I started doing some exploratory surgery in the Pink room last night to see how difficult it will be to put the electrical lines in upstairs. Starting with the bulge wall (the one it shares with the bathroom) I got around to the end of the front wall cleared and ready to drill. It’s pretty easy going so far, but I haven’t gotten to the drilling or cutting yet, so I’m reserving judgement. Of course, the hardest part is going to be getting the wiring down to the basement—and that part I haven’t figured out completely. I did get to see the movie Cast Away on ABC while I was working, and I thought it was a great flick. It puts my “Wilson” experience into perspective, too.
I spent about fifteen minutes dropping a bunch of songs on Jen’s iPod this evening so that she’ll have something to listen to at work tomorrow. Then I asked her to dig out her CD collection so that we could start adding them to the server, and she came back from the box collection with a stack about thirty feet tall. I knew I was marrying this woman for something; she’s got Appetite for Destruction (a CD I impulsively sold at the Soundgarden ten years ago when I purged the hair metal from my racks), Duran Duran’s Greatest Hits (guilty, guilty pleasure), Hall & Oates’ Greatest Hits (A-dult…Ed-u-ca-shun), Beck’s Odelay, The Stray Cats, Big Country, The Ocean Blue…
I also sanded and prepped the floors in the Pink room and the office upstairs for coat number two of polyurethane. It’s supposed to be unseasonably warm again tomorrow, and I mean to take advantage of it.
I’ve been sort of on house hiatus since the Thanksgiving push. In the four weeks leading up to Turkey Day, both Jen and I were running at a fill-tilt boogie trying to make the house look like something other than postwar Berlin, and ever since the driveway emptied I’ve been ignoring the projects upstairs like a fart in church. Home Depot’s monthly sales are down at least 5% because I haven’t been averaging three visits a day—this is a place where they just hand me an orange apron when I walk in the door. Yesterday I picked up another gallon of polyurethane and started sanding the blue room with the Packers game on. I sanded the floor down to a baby-smooth sheen, and this morning put the poly down, taking advantage of the warm weather to open the windows and air it out.
This Boring Life. I love taking pictures of urban landscapes, city archaeology, and historical architecture. Unfortunately, my commute to and from work requires a 20-minute stint on the Beltway, where the only things I see are the brake lights in front of me and the sound walls on either side of the highway. Now that I’m a country mouse I don’t get to see the same subjects I did before, so it was with great happiness that I found Satan’s Laundromat, a photoblog from Brooklyn, where I can live vicariously through the lens of another person.
Love Is: a woman who isn’t happy to see a Scout sitting rusting in our driveway, but who still calls me in from the other room to tell me she sees one on TV.
This afternoon, I decided I was going to see what my garage is actually built out of. I’ve had dreams ever since we got in this house of backing the Scout into the garage, pulling the top off, and starting the long process of tearing the body down to the frame for a retub. Pipe dreams, perhaps, but the backing the Scout into the garage part has been sounding particularly good given the amount of snow we’ve received in December. There are two reasons I haven’t done this already: a makeshift front wall where the garage doors used to be, and a 6″ raised wooden subfloor inside the structure. So it was with great curiosity and a mild fear that I jacketed up, crowbar in hand, and walked outside to face the unknown. The Scout started on the second try with a squirt of starter fluid and I ran her until the idle smoothed out (God, I love that truck), and while she warmed up I went inside and moved the assorted car parts and lumber out of the way to areas that didn’t look like they were wet.
The first floorboard came up pretty easily, and to my dismay I found no concrete underneath—the original footprint of the garage is an uneven dirt floor. At some point in the last ten or twenty years (based on the age and color of the concrete) a 2′ footer was poured down the middle of the foundation and 2×6’s were laid every 18 inches from edge to edge, then covered with plywood. Given the grade and condition of the wood, I’m going to have to find some other way of protecting the Scout for a few years until I can dig the dirt out and have someone pour me a new floor. In which case I may just have somebody bulldoze the whole structure and start from scratch. Sigh.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Jen and I walked across Frederick Road last night to a lot next to the Presbyterian church where the Boy Scouts have been selling trees. After a few minutes of indecision, we settled on a short-needled tree about five feet high and carried it back across the street. Jen started dinner, I trimmed the bottom (note to self: buy an arbor saw) and we stood it in the hall next to the stairs to wait until the boughs fall.
The grading is done for my MICA class, although I have tonight to look at stuff and modify grades—I’m hoping that some of the students have really used the time to improve their designs. I took a page from Jen’s book and wrote out a page of comments for each of them to review, so I’m feeling pretty good about it overall. meanwhile I’m crashing from a bloodsugar low after lunch, so I may not be conscious for the next half hour or so.
B & E. I was gonna be quiet about this, but it looks like Dave has fessed up to locking his keys in Clifford with the engine running on Sunday. I’ve carried around a pair of Slim Jims in my trunk since the days of old and my parents’ reposession business, so it was a pretty easy deal to find the linkage in the door and pop the lock (I would have thought it would be harder these days, but I guess some things never change). I have decided to keep them out of the trunk and leave them at home, though, considering they’re illegal (OK, Mom?) but man, those things have come in so handy in the last ten years…
The Christmas cards are officially in the mail. Thank God. Also, BG&E stopped by this morning to finish the wiring in our basement. Since moving in the house we’ve had a huge live 220-volt line sticking out into the basement from the panel at the foot of the stairs. Now it’s gone and the meter is sitting outside on the back of the house. Whoopee!
