Ramblings, rumblings, grumblings, and rambling grumbly rumblings.

Michelle's birthday was yesterday, the "big four-oh", and (no surprise) it was no big deal. Forty is supposed to be the big number, but like me it came with  sort of a "yeah, ok, whatever. Is there cake?" kind of attitude. I got her a silk(ish) scarf in deep blues woven with celtic knotwork. I picked it up at the KC feis while she was otherwise occupied. I hid it in the van and just left it there, so she's been driving around with her gift eight feet away for weeks. For herself she got a Mylander torte, a layer-cake sort of confection of marzipan, raspberry jam and Kirsch brandy from Andrés. I don't care for them, but she loves them and, well, there you go.

The drought almost completely destroyed ten years worth of maintenance on both yards, reducing any area not shaded by the sun to dead ground and weeds. I finally mowed the back last weekend after not touching it since May, and most of what I trimmed was mulberry, creeping charlie, carpet weed and something I've always called "tassel grass" for want of a better name. Those latter two don't really mow, they just bend over and bind the lawn mower blade. It was slow going.

The margin of the driveway is obscured by a strip of carpet weed a foot wide, and is now damaged enough that I'm going to have to bite the bullet and budget to replace at least the first twenty feet before the next summer is over. I know how to do a slab, but I've never actually done it before, so yet one more challenge to overcome.

The house remains front porch-less. I made the mistake of destroying the porch without first purchasing the materials to replace it, and during the destruction two things happened: my Lowes card didn't get paid down as fast as I anticipated and the weather turned unmanageably hot. Now the temperatures have cooled and we have a different source of funding for the materials, the plan is to have a porch we can use (just a deck with steps) by Halloween, and a completed porch (with railings and lights) by Thanksgiving. Once renaissance festival is over and the Seamlyne queue is cleared, that's quite doable. I should be able to have "Phase 1" done in a weekend, and "Phase 2" in two or three. If I can somehow find an air-powered framing nailer, it will go really really fast.

Many difficulties with Katie just now that I plan to write about in our family blog, The Road Less Ordinary. Having to think long term, but the short term is a minefield.

I'm not a person who loves the heat, as I've said many times. This prolonged heat wave, lacking even the respite of an occasional rain shower, is getting to me. I can't get cool no matter what I try, even in my basement shop which typically hovers around seventy degrees. It's almost like my operating temperature has risen to match my environment. It's only at night, after I've showered and gone to bed still damp, laying under the ceiling fan, that I start to feel better. Autumn can't come soon enough.

On the bright side, if there is one, I am becoming somewhat acclimated to the temperatures which makes venturing out the heat a little easier - as long as I stay out of the sun. I committed a long while back to doing some fence maintenance for a friend, and I've managed to get the hours of work in while the fence is in shade, though I'm sure her neighbors don't think much of the early morning noise. (Sunday, I stayed out a little longer than I should have, and I have a very mild sunburn, my first of the season.) I've got about four more hours worth of work to do.

I've begun to think that a move to more temperate climes - the Pacific Northwest, for instance - should be a serious consideration for my family. Katie deals with the heat little better than I do despite the resiliency of her young age, and if we are to assume that climate change will continue as predicted, summers in Missouri are only going to get hotter.

It turned out to be quite the weekend. We got a lot of gardening done, in spite of a persistent migraine for Michelle. In the garden now we have cucumber; zucchini; bell peppers, poblano chilis; two tomato plants (couldn't tell you what kind, those are all Michelle's). Left to plant are garlic (which we won't harvest for a year and a half), bush beans, and potatoes.

It looks like the shed I hoped to finally build is going to have to wait yet another season. Our front porch, which has been cracking for many years but has remained basically whole has started to crumble: the bottom step lost a corner, the other steps are showing cracks, and it will only get worse from there. Time to pull out the sledgehammers.

The gas meter and line to the house is inches from the porch, so the plan is to demolish the porch - a reinforced concrete slab on a foundation of cinder blocks - a little at a time, starting at the meter and working back from it. I'll take the rubble a bucket at a time and find a place to dump it on some back country road between home and work. The slab will go first, then I'll take down the cinder blocks, taking care to preserve them for future use.

The new porch will be long and narrow, about 5' x 15', and extend from the South edge of the existing porch to under the double-window in the living room. It will have a railing of turned spindles.

