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Home Improvement

The mud skimcoat is almost done for the whole house with the downstairs closet being the last place I need to do before sanding everything down. Speaking of sanding, Spencer was over yesterday sanding the downstairs ceiling. Again. For those who don't know, he was the one who sanded the ceiling way back when I thought I didn't have much work to do on the house. I skimcoated the entire ceiling, he sanded the entire ceiling, then I tore every piece of drywall out. After this latest round of sanding this is what his arm looked like:



The sanding shouldn't take much more than a day or two. Unfortunately I'll be in Kona for Ed's wedding from Wednesday the 24th to Sunday or Monday the 29th. Speaking of weddings...



Weddings - Michael & Avelene - Ed & Clam

So I'm finally putting up pics of Michael and Avelene's wedding in LA. Only a handful of digital as the bulk of it I shot on good old 35mm film. Yes, film. I'm not gonna scan them but maybe Michael will when he has time. I'm handing off duplicates of everything to him when we see each other in Kona and his mission is to distribute them accordingly.

Ed & Clam are tying the knot in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii this coming Saturday. We're getting there a day earlier than them and hopefully will be able to visit my aunty in Hilo before having to help with wedding stuff on Thursday. I'm planning on shooting a lot more, both film & digital so look to links for more pics soon. Well, soon being next week at the earliest. Speaking of links to pictures....


Michael & Avelene's Wedding

Ed's Bachleor Party. (SFW)

Music

One of these days I'm going to make it to New Zealand. Besides being Middle Earth and a reasonable facsimile of samurai-time Japan (the village from The Last Samurai was there), there's what seems to be a strong reggae scene. Besides Katchafire and the previously mentioned Black Seeds, my brother found this band called Fat Freddy's Drop. The name's from a cartoon character printed sheet of acid tabs popular at one point over there. Weird name aside, they're sort of reggae/dub/soul but with a definite "sound". Some of their songs are straight soul with a little hip-hop beats thrown in for good measure. Enough! Sample a little and see if you like.

It's Video Wednesday! More like slideshow Wednesday. Whatever. Enjoy.

Got the water heater installed along with the timer switch for it. That's going to allow us to set two separate on/off times and save energy! Since the water heater is relatively efficient at storing the hot water, turning it on for a few hours in the morning and the afternoon means we'll likely have enough throughout the day.

The HDMI cables came in last week as well so I can install those in the wall and insulate and hang the last of the drywall to finish up the living room. Whoo hoo!!! I still hate HDMI.

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Last Monday I started germinating seeds for the vegetable garden. I went to the store to pick up some groceries for the family and despite my best efforts was almost shocked into a coma by the price of food. My ancestors were horse thieves and farmers and since there aren't many horses to thieve around here, I'm going to go back to my roots (ahahaha) and grow some veggies. I had already been thinking of it but the trip to the store really pushed me into buying some peat pot starters and some seed at Home Depot.



A trip to the local nursery provided a wealth of information and I'm trying a bunch of different things right now. Beans, buttercrunch lettuce, bok choi, won bok, a mesclun mix of lettuce, sweet silver corn, zucchini, roma tomatoes, better boy tomatoes, poblano peppers and I think that's about it for now. I bought a bunch of other seeds which I haven't germinated yet because I have no idea where any of it is going to end up growing.

So for those of you I haven't kept up with, (that would be everyone except Ed, Spencer, and my wife), here's the dilly yo since I moved.  A timeline would be more in order.

JUL05 Buy house sight unseen in Hawaii.  Still living in California.

29JUL05 Move to O'ahu and see the house for the first time. (More on this later)

SEP05 New job with PC Enterprises.  It's a private telecommunications company specializing in extremely large commercial projects.  It's fun, I get to learn stuff, I get to apply all that I know already, I work with a generally cool group of guys. (More on this later)

15OCT05 My wedding!!!  The absolute happiest day of my life.  (More on this later)

11NOV05 Veteran's Day  I wake up with severe blurring in my left eye.  Idiot I am, I go (read: drive) to work anyway where it gets only slightly better through the course of the day.  I go to see an Optometrist who can't see anything except a potential partially detached retina.

