Tag: house

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The furnace issue continues to plague us. As I said, I went online to try and find a solution, but that didn’t pan out. Saturday, I contacted a local HVAC service company and they didn’t return my call until today. Rather than schedule a visit, they instead gave me some more things to test and check out. Still we have flame, but no flame detection. This has gone beyond frustrating to just boringly annoying. I’m getting to where I firmly believe I cannot fix it in my house and that something is truly wrong, but I’d rather fix it if just to save money. I appreciate the people at Cogburn’s trying to help me out, I really do, but I’m just getting tired of it being cold in the house. Now, even when its 60°+ outside, it barely peaks at 59° in the house. Its gotten to where we would almost be warmer by just opening up all the windows.

On the positive side, I borrowed some wood from corwin75 on Saturday, and on the way home got an inspiration to check out one of the many locations I’ve been photographing for trees that have been cleared. I actually found a pretty good cache of wood to burn, unfortunately, the stuff that would actually fit in my Baja was a bit old and rotted. It still burns, but it burns up really fast. There were a couple tree-trunks there (about 2-3 feet in diameter and almost 25 feet long) of exceptional quality that would probably last us a year or more. Too bad I have no way to collect them.

Webber Hinged Cooking GrateAnyway, we went out and got the grill grate I’ve been wanting for a couple years now, specifically for Thanksgiving. Its got hinged sides so that after an hour or so of cooking, when you need to add more coals, you don’t have to try and juggle a 12 pound turkey resting on the cooking grate long enough to pour a new chimney starter worth of blazingly hot coals into the grill. You know, I’m just trying to make life easier. I do feel a little bad because we actually just bought a new grill grate about three months ago because the old one was beyond cleaning. So now we have two… Guess I’ll just use one for special occasions when I think I might need to dump in some extra coals. We also picked up a bag of Applewood chips to help smoke that bird. Its shaping up to be a really good turkey. I almost wish it was bigger. Those leftovers are hardly going to last. I need to remember to take a container for the leftover turkey as well. So on Turkey day I have to remember the following:

  • Grill (duh)
  • new Grill grate
  • charcoal
  • applewood chips
  • drip pan (or two)
  • container for leftovers
  • welding gloves (just in case)
  • chimney starter
  • newspaper
  • wand lighter
  • meat thermometer
  • and, of course, the Turkey

Also, I want to try to clean out the lid of the grill before then too, just to clear out some of the soot. I hope this turkey comes out even half as good as the first one. Mmmmmmm. Turkey.

Todd Rundgren – Hello It’s Me – The Virgin Suicides: Music From the Motion Picture [Emperor Norton]

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You know you’re not a kid anymore when you cheer with glee over your new city sponsored and provided trash can.

*glee*

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Well, Heather and I took a couple days off work for our sanity and if anything, it showed us our lives are really boring and non-productive. Some sanity.

We watched a bunch of TV and a bunch of movies, I played a LOT of WoW and she got going on painting the cabinet doors for the kitchen. I keep milling around the house trying to think of something more productive to do, but everything that I could be doing instead of WoW is about the same level of productivity. I could be working on my D&D setting. I could be reading book three in the Cleric Quintet. I could be painting minis. All of that has about the same value in the world. So instead I sit on WoW where I can at least chat with people I almost know.

At any rate, I did see some really good movies. I saw The Boondock Saints, which I had added to my Netflix queue on a whim, and ended up giving it Five Stars! Wow that was good, so visual, so visceral, and so entertaining. This was no film, which one reviewer complained about, but it was some damn good entertainment. Do yourself a favor and check it out. When I went to rate it on Netflix, I found that everything that was listed as “similar” I’d given five stars also, no wonder I enjoyed it (Snatch, Brotherhood of the Wolf, The Crow, Hackers, Desperado, El Mariachi, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, A Life Less Ordinary, and Fight Club).

We also saw Tampopo, which fairly well defies most description. Its kind of a longer attention span Kentucky Fried Movie that centers around the importance and value of food in Japan. Its got one long story, all about making the perfect bowl of ramen, a mid length story about a gangster and his erotic obsession with food, and 9 other shorter stories that all relate to food in some way. It was good, but I definitely looked to Heather for confirmation on how good/bad it was on many occasions, as well as a lot of “What the Fuck” moments.

So, as you may have noticed, I like to make userpics. I’ve all but tapped my most recent cache of ideas but am still in the mood to make some more. If you have any thoughts or ideas, please feel free to suggest them and I’ll see what I can come up with. I used to be on some UserPic contest communities, but all the winners looked the same and they all looked different than mine, so I quit. I need a bit of focus to go ahead and make more. So give me your tired, your hungry, and your lame ideas and I’ll try to capture them in still or motion 100×100 pixel imagery.

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Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II makes me happy.

Even though it tanked my bank account and trashed two months of allowance with stupid bank fees when I forgot that I pre-ordered it on my allowance card, it’s still been worth it (okay, maybe not entirely, but I’ve been having mucho mucho fun with it). Corwin75 and I played for a ton of hours (okay, like 5) and as soon as he was out the door, I started playing my single player again and immediately saved over all our hours of play. I did this twice with Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and apparently never learned my lesson.

Other than that, this weekend I got my first TPK. If you don’t know what that it, then you probably don’t care. All I’m saying is, no party of four 1st and two 2nd level characters should ever face an Ogre and six Orcs. It wasn’t entirely my fault, I didn’t write the module, I just ran it and apparently had a really good day with my dice. I need to threaten to replace them more often.

I sanded 18 more boards on the wood floor this weekend and don’t feel nearly as shitty for it, I must be building up the muscles that involve hunching over and running a belt sander for 2 hours. We’re now over half way done. w00t.

