Woe-Is-Me Emails

The dragonboat races got cancelled Friday afternoon. There were all sorts of woe-is-me emails flying around, but the Dirty Oars did rally to throw some fun parties on Friday night and Saturday all day. There was a lot of rain Saturday, but the wind was negligible.

Instead of dumpling eating and furiously rowing, we got a lot of work done in the basement. Here's how we affixed the PVC back to (or into) the hole in the ground.









More to come. Tomorrow's post is about mold and mold mitigation (the hard way).

PS
Woah... the last day of August. Crazy.

All The Races In

Happy Friday, everyone!

Our Saturday of dragonboat racing, dumpling eating and bloody mary drinking may work out, and it may not. I mean, they're talking about 40mph sustained winds now. Who knows. Maybe Danny'll slow down enough that we'll get all the races in?


We'll let you guys know how it turns out on Monday.

In other news, Sue's shoulder continues to slowly heal, but it's still hurting. And I made an appointment to get an estimate at the window shop down the street. They're coming by on Monday.

We've got a cracked window pane in the half bathroom, and a cracked pane in the basement as well. On top of that, most of our windows on the ground floor have insulation that's failed or that's in the process of failing. It's sort of hard to tell from this picture, but see how the insulation is twisted?


Modern windows have two (or more) panes. In between the panes, they hold inert gas, which serves as insulation. Then there's also a strip of insulation, which helps the windows insulate. Our insulation strips are compromised. The basement windows are the worst. Check out the warping.


Maybe we'll just get the cracked panes fixed, but who knows. There's a tax credit for improving your home's energy efficiency, so maybe we'll see if we can take advantage of that. Windows can get pretty expensive. Installed, the cheapest ones are $199 at this store.

Ah well, have splendid weekends, friends. We've got the electrician coming, the windows estimate, plus more on the ceilings and basement next week. We may actually have a decent plan for how we're going to do the walls down there, but it's going to take some work.

PS
Turn down the volume on this inventive stop-action piece.

Some Jeopardy Now

FIfty bucks an hour is what our electrician said, but he seems smart and reliable. He'll be coming next week. I have to get a fan for the attic. He did, by the way, say that he doesn't think the overhead fixture in the kitchen was ever burnt out. He suggested that all the blackened-ness was probably just dirt and dust.

Our dragonboat racing on Saturday is in some jeopardy now. Eek: Tropical storm could bring rain, flooding to RI Saturday.


Happy Thursday!

Not For Nuthin

So this is the last week of summer hours for me (this year), which is pretty crazy. Where did the summer go? As if on cue, the weather has gotten cooler, if not less humid.

We've got an electrician coming in a few minutes to look over our electrical project list. Hopefully he works for $40 an hour or less. Fingers crossed.

We learned a new Rhode Island phrase last night: "not for nuthin." Not for nuthin translates roughly to "not to mention it", eventhough if you are saying not for nuthin, it means you *are* in fact going to mention whatever it is imminently.

PS
He was surely no saint, but it seemed to me like he ended up being a pretty good man by the last stage of his life.


PPS
Last night I responded to recent comments. Sorry for the delay, and thanks for your support!

Blackened-ness

This past weekend we also wanted to replace the overhead light in the kitchen.




No luck. The old fixture is too small for our new light, and though we can't be sure, that blackened-ness inside the fixture may suggest a previous explosion or electrical arcing of some kind. Scary.

We've needed an electrician for a few other projects, like putting an exterior lamp on the driveway side of the house, so we'll just add this to the list. We have a guy coming tomorrow morning to give us an estimate.

PS
Yesterday the Governor announced upcoming furlough days. R.I. government shutdowns ahead.

Three/Four Useful Things

Happy Monday, peeps. It's a tad cooler here today, thankfully, and though he threatened, Bill didn't even sprinkle on us here.

