Tooth Jewelry

Hello, peoples! We hope everyone is doing well, putting together some exciting plans for the weekend.

I took yesterday off work, since I had to visit the dentist and get some other things done around the house. We've got fun family in town this weekend, and next weekend's booked, too.

I'm headed back to the dentist at lunchtime today to get a filling, and it sounds like the doc wants me to get braces (again). Apparently my bite is so bad it'll wear away my teeth in an unnatural way over time. Soon you may see me wearing some fancy tooth jewelry, but... hmm... maybe I should wait for Obama's promised healthcare reform.

So I completed my first day of study-buddying on Tuesday. I met for about an hour with a young lady working on an application essay for a college scholarship. She recently made the honor roll at her high school, so I was surprised that she can't spell simple words or conjugate common verbs.

This is the final day of Sue's second rotation. Hooray for Suester! Tomorrow is mostly out-processing and training for Rotation #3.

Here's my latest cartoon.

PS
We can't wait for the end of winter. At least RI's winter hasn't been as bad as...


...it gets in the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico.

And if you haven't seen this, do take a minute to watch it.

Quick-O-Change-O

Here's another quick-o-change-o project from the weekend. We're working on replacing some of our overhead light fixtures. White wire to white wire, black wire to black wire. This IKEA fixture is simple but (we think) attractive.




We have some original doorknobs and cabinetry, but sadly, our place only has one or two original light fixtures. All the rest are the least expensive Home Depot styles. Not sure who decided on that crash course of action, but I'm guessing the replacement of the light fixtures coincided with the dangerous double wiring of the upstairs.

Anyway, Sue completed the final challenging Monday of her rotation yesterday. Yay for Sue! That was a *major* milestone, so if you get a chance, email her some congratulations.

This afternoon, I'll serve as a volunteer tutor for the first time, and last night, we received our shipment of garden seeds! (We've got more veggie and flower seeds than this, and Julie has a motherlode.)


We've also saved a bunch of different kinds of hot pepper seeds over the past couple months. So, if all goes well, we should have a hot harvest.


PS
Frozen credit summarized in an animated thesis project. Pretty neat and pretty head-shake-making.

One Regret

We've only got one regret from the weekend. We were all slated to install the front screen/glass door on Sunday morning, but it started raining. Power tools and rain don't mix so well. We did, however, reaffix our coat rack to the wall and upgrade our coat hanging capacity. That was a pretty worthwhile improvement.



The coats were too heavy for the sheetrock walls, even though we used these spring-loaded anchors that expand behind the sheetrock.


So it was time to reengineer.



The hardest part of the job was trying to find studs in which to screw the coat rack. As it turns out, the old half bathroom mirror was the problem. I know that makes no sense, but check it out.

If you look at Floorplan Finally, you can see that the right side of the half bath on the ground floor is adjacent to the stairwell to the basement. If you look at It Ain't Pretty you can see what that wall looks like from the bathroom side.

Because of the inset mirror (not pictured), there are no studs in that part of the wall. The mirror was surrounded by wood, but with no wood running behind it.

That's why we had to add the supporting board behind the coat rack itself; so we could span the distance between the distant studs that are available in that wall.

I had to drill a bunch of holes in the wall looking for studs, thinking the studfinder was broken, before I figured out what was going on.





The black thingamabob is our massive, 1980s garage door opener.

Sue was back and forth to IKEA a couple times, and we have more to come this week on weekend home improvements.

We also attended a Mardi Gras zydeco dance party in Cranston on Saturday which doubled as a costume party. Fun times. Great, great people watching.

(When we were house-hunting last year in the spring, the Cranston side of the Providence-Cranston border became our second location of choice due to the prices. Having driven through that part of town late on Saturday night, we are very glad we landed where we did.)




Happy Monday!

Off the Wall

Happy Free-I-Day, team! We hope everyone has fun weekend plans!

Sounds like Sue is going to spend a good chunk of the weekend working on school stuff. I'll be working as well, but mostly on the house. Our coat rack fell off the wall, so it needs to be put back up. (Our new studfinder doesn't work so well on the old thick wallboard in the house, but we will prevail.) We've got a place in the kitchen that lets cold air into the house, and I'll see about installing our new screen door out front. Maybe Jonathan can help.

