Made another dusty sanding mess today and still kept finding areas I needed to work on.
So... onto another day since I mudded some more.
March 2008 Archives
Today was all about a full sanding, a washdown, and then then a second coat of mud and spackle.
So we've had the 30,000th visit from a Time Warner Cable technician today.
Now it was a pain in the ass to get the HD cable working way back in January but once it worked, it was fantastic.
Anyway, the week of the Blizzard of 2008, the HD box started f'n up and we'd lose signal every 3 minutes or so.
Suffice to say, it made watching anything impossible and ruined a shitload of Giga's Tivo'd content.
Well, there was all kinds of multiple trip drama to get that resolved and we were left with an HD box that was more like the old non-HD box... except the picture was shitty!
I don't care what anybody says... on this CRT HD TV... the right hardware and signal makes a huge difference in image fidelity.
I immediately noticed that a lot of the HD content looked grainy, especially in large areas of solid reds and blue.
And... the biggest offender... my Howard TV On Demand looked like it was missing a few frames. It looked like streaming video, albeit better than most web quality.
The old HD box really presented a very different picture quality than the replacement.
Anyway, Giga had them come out again today and after discussing things with the tech, we got the other original kind of box installed again and lo and behold... the HD channels look sharper and crisper and Howard TV is back to normal.
Oh cable TV technology... why do you taunt us so?
I feel kind of bad.
I started sanding and managed to get the first sanding done on the east wall and then most of the north wall before my back, especially under my shoulder blades, started to hurt.
This may take me a bit longer than planned.
And yes. My back still bothers me.
And yes. I shouldn't have did the pallet work yesterday and today.
Unfortunatley, that's what they pay me for.
Yes. It is true.
If you can imagine putting carbonated water, motor oil, licorice, and bitters in a bottle and then drinking that you'd pretty much have Moxie.
And the thing is...
I'm growing addicted to it and the way it lingers in your mouth for like 10 minutes afterwards.
Ok. I gotta get back to sanding.
I only have one small part of the east wall done.
So the other week I came across this drink called The Vijay that used Moxie as a mixer and I realized I'd never had it.
Then again, it didn't exist for many years.
Anyway, today I get home and I think that the boxes on the porch are plastic crack but no... Moxie!
Giga got me Moxie for my birthday.
And it is very... very... different.
Not bad.... just different.
Oh. I finally got my new glasses.
I must admit they work ok on my wide head. Much better than the ones I've been wearing since 2001.
I gotta figure where the goatee is going. I was thinking of doing something old school Amish but I'd get bored fairly quickly with that.
I don't know.
Mid-life crisis and all that shit.
I'd pay good bucks if I didn't end up with the Homer Simpson/George Jetson/Fred Flintstone 3 o'clock shadow after a few hours. I need to hire a personal valet to give me a hot towel straight razor shave every morning.
Hmm... I could use my "we're the US government and we don't know what to do about the failing economy we created" desperation rebate check.
Older.
So basically one mask irritated the shit out of my nose and now the new one irritates the shit out of my forehead and is goatee-unfriendly.
I can't win can I?
Wow. I can't remember the last time we had sunlight. It seems like such a rare occurrence anymore.
Thankfully, yesterday's constant rain followed by snow ended up resulting in a surprisingly brisk, but full on sunny day today.
Tomorrow we'll have a tsunami and the rapture, followed by balls of fire on Saturday.
Snow.
We now have snow.
It has rained for the past 2 days and was raining until an hour or so ago and now we've got snow.
Jesus.
He really really hates Cowtown.
So the Gay Robot Convention... aka Botcon, is a little over a month away down in Cincinnati.
This year the toys are utterly mediocre to me and the event will no doubt be merely a retread of the previous years.
They haven't even gotten around to posting a guest list. Do you believe that?
Of course, since the toys are supposedly sold out that means the conventions organizers don't have to do shit now.
The money's all in selling the toys. No doubt a good chunk of the hotel hall and panel rooms are free since they do get all these people to pay extra nights to attend painting classes.
Last year's utter piece of shit film, the mediocre shitty movie toys, combined with this year's mediocre convention have totally left me utterly apathetic.
Now I've wanted to reduce the toys down to a manageable level for some time. That'll still happen.
The thing is though I'm not finding any of it fun anymore.
