Incommunicado in T-1

Ohhhhhh, so much to do, so little time, and soon (so soon!) I will be out of here! I have a lot of work to pack into the next 6 hours or so, then laundry, then preparing for Burning Man. We will not even be at home this weekend, since we have tickets for all 3 days of the Outside Lands music festival in SF (side note, who would plan such a thing right before Burning Man??? BAD TIMING). We're staying at a friend's place close to Golden Gate Park, seeing the shows, then going to the East Bay, packing the truck, and going to Grass Valley, where we'll overnight and then bright and early we'll go on to the playa.

I shouldn't write everything out like that, it makes me tired just seeing the list. It also makes me mad that the one act I'm really interested in seeing (Rodrigo y Gabriela) plays last on Sunday, so we can't even get an early start. GRRRRR.

One of the big benefits of being out in the desert is that I can't be reached there. No blackberry. No cell phone. No internet access. No house projects hanging over my head. Just me, 49,999 other people and a bunch of fire and blinky lights. I can't wait to be unplugged! I'm not looking forward to the conditions (word is, it is a dusty mo-fo this year), but it's worth the price.

So, this will be the last posting probably until early September. I'll be getting lots of stories for then, though, so do not fret. I'll also borrow Kent's working camera, so there will be pictures, too.

September also has 2 business trips (Wales and Mississippi), 1 wedding, 1 reception (for a wedding in July), and all the house projects, so I will get back to stressed in no time upon my return!

More good news and bad news

Good:

• new pictures of the bathroom project are up
• the shutterfly sites have been consolidated to one for your viewing pleasure

Bad:

• Crazy is at it - found a branch under the tree, but no apparent place the branch broke off. I suspect it's from another tree. Also a little nervous since the tree is starting to drop leaves and it's not even September yet!
• my camera is acting up all of a sudden. The screen flickers and there are streaks and a lot of pink in some of today's pictures. So close to Burning Man, this is not good news!

Good news and bad news...

Kent just pinged me - it turns out the people who were going to rent his house are now house shopping themselves (to take advantage of the increase in conforming loan mortgages until the end of this year). So, they will not be moving into his house on Oct 1.

The good news:
The pressure is off to get my bathroom done ASAP and figure out when we would pack stuff and move, in addition to my work travel in Sept (UK and Mississippi). This was really worrying me, especially considering an unusual number of weddings in Sept/early Oct (three!). Now there is a bit more time and we don't have to rush.

The bad news:
This means no cash flow from rent, but that's where we are now and we are OK financially. Plus, now we have time to paint all those other rooms in his house that need it. Damn! (he has a lot of trim work in his house, which equals exponential time for painting)

More destruction!

Pictures to come, but we made good progress on bathroom demolition yesterday. Most of the tile is down from the wall, and the area around the doors is stripped, as is the back wall of the shower wall. There's some nasty water damage in there, but it's not as bad as we thought (whew). There's more demo to do to see the full extent.

Unfortunately it turns out that the shower tile and the floor tile are laid in mortar beds. This is like 3/4" of a concrete-like substance. I tried hammering some and nothing seemed to happen, it wouldn't break. I tried using a cold chisel - nothing. Kent hit some from the back, and it grudgingly broke open, with bits flying everywhere (thank goodness I had safety glasses on since I was hit). That was unexpected after the other experiments. However, only one wall has access from the back so we'll have to figure out another approach for the other walls and floor. Maybe a sledgehammer would help? (but I'm afraid of following through too much and damaging other walls or the subfloor)

Another disadvantage of the mortar bed - there's freakin' chicken wire embedded in that stuff! This is going to be a tough job. With any luck, Kirk (who helped with some of the kitchen items) can help a little while we're at Burning Man with demo and/or putting in new cement board. It would be nice to only be wrangling with tiling after the playa, although we'll at least be used to dust by then.

We spent today going up to Grass Valley to visit Rich and Bobbi, and get a tutorial and check out the tent trailer we'll be borrowing next week. It's a very cute tent trailer, smaller than the one we had last year, and I think it will work out beautifully! The new battery fits (whew) and everything seems to be ready to rumble.

This week will consist of working frantically, trying to break mortar beds, and packing for Burning Man. Keep your fingers crossed for me, I'm going to be burning the candle at both ends and in the middle. :P

words fail me.

I really can't say this any better than the friend who just sent this out, so here you go:

"Kinda sorta not-safe for work?
But, JESUS-on a RAFT!!!

http://www.nbcolympics.com/swimming/photos/galleryid=156776.html

Seriously... i need a minute."