Small World Dept. The couple I was playing pool with at Jason’s party on Saturday night left there to go visit a “friend who owned a restaurant”; it turns out they drove down to the Chameleon Cafe and ran into Todd and Heather. So that makes it only the second time in three weeks that we’ve shared a “this-town-is-too-damn-small” experience. (Apparently I resemble the guy from “Scrubs”. If I had a quarter…)
Interesting Random Stuff Dept. Linda sent along the link to Pink Five. Thanks! (you’ll need RealPlayer or WMP to watch.) There’s a little bit of anger over at Vent. And everybody should take a look at Pitchfork’s recap of the top albums of the 90’s. That is all.
Today our good friend Dave braved the weather in Clifford (the big red truck) to help me haul three months’ worth of debris from the garage. All the plaster, lathe, carpeting, foam, and shelving we’ve torn out fit snugly in the back of the truck, and then we hooked him up with a ton of new music on his iPod. The afternoon involved finishing off our Christmas cards—signing, addressing, and sealing all 80+ of them. Big fun.
2. Jen and I have been in this house since August, and we’ve had roaring fires going many times in the fireplace. We’ve learned that the best way to keep a fire going without a damper was to close the glass insert doors to a sliver to get the updraft from the house whooshing past the logs. It makes for a ripping good fire, even if it burns all the wood in three minutes flat. Saturday morning the chimney guys came out to look at the damper, and gave us some bad news: the furnace shares the flue with the fireplace, which means that having the glass doors open is very bad—carbon monoxide could shoot back down the chimney and kill us while we watch West Wing reruns. So, no fires for us anymore.
3. The company Christmas party was good this year. Jen ducked out to get her shopping done, so I went stag to McCaffrey’s and sat at a table with my boss, my old producer, and my cube-neighbor. We had a very good time by ourselves, and when the party finished up we drove over to our CEO’s condo in Roland Park to finish off the rest of the wine. Overall, the mood this year was festive, compared to last year’s understated party—the promise of much work and a healthy company brightened the evening.
Afterwards, I drove north to my friend and old business partner’s house for their annual holiday party, which was a good time. Playing pool and catching up were good fun, even if the upstairs was stocked with some dull folks. (Really, who goes to a party to sit on the couch and watch The Wizard Of Oz? Live a little, people.)
4. Jen and I decided that the best way to celebrate Friday was to leave the house and find some good Mexican food. We drove out Rt. 40 to Señor Toucan’s, a Mexican/Latin restaurant decorated in high schmaltz. Fortunately, there were two mariachis inside warming up, and they serenaded the dining room during our meal. Three margaritas and some killer mole later, we were ready to hire them for our wedding—even though the theme is supposed to be Savannah southern.
5. They found Saddam! He was in a hole and looked like shit! Hope you like that jail cell, pal.
Max has taken delivery of his iMac, which means I have X-mas money to use for presents. To quote the wise Hannibal from the A-Team: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Looks like we have tentative plans to meet with two of the previous occupants of our house; when we sat with them to sign the contract on the house they asked if they could stop by and take some clippings from the huge holly tree in the front yard, which we obviously agreed to. We’re going to get the house gussied up and have them over for an afternoon. Hopefully we can learn a lot more about the place from them when we do.
Gobble Gobble. Well, we sent the folks on their way this morning after a breakfast at the Double ‘T’ on Rt. 40; a great time was had by all. Jen and I got up Thursday morning and simultaneously cooked food, cleaned house, and moved furniture before my folks arrived. We had a 14 lb. bird, harvest stuffing, smashed potatoes, candied yams, fresh snapped beans, and Mom’s gravy (winner and still champ-een, two years running.) It was great to be able to sit and have a real family meal around the new (to us) table in the dining room like grown-ups, as well—the day of the little enamel-top table is done. Dessert was a choice of homemade pecan pumpkin pie or carrot cake (Jen spoils us) and coffee. We all slept very heavy that night.
Friday Jen served us her homemade cinnamon buns for breakfast, and we ventured out into the rain to Home Anthology, where Jen and I cashed in our gift certificate (thanks Nate, Kristen, Heather and Todd) for a beautiful mirror for over the fireplace. We wandered around Ellicott City and had lunch at the brewpub on the hill. Mercifully, we didn’t buy a ton of stuff while we were there.
Saturday we drove to Andy Nelson’s to pick up twelve pounds of barbecue, and got the house ready for Jen’s fambly. They drove up in Big Blue at about 4:30, two hours later than we were planning, but we got them likkered up and built a fire and sat around the living room and told stories. Much better than last year, when we shoehorned everyone into the rowhome and then took them to the typhoid breeding ground for dinner.
Today’s menu is full of leisure, leftovers, and low maintenance. I did rake the rest of the leaves off the back lawn and bagged them when we got home from breakfast, however. And it looks like Isabel, or whatever funky weather pattern we’ve had since then, dropped a branch into the roof of the greenhouse by the top, which I have to figure out how to fix before snowfall.
Recap Busy weekend—in a nutshell: tasting at the Brass Elephant successful, polyurethane on upstairs floors completed (including hallway, whew), mission to Lockard family house for turkey day complete. Lots to do before the break, little time. Details to follow.
This link is one I’m going to keep because I’ve heard of people losing power in their iPods after very short periods of time. Being the tinkering type, though, I don’t have a problem cracking the case on anything.