Archives April 2015

A few days ago I saw a FB promoted post by Fiverr, a website where all sorts of professionals offer their services for very reasonable rates.  This particular ad was an offer to make a cartoon rendition of an image for the low price of five bucks.  When you logged on to their site there was a bunch of people willing to do this, most of them in slightly different styles.  I picked a style I liked and submitted one of my White Sands selfie pics.

This morning, a couple days after I placed my order, I received notice my art project was done.  The cartoonized version of me may not be a perfect semblance but I still thought it was cool, worth the $5 I invested in it.

Despite the lack of storms and the dogs being back with Ali I had another rough night of sleep, waking up around 3AM and not falling back asleep for at least 90 minutes.

After I did fall back asleep I had a very realistic and disturbing dream where my mom had not actually died.  I was in a house with my brother and sister just sitting around.  All of a sudden the front door opens and my mom walks in with a big smile on her face.  Mom looked significantly younger for some reason, probably in her 50’s.  For several seconds I just stared at her in disbelief.  I asked myself in my dream if I was dreaming and the answer was no.

I said to mom, “How can this be?” as the tears rolled down my face as my siblings and I hugged her.  She said she had to fake her death although the reason for this was never clear to me in the dream.  I told mom I watched her take her last breath and I didn’t understand.  She just smiled.

The dream fast forwards.  I am walking with my mom and siblings in a neighborhood with sidewalks.  It is bright, sunny and hot.  We were walking for quite awhile to a destination I did not know.  I remember thinking it was weird that mom was willing to walk so far in the heat since I had such a hard time convincing her to just take a short walk in her community when she was alive.

After the long walk we arrived at some outdoor event that had bleachers full of people.  My mom, siblings and I walked up the steps to find a seat.  I went a couple rows ahead of them to try to find an open spot on the bleachers.  After scanning for a few seconds I found a suitable open section.  I turned around to tell mom I found a spot but she had disappeared, along with my siblings.  I thought that perhaps they had found seating elsewhere.  The dream ended with me still looking for them, without success.  When I woke up this morning my eyes felt like I had been crying in my sleep.

So far raising chicks in our bath tub has not been as challenging as you may imagine, especially for me since Cindy is the one that is doing all of the clean up and chick maintenance. The maintenance has been cleaning up the bin 2-3 times a day, making sure they have fresh food and water, check the temperature and make sure the chicks don’t have crusty butt.  Other than that the baby chicks just scurry about making cute little chick noises as they cycle through eating, drinking, sleeping and pooping.

Cindy has been working on getting the chicks more accustomed to humans and human hands.  Last night she had her hand in the bin and a couple of the chicks were standing on it just chilling out. Even though they are only roughly two weeks old we can already see personality differences between them.

Last night I did one more small coop mod, moving the flood light that used to be mounted on chicken tractor to the inside of the chicken run.  If anything would get in the vicinity of the run at night it will be lit up like a stadium.

There were some hellacious storms overnight with booming thunder and torrential rain.  Not only did the noise wake us up, Sadie did as well.  She gets very scared during storms and wants to feel protected.  As a result she got high up on the bed and alternated pressing herself against myself and Cindy while she panted.  Cindy put her arms around Sadie to try to make her feel secure.  In total I bet I lost at least two hours of sleep, not a good thing considering I was already tired all day.  The end result of this was my oversleeping this morning.  I turned off the alarm and evidently immediately fell back asleep until 6:30.

It wasn’t a good day for me to oversleep since I had to drop off the dogs back at Ali’s place on my way to work.  The way it all shook out I arrived at work about 15 minutes late.  Being late is something that is as rare as comet sightings in my world.

Last week Jeremy turned me onto a sweet deal for custom 3′ x 6′ vinyl signs.  I had no signage for GMT yet so I saw it as a good opportunity.  For the rock bottom price of $23 shipped to my door I had this sign made.  It appears to be very high quality and will look good hanging from a timing table.

Another package yesterday contained a small UPS for the chicken coop, yes the chicken coop.  Now your gut reaction might be “What the f do you need a battery back up for in a chicken coop??” Well there actually is a very legitimate reason for doing so.  The automatic chicken door motor is triggered by a power cycle, each time power goes off and then on the door either raises or closes thanks to the timer it is connected to.

