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I was reattaching the leaf guard on the top of the rain gutter on my garage, because when I went to clean them last weekend, I found they were installed upside down. I finished that project and decided to climb up to the top of the roof, so I could get to the rain gutters I couldn't reach from my ladder. I decided to do this at about 12:15 pm today, which for my readers who don't leave their cave much (tseng, I'm talking to you..), the ambient air temperature was in the 80's.

The above is called foreshadowing. See, I did learn something in high school literature classes.

I managed to get to the top of the ladder and onto the roof, which all of a sudden seemed a lot steeper than I thought it would be. so steep, standing up didn't seem to be a real posibility, so I proceeded to make my way to the top of the roof. About half way there, I realized something:

MY HANDS ARE ON FIRE!!!111!1!!11!!1!!onehundredandeleven!!11!

Not literally on fire, but I might as well should have been pushing my hand against a hot stove top. I spun around and sat down, thankful that my shorts didn't appear to transmit so much heat into my buttocks and freaked out for 2-3 seconds. Ow Ow OW.

There wasn't really anything else to do at this point by head back from whence I came. More Hand Burning commenced. I made it down from the roof, and began rinsing my hands under cool water.

In fact, I think it's time for a little more of that. Ow.

I haven't written anything in a while but don't have anything worthy of a blog entry of it's own. Here comes a brain dump: (more…)

ok, second attempt to write this, hooray! IE crashes! hooray! Corporate IT policy that keeps me from using Firefox, hip hip hooray!

Yesterday, I got a call from meg while I was on my way home. She took a bath after work to relax some. When she got out of the tub and went down stairs to find a wet ceiling. Not good. (more…)

Saturday I got up ealier and took Meg out for a surprise viewing of The Incredibles. I'd write a review of the story (Wonderful!) and of the voice acting (Samuel L. Jackson and Jason Lee, how can you go wrong?) but my problem with seeing Pixar movies, is I have to see them at least twice before I can appreciate them as movies. The first time I watch them, I'm too amazed at how much further they've come at animating (simulating?) whatever it is that they've decided to focus on. Toy Story, Bug's Life, and Toy Story 2 were all about getting simple character animation down. Monsters, Inc showed a clear emphasis on learning how to simulate the movement of hair. Finding Nemo was all about getting their use of light down, but even watching Nemo, you could see movement of hair that they learned from Monsters really paid off in the way they animated the anenenmeneone. The Incredibles was all about perfecting the hair work they started in Monsters and showing off the light work they got right in Nemo. Not only can we see the hair move when the characters move, we can see the hair get wet, we see each individual strand of hair, and how it has a unique coloration. Moving beyond just hair, you could see light reflected off of their uniforms in a distractingly real way to me. I'll definitely need to see it again so I'll be more prepared to pay attention to the story instead of staring in awe at the background and minutiae of character design.

More writing below, none about the above topics though. (more…)

This past weekend was spent cleaning house and preparing for fall. The house was a bit of a mess from various dog related chewing and tearing activities, and it only got worse from the scavenger hunt. We cleaned it up pretty quick though.

Outside, gave the lawn its last mowing for the year. I Hope so anyway. Not that I should complain, Meg did most of the mowing, at least once I got the mower started she did. I was planning on preparing a flower bed to be planted with bulbs for the spring, but then realized I needed a shovel to do this. Now, I do own a shovel. It just happens to still be at the river house. So now I own 2 shovels. One at my house and one at the river house.

Since this particular plot of land that our house's previous owners had designated as a flower bed appears to have never grown anything but a small, sickly blue spruce, and since our development is a partially wooded lot, I needed to add a lot of bone meal to the soil.

Wow. What a horrible run-on sentence. Let me try again:

This "flower bed" is one only in name. It looks to have never grown anything but one sickly blue spruce. This is mostly due to our lot being partially wooded, and the soil being mostly clay. To help remedy these two factors, I added bone meal to the soil.

Ah, much better.

After turning over the soil to mix in the bone meal and provide some much needed aeration, Meg got to work on planting bulbs. I got started on cleaning up the early leaves that have dropped. Within minutes, my rake handle broke. I gallantly tried to continue on, using my now stubby rake. Immediately, my rake, which I had named "Stubby Jim: The Rake Who Is A Pirate" just moments earlier suffered a horrible accident. Stubby Jim broke at the plasticy bit that holds the rakey bits to the handley bits, ruining his pirate dreams forever..

Now, having suffered two rake related disasters in such a short time, I almost gave up. After a brief memorial service for Stubby Jim, I was off to the hardware store once again.

This time, I got a rake that was all metal rakey bits up until it became all wooden handley bits. No plasticy weakness in this rake of champions, no sir.

I think the previous owner of this house hadn't raked up leaves at all last year. At least I hope so, because hardly any of the leaves appear to have fallen from our trees yet, and I filled an 11′ x 14′ tarp with leaves.

(I hope got my ' and my " correct. I don't want to make a mistake of Spinal Tappien proportions. I mean the bigger one, if I'm wrong. )

Anyway, If my presumptions about the previous owner of my house are wrong, and he did actually rake his leaves, I am going to be in a mess of trouble when we get closer to winter and the rest of these leaves drop.

After the leaves were taken care of, I put netting over the blubs to keep the squirrels away. Then I started watering the newly planted bulbs. When I get the hose out, I kinda go nuts. Besides watering the bulbs, I cleaned some spider webs off of the fence, and washed off the shed. And then the sidewalk. And then the driveway.

I almost washed off the mailbox for no good reason before I decided it was time to put the hose down slowly and walk away.

I plan on wrapping up the wiring project this weekend. Also, I'm borrowing my dad's pressure washer and giving the outside of the house a good rinse off on Saturday. I might grab a ladder too, check out if I need to clean any rain gutters. On Monday, Labor Day, we're having a cookout. If you're reading this and aren't some freaky internet stalker I don't know (if you are a freaky internet stalker and I know you, I've probably already invited you), let me know if you're coming over. Noon to 4ish. Lemme know if you need directions.