Jon Stewart asks the very prescient question: How exactly can Republicans be for deficit reduction and extending the Bush-era tax cuts?
Best line of the whole clip: “THE DEFICIT WANTS TO SKULLFUCK YOUR MOTHER!”
I spend a lot of time on the computer each day, and I’m always looking for something interesting to listen to. This American Life has been a staple of my iTunes podcast list for two years now. I highly recommend it, and this morning I donated money to keep it online. I encourage you to listen (if you don’t already) and give a little money, if you have it, so that it will continue.
The big news around the Lockardugan estate these days is a successful mortgage refinance, which (among other things) has consolidated several large bills into one smaller payment at a lower interest rate. We will be seeing additional benefits beyond a smaller monthly outlay, beginning with forward progress on the side porch and atrium.
To recap, the day before Finn was born, we installed a door between the living room and what used to be the exam room in preparation for renovations. Predictably, the 20 months since then have been filled with all-baby-all-the-time, so the exam room sat untouched while we gathered some shekels and got her moving under her own power. Our main stumbling block, even before she was born, was how to organize the space in the atrium above, due to the need for plumbing—the plan has always been to use that space for a master bathroom adjoining the front bedroom. The jigsaw puzzle goes together like this: In order to finish off the downstairs, we need to put piping in for the upstairs bathroom. In order to get piping upstairs, we need to have a plan for how the bathroom up there will be laid out. In order for piping to go in, we need a chunk of cash to pay the plumber.
So, we’ve got the cash. Now, for the plan. On paper it sounds simple, but we have been stumped as to how to fit a sink, toilet, and bathtub into a space surrounded by windows and flanked by a fixed attic staircase. Working with only one interior wall makes planning difficult, because a shower on an outside wall is always going to be chilly.
What we’ve got now.
We enlisted the professional aid of Mr. Scout to help visualize a solution to our problem above, and get the ball rolling on the space below. (The immediate goal is to have a working bathroom on the first floor in place by July 4 for parade-goers, and the long-term goal is to have a functional den completed by, oh, let’s say Thanksgiving.)
The upstairs room is, as mentioned before, completely surrounded by old, creaky windows. The basement steps drop down into the back third, right next to a doorway that was tacked on to the rear of the porch. The staircase is next to a surround which encloses the chimney.
Our checklist for the upstairs bathroom is:
- A shower
- A toilet
- Dual sinks
- A large, usable closet
- Sunshine
- An over/under washing machine/dryer (not necessary, but would be nice)
Option 1
Mr. Scout did some measuring and some thinking, and suggested a radical solution: Make the back bedroom the master. Flip the current “closet”, push it forward to meet the depth of the chimney, and make the back 1/3 of the space a dressing room. Chop the attic stairs and devise some kind of hinged stair solution that can be folded up and hidden. Delete entirely the doorway into the front bedroom. Delete all but a few of the windows on the side of the house and take back that wall space. Put a tub/shower against the back of the closet and some kind of vanity/built in cabinetry against the front wall with the sinks. And put the toilet along the outside wall so it’s not the first thing you see upon entry.
Option 2
I did another variation on this idea where the tub becomes a stand-up shower in order to fit the washer/dryer alongside; we’ll have to measure that exactly and see if it can go somewhere else instead. I’m not entirely sure I want to delete the doorway to the blue bedroom, but if there’s another way to arrange the room to make things work better, I’m on board.
Downstairs, we’re altering the original plan just a touch to make the new bathroom more usable. Mr. Scout suggested widening the room from 44″ to 50″, turning the toilet and widening the window above to center them visually, and then using a 24″ door against the office wall, opening inward, for entry. We’ll level the floor and tile it. The casement windows I was originally considering for the den will change to a trio of double-hung units like we’ve got throughout the house, and the back door will be enlarged from a miniscule 24″ to a standard 32″ 15-pane glass (although this one will be exterior-grade steel). I’m still on the fence about what to do with the window over the radiator on the back wall; it may come out and it may stay in.
