May 31, 2005

Floor Removal

This is the result of four or five hours' work pulling up a layer of linoleum, a layer of luuan, another layer of linoleum, and finally a layer of tarpaper on top of perfectly good Georgia pine.

Posted on May 31, 2005 6:45 PM | link to this entry

Kitchen floor, mid demolition.

Here's the kitchen floor after two layers of crud came up. Note the lovely tarpaper and gunk on the otherwise untouched and remarkably intact hardwood.

Posted on May 31, 2005 4:53 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

Walking In My Sleep.

Well, the weekend went off pretty much as planned, and I am dragging ass today (as expected.)

Friday night was exactly what I needed. We met up with the gang at the bar in Birches (strangely enough, the same bar we shared farewell drinks at six years ago when they left town) and caught up over a delicious dinner in a mostly deserted restaurant. The entire Yuppie population of Canton must have left for the beach or something, because parking spots and empty barstools were easy to find. After dinner, we headed over to Lulu's to meet up with another bunch of friends, and despite all the best intentions, stayed to shut the place down. Frankly, we could have stayed for another two or three hours, as we're friends with the owners, but when the magic number hit 3 we wisely bid goodnight and crawled back to the County for some sleep.

I can't describe how good it felt to sit and talk with old friends again. In the last couple of years, I've noticed that my personal social barometer rises and falls like a pogo stick: I get intensely antisocial for periods of time, and then binge on groups of people. I don;t know why this is, other than the simple fact that I'm busy and lazy and have nobody else to blame but myself. I have to keep up with my own 2005 resolution to stay in contact with everybody as much as possible.

Saturday we decided to attack the floor in the kitchen, and so we began demolition in earnest. The first layer of linoleum came up pretty easily. The Luuan underneath (very thin, very jagged plywood) came up pretty easily too, even though it was installed with a million ring shank flooring nails. The third layer, another coating of linoleum, is a different story. At some point, some idiot decided that using tarpaper as an underlayment for linoleum was a great idea. About half of the tarpaper is so brittle with age that it's relatively easy to remove. The other half is next to impossible to budge. I tried two different kinds of citrus-based gel stripper with disappointing results, and the heat gun just made this smell worse. It's looking like the kitchen floor will not be included in the upcoming refinishing job, unless the contractors have some kind of magical suggestion that I can pull off in a week.

Update: There is no magic bullet. Unless I can clean it up by Monday, we're waiting on the kitchen until we get back from Ireland.

Otherwise, the weekend was full of success. Our vegetables are growing and blooming rapidly—We have tomato plants that are almost four feet high. Jen's perennial bed is growing out of control. Our cherry tree is loaded with almost-ripe fruit. The rose bush under our dining room window is covered in blooms this weekend. Our gladiolus bulbs are six inches high. The peonies in the front yard are blooming and fragrant. Everything seems to be ready for summer.

And I want to go back to sleep.

Posted on May 31, 2005 10:23 AM | link to this entry

May 27, 2005

East Coast vs. West Coast.

This evening we've got some old friends from the Left Coast jetting into town to attend the wedding of a fellow MICA graduate. Having Matt and Soph in town is always an occasion for late nights, excessive drinking, and monumental hangovers, as well as an excellent time. It's a shame that, given our current lifestyle and schedule, it takes a visit from out of town to show us how much fun our humble city can be sometimes. We have reservations at Birches in Canton (aaaah, the old neighbahood) at 7:30, which should give us enough time to get home, get fabulous (when you have peeps from San Francisco in town, you have to represent, so I'll be putting in my gold teefs) and get into Canton to hunt for a parking spot, which will probably be as easy as delivering a baby while water-skiing.

We also have a standing invitation to join our friends Rob and Karean for a party on the river in Annapolis on Sunday, which will have to be considered carefully, given our full schedule. I have plans to rip the floor out of the kitchen that morning, so any festivities will be predicated on our success in there, but I could really deal with an afternoon away from the house with my baby.

Posted on May 27, 2005 2:39 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

Bad Technology.

I had the misfortune of test-driving a wireless Bluetooth mouse this morning, and the experience left me huddled under the desk, twitching. Ok, maybe not that bad. Ever shared a cellphone conversation with somebody on the West Coast where each of you is continually talking over the other person? The lag time is just enough that the ordinary human pause-before-speaking is offset so that you're both starting a sentence at the same time?

That would be a wireless mouse. I'm enough of a tactile being that any lagtime between my hand and the tool I'm working on is absolutely infuriating; Wacom tablets, some new-fangled laser mouses, and old graphics-intensive operating systems (OSX 10.1.X comes to mind) all tend to drive me crazy. Coming from a drawing/illustration/contracting background, I like precise control over the mouse. Anything slower or sloppier just doesn't cut it.

This mouse was slow and imprecise—adjustments of a pixel or two were next to impossible, which is unacceptable for my profession. I'll stick with my Pro Mouse, thank you very much.

