Archives August 2003

The weekend of tile, all tile, all the time. We BUSTED ass on it Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. The good news is it is basically done! All we have to do yet is wet the grout twice a day for 3 days and then clean it and seal it. The final result looks pretty sweet, a big change. There are a few imperfections here and there but nothing bad. Grouting was a chore, my knees were screaming by the time I was done. So what is the bad news you ask? We have 3 more rooms to do! However we will be taking a break before we begin the other rooms. The kitchen is probably only a little smaller than the other 3 rooms combined so it wont be as bad. Plus we know more about the process now, so it should go better.

We got done wiping down the floor about 2pm Sunday afternoon. Great, now we can take a break! Nope, the grass needs to be mowed. 🙁 Ali and Nicki almost stepped on a snake cause they couldn’t see it in the high grass so Ali really wanted to chop it down. We set the mower deck nice and low and spent another 2 hours performing lawn care. We have several small pond areas around the yard from the large amounts of rain we got this past week. We got somewhere in the range of 5-6 inches of rain. The skies looked very gray and threatening but we managed to get it all done with only a few drops falling on our heads.

Begin videogame geek talk. As busy as we were, I still found some time to play some Frozen Throne. I had one extremely frustrating match. I was night elves and was playing an undead player. I had an big early advantage, I killed his hero, killed most of his army and had a big lead in resource collection. I let up the pressure and tried to simply accumulate resources and troops since I should easily outgain him. I got cocky and fought some sloppy battles where I lost more troops than I should have and eventually wound up losing a game I should have EASILY won. I don’t mind losing when I am clearly beaten, but to lose a game I should have easily won drives me NUTS. I did manage to win a few games this weekend which is better than I had been doing so I guess it wasn’t all bad.

The “I LOVE THE 80’s” & “I LOVE THE 70’s” is some of the best stuff on TV if you are 30 something like me and like to look back at the past. The show is funny as hell because of the people they have commenting on different aspects of the decade. It is really good stuff. You should check out VH1 and watch one show. You will be hooked. They talk about all aspects of each year, the shows, the toys, the style, the movies, very entertaining.

A lot of people that go the gym are vain to some degree. I mean why else do you go to the gym except to make your body look better? I surely have a degree of vanity with the emphasis I put on staying in shape. But today I saw a guy that was just ridiculous. He was in decent shape, nothing amazing by any stretch. But this guy would do his 30 second set and then spend his 2 or 3 minute recup time doing nothing but flexing in the mirror and admiring his physique from all possible angles. He didn’t just do this once, everytime after every set. I look in the mirror when I want to watch my range of motion on an exercise but never have I done a pose down. It looked really stupid and made the guy come off as a total dweeb to me. Talk about loving yourself… Soon I’ll give my spin on the few “excessive grunters” we have wandering around as well as the techo-dance music selections that certain counter people seem to think we enjoy.

Every night this week we have been working on the tile project in the kitchen. We are well over half done in there and hope to get a bunch more laid tonight. Last night I also had my first experience with self leveling mortar. I used it to smooth out some of the canyons in the floor. Worked well. I am over the inital shock of having the kitchen all ripped up. My insitinctive reaction to want to get it all done quickly is what caused me so much drama on Sunday. Now that I am ok with doing what I can in a steady and thorough process, I feel much better. I think it will look really sharp when it is done. I am accumulating in progress pics of the work but wont post them until it’s done.

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After bragging of my improved performance playing Frozen Throne, I followed up with a 2-12 streak that brought back to that rationalization that I’m just not very good at the game. I’ll keep plugging away.

Last week we had talked about heading to Home Depot to check out ceramic tile. You know, see what we like, get some info, the basic stuff. Well in typical fashion (for us) that evolved into coming home Saturday night with 320 square foot of tile in the back of the truck as well as tools to boot, even a wetsaw! After much debate regarding if we wanted to tile over the vinyl or pull it and tile to the concrete we decided it would be best to pull it up. That is the optimal way and I don’t want to be “half-assing” a project. So with my trusty how-to tile book in hand we began removing the vinyl at the entrance way. WOW, it pulled up easy! Just get a corner up and yank! Wait a sec, what is that gray paper down there? Oh SH*T. The paper backing was still glued to the floor. Hmmm, no problem, I’ll just get out my flat bladed shovel and edging tool and scrape that stuff up lickety split. Hahahahahaha. After attacking the 3 foot by 5 foot area with the shovel, the edger and a hand putty knife/scraper and clearing maybe 2 square feet, the ugly reality hit us that this was going to be a nasty job. We bagged it for the night and I said I would go to home depot in the morning to find some sort of tool to assist in the vinyl removal process.

