new contact number

I have a new cell phone number.

busy times

I noticed that I haven't posted at all in June. Actually I have been pretty lazy about posting most of this year. Well, at least for June I have a decent excuse: I haven't been home long enough to do it. These past two days are the first in a month that I haven't worked on the house. I think I have been losing weight from working on this house!!!!

The house, a cute little bungalow near work, didn't seem like it need that much in repairs. However the more I pulled out the worst the project got. A rotten floor under the toilet became wood rot across a large section of floor including a section that was holding up one of the interior walls (which I ended up replacing). And removing ugly wallpaper revealed that it was the only thing keeping the plaster from falling down. The electrical was 90 years old. The plumbing was basically nonfunctional. And the basement was full of more mold then a college refrigerator.

A month later, the plaster is all but removed from the house (haven't got the kitchen), drywall has been hung (they should be finishing up in the next two days), new electrical outlets have been installed, the basement has been gutted (still some piles of crap from that which is still down there, if anyone wants to help load it out), plumbing is half gutted (still needed water to one sink, i have everything I need to upgrade it to modern PEX).

Next weekend, the girl starts painting (she has been craving to do that for a month now), and I'll finishing plumbing in the toilet and start hooking up the new electrical to the service. I may not get as much as i wanted done before I move in, but I think I am going to get enough.

I call a mulligen

If this house doesn't kill me, my own stupidity will. Drywall went up today. It looks rough, but they haven't taped yet so I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll pull it off.

This last weekend the girl's mom flew down to help with the house. Which was great cause I had a lot of work that i needed to finish before the drywallers came in this morning. The girls went shopping and picked up several things we would in the house (which was good, kept me from having to do it) but no sooner then 10 minutes after they got back on Friday, that Liz's dad calls to tell them that her Aunt had passed away. Off to Florida they go, this of course is where things start going down hill for me. I am not trying to take away from the hell she was flying into, nut simply stating the obvious need for us not to stay apart too long (its bad for my health).

Saturday, I burn two of my left fingers with a saw blade (yes they can get that hot in a very short amount of time). Sunday I bash one of tthose fingers with a hammer. And today I gash my head open while trying to break into my house (I'll get back to that).

Sunday night, I finially finish at the house and come home for a well deserved break to have Roan (evil cat #1) decided to piss on the carpet. After letting the urge to kill cat pass, I clean up the mess. Nelly (evil cat #2) decided that sleep was for the weak and wanted to help me overcome this problem.

Its sad when you look forward to going to work to excape the rest of your life. This afternoon I swing by the house to check on the progress. I notice quickly that when the crew left, they locked the only lock that I didn't have a key for. I am locked out of my own house!!! I look around for another way in. All the windows were secured except for where the window AC unit had been. There was only i piece of plywood covering the hole. I borrow a hammer from one of the neighboors and proceed to remove the wood. That went fairly smoothly but when i tried to left myself up into the window I misjudge where the cheap filler window was at and head butted it. It breaks and shards of glass rains down on me. I get a small but bloody gash on my head. One of the other neighboors runs me down to the local emergency clinic. No big deal small wound didn't need stitches; I have a peice of medical tape holding it together.

So to make matter worst, I get home to discover two things: the cats have learned to open the bathroom cabinet doors (tampons and Q-tips everywhere) and Evil cat #1 decided to piss on the same spot but this time got the towel I had left down there to from cleaning it yesterday.

Two more days, two more days until Liz gets back. I am not sure I'll survive that long. How did I manage to do this before I met her? Oh thats right, I didn't have a house or cats!!!!

The Great House Hunt - P2

If I actually buying a house wasn’t enough indication, the quality of this house hunt was tremendously better. This time I was not afraid for my short term health this time around, with only one notable exception: the Elkridge house, or AKA the Porno House.

Every home we looked at was given a nickname to help remember it versus the dozen or so that we looked at over the given two weeks. Most were given names beforehand; some had their names changed after we looked through it. The Elkridge house was originally named the tree fort house. Due to a tree fort in the back yard. Its named was subsequently changed after viewing.

The living room had an interior wall covered in foam brick facade with several “brick” torn off. The Kitchen was mostly unusable and the upstairs had water leaks and signs of mold. None of this scared nearly as much as the basement. The main area of the “finished” basement was covered in shag carpeting. One wall had cheap wood paneling and the other was a full length mirror. There was a disco ball hanging from the ceiling. It had flooded at some point down here and it smelt as it would have.