To that end, this weekend I installed a new storm door on the door to the side porch, and we'll use that entrance from now on, until the new porch is safe to use.

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Random thought: it's been several years since I took out the wall between the living room and the dining room, creating the arch and opening up the space. Late at night, though, I still mentally go for the light switch where the wall used to be.

The day was productive, but not in the way I thought it would be. I had thought I'd get a dye job done and maybe assemble the tights once the fabric was dry, but I just decided to get the basement wiring project finished. That's the way things typically get done around here: I Just Decide to get something done and I work on it until, 1. the projects actually does get done; 2. I run out of money; or 3. I run out of time.

For years - decades, really - to have light in the basement where my shop is has meant pulling a cotton string attached to an ancient ceramic bulb socket, and there were four. Two of them had four-foot fluorescent lights plugged into them so there has always been plenty of light, but you had to walk through a dark basement to turn on the light farthest from the door. Kind of a pain. There was one set of lights actually controlled by a switch, but the switch was placed in a spot convenient for the way I once had the shop configured Way Back When, but not for several years since.

When we first made Seamlyne a business back in 2000 - officially, not the paying hobby it was for a decade before that - we bought two commercial sewing machines on credit. No way those could go upstairs, so I began the process of finishing the basement as well as I could. The job is about half done, having reached a point of stasis: done enough that it looks like an actual room instead of a concrete block dungeon, as long as you don't look between the shelves at the back. With carpet, pictures on the white-painted walls, a table lamp, and track lighting to supplement the harsh task lighting over the cutting table, it can be quite comfortable down here (where I happen to be writing from at this moment.) There's even a worn old loveseat, much the worse for wear, but still sittable.

If you count the spare refrigerator, a hotplate, and large plastic shop sink, there's even a rudimentary kitchen. It's got all the amenities except for a bathroom, which I simply don't have the money for - below grade, it would have to be a toilet that pumps waste up, and those are très expensive.

...except for light switches by the door. Now we have them. I divided the basement into two zones: laundry, close to the door; and shop, away from the door. The exposed ceiling is starting to look like a bowl of noodles, but I'm okay with that. It's messy but safe, and all to code, or will be after I go to Lowe's to pick up covers for the junction boxes. 

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Michelle woke without a headache for the first time in about two weeks, and so We went to the Nelson Atkins Museum, our first family outing in quite a long time. The kids loved it for about the first half hour. Jami particularly liked the Egyptian section, especially the mummy. Surprisingly, Katie liked the Asian section.

Before we left for the museum, Michelle started to feel the headache and so took a preventative dose of medicine. Before we left the museum, however, her headache spiked and we were constrained to get lunch to go and just come home. She took a percocet and retired to the family room. Since a dye job can't really be interrupted once started, and since I didn't know if we'd be making a trip to the ER for Even Heavier Meds, I came downstairs to install light switches.

I can already see what I want my next wiring project to be, though I'm in no rush - it's just a re-route and not critical. The circuit I tied into for the laundry-side lights also powers the furnace, and I want the furnace to have its own. I'll run another 15amp circuit if I must. I know how at least.

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As to the tights, I'll make them tomorrow. 

Quite a mixed bag of a weekend, but ultimately it ended up on a good note.

Side Work is a bitch, sometimes.

I'll try to keep this story brief. I've been doing the website for The Stage Coffee House & Deli. It's not a huge money maker - hell, neither is the coffee house - but it's a few extra dollars here and there in cash. Grocery stores don't mind cash. 

( Actually, yeah, it got kinda long. )

Seamlyne

It's been very quiet, and I'm kinda glad. Flu-B (yep, officially) makes it tough to keep up on orders, so I'm heartily glad there haven't been any. There were two to finish up, and they're a few days further out for shipping than I'd prefer, so I finished both up today.

( More general update-y stuff... )

It was quite the day: busy, tiring, dusty, hard, sweaty, good. I'm ready for bed now, waiting for Katie and Michelle to get their showers. Last night Michelle and I were up until 2:00am dyeing, washing, rinsing fabric. Tonight, I think I'll be in bed by 11:00. It's worth hoping.

