New carpet, ‘The Kite Runner’, ‘When the Levees Broke’, ‘Ikiru’, ‘The Seventh Seal’
(posted from home)
(This post covers 1-11 May, 2008)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 11 May-
Mother’s Day! We made the trip to C-burg this morning while listening to a super podcast of ‘This American Life’. This one was about the difficulty adults have communicating with kids. We were chagrined to hear ten-year-olds say how tired they are of having adults ask “How’s school?”—the very thing we ask the kids in our family when we all get together. Anyway—good episode.
We visited with Mom for an hour or so before she was scheduled to go down to lunch. She didn’t recognize us as we entered and struggled to recall as we spoke. She’s apparently picking up enough familiar signals to know she should know us, but can’t quite put it together and that frustrates her. Once she heard Labashi’s name, the pieces came together and Mom smiled and calmed down. But she no longer seems to connect my name to me. She knows the name but not the face. At one point I thought she did know me but as we prepared to take her down to lunch at the end of our visit, she asked “And who are you?” as if making pleasant conversation. I’m not upset about it; it just is what it is. But I am saddened by it.
After saying good-bye to Mom we drove over to the house where Maypo was supposed to be working but he wasn’t there. We figured he had taken a lunch break so Labashi and I hit the local Starbucks, Ollie’s, and Lowe’s, then returned to find him back at work.
We visited for a short time then he had to get back to work and we headed for home. There we watched Disk Two of “When the Levees Broke” and then the Survivor season finale. We were disappointed in the Survivor result.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 10 May-
New-Carpet Day is finally here. We spent the first hour with the final furniture moves—the mattress, entertainment cabinet, bureau, china cabinet and our two desks. These items stayed upstairs, filling the kitchen and bathroom. We also took our two chairs down to the guest room, struggling to get them through the just-wide-enough doorways.
The carpet guys showed up around 0900. Our sub-contractor crew was foreign — Israeli-Americans, I believe. They were not only very competent and the nicest guys around, they were also very hard workers. They worked pretty much in silence—just gettin’-‘er-done. They finished up by 1615 and did a wonderful job.
Labashi and I moved everything out of the kitchen and bathroom, brought our big chairs back up and I re-connected the cable and computer connections.
That evening we watched ‘The Kite Runner’, the story of two Afghan boys whose lives took very different paths. We loved the photography and the insider view of Afghanistan. I was a bit disappointed to learn that some key elements of the story were made up. I suspected as much as the story took some turns which were just too coincidental. But overall? Very good movie.
----------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 9 May-
Today we only needed two hours to move all but the items we’d need until tomorrow but then spent the afternoon installing tack strip. We thought the tack strip would go quickly but it took longer than expected and we ended up finishing around supper-time.
That evening we watched Disk One of Spike Lee’s ‘When the Levees Broke’, the story of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We had seen many news stories about this but this film brings it together very well. This first disk is Acts One and Two of four acts and there’s an extras disk.
----------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 8 May-
Today we got back to moving furniture downstairs. We were going to wait until tomorrow but thought we’d better get on with it in case we get some surprise—like finding we have something else we have to do before the installation.
That evening we watched a ‘Weeds’ episode and Survivor. At this point we don’t want any of the remaining Survivor’s to win the million dollars—they’re all too sneaky.
---------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 7 May-
Late this morning I drove over to the Sportsmen’s Club range. I received my membership card in the mail a few days ago and wanted to get started. As I entered the property I was surprised to see six or eight cars there and to hear a lot of shooting going on, spread across the ranges. I spoke to one of the guys in the parking lot and learned today was a training/qualification day for police, staties on the lower ranges, locals on the upper. Fortunately, they weren’t using the indoor range so I had it to myself.
I found the switches for the lights and exhaust fans and read all the safety posters, emergency contacts, and lead-management best practices before setting up my targets and firing my way through a couple of boxes of shells. I REALLY liked having the place to myself and the fact that there’s no time limit is fanTAStic. I didn’t realize how heavily the time limit at the fancy range weighed on me. At $11 a half-hour at the fancy range—including brass-cleanup time— I wasn’t about to stay over so I’d rush through the session, checking my watch every other magazine. I’m also looking forward to the variety of shooting on the nine outdoor ranges instead of having a near-identical view each time.
