Mnuh.
July 1, 2009
I'm really still here. I promise.
The party was great (no, of course, I didn't take any fekkin' photos); my apartment-not so much…still.
Tex's foot went out and in between taking care of him, doing normal Bunny maintenance (not inconsiderable even when she is coasting along well-as she is now) add to that the serious task of cleaning and cleaning out of the apartment and I got bogged down.
If I was still a project manager (which my brain will always try to be) it would be akin to losing half my team on a large project and still trying to make an aggressive deadline… total and abject chaos. But I still managed to get quite a bit done even though it doesn't look like it at all.
The pics I posted earlier are still the most relevant as they are still the only oases of clean in the house.
Tex's foot is *still* kind of out, and I don't want to ruin the progress by making him help, so the house isn't done. The one bad thing about it all is that there is lots of clutter and the mouse in the house (driven out of the kitchen and the kitchen sub-floor that goes into the garages below) has moved into other parts of the house. Not fun.
I think this weekend is designated Costco to pick up another pack of those pest repellers that you plug into the wall *that actually work*… crazy.
Work is 900 miles per hour currently and I'm exhausted all the time now. I had no choice this week but to just sleep when I didn't have required chores to do. Its helping. I'll probably be able to get a few things done SAT (and on that list is to figure out what thing in Beast is causing the Check Engine light to be on…update:I replaced the Mass Air Meter and it turned off while I was driving to work this morning.)
Anyhoo, I think more change is necessary, however I don't know that I will be able to effect that change effectively or in a timely manner…and that you probably should buy stock in a yogurt company because its all I will be eating for a while.
This is SUPER COOL!
June 29, 2009
Intel has decided to sponsor my life list.
I told you your jaw would hit the floor. I’ve known for months, and my brain is still catching up.
I’ve always had a life list, but Maggie gave me the idea to put it on my site… I can’t wait to see how her adventures play out.
In fact, I was just pondering today one of the items on mine… hiking the Cotswolds Way. I think its only a hundred miles long… might be easier to do than AT in Va if I don’t have 6-8 weeks free.
This pretty much sums up…
June 28, 2009
my opinion of MJ’s passing:
And…there was a Michael Jackson cubicle shrine at the office. For reals. I’m still kicking myself for not having a camera handy. How to describe the unsettling display of MJ t-shirt, MJ cd liners, a little bouquet of flowers, and a pencil drawing of MJ and a llama? I thought it was a prank, but as the day unfolded, I came to the realization that it wasn’t…and every time I had to get up to go to that part of the office, I was torn between running away and laughing hysterically.
And the coverage on the news? People standing around with candles, sobbing and hugging each other? Prostrate on the ground in sorrow? Seriously?
No. I am not sympathetic to the public expressions of grief from the Michael Jackson fans. It’s weird, creepy grief.
And, no. I will not be crying myself to sleep tonight. I will be sitting up in the dark with a shotgun, awaiting the appearance of zombie Michael Jackson. And I’ll be ready for him. Oh, yes. I will be ready.
Oakland sunset
June 26, 2009
Post Party Bunny
June 21, 2009
none the worse for wear…
Fred bread
June 21, 2009
Yeah
June 19, 2009
coming up on the final hours until I have to have the house DONE.
(It isn’t, of course… Tex got broken and hasn’t been able to do anything for the last week…normally that would be ok, but it meant that I had to take care of him and Bunny and do everything. Feh.)
OK, pics tomorrow when I have done the last minute stuff.
You’re welcome.
June 12, 2009
(oh and at about 1:09, I have never loved Craig Ferguson more… I’m just sayin’)
Blackberry yogurt for lunch
June 11, 2009
A bit of distance…
June 6, 2009
was needed for me to talk rationally about last week.
On TUE after Memorial Day, beast’s thermometer decided to take a trip to H land and unless beast was moving (a.k.a. being air cooled) it had an alarming tendency to want to keep going back. I got through my commute ok (heater on high, windows all rolled down; luckily no steam emitted from the hood.)
Got home, called pet mechanic who said “Don’t drive it unless you want to buy a new engine” and other things such as “mumble mumble mumble head gasket mumble mumble” and other deeply alarming things. So, I left a message with the boss that I needed to either be a bit late into work or just arrange for the rental car and work at home.
Did so on WED, and thought, ok, weird week. hope it settles down.
Then THU morning, I staggered into the kitchen to get Bunny food (I am not a morning person you see) and I noticed something weird. It sounded like it was raining. It tends not to rain here in the summer.
I didn’t figure it out right away, but after a few seconds (about the same amount of time it took Martin Blank to figure out the explosive in the microwave was a bad thing) I realized the raining was coming from the ceiling IN MY KITCHEN and was getting water (filthy water run through a hundred year old building’s guts) all over the computer, monitor, keyboard, external drives and all the frightfully expensive stuff that doesn’t like to be dunked in the water.
Mad dash to move EVERYTHING while simultaneously turning it upside down/dry it carefully and not die by electrocution.
I let everything dry for 5 days while snarling politely at my landlord about what we later determined was a terminally stupid 3rd floor neighbor (no, I have not gone up there, I lack restraint at this point) who left the sink running while the drain was “slow”…apparently it isn’t the only slow thing in that apartment.
