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April 28, 2005

Scanners.

The 2005 Lockard Reunion is being held in North Carolina in a month or so, and I'd like to be prepared this time. The last reunion was a resounding success, bringing Jen's father's family together in Orlando for a fun weekend of swapping stories, photos, and history while staying in the Land of the Rat (and providing an opportunity to see Ms. Bonny Rose for the first time.) I was fortunate enough to meet many folks who I'd heard of but not met, including Jane, the matriarch of the family, who could have passed for a Dugan easily in personality and likeness.

One of the incredible things about the Lockards is the amount of historical information they have in their collective posession. We were handed boxes of old photographs, and a good portion of the visit was spent filling in the names of the proud-looking people who stared back at us from the yellowing prints. In an effort to make copies of the photos (many of which are the only ones in existence), I tried to shoot as many as I could in macro mode with my digital camera, but the effort was unscientific and ultimately dissapointing.

This time, I'm bringing the laptop and a flatbed scanner, so that we can continue archiving the pictures and make CD's for people to distribute. Our current scanner is a third-hand UMAX with minimal support for the Mac and no software for OS X. The software is a buggy OS9 port from Windows that crashes more than it works.

I'm looking for a low-cost replacement that's portable and native to OS X, but I can't seem to find a decent recommendation online. (One of the Google search result links even bounced me to a porn site, which was a little disturbing, as I was sitting at my desk at work.) The supported scanners on the Apple site are all models I can't find that currently ship, so I'm stuck with making educated guesses. When I find something and buy it, I'm going to post the results here so that somebody may be able to benefit from my experience. Right now it appears that I'm leaning towards the CanoScan LiDE 35, which has some form of Mac driver (I'd really, REALLY prefer a Photoshop plugin) and is small enough to carry, but unfortunately only has USB 2. FireWire seems to be a $200 add-on for any brand. Anyway, I'm heading to the Office Depot to see if they have one available, and I'll report back on my findings.

Update: I just got an email reply from a fellow who had posted about a similar search on his weblog:

That seals it.

Posted on April 28, 2005 5:46 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

Ctrl-Alt-Del.

Let's just say that I've had better mornings. Don't try to get in touch with me on my cellphone, because it's sitting on the dining room table, shut off (I think.) My work computer, a PC, went on the fritz after I gave it a love tap. This was after all the open programs locked, I force rebooted it, and it locked again on startup. It turned out the video card was unseated. Other things blew up that I won't go into here.

I'm going to go find something tasty to eat and try to force-restart this day after lunch.

Incidentally, is your information showing up in the Comments section when you have "Remember Me" checked, or do you have to keep entering it? Doesn't seem to work for me in Safari.

Posted on April 28, 2005 11:21 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

April 27, 2005

Convenience and Overload.

Two years ago, when we did the walkthrough on the house, we oohhed and aahhed over the obvious stuff, like the greenhouse and the fireplace, but one of the things that caught Jen's eye was the garden outside the kitchen window. When we first visited, there was a birdbath, a feeder, and a garden ringed by brown modular ABS plastic on the west lawn. (I say "west lawn" only to provide a sense of direction. It sounds grand to say that in a sentence: "We'll have tea on the West Lawn." In actuality, it's a narrow strip of grass, bounded by a weedy, overgrown privet hedge.) When we returned for the walkthrough on the day of the signing, we noticed that everything had disappeared from the yard save the lovely brown garden edging and a patch of dry, dusty soil covered in squirrel holes.

Steadily, over the last two years, Jen's been making the yard look better in between life events. This spring she hatched a plan to rehab the entire flowerbed. Last night we set the wheels in motion by removing the platic edging and replacing it with pressure-treated 2x8's (which will have to do until we can mix cement and build the rock wall.) Next, we dumped six cubic yards of garden soil and tilled the whole pile as the sun was setting. Then, we measured and drove two lengths of PVC piping into the middle of the bed, and set the headboard of a $15 antique bedframe into the pipes. (My wife is so damned smart.) Finally, by the light of the moon, we replaced the plants in their complicated arrangement so that she could put them in the ground this morning.

Note the variety of plants in the above picture. Around the bedframe are sedum and other hearty perennials. Along the edge in front are a variety of herbs and smaller flowering perennials. In back, Jen planted some morning glory, a ton of gladiola bulbs, and other tall flowers.

Meanwhile, the Peapod delivery guy was circling our street trying to find the house, and finally pulled in the driveway after I flagged him down. I'd have to say that the experience of spending $80 at the store and returning home with three small bags of food is no different than having somebody deliver it to the front door, but the convenience of having the staples (milk, bread, tonic water, creamer, etc) is pretty cool. If we can offset the high price of Peapod by shopping at the Asian market for produce, we'll be coming out ahead in my book.