Woof!!!

The back row of Ranch 99

So, I was meeting Kent for some pho last night, and got to the mall a little early. This is no regular mall, mind you, but an all-Asian mall, including the Thai goods store, the Chinese sweets store (which sells things like salted plums - I don't get it), the Ten-Ren tea store, and the biggest of all, the Asian grocery store Ranch 99. So, there is plenty to see if you wander around.

I went into Ranch 99 and started idly browsing. I've heard that mangosteens are never available in the US, but I figure if they ever come through, Ranch 99 is one place likely to have them. No dice, although they did have whole frozen durians. A nice old man also tried to steer me away from the "doughnut" peaches, telling me the other peaches were much better.

I wandered through produce (did you know you could get sugar pea leaves?), reached the back of the store and turned left. The first case was packaged meats. And it was a little different than the local Safeway. The first case was mostly pork, including:

• pork front feet
• pork back feet
• pork tongue
• pork stomach
• pork endgut (not sure which part of the intestine it was)
• pork bung (I'm guessing the last part of the intestine here - p.s. yikes!)

There was a package that I couldn't clearly see the label on, that had what looked like skin and something else in there. So, I pick up the package only to read PORK SNOUT! I all but dropped it with a little shriek and took off towards the seafood section. (what would someone need pork snout for, anyway?)

The seafood section is very interesting too, although it can also be a little traumatic if you're not ready for it. There are luminous piles of fish on ice that look very nice, but mixed in you might find skinned frog legs or half a lingcod head staring back at you (apparently good for stock). "Fish paste" was a little worrying. There was a lady digging through the bin of salmon heads; I was curious to know why she was rejecting so many, but not curious enough to ask her. They looked pretty much the same to me.

There were some prepackaged sashimi cuts too, I was surprised to see how far away some of that stock was shipped from. New Zealand, Malaysia, Japan, China, Taiwan - that stuff was from all over.

I was wandering through the dizzying array of ramen when Kent showed up.

Obviously, I still can't quite get over the pig snouts.

Weekend pictures!

FINALLY got the pics from this weekend loaded up. check out the "recent pictures".

I totally forgot to warn you all that pinot jokes are going to replace caulk jokes, at least for a while.

Nothing new to report except that it looks like I'll be working late all the way through leaving for vacation at the end of next week. Watch for progress pics on the bathroom project! I should post pictures of Kent's almost finished bathroom too, it turned out purty.

In the mean time, I leave you with a night picture of my new doorbell. With any luck it will lure moths away from the death trap of a porch light.

Primal!!

So, I forgot to mention that I actually saw this race last night. I never, ever yell at the TV for sports (I usually save that for political ads and commentary), but I actually started yelling watching the last swimmer in this relay BARELY overtake the trash-talking French. Wow! And then watching this elemental reaction of the teammates that were out of the pool. Takes you back to the savannah, doesn't it?

By the way, did I mention that I like watching men's swimming? Those boys have shoulders out to THERE! Rrrrowrrrr!

weekend of wine and destruction

So, I had a good weekend, how about you? Part of Friday was spent recovering from celebrating the inspection result on Thursday, and also running lots of errands.

Saturday was trouble from the start. We went with some of Kent's friends in a rented bus for a full day of wine tasting in the Russian River area. The bus got us at 9, which meant meeting in the city at 8:30, which meant getting to the city at 8, which meant leaving the house to get the train at 7, which meant getting up around 6 to be presentable. Oof. Naturally the first thing we did when we got to the city was hunt down some damn coffee, which helped. Then we met everyone at a bar (a BAR! Did you know you could get served at 8:30 am???), which did not help. The mimosas on the bus didn't really help either, although I guess that would depend on what your definition of "help" is.

The plan was to stop at 3 vineyards and have a picnic lunch. Unfortunately the first (Iron Horse) started us off with some blanc de blanc bubbly - and I'm sorry, but you can't just taste a little bubbly and pour the rest out! It was kind of downhill from there. We tasted I think 5 wines there (including a very, very nice pinot noir), and everyone was at least half lit by the time we left. I can't remember the name of the second vineyard, but none of their wines blew my skirt up. Their landscaping was, however, fabulous, and it was a gorgeous day. We picnicked there including popping some of the wine we'd bought.

