It's a Weekend!

It is looking like Bloomsday is going to be a Weather Appropriate event...meaning the weather is going to cooperate for mild to warm, semi-comfortable temperatures. It of course, remains to be seen and lived through.

We have just returned from picking up Susan's race packet and attending the trade show. We came across an unusual workout machine the vibrates the shit out of you. The vibration is supposed to work your whole body and you burn about 300 calories in ten minutes on it...or maybe just near it. The lady trying to sell the thing was very new agey and into crystals and bio-rhythms. I must admit that I felt better when I got off the machine. I don't think we are going to spend a grand on it though.

Next weekend is a big tour of homes around the park. This is something that is sponsored by the museum as a fund raiser and it usually gets pretty good attendance.

I made up a flyer to pass around to all the neighbors to remind them of the event.

We're going to pass them out later.

I hope they are accepted in the spirit with which they are intended. I don't want anyone to get their nose out of joint because they think I think their yard is a mess.

Mid Week and the Living is Queezy

For the uninitiated, Spokane has an annual rite of passage into Spring that we like to call Bloomsday. We call it that because that is the name of the event. They named it Bloomsday and so we call it that. I should get a crap load of hits on the blog now that I have used Bloomsday in the text. Another good way to get hits is to write "Beer".

I managed to get a picture of Susan as she was training for Bloomsday. It was a terribly rainy day when I took this picture and as you can see, she was going really really fast. I barely managed to squeeze a photo off before she was gone. Coincidentally, she looks just like this when I have a hangover.

We have been working on the house little bit by little bit. Susan is well into her paper hanging and is making good progress. She put up a piece last night that I thought was going to give her a stroke. It was a long piece that butted up against the trim of the living room archway and it was not cooperating. It didn't help that I was in the way holding the paper and preventing Susan from repositioning the ladder. We really need to get some scaffolding in there.

But, we will make due with what we got , as we always have and manage quite nicely, thank you!



I said, "Good Day!"

Gardening in Corbin Park

From my experience, it does not appear that there is a single area of ground anywhere on our property where I cannot put a shovel down and hit a root. Our soil must be primarily made up of roots. They are everywhere and they are extensive.

The picture below is not a bunch of branches I picked up from around the yard. They are roots that I dug up from under the yard.

Roots seem to be the main ingredient with which we have to deal and not something that will be dealt with easily. I am moderately sore this Monday morning after a day in the yard picking at and removing rootses.

I got out and watered all my new transplants before leaving the house this morning. So far, everything looks good but it is really too early to tell if the transplanting will take. At this point, the patient is still critical.

If It's Easter, This Must Be My Beer!

It has been a very nice weekend for working in the yard. Even though we have lots to do inside, I managed to get out and be productive in the yard. Here is a brief recreation of what I did today.

Susan got started on wall papering. She is into the main part of the entry way now and got up three sheets after another long day o mudding and sanding.

Here's how it looks so far. It sure is nice to have a professional paper hanger in the marriage. I don't have the patience for this kind of work.

Today is Easter and that means that Lent is over and that means that we are back on the sauce. Beer, Wine and alcohol of all types is again ours for the drinking.

What I learned from Lent this year is not to give up alcohol ever again.

Finally, here is why I love my wife. She can't just make deviled eggs. She goes the extra mile to make deviled eggs that look like little chicks hatching.

Quite tasty!

Pictures of the House

 Here's a nice spring like picture of the house I took this morning. The day looks promising in this picture but it was essentially cold and windy...as if it were January, or Alaska.

It looks much better than the other side of the house. Ronnie is about half way through the scraping, patching, and priming stages.

We are really looking forward to having this project completed. We will add it to the very short list of completed projects.

Return of the Odious Menace

Much accomplishments was made on the days of the weekend. Yard works and remodeling works and a new door in the back one might call...a new back door.

We purchased a replacement door for our beat up, ratty old back door. It looked like it was going to be a relatively easy project, but I think we all know better. It ended up taking about four hours. After placing the hinges on the new door in the only places that were provided, I came to realize they did not match up to the hinge placement of the old door. I had to break out the router and create a new inset for the slightly repositioned hinge on the top and bottom of the door. The middle hinge was just right.

Then I had to move the hole for the door latch. Nothing matched.

Today was a nice enough day to get outside and do a little yard care. We raked the front and I mowed for the first time. I would like to gt some fertilizer down but the weather doesn't look cooperative.

I came upon a horrible sight on Sunday. It appears a skunk has taken up residence under the Carriage House. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet as I would have to fill it in and cover it with rocks during the night when the critter leaves to forage. I'm not so dedicated as to stay up late and wait the skunk out. That's what traps a for.

That's the tunnel the little bitch has dug under a considerable length of debris.  Anyway, they're back!

One Week to Drinks

We gave up booze for Lent. It's been Hell! Susan is allowing herself a couple of glasses of wine a day but I have sworn off liquor of all stripes and I'm really looking forward to beer.

I've fallen off the wagon several times during this Lental season. Some were planned, others were more impromptu in nature.

I bring this up because we kind of thought that not drinking would spur on our evening home improvement sessions. It has not. We have to start getting our evening act together and accomplish something at night other than who got voted off "Dancing with the Survivors of America's Next Biggest Idol Loser".