Jen was able to get all the plants in the ground this morning (I don't think she even finished her coffee, she was out the back door so fast) as well as a pile of bulbs that we bought this spring. (We have a ridiculous amount of bulbs, actually—some are still good and left over from my old house, where I had dreams of planting gladiolas in the back yard.) Before I left, I asked Jen to meet me for lunch today so that we could hit a garden center up here by work. We've been living with the selections at Lowe's and Home Depot only because of proximity and budget, and there's a hideously overpriced garden center in the 'Ville that Jen bought from out of necessity. I've been Valley View once or twice but never took the time to really explore, so it was a new experience for us both. Think of the garden center at your local Home Depot and expand it by about 400%. Add a whole section for live fish (featuring koi the size of a small child), wholesale stone, and a live herb section larger than a drugstore, and you have this place. We loaded up two boxes full of plants and got out of there before we did any serious damage, but still wound up dropping $50. I think we both agreed to regroup and think out a strategy for the future, bceause the possibilities have just been expanded tenfold, and we still need to make the mortgage payment.

Posted on April 27, 2005 3:17 PM | link to this entry | Comments (6)

April 26, 2005

Speechify

I have a request for humanity. PLEASE stop using the incorrect Engrish phrase "Your guys'".

e.g. "I would think that, given your guys' case, we'd be able to deliver the product by the end of calendar year '05."

Bonus points if you're an employee of a Fortune 500 company and you use it during a conference call.

Goddamn, does that annoy the shit out of me, and I went to fucking art school for my undergraduate degree.

I'd also like to suggest public whippings for anybody with a four-year college degree who still doesn't recognize the difference between Your and You're. And let's all please quit it with the excessive quotation marks around normal, everyday things.

e.g. a sign reading:
"FREE CAR WASH"
"BEST IN TOWN"
"NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY"

Posted on April 26, 2005 4:19 PM | link to this entry | Comments (9)

SUCCESS

I just got off the phone with Todd, who let me know that he is the proud papa of triplets, at approximately 10:20 this morning. Mother and children are doing well. Right on!

Posted on April 26, 2005 11:19 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

April 25, 2005

The Auld Sod and Peapod.

This morning, I made reservations for a trip to Ireland for our first anniversary. Originally, having fallen in love with the laid-back, Dolce Vita atmosphere of Italy, we talked about returning there, but plane fare and other considerations ruled out that idea. Other exotic locales beckoned: we talked about Barcelona, Tahiti (one of our honeymoon picks, sidelined due to the exorbitant cost and lengthy flight) and Paris. Gradually most of these fell aside and we seriously discussed Ireland. I've always wanted to see the country of my ancestry, and a self-guided tour seemed to be the way to go. We found a preplanned package online through AAA, including lodging and car rental, and signed up for it this morning. We will be driving a compact automatic over hill and dale on the wrong side of the road in search of blarney, real beer, and bland food for nine days in June.

Plane fare was shaping up to be the expensive part of the trip, but I found some dirt-cheap fares from American using Kayak.com, and got us a one-hop flight to Shannon thru Boston for less than the cost of the tour package. There are some more things to be ironed out (we need a place to stay in Dublin and Shannon for a night each and a lift across the country to our return flight, for example) but the major part is done. I'm absolutely thrilled to be going—it's been a dream of mine for years. The fact that I get to go with my wife and best friend for our anniversary makes it that much better.

In other news, we broke down and ordered $80 worth of groceries from Peapod last night. I figure $6 is worth the hour it would take to go and pick all this stuff up ourselves, and we have better things to be doing with our time right now. Besides, we are lazy consumerist yuppies. Now, to arrange for Starbucks to deliver to our door...

Actually, this is the first time the conveniences of the dot-com days have reached our leafy door; while hipsters in San Francisco and Manhattan could call Webvan back in '99 for a Penthouse, Coke and candy bar to be delivered to their door free of charge, we never got the option here in Mobtown. It's (relatively) cheap, it's available, and we're taking advantage of it at least once.

Posted on April 25, 2005 3:04 PM | link to this entry

Rockity.

I found, through circuitous channels, that Mike Doughty has a blog. Soul Coughing was always one of my favorite bands from back in the day, ad I had the good fortune to see them live twice—once at the old Bohager's, which is now an empty lot (and being reclaimed as some kind of new building), and once in the old 8x10 as one of about fifty very lucky fans. That small club date remains one of the best live shows I've bever seen. (This weblog takes its name from one of my favorite S-C tracks.)

Anyway, he's been kicking around playing small gigs for the past couple of years, and is in the middle of releasing a new solo album and going on tour to promote it. If you haven't heard any of his newer work, it's a departure from the old S-C sound, but still features ace songwriting and melodies. He's an excellent writer, and comes off as an extremely down-to-earth kind of person.

If you haven't heard it, I recommend Skittish. "Rising Sign" is one of my favorite tracks from last year.

Posted on April 25, 2005 10:48 AM | link to this entry

April 24, 2005

Greenhouse...Check.

This weekend I took advantage of the lousy overcast weather to completely strip and re-cover our greenhouse.

As you can see, it was nasty with a capital "N". Years of mold and dirt were stuck on the outside and in between the sheets of plastic.

Once the new plastic was up, the inside of the greenhouse was a completely different place.

