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7:53AM: It's Saturday morning, almost eight o'clock. I have just come downstairs to the smell of coffee. I occurred to me what a wonderful sensation that is.
It looks like it's going to be nice day and there are a number of things I want to get done this weekend, all the while fitting in some enjoyable activities as well.
Things planned for today are take Willy to the Vet, do some painting around the house over the priming we did last week, water the lawn, perhaps some work in the bathroom, visit the Garland Street Fair and listen to Sammy Eubanks, take samples of wine and beer over to Jim's Home Brew for an evaluation,and drink some beer.
How successful I am at accomplishing these tasks will be chronicled here.
But first, off to the grocery to get some eggs...after I get my coffee.
8:21AM: I am back from the store. The hoses are running in the yard and I'm going to settle down and read the paper.
10:25AM: I'm back from the Vet. We felt we needed to take Willy in because he is so boney. He has clearly lost weight but it turns out to be only 1 1/4 pounds. But that can be a lot for a cat.
I had a little trouble getting him into the Cat Carrier. Once he saw it, he knew there was trouble ahead.
There was a little trouble for me as well.
Now I'm off to the paint store with a stop at Jim's Home Brew.
11:29AM: Jim's was very little help in determining what we should do with the wines and beer. That is because we entered them in the fair and they (Bob & Gary of Jim's Home Brew) are among the judges. It just would not be fair.
We bottled a Tempranillo a couple of months ago. we loved it when we bottled it but are not so thrilled with it now. Our Lemberger is from last years trip to Prosser. We have not bottled it. It tastes okay but we are wondering if there is something we can do to make it better.
They did taste my Shummer Sandy Lemon beer. They both thought it was okay but I told them I'm adding some more Lemon flavor to it. They did not respond either way. We all agreed it is a good drinkable beer.
Next, we are off to the Garland Street Fair which is just up the hill from us. The Sammy Eubanks Blues Band is playing and we love them.
1:35PM: We're back from the Sammy Show and the Garland Street Fair. That has really turned into a great event. They have Garland Street shut down from Monroe to Wall, covered with Vendor Booths and even a couple of side streets.
After listening to Sammy for a while, we walked over to Rick's Ringside pub and had a couple of beers.
Unfortunately, Susan has to work tonight so we left to come back home and give her a chance to decompress prior to going to work. I'm going to do a little painting.
4:03PM: I'm nearly done with the painting. At least, this little bit of painting. The painting I'm doing today is to cover the priming we did last week on the dark green trim around the base of the house. I found the old can this morning and pealed off a half inch cap of gelled paint. There were lots of chunks in there so I went to the General Store and got a couple of cheap strainers. It really slow going. It helps to stir the funnel and force the paint through. There's a certain amount that is just going to go to waste. But I'm trying to use as much as I can.
In any event, I happy with the results.
7:05PM: I'm back again! This time I have been back to Jim's to get s'mor CO2. I needed it for mine beer. My last $17,00 bottle bled away.
Then I stopped at the Hub Tavern for waaaaaaay too long.
But I'm home now and since I'm on my own tonight, I'm going to cook me some dinner. I purchased a nice piece of meat and I shall throw on the barbecue.
9:09PM: I've had myself a nice dinner and am now trying to settle down for the evening. I was hoping to try and put a little paint on the deck siding but it has gotten too dark.
I'm planning to get a pit fire going before Susan comes home. It seems like a good night for a fire. In the meantime, I'm watching old episodes of Star Trek on Netflicks and doing a few little chores around the plantation.
10:57PM: There is a burning ban throughout the state of Washington so the picture below must be from my archives, even though I appear to be wearing the same clothes I was wearing today.
In any event, it was a lovely way to wind up the day.
It's been a week now without my Lawn Tractor Sprinkler and I am moving on, but still pissed. I spent $25.00 on one of those wave sprinklers and it is doing an okay job for me. The problem of course, is that I have to attend to it every half hour or so. The Lawn Tractor just moved across the space of the lawn and then turned itself off at the end.
In the meantime, we are still trying to be productive.
Here is our productive work for today.
From this,
to this.
We got a coat of primer on the new siding. Tomorrow we will try to finish up with a nice finishing coat of sage green.
The amazing thing is that it used to look like this.
And while this is not a great shot of the same angle, here is a picture of what we started with.
I got up around eight this morning, got myself dressed and headed out the door for a brisk walk. I included an errand into the walk and made my way to Yoke's for some groceries.
