Category: Personal

Painting

I picked up the paint for the living room this week and spent all of this afternoon preparing to paint, painting and cleaning up from painting. Painting is awful. I think I probably spent as much time moving furniture, cleaning walls, wrangling tape and drop cloths, and cleaning paint covered implements as I did actually painting. I still have the section to do where the breakfast table is but I decided I was tired of painting and had other things that needed doing anyway. I’ll probably finish up next weekend. In the mean time I have a couple of pictures.

I have wanted a new TV for a long time. The TV I currently own is a fairly old CRT that I have had since I was in college. It is, in fact, old enough that it does not have an s-video connector and we have been through at least two other connector standards since the s-video was hip and with it. Samsung has started selling an LED backlit LCD television and I think I am going to buy one. I’d like one of the 55″ 8 Series but they’re apparently a little hard to come by right now and they’re a bit spendy as well. And, of course, you can’t just get the TV. I’d want a blu-ray player (probably a PS3) and a good surge suppressor to protect it since the only time we get rain here anymore it comes in the form of giant ice balls with lightning coursing through them. I have one complaint about the TV. It has four HDMI inputs but only a D-sub connector for computers, no DVI. That is silly. I realize that there are DVI-HDMI adaptors out there and that I could just get a video card that outputs HDMI but it’s just kinda dumb is all. I mean, considering how much the TV costs I don’t think it would have killed them to throw the extra connector on. Plus, who the hell still uses D-sub? Even DVI is getting a little long in the tooth.

No word on the chairs yet. It’s only been a week though so that’s ok. Since I’m probably going to have to take a half day from work to wait for the delivery people anyway maybe once I know when they’re coming in I could arrange to have a television delivered on the same day. How self-indulgent would that be?

Anyway, TV GOES HERE:

Birthday chairs

I ordered my chairs today. My sofa is a beautiful and unique snowflake. The design is no longer made, the upholstery (sadie driftwood) is no longer made, and the finish code for the wood bits is a code which is not used anymore. That said, I ended up getting two of the Ava chairs in “plaza – java” which is a brown stitched in a repeating concentric square pattern. I also decided on the color I’m going to paint the two walls in the living room: Sherwin Williams’ “Yearling”. I’ll need to get a gallon of that one day this week. They open at 7:00am and close at 6:00pm so it might even be preferable to stop in on the way to work instead of trying to leave early and fight traffic to get out to the nearest one.

The chairs are supposed to be ready in six to eight weeks which would put them here around my birthday. Happy birthday to me. Maybe if I’m really good Santa will bring me some toys for the Christmas in September.

Ava

I have a sofa called Ava. I bought this sofa from Storehouse furniture back before they imploded but I did not buy the chairs that went with it because money doesn’t grow on trees. I still have the paperwork and upholstery sample somewhere in the house from the sofa but I don’t remember where it is. Today I discovered that the company which made the Ava sofa, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams is still around and making furniture. They don’t seem to make the sofa anymore but they still make the chairs.

Ava chair
Ava chair

They also make all kinds of other furniture including a pretty fantastic looking leather wingback chair called Gustave. I think that would be excellent for the study when I finish the shelves. I’m not sure a white leather chair would wear well but it would look pretty good in the room with the white bookshelves. I’m sure they’d be happy to put whatever color of cow on it I asked them to for a modest fee but the white struck me when I saw it.

Gustave chair
Gustave chair

I caught myself thinking it might be worth the trip down to Houston to go to the actual MG+BW store but then I remembered that Houston is actually terrible and that I have resolved to not drive there ever again unless forced to by cruel fate. The local Loft store carries some of the MG+BW furniture but not the chair. I believe they can order them though and they would almost certainly have the upholstery catalog and as a bonus I only have to drive into town and not into Hell.

Coming out of retirement

I’ve been doing a short term contract for a company that several of my friends work for downtown which finished up today. It appears I did a good job because they offered to bring me on board full time and I accepted. It’s an interesting company and everyone has been very nice and welcoming. I also feel like I will be able to do some good there and it’s great to feel useful to the world again. It will also be nice to have a steady income again. Now I just need to figure out how to get four extra hours stuck into the day and I can start making some headway on some personal stuff that I had put on hold. Still need to finish the bookshelves. This weekend should be a good chance to get some of that done. That’s about it.

For shame

The old blog-o-thinger has been down for a week while I unhaX0red it. The picture gallery is still not functional (curse you stupid gallery software) but the wordpress is all updated now so I figured it would be ok to put it all back online. Not too much to say other than that. The garden has been suffering in the post-hail, apocalyptic heat weather. One of the hills of acorn squashes is dead. The infected edamame are giving up, the corn isn’t growing. A pretty discouraging year all around but there is a silver lining. Lunch today was pasta and yellow squash with the marinara being made with tomato and basil from the garden and the one yellow squash coming from there as well. It was pretty good too.

