Return from Detroit, clearing out the offices, ‘Sweeney Todd’, ‘The Riches’
(posted from home)
(This post covers 8-14 April, 2008)
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Monday, 14 April-
Today we continued clearing out our offices. In 1981 I built a custom-shelving unit in the end-wall of my office so the goal today was to get all that shelving cleared off and then disassemble and remove the shelving. Labashi’s office also had built-in shelving for books and office supplies to be removed from the closet of her office. We then carried the 12 drawers-full of filing cabinet drawers downstairs and then carried the cabinets down and re-stowed the drawers in them. Carrying all that stuff down the stairs wasn’t bad but I’m not looking forward to carrying it all back UP the stairs after the carpet’s in.
We had a pretty early start this morning so ran out of gas by late afternoon. We watched another episode of ‘The Riches’ around 1500, then worked another hour before calling it a day.
After supper and some blogging time, we watched two more epis of ‘The Riches’.
---------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 13 April-
Today we started the process of clearing out our offices and bedroom in preparation for new carpet. We began in my office today and when we started running into each other Labashi moved on to her office. We carried box after box of books, magazines, computer stuff, sporting goods, and office equipment downstairs and then wrestled the five bookcases down and into our guest room and filled the shelves there. We don’t think we are going to have enough room to store everything we need to store while the carpet is being laid but we are going to store as much as we can in the guest room and mud-room workshop. Then we can better assess whether we need to rent a short-term storage space. I’m hoping to get away with storing a few items in the vans or under our 10x12 tent to avoid the rental cost (not to mention the work of transporting stuff to the storage facility).
By late afternoon we were exhausted so we watched the pilot of ‘The Riches- Season One’ for a break. Then we worked until 1730, broke for supper, then watched two more episodes. We like it!
---------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 12 April-
I spent the morning on the web and tried to help Maypo resolve a problem on his PC via long-distance. We spent an hour or more trying to work our way through a Java or FlashPlayer problem preventing him from watching videos but never did get it. I suppose the next step will be posting a query on TechSupportGuy.com to see if we can get some hints on what else to try.
Later in the day I picked up some videos and that evening Labashi and I watched ‘Sweeney Todd’.
‘Sweeney Todd- the Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ (the movie) is a Tim-Burton-directed musical starring Johnny Depp and is quite remarkable. The movie is rated ‘R’ because of the graphic violence but it’s almost a cartoon-type of violence. Given that Todd is a mad barber, you can imagine how graphic things get as he wreaks revenge with his shaving razors. But the REALLY remarkable thing is that Johnny Depp was hired for the part before anyone (including the director and producer) had ever heard him sing… and he does a great job. Highly recommended if you can disassociate yourself from the graphic violence.
---------------------------------------------------
Friday, 11 April-
I spent much of today on the web but did manage to get some work done. Good Ol’ Mocha Joe has headlights which have clear plastic covers. Over time, the covers darken and look old, I suppose because of tiny scratches and dirt. So today I spent a half-hour or so with the portable drill, a polishing pad, polishing compound, scratch remover and aircraft-plastic cleaner in a successful effort to revitalize the covers. I see Wal-mart now carries a kit for this but they want $20 for the kit and I already have the other stuff around for my motorcycles so I’ll just stick with that.
The other work I did was cleaning up the van from our Detroit trip. That afternoon Labashi joined me for my four-mile walk on the creek-side road.
---------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 10 April-
We had a spectacular 70-degree, sunny day today. I was oblivious to the nice weather through the morning as I worked on the web and then noticed and had to get out. I pulled the cover off the Miata, dropped the top, and fired it up (thank goodness I charged the battery after returning from Florida). I drove down to Rocky Ridge Park and went for a jog on my end-to-end course. I’ve not done that in quite a while so the goal today was finishing. I ended up doing it in 92 minutes and was happy with that.
That evening we watched Survivor.
