lakewood ave, 1.5
We are snowed in yet again. There’s about 4″ down on the ground right now, and the sky is that peculiar reddish-gray which accompanies snow in the city. The trees outside the window are draped with blankets, my neighbor is shoveling our walk and the street is free from traffic—the only sounds come from people quietly calling out to each other as they walk to and from the store. For a brief moment in time, the city is a peaceful place to be.
I spent a good portion of last night printing Christmas envelopes from Quark; in the eight years that I’ve owned a Mac I still don’t know any better way to organize a mailing list better than exporting a contact manager’s database (then: Now Up-To-Date; now: Palm Desktop) and manually entering it into a linked series of text boxes in Quark. It brought back the days when I had several hundred illustration contacts and made a custom Quark template for Avery labels (instead of wasting the precious paper with merging Word files, something beyond my technical expertise) and hand-edited them based on the returned cards I got in the mail.
The Lantana update: Jen and I pulled all the lantana from the backyard a few weeks before the real frost hit and slammed them into some clay pots. I lugged all five of them into work and set them on the sill for sunlight, where they all proceeded to drop 90% of their leaves in protest. The two yellow plants are making a strong comeback, shooting healthy big new leaves towards the light. The purple plant is a little slower, but there are a bunch of small green shoots poking from the branches. The orange-yellow plant, the largest of the five, dropped all its leaves and sits like a stick in dirt. The white plant is a little better, but there is no green visible.
backyard, 12.01
The Thanksgiving feasting is over; the fridge is stuffed with Tupperware and bursting at the seams. All was successful with the meal, and the Meeting Of The Two Families went off without a hitch, thankfully. Everybody had a great time together and we dined in Little Italy. (Rather fitting, given the motif, eh?)
We were also lent the first season of the Sopranos on DVD the day before Thanksgiving, and spent a good portion of the holiday loosening our belts and travelling to North Jersey to peek in on the lives of Tony and his family. I realize I’m about four years behind the curve here, but I have to say this is a fantastic show. Jen and I are totally hooked.
I finally got a sheet of UV glass cut for three gifts my house presented me when I began demolishing the basement: a collection of Tijuana bibles fell from the ceiling over the old bathroom as I tore the tongue and groove down. (Additionally, I was presented with a series of letters to Santa and a series of longshoreman’s pay stubs over the old kitchen sink, a very old and used tampon in the bathroom, and an envelope containing $50 in bills circa 1969 up front in the old closet.) In doing some research on the eight-pagers, I found a link to a book on the subject as well as some other sites. It’s nice to have them framed, finally.
Will you Bring me one of these for Christmas? P.S. I really want the 10gb model. *sigh.*
Apple did a pair of ‘Switch‘ ads starring Will Ferrell that are funny as hell.
Last night I had the football game on while I was running around cleaning the house. Philadelphia was pasting San Francisco and a big deal was made out of the backup quarterback, who looked remarkably poised and confident. He and his team made a series of plays that most first-string squads would have a hard time completing. He went down hard in the fourth quarter with a dislocated elbow, and his whole team surrounded him on the field as the team medics worked on him. As they carted him off the field, something happened that made me feel really good—both teams walked out and came up to salute him, offering words of support and congratulations on his game.
I used a real nice utility to clean up and reformat a pair of DivX-encoded .AVI files today: DivX Doctor II. Now I can view a bunch of files on the Mac as well as my PC; it’s too bad DivX isn’t supported by Quicktime (or that there’s that niggling .AVI-sound issue as well.)
4:30 PM The rain has started; we shall see if it morphs into snow as promised this evening. I pulled the last herbs from the back garden this morning, but I need a larger pot for the rosemary, which went from a small plant to a ravenous bush over the summer. I have to pick up a turkey at Sam’s Club tonight and do some last minute Home Depot shopping, but all other Thanksgiving stuff is under control.
demolition, 11.14
So I have this plumber. His name is George. He came to me recommended by my friends Kevin and Kelly, who were still a little awestruck when they relayed the details of their meeting with him. He showed up at my house and looked at the pipe drain, looked at the backyard, and shook his head. He Did Not Think It Looked Good. I wanted him to say This Doesn’t Look Too Bad, but no. He kicked around the alley for a bit, and left after giving me a quote which made my knees buckle and the blood drain from my head.
