Garage Saga Part MCMXVIII

Spent this morning with parents working on the garage AGAIN. I think we need two more days to finish it off. We found N's ashes, which is something else R lost in her moves. R is VERY happy we found N again. We also found two one-hundred-dollar bills, and a few other bills, plus a TON of change. So much money that we treated ourselves to a late lunch at Steak and Ale.

The garage sale will be the weekend of the 19th. I can't wait to get all this stuff outta here!

I'm trying to decide what to do with the garage sale money. The smart thing would be to spend it all ripping out the front yard. The fun thing to do would be buy a sofa. I'm seldom smart about money, but this is one time I might have to FORCE myself to me smart. After all, I've almost paid off my car and my laptop. I can buy furniture once those bills are out of my hair.

I've about decided to go with the Oh Chair in pink for my breakfast-room area. The walls will be charcoal gray, so the hot pink will provide a much-needed punch of color. I'm still wavering between the Eames Sub-Compact Sofa in Lime, and Todd Oldham's La-z-boy Dexter sofa in lime. The Eames is really what I want in my heart of hearts, but I'm afraid if I get it that it will look dated very quickly. Then again, does modern ever really die?



Desks are a problem. I really like the one in my virtual house, but I can't find one like it in the waking world. It's birch or some light wood, and it's an L shape, and it has a beautiful curved line in the front. Not BOXY, not LEGGY. I can hide my cables and garbage behind it, and my legs, and anything else I want. But as I said, I can't find one like it, even though I've looked at about twenty websites this afternoon. Of course, it would help if I didn't have so many requirements! My desk must

• Extend almost all the way to the floor. No leggy desks!


• Look good facing out into the room -- none of this "stuck in a corner" stuff.


• Light wood, or maybe a cherry finish


• Double-wide keyboard tray to accommodate keyboard AND Wacom tablet


• SHORT hutch to conceal blinking hubs and ports and cameras and microphones and etcetera


• Attached file cabinet


• Holes for wires


• Room for a printer UNDERNEATH the desk!


• Room for a few supplies, especially disks and printer paper

Actually storage is going to be a bear. I have so many computer gadgets laying about. I've sort of been avoiding the issue. I can use the bookcases for some of it, but I need that space for books, too.

Slow Week

Very, very little is going on this week. I tried to sand my floor last night, but the newest sander I borrowed from Dad is just too heavy, and it didn't have any belts anyway. I worked with my cheap, way-too-weak Black & Decker sander for a while, but it was just too slow. I'm officially off work for the next two hours, so I think I might sneak to Home Depot before class starts and purchase a new sander. And some GFCI outlets. I need at least five for the bedroom. Maybe I need to make a shopping list -- I'm bound to need more than just the GFCIs themselves.

I should work in the garage on Friday, but I'm not sure I can talk myself into it. So much to do, and so little energy! At least I have a goal -- I must move back into the bedroom before it starts getting cold. I have about two weeks, I think.

(later)

Mission accomplished. I made it to Home Depot and Starbuck's between class and my office hours. I spent $79 for a three-pack GFCIs (thought I'd try these before purchasing more), sand paper (fine and medium) and a 3x18" belt sander. I hope the sander is tough enough for the job. It's a five pound sander, which sounds about right, but I'm afraid it will be too lightweight for the job. I really wanted a Mikita (buy quality!) but settled for the in-stock Ryobi. Tomorrow night we'll see if I made a good choice.



More work interruptions -- I've been notified that Saturday is annual Halloween photo day. That means I get to spend the afternoon taking pictures of Robin the Pirate, Ryan the Fish, and Lily the I Forget What. It will be a fun day filled with pictures and NO HOME IMPROVEMENTS!!! I miss the time, but it will be worth it. Last year's pictures were adorable. I hope the weather holds out for us.

(even later)

Gods, I wish I was somewhere else. Usually I'm content to be at school, but today I want O-U-T in the worst way. It's 6:25 PM, and I have one student in lab. He has a fairly easy project to complete. If no one else is here by 8:00 I'm outta here. (Please, please, please . . . . . )

Joined a new Internet service today -- booksfree.com. It's Netflix for books. They ship me two paperbacks at a time, and when I'm finished I ship back in prepaid mailers. No overdue fees, no remembering to drive to the library, no nothing. The bad news is that the selection isn't exactly overwhelming. They don't have Pulitzer-prize winner The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, or anything by David Sedris (Me Talk Pretty One Day), or even Like Water for Chocolate, which I thought was a sure hit. They do, however, have all the guilty-pleasure books I devour like chocolates and hate paying full retail for. Books like Robert Jordan's impossible Wheel of Time series. All David Webber's Honor Harrington books. All the Anita Blake novels. I'm sure I'll save at least a little money doing this -- it's only $8.99 a month, which will help me kick my $100 a month Barnes and Noble habit.

