A little bit about my new job

I start on January 7 (just a week away!) and I’m really excited. I didn’t let on about this before because I didn’t want to write about it while I was waiting to get the offer, and then it was holiday time and things were just crazy and hectic. But now that I have a minute to send this in, I thought I would so you all would know (because I’m sure you are all just dying to read about it, heh). So, the new company makes magazines (and some books) for the manufacturing trades, and they own and attend several trade shows to support those magazines. My title is Directories Editor, which means I’ll be in charge of making the Directory of Exhibits for these various trade shows, some of which support for the shows, and others that create a new revenue stream for the company. I’ll also be doing some work in my down time with a new data repository they’ve set up. This will include helping create taxonomy for electronic content and probably working on several other strategic initiatives as well, all of which is directly tied to the work I’ve been doing for the past year. I’m really excited about it, because I love trade shows and the manufacturing world in general, and the web content stuff is interesting to me, too.

 

My friend Kim works there and loves the place. I was teasing her some time back that I should really come there because every time she talks about going to a conference or trade show, I tell her that it sounds fun. Then in November, Kim’s boss mentioned they were probably going to start looking for a directories person, so I told Kim I wanted to throw my name in for consideration. I sent my resume to Kim, who sent it to her boss, and a week or 2 later I went in for an interview. I went thinking it would just be for the directories stuff, but while I was in there, the web people joined us, and after talking with everyone about all the projects, I was ready to sign on right then and there! I was on pins and needles after the interview waiting to hear if I got it because it is such a great fit for my skills and interests. If it turns out to be half as great as it seems right now, it will be a great job!

 

I just lifted this from Rachel's blog

I need to be better about posting more often. Urgh.

Things happening in my life recently:

1. I had a Merry Christmas with my family. I got lots of really awesome stuff and I think (hope) everyone liked what I got for them. And, Magnus peed on Grandma's living room floor, so that was my funny for the day.

2. Jason Bourne continues to be completely awesome. Thanks, Rachel, for reminding me how much I love Jason Bourne. He is my new John McClane (Die Hard).

3. I have been recommended, but have not checked out the Oregon Trail on Facebook, because I know it will become an addiction.

4. I will probably continue to give the same half-assed effort to lose weight in 2008 as the effort I gave in 2007. But I do have one more incentive to lose weight - which is that, at my new job, they are starting up a new round of Biggest Loser on 01/12. I figured if I'm going to hop right into the Bowling League, I should probably step to the plate and do the weight-loss thing, too.

5. In case I haven't called you shrieking with joy, I got a new job!! I start on 01/07, and while I am truly going to miss all my co-workers here at The Textbook Factory, I am looking forward to many new adventures with my new company, The Trade Publication Factory. Oh, and I scored an Editor title, which makes me pretty happy.

6. I've been working like a fiend on various projects around the house and I expect that to continue. I would post some pics, but like a dummyfool, I left my cell phone at Joe D's abode and won't be tripping up there to get it until the weekend, which is when I am also hoping to pick up the big buffet piece that is really going to round out my dining room furniture. I just have to move my office desk now to make room for the buffet. "Heavy lifting is my hobby".

lol-cookiez

ima goan 2 skip teh recap uf lass nite cos hi-dee did suwch gud job all-red-ee. but here's mai favrit cookies.

i maded u a cookie, but i eated it.

Actual Conversation

...with Cathy, my sister-in-law and mother of my 4-year-old nephew, while he and another boy were playing at their house.

Me: What is going on there?
C: Oh, Brock is over and he and Tommy are trying to run the vacuum. This Will Not End Well.
Me: Lord, 2 boys together is not the same as one boy + one boy.
...general conversation...
C: Guys, put those candles down.
Me: Goodness.
...general conversation...
C: Brock, get down from there, please. He is on top of the piano wearing my snow boots. I knew it was too quiet.
Me: That's the cost of 30 seconds of silence, I guess.
...more general conversation...
C: Uh, I gotta go – I just heard "well, she won’t wipe my butt, so I know she won’t wipe yours” - and they are in the kitchen.
...hangs up...
Me: (to myself) Good luck with All That!

Injury Update

So, this is the bruise at +1 week. Ouch. Note that the center of the bruise just looks like regular skin surrounded by bruising. The center part was bruised earlier in the week, so I guess it's healed now. While Heidi was gracious enough to point out that it's not that big of a bruise, in my case, it actually is one of the biggest bruises I've had. Definitely, it's in the top 10, maybe even top 5. Other bruises I remember being larger are as follows:
* The ginormous bruise that spanned from my left clavicle to my left shoulder after I fell off a horse. We were running through the muck, and the horse fell, and then I rolled right over his neck, hit the hardest, driest patch of earth landing on my left shoulder and rolled over twice-and-a-half, finally landing in a crumpled heap. I was lucky not to be crushed because I was right in the horse's path when he got back up and started running again, and he actually saw me and swerved to miss me. Good Roscoe!
* The ridiculous bruise and swelling that were a result of having a severe ankle sprain when I lost it on my snowboard and my body rolled over two-and-a-half times but because my board was lodged in the snow, my feet only rolled once. This was actually the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced. Yes, I know I'm pretty lucky with that. But my ankle is permanently bigger than it was before the incident for some medical reason I don't remember.
* The giant bruise under the giant scrape on my shin that came from a roller blading accident in Eden Park where I got nervous up on the top of the hill that looks down on the amphitheatre and tried to hop up on the sidewalk but clipped the front of my skate on the curb and scraped my leg from the bottom of my knee to right above my ankle. This hurt, but it was more embarrassing than anything. Well, embarrassing, and gross. It took weeks to heal over because I had to wrap it every day before going to work, so it never got a chance to dry out, so I had this giant open wound on my leg the whole time.
* Incredibly embarrassing bruise on my chin that resulted from falling over the edge of the basement sofa and smacking my face on the concrete floor. I had fallen asleep watching TV and my dad came down into the basement and woke me and for no comprehensible reason, I crawled over the sofa arm but snagged my foot on it and landed on the floor with an horrific cracking sound. The thing I recall most vividly about this was my dad's reaction. I actually think he lost his breath when it happened. He must have thought for a split second that I was going to crack my face open. Although I was fine overall, my chin was swollen and purple for about a month, and the bruising was evident even with a full face of makeup. Did I mention I was in high school at the time? I was already awkward and self-conscious, so this didn't help matters any. Also, the doctor said that I had a "bone bruise" and that the bone would probably be permanently swollen, and still today, my chin actually is a little lumpier on the bruise side.