Through a small side door was something I had never expected to find in a house. The room was small and fully tiled floor, walls, and ceiling. The room consisted of one main feature: A slightly raised multi-person bathing tub. It was huge, at least 10 foot squared. One could not walk around it without stepping up of the raised lip. And due to and poor signs of construction I dared not risk it. The tub had collected more then it fair share of the flood water and debris. Its depth was determinable from a visual inspection alone. Dennis, the realtor, being a slightly more braising man (or curious, or stupid, not sure which) then I, found some scrap duct work and found that the bacteria farm was only two feet deep.

Thankfully the Elkridge house was the exception and not the norm. The house we ended up deciding on is a great little house that need far far less work. I have the loan application in and the home inspection is tomorrow. So far everything is on track for closing.

The Wonderful World of Debt

Oh my God, what have I done?!?! I am buying a house!!!

A while back Liz and I agreed that we needed to move in together because the living between two apartments sucked something hard. She liked my apartment complex far more then her own, so it was decided that she would give up her place and move to mine. Problem with this plan was that I only had a very small one bedroom place. Not nearly big enough for the both of us and the two fur balls of Doom. So I would move out of my place into a two bedroom in the same complex. This was the plan.

As time neared for us to start signing papers, we noticed that my complex did not have a large availability of two bedroom place around the time we would need to move. So during a side hand remark (mostly joking) I suggested that I should just buy a place. The gleam in her eyes and the small birds hovering around her head indicated that I just stepped in it up to my knees!!!

So the adventure begins!!! Tune in tomorrow for part two of the great house hunt.

fishy work

Taken 2/17/09, Liz and I helped restock part a stream near my apartment. It was actually a lot of fun, but i did take one painful fall that left a good size bruise on my shin.

not a well thought out plan

Sometimes things don't work according to plan, then sometimes the plan just sucks. I just had the latter. The better half (Liz) was off at hockey practice. So after a little bit of climbing, I had the apartment to myself (myself being me and two rather large and getting larger cats).

While drying myself off after a quick shower, i noticed one of the fur bags was relieving itself in the litter box. I am always glad to see this is happening in the litter box and not in say my shoe (I have cats before). I quickly noticed a few key facts of situation: even though she had dug a hole deep enough to hide a dead body into, she had completely missed said hole and though she completely refilled hole, that did not take care of things that were never in the hole.

"Damn, i am going to have to finish the job, or I'll be smelling that all night." this is when i noticed the third and most important fact, while filling in the empty hole, she managed to step right in the middle of deposit. i found out this when she flicks her back paw and sends a buckshot of poo across the bathroom and right into my chest!!!!

I quickly clean the poo off myself and almost every other flat surface in the bathroom. The cat, while very curious in the cleanup efforts, still had a poo covered paw that needed cleaning. I discovered two important things for the future: cats don't like water on any part of their body, and no matter how much you are afraid of a cat leaving poo prints across the floor, put on some pants before you attempt to make any cleanup efforts!!!!!!!

A complete write off.

So I am thinking of completely writing off the first quarter of this year, with a possibility of extending that to the first half. Good friends of mine have been dealing with own personal hell. I don't wish to delve into that because honestly I don't wish to understand their level of hurt.

That and I have my own problems. I am back in Florida, third time in about a month (this time I flew). Last time for a while. My mother passed away a couple days ago. You might ask if this was a surprise or expected. It was a little of both, she had been on this path for a long time. My mom had a drinking problem for a long time. A drinking problem that finally caught up to her.

She went into the hospital around thanksgiving; the doctors gave up around news years. Friday morning we say goodbye. Its all kind of hard to believe. In a way i don't want to believe. I keep wanting to think this was all a bad joke. It should be. I was out earlier setting up a plant shelter for one of my dad's king sago palms and I kept expecting Mom to come out there and make some sarcastic remark about how long I was taking. But she isn't. I won't get phone calls on the weekends trying to guilt me for not calling sooner.

Ah shit, this post is getting hard to write, i better wrap this up quickly.......

There will always be a lot of un-answered questions about what happened: why did she start drinking again? Why did she hide that she was getting sick? why?