Out in my neck of the woods, especially during the summer months, brief power hits are very common.  It is normal to come home to a bunch of blinking clocks.  Well if this happened now the end result would be the chicken coop door going up or down at an unintended time which would not be a good thing.  The small UPS will ensure the door stays in it’s intended position regardless of how many power burps occur during a day.

I also had three more boxes show up at my door yesterday from Ipico, the company whose hardware I use to time races.  It was 3000 race timing bibs.  When I opened the boxes to randomly test a few of the bibs I was not very happy at the condition of the brand new bibs.  A bunch of them were packed in such a way that the timing ring was bent, something that it says in big letters to NOT do on the timing device.

In addition the packs of 50 bibs felt like they were glued together.  You literally had to peel each bib off the pile.  The adhesion was so bad on many of them that it ripped off the print from the bib beneath it which looked like shit.

Considering these bibs were the replacements for the original order I placed which had the wrong type of timing device just added to the annoyance.  I did a spot check of about 50 bibs to make sure they still were functional, which they were, but the quality control at Ipico still is lacking obviously.

DJI recently announced the Phantom 3 quadcopter.  It has a TON of upgrades from my Phantom, including built in FPV system and an INCREDIBLE range of around 1.25 MILES.  Yes, I will be getting one at some point.

So surely you have read about the Baltimore riots, yet another shameful example of human beings turning into two legged lemmings, lighting fires, stealing, and destroying property for a reason that most of them likely know very little, if anything about.   This scenario has played out repeatedly over the years and I have yet to hear one person deliver a logical explanation of how violence, theft, and destruction of property accomplishes anything except more violence, theft, and destruction of property.

Saturday we started off with an outdoor landscape blitz.  I weeded and then weed whacked as Cindy buzzed around on the tractor, giving the grass a much needed trim. After attending to a few other to do’s we headed out for some errands, the biggest of which was finally picking up some baby chicks.  We figured if there was ever a time to do it, it was now since since Cindy is home studying for her PT cert.

Rural King always has a different collection of chicks each time we are there.  On Saturday they even had baby ducks and baby turkeys.  It seemed odd to see baby turkeys look pretty much identical to baby chickens since they look so different as adults.  As far as baby chickens they had almost all black varieties there which was a bit of a bummer, I was hoping to get two baby buff orpington chicks in our flock.  I did want to get some black chickens as well, I just didn’t expect to get all black chicks.  We wound up getting 6 in total, two each  of three varieties, Jersey Giants, Plymouth Rocks, and Astralorps.  Along with the chicks we picked up a bunch of supplies including a heat lamp, watering nipples, food and more things needed to care for week old chickens.

They give you a little box to transport the chicks.  Cindy had it open and was talking with the chicks most of the way home, it was cute.  Our at home “brooder” was a clear Rubbermaid type container in the master bathroom tub.  I sunk a hook in the ceiling so we could attach the heat lamp to a chain where we can easily adjust the height of the lamp to change the temperature.  Baby chicks need to be kept warm.  When they are first born they are supposed to be kept at 90-95 degrees.  Each subsequent week the temp gets dropped by about 5 degrees.

Initially we had a metal tray for food and a small water dispenser.  It did not take long for us to see that this was going to be a problem.  In a couple hours the chicks had kicked most of the food out as well as spilled about half of the water.  In addition baby chickens defecate constantly, you need to clean out the brooder three to four times a day.  To cut down on the mess we switched to a circular plastic feeder with holes to access the food instead of letting the chickens walk in it.  I also used water nipples to create a hanging water bottle.  The nipples release a small amount of water when the chickens hit them with their beak.  It is a much cleaner, less wasteful way to disperse water.  Plus at Rural King the chickens had the same water set up so they knew what to do.

As Cindy finished up getting the chicks settled in I did some tractor maintenance to prepare for the upcoming arduous mowing season.  The Craftsman tractor got an oil/filter change, air filter replacement and a new set blades.  The YT 4000 should be ready to roll.

Saturday evening we attended the first Florida Tarpons home game of the season.  I have been a season ticket holder since the arena football team formed several years ago.  You would think that after several years I would remember to dress warm for the game since the indoor arena, which is also used for the local ice hockey team is always cold.  Instead I sat there shivering in my shorts and flip flops.

