naladahc | tripping along the golden path

Greetings!

Well, I'm having to post this from the Cup O Joe in Clintonville since there were all kinds of problems installing our broadband last Friday once I took possession of the house. TW tried 3 different modems and there was nothing so this is the best I can do.

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I have to offer up the greatest thanks in the world to the following people who made this insane "less than 24 hour" move possible: Kelmeister, Kelmeister's Husband, MaxPower, Cynned, JayK, the NalaOjciec and NalaMatka, Evebird, and PamA.

The amount of time... not to mention backbreaking labor that was exerted from Friday night to Saturday night to move the entire contents of the house is appreciated beyond any words I could say or type.

I can only imagine the swearing and cursing that everyone had to be saying under their breath, especially at the attic shit.

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80% or more of the toys will have to go. There's no doubting that now. I just can't see having these with the lack of a 4th bedroom. Target has this nice, though overly priced, shelf that will fit well in my office and will probably be the control space for toys for here on out.

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Hensley has adapted. The first night there put him off but he's getting better.

Ziggy has spent most of the past 2 days hiding in the basement. Chester, annoying alpha male that he is, pretty much wanders the house screaming out his general displeasure with the world.

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Boxes! My life is literally just boxes and boxes and more boxes. They are in every room, the basement, and are also completely filling the garage!

As soon as I leave here I'm heading back to try and set up my office and the front bedroom so I can get the clothes in drawers and the aquariums set back up. Neither has had the filter operational in the past few days and I hope it doesn't have too much of a negative effect on the danio/cory tank. Number Six will survive a nuclear apocalypse so I don't worry too much about him.

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Unfortunately, my laptop will not read my SD cards. I don't know if the camera is in fact damaged (my mother dropped it) or if it is a data issue caused by not reformatting the card in-camera.

Not that I have anything other than pictures of boxes shoved into spaces, rooms, and crevices.

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The worst thing that happened is that my glasses broke so I'm without my extra eyes.

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Ok. I'm heading back home to start working. At the moment I couldn't tell you where anything is if you asked!

Now the fun begins of discovering all the real stuff that is wrong with the house.

I spent yesterday trying to put some order to chaos in the basement and get it ready to bring the new washer and dryer down.

Well... the plumbing is totally shot there.

The hoses, which are now bonded to the plumbing by rust, will not be coming off anytime soon. I'm going to have to have a plumber remove the four faucets and install new clean working ones (2 for the washer and 2 for a future utility sink that I cannot live without).

Let's see... oh... I installed a new shower head/hosed thinging combo as well.

The tub doesn't drain well. I've tried some chemical clog remover but that really didn't make much of a difference.

I'm wondering if it will be worth it just spending the money to have the whole house snaked to the sewer.

I mean, I have zero history on this house at all and from the general upkeep, I don't think the people who lived here for 20 years really did much of anything. So many things are so shoddily done.

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

'Gays Too Precious To Risk In Combat,' Says General

In The Know: Should We Be Shaming Obese Children More?

No time.

You can read the recent stuff over at Giga's site.

new w/d, and stove stuff

parallel universes

Yesterday we finally got the laundry appliances fully operational.

You may recall after the stinky Craigslist fiasco washer I went ahead and bought a brand new washer in the form of the Frigidaire FTF5305. It is one of these modern high-efficiency front loading units. It isn't quite up to the gene-splicing units, but like I've said before, I need it to wash clothes... not offer me a thousand clothes washing options I'll never use.

What's pretty amazing is that I think this may be the quietest appliance in the house!

I've never had a clothes washer this quiet before. You literally cannot tell it is running unless you are standing in front of it! Quite impressive.

The dryer is pretty basic but has a nice large drum!

It was better to get new, but affordable, right now then to go overboard with $2000 laundry appliances, especially with a new refrigerator in the future.

Another expense brought upon by buying this washer is that I have to buy the newer HE laundry detergents as opposed to the usual more affordable regular stuff I would buy.

I experimented over the years with detergents and pretty much determined that the cheaper Purex I'd buy at Big Lots was more or less the same as the higher priced bigger name brands just with a different scent.

Well the new front load washers need a low-sudsing special detergent and I haven't had a chance to go searching for some cheaper Purex HE yet.

I just can't see using expensive laundry detergent on a daily basis to do gym clothes, rags, and even bath towels.

I've said all along that the new House of Love IV is a major major major upgrade neighborhood-wise from the House of Love III.

And after a few days and nights there so far the contrast between Clintonville Proper and what I used to refer to as Clintonville Lite is immediately noticeable!

The Walking of The Hoont

When we left Victorian Village in May 2003 taking The Hoont walkies pretty much stopped.

The House of Love III was surrounded by a neighborhood where people regularly threw bottles and shattered glass everywhere and while larger dogs may not have a problem with it, small short-haired black and tan hounds couldn't handle it.

I think we went for walks about twice in the entire 4 and a half years we lived there.

The new hood?

It is like dog walkies heaven!!!

It is very much a dog neighborhood and I'd hazard to guess 85% or more of my new neighbors have dogs from small terriers up to great dane sizes.

And they take these dogs for walks regularly!

In the morning. In the evening. Whenever! There are dogs and people about Clintonville! It is pretty amazing!

What's even more shockings is how conversational the people are!

Clintonville Neighbors

My new neighborhood is a sharp contrast to the old.

In Clintonville Lite OSU campus area, if you are older than 30 your are pretty much invisible. For the most part, we didn't really exist to any of our younger renting neighbors. We only existed to those who also owned homes around us.

I didn't really think of it like this until last Friday when I met a 30-something married couple taking their baby for a stroll past they House of Love III. They were amazed that it sold so quickly and for so much money.

This couple was, like me, hoping the neighborhood was turn and moved in a few years ago in the hopes that things would continue to improve.

Like me, they were also sad that things had gone downhill quicker than they expected.