Now, in my experience with plumbers, they all remind me of each other. Older, thickly-built men with mustaches who speak little, smoke Marlboro Reds, and look like they could snap you in half for talking the wrong way. George is no exception. He is an older man with a full head of white hair, built like a 30-year-old (he’s in his mid-sixties.) He wears the requisite jeans, work boots, a blue chambray work shirt and a blue Dickies work vest over it. He has no moustache, however. When they passed along his number, Kevin and Kelly called him Curly, and it fits almost perfectly.
Fast-forward to this morning, when he showed up in his blue plumber’s truck to begin demolishing the beautiful patio I spent all summer installing. I had woken early to begin removing brick, and had the entire area prepped before he got there. This surprised him. Even more surprising, I think, was the fact that the skinny guy helped him all day—not just handing him tools, but clearing and hauling the shattered remains of my brickwork, shoveling the soupy dirt over the broken pipe, and loading up his truck when the jackhammering was done. During his smoke breaks, we traded stories and found some common ground. He left as simply as he came, with a curt “Well OK, I’ll see you tomorrow” and was in his truck and gone.
So I’m waiting here for the plumber, and Miss Utility (the folks you have to call before you dig because “IT’S THE LAW”) to tell me just how bad this whole sewer disaster is. Meanwhile, I’m running around here like I’m on crank getting all kinds of stuff done, attempting to feel like I have control over something.
Meanwhile, I am unhappily doing my best Howard Hughes impersonation by carrying my own urine around in a bottle. Yes, folks, I’ve said it; it’s true. Because when you can’t flush, rinse, run water, or otherwise look at your drain without it overflowing into a stinking puddle of filth on your basement floor, you have to get creative. Luckily my neighbors are nice enough to let me use their bathroom when other events arise. So if I stop over at your house and I immediately run to your restroom, you’ll know what’s up.
Dammit. I just got the estimate.
scout, catonsville, 11.12
To the guy in the Accord who crossed four lanes of traffic into my blind spot, almost crashed into me, and then flipped me the bird: I’m driving a Scout, you ignorant doorknob. That’s over a ton of Ohio steel, moving at high velocity and with great momentum. My truck would make little flat pieces of tin out of that crap you’re driving. You’re lucky I saw you at the last minute.
I signed up for the new Macromedia content-management product, Contribute. I have no idea how this thing works, or what it could mean for several different clients of mine, but I’m going to test out the Win version of it perhaps tomorrow. Details to follow.
Because of phone snafus, I have to wait until tomorrow to find out what the cost of the sewer problems might be. Although I have a solid “oh shit” fund in the bank, I’m afraid this is going to seriously damage my plans to do a lot of things in the near future. In the meantime, I’m showering at Jen’s house and trying not to worry too much.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
The verdict on the drain is that my waste pipe is broken somewhere between the back wall of my house and the back wall of the alley—in the middle of my yard. So there’s a man coming out this afternoon to estimate how much of the brick will be torn up.
Today I’m marveling in the power of Unforgettable Fire-era U2. Wire and the title track are two of my favorites of all time. Good to hear them again (I threw the worn-out cassette tapes years ago.)
Todd alerted me to this link in the Urban Archaeology vein, based on my early work with the Letter Project: B-More Ghosts.
It appears that my main waste line in the house is clogged up. I have somebody coming in on Monday to snake it out; please say a prayer for me that the whole line has not collapsed (warranting the destruction of all the work we’ve done in the backyard to date to install a new line.) It is for this reason that I am in a foul mood today.