my mental sieve...
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| Evil Wayne my mental sieve... |
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Tuesday, June 29, 2004 They're Done Well, that's not exactly true. But the contractors cleaned up all their shit today after finishing up the siding. There's a couple of small things that need to be taken care of. For example, they screwed up the side door's screen. It won't close. It was something they did when they took it off and couldn't seem to get it back on correctly. Which is why I'm glad we have a contractor and didn't just hire different guys to work on different things. I mean, I just complain to him and he'll get it fixed. I almost don't worry about it. They also have to get rid of the dumpster on my lawn and some little clean up stuff. There's only one building inspection left sometime this week and he's done. Of course, that's not really the end. We still have painting and furniture to buy. Then moving bedrooms around and more painting...The rug came for Mike's new room today and the extra padding forces the carpet up to where I cannot remount the door (we removed it to stain it). #*($&@( So, add shaving down the door to the list of the other 42 things that have to be done before we're really done. But at least the contractor's part is ending. No more having to be up at 6:30 in the freakin' AM. The house doesn't look too bad at all. We're really happy with the new family room. More so when it's finally painted and that was a freakfest so far. We chose a color that you cannot use white primer under. But I didn't know this until after I had already done all the trim work in white. Thank God I had run out of paint, because a trip to Home Depot (who now have way too much of my money) I decided to pick up the actual color with more primer and the guy there was really helpful in explaining why white is bad. So I had to buy battleship-grey primer and redo the whole freaking room. :P The siding, despite looking light grey in the sample, turns out it's more sand colored in the real world. Which is a hint to you that you should always go outside in the real sun to see if it's what you want. Ash Grey is really Sand. We almost went with a lighter color called Oyster Shell. The house would have looked white, and that would have made us sort of pissy. White sucks. I'll have more pictures at some point. There's still lots to do and I'm trying to squeeze it in somehow. posted by Evil Wayne | 9:42 PM 0 comments Friday, June 25, 2004 Goodbye Jill Well, today was Jill Pill's last day. Of course, it being a Friday in Summer, I'm home instead. So Steve and I had to make a special trip to have a final lunch and a goodbye. Which is more than just bittersweet at this point. Steve had to leave work almost a year ago when cutbacks weren't enough and he got laid off. And now they've force JP out as well. It's a different story with her in that she just couldn't take it anymore. 
Between the incompetence of others, the fact we are constantly asked to track hours according to some ancient Byzantine moon-cycle formula, having to make up for your own sick/vacation time (I kid you not) and the fact that most editorial decisions are not actually in their hands, I think it's surprising she actually lasted this long. My job is different enough that I don't experence the same stresses, but fuck them. They managed to drive my friends away that that pisses me off. I hope to keep in touch. But I have some 20-year friends that have a hard time coordinating a picnic. Life is like that, if you aren't forced to live near, or work with, you just don't see people once you have a family or a mortgage. So today one of my best friends has gone. Monday is going to suck. posted by Evil Wayne | 6:42 PM 0 comments Thursday, June 17, 2004 Cable, But No Phone We apparently have no telephone. Never count on the coordination between a utility and your construction people, it's like they get together beforehand and agree to disagree. In order for the siding to be put on the house, utilities that are affixed to the house have to be moved. Makes sense, right? Well, the only thing is, the utilities are like rabid dogs protecting the last leg of the kill when it comes to their stuff. So you can't even think about touching that phone box. No, I'm serious, if they catch wind that I wrote that, they'd send some hired goons out to break my kneecaps. And I need my kneecaps for walking and sitting and other leg-bending activities. The phone company apparently showed up and the siding people did not. So the phone's been disconnected and is going to stay that way until the siding is up on that part of the house. And probably longer, as I'll have to call for another appointment to get it reconnected (and I'm sure there'll be some monster fee attached to *that*). I have no idea what happened with the cable people, either. Because we still have cable and we were told that wouldn't happen. My guess is, either they showed up and it was already off the house (which is has been for some time now) or they just removed someone else's cable at a wrong address call. Yeah, that'd be funny, but I've seen the police in my town get the wrong address. What make me think the I-hate-my-job cable dude will pay that much attention?!? What else? Oh the electrical company was a mess. Turns out they don't own that meter, I do. Or the house does, she was bitchy and unclear. It took several calls just to get that confusing answer and I was wasting her time. Fuck you. Turns out I have to get my electrician to move it. I actually had to call back to confirm the appointment was cancelled because you can't be too careful with a giant utility that doesn't really give a rat's ass about you, your home, or whether or not you feel unjustly charged an absorbent amount for a useless service call... So, to sum it all up. We have no telephone service at the