Tag: cellar

Less Than One to Go

On February 3rd, two months and one day ago, I was told to lose 5% of my weight in preparation for the weight loss surgery. I weighed myself this morning. I have 0.4 pounds to go. I would do the math to figure out what percentage I am at with 0.4 pounds to go but then you could use that to figure out exactly how much I weighed on that first day and I don’t want to let you do that.

I just drank my morning protein shake and had my morning vitamins and supplemented it all with a fist full of Tylenol because holy shit my back is killing me. I don’t know that my back has ever hurt as much as it does at this moment. Oh my shit, my back hurts.

Today’s plan involves going to my parents and picking up my mother and taking her to a doctors appointment. We’re going to get the results of her last blood test and see how her cancer numbers look. They’ve been pretty much perfect for the last year-plus and I am very optimistic that those results will continue.

After that I will come home and find some demo happening in the cellar. First on the list is the grid that until recently held the drop ceiling. After that it’s the rest of the ugly paneling on the walls. Most of the paneling came down during the flood clean up last year. You might recall me bitching about the paneling in the dining room recently. Suffice to say that the paneling in the cellar is 100 times uglier. Tomorrow the electrician is coming to replace the existing fluorescent lights that don’t really work anymore. There used to be six banks of lights with two tubes each. Only two of them still work, (it’s not the bulbs, I replaced the bulbs and the lights stayed dead) and one of those two only works some times. It’s been good the last week because it knows its end is coming and it wants to stay alive, but more often than not it doesn’t work when I flip the switch. Replace ’em all!

On top of that there is something going on at work that I am not going to be around for and I am feeling pretty shitty about that. I feel like I am dropping the ball. I don’t think anyone else feels that I’m dropping the ball, but I do so that’s that. Hopefully it will be quiet today. Fingers crossed.

Did I mention my back was hurting?

0.4 pounds to go. Oh yeah, and the surgery happens one month from today. Yikes!

Hectic Weekends

Last weekend was a kitchen furniture building pre-fab marathon that left me sore and exhausted and with some sweet new looks in the kitchen and dining room.

Yesterday didn’t involve putting together pre-fab stuff but it did include moving a lot of really heavy stuff, some of which went outside for a junk pickup service to haul away. The living room doesn’t look terribly different, but the changes we made make it feel completely new. It’s weird that way.

Now what? Well… now comes the biggest job of all. The cellar. We have someone coming this week to replace the lights, then someone coming to take down what’s left of the panelling on the walls and replace it all with wall board, including a new paint job. After that we’re getting new flooring installed.

Then what? Furniture, mostly. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we’re thinking a mini-living room space and maybe a pull out couch or something that can act as a guest room. Like everything else we do, the more time we have before it happens the more complex the plans get. We’re thinking of maybe upgrading a few things in the living room (not the TV, our TV is gigantic and amazing and it’s staying right where it is) and moving the current things to the cellar.

Jen came up with this plan, and it’s a good one that I wish I thought of, to have a space in the cellar where I can go to ride out my post-surgical recovery period. I could stew in the living room all day, but she’d be working in the next room and I’d be afraid I was bothering her. If we have an alternate living room space in the cellar I could go there and moan and groan in my post-op agony without worrying about being heard on her conference calls. I imagine the first few days are going to be spent in the bed room, but as things (hopefully) lighten up for me I will probably go into the cellar and maybe binge watch all of the Marvel movies or something. Assuming we stay on schedule and everything is done by May 4th.

As for this moment in time… holy shit does my back hurt.

Kinda Bummed Out

I wasn’t going to talk about this until it happened but now it’s not happening so I guess I’m in the clear.

Over the last few months we had been saving money to get our cellar re-finished. We need new floor tiles, new wall board, new dropped ceiling frame and tiles, new ceiling lights, and some electrical upgrades. There was also hopes of walling off the laundry nook and adding a new closet.

We had a dollar figure in mind and we started talking to a contractor about an estimate. The guy was super psyched and his attitude was a little infectious. I was getting a good feeling about the whole thing.

He sent his estimate tonight. It was our dollar figure times three. That hissing sound you hear is the air escaping my balloon.

Shit.

Another Reason to Hate Autumn

It’s Autumn. Fall. I really don’t like Fall. I kinda hate it. Here’s one reason.

