Home Projects 101

It's a simple matter of life, I guess, or maybe some derivation of Murphy's Law: If you plan on doing a home remodeling project--even if it *is* spur of the moment--everything and anything will come up to keep you from completing it in the time you've alloted. Such is the case with our "weekend warrior" attempt to have our bedroom shed its wallpaper (read: multiple layers of wallpaper) and painted by Monday evening. As it stands, we *might* be able to pull this off, but it's going to be a challenge.

Yesterday, I spent a good chunk of the day peeling, spraying and scraping off all the wallpaper. Between the paper and the carpet chunks being used as baseboards, that filled a 55-gallon garbage bag to the point of spilling over the top. Today being Sunday, we're taking a break from the week in general to relax, spend time at church and with family, and basically just rest. Hooray for Sundays! Tomorrow, though ... I'm throwing myself into the fray at 6 am. I bought two gallons of hearty Kilz, which should be enough to prime the whole room--ceiling and walls. A coat of primer dries in about an hour, so then we'll apply a second coat. After that, it's off to Home Depot to select a lovely shade of puce. Or mauve. Or whatever it is that weef wants. I believe her current color of choice comes from "the plum family." Once again, my dreams of having an all black room seem to have been utterly shot. Oh well.

So that's what's on the docket for tomorrow. We probably could have primed and at least painted A coat yesterday if things hadn't come up during the course of the day, but they did. Typical ... life throws things at us every day that side-track us from things. Sometimes these things are important--like helping a friend pick up a new mattress set or your wife having to pick up her consignment shop item. I don't necessarily think that picking up the hutch or moving the mattress was necessarily "mission critical" for either of them, but they wanted/needed these things done yesterday, or they would have had to wait a week or two more. Why not just get them out of the way?

Searching the Void for Content-ment

I come before you, battered and bruised--a fallen warrior of the blogosphere battle. Try as I might, I come up empty-handed when it comes to finding something blog-worthy about which to write. This is not from a lack of effort; I have earnestly sought and striven to slay the writer's block beast, all to no avail.

Though I might have come up with something that weef and I have been discussing, but that's an entire post unto itself.

In fact ... stay tuned. There might just be another post today.

RSS confusion

okay, so i have rss feed subscriptions to all y'all's blogs, right? for the last 3+ weeks, i haven't gotten a single update. i figured, "must be a moratorium on blogging for the summer so everyone can maximize their outdoor time." silly me, since one of you lives in phoenix and one of you lives in kanab ... why would you *want* to be outside?!

anyway, so i think i projected my outdoor longings on to everyone else. i haven't bothered checking actual blogs to see if anything's been written. imagine my surprise when most of you have something like 10 new posts!

anyway, i declare an end to the non-existent summertime moratorium! that's my right and privlege as a moron, right? :)

let the blogging continue! at least on my end ... since y'all have been blogging anyway. :)

Calendar Confusion

Okay, so ... it's 7:12 am. Normally, at this point, there are 5 or 6 people in the office. Right now, I'm the only one. It's kind of weird. I've been here since 10 after 6, and yah, generally no one's in until roughly 6:30-7, but this is just bizarre. I actually had to look at the calendar to make sure it wasn't Saturday because that's the only explanation I could come up with as to why no one's here.

Has that ever happened to any of you? Wondering if it's not actually the weekend because no one else is around?

Gotta say, though ... it's pretty nice. I can work uninterrupted, and I can watch Scrubs while working on my projects. Pretty sweet.

Happy X-Files Movie day!

Fretting and Worried

I have two very major concerns right now. There is a very distinct and definite correlation connecting them. They are:

1. Girl 1's vocal cords;
2. My ear drums.

There is a perk to all of the screaming, though ... I'm guessing that she's going to drop like a stone from sheer lack of energy. All of it has been concentrated on ruining my hearing.

*sigh*

Memories

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Missed My Calling in Life

So, lately, I've been into taking macro pictures of bugs. My parents in law's backyard is a great source. I've gotten good pictures of wasps, some kind of bee, ants, and dragonflies. This, obviously, is a dragon fly. Pretty cool, eh? Yah ... I took that. I was sitting on in-laws' steps in the terrace, and I saw this little guy. Pretty nice.

This guy was just hanging out on a shrub on the side of the house, but there were plenty in the terrace, too. I just couldn't get them to sit still. "Cheese" doesn't exactly fly with grasshoppers. Didn't know that, did ya?

Pretty sweet wasp, eh? I'm wondering if I had some pollen on my lens that he was scoping out; he was staring pretty intently at the camera at one point--the point where I *didn't* have my finger on the shutter release. Figure that.

Weef thinks this is a Box Elder bug, but I'm not convinced it is, though I'm not sure what it is. Check out the eyes. Creepy! They're totally red. As girl 1 likes to say, "EEEEEWWW!"

No lie: I said, "Dragonfly, LAND ON ME!" 4 seconds later, it did. Ask my in-laws. It was amazing ... it just flew right up and *plop*--there he was. Right on my shorts. What's a guy to do but start snapping close-ups.

Same little guy, just a close-up of his head. If you click on the image, you can see the details in the eyes. It's amazing. Unfortunatly, he was dead by the time we went to the fireworks later that night. My theory is that he was stung by a wasp over in the shrubs on the south side of the house, since that's where he flew from.