Posted on May 27, 2005 11:43 AM | link to this entry

May 26, 2005

Low Notes.

I love classifieds. I'm sort of addicted to them. My wife will tell you that I look at the Pennysaver religiously every Thursday. I scan the DC/Baltimore Craigslist every day for...stuff, stuff I can't afford but sure would like. I had a brief dream of buying my bride a used Miata for an anniversary present (you laugh, but they're pretty cheap) until I remembered that the Ireland trip is still being paid off and a new bed is much more important.

Yesterday, I found an ad for a $700 used 3/4 upright bass. I played upright bass for about ten years and put it down when I went to college, always hoping I'd be able to pick another one up someday. This morning, I went out and took a look at it, hoping for some reason not to want to buy it. I picked it up, felt the familiar balance and weight, and years of practice came back to me. It looked pretty good; it had a nice deep tone. The action was good; the strings felt like they had life, and the fingerboard was pretty smooth. Closer inspection revealed a cracked neck at the top of the body (it looked like it had split clean through, and the owner told me it had been repaired with a steel rod by a luthier in Annapolis) and a bunch of chips around the edges. There were two bows, both German (a good sign) and they felt pretty good, if not bent a little too much.

I'm really having a hard time knowing what to do here; I'd offer $550 for the whole thing, knowing the neck is split, but I'm having a hard time justifying the cost when we have so much other stuff going on. Plus, I have an electric bass that I don't get to play at all, given my current schedule.

I hate classifieds.

Posted on May 26, 2005 11:02 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

May 25, 2005

Personal Tastes, or: Your Music Sucks.

A couple of years ago, I bought some used iMacs from a guy who, in hindsight, probably pinched them off a truck somewhere. The deal was great, and based on some fortuitous timing, I resold one and recouped the cost of all three. Having an extra machine to tinker with was good, and I put it to work as a music server and low-cost backup for my MP3 collection. I wound up bringing it to work and quietly advised some friends to download a copy of iTunes and take advantage of the library streaming feature.

Since that time, our company has grown to the point where there are twice as many employees, and word of my music collection leaked out. At one point, I was organizing a group of fellow music lovers to buy a used server and consolidate our assorted collections into one big library, but as the number of people expanded and the RIAA got more litigious, I decided to back away from the idea. (Dear corporate lawyers: I'm above board, and I don't fileshare.)

These days, an interesting phenomena has occurred: new iTunes libraries are popping up inside the company. Some days there are as many as seven or eight, but usually we average about five. There are some gems in there, like the collection of Lewis Black recordings, or the guy that has seven Charlie Parker albums I haven't heard, or the Metallica back catalog, or those killer Stevie Ray Vaughan bootlegs. But mostly, it's one or two Pink songs, follwed by the entire Final Fantasy catalog (apparently there is one guy who only writes music for these stupid games), and then some band called Finger Eleven. New rule: your band immediately sucks if you have a number in the name. Three Doors Down. Third Eye Blind. Seven Mary Three. Eve 6. Echo7. These names tell me that the major music labels have a computer program that spits out dumb generic names, like the Pentagon's "Operation" namer. Also, Linkin Park just sucks, and no amount of whining by that annoying lead singer guy will convince me otherwise.

I do wish people would name their tracks something other than "TRACK_1", though. Spending some quality time being anal about metadata would be helpful, so I could make an informed choice about listening to a collection of Manga soundtracks or Bible chapters or muddy Evanescence live recordings. (No, no, and definitely not.) I suppose not everybody is as obsessive-compulsive about this as me, but I'm proud of the fact that 98% of the stuff I've got is correctly tagged so that searching provides useable results.

It's funny, though, to see the variations in collections throughout the company. Scrolling through the lists yields the odd REO Speedwagon tune you hoped you'd forgotten, or a block of the Monkees, or a mislabeled Johnny Cash tune, or half the Footloose Soundtrack, or a whole library of hair metal.

Good times.

Posted on May 25, 2005 11:48 AM | link to this entry

Kitchen Floor, Beginning

Here's what the kitchen floor started out as, in May of 2005. (That's right, I tore the floor up in the end of May, and we're just now getting the tarpaper off.)

Posted on May 25, 2005 12:30 AM | link to this entry

May 24, 2005

The Marathon.

I'd better find a way to sleep on my lunch break, because the next three weeks are going to be brutal. We have the following events scheduled for the days leading up to our trip to Ireland:

Having the first floor sanded, which will take four days and require
Removing the floor-standing cabinets, sink, and stove from the kitchen in order to
Pull up two layers of linoleum down to the bare wood beneath.
Oh, and move all our furniture out onto the front porch, don't forget that.
Then, there's travelling by plane to North Carolina the weekend before our overseas trip for the Lockard Reunion, and
Somehow fit life, freelance, and a few beers in between.

We are doomed.

Posted on May 24, 2005 3:09 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

May 23, 2005

Graduate.