Long story short, I don’t know that the APC battery backup survived, but so far everything else has. I got a rolly cart for the components so they can live under the table that has a totally classy waterproof table cloth on it and also am puttting a REALLY long monitor cable on it so that it dips onto the floor and will keep water off of at least the computer end of the whole setup. The monitor might not be happy, but its a 5+ year old 15″ monitor that only goes well in one place and I can have replaced… the other stuff not so much.
I got through last week repeating the mantra “Bunny is fine. Bunny is fine.”
Fixed beast (bad thermostat and gasket), returned rental car (didn’t spend as much as I thought I was going to have to spend) and am typing on the computer formerly known as wet.
Now I am sitting here, with a lower blood pressure level transcribing the horrid events of last week here vaguely avoiding doing the second to last weekend of “HouseFlop! The Musical…” eating steel cut oats from the crockpot and a mug of orange juice as I read that they might be a superfood combo [Food Combos More Nutritious Together than Separate].
Just got to clean out the living room and prep it for the big furniture move I have scheduled for tomorrow.
TTFN posterity.
Lettuce and mesclun
June 3, 2009
With a row of green onion sprouts in back
Sunday treat
May 31, 2009
Little Oases
May 26, 2009
While the living room is very scary:
I keep reminding myself (and Tex) that it is only transitional and that it will be better soon.
Also, the living room is kind of the catchall for everything, so there are little hamster trails to necessary bits of the house and some seating during this month-long slog to house floppityness.
There are little oases of finished places in the house. Some just can't be finished because there are dependencies (like my closet) but I did manage to get several places done.
The Bedside Table:
Those are my great-grandmother's suitcases (+1) and her train case all stacked up to a reasonable facsimile of level (little shims of those rubber feet helped to go that little extra bit) and it will be my bedside table when the bed moves in to the room. I found a charger station of basket material and a little lamp. Its almost exactly how it will be when I get my clock there.
The Window Wall in the (soon to be) Living Room:
I don't know what I will be doing with the computer yet, but everything here (mostly media storage) is pretty much in place. Its lovely and tidy and it makes me happy to look at it now (as long as I put the blinders on and don't look around.)
Tex finally looked at this setup with something other than a gimlet eye and said "Yeah, I can see how this will be better", so he's on board and that might make it easier to finish.
My office:
It isn't totally done, but I can sit in there and use most everything…. I still can't get a good picture as I can't open the french doors all the way. I will get a good one eventually when its done. (Probably 10 minutes before the party starts…a.k.a. The cleanest my house ever gets.)
Next weekend (or this week and SAT) might be just organizing and clearing out landing spots for the couch and the bed… so I might have the big move on the following week as originally planned.
But you never know just how motivated I actually will become between now and then to dispense with the dependencies.
Ce weekend…
May 25, 2009
FRI was a work at home day, very nice, and I got lots of web work done that never seems to get done at my cube; curious that.
However, I did have to stop to go get Tex and take him for a tetanus shot. His last one was a while ago and he cut his finger inside a telly. So that ate up quite a bit of the day. And as I usually have all of SAT alone to get things done, I didn't get as much done with him here. Not really a huge problem though, I think I was tired.. I ended up reading all night FRI and then sleeping until 2pm SAT.
Oh well.
SUN we celebrated Timmy's birthday with a traditional cherry pie and a non-traditional run to Target for shirts.
We also found him a new hat which doubles as my laptop bag.
It may not seem like it from my narrative, but I did actually make progress on the house.
I think I'm almost at the halfway mark. More than halfway on the major moving stuff, but all the little things and sorting and tossing and selling and recycling is where 90% of the effort is.
Bunny, as usual, remains unamused by all of this shuffling.
There are some slight changes I am making in the overall design, I figured somethings might change so I left those as fluid.
Such as:
-The steamer trunk will be open against the wall facing the bottom of my bed instead of by the window or on the side of my bed as previously envisioned.
-I will leave one of the short shelves in the new bedroom next to the big shelf (which is good because I still have enough books to fill them both); the other big shelf will go to the garage. I had thought about wrapping around on the other wall, but the 4 fit so nicely that I will leave that clean line well enough alone.
-The NE wall will not have any plugged in things as previously thought, I will keep the battery chargers on the little shelf that is staying behind in the future bedroom.
-That also means I need to find a different location (if there be one) for my little TV that we currently play games on… hopefully we can use the new monitor that we got to play those.
-My wing chair will be sitting next to the 4 short shelves NOT facing the "telly", but that's ok, I mostly want it for sitting and reading or knitting. I suppose I could drag it around pretty easily to see the telly if I really wanted and Tex was hogging up the love seat.
I had planned to take a breather next weekend from big moving and just sort and store stuff for the garage sale and make more hard decisions; as well as whipping my closet into shape, but I might find that my closet can't really be addressed until I get my bed out of there.
Also, I haven't seen my couch in a while. I assume its still there, but the pile in the current living room is almost as tall as I am. Scary stuff that.
In any event, I am now pooped and I still have LOTS of cleaning to do… murderous dustbunnies are on the prowl as I write.
New NE wall of the future living room
May 25, 2009