I re-arranged the clutter and set up our tables so that there's one whole dry side and one irrigated side. During the rain on Saturday, I cemented the piping together and drilled holes for the sprinkler. This afternoon we finally got to test it out—everything works great. I have to drill another length of pipe with a smaller bit and adjust the pattern for better coverage, but everything works as advertised. (there's water dripping in this photo:)

Now I'm too tired to write anything else. Oh, yeah, we bought about $300 worth of plants. More on that later.

Posted on April 24, 2005 8:55 PM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

April 22, 2005

Distribution of Wealth.

I pride myself on being a very DIY sort of fellow. It's a perverse sort of pride sometimes. Most people, given the right set of five tools, a short, well-designed instruction sheet, and an afternoon free of interruption, can do stuff like replace a toilet tank valve or install a GFCI outlet in their kitchen. I tend to take this crap to extremes, though, like building and installing my own arbor (Try this sometime: lift a 13-foot 2x6" pressure-treated beam on a ladder fourteen feet in the air by yourself. Now repeat that six more times. Watch out for that high-voltage electrical line), transporting four sheets of drywall on the roof of a Ford Taurus (transporting drywall is hard with two people and a pickup truck) or gutting and rehabbing the only functioning bathroom in my house (that was a smelly month.)

Most of this stuff wouldn't be necessary if I could afford certain things, like, say, a Toyota Tacoma. Or the day rate of a local plumber. Or even some of the hourly charges at the local rent-a-center. Often times there's a tradeoff between what it would cost to have somebody come in and do the stuff I need vs. eating, and sometimes it's even more extreme than that (our kitchen rehab estimate comes to mind here.)

It was a no-brainer, though, to have a fellow come in yesterday and haul away the huge pile of brush we've been collecting between the greenhouse and the garage. I normally would have called a friend in and paid him happily to help me haul it away, but I decided that he probably wouldn't appreciate the poison ivy either. Hopefully I won't have to do any more radical pruning jobs like I did last fall—which is where the brushpile came from—although the holly tree needs a major haircut and the gnarled fruit tree in the side yard appears to have finally kicked off. (And I'd love to chop that nasty cedar tree right down, too.)

While he was stuffing the back of his truck with my skin-irritating brush, I replaced the first of four panels on the greenhouse with new UV plastic. The job went pretty quickly and easily, which was a relief. I also tested out a few different solutions for the water piping and settled on a row of small drilled holes instead of the misting nozzles; the amount of water released seemed to be steadier and covered more area. When he was ready to leave, I helped him toss one of the old rotten picnic tables on top of the load and waved goodbye. He had bagged up all the leaves and raked the area, so we are left with a patch of empty dirt, ready for grass seed where uneven weeds used to lay. I'd say that was $100 well spent.

Posted on April 22, 2005 10:33 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

April 21, 2005

dandelion

This morning I popped the macro lens on the Canon and went outside to shoot some of the local flowers before the forecasted rain beats them all up.

Posted on April 21, 2005 3:33 PM | link to this entry

Gone in 60 Seconds.

My neighbors, the ones who had their mid-80's Dodge Caravan stolen a few days ago? They stole it back. Apparently the wife, who was riding the #2 bus to her job in downtown Baltimore, passed her own van parked somewhere on Pratt street yesterday morning. She and her husband returned later in the day, removed the parking ticket from the windshield, and drove it back home.

I guess there's something to be said for having a distinctive paint job.

Posted on April 21, 2005 11:41 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

April 20, 2005

Music and Technology.

Last night I finally got to talk with Jen's sister Cath and her boyfriend Jason, who have been doing some research on cell providers and phones, and leaving messages on our machine. Jason just picked up the phone I've been looking at, and he has nothing but good things to report. I've been holding off because of the lack of Bluetooth support in 10.3.X, and I'm hoping that Tiger will support full iSync functionality. (The word seems to be that you can sync the phone with your Mac, but you need the optional Motorola phone-to-USB cable. Thanks, but no.) So I'll wait it out another couple weeks until the early adopters iron out the bugs in Tiger and I hear that the phone is supported officially.

I got an email out of the blue from our friends Matt and Sophie, who were kind enough to send us a sizable iTunes gift certificate as a wedding present (which was awesome but totally unexpected—they flew all the way out here, and I didn't want them worrying about a wedding gift as well), which I've been sitting on for a week or two. Last night I finally sat down to redeem some music, and started out with a recommendation from Jen: an album by Kasabian, which we decided is a mixture of the Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, and Lo-Fidelity Allstars. Next, I hit the record store disease list and picked up the latest from Thievery Corporation, an oldie from Tosca, another oldie from Zero 7, and the latest releases from UNKLE and RJD2. I'm halfway into Since We Last Spoke, and I'm enjoying it completely. (I also take issue with most of the reviews for this record and The Private Press; everybody seems to want another hip-hop turntable jam, but these guys are reaching for something here. I don't find either album disappointing in the least.) I'm jazzed to hear the UNKLE album (hoping it will be as mind-blowing as the first one) although it seems a lot of folks have been less than impressed. (This critic needs to tone down the personal dissing and actually review the record, in my opinion.)

