Bewildering Balderdash

Loveseat for the living living room has been selected! Now we wait for delivery.

In other news, there is some 'happy day' thing going on today for fathers. While I had a father in the biological sense, he was never much of a presence or influence in my life. To that end, I celebrate my mother, njzoomom, who did all the parenting and was a pretty good influence on her two daughters.

To those *real* dads out there out there (and if you're a friend of mine, you're probably a *real* dad - I hope you had a grand day!

And because Duchess and Brodie don't have LiveJournal accounts, daecabhir makes a darned good dog daddy.

How in the heck are we an entire into the month of March already? It was just February.

While we lost a day due to snow, the remodeling project is going well. The only trace of the wall that was removed is the flooring which has yet to be repaired. Our master bathroom painting is done. The only real headache there was realizing that the wall color that we chose was not quite right and so there was an unexpected run to the hardware store for new paint. Okay, maybe there was more than just one headache because Dan (who is THE paint guy at True Value) couldn't get the  color to mix properly - and this was a True Value color. He was, however, able to create a color somewhere between 'Fuzzy Sweater' and 'Old Mauve' that was just right. Really. the guy who makes up paint names must be smoking something pretty good. Minus the trim, our hallway and basement stairwell are painted and we are in with love the colors. The living room needs another coat, but should be done on Monday.

daecabhir and I will need to make a final decision (and purchase) for floor tile for the hall bathroom and then I think (hope) that we will done with the big stuff for a while.

The whirlwind of crazy continues to circle this week ... yesterday dreamtigress's dog, Corva, took a tumble down the stairs and we learned that my Auntie Anne is in the hospital after heart surgery. Brodie ate the handle off one of the guy's tools, I had my yearly physical, after having no luck restoring my blown up website, I am starting over with a clean WordPress install. the kiln was fired twice this week (really, chambray, please behave predictably), and lots of other minor things that pop up and pile up to make life interesting.

My LJ updating skills have apparently gotten very rusty and I am spraying myself with virtual WD-40 to bap a post on my keyboard.

What's been going on with...

Country home - The contractors started today on our latest home remodeling project. The wall between the dining room and the living room is GONE. The space is so much more open in all of the ways and I can't wait for daecabhir to see it (he's not home yet). Tomorrow, there be painting in the master bathroom, more spackling, and definitely more prep for the rest of the painting.

Pottery - While I have not had much time in the studio in the last few weeks, I have a kiln full of bisqueware that needs to be glazed. This Saturday, I will be once again participating in the Downtown Culpeper Carnival. This time though, I will be in a store that sells bread, meat, and goodies, and will be demonstrating hand-building (carving?) of my Celtic finger labyrinths.

Pets - Brodie continues to be a smart little lad. We're working on 'stay', 'wait', and 'paw' with him currently. Duchess and he play a lot which is so nice to see.

Knitting - With everything else that has been going there has been very little time for knitting. I managed to do one charity hat during the Ravellenic games.

Motorcycle - There has been no word on a possible buyer for my GoldWing since Thanksgiving. I am hoping big time that a someone comes along this spring.

Call me crazy, but two weekend updates in a row - woot!

This weekend was a fluke in many ways ... we got a lot done, daecabhir and I had some face time with friends, and the weather was really stellar - especially for February.

On Saturday, we built firewood racks for all that wood that we split. Well, really all I did was hold some wood in place for him when needed. Once the first rack was done, I started loading it while daecabhir built the second rack. By quitting time, there was a cord of wood stack in our new racks!  1painter42 came to visit  and my honey hit the road to Baltimore to visit with frat buddies. 1painter42 and I enjoyed a yummy dinner at Bella J Cucina and then came back to house to discuss out websites, bathroom paint color choices, and pick out a picture for Tucker's portrait.

One of the discussions that 1painter42 and I had was about being an artist/creative/artisan. I don't consider myself to be very creative in the artistic sense. it's not putting myself down or anything, I just don't think that I am creative and I don't consider myself an artist either. Artisan? Yes. Artist? No.

1painter42 told me that I am full of shit FOUR times when I said that I am not creative. Emphatically each time. Just had to document that for posterity and stuff.

Today, the weather was even warmer and I was working outside in just a long sleeved T-shirt. At point, I called njzoomom for a quick chat while eating a coconut Popsicle and sitting on the front porch in the sunshine. Take that, Old Man Winter. While Daecabhir made his way home, I set about getting a few things done. The racks in both the garage and on the front porch were filled with firewood, I devised a way to make our little cart that pull behind the mower stop dumping the logs out, installed a little bumper on our mailbox post so that door doesn't hit so hard, took down the blinds from the maste rbathoom, and washed the Endeavor.

When daecabhir arrived home, we quickly got to work finishing up the firewood racks. Well, he started them while I washed the Prius, since it too was covered in road salt and dirt road dust. Once the third firewood rack was in place, I started carting wood from the backyard while rack number four was being built. We were able to get that rack about half filled before it got too dark.

Since we were both pretty beat, we opted to dine out and with Bella J Cucina so close, that's where we ended up. Funny stuff but yummy food!

With it being SO long since I have posted, I'm not sure where to begin. I reckon some little snippity updates are in order just so things that I talk about now even make sense. There might even be some back-dating of posts (mostly copying things from my Facebook timeline) which is more for myself than you, my gentle reader.

Bathroom - The job took FAR longer than expected but it's very pretty and much more functional than the old version. Most importantly, there are no more leaks. The built-in shelves are even better than we had hoped and the shower feels so much roomier now. The new super-duper Broan fan is much quieter than the old one and it's so nice to have the heather function back for those chilly mornings. We still need to decide on a color for the walls and do some painting.