Anyway, they mentioned that they regularly talked to the renting college 20-somethings but once their child arrived they completely became invisible to them! It was like they transformed into totally different people merely by the fact they now had a child!

The guy even said that he was walking his dog with the baby in one of those chest-slings and some college kids basically called him a queer fag or something as he walked by them?

Huh?!?!

Only college retards could possibly mix and match slurs to call a father walking with his baby daughter a queer fag!

Oh... I so love the retarded 20-something set!

But I digress.

Over the past few days...

(1) I've had one neighbor down the street stop by bringing lemon-poppyseed muffins as well as a Nivea gift bag (possibly for my non-existent wife). Inside the bag was a welcome card from their family.

(2) The neighbor from directly across the street walked over to say hello and welcome us to the block. He is obviously good friends with the previous owners.

(3) The married couple across the street (in one of the Tudor-style architectural historical houses) came over to welcome us. They were coming back from their run and saw us in the garage with the appliances.

(4) We've been invited next door this Saturday to a cookout/OSU football tailgate party.

Now we've only barely moved in and 4 different times people have made an effort to say hello and be neighborly.

This is like... not right. We are truly in a parallel universe from where we were less than a week ago!

And I can't say I dislike it.

Silence

While there may be a lot of dogs around, and cars do occasionally come flying down the street (speed bumps would be a nice deterrent) the neighborhood is extremely quiet.

Almost unnervingly quiet.

I still sleep with some white noise on but on the whole, I think I can wean myself off of it.

What's scary is I think I have psychological scars from living in the campus area.

I'm actually thinking I am hearing things when they possibly cannot be there!

I now expect that when I'm on Percocet or Vicodan but there's no way I can possibly be hearing distant rock music and bass at 2am! No possible way at all!!!

Even the marching band practice from nearby Bishop Watterson High School doesn't bother me.

I almost forgot!

Everybody's favorite Ukrindian turned 1 this past week!

He is probably one of the most photogenic children I've ever seen!

The internets are alive and well again at the new house along with a new N-level wireless router.

Here's hoping the old Powerbook G3 works with this new stuff.

My Inspiron's built-in card seems fine with it.

So I decided to get some laundry done and also spend a little bit of time outside working on the yard to get a feel for what is out there.

Ugh!

While the laundry is totally awesome now, the yard has so much work ahead of it this year and a shitload more next spring.

I started tackling this mess (above) on the west side of the house.

There must be 50 or so maple trees growing in the ivy. Maple trees!

I did a first pass and also started trimming back some of the haphazard trees

Honestly, I think that before winter sets in I was to remove all the "trees" and bushes from along the west side and just leave the ivy for now.

There are some evergreens out front and along the side that really are kind of barren and thin and should probably be removed completely.

That way, come springtime, I'll have a clean slate to work with. I'm thinking maybe a row of arborvitae along the neighbor's driveway and then between them something a bit more colorful and flowering.

Now sure about the front of the porch yet though. I'd like to remove those evergreens to work on the porch concrete foundation and support posts come spring and then maybe plant something new there as well.

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Now I also took my first shower on the first floor and I'm definitely going to like that shower down there. It'll be fantastic once I figure out how to get it vented to the side of the house. It'll have to go out and through the "ceiling" of the basement stairwell. Perhaps when Mister T visits he can shed some thoughts on the matter.

Then again, maybe I can convince The Cousin and Peebz to visit and get their reliable input.

The 2nd floor tub still drains so slow. I'm trying one last foaming chemical drain opener and if that doesn't improve it it'll go on my list of things to have Roto-Rooter snake.

I'm thinking I want to have the kitchen and basement drains snaked and cleaned to the main. That way, I can establish some kind of baseline to compare the drainage to year over year.

I'm thinking of trying that Dante's Pizza near Weilands today.

So I ventured out into my new Clintonville hood tonight and finally ate at a place by my gym.

Yup! Finally went to Dante's Pizza.

They only do carry-out or dine-in.

Was good though.

Indentity theft via jury duty scamming! Lovely.

No.

I'm not an unfrozen caveman who fell into a crevasse 100,000 years ago and was found and thawed and now lives in modern times.

No.

However, the culture shock of living in this new neighborhood is equivalent to being an unfrozen cavemen that becomes a lawyer and is scared and confused by modern technology such as cell phones, jets, or cookouts in which Buckeye football games are projected against a screen on a garage with 25 or so neighbors (old and current) watching it!

Yes.

It has only been 7 days since I've occupied the new House in the new neighborhood and I'm still not completely assimilated by the pods yet.

Going from retarded 20-something renters to a world of mid-30 to 60 something home owners is such a major culture shock that I probably won't adjust to it until at least 2008.

We were invited to a cookout next door and I made my often well-received miseria (polish dill and cucmber salad) and the pepperoni pizza dip that people seem to like.

They made burgers but what was really awesome was they used a turkey fryer to make buffalo wings!

Everything was setup outside and the OSU game was projected onto a screen hanging from their garage.

In conversations with all the neighbors I got a better picture of the previous owners here and quite frankly, while they weren't hated, I don't think they were very well liked all that much. In fact, I think their large dogs probably contributed to a lot of the dislike.

Obviously from the condition of the back yard turf I know the dogs destroyed it, but apparently they would let the dogs out to shit on the neighbords yard next door since it had grass!

Bad craziness!

The general condition of the house was also confirmed by several neighbors and helped paint the picture that I slowly have been building.

Alas, it will be awhile until I get the house to a state where I'm not embarrassed to have people over.

The Worst Kitchen In Clintonville needs to be gutted and redone before I'll feel totally happy with having company over.

Of course, that won't happen prior to Pierogi Day so I need to at least feel comfortable here by then! I gotta get that first floor painted to at least my expected level of quality. Everytime I look at the shitty job that was previously done I get extremely angry.

So I came home from working and Giga was not here.

