Baby hand-shaped soap.

Ward off pig-death with soaps shaped like baby-hands. Genius!

Pretty Flowers, Runny Nose.

Alas, I forgot to take my Claritin this morning. Yesterday I was about 80% OK with the combination of rain and pharmaceuticals, but today I am at about 50% and tired of this throaty Brenda Vaccaro voice. I will have to walk over to the local pharmacy to see how much they gouge inner-city denizens for allergy medication depending on how many tissues I go through in the next two hours.

First Two Tomatoes.

This is the opening shot in what I hope will be a successful battle to make our greenhouse productive and useful. I’ve got a source for a temperature-controlled fan to add air circulation ( and hopefully pollination) throughout; the plan is to add more tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers and radishes.

Working From Home.

“…one of downtown Baltimore’s main thoroughfares is filled with water after a water main burst just before 6:30 a.m. Tuesday. The break closed Lombard Streets from President to Gay streets, crippling rush-hour traffic, closing buildings, parking garages and the National Aquarium in Baltimore.”

text from last night

Texts from last night. Random sampling:
(202): Dude, I woke up at my ex’s house. I am spooning her half naked roommate. There is a pizza on my shoulder. I need you to come pick me up.

Oh, Hai. I’m Your Allergies, Kicking Your Ass.

Among the more annoying symptoms of increasing age, my ability to recover from short excursions with alcohol had to be my least favorite until this weekend. It’s been a slow progression from four beers to three beers to two that used to give me a righteous headache in the morning, but now I can have one stinkin’ Corona on a Friday night and wake up feeling like there’s a midget swinging a hammer at my skull on Saturday morning. What gives? Corona is just beer-flavored water, for Christ’s sake. What have I done to deserve this?

Of course, this could be a symptom of the passive-aggressive weather patterns we’ve been living through the past couple of months; every time we have a new front blow through, it feels like I’ve had cement poured into my sinus cavities, and this phenomena has only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. So it should come as no surprise, then, that the sudden spike in temperature kickstarted pollen production around our house, which caused my nasal cavities to start leaking snot at prodigious and embarrassing levels—all weekend long.

It didn’t used to be this way. I never had allergies as a kid (not that I can remember, anyway) and last year’s pollen dump didn’t affect me as badly as it has this year; in fact, I remember shoveling green pollen off the cars last year by the bagful and not blinking an eye. So what gives? Has the pollen mixed with a new and more potent brew of toxins and swine flu, or has my body decided 38 is the year to finally see if we can transform into a flesh-covered snot monster?

Whatever the case, I mowed the lawn for the first time since last September (coincidence? I THINK NOT), trimmed the sidewalks, watered two hedge plants (moved from the backyard last weekend to fill a huge dead spot), and attempted to repair our back gutter, which has sagged and leaked for the last two years. We also took the girl on an epic journey to find organic starter vegetables but were thwarted by poor selection and the commercial dominance of Miracle-Gro. Having the window in the Jeep fixed could not have come at a better time, though, because Her Highness spent most of the day in a onesie and still wore a rosy pink glow, even though I put the air conditioners in the windows and chilled her cave to a comfortable 72°.

Plans are afoot to purchase a fan for the greenhouse, and I will have tomatoes planted within the week, but finding other organics to grow indoors remains a problem. In the meantime, I will continue to blow my nose and fill wastebaskets and curse all of the pretty trees and shrubs and flowers that herald the arrival of springtime in Baltimore.

Saturn was Supposed To Save GM

Saturn was Supposed To Save GM. People wonder why Detroit is doomed? And, there’s an International Harvester link:
“…a new power was emerging at UAW headquarters in Detroit. Stephen P. Yokich… had first made his mark at the union by leading a lengthy 1979 strike against International Harvester, from which the company never fully recovered.”

Morning Face.

It’s Bigger In Real Life

More information here.

Signs.

Depending on who you ask, I may have had something to do with the new sign at the corner of 33rd and 7th Avenue in New York City. But that’s about all I can say here.

Little Hand

D.I.Y., or, F You, Chrysler.

Sunday afternoon I finally got around to tearing our broken Jeep Cherokee window regulator down and attempting to repair it using the kit I bought online. Before destroying the parts I had, I checked last week with a friend in the car biz who got me the wholesale price on an OEM replacement from Chrysler: $250, give or take. Trying to fix what I had for 1/5 that cost still seemed very reasonable to me, so under the knife my parts went.

The instructions provided were very clear and detailed, and I had little trouble adapting them from a 4-door model to our 2-door. After first trying to drill out rivets, I busted out the angle grinder and ground the tops off—and I have to wonder: WHERE HAS THIS MAGICAL TOOL BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE? That was the best $30 I’ve spent at Harbor Freight.

