The Family

I may be schizophrenic, but at least I have each other.

Chris, I know that somewhere you have a long list of Aleah pictures but i didn’t bookmark it and now i cannot find where you gave the link. Are those pictures still there? This is not the first time i have looked for the link, but i have now officially given up on finding it.

… and rework it a bit and you get these two gems:

I must drink beer.
Beer is the painkiller.
And beer is the little drink that brings total satisfaction.
I will drink my beer.
I will permit it to pass through me.
And where the beer has gone there will be nothing.
Only a hangover will remain.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
The hands acquire shakes,
the shakes become a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

(FYI: I didn’t write either of them and can’t remember where I got them in the first place)

Well, it seems we are going to have the house painted before i expected. My goal was to gradually work thru it this year. Now it seems we are going to hire it done.

We have long intended to have someone texture the ceiling with a deeper texture to hide the uneven places where it has been patched. Now all of a sudden Luke has decided that he is tired of looking it, and we are going to have not only the ceiling textured and painted, we are going to have the walls painted as well, right now.

I did not understand the sudden rush, and was a little dissappointed, actually, that i would not have this year to do it myself, but now i understand the rush.

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I enjoy the family blog… I enjoy my blog too. I wish we all wrote more often. When i look, which is almost daily, it is always disappointing to find nothing new.

Is that because we all have nothing blog-worthy going on? I suppose that is why i do not write more than i do.

Hmmmm so what is going on here that i could write about. I am painting my sewing room. Yes, i know, i have been painting my sewing room for the last couple of months. But i now have my sewing table back in place and that is a good thing. I do not have the work table yet. I am still in the process of painting it.

Speaking of painting, i learned a few things about paint, most from Pat and most after making a mess of things first. I think i will list things i have learned while painting.

1. I found that spackle now comes in a tube which makes filling holes in the wall very neat, tidy, and fast. When you remove the lid of the tube, you expose a pad which surrounds the hole where the spackle comes out. Place the center hole against the nail hole, squeeze, and drag the pad across the spackle to smooth off the excess. Very simple and the hole is filled without any excess spackle left on the wall around it.

2. To fill cracks in the wall, fill the crack with paintable silicone seal. (It also comes in a small tube.) The silicone seal will bond to both sides of the crack and if the crack is caused by the house shifting, it will flex a little as the crack widens and shrinks, unlike spackle which will crack as the house shifts.

3. One should not mix Kilz with other primers. Actually, what i have when i did that is usable. but i have to keep stirring it because it separates.

4. One should not mix flat wall paint with any kind of gloss paint. It might seem to mix ok, but it will not bond well to the surface. However, it is ok to mix different glosses, semi gloss and high gloss for example. It will not really gain you anything, however. I thought perhaps if i mixed them i would tone down the gloss of gloss and strengthen the semi gloss, but the gloss stays about the same. All you do is weaken the high gloss.

5. High gloss paint has a very strong finish. It is hard to strip. However, interestingly, it can be sanded. If you sand semi gloss, the paint will ball up and clog your sandpaper and make a general mess of things. If you sand high gloss, it powders like bare wood or polyurethane.

6. You can find environmentally friendly strippers. They work slower, but do not have the toxic fumes and can be cleaned up with soap and water.

7. The strongest paint finish possible is made by mixing oil base high gloss and polyurethane. You can mix it up to half and half. The paint won’t cover worth a hoot so you will have to apply several coats, but it will give you a very strong paint. You can also cover paint with polyurethane, but it may slightly yellow the color of the paint.

8. Semi Gloss paint cures to its maximum strength in about 2 weeks. High Gloss reaches maximum strength in about 1 week. So, even though the paint on a shelf is dry to the touch, you should not put anything on it for a week or 2.

9. When texturing, it is a good idea to thin the drywall with paint instead of water. The texture will bond to the wall or ceiling better and it is stronger. Also it requires less paint to cover it as it is not as porous.