We caved in and had a landscaping team clean up our yard today. The main reason they were here was to fix and clean the rain gutters on our roof, but they also cleared the yard. Awesome.

Less than an hour after they left I looked out the window and it was literally raining leaves. It was the front of the house. We don’t have any trees in the front of the house. Two doors down from us they have a huge oak tree. The leaves were falling off that tree and the wind was blowing them all the way to our yard. At this rate, within a day or two you won’t be able to tell that our lawn was clear today.

Fall sucks.

One slightly related note. In our back yard the leaves fall off the trees in the woods and the wind blows them all right against the house. The yard itself is usually not too bad, but the base of the house is a leafy mountain. There are some windows along the foundation of the house but only one of them can actually be seen from the living space in the cellar, the rest are in the storage areas. After the landscape folks left, and at the start of my lunch break, I went down stairs to put some laundry on. I couldn’t believe how much light there was down there. Turns out that one window was free of leaves for the first time in a year and you could actually see through it. It was kinda cool. Of course, by the end of the week the window will be blocked again. Yippee.

Light

The cellar has (had) six fluorescent light banks in the ceiling. Right now, exactly one is still functional. Fortunately it is near the washer and dryer so there hasn’t really been an issue.

Still, I wanted to be able to see on the other (much larger) side of the cellar if for some reason something is happening over there. Maybe I can find a use for that area other than storing stuff. I don’t know. I was hoping we’d be able to have the whole place redone, complete with new overhead lights. For the near future at least, that ain’t happening.

So Jen and I talked about getting a couple of floor lamps and sticking them down stairs. I put them together this morning before work and set them up with internet connected light bulbs so we can turn the lights on from upstairs and have everything lit up nicely before we go down stairs.

Now all we have to do is clean up all the shit left over from when we had the ducts worked on. Then maybe I can do something with the space. Maybe a new music room? Probably not. Who knows. I’m just glad I can see again.

New Water Heater

We have gone through almost a full day with a new water heater. I just worked up the courage to go down cellar and see how things are looking after everyone finished their morning showering routine.

Spoiler alert: Everything is dry. Oh high praise to the plumbing gods and goddesses, our cellar is dry.

They left the bucket right where it was:

They capped off the old pipe when they took the old heater away:

They added some new piping:

They added some more new piping:

They added the new tankless water heater. They did have to remove one of the shelving units that some previous owner had built. I’m a little sad about that, but not having a flood in my house every day makes up for it, big time:

One day down and all is well. I still need to check on the back of the house to see what the exhaust they installed looks like. Other than that… and the enjoyment of our very hot showers this morning… I think that’s all she wrote on the Lake Asshole story. Fingers crossed, knock on wood and all that crap.

Don’t Touch My Stuff

The folks who will be installing our new water heater are here. Work is underway. Please, oh gods of plumbing and water heating, allow this to be Lake Asshole’s (more recently known as Bucket Asshole) final day. Oh please, oh please. Thank you.

I mixed another song while I was waiting for them to get here this morning. Song number 44 of an expected 52.

50/90 is officially not fun anymore. At least the 50/90 website portion of the project. Last night while I slumbered someone commented on the song I posted before I went to bed suggesting that he could remaster it for me and asking if that would be okay. Then without ever getting a response he remastered it and posted a link to it.

Ummmm… No.

I know we’re all amateurs and trying to get better at what we do and all of those good things, but Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Fuck With My Stuff Without Permission. It’s really that simple. I made all of my song links private so no one can get to them but me. 99.999% of the people I’ve dealt with have been wonderful and supportive and the few comments I get are always great, but one guy had to Fuck With My Stuff Without Permission and just utterly ruined the whole experience for me.

I plan to keep posting songs there as private so that I get the little trophy next to my name, but that’s it. If I play the game again next year I will probably do it alone, without using the website at all.

Ready for Tomorrow

Remember a few months ago when I moved everything worth saving in the cellar into the storage areas? That was because one side of the cellar was flooded and there was water damage everywhere. Well, now there is water damage on the other side of the cellar and I have to move all of the shit from the storage area back into the cellar proper so that they can install the new water heater in the morning.

Two items of note. First, those shelves are likely going to have to go. I don’t know how much room a tankless system needs.

Second, I expect to have super powers by morning because I’m pretty sure I got bit by a spider and isn’t that what happens when you get bit by a spider?