catching up

I spent the past week in Baltimore for work. It went well. There were some unexpected hiccups that I had to work around and were difficult, but...that's the only way you learn. I had crabcakes every night which was good and a couple of fancy beers. I feel like I'm a crabcake connoisseur now. Yingling was one of them and it's only available in Maryland, I think. I just know you can't get it here in Ohio. I recommend it.

We had a great weekend around the house though. We watched Tremors friday night. Man, that was a funny movie. When I realized the dad from the tv show Family Ties was playing a gun toting, crazy, shoot-em-up lunatic I nearly died laughing. Then at the end when the killer earthworms had the people trapped on the roofs I was losing it!

Saturday night we had our game night. I forgot to send the email invite out and we had a lower turnout than usual, but I still ate my fill of beer cheese fondue, so nothing else matters.

Today I hung some used cabinets in the garage in what will become my second man area. I already have one in the basement but my needs for a macho-sawdust-grease-gun-monkey-wrench-hammer and nails area has increased. Eventually (maybe later this month) I'll build a little workbench area under it.

I picked up the cabinet for the garage and one for Amanda's craft area at this resale shop here in town. It's like Home Depot's version of Salvation Army. I'll hang the cabinet downstairs in the basement for Amanda once my design gets the blessing of the mechanical engineers at work. See, I can't bolt it into the concrete wall and I have to hang it from the floor joyces and I just want another opinion on what to do.

And now we are caught up.

bathroom and other news

I finally got around to finishing the bathroom. I restained the trim and let it lay in the hallway all week because I couldn't muster the energy to install it. Going back to work for 8 hours took too much out of me. Here is the final product...




Like the new rugs? You better, it took two trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond for someone to be satisfied.

So did you know they are coming out with a new Knight Rider tv series? I refuse to watch it. Why? Because they --the sitcom writers are ruining a good thing. They change KITT's red hood LEDs to blink in a different pattern and they change KITT from a Trans Am to a Mustang. Why do they have to ruin a good thing? Those two items are at the heart of my memories of growing up watching Knight Rider and to go and change those on me is disappointing. Why don't they just go all the way and let Micheal Knight be played by some dork like Ryan Seacrest.

The new American Gladiators show looks cool though. Put Hulk Hogan on anything and I'll watch it.

back to work....

So tomorrow I'm back to work. Blah. Vacation has been great. I had plenty of time to work on projects around the house and I made time to relax. I'm thankful to have had a full 2 weeks off of work.

We had a great New Year's Party last night. Whoo, lots of fun. Sergey, Lee and Andrea, Lee's roommate Dan and Lori stopped over. We had some great games of Scene It, both the Disney and Movie versions and some hysterical games of Bullsh!t. I can't believe what a lying bunch of people we had over. Liars all the way around -- Bullsh!tters, really!! :)

I had a great workout this morning too....I deadlifted 345 pounds. I didn't know I could do that.

Hooray it's finally snowing here. Happy New Year everyone! I would post a picture of our family up here, but I'm the only one awake (and it's only 6pm)!!

around the house during vacation

Most people relax and enjoy themselves over vacation by reading books, sleeping in until 9am and do some plain old sitting around. Nope, not me. I worked on a bunch of projects like:

1. I repainted our downstairs bathroom. Right now I'm staining the wood trim because the previous painters painted on the trim and then painted over their mistakes with paint to match the wood trim. *not going to say anything bad, not going to say anything bad*
2. Swapped the living room and study. Sergey came over the other day and helped me move all the furniture around. Now we have a much bigger living room and I think it looks awesome.
3. I took the scrap plywood that I dumpster dove for over the summer and installed that in the attic over our garage to make the space usable to store Christmas decorations and other stuff we'll only use once a year, if that.
4. At the direction of my wife, I insulated the all of the outlets and switches on all of the outside walls in our house.
5. Bought and installed faucet covers for the water spigots outside.
6. Insulated some pipes in our basement.

And with all this I made about 4 trips to Home Depot. Speaking of Home Depot, ever since AKM3 mentioned that their Home Depot sold hot dogs, which they voted to be the best hot dogs around, I've been secretly hoping that upon my next trip to HD that I'll find a hot dog vendor dressed like a circus clown with a 3 wheeled cart selling hot dogs. I continue to be let down each trip.

Speaking of food, I just posted a comment on Steak n Shake's website and asked them to build one in our town. I love Steak n Shake!

Bambi almost bit the dust....

About 2 hours ago we were coming back from my grandma's and almost killed Bambi. That little fella is one lucky bugger.

So we are driving home along a 2 laned state route through areas that switch between woods and farmland and I have the cruise control set somewhere between 55 and 60 mph. Bambi decides to amble out in the road right in front of us and stop. The next three seconds go something like this....I slam on the brakes and begin slowing down. "OH SH*T!!", I exclaim (which then requires a deposit to X's swear jar). We are slowing down some more and Bambi just stares back at me with the same blank expression any hoofed creature has before it meets it's maker. "OH SH*T!!", I exclaim -- with increased urgency (and of course an additional deposit is now needed). We keep slowing down and finally Bambi decides to start moving. Again, "OH SH*T!!" -- ever the increasing urgency (that's 3 deposits now). Bambi, in his or her finite wisdom decides to start running. That's good. The bad news is that Bambi is running in the same direction that we are traveling. At this point we are essentially chasing Bambi down the road. Bambi finally gets up to top speed as we are coming to a halt and for a split second we are clipping Bambi's rear legs with our front bumper (about 3 to 4 Bambi strides). Thankfully I only thought "Move your @ss you stupid deer!!" and didn't say it, otherwise I'd have a 4th deposit to make. Finally, finally, finally Maxxwell comes to a halt and Bambi skeedaddles his or her arse off to play chicken with Chevy's another day.

So then everything is well and I begin laughing hysterically over the whole thing. We pulled over at the next gas station and Bambi didn't leave a mark so all is well thanks to the big guy upstairs. Whew!

lemme get a ...

...UPGRADE!

Don't you love my Beyonce reference? Amanda hates it when I sing that. Anyway...I know a guy who has a rental property and there is a huge back story of my friend the landlord getting hosed out of 8 grand and the tenants trashing the place and moving out with 3 days notice. It's a sad story, but on the upside the tenants left some junk in the house that my friend let me take. So we've now UPGRADed to a newer computer desk and added 2 10 pound dumbbells to our gym downstairs.

Now as I use this nice "new" computer desk I like it! What a nice UPGRADE!

And I'm off work for the next 2 weeks!! Whoo-hooo!

We took X to get his picture taken with Santa today. We'll post that later. Did you know Santa drinks Starbucks? He does.

sprucing up the bathroom

My little helper X and I started work on the downstairs bathroom. You can see the evil outhouse with cats border in the background that we scraped off. X wasn't as much help as I'd hoped he would be. I had to carry a bib in my back pocket because he kept drooling. The sling makes him drool for some strange reason.


But we got all the crummy border off and I took off the toilet tank because I hate seeing that part of the wall unpainted. I was thinking of taking the bowl off, but I don't want to mess with the wax seal and I don't know how to get the water out of the bowl. I'm not desperate enough to try siphoning.


I also took all of the wood trim off because a hasty painter before me didn't tape off the trim and got paint all over it. Well, in taking off the trim and sanding the paint off I realized that the fool went and bought paint to match the trim and painted over the paint on the trim. I'd like to wring their neck.

But I got the ceiling painted and tomorrow after work I'll tape off the floor and ceiling so I can paint the walls.