The Hump of Waverly Place

Last night, I put the chandelier back in the Living Room. The light was to make the decision for us as to whether or not we would have to re-plaster.

The chandelier has spoken. Loud and clear. The picture above shows the problem. We cannot have that hump stretch across the width of the living room. It will require us to plaster that area and smooth out the hump. The plastering shall commence this evening.

The weather here has been unbelievable. The temperature has been well into the 70's for several days. It's been tremendous. I had to install the white trash window air conditioner last night in order to sleep comfortably.

In turn, I turned the gas off to the furnace this morning. I'll have to check back in these posts to see if I have noted turning off the gas and when. I think this may be the earliest.

My Hops and Grape Vines are loving the sunshine. Too bad they only are exposed to it until noonish.

I've measured 9 inches of growth in one day on the Hallertau Hops plant. The plants shown in the photograph above are (from left to right) Gewurztraminer Grape, Sterling Hops, Sauvignon Franc Grape, Hallertau Hops, and Concord Grape.

On top of all this activity, we have a bunch of sky walk to get decorated. They are really keeping us busy. That's great for our bank account but not so good for our evenings.

To Plaster or Accept

Our progress on the Living Room project is proceeding like most of our projects: Glacially!

We put up another coat of paint on the ceiling last night, hoping it was to be the last. The goal is for a velvet smooth ceiling surface and we don't quite have that. There are a couple of places that contradict that goal and just simply laugh in its face.

I'm going to re-install the chandelier tonight and then we will assess how the ceiling looks from the point of view of the light that will be in the room.

Susan says she can fix the problem areas but it requires more plastering and I've had just about all the plastering I can take. Of course, it's not me getting plastered...figuratively. I am handling the plastering with the help of my Kokanee.

Cinqo do Yoda

Today is the Fifth of May but I relate more to the Fourth of May, Star Wars Day! It's not that I'm a Stars Wars fan...I'm much more of a Trekkie. But I relate to Star Wars more than I do some Mexican Holiday that nobody knows the significance of. So, I shall refer to todays' post as Cinqo de Star Wars.

Susan ran Bloomsday today. We believe it is her 24th consecutive appearance in the annual Spring Rite of Healthy Passage. I think that is pretty impressive. She dismisses her achievement because her time is not what it used to be. But whose time is what it used to be?!

I should also mention that the weather today was spectacular. What a great day to showcase Spokaloo.

I did not run but I was the Transport Chief for Susan and Mark. I saved the table at the Onion Bar and Grill which is the traditional after run spot on Bloomsday.

We got home around 1:30 and proceeded to ensconce ourselves in inactivity. We decided to revel in the inactivity to made it last well into the evening. I am typing this at 7:26 while watching "60 Minutes". Susan is bathing and I am blogging. 

It has turned into a great day. May the Fourth be with you!

Respect the Water

No progress has been made on the living room because there is too much fun going on in the Living Room of Life, also known as the out of doors.

I took advantage of the nice weather today and put my White Water Canoe in the Spokane River after three years in dry dock. It was fabulous!

Currently, the river is running at 13,200 C.F.S., which is not really big but it's enough to make the Spokane Falls look pretty spectacular. It's big enough to make a run from Harvard Road to Mirabeau Point last just over an hour.

The stretch from Harvard to Barker Road is pretty tame, which allowed me the opportunity to get familiar with my boat again. The canoe is 12 feet long and all rocker. You cannot really propel it forward, you just spin it. It has air bags front and back...oops...forward and aft, and a saddle in the middle that I kneel over. I can put straps over my legs to secure myself in the canoe and actually become one with the canoe.

It's not a particularly comfortable position to stay in for any length of time. I got the Barker in about 20 minutes and stopped to return the circulation to my feet and legs.

From Barker to Sullivan Road is where the fun is. It's a great stretch of rapids almost the whole way. I had to stop again after the first stretch of rapids and almost fell over as I got out of the boat. My legs where totally numb from kneeling all that time. I'm going to have to work on some stretching exercises to make myself more comfy.

I'm going to do it again next week and hopefully will be able to take some pictures.

First Mow

Today was my first mowing of the year. Some parts needed to be mowed more than others. But, I broke out the mower and it fired up on the fourth pull. It still runs rough when its cold.

Later in the day, we slapped up the first coat of paint on the Living Room ceiling. That is to say, the first coat of paint on top of the primer. The paint went up well and we got it done in just a couple of hours. However, we have a couple of issues that will require more plastering. We are letting some questionable spots go and we'll just live with them. Most people won't notice them at all.

After that, we had the rest of the day to putter. I puttered in the yard. Susan puttered in the kitch.

We ended the day with a couple of pork roasts on the barbeque. I put them on the rotisserie and they came out beauty after about an hour and fifty minutes.

That made for a lovely dinner for the last night of our friend Mike's visit. He's off to Saudi Arabia for a few years of massive earning potential teaching the Sand Peoples to speak the English.

Scum Bag Patrol

During the night, some Scum Bag stopped by and stole one of the flood lights from the front yard. I didn't even know until my neighbor dropped off the staked fixture someone found in the park. So I trundled off to the store and bought a new flood light.

I know a few details about the Scum Bag but I am not willing to share them here. 

All I can tell you is the light will be back on tonight.

We painted two sky walks downtown today. It's a promotional thing for the Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure next weekend. We managed to get both of them completed on Saturday. That is awesome and we are pleased with ourselves. 