I spent the afternoon mowing and then we watched two episodes of ‘Weeds’ on Netflix Instant Movies that evening.
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 6 May-
We were tired of moving our stuff and are now close enough to finish up this Friday, the day before the carpet guys come in. So today we spent the day trimming several trees using an electric pole saw. In preparing the saw I managed to spill a few ounces of chain-bar oil on Labashi’s patio—not good! After we finished the trimming I drove to the hardware store in search of some type of oil absorbent and found a new liquid made for this purpose. It’s a white liquid about the consistency of Pepto-Bismol. You pour it on the oil stain and let it dry for five to eight hours. It slowly turns to fine white powder and as it does so it draws the oil out of the surface. That evening I swept up the powder and found the stain gone but the concrete surface was TOO clean--- like it had been etched with acid or something. Fortunately it soon began to fade—the drying process was just incomplete at that point.
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 5 May-
We continued moving our ‘stuff’ out of the upstairs to the basement in preparation for new carpet. That evening we watched ‘Ikiru’, a Japanese film about a man who learns he has only six months to live and struggles to deal with his mortality. Recommended.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 4 May-
I blogged and patrolled the web for much of the morning. That afternoon I put the top down on the Miata and drove it down to Starbucks then to Rocky Ridge Park. I fast-walked my end-to-end course in 93 minutes.
--------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 3 May-
Labashi and I drove over to the antique shops at Adamstown today. We have a couple of favorite shops on our occasional visits there and enjoy browsing. I like seeing antiques from my childhood (I saw the twin to the control-line balsa airplane I built and crashed (on its first flight) in my early teens) and odd things like laboratory test gear. I saw a World-War II gunpowder thermometer. (What the heck is a gunpowder thermometer?)
We also typically stop at the expensive Country French furniture store but haven’t bought anything there… until this time! Labashi had been searching the web for a small table to sit between her new chairs. She had found one she loved but it was WAY too expensive and you can never really trust the scale on an internet photo. But today we were lucky and found a beautiful object which can serve the purpose. It’s a Chinese antique and served a humble purpose; it was a grain measure—but probably in an upscale store or marketplace. It’s made of cypress staves and is shaped somewhat like a drum but has two wooden ‘ears’ which we believe were used as the ‘axle’ of a mount which allowed the measure to tilt up and down—up to fill, down to spill—in order to fill grain sacks with just the right amount of grain. The cypress is varnished and has an interesting patina. The bottom is also finished and will serve as a table-top.
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 2 May-
Today I began researching how to wire up the fishing boat. Somewhere along the way I’ve picked up the ‘right’ bow light, stern light, fuse panel and a marine-grade 12-volt receptacle. I dug them out and pulled the installation guides out of the packaging. Unfortunately, though, the guides aren’t much help. The fuse panel guide says “1. Connect battery to the + terminal. 2. Ground the – terminal. 3. Decide what rating fuses should be used for each switch. 4. To remove the fuseholder cap, see the diagram.” That’s it. No guidance on wiring types, gauges, colors, etc. The stern light has no instructions at all.
The bow light instructions start out “For proper light selection, positioning, and configuration refer to American Boat and Yacht Council Standard A-16, the “72 Colregs” and the “U.S. Inland Rules”. For the electrical portion of the installation, the guide says “Attach supply connections to the light, making sure to wire in accordance with A.B.Y.C. Standard E-9 and the U.S. Coast Guard Safety Standards for Boat Electrical Systems (33 CFR 183).” OK, THEN! Got it!
As I opened the packaging for the fuse panel I noticed one of the toggle switches had come apart—not a good sign! I put it back together but when attempting to crimp the case back together I broke the Bakelite enclosure. I drove up to Radio Shack and found a similar-looking switch but it’s 120-volt rated, not 12-volt-rated so I don’t know if I can use it. I dashed off a query to the panel manufacturer. But I think the real answer is I need a better fuse panel—I’m not sure this one is going to work out. Even if the Radio Shack switch will work, do I want to depend on this? I don’t think so.
That evening we watched ‘The Seventh Seal’, the classic 1957 Ingmar Bergman film. Excellent!
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 1 May-
I spent the morning blogging and the afternoon on the web. Late in the day the sun broke through our week-long cloud cover so I had to get out so I walked my four-mile creek-side route.
