Bezabor:

Saturday, December 10

I worked a few hours in our basement this morning, continuing to store away the paints and gardening liquids. I went into town for a few hours looking for a better portable toolbox and a good way to organize the sockets and wrenches in my stationary tool cabinets. I came home without a toolbox but think I’m close to a decision on a combination toolbox from Craftsman that will allow me to store the tools in a rustproof, wheeled box that can also be used as a seat or step. That should work much better for my in-the-driveway maintenance program for our vehicles. I found good socket and wrench storage systems which allow me to not only organize them and see which are missing from their places but also just pick up the set I need and take them to the work.

In the evening we watched “War of the Worlds”. When I rented it I wondered why it didn’t have a thumbs-up rating from Ebert and Roper. And now we know—it’s a stupid movie! I can’t believe Spielberg could direct such a poor movie. Consider, for example, that everything electrical is made useless by the aliens’ electromagnetic energy pulses. Cars, phones, cell phones, even watches are shown to be useless. Then in the middle of this we see someone using a video camera. No other electronics work but the video camera does. And Tom Cruise manages to get the only car in the region that works. His mechanic buddy is working on a car and says the starter is fried (which would not happen in an electromagnetic pulse) but it turns out to be the solenoid. So apparently he replaces the solenoid (which somehow must have been protected from the damages-every-solenoid-in-the-region energy pulses in its parts-bin box) so now Tom has the only working car anywhere around. And he’s able to drive it down the freeway crowded with disabled vehicles because when the pulse happened, all the vehicles drifted off the road just enough to let him pass. Ridiculous in the extreme! Shame on you, Mr. Spielberg. I want my money back.

Friday, December 9

I’m under the weather again today though I’m ever-so-slowly improving overall. I spent most of the morning on the internet, working on an odd networking problem. Every once in a while my laptop’s browser suddenly can’t find web pages. The only way out of it is a reboot. Labashi’s desktop uses the same connectivity so I suspect my laptop rather than something wrong with the wireless router, cable modem, or ISP. I installed Firefox to eliminate Internet Explorer but Firefox also hits the problem. It’s a puzzler.

In the afternoon I started the organizing process in the basement. We’ve started moving stuff back from our rented storage unit. We needed to get the paints and other liquids which are not supposed to be allowed to freeze out of the unheated storage unit and into our basement. The utility cabinets are working out well for this.

Thursday, December 8

I finished up the north wall and put the two layers of insulation back in place. While I’ve been working the north wall, Labashi has been doing a fantastic job of putting in new insulation. We now have 8 and ½ inches of insulation under our foyer floor and stairs and we have 3 and ½ inches of new insulation in the stairway walls. That entrance stairway has always been cold in winter and I’m sure this will make a big difference. Labashi also replaced some missing insulation in the east wall.

We also bought and assembled two utility cabinets and two three-drawer-storage cabinets. The utility cabinets are Black and Decker units from Lowe’s. They are plastic four-shelf units with doors and will look a lot better than the open shelving we had been using. The three-drawer storage units are Sterilite units about waist high from Target and match the utility cabinets. The utility cabinets are $75 each and the three-drawer units are $30 each. They’re not cheap but we think will pay off by allowing us to organize all the stuff that can make a basement or garage look like a disaster zone.

Wednesday, December 7

I finished up the west wall and used Great Stuff foam insulation to seal up all the gaps along the inside of the starter strip and also to fill in the gaps between the pieces of 2x4.

I also started repairing the north wall which has a section of sill damage about seven feet long. In this case, though, both sills are damaged. The outer is most heavily damaged but the inner also has enough damage to need replacement. Worse, one of the studs was damaged about 18 inches up and extending behind the upper section of drywall which we did not remove. But I was able to push the two layers of insulation up and use the Sawzall to cut off the stud above the damage. Then I bolted a 26-inch piece of 2x4 to the remaining stud to extend it back down to the sill.

I’m still miserable from my sinus infection—coughing and sneezing a lot and alternating between being too hot and too cold. I called the doctor’s office to ask when the antibiotic should give me some results and was asked to call back Friday morning if I’ve still not had any relief.

Tuesday, December 6

I continued working on the termite damage to the sill on the west wall of the basement. It’s slow going. Ironically, the sections where the damage is worst are easiest to fix. I can simply break up the old sill with a screwdriver and clean the pieces out, vacuum up the remainder, saw off the nails, insert an 8-inch piece of 2 x4 and move on. But in the less-damaged wood, the nails coming in from outside—the ones holding on the celotex and aluminum siding starter strip— make it difficult to remove the old wood. In some cases I can pry them out, in others I have to cut up the wood with the Sawzall and a chisel to get to the point where I can cut off the nails.

Monday, December 5

Today was another not-so-good day health-wise. I did manage to get some time in downstairs but only an hour or so.