Finally, the time has come to replace the head unit in my Jeep. Now the radio stations cut out and the casette adapter for my iPod refuses to load. There's nothing like being stuck on the Baltimore Beltway in the summer with no radio, next to a worthless iPod jammed to the gills with music. Good times!

Update: The RJD2 album is solid. Excellent stuff for any of you DJ Shadow heads out there. The UNKLE album is spotty and not all that exciting—the clips I heard online sounded...better than the real thing, if that's possible. Zero 7 is good mellow chillout got-work-to-do kind of music. Or for sipping coffee and reading the paper on Saturday morning.

Update Update: The Kasabian album is a pretty groovy mixture of genres-I'm enjoying it tremendously. It's kind of funny that the singer has a slight Ian Brown vibe going on, because I've had Reign by UNKLE going through my head all weekend.

Posted on April 20, 2005 10:58 AM | link to this entry

April 19, 2005

The only thing worse than the itching phase...

...is the peeling phase. Eeeeeeew.

Posted on April 19, 2005 9:27 PM | link to this entry

Thinking About Summer.

Jen and I are trading out the cars this week to have oil changes performed and routine maintenance finally performed. This means I got to scoot into work in Jen's Saturn, which features standard shift and a sunroof. A couple of years ago, I had a functional standard-shift convertible, and driving Jen's car always makes me homesick for the Scout. The other day I was driving home in the Jeep with the windows down, and some strange confluence of scents on the air reminded me of driving on the beach. I immediately thought about Assateague, and had the idea to take Jen camping on the beach again before the summer heat and bugs move in. We have a bunch of commitments in the middle of May to attend to, but I'm going to shoot for a long weekend sometime that month to smell salt air and camp smoke again. Time to dig out our camping gear and take inventory...

In the small amount of downtime I've had today, I've been doing some preliminary reading on starting seeds from scratch. It appears we've missed the recommended window by a month or so, but I don't think that will hurt anything in the long run. Most of the plumbing is roughed in as of last night, so I'm just waiting on the plastic and the final fittings from the greenhouse supply company. I've set the whole thing up so that we can attach and detach different piping based on what's growing underneath, and there's an inside fitting roughed in for a hose attachment and the valves to support it. I also found a downspout diverter for the rain barrels; this will get hooked up to the gutters I'm going to be installing on the garage and routed into the greenhouse piping system, so that we have a natural gravity-fed watering solution.

Posted on April 19, 2005 3:46 PM | link to this entry | Comments (5)

Considering...

Whether or not to be worried or relieved at the news that our neighbor's nasty three-color 1980-something Dodge Caravan was "stolen" from their driveway this afternoon sometime between 4:30pm and the time I got home.

I wonder if it's in the same place the bass boat wound up after the repo guys showed up with the wrecker at 12:30 in the morning last fall.

-and-

How it might be possible to crawl through both time and the TV, back to the David Letterman show, to personally kick the shit out of every member of the "Kaiser Chiefs".

Posted on April 19, 2005 12:10 AM | link to this entry

April 18, 2005

Lazy Weekend.

I hustled myself in to the doctor's office early on Saturday morning to see somebody about the posion ivy. Since Thursday, the itch had expanded further to areas I hadn't noticed before: down my right leg and across the hipbone, in the webbing between my left index and middle finger (precursor to the dreaded Blister Fingers), and up and down my right arm, which was already resembling the flesh-eating virus. I met with a kindly Italian doctor and he quickly prescribed some Prednisone (cough be damned) and some topical skin cream, which has the consistency of axle grease. (this was, however, the easiest and quickest doctor's visit I've ever had; in 45 minutes I had been treated and was driving home with my prescription.)

Jen and I have been planning out our priorities over the next couple of months, trying to sock away money for various projects around the house. Command Decision Number One was giving up on the IKEA bed until Jen gets her back and nerve issues worked out. I'm going to have to strap it to the roof of the Jeep and try to return it this week without taking flight on the Beltway—big fun. The floors downstairs have climbed back to priority one; with our tax return and a little boost from our bank accounts, we've got enough to cover the first floor and stairs. Next up is our often-dreamed-of anniversary trip, which we've been putting off thinking about until, well, we hit the lottery. We decided to scale back the dream trip to Italy and think modestly. Doing a little research online, we found a preplanned seven-day bed-and-breakfast tour through Ireland and plane fare for less than half the cost of a trip to Venice, and decided to go for that instead.

My ability to do any heavy lifting outside is still curbed by the creeping crud, so we took Saturday afternoon to look at plants and start planning our yard for the year. I bought a bunch of PVC and roughed in the basics of the irrigation system in the greenhouse yesterday, and had the chance to meet another set of neighbors behind us (the ones who just put an immense addition on to the back of their house, and who were gracious enough to give me the tour.)

I'd better get over this stupid rash soon, because the weather is much better now, and I have a ton of work to do around the house before it gets too hot.