10. There is another tool i like… a small paint roller made of high density foam. It is supposed to leave a finish as smooth as a brush… It doesn’t quite, actually, but it is much smoother than a regular roller and it is much faster and easier than a paint brush, and it is possible to paint a large item (a door, for example) completely before the paint dries so you can roll the roller the entire length and leave a more even finish.

We have guests. 🙂

There’s this nest on our porch – small nest, way up by the porch ceiling. Abandoned nest but interesting architectural detail.

Well, this weekend I saw these two birds checking it out. Over and over and over. And now, while I can’t see the nest proper, there is a lot of fuzzy stuff floating over the top. I think they’ve moved in.

Hope the milk delivery doesn’t bother them. I’m keeping a much much tighter eye on the cats while the birds are in residence. The cats sometimes like to dash out front, and while I know the birds are safe maybe the birds wouldn’t know that. So I’ll be more careful about the cats.

Whoooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

Local bookstore put them out early and I scored! Have my own copy of Children of Hurin, which is going to be released to the public on April 17th!!!

Happy, happy, happy, happy day

You all know i like ebay, but i am just about fed up with it. I suppose i will get over it, but i am currently very frustrated with it. I just bought some fiesta. Some was fine and some was not. I really do not have a good source for fiesta other than ebay. There used to be a store on the north side of houston that delt in fiesta seconds but they closed and i cannot find another one. I could buy from the factory or from online stores but you end up paying so much more and the selection is more limited. Ditto, and more if i were to buy from department stores.

But here i am… i bought a bouillon cup that has a messed up edge. It is not so messed up i can’t use it, but it is messed up. I recently bought a plate that was supposed to be lightly scratched and is deeply scratched. Depth of scratches is a matter of opinion, after all. Then today i received a plate that is a second and is supposed to have minor bumps and scratches (and i am fine with minor flaws. I don’t want to pay what you have to pay for firsts; Seconds are expensive enough) but it has a rough place no glaze that is 1/4×1/8 inch on the top surface of the plate! That is not something i consider minor. Of course i wrote the seller, but the listing says no refunds and all sales final and all that sort of thing. Probably the only option i have is to leave bad feedback, which means i will also receive bad feedback and that is so unfair.

I wanted to write to ebay and suggest that they create a place for me to mark bad sellers. As it is the only way i can mark a bad seller is to mark them as favorite and make a note that they are bad. I dislike doing this in part because i think ebay gives points to sellers marked as favorites. I have tried to write ebay before. I always forget what a pain it is. I finally gave up. They have very specific categories and none of them are for suggestions or for things not covered by their categories, and every category i tried wanted me to send specific information that made it clear i was not in the right place. I finally gave up…. after i spent almost an hour trying.

I am about ready to go break my lousy flawed plate into a satisfying number of pieces (if only breaking it would give me any satisfaction) and blow off the 4.99 plus shipping (which was at least a great price) and blow off ebay. If they would just let me leave honest feedback without getting retaliatory negative feedback in return it would not be quite so frustrating.

‘Cause, you know, I’ve heard rumors that you would.  Someday.

Christina and I were wondering to ourselves if there was some time hangup, a move hangup, or something.  Waiting for renfest?

I dunno.  Just curious.

OK, quarterly check up … how are everyone’s January resolutions going?

From looking at the first post, we had entries from Mom, Ramona (hey, that’s me 😯 ) and Chris.

Ramona said she’d like to increase her upper body strength and overall conditioning.
Mom said she’d like to diet/exercise/eat healthy, paint house, have ceiling done, and clear sewing room.
Chris said he’d like to increase overall fitness, keep a journal, read more, declutter, and clean more often.

So – how’s everyone doing?

On my side, I’ve been OK about going to the gym, but OKs as good as I get. Don’t know how I’m doing on overall conditioning, but I haven’t really progressed on the upper body strength thing. I have just signed up at a rock climbing wall, though, and that tends to keep me more interested.

So I’d say my own progress is minimal.