This year the budget evidently once again was sufficient to support cheerleaders, The Reel Girls, something that was absent last year.  Six of them cheered right in front of us for most of the game.  Analyzing their efforts was a good sidebar to the game.  We enjoyed our typical football collection of food including a slice of pizza, a soft pretzel and some roasted nuts.  I washed it down with three Budweisers.  The Tarpons got their first win of the season after two road losses.  Their win was mostly because two of their best players from prior seasons returned, Chris Wallace, a 39 year old QB and a 6’8″ wide receiver that goes by the nickname of Optimus Prime.  Overall Cindy and I had a good time.

My right knee was a swollen, sore mess so doing endurance training was off the menu for Sunday.  Instead I headed out early to pick up Nicki and Sadie who are staying out at the house for a couple days.  It was the first time the dogs have been at the house since most of the flooring was replaced.  I was curious how they would react.  For the first few minutes they were curious, patrolling the house to survey the changes however in no time the newness had worn off and they were just chilling out.

For a good portion of Sunday morning Cindy and I were attending to a variety of small to do’s.  I took apart the pool vacuum to fix a couple things that caused poor suckage.  I then worked on the washer.  For awhile the tube that is used to drain the tank before cleaning the filter has been clogged.  If I squeezed the tube I could feel it was clogged with sand/dirt.  At first I used a straightened wire hanger to try to loosen up the sediment and then sprayed liquid into it.  That accomplished nothing except packing the dirt in there tighter.

I turned to my crutch, the internet to look for suggestions on how to clear the tube.  One tip was to blow out the tube with air.  Well I have an air compressor and an inflater tip that would fit the hose quite well.  I was sort of worried 120 psi might rupture the hose.  So I cranked up the compressor, jammed the end into the hose and pushed it tight as I pulled the trigger.  I did a short burst at first that seemed like it went nowhere however when I squeezed the trigger a second time the pressure released and I could hear the air entering the wash tub area, cool.  A small trickle of water started to drain from the hose, a good sign.  I ran the washer through a couple rinse cycles while blowing out the tube a few more times to clear it best I could.  I am hoping to be more regular with the washer maintenance to prevent future clogging.  I was glad to see/smell that the washer filter was no longer a rancid/slimy mess as it was when I last removed it, thanks to more routine tub clean cycles with bleach.

For the rest of Sunday I mostly just chilled out, played WoW and did a few pull ups out back.  It felt foreign to be able to just sit around and not be actively involved in some sort of work.

Over the weekend we watched the Bruce Jenner interview on the DVR.  I have to say it felt quite weird to see Bruce Jenner, the man whom I clearly recall from the 76 Olympics kicking ass and taking names in winning the decathlon gold, talk about his upcoming gender reassignment from man to woman.  I was surprised to hear that he actually starting taking female hormones way back in the 80’s for a period of 5 years.   Like anyone else, I have seen the various stories about Bruce and his plastic surgery weirdness over the last 10-15 years but I had no idea it was connected to his desire to become a woman.  I thought it was just vanity and a misguided, Michael Jackson-esque, idea of what looked good.

Instead the interview revealed the lifelong torment that Bruce has experienced, living life as the ultimate man while secretly feeling like a woman.  Both Cindy and I felt compassion for him.  The compassion is somewhat tempered by Jenner’s decision to be a very prominent part of the Kardashian reality tv phenomenon, one the most Idiocracy-like shows on tv, although I am proud to have never seen it. He also is documenting the whole transition in a an E show so although I do feel bad for him, there is no doubt he is cashing in on his gender confusion in a major way.

One thing that I couldn’t quite understand was why he would want to undergo this transformation at his age.  Bruce Jenner is now old enough to collect Medicaid benefits (65 years old), what exactly is the point?  That being said, it’s his life, if living out the rest of his days as a woman will bring happiness, good for him.

All in all I think the special was well done although it still just feels bizarre to see the guy on the Wheaties box talk about wearing a dress.

We saw Birdman last night, the film that seems to have a love/hate relationship with most people.  For me I would say it was a swing and a miss.  The ambivalence about Michael Keaton having super powers was annoying.  Although overall I though the film was sort of dumb, there is no denying Keaton did a nice job playing a whack job. I’d give the film a B, Cindy would probably rate it lower.