========== end of post =========
(posted from home)
(This post covers 1-11 May, 2008)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 11 May-
Mother’s Day! We made the trip to C-burg this morning while listening to a super podcast of ‘This American Life’. This one was about the difficulty adults have communicating with kids. We were chagrined to hear ten-year-olds say how tired they are of having adults ask “How’s school?”—the very thing we ask the kids in our family when we all get together. Anyway—good episode.
We visited with Mom for an hour or so before she was scheduled to go down to lunch. She didn’t recognize us as we entered and struggled to recall as we spoke. She’s apparently picking up enough familiar signals to know she should know us, but can’t quite put it together and that frustrates her. Once she heard Labashi’s name, the pieces came together and Mom smiled and calmed down. But she no longer seems to connect my name to me. She knows the name but not the face. At one point I thought she did know me but as we prepared to take her down to lunch at the end of our visit, she asked “And who are you?” as if making pleasant conversation. I’m not upset about it; it just is what it is. But I am saddened by it.
After saying good-bye to Mom we drove over to the house where Maypo was supposed to be working but he wasn’t there. We figured he had taken a lunch break so Labashi and I hit the local Starbucks, Ollie’s, and Lowe’s, then returned to find him back at work.
We visited for a short time then he had to get back to work and we headed for home. There we watched Disk Two of “When the Levees Broke” and then the Survivor season finale. We were disappointed in the Survivor result.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 10 May-
New-Carpet Day is finally here. We spent the first hour with the final furniture moves—the mattress, entertainment cabinet, bureau, china cabinet and our two desks. These items stayed upstairs, filling the kitchen and bathroom. We also took our two chairs down to the guest room, struggling to get them through the just-wide-enough doorways.
The carpet guys showed up around 0900. Our sub-contractor crew was foreign — Israeli-Americans, I believe. They were not only very competent and the nicest guys around, they were also very hard workers. They worked pretty much in silence—just gettin’-‘er-done. They finished up by 1615 and did a wonderful job.
Labashi and I moved everything out of the kitchen and bathroom, brought our big chairs back up and I re-connected the cable and computer connections.
That evening we watched ‘The Kite Runner’, the story of two Afghan boys whose lives took very different paths. We loved the photography and the insider view of Afghanistan. I was a bit disappointed to learn that some key elements of the story were made up. I suspected as much as the story took some turns which were just too coincidental. But overall? Very good movie.
----------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 9 May-
Today we only needed two hours to move all but the items we’d need until tomorrow but then spent the afternoon installing tack strip. We thought the tack strip would go quickly but it took longer than expected and we ended up finishing around supper-time.
That evening we watched Disk One of Spike Lee’s ‘When the Levees Broke’, the story of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. We had seen many news stories about this but this film brings it together very well. This first disk is Acts One and Two of four acts and there’s an extras disk.
----------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 8 May-
Today we got back to moving furniture downstairs. We were going to wait until tomorrow but thought we’d better get on with it in case we get some surprise—like finding we have something else we have to do before the installation.
That evening we watched a ‘Weeds’ episode and Survivor. At this point we don’t want any of the remaining Survivor’s to win the million dollars—they’re all too sneaky.
---------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 7 May-
Late this morning I drove over to the Sportsmen’s Club range. I received my membership card in the mail a few days ago and wanted to get started. As I entered the property I was surprised to see six or eight cars there and to hear a lot of shooting going on, spread across the ranges. I spoke to one of the guys in the parking lot and learned today was a training/qualification day for police, staties on the lower ranges, locals on the upper. Fortunately, they weren’t using the indoor range so I had it to myself.
I found the switches for the lights and exhaust fans and read all the safety posters, emergency contacts, and lead-management best practices before setting up my targets and firing my way through a couple of boxes of shells. I REALLY liked having the place to myself and the fact that there’s no time limit is fanTAStic. I didn’t realize how heavily the time limit at the fancy range weighed on me. At $11 a half-hour at the fancy range—including brass-cleanup time— I wasn’t about to stay over so I’d rush through the session, checking my watch every other magazine. I’m also looking forward to the variety of shooting on the nine outdoor ranges instead of having a near-identical view each time.
I spent the afternoon mowing and then we watched two episodes of ‘Weeds’ on Netflix Instant Movies that evening.