I decided to walk The Hoont and accidentally learned that you can easily lock yourself out of the house if you leave your keys on the table and go out the front door.

So me and the dachshund kept walking for quite some time.

My one neighbor was out so we went over there to talk and a bunch of other neighbors came out and introduced themselves to me.

It was during this time that someone mentioned that the previous owner was staying at the house across the street.

Well I met her and learned a bit about the house that I needed to know.

Somethings make a lot of sense now.

The 1st floor bathroom actually was done before they bought the place and the even she didn't know what the switch in the front room actually does!

The basement has never had any real problems but they did have some water come in along the front wall a few years back because the gutters got clogged and didn't drain the water from near the house.

She's got some paperwork on various things that she's going to send me and she even found the key to the back storm door!

All in all, she was able to answer a lot of my questions.

I find it hilarious that Hanukkah Harry appears on Wikipedia's entry for Fictional Jews.

Did you know that when it comes down to it, Target would rather not take your money and sell you something that you really want?

Yup!

Apparently the almighty big red concentric circle logo people have haphazard policies from store-to-store about not selling display units that are already assembled.

Giga and I drove around to a ton of Targets, even driving up to Delaware, Ahiya, trying to find one of those perfect damn shelves!

Hell... I'd even have bought the one that was missing the two top shelves since then I still could have put the Maximii twins up there and my purty Takara boxed shit.

But noooooo!

Get this... Spectroscott even found some display units up in the general Cleveburg area and they refused to sell to him!

So.

I still don't have any remotely decent shelving to try and have some type of collection of crack in the new house.

I'm almost to the point I just want to get rid of everything other than a few Car Robots figures and my PVCs and call it a day as a crack collector!

Maybe this IKEA shelf will work.

I'm not a fan of light birch and my plans for the room were not along colors like that.

I suppose I could strip and restain the damn thing but man, all I want is a frigg'n decent looking shelf and not all this goddamn drama!

I never would have thought it would be so hard to find a decent quality wood shelf this large.

Goddamn I hate toys!

Happy Pułaski Day!

My back was killing me and my neck and shoulders are a total mess these days but I managed to get quite a bit done outside yesterday.

Yup! I'm still unpacked but stuff's gotta happen with autumn now officially here!

Guttermania

It blows my mind that the previous owners, having a yard situated between 3 large massive trees, with three smaller magnolias, didn't put gutter screens/tops on any of the north side gutters.

There is so much leaf debris that comes down that I can't imagine not doing this years ago. The 2 walnut trees alone are some of the messiest things I've ever seen. And loud too! They drop down onto the roofs and you think someone shot a gun.

They fall down green and quickly rot into decaying black mess. What sucks is they stain the concrete too. We have to park the cars back a bit down the drive to avoid getting walnut dents.

It sucks.

Anyway, I got up on the ladder and got my hands dirty and cleaned out the gutters.

The one on the garage was awful. It was completely filled and clogged. I got it all cleaned and put on the gutter screens as best I could (the whole gutter needs to be replaced) but it should last until I have more time to redo it. The other side of the garage needs a whole gutter and drain system installed. That has to happen soon but I've got trees to cut back before that happens.

The lowest rear house gutter was pretty bad too. Got that cleaned and screened.

The higher gutter wasn't too bad so I took out what leave were there but I'll watch it and see how it does before spending the money on screens.

The Yard

Autumn has officially arrived and the temperatures have dropped to the 40s. We are due for the first real freeze soon.

The hosta garden (pic above) started to yellow and I decided to cut down as much of the foliage as possible.

It cleaned up well and I probably picked up 80 or so walnuts. I need to cut down that tree in the center (above) sometime today. It is more of a weed/tree that should never have been allowed to grow. It serves zero purpose.

I'm going to leave that compost pile until springtime but it will have to come out when I repair and repaint the garage in 2008.

I'd like to heave a compost area but I don't know if I want it against the garage like that. At least the debris is not directly against the wall.

I took out most of the herb garden. I'm going to save the bay leaves and try them for use this winter.

The rear magnolias are of the variety that doesn't drop the leaves early. At the House of Love III, I'd have likely done a real solid raking already. Not here.

These will probably drop by the 2nd week of November.

Other

I've got to replace the half-broken exterior light with a motion-sensor one. Maybe today. Once I found out the neighbors use the rear bedroom as their bedroom I think only have the lights come on as needed has got to make it darker for them at night.

Plus, it'll save electricity.

Giga got the shelf removed from above the stove the other day.

I won't even go into how bad the electical outlet was installed in that wall. They broke the lath and just shoved it through the plaster. They didn't even attach it to a stud!!!

So I talked to Giga today and he agreed to live in squalor for a few more weeks.

I've decided I want to focus on getting started on the repairs and repainting of the dining room and living room immediately instead of later.

I'd be a liar if I said the move to the new house hasn't depressed the shit out of me.

The new house has done nothing but make me more depressed as the weeks have gone on and I have to start working on it to make it mine.

I think that's part of the problem.

Sure it has my shit in it but it is still someone else's house even though my name is on the deed!

So tonight we are going to start moving the contents of the dining room out of there and tomorrow after work I will begin the process of redoing that room.

The goal is to have it done in 2 weeks or so and them immediately get on the living room so that those 2 rooms will be completely done prior to Thanksgiving and what I hope will be a 2nd Annual Pierogi Making Day sometime in early December.

With any luck we'll find a new chandelier too and some affordable but new decor for the living room that goes with the new house.

On top of all this, I have to get back into the routine of 5am Gym, then work, then 3-4 hours on the house, then sleep cycle again.

In the end, that is the healthiest thing for me regardless of how monotonous it can get.

I manage to get massive momentum going on the house work and also stay healthy.

I haven't gotten on the scale since early September but I'm fairly certain I've put on about 20lbs since then.

That has to stop.

And hopefully with that, so goes the depression and my negative feelings for towards the house.

And if anybody wants to gift me $18,000 to get the kitchen redone by my 38th birthday please let me know.

