Archives 2004

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.

Add Fed Ex to the list. I was supposed to get a package to my house via Fed Ex ground on the 11th originally. Somehow during the transit, the date magically changed to today, the 12th and it didn’t show up today and instead the tracking says they attempted delivery but noone was home! I was home all f’in day, noone was here from Fed Ex. I called up and bitched and of course got nothing but “Sorry, it should be there Monday” Bastards.

With my cushy government job, we had off yesterday for Veteran’s Day. I celebrated by working on tiling the smaller bathroom. The project went well but it was slow going doing it all by myself. I only miscut a few tiles and I sort of tiled myself into a corner where I had no option but to stand on a couple tiles I just set in order to place the last two, but it looks like it will come out ok. Today I’ll grout it. I pulled the toilet to do the tiling and I am a bit nervous about how it will go back on when sitting on top of tile. I’m not sure if the bolts are long enough. I am using the small bathroom as a warmup for doing our bathroom in a little bit. I have a few pictures of the project I’ll post when it’s done.

Last night I watched Saving Private Ryan in it’s entirety. It amazes me that they can show it unedited with all the F-bombs and gore in the movie, but that is the way it really needs to be seen. I hadn’t seen it in it’s entirety since I saw it in theaters. It is a chilling, depressing and horrifying reminder of what war is all about. There are a couple scenes in it that haunt my mind and are difficult to forget. Even though there are various tragic, sad parts throughout the movie, I didn’t cry until the very end when the old Private Ryan is at the grave of Captain Miller. For whatever reason, that aspect of it just kills me. I remember when I saw it in the theater, looking away and trying to think of other things during that part to avoid crying in public. The movie made me think even more about how we have men and women going through the same sort of tragedies daily over in Iraq today. Their bravery is beyond any words of praise I could muster.

Congrats to Joe from the frigid forests of Maine, he is the big winner of the first big giveaway. He has won a box full of cd’s that will show up at his door absolutely free of charge! Stay tuned for the next big giveaway, you TOO could be a big winner just like Joe!

Over the weekend Alison and I were up in Lehigh Acres looking for more land as an investment. Lehigh Acres is in Lee county and is an area very similar to Golden Gate Estates, where we live. The big difference is the lots in Lehigh Acres are much smaller, typically 1/4 to 1/2 acre parcels. Their smaller size makes them much more affordable. We looked at a number of places, more than a half dozen. Some were literally in the middle of nowhere with access only by a one lane “road” consisting of little more than 2 tire tracks. But we found 2 that appealed to us. One was a for-sale-by-owner lot that was right off a major road and the other was another nice lot that was backed by an orange grove close to another major road. We put in offers on both of these lots, got counter offered and we accepted the counter. So we are well on our way to being real estate investors. The woman that was selling the lot privately offered me much advice about the entire process as she has been buying and selling land in Florida for a few years. I was suprised we could complete the entire sale process for a few hundred dollars and without stepping foot in a title company. It can all be handled by mail. The other lot was a realtor listing and was less money but still a good deal. The process of getting bank checks and having to overnight them here and there is a bit of a pain but by the end of the month I expect it to be all finished up. I have an itch to go buy some more but to invest much more would be too much of a financial hardship on us. My hope is to hold onto these lots a couple years and then have enough money to pay off the entire home equity line with money to spare, then repeat the process.

I don’t know why, but owning one of these is an appealing idea to me.

This is the most exciting development to hit the pages of my blog ever! Well not really, but still it’s more interesting than reading about me cleaning the house. I was cleaning up my desk over the weekend and was flipping through my CD collection. I noticed I have a bunch of CD’s of cracked games, ripped movies and other stuff of the sort sitting around. I have either played and/or watched them and no longer have any need for them. Instead of throwing them out. I thought I would try giving them away. This contest is beyond simple. So if you would like my collection, simply be the first to post a comment. You will get a box in the mail full of “stuff”. Good luck to all!

The Steelers put a big, glaring spotlight on what we already knew. The Eagles are far from perfect. The Steelers embarassed the Birds on both sides of the ball. I shut it off early fourth quarter and took a walk to burn off some steam. You can’t let people run the ball on you at will without repercussions. I’m not sure how they will fix their defensive problem. I just don’t know if they have the personel to do much about it. The TO / Donovan episode on the sidelines was rather uncomfortable to watch, I hope it isn’t the first seed of discontent. On the upside, if you are going to get man handled, embarrassed and destroyed by a team, I’d much rather it be during week 8 instead of the NFC championship game. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for the Birds. Nice game Steelers (who used to be my team as a youngster during the 70’s)

I have had multiple bad experiences with shipping recently. I mentioned a little while ago that UPS’s rates suck. Add slow and unreliable to the list. I also am not thrilled with USPS priority mail service. I used USPS priority mail to mail my brother’s laptop back up to him. Typically priority mail takes 2 days to get to PA from here. I mailed it on Saturday, my brother didn’t get the box till Thursday. I had the tracking service for it and it said it left Jersey City, NJ on Monday yet somehow it took an additional 3 days to go the remaing distance to PA. When I tried to get additional info from the post office they could tell me nothing except what I already found online. They said they don’t consider an item lost until it has been in transit for 14 days. Nice. I was relieved when my bro said it showed yesterday.

UPS is way overpriced. Even ground service costs a fortune and it is as slow as shit. I bought something on ebay that shipped last friday from the west coast, it isn’t scheduled to get to me until next Monday, 7 business days. The max coast to coast used to take was 5 days. So they raise the prices and decrease the service level. I have another shipment in progress that was sent 2nd day air. It was supposed to arrive yesterday. The tracking info shows it made it as far as Orlando and no further. My calls to UPS yesterday yielded no info, just canned responses that the system still shows an ontime delivery, even though there is no tracking beyond Orlando which is 3 hours north of us. Well it never came so I called first thing this morning and let them know that the tracking still hasn’t changed. The first guy I talked to sounded like was just awakened from a 10 year sleep. He said “We have until 5pm Nov 4th to deliver it…” I said today is November 5th. “Oh, mumble mumble, let me transfer you…” So now I have a tracking investigation going on. I fear someone got sticky fingers at UPS. DHL, here I come.

I have to work tonight and a good chunk of Saturday. The rest of the weekend will be spent watching football and driving around to check out potential investment properties. Nothing thrilling.

Read on and prepare to stagger through the next 4 years.

whatever comes down the pike the next 4 years, no abortions, amendments to suppress gays, unfathomable deficits, trashed environment, an ultra-conservative supreme court, catering to billionaires and corporations, 3 dollar a gallon gas, war, and whatever other disasters await. I don’t give an F. It’s incredible to me that W will slither through again.

Pics of the converted laundry/medicine cabinet and pic of the small replacement cabinet for pet stuff