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[May. 22nd, 2009|09:10 pm] |
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If nothing else, I feel like the new house is making me pretty handy. I made my first attempt at sanding floors last weekend. I picked one room to experiment with, rented a drum sander, and had at it. The drum sander was actually pretty fun to use, though crappy to carry up stairs. Sanding the edges of the room sucked though. But I was done with all the sanding and put the first coat of poly on Tuesday night. I've put three more on since then, including two today. Because today got to be and extra special day that started and finished at the house, with work in between. It was for a good cause, though, because our Ikea cabinets came in! I had an 8a-12p window, and of course they showed up at 12. But it was ok because I got rid of some more books, weeded, put a coat of poly down, and got someone to take the stove away for free. Anyhow, there are now 72 boxes of cabinet things sitting in the living room and dining room. According to the packing slip, it is a half ton of cabinets. With a small miracle, they will get installed next weekend, which is also plumbing installation weekend. My boss is going to help me with the plumbing and my coworker said he'd help Bobby with the cabinets. But for cabinets to go up, I have to get the floors patched up, sanded, and covered with many coats of poly by next Saturday morning. The patching will suck the most because there are chunks of floor missing where the walls used to be. And some boards are rotted. So my strategy will be do figure out where the cabinets are going, cut out those pieces of board, replace with 3/4" plywood, and cut the removed pieces to fit where the missing spots are. This sounds great in theory, but I learned last summer (with the fence building adventure) that I can't measure or cut a straight line to save my life. But, if I completely fail, we will rip out the floor, put down new subfloor, and Bobby will get his tiled kitchen. At some point I will post pictures of our adventure. |
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[May. 7th, 2009|09:02 am] |
It's funny--at the small little non-profit I work at now, I travel a lot more than anywhere else I used to work. No company has ever paid for me to fly anywhere until this job. I'm on my way to Dallas today. Usually I'm excited about the new places I get to visit, but I'm not really this time. Our organization is a LEED for Homes Provider (which means that I am a LEED for Homes Provider because no one else at work wants to touch this stuff). Basically, if anyone wants to get their house certified under LEED for Homes, then have to use a Provider, of which there are about 30 in the country. It's a program of the US Green Building Council (USGBC), who seems to think they are the greenest, most awesomest thing in the whole entire world. Which is of course why they are having us all fly to Dallas for a one day meeting and dinner. If it's anything like the last time, it will be a big waste of time and we'll all leave angry. And you know you have an awesome program when the people in charge of administering it around the country are made endlessly angry by it. Anyhow, aside from that, they're taking us to a steakhouse for dinner. I understand that they're trying to give us a good ol' Texas experience, but really. Beef is the most un-environmentally friendly meat. Plus, I'm sure that given the make-up of the group, there will be a good number of vegetarians. And this place literally only serves steak and seafood. This is why the USGBC sucks. They are overly concerned about putting on a good show and not so concerned about the impact they're making. Anyhow, I am bored and sitting in the airport because my flight was delayed and then delayed enough that they put me on a later direct flight that's not leaving for....4 more hours.
In other news, the house continues to progress slowly. I got half the plumbing supplies in yesterday. UPS left a box behind in Roanoke by accident, so I'll get the other half today. I think I'll at least try to run the supply lines this weekend and connect them next weekend. Most of the wallpaper is down, there's just one room left. There is still lots of paste to wash off though. Once the wallpaper is down, paste is off, and walls are painted, we'll have to get the floors taken care of. By that point, the kitchen cabinets should be in (that was a whole fiasco in and of itself--Ikea Direct Sales was full of suck) and we'll focus on getting the flooring done in there and assembling cabinets and hanging them. Then we'll have to get the new appliances, have a gas line moved, and get those installed. Then, I can finally move in.
The problem with all of this is that it needs to be done by the end of the month. Meghan got a job in St. Louis, so we'll be putting the house up for sale. It really needs to be empty before we do so that we can get everything cleaned and fixed. My room especially needs to be empty so I can deal with the carpet. Gremlin has been nice enough to decimate the carpet since I got her. She used to have issues with getting angry and peeing all over it. So that either needs to be hardcore cleaned or just ripped up. I'm inclined to try to clean it because I'm a little worried about what the hardwood will look like underneath. Anyhow, so I have one month to get one house ready for sale and one house ready to move into. At the very least, the new one needs to have one room done so I can move my stuff in and live with Bobby until the house is ready. I haven't mentioned that to him yet.