Also, this new leg wound is without a doubt the largest self-inflicted wound I've ever had. I don't count the above injuries as self-inflicted, because I like to think of them as "sports injuries" (well, the sofa injury, not so much) because that makes me feel cooler. Other self-inflicted wounds I've had include:
* Slicing my thumb open while doing dishes on a Sunday afternoon. I had one of those decorative glass bowls for flowers, and it had been soaking in the sink, and I picked it up by the rim while the water was in it, causing it to shatter in my hand. The kicker was that when it cracked, I thought I had surely cut myself, but I looked at my hand and it was fine, and then the thing just sort of exploded in my hand, slicing my thumb open. I had to call Miriam and tell her that A) we might not be making it to church that night, and 2) I needed her to come look at it and tell me if I should go to the ER or not. I was really freaking out because when I looked at it, I knew it was deep, but I wasn't sure if it really needed stitches. Miriam looked at it, managed not to barf, and said, "yep, we're going to the ER". She has a great story about what transpired in the waiting room while I was getting fixed up, but I will let her tell that at our next Small Group Reunion.
* Puncture wound to the hand due to an adolescent fit of rage: this one is particularly dumb. I had a little purple boom box that I loved, but the antenna had gotten bent and broken off, leaving a little metal stub with a sharp edge that was just perfect for going straight through the skin of my open hand, which was smacking the radio in a fury over the static interference that was preventing me from enjoying "Red, Red Wine". I knew as soon as I hit it what had happened - but still, I yanked my hand back, spurting blood all over the wall, and screamed enough to scare the crap out of my poor grandma who was in her own apartment downstairs. I think this is when my parents signed us up for "family counseling," which was probably actually "anger management" sessions. They also made me pay the $25 charge for the ambulance ride, which taught me a valuable lesson: if you injure yourself, don't call 9-1-1, call Miriam instead. She will mock you, but she will not send you a bill for her services.
* Puncture wound in the foot when I stepped on a rusty nail that was sticking out of a board that was in a pile of boards full of rusty nails that we were NOT supposed to go near. For some reason, that fateful Good Friday, I decided to take a "shortcut" over the woodpile, stepped on the nail without even feeling it, and realised what had happened when I lifted my foot to take the next step and realised I was stuck. Ugh. It's a sickening feeling, and even at the tender age of 8, I knew that This Would Not End Well. My brother had to run back to the house and get my dad to come out, and my dad had to plant his own weight on the board, grab me under the arms, and YANK me up off of the nail. And then we were off to the ER for an iodine soak and a tetanus shot. Wheee!!

It might go without saying that I'm slightly accident-prone.

Dear Joy,

Rachel says I should ask you about cat pee.

 

Please tell me about cat pee.

 

Love,

-Erin

 

Owie

I do not know everything there is to know about home repair and improvement. One thing I do know for sure is that if you are using this thing:



as a battering ram to peel up old vinyl flooring, you do not want to let the T-handle get behind your leg at any time. Because at some point you will get so involved in the ramming action that you will ram the handle right into the part of your leg between the calf and the back of your knee. And it will cause you an excruciating amount of pain. The kind of pain where you open your mouth to scream and no sound can even come out.

And then you will have to just sit down and write up a new blog post.

I didn't feel like working on Magnus' house tonight. It seems that 2 of the 3 of use who live here have a real problem with peeing in inappropriate places, and so I'm really kind of angry with both Magnus and Stella right now. I guess the reality is that 1 of the 3 of us has the problem and the other 2 just go wherever they want. After finding yet another spot from Magnus in the kitchen this morning and then a spot Stella left on the plastic-covered sofa in the basement, I kind of wanted to just tie them together with bungee cords and drop them off somewhere remote and forget that I ever had a pet. I mean, first of all, I took both of them in when they had no place to call home. Secondly, I give them what I consider to be a pretty decent home. Third, I never ever take a leak in their beds or where they eat or in their favorite spots to hang out, so why do they do that to me? I suppose it could be argued that I piss in their big porcelain water bowl all the time, but that's all semantics. It makes me really resent them at times.

And now that I have anecdotal evidence of both cases, I'm going to say that I think that dog piss is actually more offensive than cat piss. I mean, cat piss is pretty nasty when you get right up on it, but dog piss is definitely more pungent and pervasive. Although it's possible that Magnus has left a spot somewhere and I've just missed it.

Dog House, Part 2: Sheathing

I followed Mike Strong's direction in using 3/8" plywood for the sheathing. While this keeps the budget lower (well, actually, the plywood ended up being free, but more on that some other time), I might bump up the thickness if I were doing this again. The upshot of the thinner plywood is that it is easy for me to handle. The downside is that it does seem to split and crack more than I expected it to.

Once again, I relied on someone else's tools to do the big cuts. I asked the guy at the store to cut 2 sheets across the grain at 35 inches, twice. This is because I wasn't positive of the final dimensions of the walls but I knew that all the walls would be 35 inches tall. Once he did those cuts, it left me with 4 sheets that were 35x48 and 2 sheets that were 26x48 (although, for you perfectionists, the saw kerf from the first two cuts would shave a quarter-inch off the end piece, so the 26 inches is probably closer to 25-3/4, but again - this is carpentry not woodworking).

I took all these little, manageable sheets into the basement (it was raining, so I didn't want to bring the saw outside and run the extension cord through the water) to cut them to the final size on the table saw.
Confession: I am terrified of the table saw. I have had it for over a year and moved it 3 times and still have never turned it on. Once I saw how big the sheets were in proportion to the table, I decided to use the table saw as a cutting platform and cut with my little circular saw. I am sure my dad will be thrilled to know that the saw he bought me is actually just a very expensive set of sawhorses. Also, Melanie: do not tell your dad about this. He'd be just as disgusted with me, I think.