This fandom, like most geek and sports fandoms, pretty much grates on my last nerve and actually having to go to the convention and be surrounded by some of these people holds no appeal.
They are just toys. Not a lifestyle. And unfortunately, some geeks out there can't separate the too.
Now I'm still going to go since it is only 90 minutes away.
There are some really honest to goodness fun decent geeks I've met who make the con totally enjoyable.
If it wasn't for them I'd have no reason to attend.
I'm even thinking about finally closing up shop on the crack blog to try and find something new and fresh to revitalize me.
I so don't want to become the "jaded bitchy sarcastic bitter fan" that I normally totally despise but TF fandom is making me become that.
Not good.
Not good at all.
So you probably know I've got what the kids these days call "the sleep apnea".
Mine isn't too bad, and quite frankly if I could get my weight down permanently to my ideal 200 I probably wouldn't need this at all.
Anyway...
I've had the same setup for 2 years with this monster CPAP machine and secondary huge ass humidifier next to my bed on the end table.
Well kids...
Meet the new hotness!
Insurance covered an entirely new unit and 4 years later they one I got is a combined CPAP/Humidifier. S'kinda like a G1 Micromaster Combiner too since they snap together to form one unit front-to-backways.
I can't believe how much table surface I've reclaimed! (Not that I use it for anything anyway.)
Now all of these new things actually just ended up as the result of me wanting a new mask to wear at night.
I've fought for 4 years with these inner nasal pillow types (left side) and all I end up is irritated and sometimes even bleedy and raw.
The new one (right) is a full face mask that covers my mouth and my nose. I'm not thrilled at the head plate thing, but this one is covered 100% by insurance so I'm settling on it.
I'm hoping that with the new mask, tonight'll be the first night into getting back into a decent sleep/exercise/diet routine.
I'm pretty certain that they are all tied together in my life since my poor sleeping (from my apnea) makes me not want to wake up to go to the gym which then means anything I eat just becomes part of my ass which then just makes the sleep apnea worse which then... oh you get it.
Thankfully mine isn't remotely as bad as the NalaOjciec's apnea. He literally stops breathing many times an hour.
I remember his snoring in the 70s and 80s too... so I can imagine how bad it had to have gotten by the time he went on the CPAP.
Oh well... tonight's the night!
Well the back yard is a total swampy mud pit with various pools of water here and there.
The ground can't absorb any of this rain now.
The room under the foyer is leaking again, and the 3 areas near the drain where water has been seeping up through the slab have become noticeably more seepy. I don't know if putting the dehumidifier on would help or actually make it worse. I did start the fan under the foyer again. That'll help a bit.
The streets have permanent rivers on each side. My street (above) and my drive is especially river-tastic.
As I drove home from Westerville today I saw so many yards and alleys that were totally flooded.
I wish it would just stop.
The ground can't take any more rain or moisture. Period.
Dear Tefnut:
What's up with dumping so much moisture on the Cowlands for the past 4 months?
First we had a horribly windy and rainy December and January, then that awful 3" of rain in 6 hours earlier this month, followed immediately by 18" of blizzardtastic snow which melted and now followed by 2" of rain yesterday and supposedly 1-2 more inches of rain today?
And there's flood warnings all over the place here in the Greater and Lesser Cowlands.
What gives babe? Shu piss you off or something?
I haven't gone down into the under foyer room in the basement at The Domicile™ since I'm not in the mood to see water coming in again. However, I can't blind myself to the fact that it is seeping up through the slab near the sewer drain. I can see the moisture in the cracks.
The ground cannot handle more water right now.
We need a drying off spell.
And people' foundations need a rest. Who knows what bad craziness lurks for the Max Power basement? I shudder to think what is going on at The House of Love™ with as much water as we've had.
Dryness. We needs it.
One of my favorite writers, Arthur C. Clarke, jumped into the monolith today.
March definitely seems to be the month for people who I enjoyed reading shuffling off this mortal coil.
Arthur C. Clarke had a significant impact in my young life, with his writing taking my 70s view of science fantasy and turning it into my 80s view of science fiction. Of course, this inevitably lead directly to my interest in the ecological/political science fiction of Frank Herbert. Nothing exists or evolves in a vacuum does it? A to B to C.
I'm still impressed by aspects of 2010: Odyssey Two (the book, not the film) that I read when I was 12. He envisioned a near future closer to what actually happened. The damn film had to deviate from the book and looks all the more dated because of it.