I woke up bright and early and motivated to attack the project. I got to Home Depot at 7:45 am Sunday morning. Doh! They don’t open till 8 on Sundays. I grabbed some coffee, went back and stepped up to the rental counter. “What do you have that can make removing vinyl floor bearable?” I asked. He said he had just the tool, brand new, never rented before. 50 bucks a day to rent it! Whew, a little steep but I figured with this fantastic tool I could strip all of the vinyl areas in a single day! This machine was big and HEAVY. I asked the guy if I could get it into my truck myself, he said SURE, it has a handle in the front to lift it. It probably weighed close to 150 lbs if not more. I managed to swing it up onto the bed barely. One guy asked me if I was ok, I guess the veins popping out of forehead and neck were a giveaway. I called Ali with the great news of the super vinyl removal machine I was bringing home.

I unloaded the behemoth and shortly afterward began attacking the vinyl at the front entrance. It worked well, stripped it down however we noticed that we had to do some lifting of the machine to get enough downforce to get certain spots to come up. No big deal. We got the entrance done in maybe a half an hour. Time for the kitchen. The kitchen is a large area. We had to first pull the top layer of vinyl off by hand and then go after the paper and glue underneath. It seemed like if I wanted to get all the way down to the concrete I pretty much had to have the machine lifted all the time. This was ok at first, but shortly resulted in very sore forearms and ribs. 5 hours later we were done with vinyl removal in the kitchen.

Removing the vinyl revealed a very ugly picture. The concrete underneath looked like it was jack hammered and then filled in sloppily with some low grade patch mix. Evidently they were not concerned with it being very flat. It was a wavy, ridged mess. Not a good thing for laying tile. Grrr. We should have called it a day there. Shoulda have taken a breath and come up with a game plan. Nope I pressed on. I wanted to get some tile laid damn it!

We laid out the tiles “dry” so we could figure out the cuts we had to make. After doing so I went to our new wet saw and went to town. This went well except I couldn’t find a way to avoid being hit in the face with ceramic, watery spray from the saw. I had to wipe the film off my safety goggles after every cut. 30 seconds into my first cut, the sky opens and rains on me as I’m cutting. I ignored the bolts of lighting around me and pressed on. Must, get, tile laid.

After getting the tiles cut for the entrance I had to mix the thin set, the stuff you stick the tiles into. Ok read the directions, 6 quarts of water, mixes with 50lbs of thin set. No problem, throw in the water, then throw in the mix on top and fire up the drill mixer. Haha. Hmm not going so well, it is very stiff. Hmm maybe if I press the mixer to the bottom where the water is it will go better. Doing so locked the bit in place and instead spun the bucket, throwing thin set mix all over me and anything within 6 feet of me. Argh. I get out the hose and water it down (even though I’m not supposed to do so) 6 quarts my ass, there is no way that was enough water. After a messy 10 minutes of mixing I have something that looks like it should work.

We start spreading and laying. Wow this is a mess, a big mess. Quickly my hands are encrusted with the crap. I try to keep somewhat clean with rags but it doesnt work. Why did I wear shorts? Initially I was the spreader but soon we noticed that Ali did a better and cleaner job of it than I did. I became the tile placer. I worked the tiles in and tried to make sure they were level. They were for the most part but there were certain ones that were off some due to the uneven areas of the floor. I tried to pull some of them to readjust. It was a major battle to pry up a tile that was put in place only 30 seconds ago, it was stuck like super glue. Because of the force I had to use to remove it, normally when it did release it would result in me getting coated in even more thinset. It was really a bad scene.

We pressed on into the night. Got about 20 tiles set in the kitchen and bagged it. I was more frustrated than I ever had been doing a home improvement project. I was dejected, beat up, tired and miserable. To her credit, Ali was upbeat and did a great job of keeping me from totally blowing my cool. We cleaned up the mess and finally got to eat dinner at 9:15. As discouraging as it was, as bad as I felt, I was back at Home Depot with a positive attitude today getting a few items to help me win the war against the tile. I will prevail. I think the final outcome will be nice I just need to realize that I can’t do it all in a day.