Last night, like many nights of the last few weeks we were doing more work on chicken accommodations.  After work I stopped at Home Depot to get some bags of play sand.  Their intended use was for a corner sand box we have in the chicken run.  Chickens really like digging holes and laying in them so we figured a little play box in the run would be put to good use.

Cindy and I were quite happy that both chickens went into their new coop all by themselves last night.  We were able to watch them cautiously step inside via the web cam I have installed out there.  Speaking of web cams, I ordered an upgraded camera that will offer better resolution and two way audio.  It should add to the fun.

Lucy ventured into the coop during the day and laid another egg as well, another great indicator that the chickens now realize  the 10′ x 8′ shed is their new home. This morning Cindy saw that Lola was the first to take advantage of the perch tower in the middle of the run.  She was resting comfortably on the lower branch.

This weekend we get to somewhat fall back into our normal routine which hopefully will be much less labor intensive than the last month or so has been.  We may be heading to Rural King to pick up 6-8 baby chick pullets now that our expanded chicken living quarters are up and running.  Raising baby chicks is more work but with Cindy home she will be able to tend to them as they need.

This weekend will also be the first time the dogs will be in the house since the flooring was transformed.  I expect some canine confusion  but I think they will like the cool temperature of the tile with soft carpet in the rooms they sleep in most of the time.

Yesterday we worked on getting the house close to 100% back in order.  Repeatedly throughout the day Cindy and I stopped and commented on how different and how awesome the new flooring is.  It’s like the interior of the house just got a facelift, every space feels better.

Yesterday I talked to the regional VP of the company that handles installations for Home Depot, USIG.  It was in regards to the negative feedback I left about the tile installation issues.  Wayne said they take negative feedback very seriously.  I explained the details of the problems.  He said the woman’s stand off stance regarding our issues with the grout was not acceptable.  He said he would be talking to the installers but also was quick to offer up some remediation based on the work Cindy put in after the installers left.  He said they would be sending me a $250 check to compensate which sounded great to me. Between that and the materials we returned we will recoup about half of the unexpected tile membrane cost.  I also made sure to let him know that the carpet installation was done exceptionally well which he was glad to hear.  All things considered, even with the bumps in the road, I would recommend using Home Depot for a project like this.  Their lifetime installation warranty offers some peace of mind after the fact as well.

The other thing we worked on yesterday was getting the coop ready for the chickens to move in.  This meant we needed to clean up a lot of building materials and tools as well as make some final tweaks.  Part of those tweaks was installing a center perch support which was a 4 x 4 secured to a roof support.  We cut a branch off one of the pine trees and used it to create four staggered perches on the pole, each one within jumping/flapping distance of the other.  It should be a fun thing for the chickens to hang on once they figure it out.

During this process I was on the lanai to grab something inside.  All of a sudden I heard a lot of wind noise but it was strange, it seemed very isolated.  The garden was being whipped around violently but little else.  All of a sudden my Green Machine Timing canopy which was anchored to the ground by some thin wire attached to the table saw, became airborne and started tumbling.  Instantly I ran out in the back yard to catch it, the forces being applied to the frame as it tumbled made me think it was going to break at any second.  By the time I got to the shelter it had blown about 75 feet from where it started.  The frame appeared to be intact but there was a small rip in the canopy cover on one side.  Since I have lived there I have had a few occurrences of these mini-tornadoes.  They go as quickly as they come but they can be very powerful.  Over 10 years ago  there was one that set off the house alarm and sucked the pond shell that was full of water out of the ground.  I guess the good news is the cyclone yesterday did nothing to the chicken coop/run other than blow the front door open.

We tried to get the chickens used to the idea of being inside their new coop during the afternoon.  We got Lola and Lucy inside thanks to a corn bribe.  We then closed the shed door so they had to go back out via the chicken door which both chicks did successfully.  Later we closed them up in the run so when dusk came they would hopefully go up into their new home.  We knew it was going to be a tough first night, chickens are very much creatures of habit.  They were not going to like not being able to go to the chicken tractor which has been their bedroom.  As the sun was going down we looked out and saw both chickens pacing by the door of the run, wanting to go back to their normal home base.