I so want to be rid of The Worst Kitchen in Clintonville™!

I discovered a new law of nature today.

There has been much talk in the scientific community about this for decades but there hasn't been much progress made in the past few years.

In case you need to know, it takes exactly 13 days for the combined hair of 2 cats to accumulate and become noticeable in this house.

You can take that to the bank!

So I know in the end I'll regret this.

Yesterday, in a quest to find decent crack shelves, we ended up at the godsawful Easton.

I totally forgot how much I loathe malls and going out into the American-consumer public in general.

Anyway, we ended up at the Apple store and I got to looking at the new 4GB iPod Nano for $129.

I use iTunes and I really have wanted an iPod for some time. I just want to be able to have all my music in iTunes synch to something. No phone. No video. Just a music player with a screen.

While I'm no fan of Apple locking iTunes and the iTunes store to the iPod only, the simple fact that it is all seamless really makes it convenient.

Well... I picked up a few iPods including that iPod Touch and decided I'd just work with the 1GB max old Rio S10 that I've been using.

Well, this morning, Woot was offering 30GB Refurbished Microsoft Zune's for only $99 and I decided that 30GB of capacity versus 4GB would win out for the $99 price so I bought one.

Yeah. I know when I'm forced to used the awful MS app to put music on it I'll hate it but I saved a shitload of money and got a lot more capacity for my buck.

And no, even though you haven't asked, I got the white one instead of the turd brown one.

Come to think of it, I should have gotten the turd brown one.

Oh well.

In the end, it'll probably be a total waste of $99 that would have been better spent on an iPod.

Why is it everyone else can apparently comment on this blog but when I try I get "Text entered was wrong. Try again.".

Text entered was wrong?

What the frock?!?!?!

It has been loads of fun since I upgraded the blog software.

Some English people have resorted to pulling out their own teeth because they cannot find -- or cannot afford -- a dentist, a major study has revealed. (CNN)

Not even death can keep a Pole down!

You cannot escape our powers!

If you can think of anything better than coming home at lunch to find that your dachshund has had another bout of explosive diarrhea then you let me know. Type 7 I'd say.

He's a wreck right now.

His allergies have gone crazy and he's scratched himself raw all over the place.

And sometime this weekend he apparently ate something in the yard and has been been leaving sickness-induced explosive watery land mines all over the kitchen.

He's got an appointment with the vet Thursday afternoon.

And driving in the car always makes him get even more likely to explode.

Work has finally started on getting the dining room redone.

Giga and I moved out the bulk of the furniture and he started working on the removal of the hutch/curio/hideous monstrosity taking up the corner of my dining room.

Hopefully it will come out without damage.

What's sad is that whoever installed it cut the baseboards out to do it.

That's not going to be an easy fix and I don't plan on doing it during this phase of the house work.

The chair railing is going to be removed and for this initial "remodel" the room will be a currently undecided single color.

Perhaps the chair rail will return in the future. Not sure yet.

I'm not a big fan of them.

There's a 20amp/220volt outlet under the window that needs to be removed and rewired for 15amp/120 service.

We definitely need an additional outlet in this room so I figure, depending on how hard it is, I'll try and tackle this myself. I haven't followed the wires yet though.

Hopefully, we can find a new chandelier in a few weeks.

We never did find a better one for the old house but I think that without the much-missed ceiling cross beams we can try other styles we may have not gone with before.

So basically, the next few days will include:

1. Removal of the hutch.
2. Removal of the chair rail around the room.
3. Repair of the holes in the ceiling and general plaster wall repairs.
4. Priming the room + the closet.
5. Painting the room ceiling + the closet ceiling.
6. Painting the room + the closet (likely the same color but who knows).
7. Installing new outlets and a new modern style dimmer.
8. Rewiring the heavy duty outlet to a conventional one.
9. If possible, installing a new chandelier/light fixture.
10. Finally set up the dining room!

This time, I'm going to do any associated closets when I do a room.

I didn't do this during the past couple of years at the old house and when I moved out it really angered me that I didn't take the time to do them.

So... refreshing the closets will happen everywhere here.

So following Giga's lead I removed a few more screws from the corner hutch thingie and after really looking at it I'm kinda thinking this isn't coming out in one piece.

There are some obvious nail action going on inside but it is hard to tell if it is just nailing it all together or actually going into the wall or studs behind it.

I think I'll wait until G gets home to discuss this further.

I've got some other work I need to do anyway.

Woah! Talk about unexpected.

I came down early this morning to head off to the gym and there before me stood a fully removed hutch!

Giga managed to get the whole thing out last night with minimal destruction!

Alas, I can't post the pictures of the amazing wall paper that was behind it until later this afternoon.

So... obviously that thing was not original to the house but it has been up for many decades and was probably not installed by the previous owners.

The 60-year old wallpaper is amazing! I'm fairly certain it is original to the room since there's only plaster beneath it.

What's even more amazing is that the room looks just a bit bigger now when viewed from the kitchen.

Unfortunately, the person who installed it cut out the baseboards to do so.

Giga discovered that some of the trim is not original and while an attempt to match it was fairly successful, upon closer inspection you can see that it isn't all what it is cracked up to be. Not that it can compare even remotely to the House of Love III's trim and baseboards.

The hutch removed (above). You can see how they just fit it over what existed.

Except the baseboards which they totally cut out.

The 60-year old wallpaper is amazingly intricate.

But look at that wallpaper under the chair rail!!!

This room has seen an amazing amount of styles in the past 6 decades.

However, the Supervising Stank Meow approves of the refacing.

He made sure Giga didn't hurt himself or get too dirty.

However, if he did, his clothing could be washed in the awesome new high-efficiency washer!!!

The chair rail is all down. Giga got 2 walls done yesterday evening and I finished it all off when I got home today.