Studio - Like the bathroom, the studio took longer than expected as well, but also like the bathroom, the result is pretty super. it took a while to figure out the placement of all the equipment, but I think what is currently in place works fairly well. There will be some tweaking for a while but I am pretty darned jazzed to have a 'real' pottery studio.

MDRF - Faire season is such a funny thing. It lasts forever and is over in a flash. daecabhir and I spent the entire season working with Master Tessum selling stoneware. There may have been some P3 pots in the shop unofficially and some may even have sold. It's no secret that I adore Terry and I love getting the chance to help him, handle pots, and learn stuff all at the same time. His wife, Judy, paid us the ultimate compliment when she told us that Terry actually enjoyed himself this year. He even took a weekend off.

P3 - With construction, equipment set-up, MDRF, and a few other life curve balls thrown my way, my studio time has been limited. This has got to change. Enough said.

Knitting - There have been several items to come off my looms, many of which I can't really post about until after the holidays.

daecabhir and I have been trying to clean up around the country home - inside and out. One of the things that we have wanted to be rid of for quite some now was the small, unused shed that is back behind the second garage. We asked the contractor who did the bathroom and studio about it, but his price was about $275 to take it down. He admitted that it was a lot of money and made the suggestion of putting the shed on Craigslist for free.

We've gotten rid of a lot of stuff via Craigslist but it never dawned on me to list the shed on there.

Sure enough, we got several hits right off the bat. The first who came for it wasn't able to get it on their trailer (but they did take the old dog run) so the trip was still worthwhile. After tagging a few of the other folks who had written about the shed, one guy came out to look at it and then arranged for a tow truck to come and get it.

The guy who worked the tow truck was amazing to watch. He made fairly quick work of getting the shed - 8' wide x 10' long x 8' high - unto the bed of the roll off. Bye-bye shed - for free!

Squee! Got to catch a good-sized meteor tonight all thanks to my wonderful partner - who despite being tired - made there be an air mattress happen on our deck so we could watch for the night's entertainment without craning our necks.

Master bathroom demolition is underway!

One of the contractors was here bright and early to start the demo process in the master bathroom shower. In addition to the known issues with the shower, during the demo process we learned that the old durarock had been nailed in with regular nails which is a no-no - any that were exposed to wetness are rusted. The new bathroom will be lined with Hardy board which is much-preferred over durarock and it will be put in place with treated fasteners.

Much of today was spent acquiring electrical and flooring supplies for the studio as well as doing some reconnaissance for exciting things like exhaust fans, tile, vanities, etc. daecabhir  as done an amazing amount of research into making sure that the studio will be properly and safely lit, powered, and exhausted. He lugged heavy boxes of floor tile, picked out wiring, light fixtures, and took notes about fan recommendations and other helpful information. The Prius was riding pretty low on the way home but everything fit in it just fine - even six boxes of eight-foot long light fixtures.

Wonderful bit of kismet in Lowes today - the *very* helpful young man in bathroom section asked my for one of my cards. When I handed it to him, he exclaimed that his fiancee loves my pottery. A bit shocked, I ask how she had heard of me. Turns out that she bought a few pieces at the Virginia Renaissance Faire! Small world, indeed.

My pottery studio really doesn't look like a studio anymore. The dust barrier is down and many items have been moved out (although there is still more to move). The kiln is running a bisque fire as I type and once the kiln is emptied and cooled down, it will get moved too.

The contractor - Reade Clayton - is due on Thursday to start work on both my studio and our master bathroom so things will be busy and even more hectic.

In knitting news, I have completed my first 2013 holiday gift (and yes, dreamtigress, I still owe you your 2012 knit goody). Renee from the Ravelry looming group is putting together a mystery shawl loom-along and I can't wait to start it.

Health-wise, my back is pretty screwed up at the moment and we're not sure why, I've gotten two rounds of injections and will need to go back for more. My right arm is sore and bruised - Stephanie, Dr. Truong's PA, has done two rounds of acupuncture on it but it's not getting better so I will Dr. Truong herself this week to see if we can figure out what the heck is going on.

At the end of June, we had something called VoiceLink installed in our home by Verizon. VoiceLink is wireless technology that was used in New York and New Jersey after hurricane Sandy to restore phone service to areas were copper lines no longer existed. Verizon is currently testing VoiceLink in Virginia and Florida currently and we qualified for it since our copper line is old and not very reliable anymore.

Well, it seems that VoiceLink isn't too reliable either. During the three weeks that it has been installed, its dropped a few calls, gave error messages to callers - this in addition to inconsistently routing of calls to voice mail, tinny sound quality, and a few other things that I am forgetting at the moment.

After trying to reach Verizon tech support over the weekend and having the voice menu route me to a Spanish dialogue no matter which option I chose (and trust me, I tried them all), I finally reached a live person on Monday who much to my surprise dispatched someone for today (which the window for service being 8 am to 7 pm - just to narrow things down a bit).

This morning we get a phone call from said repairman who basically said that we need to go back to the copper line. Without coming out or any further investigation, he told me to call Verizon back and ask for a 'reverse VoiceLink' ... which is a fancy term for taking your broken tech out of our home.

Upon calling Verizon _again_, I was informed that now it will be 7-10 days for the 'reverse Voicelink' to happen. Someone 'should' be calling us within 72 hours to schedule a time. Again, according to the person I spoke with today, since we are not a business customer, we do not get priority; then she said later in the call that since we have a working line, we don't get priority. I pointed out to her that I don't consider tinny reception, dropped calls and error messages to be a working phone, she replied that Voicelink systems don't get priority.