When Cindy and I went out we saw that even if they wanted to go into their new coop they couldn’t.  The automatic chicken door had already closed, obviously I needed to adjust the timer.  So we opened the chicken door and called the chicks in.  They both cautiously came up the ramp and in the door.  The low light conditions were making them disoriented, especially Lola.  Cindy picked her up and put her in a storage bin she had filled with wood shavings on the floor.  Lucy walked over and jumped in with her as they always like to sleep close together.  It will take some time for them to adjust to the new arrangements but once they understand the entire space is for them I think they will be quite happy.

I got my web cam up and running in the coop, unfortunately I will need to come up with some sort of alternative mounting position.  The camera can rotate left and right as well as up and down but it’s downward angle is not enough to see the floor.  I am sure I will come up with something that works.

So Cindy and I were not thrilled when we heard the install window for the carpet was between 10AM and 1PM.  We figured it made the prospect of the carpet getting done on Tuesday remote. Wow, were we ever wrong.

The installers showed up about 11:30.  Cindy was happy there would be no language barrier as there was with the tile installers, both of the carpet guys were just average Joes.  They were like a fine tuned machine right from the start.  They tore into the job in a way only an expert can.  I was amazed when Cindy told me they were vacuuming up the installed new rug at 1:30.  They laid down new carpet and pad in four rooms in right around two hours.  I had no idea it could be done so quickly.

Not only were they fast, they did a great job.  Cindy reported back that the new carpet looked and felt great.  The higher quality carpet combined with the best pad Home Depot sells was a perfect combo.  The darker color also added some nice contrast to the wall color that is throughout most of the house.  Cindy told me she was going to get busy moving back what she could.

I was surprised when she sent me a picture later in the afternoon of the main bedroom pretty much completely put back together.  She used the furniture sliders and determination to get it all back in there.  I was amazed when I got home and saw just how much she had accomplished.  Almost all of the furniture was out of the great room area.  It looked great.  I got my first in person look and feel of the new carpet and was thoroughly impressed.  I was very pleased.

I changed and got busy helping Cindy with a few of the bigger pieces she couldn’t move herself as well as starting work on the office.  The server/switch/wiring shelf I have had in the office has been pretty nasty looking ever since I set it up 10 years ago.  I decided to TOTALLY rip everything apart and redo it.  It took a lot of doing but the end result was a much improved NOC where most of the wiring is concealed from view.  I moved the stand to a spot where I was able to eliminate a huge handful of CAT 5 wires which helped as well.

We also worked on getting the hobby room back together which probably had the most stuff in it of any room thanks to all of the running club equipment that I house in there.  We worked until close to 10PM getting things back in place.  All of the major portions of the house are back in place at this point.  We just have a number of detail items to attend to now which I hope to get done during the day.

It feels fantastic to finally be emerging from the other side of what has been a month long deluge of home improvement hell.  I told Cindy last night that the new flooring is sort of mom’s last gift to us as I used some of the proceeds from her estate to help us pay for it.  I am sure she would have approved of the end result and it will just be another way for us to remember her with every step we take.

Last night I was out in the coop reconfiguring the other front window so it could be hinged, allowing more airflow through the coop.  Since I already did the procedure once, the second time only took me less than 15 minutes.  We also have started pulling out the tools and other construction supplies in anticipation of moving the chickens into their new, highly upgraded living arrangements.

So today the carpet installation is scheduled to begin.  When we woke up this morning we had to clean out the last items in the bedroom and the office.  Adding the items to the already stuffed great room area just added to the chaos. As I have spent the last couple days in the house with all of the stuff piled up around me it made me wonder how some people live with tons of clutter around them on a daily basis.  Just being immersed in this mess for a couple days is making me crazy. Clearing the office means my home network infrastructure is also down.  I can hear the emails piling up as I type.

There are some positives about having to remove every single item from every bedroom in the house, it allows for changes when the rooms are put back together.  Cindy and I already have identified a few things we want to change up when we refill the rooms.  It also gives me an opportunity to redo things in a more organized and logical manner, like my office network.

Originally we had high hopes that maybe the carpet installers could get all four rooms knocked out in one day however we just got an arrival window for them of anywhere between 10AM and 1PM.  If they arrive at the tail end of that window I doubt our hopes will be realized.  The one thing we have going for us is the prep we did on the floors should allow the installers to jump right in instead of having to do that prep themselves before laying down the pad and carpet.

