Big Ouchie

Here's a series of pics showing one other improvement to the garage from the weekend. When we moved in, there was a short tool-hanging fixture. It was pretty handy, but...


...we had lots of other tools that needed to be hung, so...


...we installed a fixture that extends almost the full length of the western wall. Much better.


Also, we propped up the tomater plants with thin bamboo tripods.


Some squashes are starting to grow. We think those are the acorn variety, but who knows.



PS
This PS falls in the category of "whatever else comes up" mentioned at the bottom of yesterday's post.

At the end of Sue's last full day at the VA, she said goodbye to her colleagues, then walked to the car. Grover's back foot was hurt though. Oh no!


Looked like a pretty small ouchie from the outside (see the little nubby protrusion?), but...


...it was a big ouchie!



Three-point-five inches of ouchie.


Two thousand miles ago we had our tires replaced (on Wayne's Honda shop's instructions and so we would pass our state inspection) at Firestone around the corner from the house. And last night, the punctured tire had a little air in it, so we drove back home at about ten mph directly to Firestone. Our house and Firestone are only about two miles from the VA.

The tire was new enough that it held its shape pretty well on the drive - no damage to Grover's rim - and the tire was apparently under warranty. So they replaced it for free, and we only paid $17 for Firestone to discard the ruined tire. Pretty fortunate all considered.

PPS
It's the last day of internship! Woo hoo! Sue's sleeping in because she has to be in only at 10AM, and her real job today is to orient the new intern taking her place, have a goodbye lunch, and then this evening, we'll go to a program-wide hello-goodbye BBQ thingie.

And it's the last day of the fiscal year, so tomorrow the Advancement office starts a couple months of summer hours: 8-4. Can I get a woo hoo, too? Woo hoo!

Step-by-Step Migration

Happy Monday! Sue has two days left!

This weekend, Sue trimmed the front hedges, rehabbed a chair we got at Salvation Army and did a bunch of work work. I moved our tool/work room to the garage, moved the compost bin back to where it's supposed to be, posted a curb alert on Craigslist to get rid of some odds and ends, listened to lots of reggae on WRIU, and a few other things.

This is how the garage was looking. (Not half as bad as it used to be. Remember that? Yikes.) Because the painters kept their ladders and equipment in there, it had been full of stuff for about three months.


Grover to the rescue! He wants his garage back!





Note that we put one shelf way up high to store useable wood.





It may seem like a big drag to reorganize one's tool/work room. I mean, last summer, which seems like yesterday, we arranged our tool room downstairs. (At that time, Ma, you said something like, "You're going to have your tools right there?" It was good for a while, but now that the house is in better working order, your implied message rings clear. We want the basement to be a livable area.)

Thing is, organizing the garage was sort of exciting. Reason being, we asked Jonathan for a working design of how the basement could eventually be upgraded so we could perform a step-by-step migration toward a better set-up down there. The garage set-up was a critical step.

We were initially trying to squeeze a work/tool room into the basement, along with musical instruments, a bigger animation tent, the washer/dryer, eventually a half or full bath, maybe a twin bed and storage. Too much. Putting the work room and tools in the garage opens up the possibilities in the basement.

This week, we'll post a couple of Jonathan's floorplans (remember, his house's basement is very similar) along with pics of further garage enhancements, the chair Sue fixed up, Dylox-phobia and whatever else comes up. Cheers!

Rocket of Weirdness

As it turned out, our King was on a rocket of weirdness with inexhaustible fuel. I suspect now we'll start hearing new stories. Shocking.

In fifth grade, Mr. Straughn left the room for a moment, and my buddy Augusto got up on a table in the back of class, lowered his pants below his bare behind, then proceeded to do what he called a mooooonwalk.

Watch it. Watch it. Watch it! Too easy.

Have a good weekend, peoples.

PS
Pretty crazy. *The* icon of the 80s and a major icon of the 70s passing on in the same day. RIP.

