Thanksgiving Eve

Thanksgiving has to be one of the best holidays in the holiday lexicon. Susan and I like it because of Thanksgiving Eve. That is the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving which is really a Friday night. We like to go to a place called Blues at the Bend. We gather many friends together and have a wonderful evening and you don't have to worry about getting up or feeling small in the morning.

Last night was no exception. We got there about 6 in order to procure a good table. Gonzaga played a championship tourney game in Hawaii against Cincinnati. They were behind most of the game but won by a point in O.T. It was a great game and the crowd was into it even when the band was playing.

We got up this morning and got our painting duds together. We painted two spots, which is our Thanksgiving tradition.

This is just the start of many more days and nights of painting to come.

Tile Conundrum

I am soooooo happy that I invited my friend Brian over tonight so he could witness the process of beer making with his own self in the proximity of the beer making equipment in order to totally screw up my entryway tile project.

Perhaps I should explain.

My friend and fraternity brother Brian has become interested in home brewing because he has tasted my home brew and thereby been sucked into the brewing brotherhood. And while he has made the effort to buy some introductory equipment into the endeavor, he has not yet brewed.

Brian has planned a festive holiday party for the early part of the festive holiday season to be held at his festive holiday home located in the festive Glenrose region of the Spok-Anal Area. I offered to make a keg of beer for his festive gathering. He wanted to break his Brewing Cherry on my dime so I invited him over to observe the festive brewing process.

While here, he commented on my entry way tile project and how festively fabulous it was. Then came the issue of the transition into the TV room. I was planning on placing tile there. Tile Master Ron was planning on placing tile there. Susan said that she thought there should be wood in that spot rather than tile. I said, "Oh Susan. Poor poor little Susan. How can you be so misguided?!"

But tonight, Brian said, "You don't want tile there. If you are in the TV Room, with the door closed, you would see tile. You want to see wood until it transitions under the door."

I should say at this point that Brian is an ASSHOLE! Oh sure, he may be a correct asshole...but an asshole nonetheless.

Why is Brian an asshole? Because now, thanks to his un-invited critique, Susan is doing the victory dance around the tile and I have no choice but to admit defeat. WHY?! Because I was wrong!

If you will note in the picture above, the red dotted line indicates where the door will be when it is closed. It is clear to me now that the area from the wood to the tile should be filled with wood...not tile. It took an outsider to point this out to me.

Now here is the important point to get from this. "Always listen to your wife!"

Here is an alternate, less emasculating way to look at it. People need to come through your house and look at your projects and give their opinions. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of fifty their opinions will suck. But occasionally, a Brian (Asshole) will come through and hurt your short term pride in order to save you from a lifetime of humiliation.

I can clearly see now that Brian (and Susan) was correct. Fortunately, I have not written this down anywhere will people will find out about it.

Snow Day

This was the picture outside when we woke up this morning. The forecasters had threatened us with a snowfall but I often think they do that just to cover their asses. They made a lot of noise about winter storm warnings. But there was really nothing to worry about. This was the scene when we returned from church. I didn't even get a chance to break out the snow shovel.

Lazy day around the ranch today. I'm sitting here at the keyboard and Susan is scraping the stairs...trying to remove some of the stain so we can get that stalled project under way again. Perhaps I should go help. I think it's helpful to sit here and write about it.

Tile and Beer

For the rest of the week, I'll be writing more about the installation of the tile and how cool it looks. This is due to the fact that I can't do anything else until we get more tile. I should have an update on that soon but in the meantime, there's other stuff to talk about.

You may recall that I grew a couple of hops vines over the past summer. One of the dangers of growing hops is having to harvest hops and then do something with your harvest. Yesterday we did something.

Tile Master Ron also grew hops and we decided that along with the tile project, we would make some beer. It's a recipe I haven't tried before but it specifically calls for Sterling hops, which is what we grew. Talk about co-inky-dink!

So in between slopping down mortar and placing tile, we measured hops and boiled wort. it was quite a busy day. I know, it looks similar to making some sort of drug deal. Well, it is a drug deal. We're making beer and beer contains alcohol and alcohol is the most widely distributed drug in my bloodstream. And it's Legal!The beer was bubbling nicely as I left for work this morning and will be ready in a couple of weeks. I need to get on the beer ball and get another batch going for a party in early December.

We are about to hit our busy season. Painting skywalks, working on the house, and our general partying schedule will keep us very busy.

So Close and yet...

Because I am an idiot and incapable of counting correctly, I am one half of one tile short in completing the entry way. It could have been much worse.

The way I had arranged the tile in my plan, I figured I needed 27 square feet...27 tiles. I bought 30 thinking I would have enough to cover the inevitable mistakes. As we were coming to the end of the project today, I started counting tiles and realized we were going to be short.

Actually, I'm being a little hard on myself. We would have been perfect except that one of the tiles broke. However, I can't figure out how I miscounted so badly. Instead of needing 27, I needed 33. Ron ended up redesigning the way we put the tile down. It saved us lots of cuts and somehow, it used less tile. That is why we have Ron.

So, we are not quite done yet. I need to buy another 5 tiles. But, even so, it looks fabulous. Here are the pictures. Get ready! You will soon be sporting a tremendous woody.