We’re shooting to have a working toilet and possibly a sink in place, surrounded by some roughed-in drywall for our parade guests. After that hubbub dies down we can get to the serious business of new windows, siding, and what to do about the floor (the end cutting pliers and I have a date with the floor sometime very soon), as well as insulating the coal cellar below (more tigerfoam) and doing something with the rickety porch off the back.
ready to roll
From Craigslist, I give you a $10 Fisher-Price children’s bike seat, rated for 40 lbs. and installed on the tandem in less than 15 minutes. I may need to make a longer bracket for the seatpost stay, because it seems like the geometry of the bike is pushing the seat forward a bit close to the back of the rear seat, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. It’s got a three-point harness but nothing for the feet—some of the other models I’ve seen have straps in the footwells, which seems like it might be a good idea. The seller has another one which I may go back and pick up for my mountain bike.
I was up until 2 last night working on drawings for the 9-5 gig, so I’m dragging ass today.
So apparently the child bike seat we got for free is still usable, but there seems to be a conspiracy among manufacturers to make their installation as difficult as possible. I’ve been up to Loch Raven twice in the last two weeks to measure out the rack that goes along with the seat, but I left without it because I was under the mistaken impression it would not fit. It turns out I was orienting the rack backwards and not fastening it to the seat the right way. So I have to go back (none of the shops near my office our our house carry the rack) at some point over the weekend to try one last time.
Sounds like the stock market took a scary dip yesterday, based on fears that Spain is heading the way of Greece and Portugal may not be far behind. NPR did a great piece on the problems Spain is facing, which was an eye-opener, as well as the issues Italy is dealing with in order to prop up its own crumbly finances. My question is this: Does anyone in Europe (besides Germany) pay their income taxes? Fuck’s sake, people.
Jen’s potatoes seem to be growing out-of-control crazy, which meant I needed to hit the Home Depot for more vegetable dirt. While I was in the garden section, a young couple was very earnestly asking one of the employees if bees are harmful to plants.
I’ll repeat that.
They were asking if bees were harmful to plants. Apparently there were a lot of bees flying around their flowers, and they were concerned that something might be wrong.
It’s enough to make me want to move to a survivalist compound out in the midwest somewhere so that we can teach Finn what to do when our society of ignorant morons collapses around itself.
Saturn went belly-up a few months ago, but it looks like GM is at least trying to make an attempt to hold on to its customers. Jen got a very well-designed envelope in the mail the other day on Saturn stationery which apologized for, um, going out of business, and contained vouchers for a year’s worth of standard maintenance (or four visits, whichever comes first). Even though I was impressed by the rental Malibu I drove in San Francisco a few years ago, I doubt I will ever buy a GM-produced car in my life, new or used—unless it’s something that’s older than I am. As much as the Jeep has been a solid performer, Chrysler can go suck it, and Ford… well, Ford has some sweet-talking to do before I’d ever consider anything beyond a full-size truck with the blue oval attached.
This, however, is a pretty stand-up thing to do from a company with a history of sitting down. We will definitely take advantage of the offer (the Slattern is just about due for its 3K oil change), and the ice around my heart for GM has been melted just a wee bit.
This evening I decided I’d motor home with the moonroof open in the Saturn, and flipped the switch between the two visors. The glass lifted obligingly and then froze about 1″ away from the front edge of the opening, dead in its tracks. No sound from the motor, no grinding in the tracks. This has happened before, a number of years ago when Saturn was still in business and the car was under warranty, and they replaced the broken part free of charge. Now we’re on our own.
A search online revealed a detailed explanation of how to disassemble the roof of the car to get at the relevant parts (and take the entire moonroof assembly out), and another post contained the key bit of information I was looking for. GM, in its infinite wisdom, used a drive motor with a built-in manual gear to help wind the glass closed in the event of just such an emergency. In their customary stupidity, they hid access to this manual gear by covering it up completely, so in order to get a screwdriver on it, one has to remove the entire headliner. (Contrast this with our Honda, where there’s an unobtrusive plastic cap over the manual wind mechanism in the middle rear of the roof. Pop it off, and you’re in business).
So, tomorrow morning I’m going to head to Crazy Ray’s to see if they’ve still got one of the three SC-1’s from a month ago, and pull the switch to see if that’s the problem. If it still won’t close, I’m going to pull the headliner down over the weekend, crank the window closed manually, and just enjoy the breeze from the side windows instead.