house. I have no idea how long it will be. A day, two? Five?!? If you call and you get the machine after 7 rings, that's Verizon. If you leave a message, we'll get it eventually. Or just call one of our cells. posted by Evil Wayne | 4:24 PM 0 comments Monday, June 14, 2004 No Cable In order to put the siding on the house, they have to remove some of the utilities that are affixed to the backside. Comcast apparently refuses to let it just dangle (and I think we all know how painful that can be). They claim they have to disconnect the cable then reconnected after the siding is in place. I have no idea why. The end result is that we probably won't have cable for next few days starting Tuesday morning. The TV I can probably live without for now, but it also means no cable modem! And that, my friends really cheeses me off. However, there is a small sliver lining. I signed up with AOHeLL on my notebook a short while ago. No, I haven't lost my mind, it was included 6 months free with my Dell purchase. I just happened to activate it. So I'll have dial-up over the duration of the cable interruption. A step backwards into the stone age to be sure, but at least I can access all my emails from there if necessary. I can't believe how cut off I already feel. It's medieval. posted by Evil Wayne | 9:14 PM 0 comments Saturday, June 12, 2004 Starry, Starry Night... This is cool (you'll have to define your own area of sky): SkyChart posted by Evil Wayne | 9:23 AM 0 comments House Pics Update I've managed to updated the house pics up to Day Seven, which is still grossly behind where the project really is. The bedroom, for example, is finished as far as the contractors are concerned. My priming and painting is whole other story. Which is forcing me to realize that even though they could be done with all the work on the house within two weeks, we've got tons of work ahead of us before it's truely done. Come to think of it, there's so much more work after even all of that, that the house is really just a giant works-in-progress at least for the next 5 years. *sigh* I should have bought a condo. Day Seven contains a couple of shots of the wood they found the carpenter ants' nest in. It's not so easy to see, but there was a ton of ants and they had done significant damage to the far corner of the sunroom. In some places, the wood was hollow. It had a sort of melted look to it and when you shook it, dead ants, pupa and eggs fell out. I only got a few pics because the whole thing was really freaky. We got an exterminator to come out and he sprayed down the area, which causes tons more to fall out of the woodwork. Then he dusted the interior of the walls while they were open which should keep them out and kill the rest. Did I mention I should have bought a condo? posted by Evil Wayne | 8:37 AM 0 comments Friday, June 04, 2004 Milestone Last night was the first time in over 2 years that Tine and I had our own bedroom. Since the birth of The Boy we've always had him somewhere about us. The nursery was a converted walk-in closet, so he was always right there. Once he was put down for the night, you didn't go in our room unless it was absolutely necessary. The floorboards squeak and he has such a hair-trigger that if he awoke, it really meant he was coming downstairs for awhile. You just had decide if you wanted him to be covered in screaming tears and snot first. But with the completion of the bedroom wall, we finally have a bedroom to ourselves again. Abet a smaller room, but it's ours alone. If we want to leave the light on we can. If you want some piece and quite, there's a place to go. If you want to stay up and read, you don't have to endure the TV anymore. If we want to talk at night we don't have to whisper. Oh, it's a glorious day all right (now, if I just hadn't woken up at 4:30 this morning, I could be much more cheerful about the whole thing). 
posted by Evil Wayne |
10:39 AM
0 comments Tuesday, June 01, 2004 Long Weekend? Where?!? Okay, there was no long bloody weekend... First, there was a trip to Home Depot for supplies. Then it was preping the wall. Then priming the wall and trim. Wait to dry. Prime the wall and trim again. Wait to dry. Paint the wall. Dry. Picked up the AC for the new room at Sears. Retape trim area, and paint. Dry. The toilet also broke or had been in the process of breaking. The water was running, but Saturday night it started running badly. So I had to kill the water to the house because the freakin' plumbers we had in here a few months ago did not install the shut off valves the way I wanted. @(#)*$ So, back to Home Depot for plumbing supplies and some trim paint (yes this is out of sequence - I think we went to HD like 90 times this weekend - sue me). This is the same toilet that four or five years ago I tried to repair (the same problem actually) but the mechanism was so corroded that it was fused to the inside base. So it went from a running water problem to a cracked tank problem and we ended up without an upstairs toliet for about a year. It went a little bit better this time. Because it was only a few years old the whole thing came apart easily. The only problem I had was that I cannot completely shut off the water, there's a steady trickle. The secondary shut-off doesn't close completely and the upstairs shutoff is corroded. Man, we have sucky water. So putting the new valve in was a little tricky at the end. But it works now and hopefully I haven't fucked it up and right now my downstairs is filling with water with nowhere to go. Plus, I mowed the entire lawn. That include the little garden area. I can still smell cut grass and exhaust. Did I mention that someone came and took the old car away? We are getting everything done this year. Oh, I lied about having more pics up, you can sue me over that while you're at it. posted by Evil Wayne | 12:42 PM 0 comments |
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