Before I left, I decided to set my sprinkler and get a good early start on yard watering. So I went behind the arbor vitae to grab my Nelson Industries Traveling Yard Tractor Sprinkler, and it was gone. I had left it there only last night...at about 11PM. I can only surmise that it ambled off into the night to water the lawn of life.
That, or some fucking scumbag, low-life, shit hole, piece of crap, turd ball decided it was more important for him (or her) to have it than me, the guy who paid for it.
I am really getting fed up with these fucking scumbag, low-life, shit hole, piece of crap, turd balls. I really want to set one of these assholes up and pummel them lifeless. (I'm looking forward to the day when this post will be used against me in a court of law.)
The most infuriating thing is that the aforementioned fucking scumbag, low-life, shit hole, piece of crap, turd ball is going to get $5.00 for my $75.00 sprinkler.
Well, I have finally come to the conclusion that I cannot leave anything out. If it is something I want, and I leave it outside for any fucking scumbag, low-life, shit hole, piece of crap, turd ball to lay his hands on it, then it is my fault.
So here is a notice to all you fucking scumbag, low-life, shit hole, piece of crap, turd balls that may be having someone read this to them.
First of all, FUCK OFF & DIE!
Next, you are welcome to everything that isn't nailed down...like I had to tell you that. I know you already feel that you have the right to everything in the world that is not currently yours.
Lastly, FUCK OFF & DIE!!!
I have looked back through past posts and I cannot find if I have described the event I'm about to describe. Susan and I both experienced this event last year. It seems like it happens on one particular night, which happened to be tonight...for this year.
The event is the amassing of the gnats.
Here is a picture looking west from our front porch. If you were to zoom in on that large tree, you would see what appears to be a bunch of dots all over. Those dots are bugs...I am calling them gnats, but I am not sure about that.
This picture is a zoom in of the tree and a better depiction of the dots/bugs/gnats. I think you can see them a little better.
We noticed this conflagration last year and were mesmerized by it.
As the sun was setting, it lit up the area in front of this tree to reveal thousands of bugs swarming. Every once and a while, a small tornado of bugs would swirl into a tight ball and move through the swarm until it dissipated.
I tried to get a video of the tornadoes and I think I could have captured it. However, my lack of knowledge about how this camera works turns against me.
My problem might have been that all my batteries were nearly dead and I just didn't have enough power to record the video.
In any event, I have now recorded Gnat Night for 2016. We shall see if it recurs this year or if we have to wait another year.
I hope you have been keeping up with my health issues over on the other Blog. However, this Blog is for the house and all things house related. So here we are!
Susan is getting started with her wall papering in the bathroom. This is an area where I stay out of the way. She is the paper hanger in the family. It usually involves lots of muttering under her breath, a little cussing and and a lot of me staying out of the way.
So I'll snap a few photographs and then commence to staying out of the way.
She made progress. In fact, she made damn good progress.
She worked all afternoon and has just finished up for the day.
Now we are walking to a near by Italian restaurant for dinner.
I had a doctor's appointment this morning to follow up on my defib implant from a month ago. As I write this, I am in a hospital bed in Room 625-2 of Sacred Heart Medical Center.
To get more information on "wazzzzzzup", visit
www.porkymccorpulent.blogspot.com for this date.
That way, I don't have to tell the story twice.
It has taken me until Monday to report on the events of the weekend. It hasn't been particularly hectic, but we've had other things to do.
What was hectic was the hour prior to the start of the Solstice/Birthday Party. Susan felt she was waaaay behind which caused her great stress which was transferred to me.
Once the first guests started to arrive, Susan finally simmered down and had a beer.
Mom and about eight of her friends arrived by Limousine.
We figured out we had about 55 people at the house and at one point, they were all at the house at the same time. Then 9:00 arrived and we were down to about 15 folks. We all kind of puttered around and cleaned up. Before you knew it, everything was fairly tidy. We then settled down on the deck to drink and chat.
The great part of the party was the attendance of many of my cousins. Cheryl and Kerry Roberts, and Karla Peyton as well as all my sister Sherry's kids.
Sunday was a very mellow day which started with Brunch at Mom's.
We all met for one last time before everyone had to hit the road. Again, great to see EVERYONE!
We have had another major advancement in modern bathroom technology enhancement.
Shown above is a sink. It is a method of delivering water, on demand, to the operator of the sink. In this fashion, the operator may wash his (or her) face and hands, consume the aforementioned water, or just turn it on and let the water run for hours on end.
We will eventually change out this faucet. We would like something more old fashion looking, two handle cross tops with porcelain knobs.