Another book-y thing -- I'm trying to get the division to sign up for InformIT's Safari bookshelf. It features online technical books. We can have up to ten books out at a time, and actually print chapters we find helpful. I'm hoping this is something our group at school will actually use, and that eventually we can get it for students as well as instructors. I've signed us up for a thirty-day trial, and hopefully we'll find it useful enough to continue using.

The Garage Saga Continues

Spent the weekend working on the awful garage. Mom and Dad helped. We carted TWO truck load of trash to the dump. I'm starting to think it will take until next year to see the end of this! The garage is clean enough now that I can work in it when the weather is bad. We might actually have enough space to have the garage sale IN THE GARAGE! Can you imagine?

Lots of pretty things unearthed this weekend, but nothing really remarkable. We only found about $200.00 in cash and change, which is quite a far cry from the $2100 in savings bonds we found last week. R. was very happy to see those, and even happier to see the photocopies she had made of the bonds. Now that she has the numbers she can call the Treasury Department and trace the others.

It's starting to get gloomy and wet and cold. We're supposed to have showers all week. I'm tempted to turn on the heat, but come on, it's still October!! Surely I can tough it out until November starts.

My 3D home is looking good. I love playing with it, it's so much easier than the real house! I've finally decided what to do with the larger living area at the back of the house. I am going to make it a dedicated study after all. I found a huge desk I'm in love with. Best of all I found a wall color. It was an accident, but I've fallen in love with charcoal gray. I'm going to cut the gray a little with a band of softer grey near the floor, and maybe at the top as well.

Really must sand. I have a sander, and I have time. What is holding me back, other than sheer lack of desire? I have to get the bedroom finished quickly, though, so I can heat it and my work room while leaving the rest of the house cold. I also need to install that cat door so I don't have constant drafts in the house. Maybe I should reconsider and put it in the back of the house after all.

Thank You, HGTV!

I've been considering installing GFCI outlets in my house for a while now. For those unfamiliar with the outlets, they sense changes in the electrical current and shut off the current to prevent damage to people and to equipment.

My old house has old electricity. I'm lucky in one respect -- it's copper wiring, not aluminum -- but unlucky in others. All I have are two-slot outlets except in the kitchen and bathroom. Worse yet, the three-slot in the bathroom isn't even grounded. (Good thing I'm not a dryer-and-curling-iron gal. I would have killed myself by now.) My computer is running on an extension cord, which is far from safe, and the last thunderstorm took out my cable modem, attached to a plain 'ole two-slot plug. As you can see, an electrical upgrade is in my future.

My Black and Decker home repair book first introduced me to GFCIs, but it never specifically said I could replace my old outlets with them. I've looked at several sites on the web trying to find a definitive answer -- something that directly discussed old houses instead of general safety.

(This search is what lead me to hate the This Old House website, incidentally. After reading all the free material on the site I found an article with a promising title, but I couldn't access it without paying $5.00. I paid, and discovered that the material was the EXACT SAME as the free material, and didn't answer my questions at all! I wrote to complain, and never even received a form letter, let alone a real reply. This Old House sucks!)

So today I decide for the first time to seriously explore the HGTV website. Becca told me it was more than an archive of the shows, so I decided to check it out. I did a search for GFCIs, and found an article titled "Replace a Two-Slot Outlet." Finally, real reassurance that I can do this!

While code regulations only require GFCIs in the kitchen and bath, I intend to replace every plug in my home. I can't foresee where I'll need to plug in an expensive piece of electronics, and I don't want to risk damaging the equipment -- or myself. GFCIs aren't expensive, unless it gets to the point where I have to replace the electrical box, too.

I think I'll ask Dad to come over and help me install the first one, and after I'm sure I can do it I'll be able to tackle the rest.

Drunk on Color

Darn it all, blogger ate my entry. Now I have to re-type.

What was with yesterday's entry, anyway? If you haven't read it just skip right over. I was obviously in severe need of sleep.

After class today Mom and I grabbed lunch and went on a major shoppping expedition. We started at a bookstore in South Arlington, where I reluctantly bought a $7.00 book on designing an office. The bookstore was a little odd. It sold what seemed to be remnant books, but they also had an interesting selection of older "cofee table" books, some of them as much as ten years old.