Crawling Taller

Viney is crawling taller. First pic is from June 19, so that's only six days ago. Pretty impressive. Clicking on the second pic shows she's all the way at the top of the frame. A rate of about 3/4-inch per day?



And woah, with all the rain, the veggies, especially the squashes, are exploding.

MAY 17 = Day 0


JUNE 9 = Day 23


JUNE 25 = Day 39


This weekend, I need to get some supports for the tomatoes. They fell over once, and I built up some soil around the bases of their stalks. I guess the squashes, too, need somewhere to go, otherwise they'll be spilling out onto the lawn.

PS
A lady in my office found out the hard way, these bad boys carry Lyme disease: Study finds deer tick numbers up in state. She went for a run on Blackstone Boulevard, right in town. She didn't know why she was getting episodes of pounding headaches and chills and fevers over the course of a weekend, then she found a swollen tick. Ick! Apparently though, she caught it early enough. A regimen of antibiotics should do the trick.

To The "Yays"

Budget battles are going on all over the country. Rhode Island's House representatives today are voting on a bill that would repeal the flat tax alternative (apparently a break for about 2,000 high earners in the state) that was adopted 2006. The money saved would be used to help fund other state initiatives - like city and local distributions which are slated to be cut by $55 million under the Governor's austerity budget.

Also on the docket today, this time for the Senate, are votes on bills to make prostitution and sex-trafficking laws more strict. Way back when, in this blog's first-ever post, I mentioned (see #12) that indoor prostitution in Rhode Island was essentially legal. If today's votes go to the "yays", that would change.


And in other news, Sue has five days left of internship. Viney is doing well. The weather looks like it's slated to change for the better - more rain today, but some sun is on the horizon.

I have developed a plan to make the garage my work room; it's going to involve building another shelf and some racks to enable hanging stuff in the garage, then relocating all the tools from the basement, all the scrap wood/materials, etc. It should increase the livable area in the house, reduce clutter and dust, and provide for a better basement renovation plan - one that doesn't require squeezing in a workroom.

Happy hump day! (Can't believe it's almost July.)

Fence Install

As promised, pics of the fence install!





Here's the driveway side of the house. Remember that Chris the handyman dug those holes on the ninth of April. That's why those piles in the second pic below are flatter and covered with grass and weeds.





We still have to put the hinges and gate on/in, along with filling in those holes around the posts (which should make the project look a bit more complete). Trimming, as necessary, and affixing the post-caps will be the final step.

Then we'll plant some stuff at the base of the fence. Maybe some hastas and an azalea? Something evergreen anyway, but leaving enough open space to pile up snow from the driveway.

It was serendipity, but we're happy the height of the fence (not the posts) matches the height of the sill on the porch. See far right of the final pic.

For reference, the fence visible behind ours in the final pic is also cedar. So over time, the color of the fence will get grayer and browner, getting a few shades darker than the driveway cement.

PS
Sue has only six days left! I'm making brownies this morning for a Campaign-ending celebration at my boss' house, which is doubling as a baby shower for a lady in the office who will be having twin girls in August/September.

PPS
This stuff about the red-line metro accident is scary. Crazy.

Downvillage Section

At 6:45 Saturday morning, we picked up Drew and headed for Provincetown, MA. Anna, one of Drew and Sue's intern-mates, was hosting a party/BBQ at her mom's house out there. It's like at the end of the Earth.


It was great times. The weather held out for us, and we took a walk to some dunes, then down on the main drag in the downvillage section. Here's a short collection of pics from the trip.







One of the highlights (perhaps *the* highlight for Sue) of the trip was when Vito took a nap in Sue's arms. Vito is Dorothy and Tina's six-week-old Viszla puppy, who had only come to their house the day before we arrived.

At 6:45 Sunday morning, we drove back home and managed to fit in 75% of the installation of the new backyard fence. Yay! Pics tomorrow.