---------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 6 May-
We were tired of moving our stuff and are now close enough to finish up this Friday, the day before the carpet guys come in. So today we spent the day trimming several trees using an electric pole saw. In preparing the saw I managed to spill a few ounces of chain-bar oil on Labashi’s patio—not good! After we finished the trimming I drove to the hardware store in search of some type of oil absorbent and found a new liquid made for this purpose. It’s a white liquid about the consistency of Pepto-Bismol. You pour it on the oil stain and let it dry for five to eight hours. It slowly turns to fine white powder and as it does so it draws the oil out of the surface. That evening I swept up the powder and found the stain gone but the concrete surface was TOO clean--- like it had been etched with acid or something. Fortunately it soon began to fade—the drying process was just incomplete at that point.
---------------------------------------------------------
Monday, 5 May-
We continued moving our ‘stuff’ out of the upstairs to the basement in preparation for new carpet. That evening we watched ‘Ikiru’, a Japanese film about a man who learns he has only six months to live and struggles to deal with his mortality. Recommended.
--------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, 4 May-
I blogged and patrolled the web for much of the morning. That afternoon I put the top down on the Miata and drove it down to Starbucks then to Rocky Ridge Park. I fast-walked my end-to-end course in 93 minutes.
--------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, 3 May-
Labashi and I drove over to the antique shops at Adamstown today. We have a couple of favorite shops on our occasional visits there and enjoy browsing. I like seeing antiques from my childhood (I saw the twin to the control-line balsa airplane I built and crashed (on its first flight) in my early teens) and odd things like laboratory test gear. I saw a World-War II gunpowder thermometer. (What the heck is a gunpowder thermometer?)
We also typically stop at the expensive Country French furniture store but haven’t bought anything there… until this time! Labashi had been searching the web for a small table to sit between her new chairs. She had found one she loved but it was WAY too expensive and you can never really trust the scale on an internet photo. But today we were lucky and found a beautiful object which can serve the purpose. It’s a Chinese antique and served a humble purpose; it was a grain measure—but probably in an upscale store or marketplace. It’s made of cypress staves and is shaped somewhat like a drum but has two wooden ‘ears’ which we believe were used as the ‘axle’ of a mount which allowed the measure to tilt up and down—up to fill, down to spill—in order to fill grain sacks with just the right amount of grain. The cypress is varnished and has an interesting patina. The bottom is also finished and will serve as a table-top.
--------------------------------------------------------
Friday, 2 May-
Today I began researching how to wire up the fishing boat. Somewhere along the way I’ve picked up the ‘right’ bow light, stern light, fuse panel and a marine-grade 12-volt receptacle. I dug them out and pulled the installation guides out of the packaging. Unfortunately, though, the guides aren’t much help. The fuse panel guide says “1. Connect battery to the + terminal. 2. Ground the – terminal. 3. Decide what rating fuses should be used for each switch. 4. To remove the fuseholder cap, see the diagram.” That’s it. No guidance on wiring types, gauges, colors, etc. The stern light has no instructions at all.
The bow light instructions start out “For proper light selection, positioning, and configuration refer to American Boat and Yacht Council Standard A-16, the “72 Colregs” and the “U.S. Inland Rules”. For the electrical portion of the installation, the guide says “Attach supply connections to the light, making sure to wire in accordance with A.B.Y.C. Standard E-9 and the U.S. Coast Guard Safety Standards for Boat Electrical Systems (33 CFR 183).” OK, THEN! Got it!
As I opened the packaging for the fuse panel I noticed one of the toggle switches had come apart—not a good sign! I put it back together but when attempting to crimp the case back together I broke the Bakelite enclosure. I drove up to Radio Shack and found a similar-looking switch but it’s 120-volt rated, not 12-volt-rated so I don’t know if I can use it. I dashed off a query to the panel manufacturer. But I think the real answer is I need a better fuse panel—I’m not sure this one is going to work out. Even if the Radio Shack switch will work, do I want to depend on this? I don’t think so.
That evening we watched ‘The Seventh Seal’, the classic 1957 Ingmar Bergman film. Excellent!
--------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, 1 May-
I spent the morning blogging and the afternoon on the web. Late in the day the sun broke through our week-long cloud cover so I had to get out so I walked my four-mile creek-side route.
========== end of post =========
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 22:33
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