On top of that, I'll be finishing up a new cartoon about living in Providence, and figuring out how to rev up my computer so it can handle the massive animation files I've been playing with at night. A three-minute test file ballooned to 2.9G earlier this week, giving my computer a chokehold. Considering some sort of external hard-drive. In other news, I'll start volunteering as a tutor next Tuesday.

Here're a couple recent pics of places in Providence...

Don't Slip

Sue's short stay-cation is complete, and she says she definitely enjoyed herself. On top of some rest and relaxation, she got a bunch of work done. Brandon, you may be wondering... she finished season one of Flight of the Conchords and loved it.

Providence Mayor Cicilline delivered his State of the City address last night. His 2008 speech was one of the reasons we determined to buy a house here. He seems like a smart guy with some good ideas. And it sounds like one day he may be Governor, if his approval ratings don't slip too much.

It's 20 outside. We're going to get more snow/sleet his evening. Ick.

Happy hump day!

Sue-nami Part II

Yesterday was Sue-nami Part II. Check it out!

BEFORE



AFTER



She recovered the love-seat cushions with fancy upholstery fabric (on sale at Jo-Ann). Her new covers fit snug-as-a-bug around the old cushions, and they make a big difference in the room. 'Mazing!

Sue-nami

The Suester has today and tomorrow off (but I have work... booooo), and she's enjoying some well-deserved sleeping-in at the moment. This weekend, we saw some friends, did the obligatory chores, and travelled up to Boston last night for Nick's birthday celebration. We missed karaoke, but hope/expect it was a blast for all who could attend. We also took care of Lila the poodle next door this weekend; she's twelve now, but she's still got a bit of mischievous puppy in her.

The big news of the weekend was that Sue got an overwhelming urge to spiff up the house, and she spent most of the day on Saturday making curtains for what is currently the TV/art/yellow room. Some of you may remember that the room was bright glossy yellow when we bought the house, and so far we've left it. We're not sure if it'll stay that color, but here're our throwback curtains...






You may not believe it, but the last picture is the most indicative of the saturation and hue of the color of the room. Gotta love it.

I'm a big fan of the curtains, but Sue's not so sure about them. Now she's amped up to re-cover the 1950s love-seat we've got in there and to potentially repaint the room. It's great, all I have to do is stay out of the way of the interior design Sue-nami!

Happy Presidents Day, everyone.

Ninth Month

Happy Friday the 13th, and happy early Valentines Day! We arrived in Providence on June 2008's Friday the 13th, so this is the first day of our ninth month!

Here's the answer to ProPil Pop Quiz #6. (Hopefully this works. Never tried to upload video before.) Meg guessed closest!



In honor of the Year of the Ox.


Three issues are critical for the apparatus to work. It needs to be sturdy so the camera isn't jostled during "filming". There has to be enough generalized light (meaning, light for the camera to work with no flash, but no light shining down on the workspace, which would create glare), and it needs to allow access to work beneath/within.

It started like this (below), but the mesh wasn't sturdy enough.


The hole saw was the scariest power tool I've ever used. The resistance from the wood was extreme, maybe because the blade wasn't sharp enough. Eventually it worked though.




Then the light was good, but on the far side in this picture, the curved light fixture was right in my face as I worked through the ox video.


So last night I was at Wal-mart to find some clearance-priced holiday lights, and I removed the offending curved light. It's working pretty well now. More to come.

So Very Wobbly

Yesterday was fantastic outside, so the freaks came out. Only in Providence...




When we got home from work, we flipped over the dining room table - a nice old butcher block table. Remember how we got it from Craig's List, and once we got it home and put it together, it was so very wobbly?

Well, we had been planning to buy some oak to cut and fit underneath the table to reinforce it. We were not looking forward to it, because we're no carpenters and doing something like that at all is much much different from doing it well, if you get my drift.

So anyway, we recently got this new ratchet set. Many times in the process of fixing up the house, things have been harder than we imagined. Tightening the big screws last night did the trick - a fix much *easier* than we imagined! The table is sturdy again!