Once I had all the parts back together (and got the worm screw back on track after the guy at Mr. Tire ran the window down all the way) I went outside and tore the door down for hopefully the last time. After fooling around with the internal arrangement for a few minutes (and with the help of my lovely bride, who held the window up), I had the window bolted to the regulator, the regulator bolted to the door, and the switch attached to the motor. With fingers crossed, we put the key in the ignition and LO, THERE WAS POWER.

And just in the nick of time. We did some minor errands on Saturday—if you call hauling and tilling 10.5 cubic yards of manure minor—and the Jeep got very hot in the sunlight. Having one working window in a black greenhouse is a recipe for heatstroke; I’d hate to have Finn back there for any length of time without airflow.

I’d like to thank Stieger Performance, the folks who put the kit together and made it available, for their excellent service and a top-notch product. I’d like to thank my wife for waiting over a year for me to give up on finding a junkyard replacement, and dealing with limited airflow during her entire pregnancy. Finally, I’d like to extend a tall middle finger to the Chrysler Corporation, for their cheaply engineered plastic componentry, and for a confounding and inexplicable mixture of metric and standard hardware in the same vehicle.

Build-As-You-Grow Potato Bin

Build-As-You-Grow Potato Bins. Ooooh, I sense a very simple and inexpensive project coming on…

New Music

I’m currently listening to the new Silversun Pickups album, which has been (rightly) compared to Gish-era Smashing Pumpkins. The lead singer’s voice is almost as annoying, and the hooks aren’t quite as powerful, but overall it’s nice to have some new guitar rock with melodic bass. Also, the latest Coldplay album isn’t bad, and the last Bad Brains album is pretty good, too.

Rock and a Hard Place.

One of the drawbacks to having multiple projects going at any one time is trying to remember where certain tools got left. Is it in the basement by the toolbench? Or is it out on the side porch with the insulation? Did I leave it out in the garage with the Scout? My screwgun is still AWOL and presumed dead, and I have an entire toolcaddy that disappeared sometime last month with my 1/2 metric sockets.

Monday night, after bathing the wee one and tucking her into bed with Ox and Teddy, I spent a half hour gathering tools from four different locations around the grounds of the Lockardugan estate and prepared to do battle with the kitchen sink. Our kitchen is fabulous, and it’s been five years of bliss since the renovation, but there’s one thing that didn’t get done right which is beginning to pose a problem: Our sink. We bought an undermount double sink to go with our granite countertops, and at first blush we loved everything about it. But after a month or two, we noticed it was beginning to sag downwards from the stone, to the point where the silicone seal was peeling apart. I looked underneath and found that the installer had used two pieces of scrapwood on either side of the lip to tack it in place, a decidedly unprofessional solution to a potentially disastrous problem. (Both sinks full of water, plus the weight of the disposal, equals 100 lbs. or more).

I started propping the metal lip from underneath with lengths of wood cut to fit, but I soon got nervous about putting pressure on the weakest point of the granite slab (the sink cutout), so I took all of that stuff out. Instead, I carved all of the old silicone out—the stuff that’s separating and turning funky colors—and replaced it with new mold-resistant silicone. After five years, it’s doubtful I’ll get any love from the company who installed the counter, but I’m going to call and pitch a fit anyway just to see what happens.

(FYI, the proper method of undermount sink installation involves epoxy-bonding metal clips to the underside of the granite which hold the sink in place).

Smoooooch.

Finn had a great Easter with the family this weekend, and even got to meet Grandpa! More details to follow.

Beer and Light Wines.

We have a new dryer cooling its heels (or, warming our socks) in the basement as of 8:45 this morning, courtesy of Sears. The old Kenmore unit got hauled away, which means the last of our legacy appliances is now gone, and hopefully this one will last longer than the GE washer we bought at Sam’s Club when we first moved in.

Dragging.

Armed with my third cup of coffee, I attempt to stave off apathy, myopia, and a lack of inspiration.

Pretty Girl

The Year of Dying Appliances.

There are a few things to look out for when trying to identify the approximate age of an appliance. Unfortunate color palettes, faux woodgrain, ancient, outdated couplings, ungrounded, fabric-wrapped wiring, and cast iron are all usually pretty good indicators of impending failure and borrowed time. I’ve got another one to add to the list: anything that proudly trumpets “Solid State” across the front faceplate. Like our dryer, for example. “Solid state” usually means transistors; the new big thing back in, oh, 1970 or so. It makes me wonder if they actually used vacuum tubes in all the models previous to that era? We knew the dryer had one foot in the grave the minute we looked at the house; we knew that every day it continued to dry our socks and not explode into a lint-fueled inferno was another gift from the heavens. I guess it kind of makes sense, then, that only a month or so after our hot water heater blew up, the heating element in the dryer would finally give out. So I’ve got to do some quick research and score us a dryer in the next three days so we can get our clothes washed before hitting the road for Easter.

I hit some consignment stores a week ago or so and scored a bouncy seat for Finn, who should probably be practicing her balance a bit more.