Post #300

In yesterday's PS, I implied that today was a big day for ProPil, and it really is. If you add up the numbers in the archive at right, you'll see... this is Post #300!


Check this out: Date Duration Calendar. If you want to find out how long precisely you've been married, or at your current job, or since you graduated from high school, or... how long you've been living in the Ocean State, you can use that nifty site.

From and including: Friday, June 13, 2008
To, but not including : Wednesday, September 30, 2009

It is 474 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date, or 1 year, 3 months, 17 days excluding the end date.

Alternative time units:
474 days can be converted to one of these units:
40,953,600 seconds
682,560 minutes
11,376 hours
67 weeks (rounded down)

So... yay! And since we haven't done this in a while, let's check in with our handy list of improvement projects:

1. Paint upstairs interior
2. Install front screen/glass door
3. Fix dining room table
4. Install light on side of house (contract)
5. Grade land around house
6. Install backyard fencing
7. Replace front stoop (contract)
8. Install porch door and stairs to backyard
9. Paint exterior (contract)
10. Remove doorbell switches and chime
11. Plant creeping bushes in the backest part of the backyard
12. Install attic pulldown
13. Install additional storage space/flooring in attic
14. Ceiling patching
15. Redo/finish basement
16. Redo kitchen
17. Refinish/repair wood floors (contract)
18. Repair master bedroom closet floor
19. Repair gutters (contract)
20. Install flashing on porch roof (contract)
21. Replace upstairs bathroom fan (contract)
22. Clean/paint radiators
23. Redo porch floor
24. Install side glass/screen door
25. Replace upstairs bathroom sink

Remember that Green = Progress, and the last time we did this was June 12th, on our Ocean State Anniversary.

For #6, we still have to fix the gate post to the garage with some masonry screws and hang the gate. On #13, we got lights and an outlet installed in the attic, in preparation for doing some sawing, hammering and drilling up there. To finish #14, I just have to put another coat or two of ceiling paint mixed with styrofoam-type stuff (that project got lost in the shuffle, so maybe I'll show it tomorrow). On #15, the basement, I'm taking a little break, but I'll begin again in earnest in mid-October. The rest will get tackled, we suppose, in due time.

Thanks for your continued support!

PS

I have been trying to keep up with recent comments. Relatedly, if you're interested, Monday's post about the dragonboat races earned ProPil an advertising comment from one of the slaves (one of Rhode Island's famed Hashers). Their site is a little baudy and implicitly profane, so if you choose to check it out, consider yourself warned.

Know Why?

Happy Tuesday, peeps.

We've got another 5K this weekend, so we've been ramping up our running regimen heading into it. This morning we jogged to the track at Hope High (1 mile each way) and then did some higher speed exercises. Sue did four 400s today. I did four 200s. Hopefully we can beat our times from the JCC race a few weeks ago.

In other news, VIPS has still not called/written me back. I may have found some flat file cabinets on Craigslist, and this weekend I picked up polyurethane, more baseboards and more wainscoting for the basement. I think I have most of what I need to make it nice down there.

PS
Beyond the fact that it'll be the last day of September, tomorrow is a big day for ProPil. Do you know why?

PPS
David Brooks in the NYT has been on a provocative intellectual tear since this most recent presidential election cycle. Sometimes he's been off, but most times I think he's tracing the main vein to the motherlode. His opinion today is worth a read: The Next Culture War.

In Tight Sync

The races this weekend were awesome. The weather was great, and the Dirty Oars are a fun-loving group.

It looks like this from the shore, as the big boats get lined up.


There are 19 people in each boat - 16 rowers, a captain (steering with a big rudder oar), a drummer (to keep the rowing rhythm), and a flag catcher (who grabs a flag from a pole in the water at about the 75% mark of each race).


If you're a good team, all your paddling is in tight sync. (Click the pics to zoom in if you like, and if you do, you can see in the pic below that somehow the leading team's flag is in the water.)


Our first race was at 9:30ish. We finished in 1min 43secs, but we were missing four of our rowers. At about noon, we won a race by 1/10th of a second - with a full boat and a time of 1:29. That earned us a spot in the best heat in the final race.