Oh well!
Thanks for shifting my thought patterns back then. It most definitely had an impact on my life.
Airborne settles lawsuit for $23.3 million (CNN)
On the whole, I'm not susceptible to marketing.
However, there was a period, even recently, when I bought Airborne or the generic CVS version and took it even though I knew full well that there was nothing remotely in it that would make sense to prevent a cold.
See... there's a ton of shit in "health" food stores and even in general retail stores that has absolutely ZERO clinical research to prove anything.
So much crap in this country is still sold and consumed on the basis that it does something beneficial when in fact it doesn't do much at all.
This is especially true of the body building community and such. How many gyms push supplements and drinks on their members? It is all about revenue streams.
Now when I'm in strict dieting mode I do supplement my daily intake of proteins with a powder mix. I started doing this when I began playing with my caloric intake versus what I was eating and realized I was shifting substantially to a low protein/low calorie essentially vegetarian diet and needed to make up for the protein intake elsewhere.
While I still for some unknown reason take a daily vitamin supplement a day, I do know that when I'm doing my strict dieting I get all off the known vitamin requirements throughout what I consume and don't need anything else. I still laugh when the NalaMatka brings up the fact that I should take a "multiple vitamin - mineral" pill because I think decades of reading Prevention magazine have grounded that into her.
Just as recently as January I was doing the megadosing of Vitamin C thing even though I know it doesn't prevent anything.
I'm not naturally inclined to get more than a single cold a season... on occasion two, and I haven't had a definite case of influenza since high school or earlier.
If you eat an adequate diet of fruits, nuts, and vegetables, a little animal protein, a large amount of water, and a small amount of grains, you'll get all the nutrition you need.
And when I'm strict dieting, I lose and maintain a healthy weight on just that and feel a 1000 times better than when I'm not.
Why is it that I can't permanently change my lifestyle to that though?
Am I actually more influenced by marketing and pointlessly unhealthy cravings than I am consciously aware of?
For the last few months Chester has developed this horrible bleeding gashy sore on his throat.
Giga's spent about $200 to get this under control and every time it appears to be healing he relapses into a raw bleedy state.
It really is disgusting.
We've been told by the vet that it is allergy related.
I know he's allergic to magnolia pollen but he's never experienced anything like this in the 5 years we've had him.
At present he's on a liquid drug that is a real major pain in the ass to give him and at least it seams to be scabbing over again.
So today was a very foggy dreary damp day here in the Cowlands.
Morning found us breakfasting with Moni and P. and then heading to The West Side to see Max and Shawn Power.
Max has added a Deluxe Luxury extension to the model train layout. Quite a big addition actually.
The train layout takes up an entire area of the basement now. And since we've had so much rain and snow, it even has its own waterfall now!
We then headed to Kelmeister's place but they weren't home. However, we did surprisingly detour to a rare Saturday open house near them, looking at possible places for Jay-K-Not-Rowling.
This one house, for only $125,000, was huge and while it would need work, had major potential.
The house had one of the single worst wall paper border atrocities I've ever encountered though.
Horse heads!
Ugh!
Since The Pickett wasn't home, we hit a few West Side places.
I even found a table for the foyer that will totally work!
Both of us like this one and it'll go right in front of the windows as you come in to the foyer space. Now I gotta find an appropriate lamp and of course, window treatments.
That was pretty much our day.
My back is now super hurty so I'm gonna lay down and then go visit Rura Penthe.
Can somebody please explain to me why it has taken me 11 years to discover Canadian band The New Pornographers???
Perhaps their tongue-in-cheek Jimmy Swaggert derived name?
Or possibly because the fact they're Canadians and I haven't forgiven them for their involvement in the War of 1812?
I've been totally loving their most recent album Challengers lately. There's a bit of Bowieness to it and a just an unexpected sound that I'm easily drawn to at this stage in my midlife crisis.
So on top of my new glasses I got today, I also just found out that I can get a completely new (and hopefully much smaller) CPAP and humidifier, along with the new full face mask I so desperately want.
I'd love an all-in-one unit and after 4 years of general discomfort I'm going to have to go to the full mask. I just cannot handle anything irritating my nose all night anymore.
If it doesn't chafe the hell out of me, the current one just pops out of my nostrils on the exhale.