This weekend Jen's sister Christi graduated from U of M, and we hosted 4/5 of the family in Catonsville. Saturday Jen spent the day retrieving people from airports while I attempted to mow the front half of the lawn before it grew higher than our roofline. We took everybody out to the Ship's Ahoy (our local dive-bar-turned-respectable-restaurant) for crabs, something everybody wasn't really sure they were in the mood for until the lady dumped two dozen steaming hot 38's on the table. We had a great time sitting around and catching up with everybody over what turned out to be too many beers (our bar tab equalled or exceeded the food bill) and returned to the house to accidentally call Jen's Dad and share our anniversary cake. I have pictures of all of this, but they're stuck on my phone.

Just for the record, the bakers got the cake wrong again for the second time. (They offer a complimentary one-year anniversary cake free of charge so you don't have to keep the dregs of your actual wedding cake in the freezer, which is a nice idea.) We were not amused. Almond, DAMMIT!

Sunday there was much driving. And sitting. And waiting. Speeches were given, asses were numb, and Christi walked across the stage. We hooted and hollered, and took blurry pictures, and then waited through more speeches to leave.

Congratulations, Christi!

Posted on May 23, 2005 12:23 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

May 22, 2005

One Year.

One year ago today, I woke up a bachelor for the last time in my life. One year ago today, I promised to love, honor, and cherish one special woman. One year later, I still can't believe how lucky I got.

Happy anniversary, baby.

Posted on May 22, 2005 10:51 AM | link to this entry

May 19, 2005

OK, It Was Really Good.

Thankfully, there were no geeks outside with lightsabers or stormtrooper uniforms. Episode III was pretty killer, if not a little wooden here and there. Lucas took a step back from the cutesy 'little CGI creatures doing funny shit' tone of the first two. Lots of boom-boom, saber fights, dark portents of doom, and some more ass-kickin' Yoda. I wouldn't be disappointed to buy a ticket to this flick, and I'll see it again in the theater.

[minor spoilers ahead]

5-20: Having a day to reflect on the experience, I'd have to agree with pretty much everything Kottke said. I wanted Yoda to kick the Emperor's ass. I wanted for Anakin to renounce the Dark Side, and for Mace Windu to kill Palpatine, but I knew it wouldn't happen. Some of the images that stuck in my head were ones I didn't think we'd see from Lucas—Anakin's end by the lake of fire, several thrilling lightsaber duels, and the sight of a young Chewbacca keeping an eye on Yoda. Surprisingly, the set-piece space battle that begins the movie was the only one, and it wasn't all that memorable.

Finally, I have to say that there's something intangibly more real about the old-skool plastic model approach to filming spaceships. While it's infinitely easier to create everything in CG, there was something missing from the thousands of little pixellated blobs zipping around in each frame. I think back to the stunning tracking shots of the Millenium Falcon dodging asteroids in Empire, and of the skill and care taken to line up each shot. The cameramen cared about getting it right, because they had to make a ten-foot plastic model look huge and alive. I miss those days, but I have to just let it go.

Posted on May 19, 2005 3:30 PM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

I Wish I Had More To Say.

I wish I had something more exciting to talk about today, but there's not a whole lot to tell. Jen and I are horrifically busy. I was supposed to be getting some work done last night, but I got pinned to the couch by two cats and a viewing of Lost. Our vegetables are growing happily, and I ordered the remaining pipe fittings to build the second half of the irrigation system. Dooce reviewed a chandelier Jen and I were considering for our dining room...not. our phones are wonderful little machines but it seems that Cingular's coverage is spotty (or flip-phones have lousy reception.) This weekend we are hosting Jen's family to attend graduation of one of her sisters from college. We weren't sure where or what time the ceremony is, or if we were going to have tickets to attend (apparently, it's free) or even who was coming in (we're still not sure). So the weekend should be interesting.

Posted on May 19, 2005 10:37 AM | link to this entry

May 18, 2005

Reflecting...

In my pocket, next to my Sam's Club card, $5 bill and assorted reciepts, is a ticket to Episode III at noon tomorrow, paid for by my company, who is letting a good majority of us go see the premiere.

I'm a pretty lucky guy.

Posted on May 18, 2005 1:45 PM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

May 17, 2005

Vegetable garden.

My dear Gramma Dugan used to pronounce it ve-ge-ta-ble. "Eat your ve-ge-ta-bles." Gramma, this one's for you.

Posted on May 17, 2005 4:55 PM | link to this entry

May 16, 2005

Kill The Wabbit.

Jen was geeking out yesterday by sending me text messages on the Batphone: "DAMN BUNNies[sic]."

I spent the better part of Saturday digging out the shade bed (that bed which lies along the driveway and is hidden by three very emaciated bushes) and laying in a frame of 2x12"s to contain fresh dirt. Phase One was actually lugging the material home. Phase Two involved digging the existing plants out of hard-packed clay. (Think of the chain gang scenes in Cool Hand Luke.) Phase Three was constructing and installing the frame. That was definitely enough for one day, and a hearty round of applause must go out to our neighbors M. and S. for upping our suggestion of walking to get ice cream to a full-blown barbecue with beer at their place.

