Friday, June 30, 2006

I Know Why They Call Them Sliders

"She mostly does horses." Hah! That is still funny to this day.

Had lunch with The JohnnyB today. We went to Armadillo Willy's, which is one of the places it seems like The JohnnyB and I always end up. StinkyJ was working through lunch, as he always does these days, and BrainkyP was MIA.

I was looking over the menu, and I noticed something interesting. They have something on the menu called, "Sausage of the Day." It's served with grilled onions and green peppers. That sounded good. I was all set to get that, but I noticed a big sign behind the counter promoting their latest creation: Kobe Beef Sliders. So new, it's not on the menu or website. These were three mini-cheeseburgers in the White Castle style served with garlic fries. That sounded damn good, too.

I pondered the choices for a while whilst we stood forever in a very slow-moving line. Now I'm paid to think ahead. Not too far ahead, mind you, as that's BrainkyP's job. But, you know, maybe up to a day ahead. My job is clear up all the nitty-gritty details that the idiot "big thinkers" overlooked so that they can seem to be successful with their long-term planning. So I ran through the scenarios. When I get to the front of the line, I could say to the pretty young lady running the register, "I'd like the sausage of the day."

She'd look at me, look at The JohnnyB, and say, "Didn't you come in with it?" Then I'd have to go off into a long diatribe about how, yes, I know he's very tall and stocky, but his hands are disproportionately small, plus his earring placement very clearly indicates he's a bottom, and anyways we're each married, and not to each other, and we're just coworkers having lunch, and go f' yourself.

Orrrr, I could say, "I'll have the Kobe beef sliders."

At lunch, The JohnnyB was telling me some story about how he was planning to paint his living room this weekend, but that his wife was worried about his blister. Then he showed me how he had a big blister across the palm of his right hand. He made up some story about burning himself on bacon, but I knew that somehow this was oddly related to the sausage of the day story.

You should all go to his blog and request photos of "The Palm". It'll be the funniest thing ever posted there, if you don't count my comments.

When I got back to work, StinkyJ axed me what I had for lunch, so I told him about the sliders. He said, "You know why they call them sliders, right?"

Oooooh yeah.

Took about 45 minutes for the truth to hit home on that one.

After work today, we had a little happy hour at SC13. I was going to leave on time to get home on time, but The Mrs. called me while I was there. I don't think I have ever been there without her calling me. I did not answer, because if I answer with mariachi music in the background, there is trouble. The Mrs. left a voicemail. He opening line was, "How is SC13?"

On the way home, I was overcome with the raging Shabu's. I wasn't sure I would make it home. I went in through the garage, since the downstairs bathroom is right next to it. I walk inside, and damn, the neighbor is over with her kid. I can't have the raging shabu's with the neighbor in the family room. So I head upstairs.

The Mrs. starts hollering, "Why are you going upstairs?" I ignore her.

I hit the master bath. No TP. The Mrs. never replaces a TP roll. So I go to the cabinet. No TP there, either. I'm clenching like crazy and dancing around at this point. The cold sweats are getting worse. I run to the kids bathroom and open the TP cabinet. No TP. HannieC is following me around at this point. Finally, I grab the half roll off the roller and head home to the master bath.

This whole time, I'm thinking to myself how it is that about 6 months ago, The Mrs. stopped buying TP proactively. She waits until we run out, then buys a boatload more. I mentioned this to her at the time, and she told me to go f' myself and if I wanted to do the shopping, that was fine with her, and why do I always try to pick a fight with her?

I went down to the garage where we keep the extra stock. Lots of paper towels. No TP. I had to scavenge some from the downstairs bathroom stock so that we'd have a couple backups in the upstairs baths. Then, of course, I found 4 rolls in the master bath. They were in the wrong cabinet.

I missed dinner, but I'm feeling much better now.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

I Got a Haircut Today

I had to break it to "Big John" that I was moving to Colorado and that this may very well be my last haircut from him. He asked me if I had a replacement lined up for me as a customer. I'm working on Brooksie for that. He also said, "Your hair seems a lot thinner today than I remember it being. Like, when I wet it down, I could see your scalp all over. I don't remember it being like that before."

Do you remember what it was like to get a tip?

I'd post those kitchen pictures, but I can't find the camera. The Mrs. says, "It's in my purse," but you can hardly ever find her purse. I sure don't know where it is.

Remember when I said we didn't need more than an 8' PODS? WRONG! And this isn't even final-final. They took the PODS away yesterday with even more stuff in it. The 12' would have been too small.


On the plus side, our realtors are now bringing in some of their own furniture cuz the house is too empty.


I need sunglasses to walk into the kitchen now. Really. It hurts my eyes.


Sell Sell Sell

out.

For the second week in a row, I am not attending Fat Camp. Last week, that by itself was enough to kill it. TommyO called me; I was out cuz I had to prep the house for sale. Fat camp ended there. No further contact amongst the players. Today, AndyP called me, and I am out cuz I have to prep the house for sale. I wonder if anyone will contact anyone else.

The interior painting is finally all done. I'll post some pictures of the kitchen soon. Don't have the camera with me at the moment. With the cabinets white, I feel like I need to put on sunglasses to walk in there. Sheesh.

I'm caught in the "most likely selling price" analysis portion of the relocation process now. Two independent realtors have to give a pricing analysis, and then this relo company looks at them and sets the price range. At the rate things are mooving, it'll be two weeks before we're listed. I think if we were doing it on our own, we'd have been listed tomorrow.

Chatted with the Fort Collins realtor today. She is very excited to earn a commission. She tells me nothing is moving in the price range we are looking. Completely a buyer's market. This is good, cuz then I can lowball. I hear stuff is going for $50k below ask, though not from the realtor.

The JohnnyB has up his second post. Wow. It's even better than the first. And he allows anonymous comments now, too.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Happy Birthday (Party) to HannieC

Before I forget, I'm going to open with a funny story. I need to tell this, because it's an instance of The Mrs. being funny. She isn't funny all that often, and when she is funny, she is very, very proud of herself. I need to tell this story now, because she's hitting "reload" on my blog so much looking for the official account of her triumph of humor that she's throwing off all my visitor counters. So here it is:

We were driving along a couple days ago, and The Mrs. was telling me about FreddyC's appointment with the vet to make sure he was up-to-date on all his shots, etc. before The Big Move. I said, "Hey, I learned that one of the guys in Ft. Collins's wife is a vet. I think she mostly does horses and farm animals and stuff." Then The Mrs. says,

"Yeah? But what kind of animals does she take care of in her practice?"