The miscellaneous wallpaper now needs to be removed, as well as the meticulous process of removing old paint from around the removed hutch and then spackling and trying to sand it all as smooth as possible. There's some ceiling hole repair work ahead too.

G has some ideas on restoring the missing baseboards. It won't be done during this room refresh we are doing now but it'll be put on the "future projects" list once we get the house livable and at least make it feel like "ours" instead of "theirs".

However, I figure we can try to stain and fix the areas that are messed up on the trim (above). It appears some of the chair rails were stained on the wall as opposed to before installation. That means there's part of the trim they butted up against that has no stain. Sucks.

Would you believe the walls were once painted blue? Old homes always have so many strange surprises.

In other news, there's electrical work ahead. At least I think I'd like to get this done during this refresh. If it requires too much effort I'll put it on the future projects list and move on to the living room to get it that done before Thanksgiving.

There's an extremely ancient (1939) outlet right below the rear window. I'm not sure if it is live yet and from the looks of it it doesn't even look like a polarized receptacle. It obviously isn't grounded either.

If it is live, and depending on how the wire runs, it should be possible to easily drop a new box along a stud at a modern height from the floor and then run a new outlet there. We really need an outlet along that wall.

Last but not least... it is time to pick the color!

I'm currently all about this Valspar "Eddie Bauer" line color called carnelian that is a vibrant red. Not like candy apple or the burgundy of the House of Love III but a red nonetheless.

I may even use it for the office.

I knew G doesn't want a cave-like dining room. This room doesn't get the same amount of light as the old dining room since it faces north. It doesn't quite have all those windows either or the ceiling height and extra ceiling lights.

I'm thinking that we find a very nice bright chandelier and then a series of wide candle sconces to go along the walls.

That way, we can still have something similar to what we had with all the candles at the old house (which I totally loved) and then we can also change the color of the candles if we want.

Any thoughts on color?

Mister and Missus JackOfAllGeeks are now the proud owners of the hutch that was removed from the dining room.

We ended up having to take it in the pick-up since it was bigger than their new Jeep.

So not much done on the dining room yesterday other than putting up some plastic drop clothes to keep dust and debris out of the other rooms.

Why nothing done you ask?

Well. Let me tell you.

A certain short-haired black and tan standard dachshunds had to go to the vet yesterday to the tune of almost $400.

On top of his usual check-up and vaccinations, his allergies have returned worse than ever this past few weeks.

He has scratched himself raw in so many places and basically will go into scratching at any moment. It drives one crazy!

In addition to that, he has spent the past few days sick, often with explosive results all over the kitchen. I was surprised I even got a semi-solid stool sample yesterday.

Anyway, he's on antibiotics for the sores, steroids for the scratching, and a temporary diet change to try and affect his digestion.

Apparently he has a high bacteria count in his stool and entirely too much fibrous leaf matter. The best we can think is that he's been ingesting so much crap over the past 2 weeks as he's found all those nasty ass old tennis balls in the yard. It didn't help that he was attempting to eat rotten vegetation either!

So. That was quite an expensive visit to the vet.

I won't even go into the hilarious anal glad cleaning and the awful smell that produced!

I just hope the insane scratching comes to a hault.

So the other day Hensley clocked in at slightly under $400 at the vet.

Well, I got the call back from the vet on the stool results and the Hoont once again has whipworms.

He must have picked them up from the new yard or after eating some shit on one of our afternoon constitutionals. Readers may recall he got them before in July 2006.

Alas, we ran and picked up more meds and that officially took the visit to over $400.

Joy!

On the good side of that, within 24 hours of his first doses of the steroids and anti-biotics he has stopped scratching and is pretty much a totally different dog.

I'm a mess today.

Now my back has been hurting off and on since we packed up the truck and moved.

I've managed ok and quite frankly, was feeling really good most of this week.

I noticed yesterday morning my upper back and shoulders were really tight, almost like a pinched nerve or something but figured it would work out as the day continued.

Well.

Last night I was laying in bed and finished reading Sandman: A Game of You and when I went to get up amassive lightning pain started shooting all through my upper back and left arm.

The pain is up there with the awful scapula bursitis I had in June 2006 but it is radiating differently, originating more in my neck.

All in all it is making sitting, standing, and trying to move any normal way a real pain in the ass. I won't go into how bad it was trying to lay on the bed last night. I woke up crying!!!

Ugh!

So I went to the doctor today (though I'd rather have met The Doctor) for the neck pain.

It looks like I have a mild cervical herniated disc which is causing all the pain in my neck, shoulder, and arm.

I got a shot in the ass of predisone, a prescription for it orally that starts in 2 days, and a bunch of oxycodone for the pain.

I went back to work and prepped for tomorrow. I'm gonna take a day off tomorrow to lay on the heating pad and hopefully let the wonderful prescription pain killers and steroids work their magic.

The funny thing?

Both The Hoont and I are on the same steroid!

Who'da thunk that would ever happen.

Hopefully the pain and inflammation will stop in a couple of days so I can get working on the dining room.

October's almost over and we've got 2 full huge rooms to do before Turkey Day.

At least the living room doesn't have anything more than painting to do.

So momentum hasn't built up yet on the dining room, especially with my recent neck/nerve problems.

But rest assured that we have spent countless hours looking at kitchen options that we won't be able to afford for at least 2 years!

Man... have I told you how much I hate my kitchen?

Really! It sucks the balls!

Anyway...

So if you've been reading (and probably not been able to comment since for some reason some people, including myself, can't) you know we got the hutch out as well as the chair rail.

Before:

The wallpaper still needs to come down and the walls need to be spackled, some plaster repaired, and so forth.

Hopefully, with Giga's assistance, that can happen this week. If he can get the wallpaper down and I get a few days of neck rest I'll hopefully be good to go on the rest maybe Thursday or Friday.

Possibly After:

So we've been going through colors and such and I found this one called Carnelian which is sort of an orange-red that totally caught my eye and is still my fave.