Sunday, Jen ignored all warnings from her Russian physical therapist and planted a paycheck's worth of pretty shade plants into the rich soil we added and watered the whole thing while I toiled at the computer all afternoon long. It looked great Monday morning, when her back felt like the whole Russian army had marched across her shoulderblades.

Apparently, though, this fluffy patron and her child think we have opened up a salad bar for their convenience. Now, I like bunnies. They're cute, and they eat lettuce and hang out in the glass cage at the pet store and poop little round pellets, like styrofoam peanuts. But when they start chowing down on my woman's plants like it's bluehair hour at the smorgasboard, I have some homicidal (bunnycidal) thoughts. We're going to have to look into some anti-bunny measures (punji pits? guard dogs? mines?) so as to keep our garden green.

Posted on May 16, 2005 4:01 PM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

Rockstar One to Rockstar Two.

Friday night, Jen and I walked out of the Cingular store in the Columbia mall with two shiny new cellphones. To give you a brief recap: My phone, a five-year-old Motorola, had about fifteen minutes of talk time left on its $25 crap-ass batteries, which meant I had to carry the power cord with me wherever I went. Friday morning, I was in the middle of an important call on my way to work. As I pulled off the exit near my office, the annoying BEEP of the "batteries are dying" alert started punctuating the conversation at one-minute intervals. I found myself running through the parking lot, up three flights of stairs, and to my desk to plug the damn thing in just as the signal was fading....luckily, I made it. This phone features a useless black LED screen, a UI one step above DOS, and a busted earphone jack (don't ask me...I don't know). Jen's phone, the standard free Nokia they offered four years ago, was several steps above my phone, but she was averaging about twenty minutes of talk time before it died, which meant we had to use our phones strategically.

After about five minutes of browsing the various models, we decided on the 551, as it had Bluetooth for the cheapest price. The guy behind the counter rang us out, and we returned home to spend the rest of Friday evening drinking beer and playing with our phones (oh, how romantic.) We sent pictures to each other. We called each other. We programmed ourselves in as Rockstar One and Rockstar Two. We quickly learned that the phones have a vibrate function, a personal voice note function, a speakerphone, and about seventy-five other things we haven't gotten to yet. Apparently, with the media plan Cingular offers, you can browse the internets and send AIM messages on the teeny keypad to your other geek friends. Me, I'll just be happy when my Powerbook talks to my phone automatically to update my contact list, and I don't have to run the Boston Marathon to make it to the next electrical outlet.

I still have to figure out how to turn off the hateful, irritating default ringtone, though.

Posted on May 16, 2005 11:10 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

May 12, 2005

Mystery E's.

I don't think I've talked too much here or elsewhere about my Dad's reposession agency. Back in 1984, my Dad decided to leave the rat race and purchase his own business. After a bunch of research, he found the most unlikely of ventures in the most unlikely of places: an established reposession agency based in a sleepy town north of New York City. I'll have to go into some of the stories of culture shock at a different time, but this was a huge leap of faith for the whole family. We moved into a prewar house on the side of a mountain, surrounded by forest, and facing a fenced impound lot. When I say fenced, I mean chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and floodlights. The house was decent, if you count the inground pool, jacuzzi, and huge living room; it sucked for me because I lived in a tiny unheated room in the middle of nowhere with no car.

Having no car wasn't an issue until I turned sixteen, because I wasn't driving anyplace anyway. The bus sucked ass, but I knew my parents were too busy to be carting me all over creation. Besides, I got to drive cars all the time. I had a built-in job helping the yardman start, move, release, and fix the cars in the lot. How many people do you know who were driving Porsches at fifteen? I could parallel park a standard-shift car two years before the driving test. (I got pretty good at picking car locks, too, but that's another story.) Besides working for my Dad, blowing shit up and exploring the local woods were pretty much all I did in the 9th grade.

By the 10th grade, though, life was getting pretty hellish. The local asshats were making bus rides a nightmare (it's difficult to stand up to four guys who each outweigh you by 100lbs) and I was getting involved in school activities which meant I was staying after a lot.

Now, my best friend S. was taking a driving course at the Boces which meant he didn't need a learning permit after taking the test like all the rest of us pukes. He also came from a large family which demanded a part-time chauffeur, something that was difficult for his parents, who worked all the time. They decided that he could help out and be the chauffeur, so they bought him a car. Not just any car, but a used 1970-something Cadillac Coupe De Ville. It was the ugliest car on the road, which is probably why it was affordable. It was also huge. Each door weighed about 500 pounds. The rear bench seat was half a mile wide, upholstered in a lovely shade of blue vinyl. (The car had once been baby blue, but someone had painted it rattle-can gray in the early eighties, and the paint cracked, so it looked like cat puke on a blue rug.)

