“Kinky Boots”, “Little Miss Sunshine”, "The Black Dahlia", “Grey’s Anatomy”, trenching, contractor proposal problems (posted from home)

(this post covers 20-28 December)

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Thursday, 28 December-

Today I dug out the trench along the west end of the house. I first had to remove a layer of decorative stone and six concrete stepping-stones to clear the area but that wasn’t difficult. The digging went pretty well too. The whole process took about three hours. While digging I listened to a ‘This American Life’ podcast about ‘reruns’ and ‘do-overs’ in our lives—very interesting. The now-uncovered row of siding is mostly intact but has a few badly-oxidized areas and a few holes. I’m not yet sure how to address that. I’ll have to take a closer look and decide whether I have to replace the row-and-a-half of siding or could somehow repair the damaged areas only. The argument for replacement is probably strongest given that I should take that opportunity to replace the Celotex and plywood underlying that damaged siding.
That evening we watched four epidodes of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. I’m beginning to wonder about the show’s message. It’s entertaining in a did-you-see-what-he/she-did kind of way but for two of the three female-lead interns to be having sneak-off-to-the-closet sex with their bosses in the workplace and the other to have an oft-mentioned history as an underwear model is a little much. The strongest female character is the resident (Bailey) and I think she’s great but she’s known as ‘the Nazi’. I’ve only seen seven episodes but so far the message is it’s ok to break workplace rules put in place to avoid hate and destruction so long as you ‘think you might be falling for the guy’ (Meredith)--- or you want to get ahead of the other interns (Cristina). We’re also struck by Ellen Pompeo’s interesting face. She’s young and she’s old at the same time—perfect for her role.

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Wednesday, 27 December-

Today we finished clearing out the storage unit and turned in the key. It was great to have everything out of the way while we’ve been slowly updating the basement. We still have three sections of outer half-wall to do but can’t finish them until we solve the occasional drainage problem outside those walls. But we now have enough enclosed storage to bring everything back and eliminate the monthly rental cost.
The latest contractor’s proposal has us thinking again. We’ve decided to dig down about a foot along the end of the house so we get the soil away from the siding. That will at least keep the termites away and will get the wet soil away from the sill area. It does create a trench and we’ll have to keep an eye on that in any heavy rains but I’d be very surprised if that foot-wide-by-a-foot-deep trench would fill up and overflow since most of the landscape in this area drains away from the trench. If it does threaten to overflow, I can trench out through the yard for about 30 feet to get to a low-enough area to establish better drainage.
This evening we started a new series—‘Grey’s Anatomy’. I’ve seen this one at the video store for some time and I’d think, “Nah, I’m not ready for a hospital drama”. But today I was ready (possibly because we’ve seen everything else worth viewing in the store…). We watched the first three episodes of Season One. We love it. It’s amazing how quickly we can get invested in the lives of these characters.

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Tuesday, 26 December-

Today I made an adjustment to the motion-detectors. I’ve noticed some nights that passing cars will occasionally set off the motion detector on the pole-light. I switched it to test mode and adjusted the sensitivity down. I also adjusted the angles of the floodlights on one of the other motion detectors and I may have created a problem. After I made the adjustment I noticed that one of the lights would trigger on with motion but would not trigger off after the test mode’s 30-second wait period after last motion. In checking it out, I found a notice on the unit that said the floodlights should have at least a 30-degree downward tilt (that notice wasn’t in the manual!). Though I changed the angle back to lower-than-30-degrees it still does not turn off reliably. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Back it goes.
We also received an unexpected call today. One of the other contractors who had come to look at our drainage problem but never called back called today to say he has a proposed solution. He’s recommending a product called DeltaMS, which is essentially a dimpled-plastic-sandwich panel that goes against the foundation wall. It both waterproofs the outside of the wall and provides an airspace where any water approaching the wall can drain down easily to the footer. This would mean digging down to the footer along two walls and installing footer drains. Also, the grade level of the swale on the end of the house would have to be lowered to keep surface water away from the house. He quotes a $4300+ figure for this work. I don’t know. We like the waterproofing-the-wall part of this but the deepening-the-swale part isn’t good as it would make the hillside in the yard too steep. I think we’d be more inclined to try the Multi-flow idea first and then if that doesn’t drain water away fast enough, perhaps do the DeltaMS thing.
I took advantage of the relatively warm weather to go jogging again at Rocky Ridge Park. Today was a lot easier than just two days ago—maybe it was the espresso in the frappacino I had before the jog.
That evening we watched 'The Black Dahlia". What a disappointment! It's a Brian DePalma film and has Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart, and Hilary Swank. It's about a particularly-gruesome unsolved murder in 1940's Los Angeles. The extra features section tells the story behind the story and that's the best part of this DVD. The movie becomes hopelessly mired about mid-way through and leaves us wondering how that happened.

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Monday, 25 December-

Merry Christmas! Labashi and I took it easy today. I spent much of it setting up and playing with Labashi’s Christmas present, an MP3 player. I bought it for her to listen to podcasts. We’ve found that we can only occasionally find good public radio programs while traveling. Also, Labashi likes to work both outside and in her workshop with a radio playing. I had thought about possibly subscribing to a satellite-radio service but it finally occurred to me that the answer is to time-shift. Once I found some good sources for free podcasts, I knew this would work. I’ve been collecting podcasts for the last couple of months for her and I have a good bit of our music loaded up in my laptop’s music library so it was easy to load up the MP3 player. The sound is great through the default earbuds, through a set of portable external speakers I also got her for Christmas, and through the interconnected headphones we use while watching movies in Mocha Joe.
That evening we watched the extras on the ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ DVD. This set of extras was a good one.

