up, ceiling down
Sunday Jen got busy cleaning the house while I moved crap around upstairs and got the office ready to go. The drop ceiling came down, the kickplates came out, and I’m just about ready to start fishing wire through the walls.
Yesterday I enjoyed a snow day from work, which brought back memories of Star Blazers, Legos and grilled cheese sandwiches in second grade. Instead of regressing to age eight (I don’t own feety pajamas anymore) I packed Jen off to work, answered some email, and then looked over the linen closet in the hall with a fresh cup of coffee. Over the years it’s been hacked apart for access to the tub plumbing, new shelves have been jury-rigged, and the floorboards were cut open. I’ve been wanting to get inside and start rehabbing it for a while now, and because I’ve got the shared wall opened up in the blue room, the time was right.
I started by pulling the shelves down and the trimwork out, then began to scrape the ancient wallpaper the old-fashioned way—hot water and elbow grease. Once the walls were clear, I started a wire run from one side to the other (the door opens from left to right, and we decided to have a light switch on the left inside wall). By dinnertime, I had wire installed from the inside of the Blue room (the linen closet will share the same circuit) up the wall, over the doorframe, and down the left wall to the switchbox. There’s a ton of stuff to be accomplished before it’s done, but having a light in there will be a great start.
Your Mailbox is Full. Based on the amount of bullshit email I got this morning, this stupid new worm is making the rounds. If you emailed me in the last 24 hours and haven’t heard anything from me, assume I mistakenly deleted your email with all the emails titled “Mail Delivery System” and “Test”. Apparently the purpose of the worm is to DDoS the SCO corporation, which is kind of funny, but still annoying. I’m glad I run OSX.
Random Fun Links. Excellent reading from Edmunds.com about Car Salesmen. Given the dilapidated condition of the Taurus, I’m sure this will come in handy.
Movie Star Penn
This morning we got up early to dig Jen’s car out of the snow so that she could follow misguided company policy and be one of only seventeen people in the Baltimore area who had to go to work today. Catonsville was pretty quiet, because the snow was sitting on the roads refusing to melt and the plows were just pushing it around. Once I got the driveway cleared, we got Jen out and on the road to work, and I looked over at our next-door neighbor’s house.
Now, when Jen and I started looking at houses in the this town, she warned me about the neighborhood—not that it’s bad, or filled with toxic waste, but that it’s as old-school as old-school gets. There’s a church every thirty feet. We moved in next to a house with a crucifix on the front lawn, flanked by a plastic sign featuring the Ten Commandments; we knew things would be interesting with our neighbors when they found out we were engaged and not married, and bless their hearts, they have been warm and cordial with us—until I gave them our Christmas card. We’ve not seen them much since then; it could be because the average temperature here in Maryland has been hovering around the 20-degree mark, or because they are inside praying for our mortal heathen souls.
So I cleared the sidewalk out in front of their house with my non-believer shovel.
Wow. From Rob, I found this link to Margaret Cho’s site. It seems some right-wing site quoted part of her website and suddenly she was inundated with half-literate emails from racist homophobes. Isn’t America lovely?
flower (special thanks to Dad for the macro lens), 1.25.04
Among the things Jen and I got done this weekend was meeting with our florist for the wedding, which started out like Scott’s expedition to the North Pole. We were referred to a wonderful lady north of the city, and with her help, working out the arrangements took about two hours. I think we both left the shop relieved and confident—the flowers came within our budget and beyond our expectations.
Saturday evening we drove to the Ram’s Head in Annapolis to meet up with the Montheazletts and Caudizzis for drinks and dinner to celebrate Nate’s birthday. Entering the bar with no dinner reservations, we stood at the bar for a while until we found some seating at the Irish pub down the street. We also got to meet Dave the Tunemaster, who looks a little too much like me (skinny, goateed men with square glasses and hyperactive temperaments, although he has better hair than me), and Steve and Carol. While I pimped my real estate agent on Kristen, Jen and Heather made plans to hit the original bridal shop to have a steel cage match next weekend.
Sunday I was able to get power, data and cable run from the Blue room to the basement, as well as insulation put in the wall and surrounding the bathtub, which will put us in the vicinity of the schedule I was hoping for.