Now, bear with me here. We spent a lot of summer days at the Dugan house, because of the pool. We also had a fully-stocked garage with lots of outlandish and exotic tools. One day S. came by with the Caddy and asked if I could help him replace the original AM radio with a new cassette deck. No problem, I said. This shouldn't take more than an hour or two, and then we can swim for a while. We grabbed some pliers and screwdrivers, turned on the radio in the garage, and got to work taking apart the dashboard of his car.

Three hours later, cursing, sweating, and covered in twenty-year-old dust, we still hadn't budged the thing. We had disassembled half the dashboard, laid it all out in neat sections on the driveway, and still couldn't figure out how the engineers in Detroit had designed this car. It sounds like we were both idiots as far as mechanical engineers are concerned, but don't let this story fool you: I had been taking apart and fixing things like radios, engines, and tools for years. S. also had natural skill in taking stuff apart—we weren't just a pair of monkeys banging on suitcases out there.

For awhile it looked like we were going to have to remove the windshield to get at the back of the radio (I'm not kidding here. There was a flap of metal that curved up and over the back of the glass and down below the back of the thing) but we realized that there was another way. After taking apart most of the AC ducting under the dash, we had enough room to get at it, or at least, see the bottom of it, and we realized we had a problem: the damn thing was huge. I mean, the size of a toaster oven huge. The hole we had was about half the size, and there was no real evident way how to get it out of there.

At this point, S. had had enough of this shit, and just wanted to get the damn thing out of the car. We switched from finesse to brute strength, trading screwdrivers for chisels and hammers. Fifteen minutes later, we had a big enough hole carved out of non load-bearing metal to yank the bottom of the radio down toward the floorboards. When it finally came out, in a cloud of dust and old cigarette butts, we breathed a sigh of relief. It was then that we realized just what a bastard this thing was: it weighed about fifteen pounds, and it looked like a piece of discarded Soviet military equipment. But the corker was that it had one thick wire hanging off the back, which lead to a complicated, ancient plastic harness with no diagram. This meant bad news. This meant there would be no new radio in the Cadillac.

This radio had to die.

But how to do it? How to properly dispose of this foul, ancient, cursed beast?

It turned out that the answer was right over our heads.

At some point, when my mother's back was obviously turned, S. and I found that we could easily climb onto the roof of the garage. From there, it was a simple matter of time before we started jumping from the roof of the garage, over four feet of solid concrete, and into the deep end of the pool. (The garage was separated from the house by the pool, and was built to withstand hurricanes. It had a two-story peak and a slope gentle enough to scale.) In a good clip, it was a one-minute circuit around the back of the garage, onto the roof, and into the water. We decided we would use this ninja skill for purposes of evil. S. backed the Cadillac up twenty feet (after filling the trunk with the assorted debris from the dashboard-half of it would remain there until the car was officially retired) and we climbed onto the roof of the garage and met at the peak. S. said a few words, which have now been lost to the ages, and lofted the radio up into the afternoon sunshine.

It came down onto the pavement with a dull thud, bounced, and came to a stop. There was no evident damage. I climbed down to retrieve it, handed it back up to him, and he threw it again. This cycle repeated at least five or six times, until one of the corners began to give way. Then, it seemed like the thing just flew apart. In a cloud of electrical components, metal, and plastic, the radio exploded, and we cheered heartily at the death of the beast.

Before retiring to the pool, we examined the lump of metal that had once been a radio. Tubes and wires stuck out the side, and little sheets of metal fell from the back plate. We realized we were standing in a circle of these things, and I bent to pick one up. It was flat, and shaped like an uppercase "E". There were hundreds of them on the ground. It took us another half an hour to police all of the damn things up.

S. finally did put his stereo in that Caddy, hanging out of the cavernous hole left by the Beast, and it stayed with the car until its retirement. We never did figure out what the 'E's were for, but when I take the Jeep radio, which has begun to fail on me more and more, and throw it off the roof of our house onto the pavement, I'm going to be looking for those goddamn 'E's.

Posted on May 12, 2005 6:07 PM | link to this entry | Comments (5)

May 11, 2005

Growth.

This morning I made myself late to work. I threw my stuff in the Jeep, kissed my wife goodbye, and walked around the back of the house to water our fledgling vegetable garden. Along the way, I had to replant several gladiola bulbs in their pots, due to our local squirrels digging for treasure, and carry the pots into the greenhouse for safekeeping. The vegetables all look healthy and good so far. Two eggplants have recovered from their move—I thought I was going to lose one for a day or so, but it perked right back up yesterday. The tomatoes all look healthy and happy. (Strangely, one variety recommends "damp soil" and the other asks for "daily watering".) The red and green peppers are both looking strong.

