Home Work
Entry 111: August 15, 2000- August 21, 2000
 Vic's Back! Cranky No More! |
Next time I am feeling down in the dumps, I am just gonna post an entry like the last one.
Heard from LOADS of people that I have never heard from before- first time writers. I of course got quite of few of my regular writers about the content of last weeks rant.
Want to thank eveyone who took the time to give me the encouragment to keep at it. Totally cool to hear from all those people who basically started their letters with: "I have been reading your pages for a couple years, and I finally decided to write you after last weeks journal entry..."
So many warm words and positive reinforcement that of course I now feel guilty for blabbing about the work load I have right now. But "Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!" You all really lifted my spirits. I still have quite a bit to do, but I feel like I might be able to get my arms around it all.
It's Sunday night right now. I am finally getting around to tweaking the images from this week and writing this journal entry. My parent's tummies are full from Joe's Crab Shack and they are slumped on the couch, bone tired from all the work they have done since Thursday. They are leaving bright and early Monday morning, most likely exhausted from the crazy pace we set. (And fleeing early to take a REAL vacation! ~g~) They worked HARD!
And Vic is back, yeehaw! He flew back on Wednesday night and I made the trip out to the Airport to get him.
Dang it's far out there, and I still haven't gotten the hang of the new airport. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong though. Don't ever park in the "Close In" parking lot..its not really close in at all! Park in the "Parking Garage" (which to me seem like it is long term type parking"). The Parking Garage is right next to the terminal. "Close In" parking is a 10 minute walk. Geez..how stoopid is that?
Anyway, he is back and prolly a little wore out from all the projects we did this week too. I think he now understands where I get my stellar drive from.
I know ur just dying to see all the progress on the house (You HGTV fans are gonna wet urselfs..hehe) So lets just dive in.
Staff Photos
It's Workshop Season, and Janet is back in town tying up odds and ends. And it has been whirlwind visit for her also. No time at all do to our lunches, or even our "power breakfast" routine. Totally missed that. She will be back again in a week, so maybe a trip to Z-tejas will be in the plan.
The pubs department scheduled our annual staff photo to coincide with Janet's visit, so we had to get all gussied up once again. The top pic is of me and janet, me doing my "Omigawd, I gotta wear a tie? thang".
Janet was pretty busy, but she did manage to get new tires on her Ford Exploder. I find out on Monday if my Sport Trac has the nefarious tires on them when I take it in to FINALLY get the door fixed (4 months for that part to arrive!). Anyway, Janet drives accross the desert several times over the next couple weeks, so it was imperative that she get them changed. She IS a pregnant woman you know!
Ok, time to get out them stoopid clothes. Here are the three of us in a more relaxed garb. (Remember Janet is a pregnant woman!) Janet isn't saying what sex the baby is yet. I am guessing a little girl. I think she might have slipped-up and mentioned "she" or "her" but that Janet, she is sneaky thing. It would be just like her to mislead us all with little tidbits of misinformation.
And ME! Her best friend!
I of course will pretend to the rest of the office staff that I really DO know the sex..but I am not telling them either. ~g~
| Home Improvements-Without The Pratfalls |
I took Wednesday off from work, to clean and finish up the flower bed on the left side fo the driveway. Yanking more sod! Totally burned my back this time, and now its all itchy like.
My parents were due to arrive late-afternoon on Wednesday, but they stopped and visited some family in Oklahoma instead of driving straight through. They arrived at about 11:30 Thursday morning.
And boy did they hit the ground running! As soon as they were out of the truck, my dad was out inspecting the fence and the deck, trying to determine what needed to be done. My mom quickly eye-balled all the cleaning and general repairs that needed to be done. I think they both had an internal list all set and ready to go in the first five minutes of being in the house! I don't even think they did the traditional "run to the bathroom, unload the car thang"! It was "Let's get down to business!" I love them!
I called up Vic and Janet at their respective offices, and we all met at Pok-e-Jo's BBQ and had a really awesome lunch. My parents haven't seen Janet in years, and Vic finally got to meet 'em.
After lunch, we took care of the first order of business. Getting a microwave and a new fridge. No way can my parents live without their microwave popcorn, and their certainly wasn't room for any food or leftovers in the tiny fridge. We checked out Homo Depot, but decided to see what the delivery time and prices were at Circuit City (As a rule, I cant standz Best Buy-I can never get anyone to help me there-..something to be said about the service one gets when someone is on commission)
Found both of the items at Circuit City. Walked out with the microwave, and the new 25.6 cubic fridge was set to arrive on Saturday! Yeah! (Can you say "Credit Debt?")