Yesterday I filled out my survey for the tile install where I aired the various issues we had with it.  After filling the comment field with various negatives I was sure to mention that we thought the husband, who cut and laid all the tile did an excellent job.  Our issues were with his wife and the various screw ups in the materials that were ordered and delivered.  I got a voicemail from the head guy from the local office afterward regarding the survey.  I got his voicemail when I called back.

I forgot to mention that over the weekend Cindy’s brother stopped by with his new wheels, a 2015 Mustang.  It is the 4 cylinder turbo model.  Now I have always been a GM guy primarily and I was very close to buying a new Camaro before I pulled the trigger on my SSR.  I have to tell you, if somebody sat a new Camaro and a new Mustang in front of me and said I could have either, I might actually slip behind the wheel of the Ford.

I LOVE the exterior redesign they did with the 2015 Mustangs, it just looks great.  The interior is equally awesome with all of the bells and whistles you can imagine.  Despite only being a 4 cylinder motor it pulls like a beast thanks to the addition of the turbo.  It just felt great during the 10 mile or so test drive we went on. Despite it’s small displacement the motor cranks out something around 315 horsepower.  If you jump up to the V8 GT you enter into the neck snapping power realm.  The 15 Stangs are a sweet, sweet ride.

So on Friday the tile installers finished up.  The woman was not very happy with Cindy.  I had called in to the installer office saying that we thought the grout joints were not filled enough.  Cindy reiterated this when they showed up.  Cindy had already aggravated the mother by not agreeing to sign off on the install on Thursday before the work was actually completed.  The woman was not very receptive to our latest complaint.

I had talked to a supervisor and explained what our issue was.  He said with straight edge tile it is normal to feel the edge somewhat when you are walking on it barefoot.  I told him that my girlfriend took a picture of the tile they have on display at the store including grout.  The grout joints were significantly higher.  So anyway the mother said once they were done Cindy could go around and let them know if she saw problem spots.

So I loosely monitored the work as it went on.  I did not see them doing anything to the areas that were already grouted during the day.  Cindy did say the new areas they worked on seemed better however she didn’t press them to redo the stuff they already did.  The mother was complaining about how her neck hurt and just being a pain in the ass.  Cindy asked them to leave the grout they already had mixed up so she could touch up any low joints she saw.  Cindy would do a better job anyway.

So after the installers left Cindy spent probably a couple hours going around filling low joints, especially in areas that see the majority of foot traffic.  It’s pretty lame that the only way we could get it the way it felt right was to do it ourselves. When I got home I inspected the final outcome of the installer and Cindy’s work.  The visual impact of the tile is pretty dramatic, the house looks so different.

We went about a psuedo normal Friday evening eating pizza and watching some dvr’d show back in the bedroom.  Afterward Cindy said she had to do some clean up work on the tile.  She was working for awhile when I came over to take a closer look.  A lot of the tiles had gray streaks in the grain of the faux wood.  The streaks were dried grout.  When Cindy was doing her touch up she was applying grout and then wiping with a damp sponge but she didn’t follow up with a towel to get the residue off.  That residue had now dried and because of the grooves in the simulated wood grain they would no longer clean up with a quick swipe of a towel.

Well this was the start of a two hour on your knees scrubbing session where Cindy and I went around the 750 square feet of tile and did the best we could to get grooves clean.  Of course I wasn’t happy to be working on this until 11:30 at night but it was hard to get mad at Cindy for busting her ass to try to make things right.  We worked mostly in silence as we used a combo of towels, rags, sponges, and brushes to clean the tiles.  At the end of the night things looked significantly better.

I awoke Saturday and emerged into our freshly tiled living area.  I inspected our scrubbing from the night before.  For the most part we were successful, I quickly scrubbed down a few spots we missed.  As I did I paused several times to admire the visual the new tile created.  It looks awesome, despite the angina we had to deal with to get there.

Saturday morning I loaded up the left over material from the job into the back of the Tacoma. There was quite a bit of it, seven bags of thin set, two bags of grout, two jugs of stain blocker and four boxes of tile.  I kept two boxes of tile just in case something happens down the road. After a rather long and drawn out return process (Cindy experienced this all week), I got around $300 credited back, something that will help offset the unexpected $1100 tile membrane hit.