We were psyched, but we got burned by two teams that do dragonboating pretty seriously... traveling to Montreal and Beijing and other places for races. Who knew? We earned a time of 1:25 (I think) in that race, but we still came in a distant third. The best time of the day was a surprise... 1:16 by a group of high school boys who were in a less competitive final heat. They were pumped.

I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but we won a $500 check as the best "support" team. We can donate the check to our charity of choice. The whole event was benefitting breast cancer awareness and research, so probably our captain will direct our funding there.

There was also traditional dancing going on...


...and tea eggs were on sale...


...and the winner of the dumpling eating contest ate 35 dumplings in five minutes. Craziness.


The organizers also tried to fly the biggest kite in North America, made by a Taiwanese kite master. Unfortunately, it wasn't windy enough.



The local hashers group (folks that run and drink together, yes, sometimes simultaneously: Hash House Harriers on Wikipedia.) came with their whole team connected by chain in purposefully ragged clothes. Their captain had a full-on leather whip and electrical tape coiling up his calves like old-style sandals.


PS
Everyone on our team wore the team t-shirt and bandana. The glasses were my special addition to the get-up.


PPS
Congratulations, Hacker, on breaking the ice. Too bad it had to happen against the Redskins.


Skins Loss is Worst DC Sports Moment of 2009

Since 1938

TGIF, peeps. Hope everyone is thriving today and has fun plans for the weekend.

Remember how we complained early in the summer about all the rain? Well, I guess it was warranted, since yesterday in the ProJo: Weather put a damper on summer of ’09.

After all, July’s 10.52 inches of rain was the wettest ever, beating a 1976 record. And the June/July total of 14.13 inches was the wettest for those two months since 1938.

In the interest of continuing the renovation of the basement, I've been trolling Craigslist for some flat file cabinets like this...

They're great for storing big sheets of paper, finished works, and supplies. I'm trying to make arrangements with a guy who has a bunch of them in Brockton, MA on Sunday. We'll see.

Tomorrow is going to be dragonboat day, so I expect on Monday we'll have a bunch of pics to share. Take good care!

PS

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Thanks, Brandini.

Off A Cliff

We're gearing up for Saturday's dragonboat race day. Sue had a great yoga session last night. I'm making brownies for the people at work, and Rhode Island's economy is falling off a cliff. Here are some news stories from the ProJo this week:

More in Rhode Island now living in poverty

R.I. emergency shelters overwhelmed

RIPEC calls for ‘immediate action’ to avoid massive deficit

Rhode Island is facing a string of multimillion-dollar budget deficits over the next several years — ranging from $60.6 million this year to a potential $483.8 million next year — unless the governor and legislative leaders take “immediate action” on an avoidance plan.

Frankenstein Seeds

Good morning, kiddos. I've got two things to talk about today - one's an offer and one's a report. First the offer...

Remember ProPil Pop Quiz #8? It was going to be about mystery seeds? But before I posted it, I found out that four o'clocks were bushy plants that put resilient tubers in the ground and made beautiful, aromatic trumpet-like flowers?

Then remember Five Dimensions from mid-August? The pics that were in there are below.



Well, the plants have gotten bigger, and they're much more flowery now. Beautiful indeed and aromatic as advertised. They've been in bloom since that time - a full month. So now we've got four o'clock seeds - lots of them. They are actually sort of Frankenstein seeds, since there were two types of four o'clocks that grew next to each other, and in all likelihood, our sedulous bees cross-pollinated them.


Do you want some Frankensteiny four o'clocks to beautify your home? We will be happy to send a little baggy of seeds from the Ocean State to you. I expect they will grow in a container on a porch, but be aware, if you plant them in the ground A) they do spread underground via tubers and will probably come back bigger next year, and B) they make lots of seeds, so they may be rather difficult to eradicate once planted. Let me know. It would be fun to keep the mystery seed conversation going for years in the future.