I spent most of the day - except for an all too brief afternoon nap - in the basement, working on making the shop once again, a shop. After we closed Seamlyne at the end of 2006 I re-purposed the space to computer consulting. Now that we're reopening (and my principle computer is now upstairs) it's time to re-purpose again.

Today, I finished carpeting the space - I did about half of it somewhere around 2005 and never made the time to do the other half. It's cheap carpet, but it warms the space adequately, makes it a little more barefoot-friendly down there. Rolled and folded for all these years, it's a bit wrinkly, but in just the few hours it's been down - taped into place using heavy duty double sided carpet tape - it's already starting to relax into place.

Now that the kids are old enough to join us down there as they wish, the goal is to make the environment down there as pleasant as possible. We got an old loveseat from Michelle's parents - it has a twin sized Hide-A-Bed that I can think of a few uses for - that will provide comfortable seating. A TV and DVD player provide entertainment; we'll get a converter box so the old TV can pick up the new digital TV signal; we have an old PC downstairs as well.

Probably the biggest step for me was taking my Old Computer Desk apart to its components with the intent of turning the two legs of the "L" into sewing tables. They're precisely the right height, and I'll be cutting at least one hole so I can recess the domestic straight-stitch and put the deck flush with the desktop - something like the picture on the left, there. (If you sew, and you've never sewn on a sewing machine with a working surface two feet square, you're really missing out.) I'll probably do the same with my small serger. It just makes the work go easier if the working surface of the machine isn't raised above the surface of the table: easier to maneuver the garment; easier to see what you're doing; much much easier on the back.

If anyone has a small computer desk and/or TV stand they'd like to see hauled away, please let me know. Those are the two pieces we're missing.

Michelle, thinking ahead, God bless her, made a terrific soup for our supper, so we wouldn't have to order-pizza-or-starve. She also made garlic-cheddar biscuits. Supper was very good.

There's more, I'm sure, but my brain is turning to mush. Time for shower and bed.

Do you expect me to squeak?

No, Mr. Mouse, I expect you to die.

Some of you know that we've been having mouse problems. I blogged about a portion of the experience here.

Recently, though, we've been dealing with a rather special breed of mouse, one that knows how to balance on the snap wire of a traditional mouse trap to clean the trip bar of peanut butter on not one but three traps, not once but twice; a mouse that recognizes and avoids glue traps, both black and yellow. One that thinks, the little bastard.

Tonight, I set up my final attempt, my last offensive before we break out the poison. It's a live-fall trap made from a five gallon bucket and a toilet paper tube, which is baited with peanut butter and precariously balanced on the edge. A ramp provides easy access, and is likewise, smeared with enough peanut butter to get Mr. Mouse's attention. At the bottom of the bucket, just for insurance, a glue trap.

Here's the plan: Mouse smells the peanut butter, climbs the ramp to investigate. Just ahead he sees a morsel of peanut butter and a tiny "Reserved" sign. He walks into the dining area, takes one step past the tipping point and is dropped without fanfare into the bucket - and hopefully onto the trap.

If I could figure out how to reset the trap, that would be awesome, but it's the best I can do in fifteen minutes. The tube is taped to the bucket and the lightest touch tips it one way or the other, so maybe it will reset itself and I can catch mice all night.

Click on the picture for a larger version.

It was a mixed bag as weekends go.

The August Dormer Roofing Project of 2009 is officially finished. With the prospect of friends coming over on Sunday - one who hasn't been to Osage in years and one who's never been at all - I applied my energies to finishing the portion of the ceiling and wall affected by the leaking water. I have a little touch-up to do in the paint along the ceiling (you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it), but it's done and looks really nice.

That and a trip to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore was most of Saturday. That story, with an update on the shed project, is detailed here.

Sunday, Jami became feverish, hitting 101° or higher. Not sure what he's sick with, but he's a kid and the weather's been very changeable. Dinner with friends was postponed (bummer, that). By mid-afternoon I was feeling very out of sorts myself, but as I look back I think that was a product of a very bad sleeping night.

Dinner was chicken tenders made with Panko breadcrumbs, very successful there.

I have discovered the joys of MySQL and Wordpress. I've set up three websites so far: Bill Morris Music, Lezlie Revelle's Blog, and The Road Less Ordinary, a blog about responsible living, good food, and autism. What I'm learning there will serve me in good stead not only for personal projects but for work projects as well.