Posted on April 18, 2005 11:40 AM | link to this entry | Comments (6)

April 15, 2005

Green Thumbs.

I've been dreaming of using our greenhouse for actual growing purposes ever since we stood out in the backyard and saw it for the first time. When we inspected it, I knew it would need a lot of work. The owners had left us a pair of rain barrels, one potting table, a selection of clay and plastic pots, and one empty greenhouse with a busted heating fan, questionable electrical system, and half-disconnected irrigation pump. Being a closet engineer, I've been dying to get to work on this, and Jen has been wanting to use it for growing stuff since last spring.

Since move-in day we've cleaned it up and found that the electrical system works fine—the flourescent lights need new bulbs and possibly new ballast—but the irrigation system made no sense. As far as I can tell, there's a weird pump above the door which used to be hooked up to a water line which then pumped water between the two sheets of plastic which cover the greenhouse. It's either that, or it vented something out into the air...but I can't tell how or what.

Update: I think I finally figured it out. It's an air pump, and it used to inflate the layer of air between the two sheets of plastic. Somehow, I guess, this increased the R value of the structure and kept things warmer.

The heater is still powered, but makes a frightening screech when it's turned on. It sounds like a rusted or thrown bearing.

Last weekend I took a closer look at the outside of the structure and found out how the plastic is kept in place. It's a simple tension system, where the plastic is fed into a channel on the frame, and a long strip of aluminum is then fitted into the channel over top, then gently tapped into place. They then sealed it with pounds of silicone caulk, which will have to be removed, but that's a small matter.

Today, because we're not getting hammered by income taxes, I took some of my IRS money and ordered a bunch of stuff: four lengths of UV-rated greenhouse plastic, a trio of 1 GPH misting nozzles and their respective PVC fittings, a hose-to-PVC connector, and a drain valve. My original idea was to use copper and PVC together, and drill small holes in a length of 1/2 PVC to mist, but I decided to spend an extra $15 to test out how the nozzles work. The rest of the PVC is off-the-shelf stuff, and should be another $20 or so. It should be here next week, and I'll keep you up to date on the progress.

Posted on April 15, 2005 1:59 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

Administrative Updates.

I took some time last night to update a bunch of stuff here at Idiot King Central; Search results will actually resemble the rest of the site and are listed in a format more pleasing to the eye. Most (if not all) of the links on the left are now correctly pointing at their destinations, especially in the Archive sections. I re-arranged the main archive page to fit the output from MT, and tweaked the search bar design a bit for aesthetic purposes. I'm still playing around with the comments design, so that may change a bit over time as I work it out. Overall, you should notice better gas mileage, hear a dialtone every time, and enjoy a 12% decrease on your electric bill.

Posted on April 15, 2005 9:24 AM | link to this entry

April 14, 2005

A Memo From the Lofty Halls of the Common Sense League.

Anytime a product is billed as an exfoliant and promises to remove an itching rash by "bonding with the poison oil and washing away with vigorous rubbing", DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. This crap I paid $25 for yesterday did nothing but piss off the poison ivy I already had until it reached meltdown stage last night: this point was when my wife turned to me and said, "We have to...you know."

Because my loving wife knows just how squeamish I am around needles, "We have to...you know" is code for Go get me a needle so I can heat it over a candle flame and pop the humongous boil that's hanging off your forearm like a conjoined twin.

You see, this product contains little balls of plastic that are supposed to be there for scrubbing, like that soap with the sand in it that's supposed to help with getting all the engine grease out from between your fingernails. The difference is that engine grease doesn't get mad and expand like a Satan-posessed party balloon. There I am in the shower yesterday, praying that this crap will take the itching away, and I'm rubbing it into the blisters, and I felt like a dog when you hit The Spot—where the dog goes into uncontrolled fits of scratching and gets the faraway look in its eye. it felt SO GOOD to itch this stuff. I rubbed the crap in for the prescribed 30 seconds, and then washed it off carefully so as to not splash any of the poison oil on any sensitive areas, and then applied Step 2, which is a clear cortisone cream with the consistency of snot. Here was Clue Number Two. The $40 competing product claimed that relief would be immediate, while this shit had me immediately pouring some kerosene onto the brushfire.

So after "We have to...you know," we both stood in the kitchen and mopped up the liquid that leaked out of my arm until it was normal-sized again, and again after it blew right back up to full angry size and we drained it again, and then a third time. (It was at this point I knew that I was destined to have children with this woman; I flashed back to the day I came down off the roof, having been stung by a wasp, and pointed my swelling hand at her, hopping on both feet like a kid who needs to go potty. She quickly made a potion of baking soda and water and put it on the sting, and it felt better in seconds. Our roles became clear: I will teach them how to shingle roofs, and she will teach them how to reattach their own limbs.) After the third draining it looked a little tired—all that anger wears a conjoined twin out, I guess—so we returned to the couch and our regularly scheduled coughing and hacking. Every once in a while I'd mop it with a tissue to make sure it wasn't leaking into the couch, but it remained relatively quiet for the rest of the evening.