And onto the report... I've started reading The Birth of America: From Before Columbus to the Revolution by William R. Polk. Catherine and Stephen know I like learning about the Native Americans. My brain got a wallop last night when I read about how the Native Americans lived in New England. Here's an excerpt:

Generally, Indian houses were not scattered across the landscape as they were among the colonists; the East Coast Indians from the Gulf of Mexico to Newfoundland were townspeople. Although later British colonists insisted that Indians were nomads (and so not really attached to the land the colonists wanted to appropriate), their eyes told them otherwise. As the pamphlet commissioned by Lord Baltimore for the use of colonists in 1635 admitted, “They live for the most parts in Townes, like Countrey Villages in England.” Earlier, in 1539, the country of the Florida Indians was described as “greatly inhabited with many great towns and many sown fields which reached from one to the other.” On the site of modern East St. Louis before the arrival of the Spaniards, the city we call Cahokia had a population of “upwards of 20,000.” Unlike the Great Plains nomads whom the white men would meet centuries later, East Coast Indians were settled farmers and villagers.

Sue seemed to know all of this, but I guess I had this picture in my head of nomadic peoples on horseback, spearing buffalo and migrating with their teepee villages to take advantage of good hunting and good weather. Instead, I see these...



...settled wigwam communities surrounded with farmed plots. I dunno, call me stupid. I thought that was fascinating. Probably I was whispering across the aisle in class and missed this part of Social Studies.

PS
Also I found this letter from the author's personal website. He has a long history in foreign policy, way back to President Kennedy. For the politically-minded, Polk shares his increasingly skeptical views on Obama and the new administration.

Settling Into Fall

It feels like we're sort of settling into fall now. The daytime weather is nice but growing cooler each successive evening. The nights are longer. Halloween candies have appeared at Walgreens. It's very foggy out there today.

After a three-month break from art allowing travel and focused work on the house, I've started to draw some again - story-boarding my next animation project - and lots of people were missing from Sue's book club last night on account of head colds and coughs. (Sue's new book is Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.)

I'm sort of bummed that I haven't yet started being a high school study-buddy this semester. VIPS emailed me to see if I was interested, and I am and told them so, but they have yet to tell me when and where I'll be volunteering.

I put valerian root tincture in my tea last night for the first time. I think I was super tired anyhow, but I definitely slept early and well - from 9 until 6:15.

Time to go pick some tomatoes and beans...

Giant Gears Turning

Happy Monday, everyone! We had a great weekend; both Sue's mom, Linda, and my mom, Marge, visited us in the Ocean State.

We took them to Sun and Moon Korean in East Providence - great stuff - on Friday, then Three Sisters for ice cream. We went to the Lippitt Park Farmers' Market and craft fair on Saturday morning, then we threw a long overdue housewarming openhouse potluck party for neighbors, friends and colleagues that afternoon/evening. The weather was splendid, and people seemed to enjoy it.

On Sunday morning we visited Slater Mill. Samuel Slater was the original industrialist in America. He came from England against British law at the age of 21 (I think) and built the first water-powered thread-making facility in the New World right here in Pawtucket's Blackstone Valley. To run the shop, he employed child laborers - typically 6 to 14 years old - from neighboring farms.

Here's one of our guides showing us how to hand-process flax so it'll be suitable for thread.



Here's a massive thread-making machine that would crush a young person to death if they slipped, tripped or got too tired working sun-up to sun-down six days per week.


Actually most of the machines in the mill are very dangerous. Giant gears turning. Taut belts whirling. Pretty frightening.

After Slater Mill, we went to Roger Williams Park - a beautiful, big park in Cranston just south of Providence city limits. I saw this little plaque buried in one of the sidewalks.

Rectangle of Plywood

TGIF! The answer to ProPil Pop Quiz #10 is...



...the small rectangle of plywood became the replacement leg of a radiator cover. (The radiator cover stands in the front foyer, covering up the unpainted wallpaper from yesteryear. Lot Lot Nicer provides that clue from a different angle.)

Have great weekends!

Wrap-Around Desk

Happy Thursday, folks! We installed the wainscot caps last night, painted the wainscoting white with a semi-gloss and mostly finished the wrap-around desk downstairs.

DURING RENOVATIONS


THIS MORNING



We bought and employed a nice sheet of birch ply (like $60, at Jonathan's suggestion) for the working surface, because it's sturdy and pretty and smooth. It looks pretty cool. I'll be sanding that with fine finish sand paper, then sealing it next week (so you can put a glass of water on it or spill ink or whatever without staining it).

