Paintsgiving

This weekend, in addition to eating delicious turkey with a family that I am not related to, I had the pleasure of finally painting my half-story. You can't really tell in these before photos, but the color of the half-story, which is (for tax purposes) my office, was painted in an off-white reserved for soul-crushing poorly maintained apartments. It didn't send the message I wanted, which is something like, "I'm not feeling suicidal! I feel happy! I want to do office things in this pleasant office-space!" In fact, the color didn't engender exclamations of any kind, only heavy sighs.
Additionally, the previous owner had obviously spent a lot of time painting the space this soul-crushing color:
Why, yes, that is an articulated hand print in the middle of the floor. Nice. Not only soul-sucking, but also done with abandon. I suppose it's better than caring deeply about a paint job that makes you want to die.

You might think that this kind of attention to detail would annoy me, but it had the effect of really lightening the burden of me doing a fine job of painting.

I got the opportunity to use, for the first time, the paint mixing attachment to my new drill.
Which was fun, because creating a vortex is always fun. Just ask any super villain. You might have noticed that I used newspapers to keep my floor safe from paint that might have otherwise resulted in markings on my floor. Good idea! Take note, former owner. More specifically, the newspapers were copies of the New York Times from mid-2009. I should have paid more attention to what I was putting down, though, because I spent two days putting my coffee cup next to a photo spread of Sarah Palin, and not that kind of photo spread.

After thanksgiving dinner, I went home and taped up the rooms, and unscrewed the fans and light fixtures. Well, most of the rooms, as I ran out before I got to the baseboards and the bottom of the windows in the larger room, whose main feature is a stairway. This way, I got to test my mad cutting skills. Which was annoying. I also secured the doors:
I'm all for my cats being exploratory (I feel that they're a good example for the college students with whom I interact), but I'm much less keen on them exploring the fiberglass insulation. Call me crazy. I thought, as I was installing these latches, that I had cut them a little close, but when I went upstairs and found the one that I did to latch less tightly undone, I was pleased. Let it be known that hook and eye latches are no match for cats. Crafty bastards.

Friday, I primed the whole space. I took a break after I'd finished the office to spend some time in the glorious sun, when ZOMG KITTIES! I opened my side door to find two little black kittens on my porch. They ran off to the front of the house to hide in the bushes and look at me with their big eyes and their fuzzy heads long enough to make me cave and put out a little bowl of food, which they ate up, om nom nom. When I came back out to take a picture of them for you, they went to hide in my downspout. Brave one first:
And then the other one:
I have not seen them since. Perhaps they found some other sucker. My squirrels spent all weekend staring at my porch yelling "get off my lawn" in their squirrelly language. Whatever happened to the little kittens, I haven't seen them since Friday. I think perhaps they saw the kitten hobo marks on my house, used me for food and left. Or they found their mother. More likely, they were eaten by a mountain lion. Circle of life.

I spent the rest of the day playing a silly game on my fancy new work laptop. And sleeping. So, I got up pretty early on Saturday, and managed to get the whole place finished by the early afternoon.
Done:

and Done:
I hope to never spend that much time standing on the narrow side of the stairway.

All the cats that were not eaten by mountain lions seem to like it, or have been intoxicated by the fumes:
I spent the rest of saturday napping and then going to have dinner and play Super Mario on Wii for several cursing-filled hours with friends, who I hope know that I really didn't mean that thing I said.

Sunday, I got up late, ate breakfast at Hy-Vee (that's the way we do it in Iowa, suckers), took up the tape and cleaned up. Well, started to clean up, in that I threw all the newspapers and sheets down the stairs, and then kicked them into the living room, where they remain.

In other news, I got new lenses for my Oakleys. I'm now prepared for any lighting conditions:
My mother will be happy to learn that I also renewed my Certificate of Deposit and looked into refinancing my mortgage.

In other other news, I didn't get a chance to talk about cicadas this year.
I love cicadas, don't get me wrong, I really love them, but I had to read all about their External Genitalia to be clear about what I can see in this photo. Which gave me the chance to read such choice information as, "the first valvulae are armed with serrated blade." Wait, WHAT?!

In other other other news, I've also added a large selection of eighties music to my iPod, and discovered that Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It" is a clear winner. Perhaps because I tried to test out my "what's love got to do with it" threshold for a time, and listened to it exclusively for a couple of days. I did not reach the threshold, but if my Tina Turner threshold is anything like my Cher threshold, I really should just leave it be. For the record, I've listened to "What's love got to do with it" three times while writing this post, and am about to put it on again.