So, there you go. You pitch up a nice slow one down the middle, and The Mrs. swings for the upper deck. The rest of the weekend, every time I said something grumpy, The Mrs. responded with, "She mostly does horses."

Yesterday, we had HannieC's birthday party. Her birthday isn't for another 2 weeks, but The Mrs. pulled in the party so that it would not conflict with an open house. We rented a cotton candy machine and a snow cone machine. Both were big hits. At some point in the middle of the party, The Mrs. comes wandering out with a bottle of sweet-and-sour mixer and a bottle of tequila and says to me, "Time to make some adult snow cones."

See, so every now and then there is a glimmer of why I married her. Here are two glimmers in the same weekend.

We ran completely out of tequila very shortly. It's the kind of liquor I never stock a backup bottle of, since my circle doesn't drink that much tequila, and The Mrs's circle isn't around that much. But, as it turns out, suffering parents standing in the heat at a 6-yr-old birthday party are a ripe audience of tequila cones.

Then we all got in a discussion about how I was going to truck the liquor, along with ammo, propane, motor oil, and other household chemicals out to Colorado, and it came up that it might not be legal for me to drive through Utah with the liquor. I'm gonna have to look that up. I checked the non-Utah route, which heads through Arizona and New Mexico, but it was 300-400 miles longer. I dunno if that's worth the detour, or if I should have a big going-away liquor bash.

Here are some photos from HannieC's birthday party. Our youngest guest, fellow blogger ZachyO, dropped by while his townhouse was having an open house. He needed a little more space, now that his parents moved in with him, so he bought a full-size house. Here he helping his dad take a whack at the Batman pinata.


The cake was also Batman-themed, though it's hard to tell from this picture. I don't know why HannieC has suddenly become a Batman aficionado. I guess it's better than Dragon Tales.

It was hot. The Childrens played first in the Sponge Bob sprinkler, and then in the elephant pool. They turned the back yard into a giant swamp by the end, though it seems to have drained overnight.


MaxieC plays with his good buddy NolanB, no relation to JohnnyB. This is the only shot we have of him not bashing NolanB over the head with a plastic sandbox hoe. Mainly because we took the hoe away and made him play with the rake.


My favorite shot below. I call it, "real men don't need ladders to hang the pinata."

Friday, June 23, 2006

Oh where is my kitchen?

Let's see...this is my oven with the spot to the right being where my refrigerator should be.


Here is the other side of the kitchen. See the fancy cooktop?


And the dinette that The Mrs. spent so much time boxing up so I could put everything in the PODS. Is the refrigerator supposed to be in the dinette?


The painters are now projecting that they will finish the kitchen on Tuesday, which will be one week after they started. Our painters don't work Saturdays. Looks like they have sprayed on one coat of primer and one coat of paint, and then brushed on a second coat of paint already. Still needs at least one more coat, possibly two given the Tuesday completion date.

The Mrs. just came in from the garage, where she is boxing up more stuff, and said, "Well, it looks like MaxieC will have at least one friend to invite to his birthday party." I said, "Who?" and she replied, "Little RyanC."

HannieC's birthday party is on Sunday. It's two weeks until her birthday, but we pulled in the party so that it would not conflict with house selling. House selling is going sloooowly. Lot of hoops I need to jump through to get The Company to pay for everything, and The Company seems in no rush. It's almost maddening how many "fill out this form and wait 3-4 business days for someone to contact you" loops I have been through.

I'm starting to get very disappointed in The JohnnyB. He's managed to get his advertisements installed, but he's only getting public service ads. Why is this? Well, cuz he hasn't written anything in a week. Why is this? See, JohnnyB's life isn't all that interesting. Now, I try to take him out drinking every now and then to give him some material, but he doesn't have a natural sense for the humorous. For instance, I was out drinking with him just this past Tuesday, and he found nothing in that to discuss.

He did, to be fair, buy me a Ketel One Martini. Then he made me switch chairs with him so he could chat up the lady sitting next to me, who was apparently an old friend of his from The Company. We were all from The Company, and pretty much everyone knew everyone else with a few exceptions.

See, when I got to the conference thingee on Tuesday morning, I bumped into this guy from my project, well call him Shunster. and he said, "Man, I went out drinking with Those Fort Collins guys yesterday. We went to this martini bar up the street that they found. Those Fort Collins guys really like to drink. Where were you, man?"

I'm thinking to myself, "Self, the phrase, 'Those Fort Collins guys really like to drink,' is quite encouraging. Self, you will fit in nicely, if I do say so myself." It also reminded me of the last paragraph of this.

So, at the end of the day, I tracked down Those Fort Collins guys and rounded up a couple of the Santa Clara guys, and we hoofed it over to the bar. We passed three pawnshops along the way, and Shunster had to show us a tripod-mount machine gun in the window of the one next to the bar. Then we looked at all the guitars hanging in there. I spotted an interesting one and I said, "That looks like a BC Rich Bich" just as three women walked by. One of them gave me a nasty look. They went into the same bar we did.

In there, we met a bunch of other peoples from The Company. One guy was up at the bar buying drinks, and he asked me what I wanted. Now, I'm not making this up. You can check with JohnnyB. The conversation went like this:

He: "What do you want to drink?"

Me, CherkyB: "A Ketel One Martini."

He: "A Guinness?"

Me, CherkyB: "No. A Ketel One Martini."

He: "A martini or a cosmopolitan?"

Me, CherkyB: "Martini. With Ketel One."

He: "Vodka or gin?"

Me, CherkyB: "Vodka. Ketel One Vodka."

He: "Vodka what?"

Me, CherkyB: "Ketel One. It's a kind of vodka."

He: "Oh. OK."

Meanwhile, the bartender had been standing right next to us this whole time and had begun mixing it up when I had first said what I wanted. The guy leans over to him and says, "A vodka martini with Ketel One, please," and the bartender sets it down right in front of him. He was surprised at the fast service.

Then, he starts down the line of people stacked up behind me waiting to order drinks. They have all learned. They all order Guinness.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Happy Father's Day

Before you read this post, I'd like you to take a quick review of this account of Mother's Day.

What an idyllic day that was.

Father's Day began in much the same way, with the lovely HannieC getting up early to make me breakfast. 6am early. She made me two toasted English muffins with butter right at 6am. Now, I'm not normally up at 6am. I'm not normally up at any AM starting with a 6. But I know this because when HannieC finally came in to wake me up to serve the breakfast at 6:45am, The Mrs. informed me that it was made at 6 and "must be ice cold by now." Then, she claimed this, "I tried to hold her off as long as I could."