So that is most of my life in a nutshell. Lots of work all around. |
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[Mar. 8th, 2009|12:20 am] |
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Last Wednesday, on the 4th, I bought a house with the boyfriend. It is quite the project. It's a really awesome and beautiful house, built in 1932, but it needs a lot of work. It came with all of its contents, which is almost 50 years worth of stuff. There are some neat things in there, but there's also a lot of junk. And dust. And cat hair. It looks like the house wasn't cleaned for years. We've spent pretty much every day there attempting to organize things so that we can at least figure out what we're keeping, what's trash, and what's going to be sold. We're gonna have one hell of a yard sale soon. We've found everything from a mink stole to vintage hats to all the bibles anyone could ever want. We have a lot of cleaning to do thought before we can even think of starting to fix up the house. |
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[Feb. 18th, 2009|12:26 pm] |
I'm in New Orleans this week. I got in Saturday and fly out tonight. It's a strange place. I got in Saturday night around 11. It was chaos. Mardi Gras is next week, so I thought there wouldn't be much going on. Apparently parades start at the beginning of the month and run through next week. I couldn't even get dropped off at my hotel because the streets were so crowded. But part of that is that my hotel was a block over from Bourbon Street. I wandered around a bit that night while I was searching for dinner (I was starving because I didn't realize there was a time difference and I hadn't eaten since 11:30 EST). Bourbon Street is the craziest place I have ever been. So many lights and so much music and so many people. Drinking from plastic cups on the street is apparently legal. There was much drunkenness. Aside from that rather in your face introduction to the city, I have enjoyed my time here. The buildings are beautiful. There is so much character. And I love just about any city that is walkable. It makes me happy to not need a car and not even think about needing one. I was a little disappointed to be here by myself because there are so many restaurants and I wanted to try them all. But I'm not one to go to a sit down restaurant by myself. But I tried pralines and beignets and had some jambalaya and a po'boy and considered it good. I wanted to try alligator, but couldn't find it at any of the places I went. I'd definitely like to come back with someone at some point and really explore more of the city. I got a very cursory view while I was here. I mainly only saw the French Quarter and down by the river. And while I like what I've seen, I feel like New Orleans is wasted on me. I don't think I could live here, but it's nice to visit.
My reason for being here was a work conference. I'm really glad that work pays for stuff like this. It's good to get out of the office, see new places, and learn a bunch of new things. It's been a really good conference and it revitalized my love for what I do. The day to day can get rather dreary, so it's nice to approach everything from a more cerebral level and reconnect with what drew me to this field in the first place. There are a lot of opportunities in this field and so much still to learn. At some point I plan to be one of the people speaking and talking about how I've been in this field for 25 years. There are going to be a lot of major and rapid changes in how residential buildings are dealt with in the next few years, so it will be a lot of trial by fire. It will be rough, more likely than not, because the industry isn't ready to make these changes. However, money is being thrown at it and it will have to adapt quickly to take advantage of that. There will hopefully be a forthcoming glut of retrofit work done on the existing stock. And the way that new buildings are built should start to shift drastically in the next two years or so. It will be pretty awesome. |
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[Jan. 5th, 2009|09:41 pm] |
I guess a year end wrap up is in order. In order of specific and recent to broad and older:
-Today I got an email at work from a high school kid hoping that I'd talk to him and assess some plans for a paper he has to write. It's weird being in that position. No longer the one asking "grown ups" for information, but being the "grown up" who is asked.
-I spent the last four days in Massachusetts. I still miss it intensely. I didn't even mind the cold or the snow. There is just something about it up there that kicks me into high gear. But it was not a trip for fun. I had some family stuff to try to take care of. I won't get into it, but every time I find out more about the situation, it just gets that much worse. It is the culmination of two people's attempt to block out the world and ignore reality.
-With any luck, my boyfriend and I will be buying a house soon. It wasn't really planned. I had been browsing and found one that was dirt cheap and awesome. We put an offer in but it was rejected. Since then, we've continued looking, put in another offer and had it rejected, and have looked at some more since. It will be my second house and his first and the first time I've bought a house with someone I've dated. It's a big step for both of us.
-I finished my masters. Finally. It was rather anti-climatic, but I'm very glad to be done.
-Work continues to be good. I've learned tremendous amounts. I've gotten to go to conferences, get certifications, and gotten two promotions and two raises. It is basically my ideal job.