But for now, and with the Solstice Party around the corner, this faucet will do
It was a true pleasure to take my morning constitutional in the main floor bathroom this morning. The floor was warm and the capacious setting brought serenity unto my personage. There was also the satisfaction of being in a room that we had a major hand in creating. And a little embarrassment at how long it has taken.
I left work an hour early today in order to get home and get some important preliminary work done in the bathroom. I had to get the bead board installed on the toilet wall. I did all the measurements and layout last night and got everything marked up. When I got home, all I had to do is get everything cut out.
Surprisingly, it all fit! Wow!!!
The other big obstacle was to remove the valve that supplies the toilet with water so I could place the bead board. That required the purchase of a crimping tool that tightens the ring around the valve. The tool cost $62.00 for something I will use once...maybe twice if I screw up. In reality, I used it once.
Anyway, all went well and the panel is in place.
The next task was to pull the old toilet out of the Carriage House and get it cleaned up. It was a mess.
Once the toilet was ready, it was a matter of placing the wax ring, putting the screws in place, and dropping the potty into position.
All went well and we have a working toilet on the main floor.
Our looooooooooooooooooong national nightmare is over.
The next thing to do is to see if we can make the sink work.
We had decent weather today and that allowed for some good progress in the bathroom.
We had a little more progress with the shower. We need our finishing tile, which should be in tomorrow. Then Ron will finish that one side of the shower so I can get the bead board up and get the toilet installed.
I also made some progress on the north wall with bead board. It is taking me some time to get each panel placed and fitted properly so I do not proceed quickly. But I am proceeding and with luck, we might have a sink installed with our toilet.
Man, are we getting hoitey-toitey or what?!
Please to take note of the photograph below.
You will notice that the shower tile is coming dangerously close to the wall box where the heater will be. We still have to add a decorative tile and a thin bull nose pencil tile to finish.
With the heater in that location, it wasn't going to work.
So Susan asked if there was any way to move the heater over slightly. We had already moved it once when we realized it was too close to the toilet. Well, we thought about it and came to the conclusion that we could screw a 2x4 to the stud and move the box over about an inch and a half.
And so, that is exactly what we did. Now we have enough room to make our tile design work.
I like it when we come up against a problem and Susan figures out a fix.
I think we are at another major milestone sign post delineation. We have begun the tiling of the shower.
This is how far we got today. When I say we, I of course mean Ron. He is our tile guy. Although, I did a lot of observing today and I think I can do it. I'm going to try and help out on Wednesday when Ron returns to finish.
There has been a slight break in bathroom activity. My heart has raised it's ugly ventricle and is giving me some problems. You can check out my other blog to get caught up on my health issues. www.porkymccorpulent.blogspot.com
I've been home all week and trying to do little projects here and there as I am able and feeling like it. I must admit that there have been lots of naps.
I shall report on my progress as I make some.
10:31AM: I have been addressing invitations to the upcoming Solstice party but I am taking a break to go out and buy more envelopes. I have to get some other grocery items as well so I'll probably do that now.
12:24PM: I have completed the addressing of the invitations. Time for a nap!
Susan and I are pretty sore from patting ourselves on the back after accomplishing so much this past Holiday Weekend. We feel that we are wicked awesome with trends leaning toward moderate skillfulness.
And yet, there is more to do. We are continuing our work on the bathroom, specifically, the tile. We could get really anal about this process.
When one is down close to the floor and examining the tile up close, it looks pretty bad.
But when you stand up and give the floor a cursory scan like any other person would do, it looks fine.
So we are trying to find the happy medium.
We began the day with a mission. To go out to the Little Spokane River and procure some fernses. First we stopped for breakfast at Ferguson's Cafe.
Then we headed for the river...
...which turned out to be a total bust. There were no ferns to be had. If it wasn't for the fact that we got to go to the river, I would have been pissed.
So, we went to the Depot and bought the three ferns they had.
Assorted other things occurred that I don't feel like relating here. But we did manage to get some work done on the bathroom floor. We are at the point where we are cleaning the grout and deep cleaning the tile. Once that is done, we can seal the grout. Just one more step towards installing a toilet.
All in all, a great weekend to be an American!
8:22AM: With the Indy 500 as background music, we are up and at-em with the projects for today.
Phil arrived at 9:30 and got started on the siding project.
This is the first board in place.
The next thing Phil has to do is cut into some of the old siding so it feathers in nicely and doesn't look like there was ever a whole section of work done in this space.
Susan is back to work potting hanging baskets and will be returning to the front yard to finish the west flower bed.
I'm trying my damnedest to not go out and do any work. However, I think my time has run out. Yup! I just got yelled at. Gotta go!