Oddly enough, though, the thing that makes me happiest is that the cucumbers, which I planted from seed, are germinating well. I use a watering can to reach the back of the greenhouse, and the first slug of water washed the soil off the top of one of the hills I made. Tucked in together were five or six seeds, all sprouting sucessfully. I covered them back up and watered the rest of the plot, thinking about home-grown tomato and cucumber salad for dinner in August.

Next up is to get another plastic tub like the one I have (I'm using one of those under-the-bed storage containers drilled with drainage holes) and plant my pole beans.

* * *

In other geek news, I converted one of the interior pages on my main site to a mixture of about 75% CSS and 25% old-skool table-based layout. This has been something that's brewing for a long time, and I'm pretty happy with the results. When all is said and done, the page size will have decreased by about half, the style sheets will be consolidated, and the information will be updated (I only go up to 2003 on the design page—har har) Unfortunately it blows up in IE6. There's also an issue with Mozilla and my popup script that I haven't deciphered yet, and some other niggling issues to be addressed. But the heavy lifting has been done, thank God.

Posted on May 11, 2005 11:40 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

May 10, 2005

The Great Leap Forward.

The other day, I checked my account balance online only to find the same seventeen dollars that was present the day before. We're supposed to get this righteous tax refund check, you see, and then we're going to turn around and give that money to a company with great big sanding machines, and they're going to do some sanding-fu on our floors and then stain them and finally polyurethane, and we'll all be happy. Unfortunately, yesterday the Gubmint decided to deposit the money into Jen's account, so I was waiting in vain.

Regardless, the money has arrived, and if we can manage not to blow anything up or spend it on anything stupid, the flooring company is going to come out and make our house pretty.

Which means Project Bedroom is on indefinite hold and Project Remove Kitchen Linoleum has moved to the head of the schedule (but not before Operation Restore Shade Garden has been sucessfully completed this weekend.)

Words cannot describe how excited Jen and I are for this.

Posted on May 10, 2005 5:13 PM | link to this entry

May 9, 2005

Cosmopolitan Hillbillies.

So this weekend, I was that guy on the beltway doing 45mph, hazards flashing, with a mattress billowing off the roof like a sail, trying to get it from Point A to Point B. Point B, for us, was IKEA, a full 30 miles or so away from our front porch—Point A. We decided a few weeks ago that the mattress was not for us, and moved it out there for eventual removal. Our 45-day window was rapidly approaching, and Saturday was the first weekend without rain since the beginning of April, so we lashed it to the roof of the Jeep, said a prayer, and set out for the Great Swedish Home Furnishing Wonderland.

Our bondage skills served us well until about halfway, at which point the front of the mattress had lifted six inches off the top of the roof rack and threatened to achieve liftoff. (This was after several hundred cars had passed us, passengers staring with Great Googly-Moogly Eyes at the pterodactyl strapped to our heads.) We pulled over, cinched that mutha down TIGHT, and limped to the IKEA parking lot, holding our breath.

I had been expecting problems trying to return the mattress (they have a no-returns-on-bedding policy, which is code for "no human soil") as well as the transport problems, but the guy at the counter didn't blink an eye, counting off the full purchase price in cash and sending me on my way in less than two minutes.

*WHEW*. I don't know what I'm more relieved about—getting our money back, or simply getting the damn thing there without causing a major traffic accident.

This weekend was also the Maryland Film Festival, a home-brewed Mobtown version of Sundance. Every year they put up flyers and make announcements and we say we're going to go be Supporters Of The Arts and we never do. Our good friend Sara has been volunteering at the festival for at least the last couple of years, and inviting us to come along with her; this year Jen decided she was actually doing it.

One of this year's features that caught her eye was a documentary called We Are Arabbers. Arabbers are the fellows who lead a horse-drawn cart around the streets of Baltimore, filled with fresh produce, and sell door to door. At one time there used to be hundreds of them, but in recent years their ranks have dwindled to the single digits. (When I lived on Lakewood Avenue, there was an arabber who would walk our street and yell some kind of unintelligible song about what was on the cart. Because I usually don't carry cash, I was always unable to buy anything, and I felt bad about that. The visits were infrequent and unpredictable, and apart from one experience, I wasn't able to take advantage of it.) Aging, a city government that values chain restaurants over its blue-collar history, and pressure from big-box grocery stores have all contributed to the slow demise of the occupation.

The documentary, started sometime seven years ago, is a fascinating look into the history and current state of arabbing (pronounced A-rabbing) through interviews with the remaining men who worked the streets. It's a fascinating story, and part from some sound and picture quality issues, an excellent film.

After the movie, Sara joined us for some tapas and a cocktail next door. She was leaving to see another film at 7, so we decided to head up the street to the lounge at the Brewer's Art and have another cocktail on one of the couches. After our first round, when we had put our feet up on the table, smooshed back into the couch, and gotten comfortable by ourselves, we were approached by a well-dressed woman roughly ten years older than us, who asked if we had just begun dating. We held up our wedding rings with puzzled looks. She apologized and asked if she could have the other three people in her group join us on the other empty chairs around the table, explaining that she didn't want to spoil the quiet mood for us if we were just getting to know one another. We were a little taken aback but also flattered that she bothered to ask, and we offered the extra seats.