I don’t know how to play chess, but I understand the basic concept—it’s the rules I never bothered to learn. It can be used as an allegory for many things in life. Like yesterday, for example. Jen had an early morning client meeting, which meant Finn needed daycare. Which meant I needed to get her there in the CR-V. But Jen had to be able to pick her up, so I had to get the CR-V back to the house and swap it for another vehicle.
Meanwhile, Pep Boys replaced the defective battery they’d sold me late last year, but I hadn’t had the time to drop it into the Slattern, so I was going to have to take the Scout on her inaugural test drive to work when I brought the CR-V back. Got all that? Good.
Jen made it to her meeting on time, Finn made it to daycare on time, and I made it to work about 30 minutes late, but the Scout did just fine. No leaks, no spitting coolant, and everything felt great.
During the day, I called Bank of America to replace my ATM card for our joint account, and after one abortive attempt I was able to get a CSR to order me a new card. before I hung up I asked her to verify the account she’d altered, and she gave me my primary checking account, not the joint account. (This, after punching in the joint account number and my soc in order to access the main menu, then repeating it to the CSR as soon as she got on the line. Isn’t technology amazing?) So I corrected her, verified she had the right account and verified she hadn’t cancelled my primary checking card. See where this is going?
On my way out the door from work, I called to order some kebabs for dinner, because Jen didn’t have time to get anything set up and because it was a LOST night. I turned the key in the Scout and got a lovely click-click-click from the battery, which had fired up just fine in the morning but decided to crap on itself sometime during the day. The guy downstairs in the booth, who couldn’t have been nicer, didn’t have a battery charger, and the garage was pretty deserted by the time I was there, so I reluctantly called Jen, who was in transit with Finn, to come and give me a jumpstart. She made it into the city in record time, and after some fiddling with the jumper cables (they will be replaced next month) we got the Scout to fire up. Driving back to the ‘Ville, we separated so I could go pick up dinner, and I left it running while I ran inside. When the guy ran my ATM card—you guessed it—declined. The BoA lady had, indeed, cancelled my primary card. I made like I was going to run home and get cash, but the proprietor, who couldn’t have been nicer, told me to take the food and come back to pay when I could. So I will endorse Cafe Kebab on Frederick Road not only because their food is delicious, but because the owners are exceptionally nice people.
Returning home, Jen had food ready for Finn, and we all devoured our dinner a full hour past our usual schedule. I ran out to pay for our meal, and then hurried back to help Jen give Finn a bath (she had played outside for a good portion of the day, and thus was covered in sunblock). After putting her to bed, I had 15 minutes for my next mission:
- Pull the good battery from the Jeep, which was parked across the street.
- Drop the new battery in the Saturn.
- Move the Saturn out of the driveway.
- Drop the Jeep battery in the Scout.
- Pull the Scout into the garage.
- Pull the Saturn into the driveway.
- Put the bad battery on the charger for one more test.
Thankfully, I made it inside just before the first commercial break of LOST. Which kicked ass, by the way.
Jen also informed me I’m not allowed to drive the CR-V, because she’s afraid I’m going to fuck it up somehow. Which, after all of this mechanical drama, is probably true.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Today the U.S. Government charged Goldman Sachs with fraud for their role in the financial meltdown. What took them so long?
Our current fleet here at the Lockardugan Compound has gotten quite out of hand lately. With the addition of the CR-V, we’ve now got four cars clogging the driveway (three, actually, because the Scout is still in the garage) but our plan was always to ditch the least practical of the remaining three. Because the Jeep and the Scout both have two doors, an equal amount of cargo space and similar gas mileage, one of them has to go. I don’t think I have to tell you which one is nominated. (It’s the one without its own website).
I thought we might have a buyer lined up when we bumped into a friend at the coffee shop the day we bought the ‘V and happened to mention we were going to sell the Jeep; three weeks and two snowstorms later she took it in to her mechanic for a once-over, and came back with some disappointing news. He claimed it needs a new catalytic converter to pass inspection, as well as new front tires (we knew this) and pointed out an interesting bug with the reverse lights—they don’t work. She decided to pass, so we’re back to square 1 for the time being. Which suits me fine, because there’s more snow coming this week, I can’t get the Scout out of the driveway without moving the other three cars, and I’ve got at least three trips worth of garbage in the basement to be hauled to the dump.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.