Depending on the style I get I'll definitely look like a robotic face hugger has attached itself to my face.
Sucks.
But I've been sleeping with the CPAP again and I've felt better these last few days. Hopefully the current mask won't bother me until I get my new one next Wednesday.
And... most hopefully... I can find a full face one that doesn't have the forehead plastic crap!
It is bad enough waking up with all kinds of red marks on my face every morning, I sure as hell don't need to add marks to my forehead on top of that!
If I could get down and maintain 180 pounds I wonder if my sleep apnea would completely disappear.
Hell. It has been so impossibly hard to maintain 240!!!
180? Yeah. If I became a meth/crack addict instead of a plastic crack addict!
You may remember I broke my glasses in the moving truck way back when in the long long long ago of late September.
Well I finally got around to making an appointment and thankfully, my left eye is the same and my right eye is only a tad bit worse.
What's funny is I could have sworn I had my eyes checked last year yet he said it was in 2005.
I am indeed getting old if I'm having the bizarre time compression thing.
How I long for the days of youth when a year felt like 5!
Then again, I didn't have 2029 toy robots back then so I'm definitely a lot cooler than I was.
Or am I? Hmmmm...
Anyway, my new frames are very retro 1950s/early 60s. Giga's old pair was kind of like that too.
I have a photo of the NalaOjciec's ojciec (henceforth who will be referred to on this site as Dziadzia Kitty Kat... don't ask) with a pair of frames that really evokes these new ones of mine.
Of course, I'd have died to get his genes that controlled the size of my gut and ass too but I'll have to settle for similar frames he worse. (Let's just say he was built like Giga 'cept skinnier. I got more of the Duszynski genes in the gut/ass department.)
If I can get my weight back down they'll look really good. And they'll go with my grey hair much better than my current ones did.
With the vernal equinox fast approaching, and great Sol moving from Pisces to Aries in the heavens, you can almost taste Spring here in the Cowlands.
My back is still on/off bad. And with last weekend's shoveling it has been pretty much on the bad side.
I've been very depressed and mental the past few months and really have not been able to get back on a decent healthy diet or gym routine again.
Maybe with Ra lighting up the sky I may get out of this funk, get back to seriousness about living, and maybe get working on the house.
Winter.
You are almost over.
And I'll be very happy to tell you to eff off!
Most of you probably don't know who he is, but Dave Stevens recently passed away from leukemia.
His character The Rocketeer was one of the first characters a 12-year old Nala was introduced to outside the often limiting confines of DC and Marvel comics.
He was an incredibly fine illustrator and painter.
His full page illustrations of Phantom Lady and the Golden Age Catwoman from DC's 80s series Who's Who are still two of my favorite superhero illustrations of all-time.
I mean... Sandra Knight kicking Nazi ass drawn by Dave Stevens? S'like a slice of heaven there kids.
Virtual child passes mental milestone
I tell you... this'll all end in a Butlerian Jihad of some kind.
And hopefully the good original thought-provoking kind and not the shitty craptastic poor bad Terminator retread lame ass version written for children weaned on bad 90s sci-fi.
I kinda of get a pukey taste in the back of my throat when I even think about that shitty craptastic poor bad Terminator retread lame ass version.
So this morning all these churches have canceled services because of the blizzard.
Excuse me?
Hello?
Exodus 20:8... that little commandment about keeping the sabbath holy?
Canceling services is an abomination in the eyes of G*d people!
Those 10 commandments weren't given to Moshe by that Super Happy New Testament G*d.
That commandment comes down from the the old school totally kill your ass then hand it back to you on a plate Torah YHWH! And he does not take people's whiney ass shit!
You don't just pick and choose which commandments you want to listen to and obey because of weather people!
Here endeth the lesson.
I'll see you all in hell.
Man...
I think the trick to immortality is having batshit crazy fans. It is not enough to have just passive casual fans, they must be die hard fans. People who would write Wikipedia articles about you. Jesus knew this so that's why he picked those certain twelve guys. They were intense guys. The new testament is kind of a bunch of wikipedia articles before the internet. You don't hear about the thirteenth disciple because there was nobody else dedicated enough in the kind of drop-all-your-shit-and-follow-me-and-write-me-gospels kind of way that Jesus needed. He had possibly the first hardcore fandom and look how famous he is now. It's quality fans that get you fame, not quantity.I do love the way Crazy Steve can craft a thought.