Marcie was over the other night and she too picked the carnelian. I don't think we had the swatches when the Geek Family were over picking up the hutch so we didn't get their input.

Anyway, Giga ran a pic through some site and got a sample of the carnelian in it with a new chandelier.

I'm all into this.

Sure the color will vary in reality but man, I think with a nice chandelier, and plenty of candles and wall sconces we can get a really nice warm dining room.

Hell... I think I want a dining room sexy enough that you want to just knock off all of the items on the table and go to town!

Actually, I think I'd settle for just a really nice dining room that feels like it is ours and not theirs.

So an unexpected check arrived yesterday for a little under $1000.

It was the reimbursment for the remaining escrow for the House of Love III.

(Obviously, I'd pretty much decided to call the new place "The Domicile". I though I'd just use "dom", the Polish word for house, but that requires too much knowledge to connect it to a house.)

Anyway, with this surprise money I basically have decided that I'll get a new decent queen size bed in the next few days.

The neck and back problems I have are compounded by an awful 30+ year old hand me down mattress and box springs (sorry Jay).

Last night we headed to The Original Mattress Factory and based on their pricing for sets (mattress and box springs) I'm likely to shop there.

Many friends have got their beds there and while I've shopped all around the past few weeks, I feel fine with a bed from there with the cash I gots ta spend!

So I'm moving on up to a queen size bed for now.

Once the bedroom is redone and the electric is rerun (or just moved) I'll consider going to King in there and replacing the old full (which will replace the twin in the guest room when the queen arrives).

I'm looking forward to a decent mattress.

SpectroScott's guest room mattress, along with the NalaMatka and NalaOjciec's guest room bed, are two of the most insane beds I've ever slept in!

And I deserve a decent bed at my age.

To say that we have been getting rain in Cowtown the past 12 hours would be an understatement.

We literally have rain and rain and rain and rain and rain and more rain coming.

Now in the old House of Love III I would be a mess right now. Even with all that basement wall work I did, I was really trying to repair parging and deal with the dampness. None of what I did could truly be classified as waterproofing by a professional.

Sure, there were products used to help keep the walls water-resistant and make the place functionally useful but it wasn't like what Basement Doctor would do. Hell. The 2 basement people I had come out wouldn't touch it really.

Anyway, The Clintonville Domicile was waterproofed with an interior floor trenching, draining tile put in, and sump pump back in 1988. (Hell... that was my freshman year at Ohio State! Bad Craziness.)

Quite frankly, we haven't had much consistent and high volume rain at all this year. I was worried that the basement of the Domicile, being the work was done a long time ago, was not up to par.

So far so good! I went downstairs and for the first time since we moved in, there's been enough rain that the system is having to compensate for it. The well had water in it and to make sure, I manually started the sump pump and it pulled out all of the water to the side of the house/driveway.

Now I want to completely redo the gutter drainage out front and along the back to take water as close to the street as possible or to the back of the property. Incorporating the sump pumps drain into this is definitely on the list but that's a 2008 or later project unless something should change or demand it.

But my water nightmares can now go away.

And what's even better? The former owners gathered up a ton of paperwork they had and mailed it to me.

Inside? The lifetime transferable warranty for the basement waterproofing!

Giga and I talked about finishing up some of the basement walls, making a distinct laundry area, a distinct storage and mechanical area, as well as another bedroom/office under the living room.

I now feel a thousand times more confident that doing so would ad value to the house as well as not be impacted as so many decades old basements are with overly heavy rain!

And that my friends, is the first time I've felt good about rainy days in a long long long long time!

Now I've wanted some form of upgrade in MP3 player over my current limited 1GB Rio S10.

There's just something appealing to having more and varied music when I'm working out at the gym since I've learned that having decent playlists is so important when on the treadmills or ellipticals.

Having enough different music throughout the week just doesn't happen with a 1GB player.

Now I'm an iTunes user and an iTunes store user, through I only buy a few tracks here or there when something on Sirius 21 has sparked my curiosity.

But $199 for an 8GB iPod new model Nano just was not money I wanted to spend when so many other pressing matters are of a concern to me.

Well, Microsoft partnered with a couple of sites and began selling new and refurb 30GB Zunes for only $99.

When I saw that, the simple economics of $99 for 30 gigs, the larger screen, video capabilities, and a radio tuner all kind of made sense at the moment so I snagged one.

And for my needs, it isn't too bad at all.

Now I wish these fucking companies (yeah I'm looking at you Apple and Microsoft and all you record labels) would just get over their anti-consumer attitudes and just allow all this shit to work across the board.

You should be able to buy a song at any store and play it on any player.

Yes, the iPod track record so far has been solid but believe me, there's no f'n reason why their music should not play in any other player without all the questionable hurdles the consumer has to do to make it work.

I buy the music legitimately, and then I have to burn it to CD then reimport it to MP3 just to play on standard formats.

And no, the proprietary DRM formats of Apple and even other stores do not offer any suffiecient sound quality over anything else when listened to over stupid little speakers. All you fucking marketing people should be shot on site over the shit you spew about these things to shy away from the price issue.

Anyway, so far the Zune is fine for my needs. I'll continue using iTunes and just use the awful Zune software just to synch music and files to the Zune. That's about all it is good for. It is a piece of shit and seems like it was a cheap piece of freebie MP3 player software MS just bought and worked on for a week and renamed. I get that feeling with a lot of consumer Windows software, especially things for media.

Not that you care, but I just made the first mortgage payment on the new house today.

Scary.

So very very scary.

The new neighborhood was obviously the right thing to do and the culmination of a lot of events over the past 5 years but oy koledy! That's one bad crazy check to write.

Now i just need to win that damn Megamillions shit.

Just a couple of millions after taxes.

Let me pay off the house, redo the kitchen and bathroom and finish the basement, buy the Nalamatka and NalaOjciec a new Glass City pad, and I'll be done.

That's all I'm asking for here.

