She's all girl...

Calla: "I need more chocolate!"

Yep.

Random thoughts...

1. One should not wear Star Trek costumes to a renaissance fest. Sorry. Just don't.

1a. If you MUST, because you refuse to listen to the above, then go for the cheesy factor, and go in a small group and act like an away team. Carry the communicators, make comments for your "log", etc. People are already going to think you're a few steps beyond weird, you might as well laugh at yourself with them and go with it, you know?

...I still think you just plain shouldn't wear it, but...

2. Watching Maisy at 12:30 AM with the girl is fun. Especially if she goes to sleep afterwards (which she did, yay!).

3. New sunglasses are nice. :)

4. So is coming up with plans that may actually mean an affordable addition to the house, without adding anything to the footprint - let's hear it for getting the kiddos their own rooms AND a play area! (Okay, so maybe technically it's not so much an addition as it is making livable space out of what isn't at the moment - but that's what makes it affordable.)

5. MUST get one of the Einstein toys from the current Happy Meal line. I'm sure NOBODY is surprised that I'd want that, right?

6. I'm going to be completely messed up all week because the hubby was home today - I'm not going to know what day it is, heh.

Have a great week! Happy Memorial Day!

Go read the product reviews for...

this t-shirt.

;)

Need a little cute...

Prayers requested.

Hey y'all,

A family from the school I worked at has lost their husband/father after an illness (still unknown). He was just shy of 44 years old, and leaves his wife and children behind.

If you're the praying type, please offer a few for the Allens? Thank you.

REO Speedwagon and the Coffin

Here's the REO Speedwagon. It's a pretty spiffy looking truck, if you ask me!

And here's the front emblem. Might not be a really clear shot of it - sorry! Best I could do with my phone.

And finally, here's the Coffin - hee! It's a steam automobile, and Coffin was the maker's last name - apparently, this is the only one like it that he made.

Geek Fest, Part 2

Well, we did get to see the Star Trek movie, though not last weekend. We both really liked it - how they handled the alternate reality thing, how the crew was brought together (I knew who McCoy was before he was introduced, LOL, and OS ST fans will know how and why), and Spock's dialogue at the end (among other things).

This weekend we were on a car tour with the local group of the Horseless Carriage Club. Pics will be posted as soon as my cell phone recharges - if nothing else, just for the shot of (an) REO Speedwagon. The truck, not the band. ;) We also had a good visit at the Dublin Dr. Pepper bottling plant (the first, and the only one still doing granulated cane sugar). Now, I never really cared for Dr. Pepper. I could drink it, but it wasn't something I'd choose. What a DIFFERENCE the real sugar makes! I think I'm glad it's not easy to get, because wow. I like. So I did buy a case while I was there (it's still in the trunk of the FIL's Studebaker - have to pick it up tomorrow). You can order some here. Seriously worth it.

Mom - I'm planning to put some aside to bring up with me when we go up to visit. Bringing real-sugar Dr. Pepper up, taking Winery at Wolf Creek wine back - hee! Wish *they* shipped. Oh well!

"It's a Geek Fest weekend."

Thus saith the hubby, upon discussing his spreadsheets he made for realistic ETAs for his Star Trek simulation group (the one we were doing all those other calculations for), and our plans to go to the local ren fest tomorrow, to meet up with other folks who play or work for the MUD that I work for...

Add up the geek points for all that, LOL. He's now watching the "It's Good to be a Geek" vid.

If we could sneak in the Star Trek movie this weekend, we'd have some kind of peak geekiness.

In celebration of geekdom...



The other obvious one has embedding disabled, so you'll need to go here to watch it (White and Nerdy).

Why yes, I am a geek.

Geekish fun: Calculating the mass, gravitational acceleration, and escape velocity for an imaginary asteroid that the hubby's Star Trek simulation group has as a shipyard.

Geekishly amused: Finding that the escape velocity is under 35 mph (of course, like any good physicist would, we calculated the escape velocity in m/s - but we just HAD to know what that came out to in mph as a basis of comparison).

It's nice to find out that I can still do this stuff. Heck, I still remembered a few of the equations.

Poor little girl!

Calla was crying on the potty chair - not b/c she didn't want to be on it, though. Heck, I'm still not sure what it was about. I did finally see that she had scratched open a couple of mosquito bites, so I got those cleaned up, and that seemed to calm her down - hopefully that's all it was.