---------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 9 April-
Today we turned Mocha Joe toward home. Though we had a 15-20 mph wind blowing from the west and rocking the van as we came south to Toledo, I knew it would give us a nice tailwind once we turned east on the turnpike. Gas at the I-80/I-280 intersection had jumped from $3.22 on our way out to $3.33 this morning. But then again, it was $3.35-$3.39 in the city.
The tailwind and smooth turnpike gave us an easy ride home. We listened to ‘This American Life’, “Bill Moyers’ Journal”, and ‘This Week in Saskatchewan’ episodes on the iPod as we drove.
As we exited the turnpike we opted for supper at Hillside Café, then made it home just as darkness fell.
----------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 8 April-
I spent much of today at the library. I updated the blog and puttered about on the web, then read a few magazines while I had the opportunity, then left about 1500.
Back home I replaced a bad lamp socket and then worked on the garage door. The door is a two-car, single-panel, ‘up-and-over’ door rather than a sectional door and is at least 30 years old. As this very large metal door would swing down, it would stop with the bottom edge still sticking out into the driveway about eight inches (from the frame). I first adjusted the sagging chain drive and adjusted the down-force screw but that made no difference. Eventually I figured out I could replace the connector bar with a longer one to push the top of the door further around, thus pushing the bottom closer to full closure.
On the way to the library this morning I had bought a ¼” x 1” x 36” mild steel flat at Lowe’s so I cut and drilled it to make a near-duplicate of the original — just 2 and ¼” longer. That regained most of the eight inches and the door now looks like it’s closed from the outside even if it doesn’t quite close completely. The chain drive keeps the door from being forced open from the outside. The bottom of the door is rusted and bent too much to fully close so that’ll do until replacement time.
We had such nice weather I wanted to be outside so I patrolled the yard, picking up branches and then raked the dirt and grass that had been piled up by the snow plow back into place.
That evening we watched a very interesting PBS special on deciphering Mayan hieroglyphs. I had no idea how difficult it was to solve that puzzle.
=== end of post ======
(posted from home)
(This post covers 8-14 April, 2008)
---------------------------------------------------
Monday, 14 April-
Today we continued clearing out our offices. In 1981 I built a custom-shelving unit in the end-wall of my office so the goal today was to get all that shelving cleared off and then disassemble and remove the shelving. Labashi’s office also had built-in shelving for books and office supplies to be removed from the closet of her office. We then carried the 12 drawers-full of filing cabinet drawers downstairs and then carried the cabinets down and re-stowed the drawers in them. Carrying all that stuff down the stairs wasn’t bad but I’m not looking forward to carrying it all back UP the stairs after the carpet’s in.
We had a pretty early start this morning so ran out of gas by late afternoon. We watched another episode of ‘The Riches’ around 1500, then worked another hour before calling it a day.
After supper and some blogging time, we watched two more epis of ‘The Riches’.
---------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 13 April-
Today we started the process of clearing out our offices and bedroom in preparation for new carpet. We began in my office today and when we started running into each other Labashi moved on to her office. We carried box after box of books, magazines, computer stuff, sporting goods, and office equipment downstairs and then wrestled the five bookcases down and into our guest room and filled the shelves there. We don’t think we are going to have enough room to store everything we need to store while the carpet is being laid but we are going to store as much as we can in the guest room and mud-room workshop. Then we can better assess whether we need to rent a short-term storage space. I’m hoping to get away with storing a few items in the vans or under our 10x12 tent to avoid the rental cost (not to mention the work of transporting stuff to the storage facility).
By late afternoon we were exhausted so we watched the pilot of ‘The Riches- Season One’ for a break. Then we worked until 1730, broke for supper, then watched two more episodes. We like it!
---------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 12 April-
I spent the morning on the web and tried to help Maypo resolve a problem on his PC via long-distance. We spent an hour or more trying to work our way through a Java or FlashPlayer problem preventing him from watching videos but never did get it. I suppose the next step will be posting a query on TechSupportGuy.com to see if we can get some hints on what else to try.