The nice thing about the table saw over actual sawhorses is that it has these adjustable wings, so I actually had nice support for my workpiece and my waste piece, which is what you want for safety's sake. You can see below how the board spans the table wing and so there is a nice cutting path. I didn't take pics of this, but I clamped the boards down because the table is made smooth for boards to glide across, so they were shifting a lot while I was getting set up for the for the cut.

I measured each side of the frame with the plan to have the front board overlap each side by the thickness of the board (3/8") and to have the sides overlap the back by 3/8". It turns out that I can't cut right, because the sheet for the back wall is completely out of square and looked like a parallelogram. My side sheets turned out great - they were spot-on what I was shooting for. The front sheet is its own little problem which I explain below. After all that measuring, I saw a dog house that is trimmed out on the corners and I want to do that, so I could have just cut each piece to the exact dimensions of the frame, but oh well, it was good practice for me to work through that overlap problem.

About that front piece. I had a measurement for the opening based on a measurement of the dog, but when I actually cut it out, it just looked...wrong. Seriously, I double-checked the original instructions and I did it right, but it looks really weird. (If Heidi reads this, she will be thinking "FebRuary?!?" right now).
Next time: pics of the finished "box," and I start on framing the roof.

You should get a beverage and a snack before starting this one.

I’m not even sure how all of this could have happened in one morning, really.

Everything started out normal, get up before the sun to let the dog out, leave the back door cracked so once he gets bored, he can come back in to my place rather than pushing the side door until it opens and then going up into the boyz’ apartment, collapse on the sofa and hope to catch another 40 minutes of sleep. All the usual stuff.

I had a nasty little headache brewing, though, and perhaps that’s what precipitated the rest of the morning’s events. When I finally stopped pleading with the dog to give me “5 more minutes,” I got up, put my shoes on, grabbed my keys and the bag of treats, and walked out the door. We started on our walk just like we normally do, and when I reached in my pocket to grab a treat, I realized that the key in my hand was actually my car key, not my door key. I did the whole frantic pat-down of myself, hoping in vain that my door key was in another pocket or shoved in my bra, or something – anything, really. No such luck.

Sidebar (background, actually): It happens that, on occasion, I leave a door unlocked on my way out of the house. If you are reading this and thinking you could come to my house and take advantage of this to steal my stuff, trust me – it is not worth it. One, I have nothing of value. Two, the house is such a disaster area that you’d be better off stealing shit from a demolition site. At any rate, back in October, I got a shitty note from the dog-walking tenant giving me the key back and telling me he had made the decision that he would not walk the dog anymore because I do not “always leave all of my doors locked at all times” and he couldn’t assume that kind of liability. Uh, see numbers 1 and 2 above and add to that Three, you also have nothing of value so suing you in the event anything happened would be fruitless at best(seriously, WTF??). Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been a lot more conscientious (neurotic?) about checking all the doors all of the time to make sure they are all locked. However, this is to my own detriment as I have managed to lock myself out 3 times in the past month (and actually, twice just this weekend). I would like to further add that I have one of those combination lockboxes with a spare key in it for their place and my place, but as I discovered on Saturday, the spare key I had in there does not open any of my doors (I have no idea what it does open, either). So, I had to have Bri and Rob rescue me with their key (thanks, guys!). I promised them I would get a copy made at Lowe’s on Sunday, but when I got there on Sunday, Lowe’s was packed. Seriously, everyone in the world went to Lowe’s Sunday morning, and by the time I got over to the key cutting place, every person working in the store was running a register and there were 4 or 5 customers in every one of those lines. I looked at all that and I was like, “I’ll just get that spare key cut sometime this week”. All of that to let you know how it comes to pass that I am locked out of the house.

Dag-nab-it, I’m thinking to myself on the way back to the house. Not only do I not have my keys, but I already know that there is no spare in my lockbox. At this point, my only hope is to get home before the boyz come back from their morning ROTC thing and plead with one of them to help me. Now, I had Messy Jesse help me out in this way last month when this happened. Basically, it involves dragging something over to the little window in the pantry, climbing on whatever thing you found, grabbing the windowsill, heaving/climbing your way up the wall, squeezing through the window, and then sliding down the 4-foot drop to the floor. Fun times. Actually, it was really fun for me last time, because Jesse is pretty easy on the eyes and watching him go through all of that showcased how fit he is. Ok, so I’m thinking, well, I hope I see Jesse when he gets home because he’s really the go-to guy for this sort of thing, and even though Matt is probably stronger than Jesse, he’s also not nearly as lithe and he’s much broader, so, yeah, let’s just hope it’s Jesse who comes home first.

While I’m hanging out in the backyard, it occurs to me that I can solve this whole problem myself by driving my car over to under the window and then climbing up to the roof of the car and hopping through the window myself. Yes, that is an actual thought I had, and it turned out as badly as you might expect. I put the dog into the dogpen so I could move the car without having him run out, and then before I could even start moving the car, he started doing that screaming-barking he does when he feels that the whole world has somehow wronged him. This is particularly maddening to me because: 1) he was in a 4x6 wire cage surrounded by 250 barking dogs when I got him, so I’d really think being behind a white picket fence and having the run of a 20x50 foot dogpen would be enough to make him feel OK about life, and 2) I built him this fence so that he would have a nice place to be outside while I’m at work and wouldn’t have to be on his tie-out line, which incites the same kind of screaming from him, so if I’d known that the end result would be the same, I could have saved myself about $500 in fence materials and labor and several weeks’ worth of my own time and energy (remember those fence pickets I spent a month painting?). So at this point, I’m getting really agitated and I’m behind the wheel – not a good combination. I just sort of lost it at that point and hit the gas, scraped the bottom of the car on the drop from the asphalt to the patio (remember, it’s still a dug-out mud pit and not an actual patio, duh), broke off a chunk of asphalt, and at one point, was actually spinning the front tires in the mud pit. This then sent me into a total panic, because then I was going to have to ask the boyz to not only climb through my window, but also help push my car out of my own backyard, and the thought of their reaction to coming home and finding this situation was more than I could bear, so I just rocked it using forward-reverse until I (thankfully!) got the car back out and then gave up on that genius idea altogether.