This morning I woke up and did the inventory: Cough? Check. Sore throat? Check. Mucus puddle in lungs? Check. Angry, freakish blisters covering forearms? Check. Except it's even nastier, if you can believe this: it's crusted over where it leaked out last night (I had it wrapped up in a sock) and still leaking.

I think that maybe discretion should be the better part of valor here, so today I'm going to spare my co-workers the sight of my conjoined twin attempting separation and the Black Lung. This shit is gross.

Posted on April 14, 2005 8:29 AM | link to this entry | Comments (7)

April 13, 2005

Some good news through the gloom.

The poison ivy which was tickling my forearm the other day has grown to huge proportions; it's sprouted on my neck, on my other forearm, and now there's a little patch behind my right knee. After consulting the Internet yesterday, I hit the drugstore in search of this stuff called Zanfel, which promises to wash the urishiol off the skin and reduce the swelling. I was all ready to buy that little tube until I looked at the price: $40. I wound up going with a competing product, and followed the instructions, and nothing has changed. So I'm out $25 and still itching.

We are still a sickhouse, as well—this flu is not letting up yet. I feel a smidgen better today, but I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that I'm better. I still produced plenty of lung butter this morning, and my head is still draining. Jen is still slightly better than walking dead, so we make quite an attractive zombie couple when we're out in public.

There were two good bits of sunshine this morning, however; I opened our tax return info and found that we're not paying the gub'mint $400 like we thought, but actually getting a little over $1,700 back due to our mortgage interest. So I think we're going to put that in the kitty for the kitchen and sit on it a while.

The second good omen appeared when I went back into the kitchen to refill my coffee. Happily pecking at the thistle feeder ouside our window were a pair of finches, one yellow and one a bright reddish pink. I called for Jen to come in and peek over my shoulder, and we watched them eat and chirp at each other quietly for a few minutes. These are the first we've seen, and it made us very happy to have them. Eventually the yellow one flew off and was replaced by the female mate of the red male. I hope they bring back some friends.

Posted on April 13, 2005 12:11 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

April 12, 2005

In Pursuit of Marital Harmony.

I've moved on to the next phase of this illness, the one which involves great big gobs of green stuff that shouldn't exist outside a Petri dish. My body creates this? Good God, man, that's awful! I can't believe I'm still breathing after hacking this stuff up. Sleeping was only marginally better than last night, although I let Jen dream in relative peace by herself by exiling myself to the upstairs bedroom. Because having a squirming, coughing, sneezing slug laying on a plastic-covered mattress next to a light sleeper is a recipe for marital dischord. (That's right, the plastic is still not off the IKEA mattress.)

In other news, the guy who inspired me to have my Scout retubbed is selling his for the low low price of $10.5K. When I think about all that I'm going to have to do for Chewbacca in the next ten years, I'm tempted to take out a loan and just buy this one, because it's got just about everything I'd want already done (except those nasty wheels, and the half-doors have to go). But I'd rather have a new kitchen and the domestic harmony that a new kitchen would bring instead of a great belching, gas-guzzling truck right now; someday in the future I'll have that truck as well.

I also added another pie-in-the-sky house project to my list during the slower moments of a meeting this morning: a plan to add irrigation to the greenhouse. It should involve nothing more than an afternoon with a couple lengths of copper tubing, some PVC, four valve bodies, a propane torch, and a drill. I'm also thinking about plans for adding gutters to the garage and building a raised platform for one of our rainbarrels so that the captured runoff would flow via gravity into the irrigation system through a battery-powered on/off valve. But that's another afternoon and a whole other set of plans.

The irrigation plan gets put behind the 492 other, more pressing concerns around the house, not the least of which is rewiring the back bedroom. (No, Baby, I haven't forgotten.) Once I can wear a dust mask without fear of covering the inside of it with green snot, I'll get to work on that.

Posted on April 12, 2005 1:19 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

April 10, 2005

Overstepping.

There's a good way to find out how much cough syrup you have in your medicine cabinet: stagger into the bathroom at 2:30am after you've hacked your way through four long dark hours, and then rustle through the contents—making sure you don't drop everything and wake up your wife. I brought some kind of viral throat ailment home last week and thoughtfully gave it to Jen. Our doctor helpfully told me it wasn't the strep and sent me home to find some chloraseptic, and the two days following my visit I felt about as fine as a viral infection would let me, so I thought I was better.

Saturday we decided to marshall our strength and focus it out in our yard. I got up early to check out some of the local yard sales in our neighborhood, but in a rare moment of better judgement, I resisted the urge to buy stuff and picked up eight bags of mulch for the bushes instead. Between the two of us, we got the both planters installed in front of the greenhouse, the day lilies replanted from the east flowerbed, the vines on the west side cut back (not without a light dose of posion ivy for your enterprising correspondent), the front hedges mulched, and I replaced the nasty lattice holding up the grape vines with a sturdy frame of square posts.