It turned out they were two older couples (I'd guess mid-40's and mid-50's), well dressed, and obviously looking to unwind a little bit. The six of us easily struck up conversations, and we sat through three more rounds talking about 'adult' stuff like favorite restaurants and wine. It turned out they were couples related by marriage, and they were obviously of a social class several floors higher than our own—I would guess either couple could have written a check for our entire net worth without blinking an eye. The fact that we own a house in Catonsville was in our favor, though; luckily, they don't know how much of a dump it is. Still, they all had a certain Southern graciousness that made the evening interesting and fun—we were invited for cocktails and dessert with them over at the Owl Bar, but had to torpedo that plan when their staff told us the kitchen was closed.

Returning to Catonsville, we realized we were very hungry, so we made a 1AM detour to the Double T Diner, joining the after-prom crowd for breakfast. It reminded me of the days in high school when the Olympic Diner was the only thing in my town to do after midnight; we'd jam six people in a booth and drink coffee until we ran out of money, watching people we knew come and go.

All in all, it was an invigorating, cosmopolitan evening—something Jen and I have been sorely missing in the last six months, and something I'd like to get into the habit of doing more often.

* * *

Yesterday, after dealing with the hangover (you drink vodka tonics for six hours straight and see how your head feels the next morning) I was consumed with yardwork: planting our vegetables and setting up the tables for optimum irrigation (four tomato plants plus three seedlings, two eggplant, two red peppers, two green peppers, and a tray of cucumber I'm hoping to start from seed), nuking the poison ivy, mowing, seeding two bald patches on the lawn, finishing the predrilling in the upstairs bedroom, and starting an illustration for a friend.

Posted on May 9, 2005 9:45 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

May 6, 2005

Lousy Friday.

Don't bother coming to me for sunshine and flowers today. Have a good weekend.

Posted on May 6, 2005 2:22 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

May 5, 2005

Boring Thursday.

Not much to report today, just basic boring stuff. Lots of research last night on house stuff; new quality windows for the dining room will cost us upwards of $500 each. Two Energy Star-rated air conditioners for the upstairs will cost around $300 (Frigidaire 8000BTU models with remotes.) Switching out the first irrigation system in the greenhouse for a version with misting heads reveals a fundamental truth: More misting heads are required, with a greater coverage area (I got three 1GPH heads to play with, and they don't cover enough area.) A minor setback. Also, my plan for a rain barrel gravity-feeding the irrigation system will probably not provide enough pressure to get water through the misting heads, which means I'm back to tiny, spread-pattern holes drilled in the pipe..

Sorry, but that's all I got, kids.

Posted on May 5, 2005 11:39 AM | link to this entry

May 4, 2005

Have you seen my baseball?

The O's game last night was a lot of fun. J and M, the kind folks who scored us the tickets, were cool enough to handle driving duties, which meant all we had to do was show up. Being with the two of them is kind of like hanging out with a 20-year-old vaudeville act. They are constantly on, and constantly riffing off of each other, which makes keeping up with them a challenge.

The game was good, if not totally uninteresting—excellent defensive baseball and stellar pitching, up until the point Toronto was able to get a man on third and a decent sacrifice bunt to bring him home. Then Baltimore went through two relief pitchers and made a valiant attempt to even up the score, with no results.

Clearly, the best part about seeing baseball live is the experience. We had excellent seats up the first-base line, directly in foul ball territory (and were not disappointed: three near-misses, the closest of which was caught by a woman sitting directly behind Jen) and facing Sammy Sosa, who was about 100ft. away. As we sat down, we were treated to the sight of a young fan vomiting all over the seat in front of him, watched intently by his parents, who did nothing to direct the splash away from the folks in front of them. Later, they bought him nachos and soda. I'll have to remember this excellent strategy when we have children.

Back in the day at Camden Yards, there used to be a vendor who sold Italian Ice with this peculiar (but memorable) sales chant:

"Oyyycy Oyyyce...
Lemon Chill."

He would sort of march up the stairs with two cups held out in front of him, yelling his sales chant in a hoarse voice that cut through the chatter, stomping his feet in time with the syllables.

"Oyyycy Oyyyce"
*stamp* *stamp*
"Lemon Chill."
*stamp* *stamp*

He's not there anymore, but we were treated to Clancy, the Bud Light Man, who just cut through all the bullshit and yelled, "Hey, BUD LIGHT HERE. CLANCY has your BUD LIGHT HERE." Dude worked hard for the money, and we bought a round of beers from him, which incidentally are now served in brown plastic bottles that look like glass but don't hurt when they bounce off your forehead. Then we had the hot chocolate man come down and tempt us with his wares: "Howwwt KEW-keww, gityer hoowwt kew-keww here." (This is a Baltimore accent, the one that morphs Maryland into Merlin, ambulance into AM-be-lamps and police into PO-leece.) Strangely, the kew-keww is served in waxed paper cups, which seems to promote heat-related injury and lawsuits—ironic, considering the team owner built his empire on asbestos litigation fees.