I’m not good at waiting around for something I have no control over. I get really antsy. So while I’m waiting, I figured I might as well put the sheathing on the doghouse and then I could leave the dog in the Dogpen of Torture all day, so I dragged the frame (which probably only weighs 40 pounds, but is very awkward) out to the dogpen and plopped it on the skid and brought all the plywood pieces over, and don’t you know, the very first thing that happens is that I get a huge splinter that goes straight under the nail of my middle finger. AUGH. I can’t explain this pain – you’ve either experienced it or you haven’t. If you haven’t, trust me, I hope you never do, but it basically sends a wave of nausea over you that I have to think is somewhat akin to what guys feel when they get kicked in the nutz (but probably on a much smaller scale). Anyway, that happens, so I’m bleeding, and pissed off, and about ready to cry, and just then, Messy Jesse shows up (thank you, God!!) and I give him the cutest “help me” face I can and ask him to climb through my window, again, and he starts laughing, and asks how I’ve done this again, and while I want to say “well, ever since your dumbass roommate left me a note that sounded like my leaving the door unlocked was somehow a threat to National Security, I’ve been locking the door, and locking myself out,” I decided to just go with the “it’s a long story” response. Of course, as soon as Jesse gets halfway up the wall, while I’m standing there watching, Magnus darts over, snatches this little green apple that Jesse has set down on the patio table (which makes a great platform for climbing into the window, by the way), and takes off with it. So I’m yelling “LEAVE IT!!” at the dog, and poor Jesse had his back turned when all this is happening, so I hear him go “UHN??” and then fall to the floor. I tell myself he was just dropping and then inspect the apple, thinking I’ll just give it back to him, when I see two little puncture marks from the dog’s teeth. Eff. Jesse comes out through the Disaster Area that is the kitchen, and I sheepishly hand him the apple, apologizing for the fact that the dog grabbed it, and then it hits me – I ask him to wait for a minute because I have something for him (which probably scared the crap out of him), and I run to the dining room, open the fridge and grab 4 of the Miller Lites. I gave them to him – two for last time, two for this time, and a promise that I won’t ask him to do this again, and a big thank-you. Whew.

At this point, since I have a little time before I need to leave, I decide to go ahead and put the sheathing on the dog house, which actually went pretty smoothly except I’m going to have to take the back panel off and cut it again, because it is completely off-square and is actually more like a parallelogram (I have no idea what happened there, but if that’s the worst of it, then I’m calling this project a success). The roof is just the 2 pieces of plywood right now, so I laid them flat on top of the box and put some bricks on to hold them down in case the wind picks up. Oh, and I didn’t put the front on because, you know, I have to recut that door. But still, he has a cover from rain and wind, so I filled his MolecuBall with his breakfast, left him out there and went to work.

I am 100% certain that he will break out today while I’m gone. But I’ll deal with that later. For now, I’m going in search of a pop-tart for breakfast.

Dog House

There are plenty of places on the Internets where you can learn the proper way to build a dog house. I’m going to provide some links to those because they were very helpful, to me.

This is the only place you’ll be able to see that it really is possible for pretty much anyone to build a dog house in the span of a few days and 23 trips to the hardware store.

Project notes:

1) This house is going to sit on a pallet ("skid"), so I didn't build a floor. That created its own challenges in terms of framing up the walls, because there was no floor to nail them to.

2) I looked at this guy's great project notes, and I settled on using one of many formulas from this great site because Magnus is way smaller than Ranum's hounds.

3) Don't get the idea that, just because HGTV always shows some cute chick with perky breasts running around in a sweater and trousers that you should do this, too. You will get dirt on your pants and sweat in your sweater, and your boobs will fall out of your bra no less than 27 times before you finally give up and put on your sports bra and ratty t-shirt. OK, let's get started.

The first thing you should do is sketch something like what you want to build to take with you to the lumberyard. You should discuss this with the person in detail because you will almost certainly have forgotten to factor in a board dimension somewhere and that person will catch it on your cutting diagram and correct it, saving you time and aggravation.

I don't have a chop saw and my circular saw is cordless, so to preserve my sanity, I had the lumberyard cut the boards while I was having breakfast with a friend. Then I could put them together, almost like a little kit. I love kits! This is the advantage of using your local lumberyard over the big-box guys. Please do not comment on my figure in the shadow in the picture.

I thought I would at least attempt to toenail something, and you can see in the pic below the blowout I created on my first joint. This part was really frustrating and I ended up having to call my dad and ask him how to get started.

He had a lot of crazy "suggestions" about doghouses in general and it took about 40 minutes to get through all those to get to the answer I wanted about how to nail the 2x4s together at the corners. It turns out that it's easier to build each wall separately and then nail all the walls together, but I also decided to skip the toenailing and use the brackets, which I'll explain when we get to that part.

Now, my dad says that the way you build a wall is to mark the board that will be the base of the wall, start your nails on your marks, and drive the nails until they just stick out of the other side of the board, then line up your studs and nail the board into the studs.

Couple of things to note: 1) you have to stand on the stud while you nail so you use your weight to hold the boards in place; and 2) this assumes two facts about your work area, neither of which are true in my case: that it is roughly flat and roughly level. Because this is a doghouse, I wasn't too worried if things weren't perfectly flush, which you can see in the pic below. If you care about that kind of thing and want to know what to do to make them line up perfectly, you will have to ask someone who knows, because I do not.

Before I went any further, I wanted to test the whole concept for size. I realised too late that I could have made a mock-up using cardboard, but in this case, it looks like things are going to be OK. The hardest part of all of this project was getting him to actually go in between those wall frames and just sit while I took this pic.

Looks good. Well, truthfully, it still looks too tall to me, but I'm going to trust in the power of the formula.

Once your walls are built, you can lay them out like this and have an old-fashioned wall-raising party. You just need to round up a bunch of squirrels to lift the walls and "walk" them into place, like an Amish barn raising or something. Or, you could just do it yourself because the walls aren't too heavy yet.

