Busting ass and lazy ass
I had a long 4 day weekend and used about half of it tiling the small bathroom. I have been avoiding it because it was such a pain in the ass doing the foyer, kitchen and utility room. The bathrooms are a bit less daunting because we decided it would be ok to go over the exisiting vinyl instead of going through the hassle of stripping it. I came to this decision after talking to the contractor we got a quote from to do the work. He said it would be fine to do so as long as the existing vinyl is well adhered, which it is. So the only prep I had to do was sand the floor down a bit and sweep it. The task was a bit more involved because I was doing it solo, however the prior experience of tiling helped greatly. I was able to get the tile laid down, cut and set in thinset in about 7 or 8 hours. Then on Friday I grouted it in a couple hours during the afternoon.
One of the aspects of doing a bathroom that worried me was the toilet. I originally was considering leaving the toilet in place and tiling around it, versus pulling it up and tiling under it. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that if I pulled the toilet and installed it on top of tile, which was higher than the vinyl, it wouldn’t fit right and I would have a leaking, stinky mess. Well after removing and replacing the bowl, I saw that those ideas were dumb and it sealed just fine on reinstallation. I did the entire job without many issues and I think the final product looks good. I just have to wet cure the grout yet tonight and then seal it anytime after that. The worst part of tiling is the knee trauma it inflicts on me. Crawling around for that long just makes my knees scream, even with knee pads. I hope to tackle the other bathroom during the extended Thanksgiving weekend.
So even though I was busting ass doing the tile project, I also spent a lot of time being a lazy ass at the same time. For example, on Friday, from about 8am till lunchtime, I did nothing but screw around on the Xbox. I took a couple hours to grout and then screwed around some more until Ali came home. It was weird, even though I did the tile work, I felt like a bit of a bum.
On Saturday morning we had to get up bright and early to take the Nissan up to Fort Myers to get my 30,000 mile service. When we bought the car, we had a problem because the dealership sold us a car that had 1500 miles on it and didn’t tell us. As compensation, I negotiated that they give me a free 30,000 mile maintenance. I’m glad we had it, otherwise the dealership would have charged me a RIDICULOUS 500 bucks to perform this work which seemed rather routine. I presented the service guy with my letter from thier sales manager, “US Marine” and he accepted it without question. I got a call during the morning asking if I wanted them to perform some additional ridiculously priced service while they were at it, which I respectfully declined.
During the afternoon we went to a lawn & garden show which was being held right down the road from us at the county fairgrounds. We picked up a fruit bearing banana tree as well as detailed instructions from the grower on how to be a successful banana farmer. I threw together a quick planting box for the banana tree and planted it. We also got a beautiful bougenvilia plant. Supposedly, within 16 months we should be harvesting bananas on a regular basis.
On Saturday night we had a date night. We went to dinner at Olive Garden and then went to see The Incredibles. It was an entertaining flick but it wasn’t a must see for me. The WOW factor for these computer animated films has worn off a bit for me. It’s still amazing what they can do but it takes more than that to entertain me at this point. The movie was good but it didn’t make me want to run out and tell everyone to see it. These type of films seem to be coming out monthly at this point. The Incredibles is doing huge box office numbers so my opinion must definitely be in the minority.
On Sunday morning I went into lazy ass mode again. I got a device for my gameboy that allows you to write game backups to flash memory. It’s awesome because it allows you to store 5 or 6 games on one cartridge and pick and play any of them at will. SO I spent a couple hours testing out various games. Eventually I started on what seemed to be my large task list. I cracked the whip and got most everything done by 1. Then I went back into lazy ass mode. The Eagles don’t play until tonight so I didn’t watch any NFL games and instead screwed off some more. I don’t know why I get stir crazy if I am not doing a sufficient amount of “productive” activities but by dinner time I was bouncing off the walls. I medicated myself by doing the bills and then doing a workout from Men’s Health. Ali can not understand my issue with having nothing to do, I can’t say I blame her.
The new gym is finally, finally supposed to open this week. It has been a frustrating month getting date after supposed date when they were going to open. It sounds like the county is being ridiculous with some permitting issues but still, the gym shouldn’t have kept throwing out dates to open without knowing for sure they were good. You always should under-promise and over deliver. To accomodate Ali getting to and from the gym on her own during the day, we have an E-bike coming today. More details to follow but it is basically a bike/scooter hybrid.