-I accomplished none of the things on my list of things to do before I die list. I can't say I did anything truly awesome in 2008. I did go on a road trip with Bobby and we went camping and that was really good. And I dragged him hiking. But other than that, it was a year of getting stuff done that had to get done. Since I have regained my free time and will be making enough money soon to allow me to theoretically save for fun things, there needs to be more awesomeness. I am taking suggestions. Activities and trips are preferred. |
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[Oct. 31st, 2008|11:54 pm] |
Can you imagine the field day Republicans would have if Obama was photographed with a horde of half naked boys? But when McCain does it, he's just being a ...
(Sadly, this isn't photoshopped) |
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[Oct. 24th, 2008|08:04 pm] |
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I don't know why, but I love this chart in a really dorky way: |
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[Oct. 13th, 2008|09:25 pm] |
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I went to see Bill Clinton speak yesterday, which was pretty awesome. That had been one of those things I always wanted to do and now I can say I have. However, it was not on my list of things to do before I die, which has been untouched so far this year. I don't think I'm gonna manage to check anything off of it either, which sucks a lot. |
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[Oct. 6th, 2008|10:15 pm] |
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I don't know why Fall makes me wish for Boston. I guess I almost always had good Falls while I was up there. It seemed to be when I met people who became important in my life. There were new classes and opportunities. I suppose that it represents a time to break out of the summer rut and charge forward yet again. But that was Boston. Richmond represents almost none of that for me. It is still Fall when I tend to meet the people important to my life, but the motivation in other areas of my life is lacking. The things that are simmering up are relics of Boston--painting, writing, going to events, exploring. But it seems out of place here. There is a lack of intellectual space here in which to grow and explore and so I feel stymied without that omnipresent drive in the ether. I just keep hoping that perhaps once I'm done with my degree and I can have a semblance of a personal life again that I may be able to find the drive within to take up these pursuits again. I doubt it though; there seems to be a wall up down here. I have yet to feel like I have successfully found my space. My space is continually co-opted. I still somewhat regret not buying the house in Baltimore, simply because I would have had my space. I still look at houses in the Richmond area every few months because I am still seeking my space. I am tired of being confined to a 10x10 space with scarcely room to move. But, so it is and so it will be for the foreseeable future. The best I can do is set things in motion for change. |
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[Aug. 16th, 2008|11:35 am] |
Vacation so far has been nice. We went camping in North Carolina the first day. It didn't start off so well--it was raining when we got to our camp site. So we spent awhile trying to get the tent set up in the rain. Neither of us had set this tent up before, so there were some challenges with that. Thankfully, by the time we were done, it had stopped raining. We made a fire and did the typical camping thing, hot dogs and s'mores. It was a nice night, not hot at all and clear. It was surprising how bright it was with just moonlight. I slept well, but Bobby didn't. I can sleep pretty much any time anywhere. The next day we went hiking. Just as we were leaving the camp site, we startled a bear that was in the next site over (which was empty). It was a little one and it ran, which was good. It was the first bear I had seen in the wild. The rest of the hike was nice, with the exception of all the spiders. Bobby hates spiders, so he was a bit unhappy by the end of the hike. I saw the biggest spider I had ever seen (aside from pet stores and zoos). I'm ok with spiders, but that freaked me out. It was as big as my palm. We also saw a dead fox, which was sad. Overall, it was a good camping experience. It was Bobby's first time and he said he'd go again, which is nice.
I'm in South Carolina now and getting ready to go to the beach, so I'll write more later. |
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[Jul. 21st, 2008|10:52 pm] |
News from the weekend:
-Bobby and I put up more fence. Digging post holes continues to suck.
-The redneck neighbor was inspired by our clearing of the fence line and cleared his side too. Including taking a chain saw to a 2" diameter sapling. Debris was dragged to his brush pile.
-The redneck neighbor set our backyard on fire. Again. First time (2 years ago) was, "oops, hot ashes in the brush pile." This time was, "oops, cigarette in the brush pile." Somebody never learned about fire safety. The fire department was summoned. Fire continues to smolder.
-The redneck neighbor was enamored with the chainsaw and decided to cut down an oak tree. Which fell across my back yard and missed the grape arbor by no more than a foot. Tree is still there. He has until the end of the week to cut it and move it.