Okay, back on track. Next up in the upstairs is the bookshelf. Take home lessons from the painting the half-story:
1. Give up on that half-full can of paint. It's not any good. I mean, you can use it, but you'll wish you hadn't.
2. You do, in fact, want to edge those oblique corners at the ceiling and knee-wall. It makes life easier.
3. I do, in fact, have mad cutting skills. Hott!
4. Brand new masking/painter's tape works way better than that roll that you've had in the garage for two years. Seriously!
5. ZOMG KITTENS!

Passive Voice Was Used

I'm pretty sure that if I move to Iowa City, I'll have to quit my day job because the 80s bluegrass coverband I start with Lorin will take up too much of my time.

I share this with you because I want you to know what I've been thinking about. Instead of contemplating the many witty things that I might use this forum for expressing, I've been pondering the bluegrass instrumentation of Sunglasses at Night.

This is the kind of thing that can distract you. For instance, I was distracted while pondering just this weekend while I was leafblowing. The air intake became blocked. Which caused the engine to overheat in a slightly smokey, totally brokey kind of way. And I had to get out my rake.

If you think that an 80s bluegrass cover band is the kind of thing that will only amuse me for so long, you obviously don't know me very well.

Here's another thing:
I can't tell you how upset it used to make me that I had to walk out of that door, east to the walkway, then down the walkway, the go back west. That is, until I started walking out the door, straight off the ledge, through the grass and then turning right onto the sidewalk. It was just such a waste!

Next week: I'm still lazy.

There are things I am in not in control of.

This weekend, I spent some quality time on Friday evening weeding my books and cleaning the upstairs of my house. It was soothing. I've got three boxes of books to get rid of, leaving me with five boxes of books and three boxes of binders in the closet. The entire upstairs, save the desk and the two chairs, fits into the closet. Which seems small at first.

I've got some other stuff to do upstairs. (I have things to do everywhere).
First, to secure the doors to the attic. Which the cats figured out how to open. (While I'm a supporter of my cats' ingenuity, I'm not a fan of them hanging out in the insulation. Unless they're killing things.)
Second, I've got to paint.
Third, I've got to build some bookshelves.
Maybe later, I've got to figure out if I want to put some climate control up there, what kind, and then do that.

I've set a timeline for that whole deal. But I'm not telling you.

If you're wondering why I've been so silent here, it's because I stopped caring a while back. So, maybe I'll try to work on that, too.

All Pointy

My dad is passing the torch. Not the literal torch, but rather the giving me all of his stuff because he lives in a small house without a garage torch. Each time he comes to visit me he brings me new delights. It gives new life to his stuff and gives me all what I need. I mean, why buy a new book about tablesaw techniques when you can have the one my dad bought in the seventies. The amount that his old stuff makes me happy only underscores the fact that I am just like my dad was at this age, only without the two children. and also many, many other differences. but basically the same.

So, among the things that my father gave me was a small grinding mill for the sharpening of no longer pointy things. And an entire book about sharpening things. Have I talked about this before? Well, it's very exciting.

Some people know this about me. Some of those people also work with me. Which led to the following interaction at work.

Colleague: Can you help me with something?
Me: Sure!
Colleague: Would you be able to sharpen a machete?
Me: YES!
Colleague: *pulls out machete and puts it on my desk*

I'm still not sure which part of that was the most awesome. I did learn one thing, don't piss off a biologist, never know what they've got up their sleeve.

Because the machete (MACHETE!!!!) was given to me at work, and I walk to work, I got to walk home carrying the machete. This is what I learned while carrying a machete home: holding a machete feeeels gooood. You just want to... swing it. yeah.

Dull machete:

That's a long knife.

I was so stoked about this project that I just went and did it as soon as I got home. Sharpen sharpen sharpen. I was seated almost level with the mill, which is a wet mill, and it'll leave a mark:

that's all the not pointy tiny metal parts. What's left is pointy, and also shiny!

Truth be told, it could be pointier. But I don't want to be creepy about it. and it gets the job done.

one not very hard swing will get you:


Holy crap, it felt so good. I had to run over to a nearby jungle and cut myself a path, which was pretty fun, but the machete could have been sharper.

I love being a resource.