I envy both he and Kelmeister in this respect.
Me?
S'all random train of thought with the occasional uncorrected bad grammar and punctuation thrown in for good measure to ensure that I could never remotely be a professional writer.
See the subject?
After 36 or some such ungodly number of hours the snow has finally stopped.
All I can say is this is going to be a major bitch when it melts.
The ground around here can't take any more moisture.
So many people's basement have had water leaks or flooding.
And when this 15-18 inches of snow melts it'll be that much worse.
So the dachshund said to Nala,
"You promised me fat one,
that if I followed behind you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during
the most trying pig-ear empty periods of my life
there have only been one
set of footprints in the snow.
Why, when I needed you most,
you have not been there for me?"
And Nala replied,
"The times when you have
seen only one set of footprints in the snow,
is when I carried you because you are only 8" high."
"And then you made poopies."
It still hasn't stopped snowing.
I went out again and tried to clear off all of the accumulation since Giga shoveled this morning.
My back has seen much better days. Ugh. When Giga shovels again later it should be a whole lot easier than if I hadn't done it.
The driveway alone was about 7-9 inches in places.
And the cars. Covered!
It has been snowing for a little under 24 hours. There have been a few lulls here and there but we've got at least 8" or so and it isn't supposed to stop until 5pm or so.
We may just end up with 10-12" total.
I shoveled for an hour yesterday and Giga shoveled this morning but every time you clear something more snow just comes in (or blows in dammit) to fill the space!
And Hoont Poop Zones? Ugh! Almost impossible to keep clear.
It is a sad sad thing when the snow is taller than your dog.
So Cowtown has experienced a lot of water this past winter season.
Now usually, we get a bit of snow, but on the whole winter here, at least for my past 19 years living here, has been a sullen grey damp and cold wasteland.
This year though?
So much rain and more rain.
And that's taken a huge toll on the basements of so many people I know.
I ran into A. next door and they've been getting water in their basement. They really live down there too.
Apparently the drainage tiles are shot even though I still see their sump pump dump water on the street.
And everybody's favorite Irishman Max Power? Water in the basement too.
There were tons of yards and alleys flooded around the Clintonhood so I'd imagine a lot more people got water too.
They had to.
It was badtastic.
Oy koledy!
First we had a 70 degree sunny day.
Then 1 day of massive 3" rainfall.
Now it is in the 20s and we currently have received about 2.5" of snow with another 3-6" expected over tonight and all day tomorrow.
I just spent the last hour shoveling the current snowfall and hopefully, by salting the walk and drive, it'll be easier to get the rest off or it'll just melt.
I remember fondly the excitement of finally getting a driveway to a garage.
Well... I kind of forgot how easy it was to shovel the House of Love's™ simple sidewalk.
Here at The Domicile, it is quite the pain in the ass.
Thankfully though, snow like we have today is a rarity in the Cowlands.
And no NalaMatka, I'm not regretting returning the holiday money you gave me to buy a snowblower.
Since the weather is so shitty it looks like I may just be shut-in and get the website redesigns implemented.
Holy shit!!!
Thanks to Kelmeister's alert, and Giga figuring out what the presale code is, I just snagged us 2 super mega decent seats to Eddie Izzard here at The Palace for his May show.
This is better than toy robots!
Lots better!
It has been many months now since I moved into the Domicile and just when I was feeling somewhat confident in the basement...
Yes. Water has come in.
There's an area under the foyer where the main foundation wall for the front of the house hits the east wall.
The waterproofing goes up to the wall then abruptly stops, obviously because of the concrete.
This is exactly the area where the water is coming in.
Now I don't understand why that one small area did not have any Drylock coverage at all. It is the only area that appears to be bare concrete. It literally makes no sense.
I've known I need to scrape some of the basement walls and reapply new masonry waterproofer, but I didn't realize I'd have to do it so soon.
I suppose it could be worse. Hopefully this is the extent of it.
So it started sometime last night and has pretty much rained all day.
And it is supposed to keep on raining all night until we've had about 3 inches.
Not good.
I'm really surprised the usual areas in the back yard aren't full of standing water.
I can see the neighbors' back drive is somewhat underwater.
There are some parts of Clintonville that don't seem to be dealing with the water all that well either.
Sucks.