Lesson learned from the weekend--an inspired redneck is a dangerous redneck. |
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[Jul. 18th, 2008|11:12 pm] |
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With school done for the summer, I've had all this free time. Me and free time don't go well together. I get antsy. I get an itch to go adventuring. Which, really, I should be doing. There's no reason not to. Once this fence gets done, I'm going camping. I need to go play in the woods. Or at the beach. I'm sad that going up to Massachusetts in August isn't going to work out. I really wanted to go. I need to get up there at least once a year. My parents have been really stressed and not doing so well and don't want to deal with the stress of company, so this isn't a good time. Instead we'll be going to South Carolina. Which will give me some of what I want--a road trip and water. But really I want a road trip and woods and the beach and solitude and hiking and waking up amongst the trees. Unplugged and re-centered. Everytime I think I'm closer to growing up and settling in and staying put, that feeling gets flipped on its head in short order. Why the hell can't I ever keep my mind satisfied? Why is it always on this crazy quest for input? |
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[Jul. 13th, 2008|11:35 pm] |
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Not having homework to do is wonderful. This weekend I was able to do things I wanted and needed to. Boyfriend and I started working on the fence on Saturday. It will look awesome when we finish, but for now, all I will say is that digging post holes sucks. Today was a lazy day, but I at least had the time to go to the grocery store, cook my lunch for the week, and take care of the composting I've been ignoring for the past 3+ weeks. My compost pile is doing really well. It's finally composting! All the food scraps from the last time I put stuff in had been broken down and replaced with beautiful dark soil. It's really satisfying. I checked on the grapes, which are still very much green but looking good so far. I also happened to notice some berries growing nearby. I had seen this same kind when we first moved in a few years ago, but I had ignored them because somewhere along the line it had been drilled into my head that wild berries = poisonous! But upon closer inspection and some googling, I determined that they're wild blackberries. mmmmmm... Blackberries are one of my favorite fruits and the one that I tried today was damn tasty. So those were my two exciting discoveries of the day. I'm looking forward to many fresh blackberries over the course of the summer and, hopefully, finishing up the fence next weekend. |
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[May. 27th, 2008|10:58 pm] |
Having a two week break between classes is just a tease. I was just getting into having time to do projects around the house and I'm really motivated to do them now, but what must I do instead? Homework. By the time classes are done for the summer it will be mid-July and I will be having trouble enough motivating myself to move, let alone do projects. Just about the only activity I can manage once it gets hot out is swimming in the river. The river river. Not the river of sweat that commences when I do projects in the summer.
I, as an experiment, have been driving a lot less aggressively. I've also been avoiding the part of my commute that involves the most stop lights and stop signs by riding my bike part of the way to work. So far, my mileage has improved significantly. For around town, stop and go driving I tend to get about 90 miles on my first 1/4 tank of gas. Since changing my driving habits, I've gotten 130 miles on my first 1/4 tank of gas. That's a big jump. And I'm getting some exercise for my fat ass.
The boyfriend and I have been working on eating better and exercising more. We had a nice memorial day weekend which involved long walks with the dogs and a really nice afternoon at the river. I've been riding my bike more. Today I gave wii fit a try. It's nothing too strenuous, but I suppose it was better than sitting on my ass surfing the internet. And soon it will be river swimming time! |
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[May. 16th, 2008|07:41 pm] |
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Around this time each year since I bought my house, I begin remembering why I bought my house. I'm pretty sure if we had looked at it earlier in the year (we saw it in April/May), we would have bypassed it. But this time of year, I would be happy to spend every evening standing on my deck watching the sun sink behind the trees. I'm constantly awed by the amount of living things packed into such a small area--the hodgepodge of plants and trees, the numerous birds, insects, rabbits, and squirrels. There's a small thriving ecosystem that exists in my backyard. The energy is something awesome. Without fail, it makes me pause, breathe deeply, and relax. Sometimes I'm envious of the people who live closer to downtown and have their densely packed mixed-use new urban environment. I will wish that I lived at Bobby's, since it's a mile from work and I can walk. But I love this place. It grounds me. |
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[May. 16th, 2008|12:02 am] |
I grabbed a book called "Friend of the Earth" from the "free" table in Bobby's building. It has a interesting cover and I'm a sucker for prettily packaged books. I read the first couple pages. It's set in 2025 and the world is one of frequent rain and wind and not too many surviving species. Which, oddly, is typically what I figure the future will look like. Apparently someone else does to.
I just have this feeling that I can't shake that I will look back at this part of my life as "the good days." The days when people could make a living in an office, could find what they wanted at the grocery store, were relatively healthy, and our ecosystems were still mostly intact. The days before the weather went awry.