All this activity was apparently not what I needed, because it was impossible to fall asleep last night. The throat affliction was back, and worse than ever. We both woke up groaning and decided a trip to DC for the cherry blossom festival was not on our dance card. We hit the store and stocked up on vitamin-C based products, medicine, and cookies, and headed home. Jen suggested we detour past a local house which advertises fresh honey for sale, so we drove past and noticed a fellow out back digging post holes among a group of hives. The lady who met us in the driveway offered honey and bee pollen, and we chatted with her about their hobby. Soon her husband joined us, and he offered the five-cent tour around his backyard, as well as offering his help in starting our own hive. While the idea is an exciting one, we decided next year might be better for us. (Natural honey is delicious, by the way.) We took it easy for the rest of today. Two episodes of Ken Burns' Jazz, some warm tea, and fresh warm air (as well as 500mg of cold remedy) have done good things for me; hopefully some robitussin and a good night's sleep will help as well.

Postscript: Turns out the Prednisone I had left over from the last case of poison ivy is probably not the best thing to take right now; it reduces swelling but also weakens the body's immune system.

Posted on April 10, 2005 8:14 PM | link to this entry

April 8, 2005

Morning daffodils

Jen and I stopped before work and took a bunch of pictures of the tulip tree out front again, which is in solid bloom. I also traipsed through the daffodil patch to shoot some of the new blooms, which are the two-color variety. The front yard is filled with the scent from the tree, and it's beginning to slowly shed the pink petals onto the lawn.

Posted on April 8, 2005 11:59 AM | link to this entry

Thank You For The Sun.

This morning fresh air blew through the open windows and I could smell the scent of the tulip tree on the breeze. It's supposed to be overcast and raining today, and in the 60's for the weekend, but everything is blooming outside, and the birds were in full song. I broke out the year's first pair of shorts.

There's a long list of things to be done outside this spring, some of which includes ripping out all the ivy on the west side of the house and de-infesting the 'hedge' over there of the creeper vines. I'd really love to get out there early tomorrow with some coffee and a pair of clippers to do some surgery, especially because that's where the poison ivy lives in the summertime. Having that cleaned up would make the side yard a lot tidier this summer. Jen's perennials have (mostly) peeked up above the soil, and the first round of bulbs have come and gone.

Measuring out the greenhouse for new plastic, I found that it's going to be cheaper than I thought to buy, which is good news.

I'm going to build the other planter for the greenhouse tomorrow as well, and I suppose we'll be buying some topsoil and mulch for around the yard to boot. I'd really love to spend the entire day out there, but I may have to curb my green fever so that I can get some paying work done as well.

Posted on April 8, 2005 10:31 AM | link to this entry

April 7, 2005

Well, that's a relief.

Last night Jen and I drove to D.C. to visit with my sister Renie, who's finishing up the first of several business-related training courses and staying in Crystal City. We got some Thai food and caught up on the events of the last couple of months, then retired to the hotel bar for an aptertif. Her job seems to be going really well, and it looks like she'll be down this way some more in the coming months, which is good news. During the evening, my already sore throat began to hurt more and more, until it swelled up disturbingly on the ride home. This morning, I woke up almost unable to swallow after a long night of terrible sleep. In a decision that's pretty rare for me (usually I need to be spurting blood from a major artery to seek professional medical treatment), I called the doctor and made an appointment. I've always been able to shrug off most illnesses, and injury is something that just gets in the way of finishing what I'm doing, but this was different-a friend of ours is just getting over a case of strep, and I didn't want to nurse along a dose of that for two weeks without checking it out.

So I went and filled out the same damned form, got weighed and measured and prodded, and had a test run, and it came back negative. Most likely this is some viral thing. While I was there, I asked about the pain that runs up my forearm after a long day at the mouse, and she told me that it's not carpal tunnel, but most likely a tendon strain, and she gave me a referral to a physical therapist to get a brace for it. So, good news on that front.

So I apologize for my 'B' game last night, Ren- I was feeling more under the weather than I thought I was. We're looking forward to seeing you again in two weeks.

Posted on April 7, 2005 3:14 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

April 6, 2005

Ain't That Something.

Seems like everybody's kicking right now. the Pope, Frank Perdue, Johnny Cochran, Saul Bellow, and Prince Ranier are all dead and Peter Jennings has the cancer. Pete, who is the healthiest-looking (and probably youngest) of the four of them, has lung cancer. Damn.

On the list of current and very future projects: fixing up the greenhouse. I've written about this on the old log, but when the mid-month paycheck comes in, I'm investing in a swath of UV resistant poly sheathing to replace the dirty, tattered plastic that's up right now. I've also thought about plastic walls for a more durable structure (not to mention better heat retention), but I think price is too much a factor right now. I also put together a flowerbox for outside the greenhouse doors from some pressure-treated 2'x6' so that Jen can transplant the day lilies in the east flowerbed before they grow too big. I have to get a little more lumber to finish the mate, but the first one looks good.