I need a good camera to take pictures of the minis I paint. Heather’s old point and click digital camera just doesn’t cut the mustard because, while the macro feature is pretty good, it doesn’t focus on the mini very well and it still comes out looking like crap even after a great number of attempts. I’m beginning to think scanning the mini may be a better option. Oh well, back to the grind.

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All in all it was a good (three day) weekend. Friday I don’t recall doing anything of real substance. I stayed home the second half of the day as I had already worked over 40 hours that week and I wasn’t really concerened with comp time. I cleaned up the Confrontation minis and primed them so now they’re ready to be painted, if I ever finish the one I’m currently working on that is. We rented a couple of movies, that was it. We rented 28 Days Later and Johny English. We watched 28 Days Friday night. I thought it was really good, I mean really. Heather was concerned it was going to be gross, and really, aside from a couple bloody moments, it wasn’t bad. I think I only caught her looking away once. I definitely liked the original ending better than any of the alternate endings. Something still seemed amiss when it was all over, I think it was a bit too neat and tidy, but I’m not sure. It was still good and I can’t think of a better or different way to end it.

Saturday I went down to Garland for some more RPGA. It costs me a little much to keep going down there ($4 per game day, sheesh). I decided I wasn’t going down again this month, but then my friend Jon announced he was going down next week so I’m gonna bum a ride with him. Also, they’re playing two LG games I’ve not played and won’t be doing LG at all next month so it works out well. At any rate, I went to Hall of Heros and played a bit, got my 6th level back and now I’m trying to decide if I’m gonna pick up a rage real quick before continuing on with Ranger. Damn kitten. By the time I got back (which was a bit early afterall), Heather was already gone to the big to-do she had going on so I just kind of sat around a bit. Hmm, now that I think about it, it may have been Saturday that I primed the minis. Maybe Friday I finished puttying and cleaning and then by Saturday the putty had dried and I primed them. Yeah, that sounds good, you’ll believe that, right? Saturday night we watched Johny English. It was really funny, I busted up laughing through a good portion of it. I’m gonna have to watch for it on the used shelves. For some reason I don’t see it doing too well, so I half expect to see it in the “Two for $15” before too long.

Sunday, oi, we sanded the floor again, and there was no Karate to be had in doing so. Spent another back-breaking two hours sanding. My legs, my back, my shoulders and my arms were all screaming by the end of it, but now were, 1/5 of the way there (w00t?). After that I just laid down for, oh, an hour I think. I laid down half off the bed, my feet on the floor, the small of my back on the edge of the bed, bent backwards. It felt really nice, fell asleep a couple times. After Heather finished cleaning up all the sawdust and we showered, I actually went in and painted for a bit with a movie on. Felt good to paint, made some headway.

Monday, I got up late, puttered around, painted a little (did some awesome eyes on this mini thanks to this article. Got cleaned up, ate some lunch, and then it was game time!

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Eureka! I found it.

We did our first GeoCache this weekend. It was a really long walk because we decided to just walk from the house rather than drive to a nearby location, but we still had fun. It was only a mile or so out there, so it posed to be a nice hike, but after a couple of wrong turns and double backs, we probably double the distance out there. Fortunatly the walk back wasn’t as bad since we knew where we were once we got there. Kind of an “oh, this is where we’ve been walking” thing.

The cache itself was pretty slim pickin’s but you don’t don’t this kind of stuff for the treasure, you do it for the hunt. This one was really cool too, because you didn’t just put in a location and simply walk to it. You put in location and when you get there, you look for a number on a mundane item which gives you part of the co-ordinates for the final location. After visiting three such locations, you have the final location. It was a really cool four part cache. The location was obvious as we got closer and closer to it.

All we took was a Pink Carabiner in exchange for the Green Carabiner that we had on Ia’s leash. I just thought it was funny.

The other thing we did this weekend was start the dining room floor again. Heather had pulled up the carpet, cleaned up the staples and glue, and started sanding it, but gotten disheartened when the sander wasn’t doing that much. My parents lent us a belt sander while we were out there and we took it out on Sunday to see what it does to the floor. Dayamn if that thing doesn’t strip the floor down to the bare wood. We hadn’t intended on going that deep, but since it does it with only moderate effort, we’re gonna do a complete refinish, sanding, staining and all. Yeah, we’re idiots.

Oh well, the semester’s started and my life hasn’t completely come to a screeching halt yet. We’ll see how I feel by the end of the week.

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LiveJournal Archives – 09/30/2003

It’s been a hectic couple days but we got some cool stuff done in the house. While I was tearing down the lighting in the kitchen and replacing it with a strip of track lighting, Heather was tearing up the carpet in the dining room and preparing to refinish it (though it may be in good enough condition to not require refinishing). All that and a few solid hours of D&D Heroes to boot.

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LiveJournal Archives – 09/22/2003

I went to the bathroom and one of the toilets was missing. I mean the whole thing was gone, including the floor and wall around it. What does it say about me when the first thing I think is “I hope they don’t try to take the other one while I’m using it.”

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LiveJournal Archives – 09/16/2003

Brandon and his girlfriend came over last night and bought us pizza. He’s the best nephew I’ve ever had. We watched Léon and generally just hung out. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before. I mean, come on! It’s Léon! Anyway, it was a good time, I really enjoy his company and he seems to really enjoy hanging out with us and watching movies.

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Early Morning

I’m sitting in the quite lab, once again wondering why the hell I get up here this early. Some sort of deranged dedication to the lab. I think I’m just so tired of people complaining about the lab and computer support, I’m willing to “martyr” myself to make things better. It’s pretty much just a hollow offering, but it’s slighly more than the least I can do.

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