Now, when you get to the part where you start attaching walls to other walls, I highly recommend using the brackets I mentioned, and I will warn you so you aren't surprised like I was that while the brackets are a buck or two each, you also end up having to buy a $10 box of specialty screws to go with the brackets. The screws are sized for the openings in the brackets, and they are self-drilling, which means each one has a tiny drill bit on the tip of it (you can kind-of see in the picture below). The threads are made for digging into wood and the head is designed to hold the metal and spread out the load. Believe me when I say that I looked at all the other screws in the store to see if I could find a cheaper substitute. You can, but nothing does all the jobs that these little guys will. So now you know.

I used the larger braces for the bottom of the frame, and then used the smaller kind to brace the top part of the frame. This saved me 4 dollars and a ton of extra screws. By the way, you can see above that I didn't have all the screws in the bracket when I took the picture. I thought about leaving it like that because there were so many places for screws that I thought surely some of them were overkill, and they probably are for a dog house. But the frame was a little wobbly and it seemed like putting the rest of the screws in stiffened things up a bit, so you decide for yourself how you want to do that part. Also, I hope that my eighth-grade IA teacher Mr. Dagger does not stumble across this blog, but if so - Larry, I realise now based on the hammer tracks below that the "C" you gave me was well-deserved and I am no longer bitter. Much.

2x4s and such ("Framing lumber") are pretty prone to warping and bowing, so you have to do a lot of pushing, pulling, and grunting while you connect the parts. Even still, things don't line up perfectly. This is one of the big differences between carpentry and woodworking. I prefer the latter, but hey - the dog needs a house.

A few minutes and a LOT of cussing later, I had an honest-to-goodness frame for my doghouse!

The next step is to cut and apply the sheathing. I'll cover that in the next post.

Tommy Time, Episode 1

I realised that I never did blog about the fun times I've been having with Tommy lately. I offered to watch him one weekend a month for Cathy. So far, it's been when she has to work, but I also hope she can squeeze in a weekend for herself somewhere in there.

The first time Tommy came was for my birthday, which was really fun. I had invited the whole group of "friends with kids" over for a backyard movie party. This was actually such a great time that my future plans for the backyard include setting it up so we can have more movie parties. But, like all my projects, I have to do that on the cheap, so it will be a long process of procuring materials and whatnot before I actually have something to blog about. My favorite thing of that weekend was on Sunday morning, Tommy woke up before the sun (why?? why does anyone ever do that?? I will never understand...) and the very first thing he said to me, in his little-kid morning whisper was "Erin, is it the new day yet?" which is adorable in its own right, but also because Cathy had sent him with a bunch of food for the party (have I mentioned how absolutely awesome she is??) and the "premiere" item was this box of donuts that she told him he couldn't eat until "the next day". So, the very first thing this kid thinks when he wakes up is, "can I have a donut?" Um, yeah, he's definitely my nephew.

Grown-up Furniture

I got the sweetest dining room set (is that the same thing as a "dinette"?) from Rob's mom, Kathie.

She sold it to me for a price so obscene that I can't even print it, but trust me, it was a good deal. Phenomenal, actually. I wish I could take better photos so you could get a sense of how great this looks in real life.

Close up of one leg:


I love it. I've been in love with this table for a long time, because Bri and Rob have the same one. I like that it's so substantial. And the scale of it is just right for my dining room. Plus, it has a custom-made pad, which I've been leaving on because Magnus has a nasty habit of putting his paws on the table to look for foods and I don't want him messing it up.

I've been sitting at this table A LOT since it got here. It makes me soooo happy and even though I love my little purple/blue table, this one beats the pants off that one for use as a dining table.

The chairs are also fantastic, and the whole thing ties together nicely with the living room furniture, which is good since the rooms are so open to each other.


Then, as if the joy of this wasn't enough, Kathie GAVE me this adorable patio set, which I plan to paint either a fun green or blue. Think "celery" or "sky". But I won't paint it until next spring (Heidi). Note how nice it looks sitting on my patio. Oh, that's right, I don't have a patio, I have a gravel pit. Oh well. One thing at a time.

Testosteroni

For those of you who have never heard this, I’ve long joked that I am actually a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. By which, I mean that I have a lot of “manly” characteristics and like to do “guy stuff,” but I definitely like-of the boys. For example, I really enjoy both building and destroying things and playing with power tools, and I have enough facial hair to go ahead and call it a full beard. Now, I’ve always suspected that this was largely due to having higher levels of testosterone than average for a woman, but I never did have any confirmation of that. Until recently. I had a really strange discussion with the doctor about starting on the Pill again to help control my acne (another symptom of too much testosterone), and during the course of that conversation, he just sort of flippantly said that I do have this condition of having too much testosterone. The weird thing is, he said it like we’ve talked about this and it’s just some part of my medical history that everyone knows. Everyone but me.

 

The good news is that the treatment for too much testosterone is to put me on the Pill. So, the end result is the same, it was just a really strange trip to get there.

 

Since this discussion, I’ve found myself wondering how much of my physical and psychological self is actually affected by this skew. I mean, I have to think that I’m not alarmingly high on the spectrum of women or I’d be losing my hair and braiding my beard ZZ-top style by now. But it did make me start to think about the stereotypes we play into for gender roles, and how many of those “male” things I do might be different if I had less man-essence and more womanly-ness. Like, would I be more interested in doing my hair and wearing make-up? Would I want less pizza and beer and more salad greens? Would I be more nurturing? Would I have wanted to get married when I was younger the way other girls did? Would my hobbies and interests be different? Even assuming the stereotypes are true, it must be more complex than just hormonal influence, because I’ve been considered (and considered myself) a tomboy for my whole life, long before testosterone would have come into play (right?). I was playing football and soccer with the boys on the grade-school playground while the girls were talking on the swings. In high school, we didn’t have a girls’s soccer team, so I played with the boys and didn’t give it a second thought. When I wasn’t playing soccer, I was taking martial arts classes. And when I think about all of those things, I also recall that, in all those situations, I was completely and totally boy-crazy. I loooved being the only girl in a whole group of boys – loved it. I dated lots of guys that I met in all these boys’ games.

 

I don’t have a poignant summary for this one. These are just some thoughts that have rolled around in my mind for the past few weeks and I thought I’d put them out into the ether – perhaps fodder for the old nature-vs-nurture debate. I do want to point out that I’m actually OK with me, like I am, and that I really don’t think this little extra testosterone actually makes me who I am today. I like myself as a person, and I’m probably about as OK with myself as a woman in our culture can be, given all the pressures we face.