People in New England are already complaining about how the warmer, shorter winters are hurting their local economies, which depend on income from winter tourism, such as skiing and snowmobiling. There's drought in the southeast and the western states. There are more intense storms. At some point, our ability to cope with these "disasters" and absorb the effects will reach a breaking point. Only so much money can be handed out in aid. Only so many crop losses can be absorbed by the food supply. How often and how much... At some point it will be too much.
Everything is part of a very, very large system. Humans have control over a good many facets of that system, but weather we do not. We do not build structures that can generally cope well with high winds and excessive rain. Our food supply depends on fairly predictable weather. We can adjust and compensate and devise methods of dealing with less predictable and more extreme weather, but can we really change on a large enough scale to accomplish what we need to? Especially when most are sitting on their hands, waiting for something definite to push them into action, waiting for that line in the sand to be crossed...
This is all a roundabout way of me telling myself the following--firstly, despite the odds, it is necessary to keep fighting; secondly, waiting until it seems like a good time to finally ease off and enjoy life a bit more is a waste of time. This is the perfect time to do so.
I'll quote a bit from Ted Turner from an interview in Foreign Policy which tends to give me a little more sense of purpose, especially the quote from Jacques Cousteau.
"I’m frustrated a lot, but we can’t give up and get discouraged. We have to keep pressing on. I was good friends with Captain [Jacques] Cousteau. I told him one time in the Amazon, doing a series down there on [Cousteau’s boat] the Calypso, I said, “Captain, I’m kind of discouraged.” He said, “Ted, we cannot afford to get discouraged, even if we knew that we were going to lose. Which we don’t. What can men of good conscience do but keep trying until the very end?” And whenever I tend to get discouraged, I think of those words and I press on. Failure is not an option here. We’re talking about the survival of the human race, as well as all the other critters we share the planet with—the elephants and the pandas and the polar bears." |
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[May. 12th, 2008|10:13 pm] |
Last night I went to see Radiohead. It was awesome. Awesome enough that despite being soaked to the bone from hours of downpours, searching for 15 minutes in said downpours for my car in the muddy parking lot, waiting two hours in said parking lot before even being able to get out of my parking spot, not arriving to the boyfriend's house until 4am (5 hours after attempting to leave the concert), and getting only 4 hours of sleep, I was still in a good mood this morning. I was even still in a good mood after I decided to go to the doctor after ignoring little things all semester and discovered that I have an upper respiratory infection, pink eye, and ringworm! I think the doctor was impressed with my trifecta of contagion.
On a random side note, my birthday is in just over a month. While I don't really care if I get anything, if anyone wants to, this is my amazon wishlist. Anything off of it would be awesome. Used copies are preferred over new. Fewer dead trees! |
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[May. 6th, 2008|10:07 pm] |
Living in Virginia can be weird sometimes. If I drive two hours north, I find people who are fairly driven and educated. If I drive two hours south, I find confederate flags flying in people's front yards.
The semester is finally over and I feel almost like a normal person. I've had time to do things like make appointments, cook for myself, and finally clean my room. It's nice. Too bad summer classes start in two weeks.
My moped is finally back in good running order. It's awesome. I love that bike, even if it has a penchant for leaving me stranding at inopportune times and places. |
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[Apr. 6th, 2008|11:24 pm] |
I wish there were more hours in the day. School will be over for the semester in a month and I have so much to do before then. Work is getting busier by the day, which doesn't help. I'm constantly behind. Everyone at work is--but it doesn't make me feel better. I'm just tired of feeling as though I'm behind in all areas of my life.
This is typical for this time in the semester. I begin to lose the time I need to properly center myself. All I want to do is go to the river and bring myself back to my core self, but time for that is lacking. I'm doing a lot of what I want, but when do I get to be at the point where I can be doing good and have the time to be myself, not just the perpetually forward-moving, must accomplish something version of myself?
The picture on my desktop at work is of the state park near Baltimore that I found myself running off to when I was still at American University. That place had amazing energy. There was a stream with beautiful rocks that were striped and smoothed and shaped in odd contortions from years of water coursing and pooling and shifting. There was never anyone else there. I could be there for hours and maybe see two people at most. That woods was my one escape while I was there.
I need to make changes and make time for the things here that will bring me back into focus. I can't wait until this damned degree is over and done with. |
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