She's STILL on the potty chair. She doesn't want to get up. She does have a chart in my bathroom now (she said she wanted it up on the wall in there), and has two successes marked. :)

This just makes me happy.

Remodeling Guy Roundup!

I decided I'd go ahead and post about the home remodel for the 2009 Spring Remodeling Guy Round-up - I know some other folks had asked about the work that we did on our house, so I figured we could do both with one post. This was an old project, though, so I'm not sure if it meets his qualifications for the roundup - but if it's ineligible for The Spiffy Prizes, well, that's okay. We still got to show off our work.

Below are some before and after pictures of the remodel of our house. It was a HUD foreclosure (this was several years ago, by the way), so it needed a fair bit of work - replacing plumbing, some drywall, all appliances, new roof, etc. It was quite a project, and we were all relieved when it was done - especially my father-in-law (his back is visible in one of the shots), who worked himself into pneumonia during the remodel. We all survived, though!

First, the outside. Mostly cleanup, but from this angle, you can see the small side porch that was closed in for the master bath (with the old exterior doorway becoming the master bath entrance, and the door itself being reused as the new door into the bedroom from the rest of the house). Otherwise, outside was mostly cleanup. The roof work was the only thing we contracted out; the remainder was done by family and friends. And that ivy? It's all over that side of the yard now. Makes the hubby happy; less mowing!

That side porch area, now - before and after. You'll (probably) be happy to hear that the ever-so-lovely skirting has since completely been replaced by hardiboard siding. I wish we had more pictures of the creation of that master bath from inside; we borrowed space from the den (the leg of a really awkward "L", which became the shower) and the existing hallway bathroom (which was long and narrow, so it could give up some of that space) to help form the room.

This is a shot with my cell phone of the niche left above the "borrowed" area from the den. The floor of the niche is reinforced (plywood); if the kiddos manage to get up there, we didn't want them to end up putting their leg through drywall and into the ceiling of the shower.

Mantel area - Glass in the door needed to be replaced, and with the thought of children soon, we wanted that gas heater out (though we certainly weren't just going to discard it). The mantel is just screwed against the wall. After - Dining room visible through the french doors. The gas heater is gone (still have it, in the garage), line capped. Had to cut through the floor to do it, so now a matching tiled hearth to replace the removed floorboards (which we used to patch other parts of the floor in that room). Tapestry over a bit of foam board in the middle of the new tile "firebox" surround; that tile is on plywood (which the board is mounted to as well).

Living room - Rather plain, but no serious issues in this view (and as dark as it is, it's hard to see that the floors need to be refinished, but they did). After, floor refinished, walls repainted. The furniture has since been rearranged, and pictures moved around a bit. FYI - the only new "furnishings" in the house are cabinets, appliances, lighting and (some) plumbing fixtures. For the remainder, we are at least the second owners (mostly through garage sales). It's reusing/going green now. Then, it was just being cheap frugal.

Dining room - Kitchen visible through the bar type window. This room wasn't bad, just needed to be furnished and repainted. After - the only rug in the whole house. Furniture was on sale at an antique store.

Kitchen - I have no idea what the deal is with the missing cabinet doors. Looks like partially installed new upper cabinets with older lowers, but hard to say. After - New cabinets, sink (there was none!), plumbing. New color also. I can't stand bright yellow. I am considering repainting to match a deeper color from the tile, but not sure right now. The old cabinets, by the way, are now installed in the garage. No sense wasting them!

Detail of the kitchen counter - Wood counters, tile insets - edge of sink just visible. One of the colors from that narrow tile would be what I'd consider. That tile, incidentally, was also supposed to border the backsplash, but between the time we decided on that and the time we purchased, the price went up to the point that we couldn't afford that much of it, so we just used it to edge the tile on either side of the sink and stove (that wall isn't visible in any of the shots; too bad, as we closed in part of a window to gain the wall space. The remaining half of the window is STILL huge - we could just as easily have knocked the window out for a doorway.)

Kitchen view 2 - before - Pantry is visible through the right door, dining room through the left. After - I've since found stuff for the bottom shelf. The china cabinet (from a friend of the family) in the dining room is also visible from this shot.

Bedroom - my father-in-law in in the pic. Yes, in a suit. Yes, that's pretty normal for him. Some drywall patching, texturing, painting needed here. Not visible, the area we closed off to use as a closet, and an exterior door that became the door into the new master bath (a side porch we closed off). After - we did add plain white sheers, not shown. With 8 windows, it's about all we could afford at that point! Color is a deep greenish hue.