The thin piece of ply in the center of the two desks will be attached at some point - at the right height for fiddling with a laptop - but we want to paint the bases/legs of the desks first (and put another coat of white on the wainscoting) before the full desk is connected and unwieldy. Probably we'll use the same color for the new door, the stairs, and that pole in the middle of the room.

There's still a bunch more to do in the basement, but it's certainly coming along.

Finishing Touches

The title of this post is a little premature, since the basement is largely incomplete, but Sue did put the finishing touches on the hallway last night. Yay! She's happy, as she wants that to be her last home improvement project for a long while.

I don't mind the house projects, but I do want to get back to doing cut-outs and animation. I painted 95% of the rest of the basement with a color called Archival - which is gray with a hint of blue. We also put up the rest of the wainscoting we had. I need one more piece to complete the job. (Cutting around the stairs is going to be tough.)


For the downstairs we used C2 paint. Ever heard of it? We used LoVo eggshell, and it really does well with coverage. It doesn't emit as much painty smell, and the other thing that's cool about it, though it's thick when it goes on, it's less sticky when you wash it out of brushes and rollers. It is more expensive, but that's how it goes.

Tonight, I'll see about painting the wainscoting white and installing the wainscot caps. Jonathan's coming over around 8:00, and we're going to finish the desk/worktable.

We harvested our first jalepenos from the garden last night.


Way back in April, we planted Planty the Plant. She was just a wee lass. Now look at her!


PS
I feel obligated to warn all our faithful ProPil readers, and it seems fitting due to the title of this post... Provident Pilgrims will end as of the week of Columbus Day.

Columbus Day week makes sense because everyone will be in the spirit of discovering a place already discovered, calling it your own, and demolishing everything in your path only to build something different - just the sort of spirit we've been in here in Providence for the last 15 months. We'll have some special features that final week. More to come.

Lot Lot Nicer

You can't *really* see the difference via the iPhone pics, so you'll just have to take our word for it... it's a lot lot nicer. Sue did a great job.



RIP

Taking Shape

Happy Monday, everyone! We had a productive weekend. Sue is 98% done painting the stairwell, and it looks great! Quite an undertaking. It's a light gray/tan, and I'll have a couple pics tomorrow (which hopefully will show the color). Now we have to put all our pictures back up.

As you may have guessed, I worked almost all weekend on the basement. Flooring in the main part of the basement and nook is now complete. Plus, there was some question as to whether or not my work on the radon system would destabilize the system's suction/vacuum (since it works just like a vacuum), but after gluing all the PVC back together and turning it on, it works! Whew.

Here's how the nook is taking shape - a retrospective way back to Bench and Wall Demolition on July 7.

BEFORE


Demolition.


Demolition.


Clean slate.


Framing expansion and re-routing PVC.


Drywall Install.


Joint taping.


Joint compound or "mudding". Plus lots of sumo-sanding and dust.


Now this is what happened this weekend... priming.


Painting with Benjamin Moore "Iron Mountain".


Baseboards.


Wainscoting. (I've yet to install the wainscot cap, but it's all painted and ready to go.)


Beginning of art/animation wrap-around workspace.


We're having a little trouble picking paint colors for the rest of the walls, door and stairs, but we're getting there...


PS
We ran the JCCRI 5K on Sunday. Sue ran 25:20, and I ran 23:10. The weather was great. Fun times.

ProPil Pop Quiz #10

Oof. It's Friday, but September 11th always weighs heavy. I haven't reminded Sue what day it is. That would put her in a bad mood. Supposed to be a rainy one.

She started painting the stairwell last night. Looking good. I've installed about 90% of the flooring in the basement. We'll share pics next week.

ProPil Pop Quiz #10
In this picture from earlier in the week, you'll notice there's a small rectangle removed from a sheet of plywood. (Look upper left.)


That small rectangle was removed from the board over the weekend, and it is being put to very good use. What is it being used for?

Here's your hint: No visitor to the house has ever seen this old wallpaper.


It's a tough one, but you guys are supa smaht.

PS
Maybe this will help get you guys through the day. This dude is totally ridiculous. Totally. You will not believe your eyes.