As soon as we got back from lunch and Circuit City, we made a list of all the things we could get done during their stay. My dad set to work installing the new Microwave over the stove that I had purchased a couple weeks ago. That was Thursday night's project and my parents had been their less than 6 hours.
My dad decided that overhauling the deck and the the fence would both be too much work for their short visit. He really wanted to do the deck thing, but it just got so hot, and really, there were so many other projects to do, that only this one project would get done. So we opted for volume.
So we targeted all the things that needed to fixed or upgraded.
First thing that drove my dad and me nuts was the "new" gate that the owners had installed before I moved in. The post it was attached to was totally warped, and even the gate itself was made with new but totally warped two by fours. The hardware didn't even allow the door to lock. The previous owner had even used a coat hanger to keep the gate shut. I hope she got her money back!
Like all projects, The gate project totally snow balled.
At first we thought we could get away with just replacing the post. I dug it out. May poor dad suffered through so much heat, and really isn't used to it. So Vic and I tried to provide all the hard labor, but he is so hard headed that he worked like a dawg most of the time.
I did dig out the 3 foot holes to sink all the new poles. Let me tell you, that's HARD work. I am for sure getting a post hole digger if I ever decide to do the whole fence. Took forever to dig the three poles I ended up sinking.
My dad tried to hang the gate, then decided that the person who built it did it all wrong, that the door was swinging the wrong direction, (Apparently gates should swing out..not in.) and it WAS pretty warped. So he spent half a day rebuilding it in the hot Texas heat.
Here it is all perfect! It swings like a dream! I added a quickly tossed together flower bed (sans flowers...next pay period!)
I also replaced about 10 pickets on the neighbors fence so it all matched. This area is beginning to shape up nicely!
My mom took one look at the vents, and decided to pull them all down and soak them in bleach and then repaint them. After seeing how encrusted with mold and mildew they were, we opted to just replace them. It would have taken hours to clean and paint them, and it turns out, air vent grates are relatively inexpensive. So I got up their and replaced them all. Also replaced the intake filter...YEESH! it was nasty! More ariflow now though!
MENTAL NOTE (again): Have I changed the oil/coolant in my truck recently?!?!?!
If you think my mom was standing still during all this you would be dead wrong. The woman is a Tasmanian whirl! She had all my grates removed, started on the kitchen cabinets (needed to be cleaned/polished inside and out! YICK!) and I asked her if she could make the laundry area in the garage a little more appealing. She sweated out in the garage for hours and hours, painting the drywall. My dad added some more shelves so I can have room for towels and laundry stuff.
Here is the finished area. Much more appealing don't you think? I can wipe the area down now when the lint and crude builds up. Would love to totally drywall and paint the entire garage. This is a detail overlooked on most homes, and I really think it makes the space seem much cleaner and inviting. Yeah, I know..its a garage for heaven's sake, but doing ur laundry should be done in a clean area.
On Saturday, Circuit City showed up right on schedule with the new fridge. I missed the delivery (I was at Homo Depot for about the 8th time)
On Friday I discovered a $6.75 kit to run an ice-maker line over to the fridge area. So I installed that on Friday afternoon- drilling my way through all the cabinets, snaking the water line, and adding the saddle valve to the water supply! I felt so butch!
I got home from Homo Depot, and my Mom explains to me that there WAS an entire faucet behind the fridge already! HOW THE HECK DID I MISS THAT DETAIL! ~hehe~ So now I have TWO ice maker lines! They used the faucet, and now I have a back up line if the other one should ever go bad...hehe..which would be never.. What a maroon!
You can also see the awesome microwave my dad installed.
My mom SCRUBBED 18 years of grease and grime off the inside and outside of the cabinets. The cleaning water was disgusting! The wood doors took on an entirely different look as they became sparkling clean. She even added padding to the bottom of the drawers and shelves.
The kitchen is complete!
| We Require Nourishment! |
Food was never a priority. We ended up eating fast food practically the entire time. Must have had McDonalds three times! Bleh!
Vic I did manage to arrange a dinner so my buds could come meet my parents. I opted for Marie Calendars on Friday night. I figured it wouldn't be so packed that we would have to wait two hours...especially since we had 10 people in our party.
Jason, Cobbler, Divad, Bill, Vic, Joel (and his ultra sweet and hip mom, Loudres) all had a great time, and I 'think' my parents enjoyed meeting them all. My dad was a bit bewildered, but my mom was thrilled to finally meet all the people she has been reading about the last couple months.
Saturday night Vic cooked the best meal! We had Chicken Enchilada Casserole with all the fixins! After dinner, we had a hankerin for Amy's Ice Cream, but my dad was just too beat to drive around for ice cream. (the Broncos were playing the Cowboys too!)