That $7.00 price tag might seem low to the uninitiated, but they true bookworms of the Metroplex know nothing beats 75% Off Books, where none of the books cost over $5.00. It's about the only place I'll buy design books. If I wait long enough all the Rockport, Friends of Ed, and Wrox titles show up on their tables. All at that winderfully unbeatable price. I routinely purchase $60 or $70 in books from the store. It's a big struggle for me -- it's all so cheap, and there is so much I want! I'm like a kid in a toy store trying to make my allowance stretch as far as possible, almost in tears over the agonizing choices.

The bookstore was next to Hancock's, which was our real goal all along. We were after a remnant of blue upholstry fabric we had seen a few months ago but didn't buy because Mom started feeling ill while we were in the store. We went back and dug through the tables, and luckily found our scrap. Then we changed our minds and went with a darker scrap. The remnant will be used to cover the $10 chair Mom bought for me at Big Daddy's Flea Market.

While digging we also found this fantastic fabric that might work on my lounge chair.



No trip to Arlington is complete without a stop at the Salvation Army. My treasure of the week is a tapestry painting stretched on a frame. It's absolutly hideous. It looks like a comic book illustration. And it will look brilliant on the aqua blue living room walls.



Mom fell in love with a pair of twin beds from the 1930s. They would be perfect for the "Mary Mary Quite Contrary" bedroom she wants for her granddaughters. They're $299 each, but tomorrow they'll be 25% off. She doesn't want to buy them because of the price, but I'm trying to get her to. They're PERFECT, and how often will she find beds with matresses and box springs at that price? I've even offered to buy them for her, but she's still wavering. I have orders, though, to be at her house bright and early just in case she changes her mind.



On the way out of the Salvation Army a mannequin in the window caught my eye. I don't know what it was, but something -- maybe her mismatched head and bad haircut, or the wedding dress, or her lack of arms -- but I had to take a picture of this forlorn wallflower and
her sister.

OK, Blogger, I'm begging you . . . . don't eat my post again!

Metamorphesis

I think maybe I'm changing into the kind of person I've always wanted to be. Of course it is October, which is always a great month for me. The color of the sky alone gives me enough joy and energy to skip through the day.

But the past two months have, overall, been special. Personally and professionally I've had time and energy to invest in efforts I wouldn't otherwise be able to undertake. I've done so many things! I almost feel like Oprah or Martha Stewart -- one of those incredibly accomplishing women whose daily schedule makes a normal person cringe.

And it's not like I'm working nonstop -- at least not most days. Wednesday I slept until 10:00. And today, for instance, I took fifteen minutes out of class to celebrate department birthdays, read three chapters of a book over pizza, and spent about half an hour working on my decorating scrapbook. I also plan to watch a DVD in a few minutes, while eating buttered popcorn.

(Aside -- Target has a GREAT microwave popcorn bowl that uses kernel corn! Can we say thrifty? I was going to put in a link to it, but they don't seem to have it in teir web stores. Check it out next time you're at your local store, though!)



In spite of all these leisure activities I've also taught for six straight hours (excepting the cake break), wrote two important emails, discussed lab software with our Lab Saint (Michael) and Divison Angel (Deborah), discussed work priorities with my lab assistant Drew, and held three conversations related to my "team lead" position. When I made it home at 5:00 I opened the garage doors and cleaned out another four LARGE boxes of R's stuff, carried the combined weekly total of sixteen bags of trash to the curb, did a load of machine-washable laundry, assembled a new sweater-drying rack, and washed two sweaters. Later I plan to take a shower and catch up on my email -- I know of at least one student who needs help with a project. I'm also going to go through a LARGE box of R's papers I found in the garage, but I'll be doing this while watching the DVD so it doesn't really count as work.

Maybe I'm changing. Maybe I'll actually do something, instead of loafing through life.

No Net!!!!

A thunderstorm took out my cable modem, so I haven't updated recently. As you'd suspect nothing much has happened.

The floor is still not sanded. I borrowed a sander from Dad and broke it, and now have to buy a new one.

R's garage is still not cleaned, although I'm making progress. I threw out six more bags of trash on Tuesday, and plan to throw out more tomorrow.

I'm still playing furiously with the Home Design software, and having loads of fun. Here are three views of the bedroom, including the metallic wall, and two views of the living room.

















Other new 'virtual' developments include a growing awareness that I hate the way my study looks. I've tried several different desks, several colors, and more room arrangements than I care to think about. It just isn't coming together. Tonight I realized part of the reason is that I'm trying to put two rooms in that little space -- a computer area, and a library area. It looks boxy and uncomfortable, no matter what I do. Now I'm trying to convince myself I can live without a desk, which is nothing more than a place to pile trash anyway. I'm seriously considering placing my desk right in the so-called "breakfast room." I wish I had washer/dryer hookups in the garage -- I'd move the appliances out, and use that area for storage. If I do go with this plan I'll have to store things under the bar, and in the other room.