Chopstick Ladder

Happy Friday, folks. Sue has just eight days left of internship! She's transitioning into summer vacation mode - a happy-fying experience and well deserved.

Earlier this week (Tuesday actually) I reached my one-year anniversary at work, and so yesterday I celebrated by cooking up some Trader Joe's cornbread with dried cranberries for my colleagues. They liked it.

Sue finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last night. In her personal rank order, it was better than the rest of her book club books except for The Book Thief.

Doesn't look like we're going to get the fence installed this weekend, since it'll be raining and raining. RI natives are moaning and groaning about the weather. Apparently this has not been a normal spring. So so so much rain.

If you haven't seen this, it's pretty funny. "I got the sucker!"

Have great weekends!

PS
A little follow-up to yesterday's post. Last night we built a chopstick ladder for Viney using some iron(?) wire we got at a yard sale a couple months back.


Also, a picture probably wouldn't do it justice, and it's raining anyhow... the moss slurry is so swollen with water it's bulging out from the wall. Maybe I wasn't watering it enough? Perhaps next year I'll set up a sprinkler system on a timer, like they have at the grocery store.

Kindred Spirits

Okay so, the first part of this post is dedicated to cool D-Glas. Everyone remember this first pic below? The tiniest green shoot of growth?


Well, a couple weeks later the green shoot developed into this... a first solid creeping limb of a Belle of Woking clematis.


The Belle of Woking makes big white flowers. We have dubbed her Viney the Vine.

We think Viney will look nice creeping along the wall of the garage over the woodpile, so we planted her along the back of the yard by the garage. We plan to affix a coil of painted purple wire (nearly invisible hopefully) along the underside of the garage soffit (the underside of the gutter overhang).


While Planty the Plant grows a totally ridiculous 30 feet (see bottom of linked post) in a growing season, the Belle of Woking will creep about six to eight feet. Maybe we'll also grow it west along the top of the fence in back.

That's Viney down there at the base of the fence post. The fence posts are actually telephone pole crossbars. One of our neighbors used to work for the power company, and he installed the fence for a previous owner of our house for the long haul. He says those posts should last a half-century.


In other news, I have given up on the moss slurry sun. Even with the super-absorbant pillow-thingies in the mixture, it still doesn't hold enough moisture and keeps drying out. I took the protective umbrella off earlier in the week. Sniffle. Sniffle.

It's going to rain for eight days straight starting today apparently. So probably the slurry sun will be washed away. I expect I'll try a new strategy next spring - growing a broad sheet of moss, then cutting it away to make a design.


As you know, I have been cutting up comic books. Here's It Will Be PBR from March 27. Since that time I have cut up a bunch, and I have a bunch of pages ripped out, piled up for when I get the urge.

Well, we went to Salvation Army one day after work, and I grabbed an Ultimate Spider Man. The art is pretty amazing. I was going to tear it up and add it to the to-be-cut pile.

Tom, our painter, saw it when I returned home, and he started talking comic books to me. He was so excited that I was a fan. He gave me a pound (i.e. slapped me five) with a big smile on his face - kindred spirits! I couldn't tell him the truth - that I planned to desecrate the book and lots of other books to make collages.

So I told him I wasn't much of a fan, just liked to look at artwork to learn what I could about the techniques - all true. I ended up lending him the Spider Man book that day.

I have the comic book cut-outs on the floor of the yellow art room. One day a couple weeks ago, he was working alone (his partner, Mike, was at his son's eighth grade graduation), and Tom got stranded on his scaffolding. I'm not sure if his ladder slipped and fell or what happened, but he crawled in through the guest bedroom window and walked downstairs. As he walked by the art room he saw the cut-outs lying on the floor. Sounds like he was impressed and wanted to support the project. The next day he brought me a stack of comic books. Mostly they are sets of three... complete mini-series of different characters.

I read three Superman vs. Predator books two nights ago. Last night, I fell asleep looking at Batman: Outlaws.