Mini-Farm Locator

This is a message from a friend of mine about a job that he found for me at his new company. I don’t think that job lead is going anywhere, but I love this email message, particularly the italicized part. Oh, also – feel free to recommend any available farms you might stumble across as well.

 

Erin,

Hi, I told you it wouldn’t be another three years!  I started my new job last week and have already found one for you!  The reason I think you should work here is because it is what you want.  There is a culture here of doing things right instead of just quickly or inexpensively.  …The other reason you will want to work here is because I found a house for you to buy.  I pass it on my way here/home each day.  I don’t notice it in time to stop to get the info, but it is a mini horse farm.  The info I intend to collect for you is whether it is a mini-farm, a full-size farm for mini-horses, or a mini-farm for mini-horses.  Anyway, it is on SR123 (I think) and is about 20 miles from the office.  If that doesn’t work for you, there are many more very close.  Anyway, so far this seems like a really good company.  I think I will be very happy here for a long time.  Let me know if you have any interest and I will do some research on suitable positions for Erin Blackford.

Take care,

Eric

 

 

 

Consumer Complaint

Some of you may recall my excitement about ordering The World's Best Post Leveler. Well, it did arrive a day after they said it would, and I was still feeling pretty good about having supported a local business by going to Ace. I could have ordered this from the catalog where I first spotted it, but my thinking was that I'd receive it sooner, save on shipping, and the tax paid would hit the local economy. All of which seemed like good things.

Now, the day I went in there and asked for the thing, they couldn't find it in the catalog for a long time, but after some extensive searching, they were able to find it, order it, and offer to create a raincheck for me. As it turned out, the lady who was going to ring it up for me couldn't get the computer system to issue a raincheck, so she told me just to pay for it when I came back. All the same to me, I suppose.

When I went to pick it up, I had to go to two separate people to find it, and when the guy rang it up, it was $1.50 more than the price they had told me 2 weeks prior. I told him that they had offered me a lower price originally, and his answer for that was that the price changed after my request. So, basically, by going to the local Ace Hardware, it took longer and they raised the price after (because?) I ordered it. Also, the $1.50 might seem like it's not worth complaining about, but the thing was only 10 bucks to begin with, so they hiked the price by 15%, and I think it was because they had an order for it. Whatever, Ace.

The real tragedy of this all is that after I ordered this but before it came in, Matt went ahead and sank the posts, so I didn't even end up using it for the fence project. Sigh.

"Quoties"

So, after my painful rejection by One Sentence, I decided that my future sorts of submissions would be directly to mine own blog. So, having said that, here is a pic I would have sent to the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

Now, I have a couple of comments on this matter. First, I have to think that having a sign like this would actually lead to an increase in the number of visits by undercovers. I mean, it just screams "wink wink, nudge nudge". Second, when I mentioned my One Sentence rejection and this photo to my good friend Heidi, she said, and I quote, "Weeelll, you could probably submit that and she'd probably post it, because she doesn't seem to be all that picky about what she puts up there." Ah, Heidi. She does have a way with the words, that one.

One Sentence

OK, now. Heidi is always finding these places on the Internets, and sending things to them, and they are publishing her stuff, and that’s great (whatever). After seeing Heidi’s One Sentence post, I thought I would submit one as well. I went to the website and looked at the other submissions and I thought that it was quite a mix of the profound, the sublime, and yeah, some that were kind of lame. I also looked at the guidelines, because whatever I’m doing, I always read the directions. Now, there are a lot of sorts of gut-wrenching or heart-wrenching stories I could tell about my life, but I was trying to think of something that was less tragic and more, I don’t know…curious. So, I crafted my sentence with care and submitted it with hope. And…nothing.

 

As a result, I’ve decided to reclaim my one sentence and post it here.

 

I’d always thought Dave Matthews’ Crash was a song about a priest and an altar boy, until the day someone explained that it wasn’t.

 

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Brick Row Brought to you by Jenn-Dub

This might be kind of a cheat on my 30 posts in one day thing, but I'm going to count it because I had planned to post this picture before I decided to do the 30 posts today. My game, my rules.

So, here's the lovely brick row that runs under the picket fence. I love it and I think it will help with the mowing and also keep Magnus from digging under the fence.

Watching Izzo

Another story I wanted to wait to tell is that I watched CNK’s kid, Isabelle, this week. I was going to mention earlier this week that I’d be watching her, but I decided to wait because inside my head, it totally made sense that someone might read this blog, figure out who Izzo is and where she goes to school, pretend to be me, and go steal her. And that’s how I’d get somebody’s kid abducted.

 

So, I went to her school to pick her up from the extended-day program, and on the way out to the car we were discussing logistics, like dinner, picking up the dog, and various othersuch. Then she says to me, “you can sleep on my mom’s bed, and I’m going to sleep on the couch”. And I asked about the couch, because it’s REDD HOTT and I was thinking it’s the kind of lovely sofa one probably shouldn’t sleep on. And that’s when Isabelle said “yeah, you can pull it out and it turns into a bed…BOW CHICKA BOW BOWWW…” Oh, Hells yeah.

 

I love hearing that coming from an eight-year-old.

betrayed.

oh, pumpkin spice latte, what ever has become of you? where you once were the perfect blend of pumpkin and spice-flavored coffee goodness, now you taste like a really soggy and not-at-all spicy pumpkin. and you cost 3 and a half, American, which means I'll be having one less gallon of gas next week.

Gyno-phone

I wanted to wait until I was finished with the appointment to mention this. When I called to schedule my annual appointment with the Lady Doctor, the phone lady was like, “oh, it’s been a long time, you’re really overdue” and I was all, (in my head cos I’m scared to be this mean in real life) ”no, you sent me a card in July to schedule the appointment and now I’m scheduling it.” I mean, honestly, they sent the card 3 months ago, fine. But seriously? If I get my annual Pap smear after 15 months instead of 12? I mean, it’s not like this is an oil change where it matters about the extra mileage.

 

And even if it were, I just haven’t put that many miles on it this year.

 

This is really a story about Heidi.