Last weekend, Sue painted a good part of the kitchen. (See Now Sparkle.) It looked a lot better, but we wanted to add some sort of woodwork to the walls and under the cabinetry, since there was nothing there but old glue. Remember?


To do this well, we had to get a new saw. I haven't bought a new power tool in a while, and I figured, I could borrow it from Jonathan or Chris, but this is a very handy tool and I'll need it for fixing up the basement (and most other wood-related projects I tackle in the future).

A miter saw does three/four useful things...


...it chops down, so you can secure a plank and ensure a nice perpendicular cut across the grain of the plank. It can cut at an angle across the width of the plank - think of a door frame and how the piece across the top meets neatly at a 45-degree angle with the pieces that run down the sides of the door opening. It can also cut at an angle across the depth of the plank, which is what we wanted to do, to have two pieces of baseboard meet evenly at the 90-degree angles in the various corners of our kitchen walls and cabinetry.

(The fourth useful thing is that it can cut both at an angle across the width and depth of a plank simultaneously, but that's for some pretty specialized projects I guess.)

Anyway, so we had to measure lots of stuff, and carefully cut lots of pieces of wood. And measure again, and cut again. It helps to have a work bench - which we don't - so you don't have to squat in the driveway a couple hundred times as you're doing your cutting and measuring...


...and measuring and cutting.


Once we got the right lengths cut, then we sanded down some of the ends so they transitioned nicely. Our door frames are pretty thin, and our baseboard planks were more substantial, so they would have jutted out a little bit had we not sanded.


Once we had sanded and nailed the boards into place, we were ready to paint them, but we realized...


... whoever owned the house before had only painted some of the wood paneling in the kitchen. We decided to paint all of it to brighten up the room.



AFTER





It looks a lot better, but if we stay in the house past 2011, we'll likely gut the kitchen and start again in there.

While we were at it, we gave the bathroom woodwork and the woodwork in the side entry a fresh coat of white semi-gloss. Success!

On top of that we had some great dinners with friends, watched some of the track and field championships at Ri Ra downcity on Saturday, and went for a couple decent runs.

Hope you had nice weekends!

Which Ones Aren't

TGIF, friends. The ProJo is talking t-storms today, but the radar doesn't look too bad...


...but Bill could make things a little exciting. (Glad we graded the yard and got the gutters fixed.)


Anyway, I've got an early dentist appointment. I've got to eat and then get on my bike. Just a cleaning this time, but next year I'm going to need another root canal. As Liz Lemon would say, "Blerg."

We had our final dragonboat practice last night. Fun times. Did I ever tell you our team name? It's a little offensive, but all in good fun... we're the Dirty Oars. Apparently the festival crowd typically loves us. Our team t-shirts are less shameful than you might expect.

When you're rowing you find out which parts of your upper body are working and which ones aren't. My shoulder is healed. Sue's shoulder is not. (See Heels Over Head if you didn't know she hurt her shoulder.) She's irked.

We hope you guys have great weekends planned. We're gearing up for some painting and ceiling patching and baseboard installation.

PS
19.19

Captain Apollo

I said yesterday that the big news in town was about the Moderate Party of RI's new legitimacy. I forgot to mention that Richard Hatch...


...no, not Captain Apollo from Battlestar Galactica! *This* Richard Hatch, the first winner of Survivor...


...is back in jail, and that's also front page news.

Remember how we live across the street from a National Guard building? Well, the building houses the 103rd Field Artillery Battalion, and yesterday the Governor announced that many in the battalion will be going overseas again - some to war zones. The link talks about one of those Guardsmen, and it says "approximately 90 members of the 103rd Field Artillery Battalion [will be deployed to] Kuwait [for] one year."

On a totally different and very sad note, I called our electrician on Tuesday. We want to put a light on the side of the house - now that it's painted - add a light and fan in the attic, put some additional outlets and lighting in the basement. One of his numbers was disconnected. The voicemessage on the other one was one of those computerized voices telling you what number you called before the beep. He always returned my calls right away, so I got a bad feeling when he didn't call back.