When we got home the majority of the rest of the day was consumed by starting the arduous process of emptying the office and three bedrooms into the tiled area in preparation for the carpet installation that is supposed to start tomorrow.  By the end of the afternoon we had the office cleaned out with the carpet and padding stripped.  I temporarily put my computer set up on a fold up table for easy rip down on Tuesday.  The server and associated network equipment was the only other thing still in the office.

Pulling up the carpet revealed some nasty mildew looking carpet tack strips in the office.  They are the result of some water leakage problems we had with the walls before they were sealed with Rhinoshield.  At first I thought we were going to leave the tack strips in place to be reused.  Seeing this made Cindy eager to just pop them all out so we could get new strips.  Before we quit for the day we also got all of the furniture and considerable other junk moved out of hobby room as well.  The great room and dining room areas of the house suddenly looked like a scene out of Hoarders, with each room filled with stuff.  It was a pretty shocking visual and I immediately felt unsettled having all of this shit piled up.

On Saturday night I took Cindy to one of her favorite Mexican restaurants, Iguana Mia.  She busted her ass all week with the flooring project and chicken coop work, she certainly deserved a  a nice meal out.  Both of us went a bit crazy with the food.  Cindy also had a “Pink Cadillac” margarita that threw her for a loop.  It felt good to just get away from what seems like the non-stop work the last 3-4 weeks have felt like.

Sunday it was back to the grind.  We finished up pulling furniture out of the remaining bedrooms, adding to the already hugely cluttered mess in the tiled areas of the house.  We then had to pull the carpet, padding and tack strips from the rooms, something we are pretty adept at by now.  Pulling up the carpet revealed another myriad of foundation cracks, some of which were pretty big.  After posting pics of the cracks Randall asked how I was going to fill them.  I originally had no intentions to fill them since the floor was going to be covered with high grade, 1/2″ thick, 3M pad with vapor barrier.

After Randall mentioned filling them I had an internal discussion where I decided to go grab my caulk gun and fill them.  There would be no better time to do it and the effort required to fill the cracks was not massive.  I used 25 and 50 year silicone caulk for most of it.

Pulling the carpet in the master bedroom revealed another oddity, a cut off, uncapped pvc pipe.  Within 8 inches was another pipe that was filled.  My theory is it was another one of the “oops” that occurred when the house was built.  In the lightning fast ground breaking to completion 3 month build period there were a number of things that were screwed up.  This looked like they mislaid the underground pipes at some point.  What I didn’t understand was why they would be too lazy to just fill the fcking pipe.  When Cindy first saw the pipe a few small ants were milling around it.  I did what the home builder should have done 14 years ago and plugged the pipe. We got all of the rooms stripped, swept, vacuumed and caulked by mid-afternoon.

We are getting to the point where the chicken coop/run is almost ready to open for business.  One of the things I wanted to try to do was convert the two front windows from stationary to hinged to allow for additional airflow in the coop on hot summer days.  The shed only has one window in the back and two small vents near the roof eave.  Earlier in the week I grabbed a continuous hinge and some hardware to implement the mental blueprint of how I was going to make this happen.  I was not sure how successful I would be so I only bought stuff to do one window in case it was an epic fail.

I was somewhat surprised that what I came up with worked pretty well.  The window can now swing wide open during the day and be secured at night with the insertion of a couple screws.  Now I need to rinse and repeat on the other side.  I also did some work trying to stiffen up an indoor perching structure Cindy made for the chickens.  Hopefully sometime this week Lucy and Lola can get migrated to the new coop.  It may be a challenge since both of them now firmly identify the chicken tractor as home base.

Over the weekend I developed the mysterious red eye syndrome that I have had a handful of times over the last 6-7 years.  My right eye is very red and is painful to the touch.  When it happened the first couple times I went to medical professionals and an eye doctor but nothing was firmly identified.  The last couple times I just ride it out and lay on the Visine until it goes away.  That is my intention with this latest episode as well.

So the Eagles signed Tim Tebow for some odd reason over the weekend.  It just adds to the biggest head scratching off season I have ever experienced as an Eagles fan.  I have no idea what Chip Kelly’s master plan is but I do know if the Birds suck this year he is going to look like an utter dolt as a player personnel guy.