Those of you who went back and read the account of Mother's Day know what a task it is to try to hold these childrens off when they are excited about Mother/Father's Day. I did the technique where I get up out of bed and take The Childrens downstairs and then keep running around, chasing The Childrens as they individually escape up the stairs to try to wake The Mrs.

The Mrs. employed a completely different technique. It involved lying in bed and, whenever MaxieC started climbing on my head to much, lifting him off and saying, "No, Maxie, it's Father's Day and Daddy is trying to sleep in." I'm not entirely sure what techinque she used to fend off HannieC long enough to assure my breakfast had reached thermal equilibrium, but I do know that it did not involve The Mrs. setting one foot on the floor out of the bed.

After HannieC presented me with her loving breakfast, which also included ice water, "to keep it simple to make," I tried to eat it while both childrens jumped on me and on the bed. Again, a completely different technique from the one I used - which was to hustle The Childrens out of the room so that The Mrs. could enjoy her breakfast in peace. I'm learning a lot about how to improve my holiday technique so that it flows much more smoothly and with a lot less effort.

The rest of Father's Day was a day of work. Work is what Father's a re for, so this is only appropriate. We loaded a whole bunches of more stuff into the PODS unit. This photo is kind of early on in the process, before I unloaded the content of the storage shed. HannieC is climbing up to "her spot" on top of a bunch of boxes on a set of shelves.


Then, after that, we took the truck that had been loaded up with junk the night before...

And drove it to the dump.


Then, as if a trip to the dump weren't enough excitement for any father on Father's Day, we followed it up with a trip to my favorite family-friendly restaraunt for lunch.


I had two beef'n'cheddars and a medium Diet Coke. The fries are for The Mrs. The Childrens also had a great time.


We spent much of the day packing up stuff. The Mrs. packed up the kitchen, not for the move (since the van lines packs us), but for the painter who is coming on Wednesday to paint the cabinets. We had bought a big giant role of styrene-like packing material that had been kicking around and hard to manage, but I had an epiphany when I was looking at the pile of lumber and spotted an old closet hanger rod. A couple of benches and a couple clamps, and we're good to go.


I cooked us up some dinner on the grill. T-bones, from the looks of it.


Later, MaxieC went through his top shelf, carefully removing books one by one and setting them neatly on the floor until he came to just the right book he was looking for.


Then, the best part! HannieC had a dance recital from 7pm until 10pm that I was to take her to. Just the two of us! What better treat could a whole auditorium full of dads want than a three hour dance recital from 7-10pm on Father's Day. HannieC was on at 9pm, and then again at 9:50. She danced to Elvis's "All Shook Up." She did well, though the girl next to her kept getting confused and was bumping into her all the time. No flash photography allowed. Sorry.

HannieC fell asleep in the truck on the way home. Then she faked being asleep when The Mrs. tried to get her out of her costume and into jammies. But she did go right to be with no fuss.

Bloggin is going ot be light the next few days. I'm out of town in Vancouver, Washington at a technology forum for the company. Will have to do a lot of schmoozing, which will put me very close to death.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Check the driveway for pods

PODS is pretty cool. They are built on 2x4's, so they don't scratch the living heck out of your fancy driveway when they set it down like the metal storage shed guys do. We got the 16' model, cuz it was on sale for only $20 more than the 12'. After piling stuff in there much of the afternoon and evening, I'm going to say we really only needed about an 8'. 12' is the shortest they have, though.

We're just packing some stuff off to storage while we sell the house. We'll have the PODS guys bring it back as soon as we get an offer. Because of the fancy-schmancy relocation package my company has, I actually sell my house to my company as soon as I get an offer, then they sell it to the buyer.



Here's a little photo I like to call, "My Son is Two."


Now, imagine this isn't the only set of shelves in the house...

Now wait just a darn second here

I had a brief moment a few minutes ago where The Mrs. was getting ready to take The Childrens to a birthday party, and I was watching them watch TV. I spent most of the day so far loading junk up into the truck and taking it to the dump and then scraping out old, discolored caulking from around the tub.

Anyways, while I'm watching The Childrens watch TV, I check on the status of various things, like if I have any email or I've made any money from people clicking on my advertisements and stuff like that. I note that I have email from my blog. It emails me the comments when people post them, since I don't routinely go digging through old posts to see if anyone left a new comment.

Anyways, it's email from good olde JohnnyB. Ah, a new reader. How happy. I can always use new readers. Immediately, I click over to my statcounter account and note that someone from Sunnyvale has spent 4 hours 29 minutes and 32 seconds on the site this morning, starting at 7:50:07am.

My goodness, someone got up awfully early to read the old blog.

Then, I note an even more intersting thing. At 12:06pm, this same Sunnyvale user has started to hit the site via a referral link rather than a direct hit. The referral site? The JohnnyB.

How about that. Out for its maiden voyage today. In keeping with tradition, I'm giving a big plug to The JohnnyB, just as I did to CJ's Blah, and Spankolio. If all my millions of experienced blog readers would just take a moment to check out the initila post and provide feedback to JohnnyB in the comments section, I'm sure he'd be very appreciative of the guidance.

The first post isn't all that bad for a first post. You remember my first post pretty much blew chunks. I even had to go back and edit out a name, cuz I don't like talking smack about people behind their backs (or, you know, in case the person ever stumbles across the blog via word of mouth or something and decides to beat me for it). Odd coincidence, that. And it took about 120 posts before CJ hit just the right combination of beer and anger for perfection. Spanky, well, he's still working on finding the sweet spot.

Then, I figure I'd poke around in JohnnyB's personal profile to see what pithy lies he has to say about himself. Now, this is where things went south. What is this location: "North San Schmose"? And what is this occupation "Gruntled Design / Debug Engineer"? Methinks this sounds awfully familiar.

I'm gonna say this one time. I know you think you're going to replace me as the funny one once I leave, but you don't get to use my material. You need to get your own material, Frenchie.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Where There's Smoke

Monday, I was sitting at work at around 5:15 staring blankly into my compooter screen trying to figure out which of my not-particularly-pressing issue to work on. Then I think to myself, "Self, it's after 5:00, and none of these issues is particularly pressing. Go home."

So I went home.