Window Repair Seminar

It was a chilly morning when I set off for work but not so chilly that I couldn't have ridden my bicycle. That's something I'm going to have to start considering more and more as a viable option to driving the car. It's becoming expensive. $4.00 a gallon is the price where I have to reconsider all my driving. Today I paid $3.79.9. At that price, it's costs me ten dollars to go 45 miles. That is very close to the distance I drive to work every day.I got my windows replaced last night. I was happy with the results once I had glass that was the proper dimensions.

Pictured above is the bay window in the dining room. The large middle pane was the one I had to replace. The plexiglas fit badly into the space and was seriously effecting that value of the house. It was easy to remove and I got it out in one piece. That will make it valuable for uses in other places yet to be named...or discovered.
I am concerned about the caliber of the wood on parts of this sill. It has had a very rough fight with Mother Nature and the wood is not winning. The picture below shows how badly it is peeling and cracking. Since we are in the scraping period of painting this side of the house, I'm going to try and give this window some special attention. That attention will of course be chronicled here.
Now it's time for the seminar portion of the Blog. Here is how I do my glazing. I've never been taught the proper method and so I was forced to develope the Stan method. And this is how it goes.
Let's start with points. Points and the little metal keepers that hold the glass pane in place. I use them liberally, generally three per side.

Next I trowel out large blobs of glazing compound and press it into a section of the window. I don't know if it's better to start on one particlular edge over another so I pick the one that feels most natural. The one you would go to first. It will be different for everyone and that is part of the zen beauty of window glazing.

Anyway, I get the blob in place and try to squeeze it into the corner of the sill and glass as tight as possible.

I like to use a wide width putty knife. I squish the glazing compound into the sill and pull the excess compound off the blade. As I squish and remove, squish and remove, I add the excess putty to the line I am working. I continue until I reach the end of the line or run out of putty. Repeat!

Finally, I use the wide putty knife to smooth the glazing into place, giving it a nice smooth finish. Dipping the knife in some water and keeping it clean of putty is helpful.

Measure Twice

I have probably discussed this before but reiteration is a staple of my writing style.
When one purchases a home, one often misses many minute details concerning certain amenities of the house. Perhaps balusters in the staircase don't match. Possibly, light fixtures are precariously glued together. Perchance a window pane or four are not glass but plastic. We encountered all of these situations when we moved in and I admit to a wee bit of buyers remorse for a short time.

But then you get to work on the house and start to discover all the other things that are wrong with it and the buyers remorse turns to homicidal rage. Before you know it, you're off to an all expense paid life time of incarceration and your home owning troubles are over. Or . . . you just fix all that stuff. And stay out of jail.

Today I got to work on replacing a Plexiglas window with a real glass window. Our painter has returned for the third and final season of house painting. In the midst of power washing, she noticed a sizable gap in our pleiglas window pane in the dining room. After six years of living here, it was time to replace the plex. It's all very easy to do unless you measure incorrectly...as I did.

Once the caulking was removed and the sill cleaned of all the crap, I realized I mis-measured by half an inch. That's a LOT! So, I'll get a new piece of glass today and get it installed tonight.

Other weekend projects included draining the hot tub and refilling with pristine clean water. This was long over due since I didn't do my winter cleaning.

Susan continued her work in the hallway as she has become quite anal about the smoothness of the wall. She will not be happy until that wall is a flat plane with narry a ripple, knot or impingement.

I would like to conclude by saying that I am familiar with the concept of paragraphs but the code that controls this damn blog seems to care not for them. I have tried three times to punctuate properly and it is all for not. That drives me fuckin' crazy! And that makes me swear! Shit!

Editor's Note: Okay, I think I have now fixed the paragraph problem. I'm leaving the original post as I first wrote it to maintain the concept of a free flowing dialog...but mostly because it has salty language.

Here Comes the Spring

I must owe money to this website because it is not allowing me proper punctuation. My previous post has no paragraphs and all my efforts to fix it have failed. So, I am assuming I must have to pay some money to someone in order to have access to the paragraph button. We shall see how it works out for this post. Here is a definite sign of Spring. My hops is starting to push up out of the ground and begin it's long tangled journey up the arbor. Yea!

In 1933, President Frank D. Roose-something signed a bill called the Cullen-Harrison Act. This bill made legal once again, the sale the beer. At midnight on April Se7enth, Prohibition effectively ended and now that hallowed day is commemorated with the designation of "National Beer Day!"

I am therefore going to allow myself to have another amnesty day from my Lental obligations and enjoy a beer this afternoon.

YEA!!!

Busy Busy Busy

Wow! There has been lots going on and lots to report and here I am finally getting around to it. We skied today. Perhaps the last day of the season for us. There's just too much going on to fit it in, although we managed to ski four times this year and each time at a different resort. We had a nice ski weekend last week as well. It was a make up trip for skiing on my birthday. We didn't go because the shingles was hampering my enjoyment of life. They are pretty much gone now although I have occasional twinges. The Shingles Tingles lasted about eight weeks. For the past se7en years, I have been bartending on Saturdays at Scotty's Bar & Grill in the Spokane Valley. That job has now come to an end. Last Saturday, March 26th, was the last day. Sadly, the bar has closed due to...well, there are a shit load of reasons but let's say, inefficient management. So now, unless I can find something else that will allow me to work only on Saturdays, I have my time freed up. It works to our advantage right now because we are keeping busy with skywalk painting. We have two more to do this week and perhaps it will become a more common place kind of thing. That would be great for us. Now it is Sunday evening and we have just gotten out of the hot tub after soaking our tired ski ravaged muscles. This is the time of year and the sort of occasion where I am glad we have a hot tub. The other 90 percent of the time, it's a hassle.