So the carpet installation is scheduled to start tomorrow.  Hopefully by this time next week all will be right with the world again.  This past month has been filled with more at home labor in a concentrated time period than I want to deal with at this point in my life.  It’s amazing what two people can accomplish with some hard work.

So I worked from home all day both virtually and literally.  I was home because Cindy had an appointment in the morning so I needed to be there because the tile installers would be.  I wanted to multi-task so I took one of our laptops out to the chicken coop/shed and connected to the office via wi-fi.  The connection wasn’t great but it got the job done.  I would simply check the laptop periodically as I was doing work on the coop.

The main focus was getting the steps for the shed finished.  Cindy started the task the day before, getting two of the the three stair frames in place.  For the treads of the steps we decided to use left over composite lumber that I have had sitting around for years.  It is a byproduct of when I covered the dog deck years ago.  The color of the lumber went along with the tans and browns of the shed and chicken run plus it basically will last forever.  The steps looked good and felt rock solid by the time I was finished.

I worked on a number of other small coop related projects during the day as I checked in with the office.  Cindy was out there with me most of the time.  We got a lot done.  At this point there are only a few more things we need to get done before we let the chickens move into their new, greatly expanded living quarters.

So before the tile installers arrived yesterday I called into the installation headquarters to talk about the lack of the stain blocker we paid for being added to the grout.  I told them we had 9 bottles of the stuff delivered and we still had 9 bottles after they grouted on Wednesday.  They said they would call the installers and find out the deal.  So I get a call back.  The woman tells me the installers said they did not grout yet.  Huh??  I was a bit flabbergasted.  I told the woman that I know what grouted tile looks like.  She asked me to send her a pic of the area I was talking about, which I did.  Once she saw the pic she realized the installers were not being accurate.

So I got off the phone with the main office only a few minutes before the installer and his family showed up in his new F250 Crew Cab Super Duty 4×4.  I opened the garage door and asked if they heard from the main office about the stain blocker.  The husband speaks basically no English.  The wife speaks bits and pieces of it but nowhere close to conversational level.  Their son was the best English speaker but he was not great either.  So anyway, the woman tells me “We used, we used” as she started digging through the empty boxes of tile.  At the bottom was a bottle of the stain blocker.  Evidently they had a bottle of their own that they used for that batch of grout instead of using the stuff we had.  Ok fine, mystery solved.

So the tile installation went on all day long and into the evening.  Their late starts and early finish times the first two days laid the groundwork for the long day.  The skill work was almost all exclusively done by the husband.  He did a really nice job getting the tile flat and fit it very well around the corners and obstacles.  The son did a lot of the grunt work.  The wife did stuff like mopping the floor, and grouting, poorly.

Cindy and I noticed in the area that was grouted on Wednesday that the joints did not appear to be filled very high.  When you walked across in socks or bare feet it was literally painful as the overly exposed edge of the tile dug in.   The area that was grouted on Thursday was even worse.  Since I have grouted before I assumed the shallow grout was the end result of the woman not pressing enough of it into the joints and being overly aggressive with the sponge that is used to clean the joint after grouting.  The bottom line was Cindy and I were not happy with it.

They were there until after 7PM.  They had all of the tile cut and placed in thinset by that time but over 1/2 of the tile needed to be grouted yet which is supposed to happen today.  The woman asked Cindy to basically sign off on the job last night so she could send the paperwork to her supervisor.  In as nice of a way as Cindy could muster, she told the woman she wasn’t going to sign off until all of the work is complete.  The wife seemed to think this was unreasonable, and said “we 90% done”.  Ok great, when you are 100% done we will sign it.  I thought it was an odd request.  It actually was good that Cindy was the one who intercepted that request as she is generally less trustworthy of people than I am.

We also had more minor detail annoyances where we did not have enough grout to finish the work, meaning Cindy had to make her third unscheduled trip to Home Depot this morning to pick more up.  We also will have to return a bunch of extra stuff including tile, thinset and stain blocker when everything is done.  Even though Cindy and I both are very happy with how the new tile looks and how it is installed (minus the shallow grout), the numerous list of details that were screwed up with the install are really piling up.

This weekend of course will be another work packed affair.  We need to get stuff that belongs in the main living area back there and then stuff all of the furniture/items in the office and bedrooms in the same area as well.  One more week of chaos and then things can return to normal.