So we headed on over to Target to buy my dad an air-matress My dad snores and the guest bed is only a double...so he was sleeping on the fold out bed on the couch..which is apparently made out of barbed wire
We got to Amy's Ice Cream, and I actually orderd up a malt (Ice-cream really isn't one of my favs...chooooccccollllate)
| More Home Improvements |
Another project I wanted to do was to create a sound barrier of baffle around the air condioner. The Masterbedrom has only this sliding glass door as a window, and guess what is just outside it? The A/C unit! It's a little loud, but hey, it drowns out the sound of traffic! ~snicker~
So I wanted to build some fencing around it that will block some of the sound and yet still let enough air circulate around it. My dad suggested I build a second fence, one that would block the view of the unit from the patio/deck area. As this would mean sinking just one more pole, I thought it was a good idea.
Now where did I leave that post hole digger?
So here it is all finished. It took about half a day to do. I plan on creating some flower beds around it. So the view out the bedroom door will be like a little sanctuary patio- capitalizing on the mistake of having the a/c unit right by the master bedroom. What were they thinking?
The last thing on our list of things to do was to add some bright color to the living space. The dining area and kitchen have lots of cobalt vases and glasses, and we have lots of green apple accents.
Vic and I debated our color choices all Sunday morning, and we opted for this color scheme. Ok, so it's completely bright and crazy, but we both really kinda like it. My parents were freaked by it, and my mom basically fleed to other projects when she saw the green we had picked out. As always, she was supportive and polite but did wondere how soon we would be changing the color...~g~
We both know we will get tired of the green color soon, but the wall is very small, and we actually have a color picked out that we want to paint it in the Winter.
I am wondering what the reaction will be from our friends. I think it's cool. I even got almost ten emails from people who saw us painting it on the cam..they all thought it was pretty wild, but at the same time, thought it looked pretty dang good.
Well, before we go, I want to do one final summary of all the work we got done in the four days my parents were here. Its a lot, so I really want to thank my parents for throwing their backs into making the house more homey. Still so much to do, and I am gonna add that to my list of things to do below so I can check them off as I go along.
1. Replaced fence post, rebuilt gate, replaced gate hardware, hung gate.
2. Replaced all the mini blinds in the house, (all of them were bent, broken and extremely dirty)
3. Replaced all the air vents and filters in the house, (all were moldy extremely dirty)
4. Replaced two ceiling fans and lights, (both wobbled and made NOISE..Masterbedrooms overhead lights didn't work..now have much more light)
5. Got and installed built-in microwave
6. New fridge installation.
7. Hooked up an icemaker line that I didn't even need.
8. Cleaned and polished the entire kitchen. Added shelf liners.
9. Cleaned the door frames on the sliding glass doors.
9. Painted and added shelves to the laundry area in the garage.
10 Purchased and installed a garage door opener for the left side garage door (took my dad most of Sunday, bless his heart!)
11. Replaced fencing pickets and support beams on the right hand side of the house (rotted out and had a cinder block to block a hole dug in it by what must have been a large dog.
12. Added flower beds by front door, and along the left hand side of the driveway.
13. Printed photos of all my friends and the last 6 bio4ms for posting in all our empty frames (Now surrounded by all our buds! Very cool!)
14. Painted kitchen/dining room wall cobalt blue and a wall/beam apple green
15. Purchased SHRUBBERIES! but no time to install them..NEXT week!
16. Built fencing around AC unit for sound baffling.
17. Replaced the vertical blinds on sliding glass door- (missing the control rod and filthy)
Things Yet to Do:
1. Plant flowerbeds.
2. Get yard ship shape. Continue watering to see if grass will come back.
3. Save money for mulch and dividers to start tackling back yard. Trim trees.
4. Start replacing sections of the fence a couple sections at a time.
5. Sand and stain current decking.
OK..that's it! Remember..there's an eskoops and a second Asklips this month. Jay in choons hasn't gotten me an update yet, so I will make sure to follow up with him!
Bye!
Hey guys! C1TV is the new cable station that is carrying gay content! Check and see if you have the channel in your area on the C1TV website!
Thanks to Fred over at C1TV for gettng me my copies of "Queer as Folk" on DVD!
And hey, if you want to "Get Your C1TV!" You have to ask your cable company to carry it....just like the old MTV days. Fred sent me a Word document that has the request on it, but I bet you can prolly email your cable operator and demand they carry the station. Download the Word doc here (sorry, I didn't scan it for viruses..so make sure you check it!)
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Chaos and Helvetica Ts ON SALE ALSO!
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