She Who Makes the Dust

Susan has been hard at work on this stupid arch, trying her damnedest to bring it up to her standards. I have been less than helpful with the project as I have been continuing to claim to be infirmed with the Shingles. I fear the clock is ticking on this excuse, so I must make the most of it. I think she is getting very close to starting to get ready to begin the process to commence with the wall papering. Unless of course, the arch does not pass inspection. In that case, the house will continue to have this fine haze of carcinogenic plaster dust floating around.

Government Mandates

We lost an hour last night due to the Government Mandated Time Change. I personally like it because it stays lighter later.

Susan and I finally have a day to spend at home together and we are going to try and make the most of it. So why am I sitting at the keyboard typing away? Well, how else am I going to be able to chronicle all the amazing things we accomplished this day?!

What follows is a pictoral and verboral description of our day.

My first task was to remove the studded tires from Susan's car. This went pretty quickly as I am a master with the tire iron. Next I decided to polish up her shiny chrome wheels which were not looking quite so shiny. They develop rust and a good scrubbing with an S.O.S. pad takes care of that little annoyance.
Next I headed for the Carriage House where the shelves awaited a coat of varnish. This went pretty quickly as I am a master of the tire iron, which means I'm pretty good with a varnish brush too.

While I was doing my stuff, Susan was busy in the entry way getting plastered. I found that shocking since we have given up alcohol for Lent, but I soon learned that it was actual plaster she was working with. She is continuing with the large amount of repair she has to do with the arched doorway in the front hall.

It's a real mess!

While Susan spent her whole day doing this one project, milking it for all it was worth, I did a few other things. I raked up some leaves in the yard, cleaned the gutter out front, put chemicals in the hot tub and, because I am a master with the pillow, I took a nap. (I'm still feeling the effects of shingles so BACK OFF!!!)

Post Birthday

Other than having to work all day, my 54th birthday celebration was very nice. I can feel the waning of the shingles virus that has enveloped me for six weeks now. We went out for dinner last night and got the enjoy the Gonzaga Bulldogs on the TV. They beating their arch rival, the St. Maries Gaels, to win the WCC championship and get an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament, where I predict they will lose in the second round.

Susan did a great job of providing me gifts every day for the last week. I got some tools, some Groupons, some gift certificates, and a wine kit.

We hope to use a couple of the Groupons in the next couple of weeks. They are for an evening at the Jameson Hotel in Wallace, Idaho and a day of skiing at Silver Mountain. We would have used them last weekend but the shingles prevented me from going.

At lunch today, I am going to visit my friend Doug. He's in the Hospital. He had a cardiac event the other day...on his birthday, in fact. I'll find out more when I see him but his future is drastically going to change. My sources tell me that me that the State is petitioning to declare Doug incompetent. He drinks, he smokes and he doesn't seem to be taking very good care of himself.

Details to follow. For previous information on Doug, see Nov. 17, 2010.

Later: Okay, I have returned from visiting Doug and am happy to report that he is upright and lucid and much better than I was imagining. I asked him how he was doing without Vodka and Cigarettes and he held up a shaky hand. But he had a real positive attitude about it. He seems glad to have booze behind him. He seems to realize that he was killing himself. I think Social Services will have a very difficult time trying to declare him incompetent.

Skywalk Specs

Today is my birthday. I'm 54...physically. I'm probably more like 74 metabolically.

We spent the day earning large monies by painting skywalks. It wasn't in the plans to do this but the skywalks pay so well and come up sporadically so we have to jump on them when we can. So we did!

You can kind of see our work there in the picture above. It doesn't help that the windows are tinted. It also doesn't help that the little street urchins who abide the downtown area like to scratch their proof of existence into the paint. We have to make the lettering small enough to fit high up on the windows...out of scratching range.

So now we have another couple of months of remodeling under our financial belt.

That's always cool!

I need to get some specifications down in writing for these skywalks. I run into the same problems every year because I don't have this information to refer to. So here it is.

The large skywalks on Main have 14 windows per side. Each pain of glass is 68" x 118"

The skywalk on Post Street in front of RPS has 11 windows per side and the measure 65" x 118".

It took us almost four hours to finish cutting our stencils for the first skywalk we painted. When we finally got to painting, it took us an hour.

We did the two skywalks today in about five and a half hours.