Anyway, I’ll get the gallery fixed but the upkeep concerns me. I don’t really need administration as a hobby. I have enough hobbies already.

le sigh

So there’s this old woodworking adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” That’s super. I did all my maths and then did them again and decided that the rabbet in the back of the bookshelves to accept the back sheet of plywood should be 3/8″ X 1/4″. That would allow the plywood to be recessed into the case by 1/8″ and fit snugly to make sure the case was square and did not rack. So I set up my saw with the dado cutter to do 1/4″ wide cut, 3/8″ deep and ran the pieces through. Oops. That should have been 3/8″ wide and 1/4″ deep. See illustration. I think I know what I’m going to do to fix this without buying new plywood but man, what a pain in the ass. I would propose an amendment to the rule to be “Measure twice, cut once, don’t be a dumbass” but I think that last part is supposed to be understood.

oops
A:Reality B:Design

Wild Kingdom

When you’re retired you have the time to do the things you always wanted to do. Things like clean the yard. Yay cleaning. Everyone loves cleaning. I’ve been rehabilitating overgrown, under-loved flower beds for the last two days. In the front this meant cutting the butterfly bush back down to a reasonable size, pulling a ton of grass out, putting in a few annuals and heavily mulching everything else. In the back it has been removing the sticks from last year’s asters, cutting off or pulling out the runners the rough leaf dogwood sends out and raking out piles of dead leaves that just don’t seem to ever decompose. Gotta love those live oak leaves.

I got a few pictures of some yard critters. First is a bumble bee in my mountain laurel. When the wisteria bloomed last year I had a ton of these guys flying around all day. It’s good to see they’re back.

I also almost bumped into this lizard cleaning out the back flower bed. Either this lizard or one like it has been hanging around in the back yard for a long time. Probably longer than the house has been here actually. I see it every once in a while but this time it actually stayed still long enough to get a decent picture of it. In fact it just hung out on the fence the whole time I was raking leaves and cutting runners.

Two more beds to go and then it’ll be time to start worrying about the new garden.

Mountains and molehills

I took a few pictures of the mountains as we were driving back to Denver from vacation. I wish we got just a little bit more snow here but at the same time I appreciate not having to drive on it.

The yard is starting to come back to life after a fairly mild winter. I don’t think the cherry is going to bloom much this year but I’m fertilizing it in the hope that I can fool it a little. The viburnum we planted in the front has been growing and looks very nice right now.

Also, the agarita bush which was probably four inches tall when it was planted is much bigger and is blooming for the first time. I don’t know if I’ll get any fruit off it this year but it’s encouraging.

I went out to inspect the garden plot this afternoon and it’s holding up well. There’s one place where the roof drip line has broken the paper but the grass in that small place can be dealt with using more thorough methods. It’s 26 feet long and 13 feet wide. After I leave a little space on the fence sides and build the retaining wall it’ll be 24.5 feet by 10.5 feet. After I measured the slope of the yard and did some math I determined that I’m going to need to have 10 yards of garden dirt brought in. I think, all in all, it’ll be about $750 worth of supplies to be ready to plant and then I need to get the actual plants. I still need to decided exactly what I’m going to plant too. I have been reconsidering the “tangle” plan and I think I’ll cut back on that and have more of the garden be a traditional layout. That will make it easier to treat diseases and pests and it’ll look better too.

Vacation

A friend was kind enough to invite me along on her sort-of-annual group ski trip and since I don’t have much to do these days I accepted. I’m generally a stick in the mud but, as was pointed out to me by basically everyone, how often do you have the time to just go somewhere and have fun and not worry about what’s falling apart while you’re gone. It was very generous of her to offer and I am grateful. The last time I was on more than an inch of snow was something like 15 years ago so I figured since I was starting over I might as well give the snowboarding a try. The resort has people up on the mountain with video cameras to record you so you can see how you’re doing it wrong and I have uploaded my particular wrongness to the youtubes for the enjoyment of one and all.

I had a lot of fun. The snowboarding has a tougher learning curve than I remember for skiing but it was enjoyable. The first day we learned how to not kill other people and then how to not kill ourselves. Mainly that’s by not letting the board get away from you when it’s not attached to you and how to slide down the mountain with the board across the hill with you on either the heel or toe side. The second day we did some “falling leaf” and then learned how to make turns. The third day it was just me and Bruce (the guy in blue in the video) so we made sure I wasn’t going to die on the bunny slope and then went up to the top of the mountain where the video was taken. My only real complaint about being up on the mountain was that I was thinking so hard about what I was doing that I didn’t really get to enjoy the surroundings. I expect once you get better that’s less of an issue. Maybe I’ll go back before another 15 years is up.

It was nice hanging out with everyone and I don’t think we got on each others nerves too much. Ready to go home on Monday but not quite ready to murder everyone so I guess that makes it a success. I am also now caught up with season two of House so that’s good.

Now I need to find some one to give me money.