Pulled into the drive and walked to the front door, where I noted that the birdbath fountain was running dry. Now, this fountain is the bane of my existence. It requires near-continuous maintenance to keep running properly. Being a master of drip irrigation, I ran a drip line to it that fills it with water every single day at 10am, so for it to be out of water at 6pm is not a normal failure mode. I investigated. The drip line was pinched because it hadn't been put back in the cutout when I reinstalled the top after cleaning out the pump to get it working again a couple days ago.

It's always something.

So I go over and get the garden hose and start filling up the fountain. I'm standing there filling up the fountain when The Mrs. comes tear-assing out of the house holding MaxieC and with HannieC right behind her. She looks at me and says, "Did you call the fire department?"

"No. I'm filling up the water fountain."

"Why not?"

"Cuz I'm just standing here filling up the water fountain. Is there a fire?" I'm looking at the house wondering if it's going to burn to the ground before I get a chance to sell it and if I should go back in to get the dog. It appears to be normal.

"Call the fire department on your cellphone right now. You didn't see the fire?"

"No."

If I'd seen a fire, I wouldn't be standing here with the garden hose filling up the water fountain. It's not like I'd drive up and go, "Holy smokes! The garage is on fire! I better get the hose! Oh, hey, the water fountain needs some filling up. I'll just take care of that on my way to the fire, since I've got the hose out already and all." And you never want to call the fire department on your cellphone unless you have no choice. Cellphone 911 calls go to the central valley CHP, for goodness sakes. Use the land line.

The Mrs. gives me one of those, "Tsk...sigh..." things that lets me know she still thinks I'm an idiot, and she leads me back to the driveway and points to the sky about a block over. There is billowing smoke rising into the sky. Something pretty big is on fire over there. Now, in my defense, this is the sky up and to the right of the street I drove in on. Given where the road is and the houses are, there's no reason I would ever have seen this from inside the truck while driving.

Now, the wife is shouting to me over all the sirens, "Call the fire department!"

"Uh...I think they already know. Don't you hear all those sirens?"

The sirens are screaming quite close, then shutting down at what sounds like about a block away. There are at least 4 different vehicles so far.

"What if they don't know where it is?"

"I don't know where it is. What am I supposed to do? Say, 'Hi. I see smoke rising one street over from my house. I think there's a fire there.'?"

"I don't think the firetrucks are going there. It sounds like the sirens are stopping too soon. And the smoke isn't getting any thinner."

"How many different houses do you think are on fire within 1 block? Do you see any other giant clouds of billowing smoke? And just how fast do you think you can put out a fire that big? I bet it takes more than 30 seconds."

"I still think you should call 911 just to be sure."

"Why don't you call 911 while I take The Childrens over to see the fire? Or go inside and get the pohlice scanner."

The Childrens are, at this point, jumping up and down in the bed of my pickup truck watching the smoke. MaxieC shortly thereafter digs a golfball out of one of the tiedown pockets in the bedliner and starts rolling it around. He and HannieC begin to fight over it.

"You are not taking The Childrens to see the fire. That's not safe. Kids, inside right now!"

We get inside. I point to the phone on the counter and say, "OK. Call 911."

"I think they probably know where the fire is by now."

Here's a google earth shot of 'hood, with thumbtacks on my house and the fire house.


After dinner, HannieC was practicing viola and piano with The Mrs., and I snuck off with MaxieC to see what was what. The house appeared to be gutted by fire. Interestingly, there was a construction dumpster in the driveway, so I'm guessing some contractor touched something off. Maybe a plumber. Plumbers are always setting houses on fire with their soldering torches.

There were 2 fire engines, a fire truck, a special equipment vehicle, and a chief's truck still on scene. The roof of the garage was still smoldering, and there were guys up there cutting holes in it with a big giant chain saw while someone inside the garage sprayed a fire hose up. So MaxieC got to see some real firemen work on a real fire, but he (and I) missed the real action.

We were standing across the street next to the fire hydrant. A woman came out of one of the houses, walked up to us, and said, "I wish they could have hooked this up without it leaking." Then she picked a piece of garbage (a surgical glove) out of the gutter that was marginally blocking some of the runoff from flowing down the street, and said, "There. Now at least it will drain a little better." And she wandered off.

It's bizarre what some people worry about.

What is going on?

I'm trying to post something to the old blog here to keep the ad revenue rolling in (at the present rate of about 50 cents per week), and The Mrs. shoves me aside so that she can instant message dirty nun jokes with StinkyJ. Something about Sister Mary Ball Washer and Sister Mary Sanchez and, my personal favorite, Sister Mary Tossyersalad.

I can't remember ever having a dirty nun IM session with StinkyJ's wife.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Oh, Now I Feel Bad

What StinkyJ meant by, "except for the wife thing," was, "except for the fact that your wife refuses to live here anymore." Not that everything was good except for my wife. But the other way makes for a better story.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

I'm Going to Open with a Joke

My career.

Oh, just kidding.

Sunday night during dinner, HannieC leans over to me and cups her hand over my ear to whisper to me this "secret joke" that she made up by herself.
HannieC: Knock knock.
CherkyB: Who's there?
HannieC: Pooh.
CherkyB: Pooh who?
HannieC: Poop!
This is one funny kid. You know, if one of your parents is funny, you have a better-than-average chance of growing up to be funny yourself.

Same thing goes if you're funny looking. Sorry, StinkyJ's kids. Maybe you'll take after your mom. Or, maybe you'll go through life telling a knock knock joke about a monkey that doesn't make any sense at all.

Speaking of StinkyJ, today he was lamenting how I was (rumored to be) leaving. Now, he always tries to make everything seem like it's in my own best interest, even when he's really pitching his own best interest. He's not really being manipulative, he's just self-delusional in the fashion of, say, Steve Jobs claiming that a mouse should only have one button. He really believes it.

So he's going on about how great my career is going here and how well the future is set up, and I'm putting that through the old StinkyJ translator that adds words to the effect of "for me" after his references to me. Like, as examples, "You're so well set up here [for me]. Your future is really looking good [for me]. You can make a huge impact [for me]." In his little soliloquy about the wondrous beauty that is my future [for him], he says this (a direct quote - I wrote it down right there):
I don't know why you're leaving. It's all good here, except for the wife part.
I'm not sure insulting my wife was the best approach to get me to stay on in my role as "the guy who does whatever thankless jobs StinkyJ finds too boring". Now, normally this kind of talk would invite a punch in the mouth, but you really need to think these things through.

