September 21, 2009

10:23 a.m.

Not Too Bad, for a Monday

Happy today. I left a message for Chimney Guy to schedule that, and the house washing; when that's on the books I'll call Roof Guy and have him come afterwards.

I did a good job tiling my little platform! I got to use a tile cutter with a diamond blade. It makes a lot of noise and splashes water around. Somehow in the cleanup the hose to the water pump broke, and Marc was very disappointed about that. He'd just spent all day fixing the tractor. He knew I didn't do it a-purpose, and I'm pretty gentle with things, but anyway there's another thing that needs fixing now. At least I got all the tiles cut first.

Today he was online trying to find real, actual varnish for my dining room floor. It looks like we have to get it in Texas. Apparently you can get varnish stain around here, or spar varnish (if you happen to have a boat), but the clear floor varnish is going the way of oil-based paint (of which he is also very fond). I emailed my friends in Texas to see if their Lowe's might have it and if they'd be willing to UPS it to us here, which would be vastly cheaper than the $65 we'd otherwise have to pay if we bought it online.

This week's list has chrysanthemumed (neener) into: take down all the side plywood to the ugly, leaking porch / finish the pellet stove platform / sand dining room floor / gather a truckload of trash from "garbage hill" to fill work dumpster with on Thursday (use tractor and pullchains to bring large items up from side of hill*) / demolish ugly, leaking porch and its cement and cinderblock base so that we can assess water damage and Chimney Guy can power wash back there / mow the lawn / do the band newsletter / practice like mad / come up with set list for first gigs / keep self clean / feed self / get enough SLEEP each and every night.

I probably left out some things. Finishing the ceiling went to the bottom of the list once I picked up the stove!

*I've talked about garbage hill; the old man dumped all his refuse into the woods for several decades, probably because he didn't want to pay for trash pickup. There is everything from hundreds of beer bottles and cans, to kitchen implements, to tires, to a fridge motor, to a car hood, to broken lawn chairs... old buckets without bottoms. LP records with the labels faded into oblivion. They're all in amongst trees, standing and fallen, brush, big rocks, some poison ivy in places, and on a very slanted hillside.

Break is over. Time to refurbish more speakers. My coworker is still out this week, helping with sister-in-law's baby; I get to learn some more of her job. Woohoo.