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Sunday, 24 December-

Today is Christmas Eve and we spent a good bit of it at Lowe’s and Home Depot. That was great; both stores were virtually empty and we had plenty of help. Labashi is starting a new interior project. She wants to update our interior doors. We spent much of the day figuring out how we might go about replacing the bedroom, bathroom, and hall-closet doors. It would be about $400 to replace the slabs or $700 to use pre-hung doors. Back at home we found that the doorways are significantly out of square. If we replace the doors alone, we’d still have to take off the trim and square up the doorframes before doing all the hinge and door-set work. I’d rather go with pre-hung doors if we go that far. But $700 is too much for us and we realized that even if that the result isn’t that good. So she has decided to upgrade all of the old door-sets with new lever-style brass units and will define multiple raised panels on each door with mullion, a style of wooden trim. If that doesn’t turn out as well as we’d like, we’ll then re-look at the replacement options.
That evening we watched ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, a quirky little movie with Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, and Abigail Breslin. I don’t know that this one would make my favorites list but it did have some funny moments. Here’s a plot summary from IMDB: “Olive is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive's father Richard is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother. Her uncle Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne, a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olive's grandfather is a ne'er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.”
Saturday, 23 December-

Today I spent much of the morning cruising the web. My find for the day is France24.com, a brand-new French competitor to CNN. I love being able to see their live feed on their web site and even like seeing some fresh commercials. Very cool!
It was another warmer-than-normal day today so I rode down to Rocky Ridge for an end-to-end jog. That one seemed to be more of a struggle than usual. I’d guess it was a 1:35, timewise. That evening we watched ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ with Merrill Streep and Anne Hathaway. Good one!

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Friday, 22 December-

Today I installed a new viewer port in our front door. We’ve had a small port (or ‘peephole’) in our front door for many years and it never was very good. Last week we had one of the neighborhood kids come to the door after dark I couldn’t see her through the viewport. The problem turned out to be a Christmas decoration in the way but it drew my attention to how poor the view is, particularly at night. I did a couple of searches on the web and found I could get a one-inch brass-and-glass viewport for only ten bucks at Lowe’s. Of course I had to spend another $10 for a hole-saw capable of cutting through the metal skin on the door but that’s still cheap. The installation only took about ten minutes and this viewport is MUCH better. I also brought back shelving units and another load of ‘stuff’ from our storage unit that afternoon.
That evening we watched ‘Kinky Boots’, a predictable-but-pleasant Brit-com about a shoe factory about to go out of business—until the owner finds there’s a market for ‘special’ boots -- for drag queens. And, no, I’m not talking about female drag racers here. Cute movie.

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Thursday, 21 December-

This morning started off with a bang. The landscape contractor withdrew his proposal in this morning’s email. Our email of yesterday must have scared him off. Or maybe not—maybe something else came up. In any case, this guy was the only one of the three we had come out to look at the problem who we ‘clicked’ with. Thinking back on our dealings with him, we thought it a bit odd that he had told us on initial phone contact and then again when we first met here at the house that he’s not a hydraulic engineer. We said we weren’t looking for an engineer, we were looking for someone with practical experience fixing drainage problems. He said he has plenty of that and that seemed to do it. But this morning his email withdrawing the proposal once again says he’s not a hydraulic engineer and he can’t guarantee the proposed solution. He recommends we hire a hydraulic engineer. On the one hand this is a shame. On the other, we may have dodged a bullet. One of the questions I had asked in our email was about the backfill sand for the Multi-flow drainage pipe. This particular solution requires very coarse sand and defines it according to very specific sieve-test characteristics. We called around to local sand suppliers and couldn’t find a coarse-enough sand. So, in our mods to the proposal we wrote those specs in and we asked how we could address this apparent problem. He is, after all, listed as a Multi-flow contractor on the vendor’s website and presumably has done Multi-flow installations before. Maybe this type of question is why he backed out. In any case, we were looking for the type of guy who can withstand a question like that. And, interestingly enough, I received a call from one of the sand suppliers today who suggested I take a look at the sieve-specs for a line of specialty sands available from one of their suppliers. I’ve found the sand and I can get it locally. Looks like we’re going to do this project on our own.
We spent the rest of the day moving more of our ‘stuff’ from our rental storage unit to our basement. We also drove into town and picked up a sample of the specialty sand and did some shopping.

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Wednesday, 20 December-

Today we moved two storage cabinets and a load of stored goods back from our rental storage unit. We are on track for having everything out by the end of the month so we can eliminate the $50 per month rental cost. Today we also sent the modified proposal for work to fix our drainage back to the landscape contractor. He proposes to do a couple of days-worth of work for a little over $6000. That sounds high and we’re sitting on the fence about whether or not to go forward with it but in any case we wanted the proposal to more clearly spell out the work to be done.
That afternoon I rode the bike down to Rocky Ridge for an end-to-end jog. I had started later in the day than usual and by the time I finished the hour-and-a-half jog the sun was setting. And it was setting in a spectacular way. The clouds were lit up by a mix of the golden-hour pinks and purples. Very, very nice!