Also outside, I've been cleaning out the garage in preparation for project Hide The Scout. All of the debris from last year's rehabbing with the exception of some carpet and an old air conditioner is gone, and next I'll reinforce the floor with extra lumber and shoring to take the weight of the Scout. in related news, I'm sending a set of pictures to a shop in West Virginia who've retubbed a series of Scouts in the last couple of years; I'm doing some freelance right now whose earnings I'd like to put aside for that specific cause. More info on that later.

And in local news, the monthly archive section is fixed on Idiotking, so that instead of unslightly teenage facial blemishes, there is a clean listing of all the entries for each month. Whew.

Posted on April 6, 2005 1:36 PM | link to this entry

daffodil and tree

This morning I took some shots of the tulip tree in our front yard, which opened last night, and the daffodils in our neighbor's flowerbed. It's great to have spring finally here (rumor has it the temperature is going to be in the 80's this afternoon.)

Posted on April 6, 2005 10:49 AM | link to this entry

April 4, 2005

Nate and Stellan

During the baby shower. How can you not be mezmerized by those eyes?

Posted on April 4, 2005 9:04 AM | link to this entry

Babies 'R' Us, or: The Clock Is Ticking.

This afternoon Jen and I had the pleasure of attending a baby shower for Todd and Heather, who are expeting triplets, for those folks who haven't been keeping score. Because of some on-again, off-again scares where she visited the hospital, the whole thing was up in the air until Friday, so we put off going to pick up our gifts until yesterday afternoon. There's a chain baby superstore right down the street from here where they were registered, so Jen and I grabbed a cart, printed out a list, and dove in.

As we drove through the aisles, picking out items and checking them off the list, I realized just how much I don't know about having children. There are breast pumps which look like devices out of a Dr. Seuss nightmare, and retail for $300. There are child seats with more straps, restraints, safety devices, and knobs than the ejection seat of a modern fighter jet. (And the selection of child seats seems to parallel that of luxury automobiles: there are Eddie Bauer, Jeep, and John Lennon strollers, each with its own coordinating accessories. Yoko, you whore.) There is a special "line" of nursery linens that coordinate and match named after some woman WASPier than Martha Stewart, and which cost more than the sheets on my bed.

After wandering through this array of capitalism for about half an hour, I was beginning to lose focus. I happened to see a little girl following her mommy wearing a shiny green frog raincoat—the one with the eyeballs sewed into the hood—and matching froggy boots. And I found myself wanting a little kid for myself. Jen and I continued through the store, and I think we were both doing the same thing: shopping for the triplets but making a mental list for ourselves. More than once, I found myself looking at something and thinking, "I want that for our kid. I'm gonna buy us one of those." One of the good things about not having any kids of our own yet is that we get all soft and mushy over our friends' kids. We kind of went a little crazy, but as we left, we knew it was worth it.

As we walked in the door this afternoon, one thing suddenly became clear: we were the only couple present without children. I have to extend apologies to anybody I didn't introduce myself to, as I got into people overload very quickly. We got to visit with the Heazletts and see little Stellan, who is growing bigger (is it really eight months? Jeez) and catch up with some old aquaintances from the MICA scene. All in all, we had a great afternoon with everybody, and I think Todd and Heather had a good day.

Posted on April 4, 2005 12:27 AM | link to this entry

April 2, 2005

Bullet Dodged.

Whew. After a productive meeting with our accountant this evening, we learned we are filing jointly and only on the hook for something less than $500 total (which is pretty remarkable given the amount of untaxed freelance income we generated last year. Don't worry, though, Uncle Sam is definitely taking his pound of flesh.) The irony of meeting to discuss one's taxes on this auspicious day was not lost un us, but luckily she made it painless and easy. (Email me if you're looking for a fantastic CPA in the Baltimore area&mdashI've been with Laura for going on ten years now, and if she can make sense of my convoluted financial situation, she should be the new head of the World Bank.)

Flush with success (and the knowledge that the money we'd saved in the event of major tax catastrophe could be put to better, and more pressing uses), we walked down the street and treated ourselves to a mediocre dinner at an Irish pub in Bel Air that I won't recommend.

Now I'm writing this, laying on our plastic-wrapped mattress in the middle of the living room, listening to the roar of the water falling from our roof to the ground below, and wondering if all the pretty flowers that have been peeking out this last week will get pounded to smithereens in the next 24 hours. The mattress is 2 for 3 so far-last night left us both in knots for some reason, so we made some adjustments to the frame and we're giving it another night. Cross your fingers.

Posted on April 2, 2005 12:15 AM | link to this entry

April 1, 2005

April Fools.

Well, I can't say this news is a suprise. Going to jail as a child molester in a wheelchair with MS is going to really, really suck. In other news, I bet these people didn't see this coming. I have all kinds of questions related to the morality of that decision, let alone the right-to-life argument.

In the Could-Be-A-Joke department, the Mobtown Shank reported last night that Atomic Books would be moving to Ellicott City, down the street from us. Which would mean that instead of never making it into Hampden to visit the old location, I'll be shopping at the new one frequently for stuff I can't afford.

Posted on April 1, 2005 10:02 AM | link to this entry