Yesterday I searched for obituaries and found this: Police ID Warwick man killed in motorcycle accident.

PS
Sorry for the downbeat vibes this morning. Stay cool, peoples!

PPS

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Aluminum Foil Hat

It's been hot and humid for the past week - up in the 90s - but it's set to cool down next week thankfully. For those of us without AC, the few hot weeks of summer are sort of tough times.

I'm working my way through In Defense of Food. It's a fast read, but those of you who know me well know that reading things like it really get my blood pressure up. Sue and I are kind of worried that after I'm done I'll end up wearing a bigger aluminum foil hat than ever before. So it goes. Damn the Western diet.

In the part I'm reading now, Pollan makes an interesting hypothesis - that smelling the flowers of ripening fruits and vegetables (in the weeks before fruits and vegetables ripen) and seeing those fruits and vegetables ripen over time may trigger changes in the gut (the development of enzymes, for example) that prepare the body to eat those foods and be nourished by them. Without that chance to see what's coming, the human body is unprepared.

Anyway, the biggest news around town is that a third party, the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, is now on the ballot in the 2010 election cycle. There was a court case, and then at Whole Foods a few weeks back, Sue and I signed the petition in support of their legitimacy.

Happy hump day, folks!

PS
Sue's next book club book is The House at Riverton.

Now Sparkle

Sue's project this past weekend was painting the kitchen. She didn't have to "paint the kitchen" exactly, since the amount of wall that needed to be painted was relatively small - what with the cabinetry and backsplash covering about 75% of the wallspace. But the white walls in the kitchen were looking very dingy. She decided on the same yellow we put on the walls of the living room.

(After being dropped a few times, and being employed in various dusty, grimy and sometimes wet indoor and outdoor projects, I think my poor iPhone camera is going south.)

We sort of hesitated to put time and energy into the kitchen, because it really needs to be gutted and renovated whole-hog. To start with, the tile countertop is goofy. (See Grout Out from January for a reminder.) The fake-stone linoleum floor and backsplash are pretty ugly. The cabinets don't all stay closed when it's humid out. We'd like to have a small dishwasher in there. Etc.

Working on it without an overall plan probably means redoing our improvements, which is sort of a waste, but we're only going to remodel the kitchen if we stay past 2011. If we have to move somewhere else to get Dr. Sue on the tenure track in two years, we'll leave the kitchen remodeling to the next owner.

That being said, the new paint job (and a couple other things pictured at the bottom of this post) Sue thinks will tide us over, whether or not we eventually remodel it.

BEFORE


AFTER


BEFORE


AFTER


She also repainted the inside of the back door and the kitchen radiator cover. Both now sparkle.

Next modest items of business: installing baseboard moulding. When we moved in there was flexible/peeling black plastic moulding there, which we threw away...


...and replacing the overhead light.


PS
While Sue hates the popcorn ceiling we've got all over the ground level and upstairs of the house, it's a little disconcerting that some of it is falling down in large chunks. Sort of like the exterior paint, we're not sure if it's the house with the problem or if the popcorn stuff was applied poorly or what.

This is from the dining room.


More to come on that issue.

Annoying Pipe

Happy Monday, ProPil readers.

The weekend flew by like a... well, it flew by really fast. We took on two big house projects. Sue's project will be covered in tomorrow's post.

This is going to be a hard one, since it's difficult to illustrate what I did, but stick with me. As I had hoped, I put a bunch of time into the expansion of the basement this weekend. Here's how we left the project after the Bench and Wall Demolition a few weeks ago.


From this point, I still needed to cut away about a foot of wall on the right (where the broom is). The radon reduction system (that 3" white PVC pipe coming out of the concrete foundation) is in the middle of everything - big problem - so it needed to be rerouted somehow, and I needed to create a frame for the new nook walls.