First, StinkyJ still has that broken leg he got from (allegedly) falling down the stairs drunk. So if I smack StinkyJ, then BrainkyP is going to take a look at that and start weighing his options. He's going to think, "CherkyB shouldn't be smacking a guy with a broken leg. Hmm. But I'm still mad about that whole best man thing at StinkyJ's wedding. Hmmm. But I'm also still mad about that time CherkyB dumped the recycle bin on my head because I kept putting garbage in it. That little bastard. I'm gonna f- him up!"

Now, I don't have a great history of fighting with BrainkyP, but I do know that we were at one of those idiotic company team building events where they had a bounce house and gigantic boxing gloves, and he beat the living hell out of me. (Just for completeness, I would like to note that the place also had absolutely free beer coming out of a tap in the side of a building, and I was maybe taking better advantage of that than was BrainkyP. But even I don't believe it when I use that for an excuse.) Plus, he weighs maybe 90 lbs. more than I do. I have more guns, but not readily available at work, so that is of little practical use. So, BrainkyP coming in as backup for StinkyJ is clearly a problem.

My only hope here is JohnnyB coming in to back me up at that point. Now, JohnnyB is substantially bigger than BrainkyP, so if he comes in on my side, I think we win. But JohnnyB may be thinking, "Hey, this is a great time to get back at that guy that's always accusing me of being a Bolshevik," and go all Uncle Joe Stalin on me. Or he may be thinking how lining up against his boss, BrainkyP, might be a bad career move. So, no guarantee that he comes in to even the odds and doesn't come in to pile on.

But, ultimately, the decision hinged on this: if Me, CherkyB, StinkyJ, BrainkyP, and JohnnyB all get fired for fighting, we probably have to shut down the department. That'd put like 200 people out of work. So, being a softy at heart for the livelihood of 200 families, I stood down.

I figure StinkyJ's wife, who is a regular reader of the blog despite never leaving comments, will punish him for being so rude.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Sunday Night Song Reference

Since I moved to this house in November of 2002, I never unpacked my CDs. One of my Motorhead CDs has this song on it. Something made me think about it tonight. I don't know why.

Only $20 on home improvement today (had a lot of my quality work time consumed by church and a birthday party). Got half a cu-yd of shredded redwood bark (AKA gorilla hair). Push a fresh layer down on the "pot garden" and covered up all the bare spots. I also finished hooking up the drip irrigation to the latest plants in the back. Backyard renovations were declared "done", quite a milestone.

Here's a shot of the Bistro spot, all cleaned up and ready for anything.


Here is the vegetable garden. Note how the new fir mulch complements to color of the redwood planters. You can also see how the veggies are doing pretty well inside the planters. We've already harvested some lettuce. The radishes are up in force, and the carrots are doing well. The onions and beets lag a bit.



BrainkyP was over last week returning the truck, and he noted that the planters, "look like little coffins, that's how good they look." Quite a master of the compliment, that guy.

You can see the "before the mulch" of both shots here.

All this yard cleanup has taken quite a toll on our compost. I can only make about 1 cu yd at a time, and it's full-up. We've resorted to throwing out compostables in the clean green bin, which is also full to the brim right now. A few days in the hot sun, and a little room will open up.


Couple funny stories, then I have to go put some things in boxes to make it seem like my closets are roomier. I don't know why I need roomier closets, but there it is.

This week is apparently gay pride week. Now, I don't know how normal people find out about such an event, but the way I know is because it was announced at church. Not just announced, but celebrated. Walked into church today, and the altar had a big rainbow banner draped over it. Oye. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Then, to top it off, today we prayed for terrorists. Not like that they would see the evil in their ways and realize that God didn't want them blowing up children just because they were Jewish, or that a religion based on nothing but death and destruction was likely to end badly. No. We prayed that those terrorists housed in Guantanamo Bay would find hope of release rather than despair, and that they would get to experience true justice rather than committing suicide.

Now wait just a minute. You're telling me that you can stand up there and announce the upcoming women-build habitat for humanity project, a project that excludes men, "Not to exclude men, but to include women," and then a half hour later lead a prayer for the Taliban? The Taliban? The nastiest bunch of misogynists the world has seen in power in a long time? The same people who would stone you to death for picking up a hammer and trying to build a house? Michael Savage hit the nail on the head when he said liberalism was a mental disorder.

I had another observation today. More of an epiphany, really. The choir was in the middle of singing a hymn in Swahili, and I realized that modern liberals have a bizarre attraction to tribalism. I don't know why that is. My guess is that modern liberalism eschews any kind of individualism. You see this in their love of unions, public schools, public transportation. communism, high taxes, and naked protests. I blame Sesame Street.

Yes, when I was a child, I remember distinctly that the underlying theme of virtually every episode was that everything was always better with cooperation. No matter what, you should cooperate. I also remember my dad coming through one day, looking at it, and going (I'm paraphrasing here, as this happened over 30 years ago), "Bah! Nothing ever gets done through cooperation. You need to learn to do things for yourself."

Thank you, PoppaC. But for that, I'd probably be an angry, sloganeering collectivist like damn near all my peers.

On the way home from church, MaxieC wanted is window open. It was a nice day, and only about 74 degrees, so I opened it for him. He was very happy. Seeing MaxieC happy infuriated HannieC.

It was that kind of weekend.

She started demanding that I close MaxieC's window immediately. Here was her argument, quoted verbatim. Try to imagine a petulant little girl as you read it.
I am too cold! You close Max's window right now! It's too cold in here! I am freezing! Close his window and turn on the air conditioner RIGHT NOW!
Whuh? Turn on the air conditioner? Being a certified super-genius only goes so far, it seems.

She gets this from her mother, who is always unhappy with whatever temperature I have the vehicle. She can't even be happy with dual-zone climate controls (which we've had on a few rentals on trips) because my temperature bleeds over to her side. Now, I'm getting it from the back seat, too.

I turned to The Mrs., shook my head a little, and said,
She's all woman, that one.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

I Have Fear

I was having a little IM conversation today with CJ of CJ's Blah (who looks much older in person than he does in his glamor photo on his website), and he was being his usual pesty self, trying to twist my arm to move out to his neck of the woods, where the air is so thin that you can hardly even see it in the winter. I asked him if he knew my biggest fear of moving out there. He had many guesses, but all were wrong. They involved things like job security, not liking the place and wanting to move again, having the in-laws move in. These were all good guess, but all wrong. After almost 12 hours of guessing, I finally let him in on the answer:

My biggest fear is that my wife and I will be sooo happy that my blog will start to suck as bad as yours.
Deep down inside, I'm not a very nice person. But, you know, even the rumor that been going around of me moving there has affected my ability to provide consistently funny content here. I'm just not angry enough.