It wasn't as cold as we feared it might be, either, which was a relief. I packed gloves, a hat and a scarf, thinking the temperature would drop precipitously, but didn't need to bother worrying. The guy in the purple wifebeater on line for beer in front of me made me feel stupid for wearing a coat, but he did have 200 lbs. and four beers on me at that point.

We wrapped the evening up with a cocktail at Matthew's down the street, said our thank-you's and crashed out. Hopefully, there will be more tickets in our future!

Posted on May 4, 2005 10:20 AM | link to this entry

May 3, 2005

Baseball, bitches!

One of the many perks of being married to a print designer are the gifts from print reps that bloom in springtime. Every April, the salespeople start sniffing around for that beginning-of-calendar-year business and waving tickets around like party favors. I've often thought that 3/4 of the attendance at Camden Yards was due to Baltimore and D.C. printing shops wooing customers, because it seems like everybody around me in the stands is in a suit, on a cellphone, or buying an Italian Ice for the boss. Not that I'm complaining, however, because the only way to enjoy baseball (besides when it's on an AM tube radio) is in person, with a stadium dog in your hand and a beer on its way over from the vendor in the aisle. Now, I can't remember the last time I was able to see a game downtown—tickets have been hard to come by the past couple of years—but it looks like tonight we break the slump to see dem O's play Toronto. Unfortunately, it's supposed to be about 50°, so we need to dress warm and shiver out the cold. But I don't care!

Posted on May 3, 2005 10:21 AM | link to this entry

May 2, 2005

Serendipity Is.

Watching (by accident) a special on PBS about the decision to drop the atomic bomb, featuring footage of a big shiny silver plane I stood next to yesterday.

Sitting in traffic this morning for an hour, watching a black van come hurtling past me in the breakdown lane, and thinking evil thoughts about the driver until I noticed the flashing lights in the rear windows and that peculiar stance that unmarked police vehicles have. Half an hour later, I passed this same van, still in the breakdown lane, as two heavily armed (!?!) U.S. marshals attempted to fix a
flat tire.

Sitting at my desk, working, and turning to see Penn, the Incarcerated One, sitting next to Teller, (who was just visiting) and quietly licking the top of his head. My heart sort of dropped a few feet. A few minutes later, they were rolling around the floor, locked in battle, pulling tufts of hair from one another.

Finding a client's archived site on my main hard drive, in the wrong folder, and being able to restore their entire live site after hosting difficulties. (The same thing happened to me last year.)

Posted on May 2, 2005 11:38 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

Sin, Thai food, a carpet, some planes, and a headache

We saw Sin City friday night, finally. As it worked out, we opted for the later show and had a delicious Thai dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, followed by some cappucino and dessert. The movie was everything it was billed as: bloody, pummelling, fast-paced noir. Frank Miller, while having some serious issues to work out, still writes like a demon on speed.

Saturday, motivation was at an all-time low due to excessive rain. We did some shopping, found a carpet on sale at Pier One for 40% off (our collection of floor coverings ranges from the ratty to the threadbare) and generally did nothing else worth mentioning.

Sunday we had plans to hit the Udvar-Hazy museum in DC to look at the Smithsonian's collection of planes. Jen's Dad was driving up to the house to meet us, which meant we had to run around chasing hairballs and dirty laundry for a few hours to straighten up the joint. Before we left, we got an impromptu visit from the Cauzzis, who were on their way home from the airport after dropping off some fambly. Mama looks great and is recovering well. After a quick breakfast and tour of the garden, we were on our way. Jen's father told us stories of visiting the old Suitland facility years ago; he befriended Paul Garber, who used to let him walk around and see the collection by himself. When we stood on the catwalk over the shiny Enola Gay, he told us about climbing into the pilot's seat when it was stored on blocks in the warehouse and staring out through the dusty windows. It was a treat to walk the hangar with him and listen to the stories of his barnstorming days in Florida when he was towing gliders with an 85-hp. Piper Cub and his Navy training days in a yellow Stearman. The collection is impressive and immense, and they haven't even finished filling the hangar yet.

I had ideas of coming home and continuing work on the bedroom electrical, but it got sidelined by the onset of a migraine headache, which shot the whole rest of the evening. Hopefully this week, if life doesn't get in the way, I can finish the wiring and be done with it once and for all.

Posted on May 2, 2005 12:14 PM | link to this entry

Enola Gay

Jen, her father and I visited the Udvar-Hazy museum this weekend to look at the planes. It's absolutely incredible. The planes they have are just beautiful, and they've done a ton of work to restore everything on display. I was kind of hoping they'd let us closer to the exhibits, but considering most of them are the only ones left in existence, I'm happy they're taking good care of them all.