12NOV05 I wake up with a normal eye.  Aaaaaaand another normal eye.  Everything seems okay, but wait!!!!!  There's more!!!!!  A trip to an Ophthalmologist, then another Optometrist, an Internist, a Neurologist, a Hematologist, then back to the original Ophthalmologist and Optometrist who send me back to the Internist.  What else?  A battery of tests, more extensive and expensive than you know.  Three different requests for blood work, an ultrasound, ECG/EKG, EEG, MRI.  Yikes!!!  Good thing I had dual coverage through my wife and my union.  (Yes I'm a union man now, more on this later)  By the way, these visits and tests didn't all happen on this day.  Oh, and the final diagnosis?  Amaurosis Fugax.  Basically a temporary loss of vision due to lack of blood flow to the eye.  I call bullshit.  If this happened to me now, I'd believe it. Back then I was active, I smoked less, and was in pretty good shape.  Bah, enough about this.

DEC05 Christmas and New Years.  Like, whoa.  Fresh start!

JAN06 Work on the house is slow but one room is almost done.  Why only one room?  Because I have to finish something.  Anything.  Unlike my father, notorious for starting projects and never finishing (this is all according to my mom, I have personally witnessed my father finish at least six projects since I've known him) I am determined to get ONE ROOM done if anything to get my mom off my back.  You must understand, at the time my wife and I were still living at their house due to our house being uninhabitable.

??FEB06 The ONE ROOM is done.   A previously undiscovered benefit to this is the fact that the room is now semi-fit to live in so we pack up and finally move into the house.

MAR06  Work is slow and the boss just bought a new office/warehouse space so as soon as I wrap up the last jobsites I'm sent to the new office/warehouse where I proceed to fork everything up to the second floor and begin organizing at least six years of back inventory and obsolete materials and tools.

APR06 Work is work.  Construction begins on the office and lo and behold, I am the only one who understands anything about general construction, i.e., layout, framing, bracing, etc.  Between me and Eddie (co-worker who fucking rocks the fiber optics) we literally build approximately 95f the new office space.  (Eddie did the drywall)  Six or seven guys get laid-off due to lack of work.  Work on the house is slow going but steady. 

MAY06 I realize the only reason I didn't get laid-off was because of the aforementioned knowledge of construction.  This is not necessarily a good thing as I'm only getting union scale: $11.38/hour for an apprentice technician.  Resentment sets in as I realize I've done more at the new office than just about anyone at half the pay.  More resentment sets in as I realize I've done about the same on the jobsites where I actually get to work my trade (Telecommunications remember?).  I am on the verge of asking them to lay me off so I can collect unemployment and work on the house when the new office gets shut down for a lack of permits.  Drawings need to be submitted and while we wait, finishing inventory because we can't finish building, I discover the bosses golfing and drawing plans for a miniature radio controlled car track in the warehouse.  I quietly begin searching for other companies.

JUN06 Yay!!!  This is current.  Finally!  Still here?  Poor sap.  So mercifully I finally do get laid-off and proceed to demolish everything downstairs.  All you see now is crooked studs, unprotected openings to the outside, drywall dust and bad electrical and low-voltage wiring.  Well.  Three-fourths of it anyway.  And that's the whole fucking shebang.  Sorry for not keeping in touch but I've been a little busy with the job and the money pit.  I will post links for pics soon.  I haven't decided to post and share via Flickr or Picasa.  (More on this later.)

Any Questions?????  Alooooooooooooooha!!!!!! -Jordan

Again, for those of you who made it this far, a little something that's been on heavy iPod rotation lately.

So we're living at the house now (yes, our little money pit of a townhouse) and things just keep getting better and better!!! I think I discovered a wet spot (never a good thing) in the attic. I was vacuuming up all the crap up there. Actually still in the process but I thought I'd take a break for now. So I'm vacuuming and vacuuming and vacuuming. I mean, I'm an attic crawling, vacuuming fool. As I slide on my belly, knuckles, and tips of my slipper shod toes, I come across a little wet spot next to one of the hip rafter supports. Nice!!! Flip over and look up expecting to see wetness on the rafter or at least some dampness. That would be too easy though. Nope, no sign of moisture at all, just some pokey-side-down-head-wound-Harry type nails. Pics in a bit. Reminds me. I can probably get some vacuuming done while I'm up there taking pictures.

If you've got a really kickass internet connection there's a short Quicktime video showing you a little of what I'm up against. Highly recommended for those with insomnia! Stream it! "> Aloha!!

**Edit** The vid is now up and running embedded like courtesy of youtube.com Have fun. Or Not. Aloha!!!