Later in the day I picked up some videos and that evening Labashi and I watched ‘Sweeney Todd’.
‘Sweeney Todd- the Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ (the movie) is a Tim-Burton-directed musical starring Johnny Depp and is quite remarkable. The movie is rated ‘R’ because of the graphic violence but it’s almost a cartoon-type of violence. Given that Todd is a mad barber, you can imagine how graphic things get as he wreaks revenge with his shaving razors. But the REALLY remarkable thing is that Johnny Depp was hired for the part before anyone (including the director and producer) had ever heard him sing… and he does a great job. Highly recommended if you can disassociate yourself from the graphic violence.
---------------------------------------------------
Friday, 11 April-
I spent much of today on the web but did manage to get some work done. Good Ol’ Mocha Joe has headlights which have clear plastic covers. Over time, the covers darken and look old, I suppose because of tiny scratches and dirt. So today I spent a half-hour or so with the portable drill, a polishing pad, polishing compound, scratch remover and aircraft-plastic cleaner in a successful effort to revitalize the covers. I see Wal-mart now carries a kit for this but they want $20 for the kit and I already have the other stuff around for my motorcycles so I’ll just stick with that.
The other work I did was cleaning up the van from our Detroit trip. That afternoon Labashi joined me for my four-mile walk on the creek-side road.
---------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 10 April-
We had a spectacular 70-degree, sunny day today. I was oblivious to the nice weather through the morning as I worked on the web and then noticed and had to get out. I pulled the cover off the Miata, dropped the top, and fired it up (thank goodness I charged the battery after returning from Florida). I drove down to Rocky Ridge Park and went for a jog on my end-to-end course. I’ve not done that in quite a while so the goal today was finishing. I ended up doing it in 92 minutes and was happy with that.
That evening we watched Survivor.
---------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 9 April-
Today we turned Mocha Joe toward home. Though we had a 15-20 mph wind blowing from the west and rocking the van as we came south to Toledo, I knew it would give us a nice tailwind once we turned east on the turnpike. Gas at the I-80/I-280 intersection had jumped from $3.22 on our way out to $3.33 this morning. But then again, it was $3.35-$3.39 in the city.
The tailwind and smooth turnpike gave us an easy ride home. We listened to ‘This American Life’, “Bill Moyers’ Journal”, and ‘This Week in Saskatchewan’ episodes on the iPod as we drove.
As we exited the turnpike we opted for supper at Hillside Café, then made it home just as darkness fell.
----------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 8 April-
I spent much of today at the library. I updated the blog and puttered about on the web, then read a few magazines while I had the opportunity, then left about 1500.
Back home I replaced a bad lamp socket and then worked on the garage door. The door is a two-car, single-panel, ‘up-and-over’ door rather than a sectional door and is at least 30 years old. As this very large metal door would swing down, it would stop with the bottom edge still sticking out into the driveway about eight inches (from the frame). I first adjusted the sagging chain drive and adjusted the down-force screw but that made no difference. Eventually I figured out I could replace the connector bar with a longer one to push the top of the door further around, thus pushing the bottom closer to full closure.
On the way to the library this morning I had bought a ¼” x 1” x 36” mild steel flat at Lowe’s so I cut and drilled it to make a near-duplicate of the original — just 2 and ¼” longer. That regained most of the eight inches and the door now looks like it’s closed from the outside even if it doesn’t quite close completely. The chain drive keeps the door from being forced open from the outside. The bottom of the door is rusted and bent too much to fully close so that’ll do until replacement time.
We had such nice weather I wanted to be outside so I patrolled the yard, picking up branches and then raked the dirt and grass that had been piled up by the snow plow back into place.
That evening we watched a very interesting PBS special on deciphering Mayan hieroglyphs. I had no idea how difficult it was to solve that puzzle.
=== end of post ======
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 19:58
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