It's been a few days since God last spoke to me. I believe he's moved on to other more important issues. He did, however, tell me to stop referring to StinkyJ as the antichrist. Something about not shooting the messenger. To tell you the truth, God tends to ramble on a bit, and I have a hard time concentrating through it all, so I'm not 100% sure of the details. Just something about StinkyJ not being the antichrist and yadda yadda yadda.

Fat camp this week got off to an inauspicious start. No one would go biking, being that all my friends are moody little bastards. The excuses weren't even creative this week. Reruns, all of them. So we decided to just go drinking. I showed up at 9:30, the agreed upon time. The next person who shows in TommyO at 10:15. Then Spanky at 10:25. Sheesh. I was on my third drink by the time these idiots got there.

I think the Fat Camp phenomenon is winding to a close. I'm preparing to bug out, it would seem, and interest from the others is mild. Perhaps I can re-establish fat camp with a more dedicated crowd elsewhere. Perhaps not.

Yesterday, HannieC came into the bathroom where I was giving MaxieC his bath. She had with her a temporary tatoo decal of Frankenstein, and she wanted it applied. OK HannieC, where do you want it?

"On my neck."

She's clearly been spending too much time hanging out at jail.


FreddieC turned 8 today. The Mrs. and The Childrens got him a beef knuckle.


Today was another day of home improvements. I took the old truck and The Childrens off to the dirt place to buy fir mulch. We weer mulching the dirt berms in the backyard as we had done to the flower beds in the front yard last week. I calculated that we would need 2.7 cu yds of mulch, but we needed slightly less than 2.5. The truck can hold only 1 cu yd at a time given the size of the bed (the "quad cab" seating really eats into the bed length), so that was 3 trips and about $100.

We're now almost $600 into this "fixing it up" craze with no end in sight. The Mrs. had our painter over yesterday to quote painting the kitchen cabinets white and a bunch of other stuff. It's gonna be over 2 grand for all that. Nothing, though, will touch when she decided we needed a new front yard. That was more like $16k.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Friday Night - Date Night

The Mrs. calls me up at work today and says that MaxieC skipped his nap today. So, "He'll be in bed probably before you get home." Then she says she's going to have HannieC in bed by 8pm so that we can "spend some time together." Now, I'm thinking the same thing you are.

Then she says
You know, so we can talk, make plans, and write a list of all the things we need to do.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Holy Smokes!

Today for lunch I went slumming with the antichrist to Dairy Belle. We took his car so that we could get handicapped parking, but I had to drive so that he could talk on the phone to his boss's boss's boss. Bet you never knew the antichrist was so low on the organizational ladder.

At Dairy Belle, I had the chili cheeseburger and the deep fried mushrooms. Now, there is an excess of greenhouse gases in my house.

Have you ever been to Yellowstone and gone to the sulfur mud springs? It's a similar experience only you don't have to drive so far.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Some Success

When we left the home improvement story about the bathroom faucets, I had not finished the last sink in the master bathroom, nor had I figured out how to fix the broken shaft for the diverter valve. That was on Saturday. I know the post says Friday, but that's cuz it logs the time you start to write the post, not the time you actually post it. I had started the End of Fat Camp story on Friday.

I have two great pieces of news to report. First, I finished replacing the faucet in the master bathroom. No, it did not go smoothly. As with all things, the fewer things you have to do, the harder they make themselves.

I figured that after having done an identical setup the day before, I'd be all set to breeze through this one. Got up Sunday morning before church, and The Mrs. suggests I do the faucet change then. I had about 2 hours. I predicted I'd be able to do the demolition in that time, and then finish the rest when we got back home. We had our realtor coming over at 3:00 just for a little chat. You know, catch up, reminisce about old times. That kinda stuff.

I start in on the removal of the old fixture. As I noted in the previous article, taking out the sink made the job a breeze, so I started out taking out the sink. HannieC helped me remove the caulk. I scraped it free with the razor scraper, and she pulled it out. Great. Then I go underneath to remove the p-trap and loosen up the screws that hold in the clips. It's a bottom-mount sink.

The P-trap comes out without incident. I get three of the four clips loose, but the fourth won't budge. I spray WD-40 and get a giant screwdriver and put a wrench on the handle - the whole nine yards. Nothing. Then, after a lot of cursing, I realize that I'm an idiot. I bet I can get the sink out with just three of the four clips off. Sure'nuff, comes right out.

The faucet comes out next, then I go for the cold water valve. The knob and base come off, but the valve is stuck in the countertop. There is a nut on top and on the bottom, and the one on top is so corroded that the edges crumble if you try to put a wrench on it. You can't get the valve out by loosening the bottom one cuz the bottom won't fit through the hole in the counter. Argh. After much struggling and more cursing, I manage to get the bottom one loose. This lets me unscrew the bottom one enough to lift up the valve and cut through the nut on top without cutting through the countertop. To cut through the nut, I used my handy-dandy Dremel tool with the little cutting wheel. Beautiful. Now I start on the hot.

Same problem, only worse. On this one, I can't even get the stupid bottom but loose. Both are severely corroded and frozen in place. I try to cut the bottom nut off with the Dremel, but I can't cuz the valve stem is in the way of the cutting wheel.

I decide to spray it down with WD-40 go eat breakfast. Then I go to church. After church, the realtor calls and says he's coming at 12:30, not 3:00. Fine fine. Sink isn't going to be done.

In the meantime, I had been ruminating. What to do about that stupid broken diverter shaft? I didn't want to hire a plumber. There has to be some way to fix it myself. Then, Eureka, God spoke to me again. He said, "Remember that episode of Muscle Car on Spike TV. That was My gift to you."

So I'm thinking, "alright, God, it goes without saying that Muscle Car, and really the whole Horsepower TV block, is Your gift to mankind. Now what in the hell does that have to do with fixing the stupid diverter valve in the tub?"

God said something about always having to lower His expectations, and then He wandered off shaking His head and muttering to Himself.

Someday we're going to have to put Him in a nice home.

Then it hit me. Of course. They were repairing a rusted out body panel, and they were noting how you no longer needed to have a welder in order to replace sections of body panels. No, instead many places were using metal-bonding epoxys to "weld" in new sheetmetal. It's as strong or stronger and doesn't require any particular skill.

Now, why God would be pointing me to a method that requires no specific skill is beyond me. I guess some things are meant to remain a mystery. It's like Moses asking, "Why a burning bush? Why not a flowering bush? Why a bush at all? Why not a burning Brazilian?"