I can't remember the third vineyard either (I wasn't that drunk, honest! I just hadn't heard of these before). They seemed a bit harried, but I'm sure it was due to 25 kind of drunk people coming in, and one person insulting the pictures of the founders. Oops. We hung out by the vineyard there, enjoying the sun, before reboarding the bus. We were going through Healdsburg when someone suggested stopping at the La Crema tasting room. Ruh roh. 6 more wines to taste. By the time we left there, it was getting ugly, but after 10 minutes on the road, there were 3 new open bottles of wine. A few people were definitely looking the worse for wear - unfocused eyes, signs of the "spins", etc. One woman had to get off the bus early (by 2-3 blocks) due to, how shall we say, suffering a reversal.

We escaped relatively unscathed and have some new wines for later. We'll see if they're as good as we thought they were.

Yesterday had a pretty lazy start. In the afternoon I packed up the bathroom, and we did demolition on the "door" to the bathroom (full of wallboard and glass brick). We broke about 5 of the 30 bricks - a big mess. We were finding glass in 3 of the surrounding rooms - although how a big chunk made it all the way to the couch is anyone's guess. We still have to figure out how to get the framing out of there (I'm thinking we need to sawzall it), but then can measure it up for a new prehung door. Next demo: tile and underlying wallboard in the tub enclosure, to see the extent of the water damage.

Pictures soon - I can't post to shutterfly from work (damn proxies!), but there are a couple here to whet your appetite.

Waiting for primer to dry

And so I am getting into new projects. I just started a shutterfly site, and will see about moving my albums over there. I've added a link on the right, or you can click here to check it out. Feel free to add comments, but please, be patient, since I have a feeling that content will be added infrequently at first.

OK, I think it's time to paint!

YEAH BABY YEAH!

The building inspector just left and I have a signed final inspection! I PASSED! Woo hoo! Now I just have non-permit issues to finish up, including:

• painting touch-up
• installing trim between window and tile
• installing door stop on door

And I'm done with the kitchen! That only took 11 months. The inspector asked how long I'd thought it would take, and when I said 4-5 months, but we underestimated how long every little thing takes, he just laughed. I wonder if he thinks we didn't do this ourselves. (but in that case, why would it take so damn long?)

I will try not to even think about other projects until tomorrow, so I can savor this properly.

And now, back to work... although I think when Kent comes home tonight we will have to go out for a celebratory margarita.

ZOMG <20 days till the playa!

I don't know how it's managed to sneak up on me again, but I'm just realizing that I have 2-1/2 weeks to finish all my August work. Between the new work assignment and the home improvement work, the summer has just flown by.

Also due to the busy-ness of the summer, I have made no new preparations for Burning Man this year. No art projects. No new costumes. No appointments for getting my hair braided (we'll see if that comes together or not). But I have plans, oh my yes, I do.

My plans include a lot of biking around the open desert, looking at art, helping friends with their projects, and enjoying time that is not being spent working or working on the house. For a WHOLE WEEK! In my existing playawear. Good thing I already know the metallic red hot pants will leave purple stains on skin with sunblock on it. Otherwise that would be embarrassing.

Speaking of house projects, we are doing the last of the kitchen inspection items tonight, and I will hopefully get the final inspection signed off tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed! Once that's done we can do bathroom demolition with wild abandon without attracting the city's attention. Oh, and if we have time. Kent has booked us solid through weekends in August. We'll have to do damage when we can.

And speaking of work, I have to get back to it. I was on conference calls from 7-9:30 am and have another at 1 that I need to do some work for. And did I mention only 2-1/2 weeks to do the work? I need to stop going to meetings.

more sleep does not equal improved temper

Well, I hate to admit it with so much to do, but it was a pretty unproductive weekend. Lani is going back to AZ on Tuesday so we went out hiking in Marin yesterday, and had an early dinner at Guaymas (excellent Mexican place in Tiburon), followed by "Bandits" on DVD. Today I had all these plans to get to my house and do the inspection items, but I kept falling asleep instead.

The problem now seems to be feeling spacey, and still having no fuse left when things start going wrong. We re-wired the dishwasher per the inspection requirement, but in the process cut some new gouges in the new cabinets (ARGH!!!) and ourselves. I'm more upset about the cabinet since we will heal. At least we didn't scratch any metal, that would be worse.

I cussed enough that we gave up for now and will do the drywall later. I think that's the last thing.

So, my theory that I was constantly crabby because I was tired may not be it. Or, I may need more than a day or two down to recharge for another month at least of house work.

Gotta go, have an early meeting tomorrow again.

I can see the music!