Hey, I could buy that cool table-and-chair set at the Salvation Army!!! It's at 75% off. If I move out the desk I'd certainly have room for it. OK, have to think about this. Do I really want or need a formal dining room??? It's such a cool set. And it needs a good home where someone appreciates it!!

OK, must calm down. I don't need a furniture high right now.

Fun but Frustrating

I've spent most of my weekend playing with 3D Home Architect, minus a few valuable hours spent working on the garage with Mom. In the garage we found another $100 or so -- I haven't bothered to count it yet -- and hauled off another truckload full of trash. We're making progress, slowly but surely.

I wish I could say the same for my floor. I haven't even been in the room this week, except to measure it for 3D Home Architect. I'll have to get serious about it later this week.

Having way too much fun with this software. I really like the results it produces. Spent most of yesterday been concentrating on perfecting my color scheme, and importing custom bitmaps like my curtain panels. This evening I started laying out the room with furniture, and found (as I feared) that the furniture I want doesn't really fit into the room. Now I'm working on new arrangements, hoping to find something that works.

One issue I'm dealing with is the bathtub. Right now the only bathtubs I can find are claw foot (what??!!??) or stretched-out ones. No corner tubs like the one I have anywhere in site.

Well, that isn't exactly true. Mr. Furniture has a corner tub for $20, and TurboSquid shows a very nice one for $40. In other words, I can't find a free one.

For now I've been forced to import a bitmap, and prop it up against the bathroom wall. VERY ugly! That has got to go soon. Maybe I could pay a student to make me a bathtub.

More Software

OK, I decided to check out the last home design product competing for my attention, Broderbund's 3D Home Architect, which for some reason doesn't get very good reviews on amazon.com. Broderbund has a 15-day trial, so I'm playing with it before I invest any more money.

So far it's meeting my needs. It was very easy to get a room going, and I could customize the surface of ANYTHING, which is a real plus. I can also import my own textures and surfaces. So far the program is equal to Individual's Total 3D Home & Landscape, and beats Better Homes & Gardens solid. (I still can't believe I can't import textures & patterns in BH&G!!!)

Ten (count 'em) styles of beds, much better than BH&G. There was actually one I liked. And, best of all, this program will allow imports of files created in 3D Studio. It seems the people who have 3D software spend a lot of time just posting random things up to the Internet, including furniture. I've found several cool files, and I'm trying t0 import one now. It's very slow, and I'm beginning to think the program has hung up.

(later)

The program did hang up, and I had to leave for the orginazational meeting of the NLC Web Design Club, which is going to be GREAT.

Anyway, I am having way too much fun with this program. 3D Home Architect RULES!! I can't believe how much cool furniture is out there for download. I even found a collection of high-quality modern classics, just what I want to furnish my house with! Now if someone would only make models of Todd Oldham's La-Z-Boy line . . .

Way too much fun. Why do I enjoy this kind of endless Net scavenger-huinting? Shouldn't I have better things to do?

Night of the Five Lizards

Tonight I walked into the living room and found FIVE lizards on my window, trying to catch bugs by the light of the incredibly bright lamp I've placed near the window. FIVE!!!!

Broke down and bought the Better Homes and Gardens Home Designer Software, which is supposed to be the best on the market. I'll admit it's very easy to get started with the software, but so far I don't see what all the fuss is about.

First off, this package (like all the others I've tested) has a decidedly modern slant. It really doesn't do a good job of imitating certain features of my 1958 house, especially on detail areas like fireplaces and windows.

The packaging went on (an on and on) about all the choices it offered. Admittedly I've only tried one furniture category, but I'd say three styles of beds isn't choices. They're very traditional beds, too -- not a plain platform bed in the lot. And none of them are studio beds with wheels, which is what my non-traditional bent is screaming for.

The software also lacks a feature all three of the other programs I tested contained -- the ability to import bitmaps as textures. This is very important in some rooms, like my living room, which has a pale pink brick fireplace. BH&G is forcing me to go with a reddish fireplace. I'm not happy. In the other packages I'd just open a brick image in Photoshop, tint it to match my brick, then import the new image into the software, and apply it to my fireplace. Bingo. A fireplace that actually looks like my fireplace. BH&G doesn't have this flexibility, and to me that's a BASELINE feature.