I won't even buy any toys. Well... except if I came across a Lucky Draw Black Fire God Magnus.

Now I know many of you, and surprisingly even myself, can no longer comment on this site after I upgraded to Movable Type 4.

I'll be upgrading to the 4.01 package and hopefully that will solve both the sluggish speed problems I see on the server side and also the problems with the commenters.

I miss Chuck's comments.

Chuck rocks.

Kelmeister I think has problems too.

Hell... I miss my own witty awesome comments.

And I'm a totally unfunny dick!

The site is upgraded.

I've tried to fix the way comments are done.

I think there's something in the SQL database, a carry-over from a plug-in I used to use to authenticate people, that has caused the problems.

I think people should be able to comment again.

I love Hoontlings.

I kinda wish we had 1 or 2 of them running around.

Sure. Stressful and costly.

But...

Poor Chuck.

With San Diego burning around him he still finds time to make billable hours.

I suppose it could be worse. It could be Sub Diego now.

And speaking of Chuck, I was looking at some of his pics from the SDCC this past summer and have decided I want this guys' pecs and abs. Can I have 'em? Please!!!

Spinnerdude has a pretty, but insane, photo of the carnage.

Spill of doggie bones in North Toledo no treat for trucker (Blade)

About 8:50 a.m. yesterday, a tractor trailer... was turning from eastbound Expressway Drive South to northbound Stickney. The top of the trailer struck two pillars of the I-75 overpass, tearing open part of the roof.

Out spilled part of its dog-friendly cargo — 36,000 pounds of Milk Bones and other doggie treats.

Man, woman die in apparent murder-suicide (Dispatch)

A man and a woman were found shot to death last night in a University District house, the apparent victims of a murder-suicide, police said.

The victims were identified as Danielle Latif, 23, of Reynoldsburg, and Richard L. Crosby, 25, who was said to be Latif's ex-boyfriend. The bodies were discovered in a duplex at 2613 Medary Ave. where Crosby lived. The house is in the northern end of the University District, just south of Clintonville and between Duncan and Hudson streets.

Why am I sharing?

I really don't know.

I've been denying it for the past few months.

Sure... bits have come out here and there but let's face facts: I'm a total mess.

Mentally, the entire selling of the House of Love III to buying The Domicile and the insanity of the move have driven me into the depths of a depression that I can barely cover any more.

Physically?

Hell.

Spending that year working the basement has left me with permanent physical scars.

Compounded with my mental issues, I'm surprised I can still function anymore.

So I damaged the lower lumbar part of my back last May when I was installing the new central House of Love III beam.

That was when I stopped going to the gym, and that all just compounded all summer to my general stress of wanting to sell the house and all but truly doing it because "iIve been trying for years" instead of really "I'm ready now" and all.

I never expected the House to sell so fast and put me into the head-spinning insanity of finding someplace else and trying to not make mistakes and all with the new place.

The main problem is that every time I try to get back to a healthy routine of diet and gym exercise, it seems like my depression or some other physical problem comes crashing back into my reality and all I want to do is crawl into a hole and die.

I guess I'm typing all this now because I'm so mentally numbed by the oxycodone that I can think "outside my body" to some degree at the moment.

Man oh man and I a physical and mental mess.

And I hurt so much right now.

I hate back problems.

I really do.

They are the worst things in the world because they impact every aspect of your life. And you try to adjust to ease the pain and it merely affects your hips or sciatic nerve or triggers the other injuries.

Balls!!!

I just want to feel better and get started on The Domicile.

I hate the fact that I can't do anything right now without feeling like I'm going to make my injuries worse.

Over 25 days in the new house and I barely have an office I can use, barely have started on the dining room, and barely have any motivation to do anything to correct any of it because I hurt so bad.

Sucks so much.

Well it took about 20 minutes of back and forth but a color for the dining room has been chosen.

And it is quite different from the direction we were originally heading.

We'll be going with an Olympic paint color called "Mayan Treasure".

It is kind of a brownish-gold with hints of orange-yellow in it.

If that makes any sense.

But it really doesn't.

You'll just have to see what it turns out like.

This story brings a new whole new meaning to "ripping one a new asshole"!

Those of you who know me well likely understand my belief that a "Great Reset" is coming in the future.

This Great Reset of Homo sapiens sapiens will be cruel, and harsh, and cut across every aspect of our lives.

Not a single member of the species will likely be spared by the Reset's effects.

I used to think it wouldn't be in my life time.

Definitely The Cousinling's but maybe only the end of mine.

It has played some role in my decisions regarding if I wanted to have my own children too.

I would have to raise my children to be efficiently brutal, clever, and possessing of skills that I could not ever imagine in myself.

But honestly, it will happen a lot sooner.

Are you ready for the carnage?

The world will turn. Turn along the golden path.

So we picked that "Mayan Treasure" color but Giga's image seemed more yellow so I tried to adjust it a bit but I know this isn't quite it either.

Let's just say the color is so amazingly awesome that no tool created by the mind of humans could remotely reproduce it on a monitor.

Yeah. That's it.

Oh. And I think we'll hang the John Wayne Gacy clown picture in the dining room.

Never let it be said I'm not all about class.

So I've decided to work through the pain and try to get as much done as I can.

Sure I'm a mess. Have been for 37 years now. But I may as stop being depressed about it and just deal with it.

Anyway, stocked up on supplies today and got the first gallon of that Mayan Treasure color.

It is kind of goldy-squashy but I'm actually pretty happy with it. It'll go well with the dining room stained glass, the color of the floor, as well as the kinds of brushed/bronzed metals I want to put on the walls.

Jay stopped by on his way back out of town and has given the color his seal of approval. Not quite the "Baby Diapers on the Ganges" color of his bedroom but not all of us can be so lucky.