I along with everyone else feared that the huge NE power outage was the groundwork for some terrorist plot. Yay it wasn’t. But look at the mess it caused, the cities affected are a MESS right now. How many anti-American terrorist groupd stood up and took notes once this happened? Seven MAJOR cities dark from a SINGLE point of failure. You know that just made it to the TOP of the to do list of terrorist organizations. It was bad enough just losing power, imagine if they lost power AND some sort of attack was coordinated with that? The world today sucks.

This is cool.

Chuck clued me in that this week Mars would be the closest it has been to the Earth in 60000 years. So last night when I was walking the dog I took a look. It was close to the moon and very bright. Very cool. When I was younger I was really into astronomy. The thought of outerspace, distant stars and planets was amazing to me. The size of it all. Being an astronomer was one of my childhood career choices. I think it came after cartoonist but before a meteorologist and a pro baseball player. When you try to imagine the vastness of the universe it really makes you think about how insignificant we really are. A speck of dust in the galaxy.

There is a tropical wave blowing across Florida today. Nothing major but it will make for a windy and wet day.

The Eagles looked great in their first preseason game. I’m optimisitic for this season.

We booked a 4 day mini cruise for our 5 year anniversary in October. I’ve never done a cruise before, Ali has done several. I’m looking forward to it, something different. It hits Key West and Cozamel (spelling). My buddy at work went on the exact same cruise and enjoyed it, lots to do.

Oprah sucks……

Dr Phil blows too….

This weekend had it’s ups and downs like most but I enjoyed it. Saturday morning I was woken abruptly at about 6:20 am by the dog scratching and whining at the door. It startled and angered me. So I shot out of bed told the dog to be quiet and then found my mom outside smoking. I asked her if she could keep an eye on the dog if she is going to let her out so she isn’t waking me up on a weekend. My mom was a bit mad at my mini-tirade but I tried to reason with her that if I saw the dog carrying on at her dor and she was asleep I would do something to either quiet the dog or stick it outside so it isn’t such a bother. After that the rest of the morning I was in a pretty bad mood as we had to do the house cleaning. I helped my buddy move his stuff to an extravagant storage unit for a few hours. After that, it was pretty much raining all day off and on so we weren’t missing a lot by staying inside.

Late in the day I asked Ali if she wanted to go to dinner at PF Changs and meet my mom there. She agreed and we went down to meet mom. Well she was in the middle of a big sale. Her biggest sale since she started her job. We didn’t mind waiting and walked the store for awhile. She finished up and we had a nice dinner. If you never had lettuce wraps, you should try them, VERY good. PF Changs meal prices are very reasonable but their alcohol prices are not! 2 glasses of wine and a light beer set me back 17 bucks, sheesh! Mom’s mood was noticeably better and more upbeat the rest of the weekend. I guess making a big sale will do that for ya.

We held off on mowing the grass Saturday because we wanted to see if some of the water would dry up so we could do it all on Sunday. No such luck, as a result of the Saturday rain it was actually more of a mess on Sunday. We mowed anyway, mowing equal parts water and grass. The mower looks like it was 4 wheeling after a session like this so I gave it a bath afterward. It wasnt that hot on Sunday (mid to upper 80’s) but the humidity was off the charts. I was simply walking around with the weed whacker and literally had streams of sweat coming off me. Very muggy even by Florida standards.

I crashed not one but two of my airplanes yesterday. First I was bringing in my SW400 for landing. I wanted to land it close to me because of standing water on my property and didn’t want get it wet. So I am bringing it in close to me, I am facing it, get disoriented and take a direct hit on my shoulder as I duck out of the way! 🙂 It bounces off of me and dumps into the trench filled with water! I quickly grab it. It landed battery side down so the electronics appear to be ok. Grrrr. Have a black & blue mark where I got nailed.

Later I take my bluecor beast out to give it a whirl with a different prop. Hmmm a bit windy but what the heck? I toss it up and everything is fine. The the wind kicks up. My low tech tape down equipment door blows upen and I start getting glitching. It goes down out of my sight in front of the house. I cut the power and hope for the best. I heard the big thump as it hit down. The walk of shame wasn’t bad. The motor released from it’s tie wrap mount and there was some minor foam damage, nothing bad. Closer inspection revealed that one of my servos apparently died in the crash. Oh well. One of these days I will learn, one of these days….

The rest of my Sunday was primarily a geek fest with me playing close to 20 games of Frozen Throne. I got tired of getting slaughtered so I put some effort into at least playing competitively. It paid off sort of with my record now hovering close to .500 or so. I really enjoy the game.

Tonight the Eagles have their first preseason game. I hope to catch at least the first part of it when the first teamers play a series or two.