Tag: home improvement

In the Office Again

Here we are, in the office in Westwood again. We come in once a month, the whole group on the same day. It doesn’t really make sense from a Covid perspective, but that’s the situation we’re in now.

Traffic was bad, but not remarkably bad. Just normal bad. There seemed to be an overabundance of stupid people on the road. That was interesting and rather awful, but unfortunately not too out of the ordinary.

My wedding ring almost fell off while I was unloading my backpack. That does it. I have to go and get it resized. This weekend, assuming my jewelry shop of choice is open this weekend. I have to check on that. I want to bring it to the same shop we bought it from in 2009. That seems like the right thing to do. If they aren’t available I’ll go somewhere else, but they are still my first choice.

Back when we had the cellar remodeled I broke the hose that vents the dryer. We had to have someone come in and replace it. Apparently they put too many twists and turns into it when they installed the new one and now we’re getting errors triggered by the flow sensor. Urgh. I will try to hook up a shorter hose that goes straight to the vent in the wall. Something else I need to do this weekend. I feel like it’s going to be a busy one.

Okay, let’s get to work. Lots of meetings today. Fun fun fun. I miss Jen.

Busy Monday

It’s been a busy morning. I’m wrapping up lunch right now and I feel like I haven’t had a minute to get my head straight today. I also had like five typos in the previous two sentences. What’s up, Robert?

I’m tired today. I didn’t fall asleep until almost 1:30am. I was then awake at around 7:00am, which is much later than I had hoped. Oh well. I’ll make it through the day and hopefully get to bed early tonight. Maybe. Who knows.

This weekend was busy as well. I spent most of Friday out of work on sick time so that I could stay in the ER with my father. He had massive back pain come up out of nowhere on Thursday. My brother took him to the ER where they waited for nine hours before seeing a doctor. The hospital was 100% full so they couldn’t admit him for the night. He ended up staying in an ER room. I relieved my brother at around 7:00am after his heroic night without sleep. Dad’s pain seemed to fix itself somehow and he was discharged in the mid-afternoon. I got home around 5:00pm or so. Maybe a smidge earlier than that.

From there the weekend of home improvement kicked off. Jen and I made about 650 trips to various Home Depot and Lowes locations. We installed a new cabinet in the kitchen, thanks to huge help from Jen’s step father, Sherman. I installed a wire pull out shelf system which almost killed me. Sherman helped me fix a small issue I was having, and then he installed a counter top onto the new cabinet. It looked great. Jen and I did the finishing work and then started rearranging things in the kitchen. We got some new cookware and saved off the old stuff for when a certain college student graduates and potentially needs a kitchen of her own at some point over the summer.

We were actually thinking about adding three cabinets and a great big pantry and a set of four shelves, but we scrapped all of that as possible overkill. Outside of home improvement, I was only able to get to my mother once. She had a brief moment of awareness when I got there. She asked me to get her a drink. That doesn’t sound like much, but compared to how she normally acts when I am there, that little interaction was huge. A nurse brought her some ice cream too and she devoured it. Normally getting her to eat is a struggle. Not then. She dug in and went after it. It was literally heart warming.

Other than that, there was just a lot of together time with me and my love, Jen. There was a lot of television watched, too much. The Walking Dead and House of the Dragon and Rings of Power are all up to date. Tonight I will go grocery shopping. Tomorrow I have a doctors appointment in the morning. Wednesday we have tons of television to watch. Good stuff.

For now though, lunch is over. Back to work, Robert.

Plans for Tomorrow

I was thinking of getting up with the sun and doing some photo’ing tomorrow but nope. Not going to do it.

Jen wants to redesign the living room so we are getting up early to tackle the task. After that’s done I’m going to visit mom for the first time in a week.

No clue what’s happening after that. Maybe some house cleaning, maybe dinner on the grill, maybe some freakin’ guitar.

I would like to play cameras one morning this weekend. It is a three day’r after all. Lots of opportunities. I haven’t checked the weather forecast though. I should probably do that.

Oh yeah! There’s Rings of Power too! Gotta watch that puppy!

Happy long weekend, folks!

ADDENDUM: Someone just suggested IKEA… oh, we might be in trouble. Heh heh

Tuesday July 5, 2022

The long weekend is over. It was nice, even though July 4th is now meaningless. Mostly Jen and I just hung out, but I also visited mom a few times and bought some clothes that fit (for now) and took a shit load of pictures on both Dad’s camera and my camera. We also went for a random drive to enjoy the nice weather yesterday. It was a pretty good weekend.

And now it’s over. We have a couple of contractors coming today to give estimates on fixing a potentially huge issue in the new bathroom. We’re pretty much guaranteed to lose the shower in there, which makes me sad. It is a walk in shower and I always wanted a walk in shower. Unfortunately there is a leak somewhere and there is evidence that the wall behind the shower stall is rotting so… buhbye walk in shower. Not sure what we’ll do with the space once it’s cleaned up. A linen closet? Maybe?

As for everything else. I did not get a chance to work on any music last night. I’ve been so hung up on the photography stuff lately that I haven’t been thinking music much at all. Time to find a middle ground where I can obsess over both topics. Music needs to be written, guitars need to be played, thrift stores need to be combed for inexpensive old film SLR cameras. Lizardfish needs to reunite. I sent a chat to the band yesterday saying if we don’t practice soon I am going to die. Here’s hoping they can save my life.

Okay. Get to work.

Better Than Expected

I was afraid that today was going to be a bad day, but so far it’s been okay. Whatever was up with my head this morning cleared up around the time I punched in to work. Jen is okay too. She doesn’t feel all better, but she is okay. That’s good.

The bad news so far was the exterminator. He’s pretty sure we’re going to have some damage behind the shower wall in our master bathroom. Now that we’ve spent all of that money fixing the cellar and the kitchen and the dining room… now we’re going to have to fix the bathroom too. We may end up ripping out the shower and not replacing it. We’ll have to see.

I am punching out of work in about 20 minutes and then going over to the hospital to sit with my mother for a while. That could turn out to be a rough situation, but I am ready for it. I am eating a little dinner right now (three ounces of chicken) so that I don’t have to worry about it later. I’ll be taking a big water bottle with me. I should be able to hit both my protein and liquid goals for the day. I am pretty confident.

What’s Next for the Cellar

I am on a late lunch break right now, posting a late lunch break bloggie post. So what, you ask? Well I’m doing it from the cellar, the new location of my home office.

This morning before work I brought my desk and filing cabinet along with both computers (one for work, one for not-work), my gigantic monitor, all of the hardware I use for work (camera, headset mic), and a few other things. Most of it is setup now. I have a podcast playing on my MacBook, airplaying through an old HomePod, and a few lamps with internet connected light bulbs. It’s nice and bright down here and everything is working fine.

There is just one hang up, and it’s one we saw coming a mile away. It’s a little cold down here. Not too bad, but a little chilly. I have a light jacket on. I’m fine and dandy. We have a little space heater upstairs that isn’t being used. I’ll probably bring it down here at some point.

So what’s next for the cellar? Tonight we’re going to mount the new TV in the little living room space. There are a few more things to bring down from upstairs, like the exercise bike and the guitar nook. We have some pictures to hang and some signs and things like that. There’s a shelf we want to put on one wall, and a curtain we want to hang in the one little cellar window. We have a bookcase coming and another little cubbyhole looking storage thingie.

After all of that? Just sit back and relax and watch a movie and have my internal organs hacked up and stapled back together. Yeah, that.