But who is to argue with God? After church, while HannieC is in children's choir rehearsal, MaxieC and I head over to the nearby Home Depot to pick up some of this fancy, new, hi-tech metal epoxy. Last time I was at my Home Depot, they had about 30 different epoxies. Well, not this one. They had 5. And only 2 were appropriate for metal: J-B Weld, and J-B Kwik. Now hang on a second there. These aren't fancy new metal epoxies. J-B Weld is older than I am, for goodness sakes.

But which to choose, which to choose? I got with the J-B Weld cuz it makes all kinds of claims about big, heavy-duty metal things that it can fix, whereas the claims on the package of J-B Kwik are kinda indistinguishable from the claims on the Super Glue Plastic Fusion epoxy I love, yet which had failed me miserably on this repair already.

So now we're home from church, and we have just enough time to wolf down some lunch and start cleaning up the house before the realtor gets there. He arrives, and we sit and chat in the summer house for a while about how the housing market is doing and what perhaps our house might be worth, and how it has an extra digit compared to when we bought it. Same old, same old. Then he wants to go inside to see what we've done with the place. It was a real wreck when we bought it, you see, and he'd like to get a feel for how it has been fixed up.

He made a lot of funny comments about how he could tell right away that "this is [The Mrs.'s] house" from the sheer number of toys everywhere. We have more toys in the house than most K-B Toy stores ever did.

Then we got into the master bedroom, and he says, "Ahh...here is our one bedroom condo within a house." See, our master bedroom is sinfully large given the San Jose market. This house was a real score. Then he sees a hole in the counter where the sink is supposed to be, tools lying all over the place, and the sink sitting on the floor of the water closet. I start to explain how if he had arrived at 3:00 like we had expected, this would all have been put back together. He looks it over and say, "Uh. OK. You're probably going to want to make sure that gets done."

After he goes, I get right on it again. The WD-40 has done nothing to loosen up anything, so I decide it's time to pull out the big guns. I get out the Sawzall. Now, my Sawzall is a very large, serious model. You've seen it. Now, the problem with a sawzall is that I can't really cut through the nut cuz the nut is relatively flush to the counter, and you can't really cut perpendicular to a countertop without cutting the countertop as well. So I decide to cut the valve clean through flush with the bottom nut. Took a surprisingly long time to do it (maybe a full minute), but it worked like a charm. Then I could cut the bottom nut off with the Dremel tool and lift the valve out (since I had cut off the fat part that didn't fit through the hole already). The rest went uneventfully.

Here is a picture of the first of the two sinks I did in the mater bath. This is the "peninsula" sink that is situated against a small wall on a peninsula of counter. It's a stupid layout, and we hardly ever use the sink. But it looks a lot nicer now than it did before.


On Sunday night I also decided to try out the old J-B Weld on the shower diverter. I mixed it up and slathered it on and held it. I waited a couple minutes, then stopped holding it, and it fell right off. Damn. Package says it takes 4 hours to set. Does that mean I have to hold it for 4 hours? I figured it meant in about 5 minutes it'd be dry enough to walk away, and then after 4 hours it would never move again. The Mrs. is observing. We discuss. I am frustrated as I can't figure out a way to hold this thing in place for 4 hours. Did God steer me wrong?

But The Mrs. now steps up to the plate. "Why don't you tape it to the wall?"

Damn! That's brilliant. She runs off to the garage to get the duct tape. After a couple tries, I get the thing more-or-less centered and taped securely to the wall. Next day, it's stuck hard. I back-fill the joint, as there was some shrinkage overnight. Here's a photo of the repair.


That knurled section at the tip is what broke off, and the gray goop right at the base of the grooves is the excess J-B Weld. I stuck the knob on there, and it worked perfectly. Only thing is I can't quite get the knob on all the way cuz of the ridge made by the excess goop. I'll put a grinding wheel on the Dremel maybe tomorrow and grind it flush, and it'll be as good as new.

Sometimes having a direct line to God is very useful.

Quick Hitters

The equivalent of making a bowl out of an apple today. A few concepts, but no time to develop them into fully entertaining stories. Yet, I feel compelled to indulge nonetheless.

Something very exciting happened today. I was stuck in traffic up by work, and I figured it was either election-day traffic or there were terroristic events going on. I called The Mrs., and she checked the TV. No terroristic activity. We decided on an alternate route that I had never tried before since both my primary routes were at a virtual standstill. This route worked nicely, though it goes through a somewhat seedier part of town than either of my other routes.

Well, I had just turned left at The Pink Poodle, and a guy in a Ford Explorer pulls up next to me (at 45mph) and makes the universal "roll down your window" gesture. I roll down the window, and he yells over, "That thing sounds really good. Is it an 8 or a 6?" I answer that it is an 8, and he goes, "Oooohhh yeaaahh!" and then he drives off.

Flowmaster 50. Best birthday present ever.

There have been a lot of rumors flying about here and there regarding changes in my future, and the next two stories are in regards to that.

BrainkyP has apparently taken upon himself to try to be the funny one. See, if the rumors are true, then the lab here will eventually be missing the funny guy.

That'd be me, in case anyone from work is reading this.

Back to BrainkyP. There we were, right at the start of an important meeting when BrainkyP stands up and says, "Our number one priority is to supply the pipe."

Yeah. Tell that to my wife.

Unfortunately for BrainkyP, his delivery was a little too deadpan for the audience, and I was the only one that cracked up. BrainkyP is the Gilbert Gottfried of comedy. Meaning, he's hysterical to other funny people, but not so much to the general audience.

Finally, it being 6/6/06 and all, today was the day that StinkyJ decided he was going to oppose God's will. Historically, all prophecies have been opposed by those in power. History will judge who is the heretic.

Monday, June 05, 2006

I don't know what to say

The thing of it is this: various forces have been aligning in the past week for the express purpose of disrupting my comfortable little life. Now, I'm not normally a religious man. That's why I attend a UCC congregational church - no religion required there. But, if I were a religious man, I would say that God is sending me a message.

Either that, or he's just completely screwing with me for His own amusement. Or, as we would say in the UCC, The Creator is completely screwing with me for The Creator's own amusement.

Inclusive language is pretty cumbersome. Forgive me if I haven't included you. It not that I don't like you. It's just that I think you're a moron.

The final straw really was when God sent his prophet, DaveyH, attorney at law, out of the blue last Friday. Now, DaveyH is my oldest friend on earth. I've known him since 5th grade, though he claims to have known me since 4th. Apparently, I made a bigger impression upon him at age 9 than he did upon me. No surprise there, as I've always had quite a personality on me.