It's sort of hard to tell, but the critical screws were the ones that connected the top of the "T", which supports the tabletop, to the legs of the table. Those screw-heads are inset, so they don't stick out. Since we didn't have the appropriate tools when we put the table together initially, we could only tighten them with a wrench, and apparently they weren't tight enough. The ratchet was necessary in this case.



We tightened down all the rest of the screws, too, and now the table and benches are good as new. Yay!

PS
We updated Espresso Oyster. Unfortunately, when we were out West, the fungi started growing tentacles. They spores should have developed more like mounds with flaps. The instructions said it grows tentacles when it doesn't have enough air or light. But we weren't home to rectify the situation. Back to the drawing board.

Some Challenges

The training session last night lasted ninety minutes. It was worthwhile and thought provoking. Attendees were mostly female, and all but three were older. There's some background and reference checking that needs to go on, but if that all goes smoothly, I'll commit to volunteer as a tutor/homework buddy for the rest of this semester and through the fall semester at the local high school.

At the session, they handed out a Kids Count profile for Providence which shows Providence's child statistics versus Rhode Island's. Here are some of the numbers, with Rhode Island numbers in parentheses.

Percentage of children in single parent families (2000): 51% (30%)

Median household income (2000): $26,867 ($42,090)

Percentage of children living in families below the federal poverty line (2000): 40.1% (16.5%)

Percentage of births to mothers with less than a high school diploma (2007): 28% (15%)

Rate of births per 100 to teens ages 15 to 17 (2002-2006): 4.7 (1.9)

Percentage of children who are English language learners (ELL) (2007): 16% (5%)

Percentage of 4th graders with reading proficiency (2007): 36% (64%)

Percentage of 8th graders with reading proficiency (2007): 37% (62%)

Percentage of 4th graders with math proficiency (2007): 26% (54%)

Percentage of 8th graders with math proficiency (2007): 24% (48%)

The place definitely has some challenges.

PS
We're thankful it's going to be 54-degrees this afternoon. Happy Hump Day, peoples!

Espresso Oyster

Sue had a fun rehearsal last night. Her homework before next week's class is to choreograph a Turkish opening. I'll do my best to report back to you on her progress.

She's psyched because she's got Monday off for the holiday, and she took Tuesday off because she could. Four day weekend! Well-deserved, so woo hoo for Suester!

Today after work I'll be oriented to and trained by an organization called Volunteers in Providence Schools (VIPS). I don't know how it all works, but if the training thingy tonight goes well, and it seems like a worthwhile organization, I'll become a tutor or mentor for a high school student in town. I think my responsibilities would be once-per-week or twice-per-month after school. VIPS' office is sort of close to where I work.

And now... our most recent fungal adventure... espresso oyster mushrooms! We saved up Sue's coffee grounds in the freezer for 6-8 weeks. Then we inoculated the grounds, tamped the mixture down, and watered it. How do you think we did? I'll post the results on this post at some point this week.

A Short Stint

Happy Monday!

I was out in NY for a short stint. Thursday night was a dinner for a planning committee, of which I am a part, that is putting together a fundraising conference in the summer. Friday featured a day-long planning meeting hosted by Columbia University.

On Friday night, I stayed in Brooklyn with Alex the A-bomb, AKA RufusQ. The Hackworths and JonJon were in the mix, and I'm glad they seem to be doing fine. I left early in the morning on Saturday for a drive upstate to spend some time with Brandini, Jess, and the three tykes (William, Chloe and Jackie).

Sue took a bus from Providence to New York on Saturday to meet up with us. The bus stalled ten+ times, then started smoking out the back, and at New Haven they changed buses, having lost about two hours of the day to the fiasco. She did get a chance to quickly have lunch with D-Glas, too.

Here're some pics... the first is the main "green" at Columbia (I think) from the steps of the Low Library. Pretty swanky place.


A-bomber doing a radio interview with a cool designer named Jimmy who gave us a Corona and told a couple solid stories about his life in fashion.


One part of an over-the-top, transparently dumb advertising campaign in the subway terminal.


Chloe with plate.


Chloe excited about plate.


Feel better soon, Jackie!


That's William in the back.