So here's a short series from the right side of where the new nook will be. I had to show it from this view, so you get an idea of how the radon PVC was (and will be) altered.


It's sort of hard to tell, but can you see how the radon system has two big pipes coming out of the foundation - one pipe rises from the lower lefthand part of the picture, then connects with the troublesome pipe coming out of the middle of the new nook, then carries all the bad radon-infested air to the far wall and out of the house (left to right across the back and top part of the picture above)?

(The pipe with the black at the bottom is actually a support pipe, making sure the beam running across the middle of the ground floor doesn't collapse.)

So I measured things out and put tape on the floor where the walls will go. Then I turned off the radon system and started cutting through the PVC. Eek. I had to buy five right angles, a "T" connection and 10 feet of extra PVC for the project, plus PVC pre-glue cleaner and PVC glue.


To reroute them, the pipe in the foreground now turns to the right once it gets past the support pipe, in order to go down the side and around the back of of the new room. Big success there.

Look what happens to that annoying pipe that was in the middle of everything. Chopped in half and bent. Once the project is complete, it will rise straight up 31", then turn to be parallel to the ground and go to the back of the new nook (left to right then up where it will meet the T connection and the other pipe behind the yet-to-be-completed wall).

The part that rises 31" will be hidden in the leg of a custom desk I'll be building. The part parallel to the ground will be hidden under the front edge of the desk's workspace.

The framing happened next.



Here's how it looks from the front angle. That annoying pipe will be coming up from that hole in the foundation.

BEFORE


AFTER


You can see the bottom of the T connection facing downward protruding from the pipe running right to left across the top of the picture and behind the frame.

The book I had told me to build all the framing on the ground, then stand up the frame and nail it into place. I didn't do that, because when I measured, the frame would not be an exact rectangle - the foundation and ceiling are not parallel.

Instead I just affixed the vertical posts of the frame directly to the rafters, like whoever built the wall in the basement in the first place.

Have good weeks!

PS
We won our soccer game. It was a scorcher this weekend.

Heels Over Head

Happy Friday, peoples! Hope everyone is well. After a day of rain yesterday, the weather has cooled down significantly. Feels like fall is coming on, but I'm guessing we'll get some scorchers later this month. Temperatures in town haven't hit ninety this summer, which is abnormal (and abnormally nice for those with only one wall AC unit).

This Sunday night I'll play in the last soccer match of the summer season down at Cranston stadium. My team lost a playoff last Sunday while Sue and I were family reunioning, so we're in the consolation game.

The fall season's registration is now open, but I don't expect to sign up. While it's been fun to play again, A) I'm not going to improve in this format, and B) playing with a wide range of players with wide-ranging skill levels is a bit dangerous - as evidenced by my being flipped heels over head in the air by a bad tackle a month ago. My shoulder is still a wee tad tender.

In the place of soccer, I'm goofing around with running again. I've gone through phases over the years, and maybe now that my schedule is pretty regular, I can set up a training regimen that works. Wish me luck.

I don't think I mentioned that Sue also hurt her right shoulder. As a matter of fact, the night before we left for Botswana we visited the urgent care clinic on North Main. Sue had fallen off her bike that afternoon, and she caught herself with her right arm, twisting her shoulder painfully. Well, it's still aching. The rowing last night didn't hurt it, but she's still having trouble carrying groceries, putting her bag in the car, and other dumb things that you would never think about unless you hurt your shoulder. She's icing and taking Advil, but if it still hurts in September, it'll be time to get an MRI. She's not pleased.

Ah well... enjoy your weekends, friends and family. We'll be down in the basement trying to make a nice room out of it. Cheers!

PS
RISD - Providence's world-renowned downtown art and design school - is experiencing some upheaval, but don't you love news stories written by reporters who know nothing more than people on the street? It seems like 50-75% of the stories in the ProJo these days are printed before anyone at the news desk took the time to make a phone call to set-up an interview. RISD president Maeda to address concerns.