Ok. Lots of times, people talk to Heidi like she’s a teenager, and she hates that. Hates it. So, about a month ago, she came over when Tommy was at the house, and he was playing the polite host and took her to the fridge and showed her the drink options we had, which was ridiculously adorable. Now, I was only half paying attention to this, and also only half-thinking when she told me that Tommy only offered her Kool-Aid™ and Gatorade™ as drink options, when there was clearly plenty of beer to be had. And my response to that was, “well, I think he understands that beer and margaritas are only for grown-ups”. And then, as my statement was met with cold silence, it caught my full attention, and when I looked over at her, she was giving me the stoniest face, ever. And then I realized that what in my head meant, “he’s not old enough to offer those to anyone” came across as “you aren’t old enough to drink them”. Hee!!

Serenity - now!

When I was a kid, and actually still now, my family had all these AA slogans that my mom had cross-stitched and hung around the house, and I specifically recall this one:

LET GO AND LET GOD. Because the way my mom laid it out, the “and let God” part was vertical, so it looked like this:

LET GO

A L G
N E O
D T D

But the letters were too close together and your eye doesn’t like to read that way anyway, plus the “O” in “God” looked more like a “D” for some reason, so now seared into my brain forever is the following mantra:

LET GO ALG NED DTD

And that’s how I cope.

Molecuball

Magnus' new favorite toy is this molecuball. it has a hole in it so you can put treats or kibble in, then the dog has to roll the thing around to get them to fall out. Now, if you can imagine for a moment that I had this in the box, sitting on the dining room table, for about a week, and then I opened the box and took it out, and before I could even put the treats in it, he was already doing his little sit-shuffle-jowl quiver thing, well, it only got better from there. He seriously loves this thing. He chases it all around the yard, and when he gets a good grip on it in his jaws, he runs with it like it's the best thing he's ever found. So adorable.

Product rating: I give it 4 stars!

So, that wasn't the last post of the day.

I have had a lot of blog post thoughts running through my mind in the past month, and I just haven’t posted them. So, in honor of NaBloPoMo, I am going to attempt, right here on this blog, to post all 30 daily posts, today.

Ready…Go!!

private to Bergie: I just pulled your email off so you won't get a separate message for each of the 30 posts. Heh.

Really (probably) the Last Post for Today

I am kicking around the idea of hosting a viewing party for Flight of the Conchords. I don't know how many episodes were in season 1 or if they are 30 or 60-minute shows, so I can't say (right now) how long this would last.

I'm interested to see if anyone would definitely plan to come so I can get an idea if this will work.

The Day of Many Posts

One upshot of terrible insomnia is that, for me, it leads to blog updates. So, that's a good thing, I guess. I didn't have any trouble falling asleep, but then I woke up once for my mid-night snack, once for no discernible reason but couldn't get back to sleep for hours, and then one last time, a little bit ago (early for me). I decided to just let it be wake-up time, and when I took Magnus out for his morning outdoor time, I noticed the dryer was going (the vent is right by my back porch). Knowing that I had tossed a load of stuff the dryer on last night before bed, I was very alarmed at the thought that perhaps the dryer was stuck in spinning/venting mode (hm, this sounds like an analogy for mine own life).

I just went down to the basement to check, and it turns out that there's something in the dryer that's someone else's, and all of my things were in my little basket. The only thing about this is, my load was pretty much all panties and othersuch. Normally, I'm not bothered by the fact that one of the guys might see a pair mixed in with all the jeans and sweatshirts, but there was no chance for someone to "burrito wrap" the unmentionables in a big fluffy towel here. All panties, all the time.

Only thing I can say about this is, I hope it was Matt.

Just testing something here

This has been driving me crazy, so I'll comment on it:

In 5 minutes or less, I can take my entire Blogger blog, including all previous posts and comments, and import it to a WordPress blog.

I cannot move my old Blogger blog to my new Blogger blog, unless I opt to cut and past each post and to lose my comments, which are actually your comments, which is sooo not cool.

But the (possibly) good news (I don't know yet, which is what this post is really for) is that I might have fixed that problem I've been having where none of my hard returns show up in the blog posts so they all look like one giant paragraph.

Dear Heidi: Procrastination Pays Off

I'm not sure how this happened, but my address was "randomly" selected for the US Census Bureau. While you might have some mistaken impression that this is in any way impressive or prestigious, what it really means is that you have to (by US law, "have to," not just because you feel guilty about it "have to") fill out this long and boring form full of personal information about your living arrangements, your job, and your self in general.

They first sent this thing to me several months ago, and then sent it again with a reminder letter including a friendly reminder that MY RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. So, Heidi was over here one night and filled out most of it for me, but left the particularly personal stuff for me to take care of, and of course, I promptly buried the thing under a stack of papers and forgot about it. The problem with all this law stuff is that there's not an actual deadline, and I’m counting on the due date as the date I should start working on it.

Fast forward to um, today - and I came home to see a letter taped to my door. My first thought was that the effing Health Department had been back by to scold me about the weeds and dog poop in my yard (this actually happened back in September). My second thought was that one of my tenants had posted a shitty letter on my door (this actually happened in October). But it turns out that it was a letter from the Census Bureau letting me know that they were in my neighborhood, that they'd be back to conduct a survey, and that MY REPSONSE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. Uh, yeah. I know. But there's no deadline.

I was reading the letter and thinking to my self, "self, you have got to send that letter in" when there was a knock on the door, and you'd think I'd have known it was them, but I actually thought it might be one of the tenants coming to tell me that Manus had gotten into their apartment again (Um, seriously? Have you considered closing your doors? That might help to keep all kinds of things out: dogs, cats, dirt, cold, uh, squirrels...whatever), but it turns out (surprise!) it was the Census Man. We sat on my front porch steps and he filled out the survey on his laptop in about 5 minutes. That guy is good.

So see, Heidi, the lesson here is: if you wait long enough to do something, someone else will surely do it for you.

Shameless Request for All Kinds of Help.