4:22PM: Here is the progress Phil made today.
Unfortunately, we ran out of lumber. I need to purchase 95 more feet.
Susan finished all her planting and I finished my unplanting, getting this stump of a dead Arbor Vitae out. I
6:01PM: We are off to Mom's for dinner. I shall report back in the next paragraph.
8:30PM: We are beat. We stopped at the Hub and shared a pitcher with Mark. Now we will watch a couple of shows and then off to slumber bed.
Good Night!
10:45AM: We haven't done anything yet other than get up, read the paper, drink some coffee (with Baileys) and enjoy a wonderful breakfast of Cheese Eggs and Taters.
There was a segment on "Ask This Old House" where they replaced a door into a closet with a book shelf that swung open like a hidden door, similar to what I want to do in the bathroom where the old stairway is. I recorded it so I can refer back it when I show Jerry what I want to do.
I've run some laundry this morning and I vacuumed the balcony. Now I'm going up to mop the balcony floor before I move on to my next project.
7:46PM: Many hours have passed and our yard looks better for it. Susan got one of the front gardens planted and all of the Geranium boxes for up stairs on the balcony.
I cut down a couple of dead arbor vitae and cleaned up around the yard in general. While Susan accomplished a lot and it shows, I accomplished a lot and you might never know it.
Here is the other flower bed that Susan will plant tomorrow.
We went to check out our tile choices and will be ordering everything on Tuesday. After the tile store and a brief stop at "the Depot", we went to the Hub.
Now we are winding down our day and going to enjoy some burgers, beer and an old Jimmy Stewart movie, "The Shop Around the Corner."
10:17PM: "The Shop Around the Corner" was remade in the 90's as "You've Got Mail". While neither movie was a laugh riot, we got a little joy out of it. It featured Frank Morgan, who is best known as the Wizard of Oz. The odd thing about the movie was that it was set in Budapest. Nobody spoke with an accent and it was really an unnecessary affectation.
Now that the movie review is over, lets have a pit fire and enjoy the first blurry S'Mores of the summer season.
4:51PM: It is the start of the Memorial Day Weekend. It's hard to tell what the weather is going to be like this weekend. It's supposed to be rainy today and tomorrow and nicer on Sunday and Monday.
Right now, it's pretty decent out. Perhaps a bit cool but not so bad that I couldn't sit out on the front porch. Perhaps that is what I shall do.
8:36PM: We have been to the Hub and back after a couple of pitchers to launch our fabulous Memorial Day Weekend. I actually plan to take some time this weekend to remember the sacrifices that have been made by fallen soldiers so I can walk to the Hub and enjoy a beer.
11:38PM: We've spent the evening watching shows off Netflix. I think we have discovered a pretty funny new show called "Lady Dynamite". It stars comedian Maria Bamford. It's pretty off kilter and really unusual and funny. We watched the first episode and liked it.
It's a rainy day. In fact, it's been a rainy weekend. Almost an inch of rain fell yesterday. A few showers have happened this morning already.
We got trapped at the Hub Tavern for a while yesterday because of the rain. We walked over to watch the Preakness and while we were there, the skies opened up and it poured for a good long while. It finally subsided enough that we figured we could make it home without getting totally sopped.
I had Phil come over today to get started on replacing the siding on the house outside of the bathroom. The first obstacle to over come is removing the old siding. I want to hide the fact that a door had been there.
There is also this giant gouge that has been inexplicably cut into the siding. I would like to fix that as well.
But there is an obstacle to the obstacle. You will notice the white post in the upper picture next to my particle board covering. That is the latch for the gate going out to the hot tub. I removed a couple of bolts that secured it to the deck but it was still attached.
With Phil's help, we managed to get it loose.
So we got to work removing the rest of the siding, trying to save as much of it as possible for re-use. After the undercarriage was revealed, we put up some tar paper and called it a day.
I am satisfied with our progress for the day. Especially since I didn't know what sort of progress we could make today.
The next step is the put some uneven cuts in the siding shown above up to the window. That will eliminate the gouge I showed above and hopefully make the whole side look uniform. Other than looking at this blog, no one will be able to tell there was ever a door in that area.
We made more progress in the bathroom last night but it is another case of two steps forward and one step back.
We got a coat of primer paint up on the walls and ceiling. It only took us a little over an hour and all went pretty well.
However, there are a couple of spots that need to be sanded. They were not at all apparent until painted. Then they stood out like diarrhea on the Mona Lisa. (I'm thinking I could come up with a better comparative metaphor) (But I'm not gonna!)
So the sanding will happen tonight as well as touch up priming.