I also chopped down that one tree randomly in front of the evergreens and the other one kind of randomly growing up in the evergreens. I'm no fan of things just there for no reason and I don't get these. I don't know why they were planted or what the intent was. Anyway, it all has to come out along there anyway so I can trench and run the gutter drains from the rear of the house to the front so out it comes!

Certain dachshunds, known to readers of this here fine blog, thought they'd just walk down the block unattended today.

Um. No.

I gots spiders on my lattice too! Two of 'em to be precise.

Professor Bobo (Kelmeister) and Brain Guy (Kelmeister's Husband) stopped by tonight on the way to a Halloween party.

He almost looks creepily nun-like.

Surprisingly, Hensley did not react any differently than normal.

You know... it wouldn't take much work to turn the Girl Scouts of America into the seeds of a future Fish Speaker group.

Sure, it'd scare men shitless.

But that'd be a good thing no?

I came across "'The Oil We Eat' Following the Food Chain back to Iraq" by Richard Manning, an essay published in January 2003 by Harper's Magazine.

It is long but not too academic.

If you read this, then you will hopefully understand some small part of my own beliefs about the future Great Reset. Something about the unspoken anger that resides deep in me.

I don't go into it too much here or even in discussions with too many people.

There's no real point.

And this isn't my depression talking here either. I wish I could say it was.

Every single one of us end up dead in the big equation.

There's no good in it.

There's no bad in it.

There is only the wheel turning.

Turning along the Golden Path.

Like most humans I fill my life with illusions about it all.

It doesn't matter though.

We all will end up the same.

And I suppose that's where the inherent beauty in it lies.

My cameras acting up.

I think it may be going the way of all 2-year old technology.

Anyway, no photos to get you all moist.

I managed to get almost all of the wallpaper down with a smattering of wallpaper glue here or there in the hutch area.

I'm not too worried about it.

I'll get the rest down today, and then if Giga can do a good scrubbing/washing to prep the surfaces, I can start the spackling and smoothing of the walls.

I'll be building up a bit of plaster/joint compound and feathering it out onto the greater part of the wall to try and reduce the severity of the depression left by the hutch. It won't be too bad.

Hopefully it'll also make it look like there never was a chair rail there.

I won't be redoing the electric for the old heavy duty or really old non-polarized outlet at this time though. Too much room for error and I'd rather just do it when I can figure out how to get all the wiring upgraded.

Got some more biomass removed the yard too and surprisingly the shoulder/neck isn't too bad this morning.

I'll be happy when I can be normal again.

Well... as normal as I ever can be.

Sometimes I read things that make me want to just harm humans more than anything in the world.

What possible answer to the question "Why did you do this?" exists.

None.

And that's why I want to harm humans who do this.

My neck and back are still hurty so I slacked off.

Giga however spent a couple of hours cleaning up the remnants of 60+ year old wallpaper glue in the old hutch area.

With the wallpaper and glue off, you can see the age of the plaster and the cracks due to settling and such. There are quite a few more than I expected so obviously the paint on the walls hides quite a lot.

For the most part, the Domicile's plaster walls are a thousand times better than the House of Love III's walls.

The HOL3 walls constantly got new cracks every season.

From the general look of things, the Domicile is a lot sturdier. I'd imagine a lot of it has to do with the poured concrete foundations versus the more flexible (and damp) HOL3 foundation.

Tonight's Hallowe'en so I don't know if I'll do much at all. Perhaps get the last strip of wallpaper under the chair rail down.

So I had my follow-up appointment today.

I'm doing better. This I knew.

So I've opted to try a few sessions with the physical therapist to try and help alleviate the remaining pressure on my spine and the nerve in my neck.

If that doesn't work, I'll have the MRI done and see if there is something preventing the pressure from going away.

Fun.

So Giga did a great job last night and I wanted to keep the momentum going as best I could without Hallowe'en getting in the way tonight.

I got the rest of the wallpaper border along the north and east walls down and then started scrubbing the remaining ancient wallpaper glue off.

All in all, I've done a pretty decent job. Between the scraper, the Krud Kutter, the soap and water, and the douching Giga did last night I'd say another bit of spot cleaning will do it.

The only area that really needs delicate attention is directly under the stained glass window to the north.

This is where the ancient electric outlet is.

There's obviously been some plaster patching around this area already.

While I really wanted to hold off on moving this down to the bottom of the wall I'm tempted to just do it since I've got so much plastering and sanding to do anyway.

I mean, why make a future dusty mess, in the dining room no less, when I can get it all done now.

I'll think about it some more tonight and look at the wiring later.

So I finally was able to repair a SD card and get a few photos off from when I was moving.

Some of the crack is in the basement but I have no idea when I'll ever touch it again. There's just so little time right now for toys.

I had forgotten how stressed out Hensley got from all the moving and all the people in and out of both houses last month.

He, much like his owner, was a total mess.

And unlike his owner, he's actually adjusted quicker to everything.

Of course the demands placed upon him by the powers that be, which is pretty much to eat, go for walkies, and poop, really don't require too much effort.

I snapped this photo late at night after he was completely and utterly dead tired and pretty much passed out in this big dog bed that he never used before.

It was all we had available since his normal bed was buried.

I'm still not sure why the data corrupted on so much of that SD card.

Anyway, time to get ready for costumed frogs at my door.

I'll be trying to consolidate The Domicile renovation posts over at "Domicile: A Story of a House in Clintonville" with probably a RSS excerpt here.

It also will be serving as a test bed for some different site structure testing for MovableType 4.

So for the most part, the old Victorian Village neighborhood and the area around the House of Love III had few if any children.

The village consisted of mostly yuppies, well off older couples whose kids were in college, renters, or extremely gay men. Not quite your trick 'r treating demographics.

Campus was a nightmare of drunken retards, the homeless, or a few children who were more likely to vandalize your house than to actually go trick 'r treating.

So with the move to Clintonville came the first actual Hallowe'en in which kids would actually go out in droves begging for candy.

Quite frankly, I kind of forgot what it was like.