Ok, here's the lengthier version of the short list I put in the sidebar:

1) I need 2 persons to volunteer to stuff cellulose insulation into the insulation-blowing machine. The reason I need 2 is that this is about a 3-hour job and one person would get really bored doing this by themselves. This is not the itchy kind of insulation, it is the kind made from recycled newspapers. Go GREEN!!
2) As an adjunct to the insulation request, I think it would be quite handy to have a set of walkie-talkies because I will be up in the attic actually spraying the insulation around and it would be nice to be able to contact the folks on the ground. Does anyone have such a thing I could borrow?
3) I need to pick out a new pair of eyeglass frames and this is something I could use help with. Can someone come with me to LensCrafters sometime and help me make some selections? I want something hip and cool but not ridiculous.
4) Does anyone have a chain saw I can borrow? I want to cut up the big blue spruce so I can burn it up in the firepit. Right now, I just have a 20-foot dead evergreen in my yard.
5) Does anyone have a corded circular saw I can borrow? I need something with more juice than my little 18v cordless model.

I think that's it for now, but I'll surely remember something else right after I click "publish".

Also: private to Bergie: I'm sorry that I've flooded your inbox today. Please forgive me...

Huge Oversight

It appears that I forgot to thank Heidi for her “emotional support”. Which roughly translates to “coming over to eat sushi and watch while I paint the pickets”.

On a more serious note – I really did forget to thank Jenn-Dub for letting me know about a bunch of free bricks and then taking me (in Walt!) to get the free bricks. You can’t see this at all from the photo, but I used the bricks to lie under the fence panels. I’ll see if I can get a shot of that for the flickr pictures.

BTW, I just looked at the pic and the fence actually looks much better IRL than in this shot. So, anyone reading this, you should come over and see for yourself!

ladies and gents we now have a fence.

viola! here it is. after 2 months of fits and starts, rain delays, and close to 5 gallons of paint and primer, we finally have a dogfence. i already did a trial run where magnus went in and i closed the gate and went upstairs for about 20 minutes where i could watch him while i worked on fixing a broken window. he seemed a little confused and a little sad, but the good news is that he didn't cry or bark at all. hooray!!

i should give shout-outs to people for helping, and i'll include a note that (former) minifarmhand matt did all the planning for the post locations, marked the holes, and dug the holes as well. thanks to cathy, his job was made easier with this great little one-man auger she let me borrow. thanks to tommy; he actually helped paint pickets by rolling paint on so i could backbrush it into the grain. and thanks to lynn, bri and rob for coming over and helping me figure out the vertical placement of the finished panels. i hope i didnt miss anyone here. let me know.

a little something i like to call 'the fridge of happiness'

well, the fire's down to embers and all the guests have gone, and i'd say heidi's b-day party was a success. it's been the best of this season's firepit Fridays, in no small part due to the excellent company of Heidi's friends, but also because LOOK AT ALL THE BEER I HAVE.

I always tell Heidi to "never say never" because i know from life that you cannot predict with any certainty what life holds for you. But so long as my body is able, I will never quit my beer.

Random snippets of the week:

> I woke up at 5:45 today. What the…???

> I’m actually in bed, typing this.

> Bri and Rob are CHAMPIONS and brought their vacuum over for me to use. So, J-Dub, thank you (thank you, thank you!) for the offer, but we’re good now.

> I think about Justin every day and hope he’s ok. All the other vacuums were so much bigger than him. You know, I just worry.

> I think I may have located a chair for Magnus, courtesy of CNKelly (does everyone know that she left me alone and isn’t my CN anymore and now she’s leaving for JAPAN for a week???).

> I have so many pictures to post of the fence project, my stunning new dining room set, the new living room arrangement (courtesy of Brian and Rob for all the heavy lifting and Heidi for all the cleaning and shoving furniture around), and probably more.

> Sometimes, when I think of how long the fence project has taken, it feels like I’m not accomplishing much of anything. But I know I’m working really hard, almost every night on the project, and on other smaller tasks around the house. Why does it take so much time to do everything???

> I shouldn’t complain too much. I’ve received several compliments on the fence project so far, even from the neighbors. Oh, and with the removal of the big spruce tree, I’m now going to be able to have a garden in the backyard! I have to admit, I was sad to kill the tree. But it was smack in the way of pretty much everything. I think the people before me just envisioned the use of the yard altogether differently than I ever have.

> If you can, come on out tonight for Firepit Friday. We’ll be celebrating Heidi’s 26^th birthday!

 

 

All-hallow-even

Halloween in the ‘Wood was a great time. Brian, Rob, and Lynn came over and we handed out treats to all the kiddies and adults (!) who came by. To set the scene, we had dragged the firepit into the driveway and had a tub of beer and wine behind us, we had a great fire going, scary sounds CDs playing, Magnus hanging out with us, and we ordered pizza for dinner. So, it was pretty much a great time even before adding in the Trick-or-Treat aspect.

 

Now, I would like to point out that there is absolutely no way to predict how many trick-or-treaters will come. I had guessed there would be 50-60 since this is an area near a school where kids walk all the time. I mean, other people said they had 5, or 10, or 20 kids, and I was thinking I’d have “a bunch,” so, I got 48 Star Crunches and 48 Oatmeal Crème Pies plus a small bag of Nestle Crunch Minis in case, by some odd chance, I had more than 96 kids. Sidebar: is it a coincidence that “Trick-or-Treat,” when acronymized, becomes “TOT”? I think not. At any rate, ToT in the ‘Wood was from 6:00 to 8:30, and by 7:15, we were at the bottom of the barrel of Little Debbies. I could not believe it. Brian made a mad dash to the store to replenish our supplies while I raided the pantry and found some bags of cheese nips, some packs of cheese-n-crackers, and a bunch of little boxes of raisins (which Lynn refused to hand out – hee!). Rob stayed cool as a cucumber the whole time this was going on, while the rest of us were in full-on panic mode. I mean, when you’re sitting in the driveway with a full fire going, it’s pretty hard to cover up the fact that you’re out of candy. Brian came back with 4 more boxes of Little Debbies and about 5 bags of candy. I think we ended up giving away close to 4 of the back-up bags, and then toward the end of ToT time, we had an entire bag of candy left, so Lynn started handing out giant handfuls of candy and she even called some kids to come up the drive and take the last of it.

 

Once ToT was officially over, we burned the pizza boxes, which made a ROARING fire and also got us accused of trying to burn down the neighbors’ tree. Hee!