PPS
Congratulations to ever debonair James Allen Decker on making it to the one-month mark on planet Earth: DeckerChronicles.

Five Dimensions

Morning, folks. Tonight we'll participate in our second dragonboating practice up in Pawtucket as long as the weather's okay. The actual race is at the end of the month.

Remember when I promised ProPil Pop Quiz #8, but then I figured out the answer on my own? Well, I'm glad I grabbed the four o'clock flower seeds from that garbage can out back of our place in Dupont Circle. It appears there were two different varieties of four o'clock seeds in that baggie, and I like them both.

It's hard to tell, but the leaves of the lighter specimen are mottled light and darker green. Neat! They both have trumpet-like flowers. The orange ones on the darker plant have specks of red in them.



This business of figuring out how to make the front and back yards look nice is harder than it seems - a worthy artistic challenge. Each plant must be understood well in five dimensions - sun tolerance, height, circumference, color, and maturity/time. (Ignoring water needs and bloom time.)

I put the four o'clocks in the ground still in their plastic pots, so I could move them if I didn't like them. The other reason is that I read they send hard-to-remove spring-sprouting tubers into the soil that can infiltrate a whole plot.

New Nook

Sue's new gig seems like it'll be a great opportunity for her to learn some new things and pursue her own research themes. She's got her own desk, and a bit oddly, it's got a Mac on it for her to use. Macs are not designed with statistics in mind, though I suppose they can handle data sets.

Yesterday the head of my department announced his upcoming retirement. Since we finished the campaign (for $1.4B) more than a year early, it's an appropriate time for him to move on, but also, he said he's the longest serving development chief at any of his counterparts. I think he worked at Northwestern before Brown. Sounds like the university will be putting together a search committee.

In other news, the top health official in Rhode Island predicts that 30-50% of the state will contract swine flu over the next 4-6 months. Eek.

I'm gearing up mentally to do some more work in the basement this weekend. It's a madhouse down there. The first things that need to be done are rerouting our PVC radon system and framing out the new walls which will expand the floor space down there. The PVC is going to fit tightly underneath the front edge of a new desk that will be built in the new nook. So first I have to figure out how tall to make the desk.

PS
Sometimes graffiti is goofy. Sometimes it's poorly executed. But sometimes, and more often in a place with so many artists, graffiti is just splendid. This isn't the best picture, since this "vandalism" is at a fenced construction site, but hopefully you can see it and agree that it's pleasantly appealing. (Click to expand.)


I think this rises to the level of street art even though the construction guys seem to be slowly ripping it down.

First Day of Postdoc

Good morning, cool peoples. This past weekend, Sue and I travelled nine hours (each way) by car to Deep Creek Lake, MD to enjoy some family reunion time with my clan. It was fun times. People are generally healthy and happy which is great to see. The Armstrong boys (my cousins) are sprouting up like bean stalks.

In other news, the Bad Verbs' backyard garden is exploding.




See the cukes above?

We do have a bit of a mold/mildew problem with a couple of our squash plants...


...but squashes are still coming.

Last Thursday, Sue officially received her final transcript from American. She is a doctor. And today is Sue's first day of postdoc. After five weeks of vacation, she starts working just a mile away from home at a hospital on beautiful grounds in the ritzy part of Providence's tiny close-in suburbs. I'm hoping the pace of the work is a big reward for her, allowing her the flexibility to pursue exactly the type of research she enjoys.

PS
Thanks for your continued support. I responded to you, Corinne, at Angry Leopard.

Brandini, thanks. We were glad the pics came out as well as they did. If there's a next time, we'll try to bring along a more powerful zoom lens.

Hacker, in Top Trip Pics, those are ground squirrels - super cute - but *these* are African prairie dogs for you... otherwise known as meerkats.


Apparently Meerkat Manor is filmed in South Africa, near the southern border of Botswana.