Author: Andy

No Beard

I shaved my beard off again last weekend. Knowing it would probably freak Ella out, I had her in the room and tried to show her what I was doing. She wasn’t too interested until the beard was gone, then she was deeply suspicous. The rest of the day she scowelled at me and seemed generally displeased.

When I gave her a bath that night, she sat in the corner of the tub a safe distance away, furrowing her brow at me in disapproval. I asked her what was wrong so she took her hand and moved it from one ear to the other along her jaw line. Not quite ASL, but I got the point. She should be consulted ahead of time in the future.

She’s probably right, too. Shaving is lame, especially without shaving cream. And we only need one baby-face in the house.

edit:
Alan sent me a link to a recent discussion on metafilter. Aparently the word describing the change is “shavenfreud.”

Waiter, there’s a mouse in my bottle

After Barley and I got home from our rainy walk this morning, we heard the slight sound of bottles clinking together. Sure, it was recycling day so the sounds of shopping carts and bottle collectors was normal, but this was a much more gentle noise, and it seemed to be coming from inside the house. Sure enough, there was a mouse at the bottom of our glass recycling bin. When I opened the cupboard, the mouse (which I’ve decided was male for the simplicity of referring to him as a him) slipped down the neck of a Full Sail LTD bottle and didn’t seem too concerned when I picked up the bottle. I felt a small bit of guilt simply for taunting the mouse, but I had to take pictures of the little dude.

Maus 1 Maus 2 Maus 3

Faced with what to do with the little fellow, I checked with Michelle, knowing she’d want to turn it loose. She did, so I walked him down the street, past the new Chinese lounge (tempting) to the condemned building and turned him loose in the field. I told him not to come back, but he probably will. That’s nature for you.

5 things I probably won’t do this year

New year pomp often requires resolutions. Because of mine, I’ve had to come to terms with some of the things I want to do but probably shouldn’t in the name of time. (damn you, time!) These 5 things I really want to do, but probably won’t:

  • Create a blog of the sandwiches I’m eating. Silly, but useful. How else would I remember that roast beef, cream cheese and barbeque sauce on dark rye is good?
  • Get Spatialoddity.com going. this bums me quite a bit because it’s a project I’ve been wanting to do for some time. I own the domain, installed drupal, got a logo, now I’m waiting.
  • Ride in the Seattle to Portland again. It was fun, I’d love to do it again. We’ll see what happens
  • Go to NYC. I’ve been digging Man Made Lake, the blog of a recent transplant from Portland that I occasionally had beers with at FOG events. His photos and posts really make me yearn for exploring urban settings. I should start by doing that here, I suppose, which would also be on this list
  • Finish this list. There are plenty of things to add, and somehow I’ll probably manage to work on bits of each of these in frantic “free” moments.

Plumbing, Day 3

Shower Hole

New Year’s Day was dedicated to getting the guest bathroom plumbed. Calling the “guest” bathroom is a little misleading since it’s the only bathroom on the ground floor, so it’s a little more important than the name suggests. Still, it required some tricky removal of old steel pipes and retrofitting with pex. We ended up avoiding doing much damage to the walls, though some patching is needed. We did have to take the shower wall down, and that’s now the only remaining plumbing.

As you can see, there’s a bit to do. But, water is now on everywhere in the house except that shower. I imagine we wouldn’t be nearly this far without my parents’ help. They gave up their weekend and new year’s day to help, though I think they are feeling some home improvement withdrawals. I’m still working on the final cost, but after we return the unused bits, we’ll probably have spent around $600 to replumb the house. Take that fat cats!

Plumbing, Day Two

Yes, the water is on, and all is well. We have water, both hot and cold, to all fixtures except in the guest bathroom. That the new year’s day project. Installation went quickly, and we only needed two trips to the store today, and one was merely a miscommunication issue. I’ll write more later, but I’m tired.

Addendum

Ok, better rested now, but most of my body is tired. We have hot water this morning, though it starts out a little rusty. I think I shouldn’t have let the hot water line drain back into the heater when shutting of the system. One example of the half-dozen lessons I learned from this project. No major flaws (yet) but several “next time” lessons. I only had to sweat 6 joints since we were able to tie in to the 2nd story bathroom’s newer copper plumbing, though one of the joints was particularly difficult and resulted in me bouncing hot solder off my hand and steaming my wrist. Nothing bad, but it really reinforced how easy working with Wirsbo is. I wish there was more to do. I suppose there is – I still have the guest bathroom.

Oh, and there are some pictures.

Plumbing, Day One

Yesterday we shut off the water to the house. We’re replumbing the house with Wirsbo Aquapex. “Pex” is cross-linked polyethelyne, basically a slightly modified version of the same HDPE you get in Nalgene bottles so it is flexible, inert, and can expand to 3x it’s diameter when frozen. Our plan changed a little yesterday because we were going to a) surface mount the replacement pex and b) install next to the existing plumbing and switch over once it’s ready. Neither actually happened.

Instead, we turned the water off and started demolishing the old plumbing and drilling holes for the new, so we really haven’t gotten too far with the new plumbing except for replacing the main and running one length of pex. Plus, we got to rock out to some great tunes. Sadly, the plumbers involved in the construction of the home figured a 1/2″ main would be sufficient. 1″ or 3/4″ is fairly standard, so our pressure will never be great. We’ll have to drill a new main at some point in the future, but don’t want to drop the two grand yet.

Anyway, it’s time to get back to work and actually do some plumbing and some more rocking out. Today’s playlist will include some Don Cab, Tool, Oxes, and Shellac.

Painting Ego Shattered

Paint SpillI spilled my first can of paint on Monday night between Blackboard outages. I was at home with Ella, who was finally napping, and so I decided to put a quick coat of paint on the last window we installed. It was quick, but the server had to go down during finals. I set the can on the window’s ledge to go answer the phone and get the server going, then came back and bumped the can. It fell. Turned over completely and managed to land opening down. Luckily. There was spill and splatter from the fall, but I was able to flip the can back over with the newspaper holding 90% of the paint in the can. I was mortified. I’ve gotten so cocky about painting that I hadn’t even changed clothes. Normally I don’t even bother to put down any drop cloth, but did this time because the paint had been acting finicky.

Finally, a good reason to use latex enamel.