Old DaveyH has been living in Germany for the last two years doing an ex-pat thing for the company that gainfully employs me. He works there too, but as a lawyer. Yet on Thursday, he's IMing me to say he'll be in town for lunch on Friday. We have lunch. I learn about how he's moving to North Carolina and isn't sure if he'll have a job when he gets there, but he's doing it anyways because it's the best thing for his wife and fambly.

Now, to you folks this may seem mundane. But to me it was very clearly a message from God.

What have I done to deserve this?

Friday, June 02, 2006

Is it the End of Fat Camp?

Maybe, maybe not.

Theoretically, yesterday was fat camp. However, when it came time to go hit the trails, it turned out I was the only confirmed attendee. Why is this? Well, it's starting to become clear that I surround myself with complete losers in order to feel better about myself in comparison. Either that, or I'm the only one who isn't all that busy right now.

Excuses this week:

BrainkyP: I still work until feven o'clock every night
Spankolio: I'm working
TommyO: I just unexpectedly bought a house, and now I have to get my townhouse ready to sell or I'm going to go bankrupt.
AndyP: I'm too important to return you phonecalls anymore.

Thing is, I had packed up my bike and everything figuring at least one of these idiots would show. But no.

I ended up going home, where there was no dinner for me. I had a Hungry Man fried chicken dinner. That was just perfect considering I had had Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch.

Last time CJ mentioned KFC, he got an ad for it. This was before he got banned from having ads for clicking on them himself. You can't click on your own ads. It very clearly violates the contract. But you gotta read the contract to know that.

So we decided that this week would be fix up the fixtures weekend. See, when we bought our house, it was a mess. One of the things we always planned to do was to change out most of the sink fixtures. I changed out the kitchen sink fixture before we moved in, as the kitchen was "so digusting" that "I can't imagine even touching anything in there." We also changed the double-oven, cooktop, and dishwasher. The kitchen faucet was a realtively painless swap compared to that.

However, at that point, we kinda lost interest in changing the faucets. It's a pain to do, and they were all working OK. But they were old and grungy-looking.

I decided we'd go to OSH to get the fixtures this morning. This is because I had seen one just like the new faucet in the kids' bathroom when we were at OSH last time. One of those faucets had died, and the home warranty people replaced it. But they didn't match the original. So one sink had one faucet, and the other had a completely different one.


Being cheap, I decided to match the new one (the one on the right) rather than getting two new ones.

Now, as is customary at our house on project day, The Mrs. decided to do something time consuming and unrelalted in order to push out the start of the projects as long as possible, thus assuring that they won't finish in one day. She decided, of all things, that she needed to clean the bathrooms. That way, they'll be nice in clean as I disassemble the fixtures and dump them out on the floor and scrape off all the old putty and caulk and generally make a big mess. See, we had our realtors coming over at 2:30, and the house needed to be presentable.

Whatever, I managed to talk her out of it. She made fun of me for wanting to take a shower in the morning before breakfast as retaliation for not letting her clean the bathrooms before we went to OSH. But still, despite us all being up at at an hour beginning with a "7", we ended up not getting to OSH until around 10:00. I have no idea why. I know I spent a lot of time up in MaxieC's room doing puzzles with him while I thought The Mrs. was cooking breakfast. Then when we came down for breakfast, she handed me a box of Entenmann's chocolate-frosted devil's food donuts. I don't know why it took until 9:30 to prepare a box of donuts. The box wasn't even open. I suspect she was cleaning the toilets.

Anyways, I'm up in MaxieC's room in the morning, and I look out the window. I like to look out his window because I can see what's going on on the street. It gives me hope. Today, though, it gave me consternation. Why? Well, I didn't see the soothing lines of my truck out there. In its stead, I saw a P.O.S. Jetta with most of the paint missing from the roof.


It's BrainkyP's car. I know what you're thinking.

A Jetta? I didn't know BrainkyP was a woman.

Well, he's not. He's just European, so he can't help it. He borrowed my truck to get mulch, and he drove my truck home from work yesterday whilst I drove his car. His brake light comes on if you accelerate too rapidly in first gear, as it turns out.

Now, I'm looking down on this car and thinking to my self, "Self, BrainkyP's car sure is a P.O.S. Why did you park it on your brand new driveway with the flagstone running through it? It's probably out there leaking fluids all over and making a big, nasty mess that will greatly diminish the curb appeal of your house."

Then I was all like, "Hey MaxieC, we've gotta run outside for a second!"

Son of a beeeotch! It leaking fluids all over my new driveway! Mother-f#*ker!

Well, we managed to get off to OSH shortly thereafter. I also managed to put his junker out in the street, though I crossed my fingers that it wouldn't get towed before I got back. The cops were out here yesterday towing a motorcycle (a Ninja 500cc) that was "abandoned" in the street a couple houses over. We don't like that type over on our side of the zip code border.

We ended up spending about $400 on fixtures and related stuff. Got a new one for the kids' bathroom, plus got two new fixtures for the master bath, a new fixture for the downstairs half-bath, and new knobs for the tub in the kids' bath.

As always, I did not finish. I ended up making two more trips to OSH, and breaking one thing that I haven't yet figure out how to fix (the brass shaft for the diverter valve in the tub - turns out of the aluminum inside the knob seizes to the shaft, putting a 2' pipe wrench on it to "loosen it up" will, in fact, snap the brass clean off. I knew that before I did it, yet I did it anyways. I couldn't help myself.). I got everything done except one of the two faucets in the master bath. Those guys were a major pain because the sink bowl is quite deep, and they are three-piece sets (two knobs and a faucet, not a knob-faucet combo). I had to remove the sink the get the old one out on the one that I finished. This after spending over an hour getting most of the old one out and failing on the second-last nut on the faucet. Man, was it easy to put the new one in with the sink out. Definitely know I'm dropping the sink out on the next one right from the get go.

Here's a before/after of the downstairs fixture.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Privacy Policy

We here at Me, CherkyB value the privacy of our readers. No personally-identifiable information is collected from our readers. We do, however, collect some non-personally-identifiable information through the use of a cookie. Examples of such information are operating system, name of internet service provider, and browser version. This data is collected so that we at Me, CherkyB can better tailor our offerings to the readership.

No personally-identifiable information is ever collected, nor is any personally-identifiable information ever associated with any information that is collected. The information that is collected is never sold to or shared with any third party. It for the sole use of the staff of Me, CherkyB.

Thank you,

-CherkyB