Wednesday, January 8, 2014

the doctor will see you now

So I watched Day After tomorrow to learn how to prepare for this whole polar vortex thing - apparently survival depends on how many books you have around to burn. I guess I'll be fine.

But really Pittsburgh, -15 with -26 windchill, a bit ridiculous me thinks (as has been this whole winter in fact). Incidentally, none of the foams and caulks and adhesives I need to use to seal up the gaping holes in the third floor eaves can be used in temps below 40, so, so much for beginning to repair the plaster (i.e. my house is cold folks, really, really cold, and my gas bill? We just won't talk about that here). While I'm ranting, I tried to convince my dogs to read my Facebook feed, filled with kindhearted warnings about pets being outside, frostbite and putting booties on your furry friends. My fuzzy gremlins however made me chase them around the yard for 30 minutes in my bathrobe and slippers to get them back inside (-26 folks!), they certainly don't seem to care one iota about my frostbite - typical vain, stubborn shibas, they didn't even put booties on me...

At the moment, blogland is filled with posts about New Years resolutions and such, but I never really even made a Christmas post, so behold, my 10 foot tall Christmas tree (noble fir, like every year), and if you want to be cool like me you'll cover it in rocks and glass owls. Oh, you didn't have a grandfather who was a Navajo-style jeweler and rock-hound with thousands of sliced stones, or an Aunt who sends you stunning glass owls every year (and makes you gorgeous tree skirts)? I'm sad for you...


















obligatory stealth cat shot
Fun with curly tailed dogs

As for New Years, as an awesome friend said, "we rung the shit out of it." Indeed, the schoolbell got quite a workout at midnight, as did our firepit and liquor cabinet. And in a pleasant turn of events, not only did our illegal fireworks (bought when we drove through North Carolina) not get us arrested or burn the house down, they caught the attention of some fantastic neighbors who moved in over the summer (the ones I met in my paint splattered glory up on the scaffold, ahhh summer). I suppose an evening of non-stop Christopher Walken impressions and Cards Against Humanity until 6 in the morning means we hit it off just fine!

I have started finishing the last of the kitchen cabinet painting, i.e. the operating table is fully loaded.


It was going fine until I went to reinstall the worst of the doors today. It had looked like someone switched the direction the door opened, and had patched the original screw holes badly. As it turns out, at some point in it's 80 year lifespan the door must have been broken off both directions it had been installed, leaving sheared off screws in the holes. I broke 4 of my impossible to match antique screws and my favorite drill bit before I wised up. The door's installed, but I need to extract the broken screw shafts and do some patching. So very not happy...

the offending door is on the bottom left

The cabinets should be done by the weekend, so one less thing on the kitchen to-do list, and even better will be getting all the doors out of the way and the hardware installed before it gets lost for good!

9 comments:

  1. love, Love, LOVE cards against humanity. Its so very wrong, but so very right. Great blog here - I'll have to stop back by. Beautiful old house!

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    1. Thanks for stopping by, I'll be catching up with yours too! As I tell everyone who raises their eyebrows about Cards Against Humanity, it's only as terrible as the people playing it...

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  2. Great post - my favorite of the new year so far! Where and when did your grandfather dig for rocks? My husband's g-grandfather did that. We've got dino prints and all sorts of small rock examples, mostly from the southwest US. Unfortunately, we don't have room for his whole collection, though I'm inclined to "make" room somehow. And I've just been exposed twice this morning to Cards Against Humanity. It is surely a sign that I must look into this new-to-me game!

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    1. Ahhh, that's so sweet of you to say. My grandpa lived in San Diego and built dune buggies to go to the desert to hunt for stones. When I was little he'd scatter them around his house for me to "find." I have so many stashed in boxes that I can't identify, but at least the agates get to come out at Christmastime (dino bones, but no prints, that is just so cool). And yeah, that game is great, and the right group of people make it a riot!

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  3. Is there any way for a reader to disable whatever it is that changes the font in your posts to the less readable font? I've tried reloading and hitting Escape to stop it, but that doesn't catch it. Thanks.

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    1. Sorry it's difficult to read, I guess I'm a more form over function type of person. I don't see a way of reading it within a reader, and tried changing the font to black/bold, but that just made it worse. I really don't have the energy to change the template, all I can suggest is copying and pasting as plain text into word (which is what I do when I can't read something)...

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    2. Sorry you're having trouble reading it, I guess I'm more of a form over function type of person. I don't see a way of reading it in a reader, and I tried changing the text to black/bold, but that just made it worse. All I can suggest is what I do on blogs I have trouble reading, copy and paste as plain text into word...

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    3. That sounds good, but for some reason Select doesn't work, so it can't be copied. Oh, well.

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    4. Karen - I changed and enlarged the font which seems to make it a little better, the white is the only color that shows up well on the background though, so this is probably as good as it'll get...

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I am human and I need to be loved...