skip to main |
skip to sidebar
That's right! I'm in the hot tub and I totally deserve it.
I've been in the throws of manual labor, hot sweat glistening over my toad belly white toad belly. The smell of toil exudes from my pores and gathers in my crotchal region, with pheromones seething through my moistened toggery and affecting all downwind females within my aura.
So here's what I accomplished today.
As stated in an previous post dated yesterday, I set out to clean the Carriage House today. It is an overwhelming mess full of dust and stored what-nots, as well as my workshop for fashioning wood products into stained and varnished wood products. My goal: make it less whelming.
The day was heavy with humidness hanging in the humidinary. The sun shone warmly overhead, which is the best place from which the sun should shone.
I began at 9 to remove the retched refuse of the teaming walls and moving it into the yard. Once most of it was out of the way, I was able to realign some stuff and vacuum the floors. That took some doing. I've been sanding in there for months and a nice layer of dust hung on everything in there like the aforementioned sun in the humis sky.
Wait! That's a horrible metaphor. Let's just say it was dusty in thar.
So with rearranging and a fair amount of purging, I was able to get everything back into the place and create a great deal of room in which to move, work, dance and store more crap.
I am pleased to say that the crap has been removed, reduced, and reorganized into a semi efficient arrangement of former crap.
Now I can move on to the basement!
Now that we are through all the stressful parties and projects, we essentially have nothing to do. We can do whatever we want. I am taking on a project I want to tear into tomorrow. The cleaning of the Carriage House. It is packed with lots o' crap.
My plan is to pull out as much crap as I can, toss what I can and replace the rest in a smart, orderly, military fashion. Not having been in the Military, but having been a Cub Scout, the result of that description remains to be seen.
Check in tomorrow!
I began having Solstice parties in 2001...prior to my relationship with Susan. When she came along, she embraced the party Whole Solsticely and turned it into a major food event.
Last night was no exception and fun was had by all. I brewed a five gallon keg of home brew and we had a bunch of wine. We were feeling a little small this morning but not so bad that we got up at 10 and proceeded downtown to paint a sky walk.
We had about 50ish people show up including my friend Doug, who died last December. His sister brought him and we propped him up on the piano bar with an "I Love Lucy" tie wrapped around the box of ashes between two bottles of Skyy Vodka, which he loved and contributed to his demise. It may be as close as we get to a Memorial for him. I hope not. I'd like to do it up right.
The weather was the big question mark. The trend over the last few weeks is to be nice during the week with an occasional sudden cloud burst, and then pour on the weekend. It was looking iffy all day until about three. Then the clouds parted and blue skies made way for a lovely warm summer evening.
With the Solstice behind us and the end of our most recent project, we have a little time to do some little things around the house. I need to make a list of the little things. One little thing is to clean out all the crap in the Carriage House. If I can just get it out and reorganize it, that would be a major advance in the course of human civilization.
Another little thing is to get a liner installed in our chimney. It is essentially an open vertical window and we need to close it. That's going to be a thousand dollars but the sky walks we are painting will cover most of that.
And so, it's on to summer!
I realize I'm kind of late getting the word out, but if you happen to be in the Spokaloo area this evening around the near North Side of town, we will be hosting our annual Solstice Party, to which you, yes You, are invited.
The weather does not look promising but it's a big house and we can accommodate a few more souls......who bring beer...and an appetizer...and cash is good too.
I have had so much I wanted to get in here and so little of it has happened. So, this is my opportunity to try and catch up.
Ketchup Item #1: Remember my hops? Both plants are doing well. They are doing extremely well. One might say exceedingly swell-ly well. Take a look!
You could reference my posts back in April when the first shoots started poking out of the ground. It's hard to believe these are the same shoots.
Ketchup Item #B: I have an old beat up fiberglass canoe that I use out on the Little Spokane River. It has developed many cracks and holes over the years and I have repaired them. You can see some of my former repair work on the under bow there.
The time had come again to make some patches. I had two cracks right at the water line amid ships. They weren't critical but they allowed water into the boat so...like I said, it was time.
Repairing a fiberglass boat is really pretty easy. I make it one step easier by not caring how it looks. Like I said, this is a knock around boat. I don't want anything out of it other than river worthiness.
You just paint a little resin onto the area to be patched, lay the fiberglass cloth onto the resin and work it in. You can sand it after it dries to smooth it out, or just leave it for that classic White Trash look.
Ketchup Item III: While cleaning the house prior to the Solstice Party, I pulled all the furniture out of the living room and had a real good look at the floors. For the purposes of this particular Blog entry, I'm going to assume that Dave, the privious owner of the house, doesn't read this.
He didn't do a great job refinishing the floors. He made the one mistake that people make all the time when they re-do floors. He used a drum sander. While very efficient, they are difficult to control. You can see the divots in the floor in the picture above.
I don't want to be too hard on Dave because my skills are nothing to brag about. The only difference is we used a large pad sander which completely eliminates divots. We may re-do the finish on this floor, but I doubt it. We have a large carpet covering most of it so you really can't see it.
But I did feel the need to comment, and now I feel better. In the meantime, I think Dave is on a beach in the South Pacific not caring about my floors.
The last thing to do with our hallway project is to create a Time Capsule. We have a little open space at the top of the main floor bathroom door and we are placing a few things in the space. Including a copy of this Blog posting.
We put in a medallion from Expo 74 that I got from my parents. There is a swatch of the wall paper Susan just applied in the entry. There are a couple of pins, some of the invitations we've made for our parties, one of our Christmas cards and a few wine labels from wine we have made. Additionally, there is a thank you we got from a friend of my Mom's concerning the Mother's Day event we hosted this year. There is also a blue ribbon from the Spokane Interstate Fair for the Piesporter we made in 2009.
We closed it up on this date.
It is June First and in my world, that means it is time to shut down the furnace. I turned off the heat on the thermostat and closed the gas valve on the furnace. I suppose I could let the pilot light burn all Summer but that seems terribly wasteful. With it turned off, I still get charged about six bucks a month. I'm not sure why...providing access to gas?
Anyway, the furnace is off and it is now time to enjoy some Summer.
I say that as I sit on the front porch writing this entry at 11:35 PM and notice that it is just starting to rain. I guess I should go turn off the sprinkler that I set earlier.
I can hear activity out in the park. Some kids are out there doing what kids do. Lots of liberal use of the "F" word.
Susan has just arrived home from working at the arena. She was working a concert. It was some happening rap fellows named "LMFAO". To show how unhip I am, I will tell you I have no idea what that stands for.
And yet, life goes on.
