Tuesday, December 22, 2015

december updates

Truly I meant to start up again before now, but then my computer started smoking...

Luckily, it had the good sense to die on cyber Monday, so a replacement was easy to come by.  I'm well past the point of being excited by electronics though, so the expenditure was nothing but aggravating.  It's hard not to calculate the things I won't be able to work on around here so that I'm able to keep typing...

Since last we spoke we've:

a.  planted many of the bulbs bought for us in the Netherlands - some of which have already emerged given this crazy weather

b.   cured the hatch to the widow's walk of an obnoxious little leak.  This allowed us to weatherstrip the attic hatch (compressible gasket on top of the quarter round the hatch rests on) and reinstall it, finishing up the attic work at last.  I had intended to paint the hatch before putting it back up, but some chips revealed that it was originally shellacked, and the beadboard looks worth restoring.  That'll wait till spring, but I did put on some nice reproduction Eastlake hardware to make handling it much easier (it's remarkably heavy).



c.  hosted Thanksgiving and HAMukkah 2.0 with great success, while managing to forget the 5 year anniversary of owning the house.


d.  restored and rewired another chandelier better suited to the scale of the dining room (the vintage fixture that was there will grace another room).




as close to the correct glow as I could photograph

e.  have read more books in just the past 2 months than in the previous year, best among them?  High Fidelity, which is impossible to read and not envision John Cusack narrating and The Time Traveler's Wife, with shockingly excellent music and Arts and Crafts references.

f.  put up a bit more siding on the schoolhouse.

g.  finally finished the floors in the nursery/future master bath, full details will be forthcoming...


h.  got rid of 2 1/2 trees worth of logs to a friend for his woodburner.  We're seeing some evidence of ground termites, which is forcing us to start rounding up our stray woodpiles.  In return for the free wood they helped us move the last salvaged radiator to the basement, and there's a chance for free BBQ if the restaurant wants the sassafras for smoking...

i.  managed to keep an infant alive for two whole months!