You can see the area we still need to tile. One of the things that I totally missed is the sliver of floor in the new door on the right side of the pictures. I did not take that into account when I was miscounting how much tile I needed.

It goes without saying (and yet, I'm going to say it) that Susan and I are thrilled. It really looks good. The colors are just right and it looks like it belongs there. It makes you want to come in and do something elegant...have a snifter of cognac, talk down to the servants and chat about the opera.

Lame Snowfall Report

Yesterday's snow fall turned out to be totally unimpressive. I feel embarrassed to have wasted the time here talking about it. It snowed for a couple of hours but never stuck or accumulated to the expected two inches. That is just as well. I still have a few leaves I would like to get cleaned up and it is not helpful when they're covered by snow.

I did notice some whiteness on the south hill as I drove to the bar this morning. There was also some snow on the hills above the valley. A couple of hundred feet makes a big difference.

I worked at the bar today and now I have to get ready to work some benefit thing that I agreed to do with my friend, Mark. I really shouldn't have agreed to do this because after I bar tend for eight hours, my body starts to freeze up and doesn't want to do any more work. All I'm doing is pouring wine so it shouldn't be too bad. Still, I would much prefer to sit here in the house and pour wine...for ME.

I'm getting excited because tomorrow is tile day. Ron is coming at tenish and he fully expects to have the project done by the end of the day. I will of course, have extensive photographic and wordal evidence here.

Later that Night: I returned from the charity event at about 8:30. It went well and I really had very little to do other than stand there and drink beer...really, the perfect kind of charity event for me. The event was to benefit a group called the Olive or the Olive Group or something like that. They help with adoptions and abused kids.

Anyway, I arrived home and decided it was a good night for a stump fire. It was about 17 degrees and I had a good collection of stuff to burn. The debris was cold and frosty and slightly wet so I gave it a little boost with some gasoline. I must have put a little too much on because when I through the match on it, it literally knocked me backwards. There was the initial spark and then a big "Fooom" sound that exploded in front of me. It was really cool!

I really like this picture. You can see heat vapors rising out of the flames. It gives you an indication of how cold it was. In short, a delightful night by the Stump.

First Snow Fall

I don't normally blog during my work day (or if I do, I don't admit it). But I feel important to note that at 1:58 PM on November, Friday the 13th, the first official snow fall of the season began a fallin'!

Mo' Leveler

Tile Master Ron came by last night and we added another layer of leveling compound to the entry way floor. It still has a hump in the middle but it's not as bad as it was. There is a definite downhill feel to the floor as you walk in. The subliminal sense will be to make you feel more welcome as you enter because you come in really really fast.
I have picked up the tile and it is in our possession. I have spoken with Tile Master Ron concerning his availability for Sunday and he has confirmed his availability-ness. We will be making a tile entry this weekend. That is a definite possible maybe!

Trip to the Dump

I arose from a Sunday Night/Mondy Morning Slumber and got the week started at the dump. I arrived at the Sullivan Road Transfer Station just after se7en and proceeded to make myself all sweaty.

Again, at least 100 pounds of water was dumped. Total cost for dumping all my leaves this weekend: $16.85. That does not include the gas for Rob's truck or the cost of hosing it out and returning it to it's pristine state. That's my job at lunch.

Above is a nice shot of my pickup load of wet leaves at the dump this morning.

I hope I get to pick up my tile today. I will find out shortly. It's only 30 tiles so it won't be any big deal to get it...providing it has arrived.

I found some interesting damage to the hardwood floor right in front of the stairway. There is an end piece of wood that chipped off it's plank. The end piece adjacent to it also has a big chip that flicked off. The wood underneath the chip is dirty looking which leads me to believe this is old damage.

Rainy Sunday

The forecast called for rain and it didn't disappoint. It rained pretty much all day. It rained in various strength and amounts but it suffices to say that it was wet ot der.

That severely interfered with our plans for yard leaf removal. We were hoping the rain would hold off until late in the day. Nonetheless, we went forth with our plans and were successful in the effort. I made a trip to the dump with a heavily laden pickup truck and I have another load ready to go for the morning on my way to work.

I have wondered this before and will do it again, I'm sure. How much of my dump fee went to pay for water that was in my leaves? The city makes a nice little sum of money on rainy days, I suspect.

The yard is nice and clean and most of the leaves are out of the trees so I think we are done with leaves for the season. I do have a side yard that we didn't get to but the leaves are mostly in what passes for our flower beds so I'm not going to worry too much.

Bring on the Snow! We be ready!

Shoppers make last minute dash for Halloween costumes

I had a link here to a video of the house that was on the news but I'm told that the station is charging 99 cents to view it. Never mind!

Halloween Hang Over

The nice thing about preparing for Halloween all day, and then suddenly being caught up in all the activity, and then winding down afterwards and eventually lumbering off to bed is we got a whole extra hour of sleep time in. It's the return to Standard Time in the Pacific Northwest and it came at a great time.

We spent the day in the process of de-Halloweenization. We did pretty well. Everything is down and almost everthing has been properly stowed away. I even got the lawn mower put away and got some stuff out to prepare for snow.

We were visited yesterday by a News Crew from KXLY TV. They shot part of a story about Halloween in our front yard. I have it linked but it's the next post after this one. It's nothing special but it does show the house and a little bit of me.

In the meantime, here are some more pictures.