Living Room Work Part 43

We were finally able to get to painting the ceiling today. There has been lots of crazy going around and we have been in the middle of it. But we buckled down today and made a serious effort to do something. 

We got a coat of primer up on the ceiling. That allowed us to evaluate the quality of the mudding and sanding we have done thus far. For the most part, we were happy. There was a particularly troublesome area where two corners of separate dry wall didn't line up very well. Susan did a great job of laying over and hiding it. But we had a lot of areas like the one shown below.

You would think this would have stood out like a festering puss laden open wound with maggots slithering about. But it didn't...until the primer went up.

So we completed the painting and after a reasonable dry time, Master Mudder Sue went to work to perform her plaster magic.

Hopefully we will get to some sanding tomorrow and then assess our next step.

We're getting closer.

He is Risen

The Easter weekend has come to an end and it is worth commenting on here. It was quite active and we got nothing done.

The weather was fabulous all weekend. It's our first taste of Spring that gave an inkling of Summer to come. I spent most of my day working in the yard. I have a lot of branch clean up to do, left over from last Fall.

This is one of the areas I need to devote some time to. Thankfully, this lattice shields the ugliness behind.

This is the ugliness behind. I cannot even tell you how this got so bad. It just did!

While I was back in this little cubby hole surveying the damage, I noticed something much worse in the potential department.

We might have a skunk again. I did see one the other night...in fact, the night before I discovered this digging. I'm going to be setting a trap soon. If I catch it, I'm going to cover the hole and then release it. I don't have time to transport it out to my favorite skunk transfer spot.

Susan has been working on Easter Projects all week. She was in charge of snack food after the Easter Service at church and she always goes overboard. 

She spent most every night this past week creating these eggs. She blew out the innards and dyed them and them meticulously decorated them. She easily spent a total of an hour per egg.

The other big overboard item she came up with is her traditional Bunny Cake. It seems to me she makes one every year. The picture below is one she made for Easter in 2002. That might actually be the first one she made.

Anyway, I dispense that information only to say that I did not get a picture of this years Bunny Cake. But you get the idea.

I could have gotten a picture of this years Bunny Cake...before I dropped it on its way to the car. 

I was carrying it carefully down the steps when I missed a step and went to the pavement. I scraped a hole in my slacks and smeared chocolate all over the sleeve of my camel hair sport coat. The bow tie took the brunt of the damage. 

One can imagine Susan's reaction to the news that her cake was now on the sidewalk. "What!" she exclaimed in a very loud, very high pitched banshee wail.

I was clearly very apologetic and very upset at pulling such a lame and stupid move, so her anger subsided quickly and she went to work fixing the damage. I don't think anyone ate any gravel that day...but I can't be 100 percent sure.

We spent the next couple of hours helping out with Meals on Wheels. Our church and another partnered to cook and deliver an Easter Meal, which they don't normally do. We put out and delivered over 300 meals.

We finished up the day with a group from church at Das Stein Haus. We watched the Louisville Basketball Game where Kevin Ware totally broke his tibia in two. We were all busy chatting so had no idea it had happened. I still haven't seen the replay and don't really care to. I'm sure it will go down in the annals of television sports history as one of the worst documented injuries on film. 

But we had some beers and some food.

Super Pops Saturday

There is nothing productive going on around the house concerning the remodeling of the house. We are in the thick of March Madness and that seems to be a convenient excuse to use as to why we are doing other little things. 

Also, we had a major malfunction on our main TV which means we have no flat screen upon which to watch the games.

We have arranged for TV George to come over tomorrow (we hope) to see if the TV is worth saving. It's a good TV with a great picture but it has a few miles on it. Therefore, it may be cheaper to buy something new. We shall see.

In the meantime, we are going out tonight to see the Spokane Symphony. Our friends, Randy and Karen have provided the tickets and so we are providing the dinner. Hopefully, the place we are going will have televisions showing the Gonzaga game, who barely escaped with their lives from their first round game against Number 15 seeded Southern University.

11:38PM: We have just returned from our evening out. Gonzaga has no more lives. They lost! They are done! Finished!

What surprises me is how upset I am over this. I'm not a huge fan of the sports games. I like sports and I like to support the local teams but I do not seek out sports. The Sports page is not my first or even second stop with the morning paper.

Nonetheless, I am bummed out! I think it has to do with the inherent inferiority complex Spokane has. We don't expect national attention and when we get it, we don't know what to do with it. 

On a brighter note, we went to an amazing concert tonight. It was the Super Pops version of the Spokane Symphony. It's a smaller orchestra and more oriented to popular music. The music wa excellent and performing with them was a troupe called Cirque Musica. They were very similar to Cirque de Soile. Hand stands, walking on ropes, hanging from sheets, trick ropes and whips and balancing on a bongo board atop three rolling canisters atop an eight foot platform. Really amazing stuff and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Saturday and Begorah

'Tis a luvely day on th' Pairk. I'm trying to create text with a lilting Irish baroque. Not working? Let's move on!

We slept in today and when we got up, we took our coffees and got in the hot tub. Susan's knee is still bugging her a bit and that was therapeutic. After getting out, it took me forever to stop sweating. That's probably T.M.I.

We have lots of little jobs to do around the house today so we are dedicating ourselves to those and leaving the messy work of sanding the ceiling in the living room for tomorrow.

Let's see how we do!

5:08 PM: Cleaned the yard...wait, that's not right! Raked some leaves, learned how to fix a pane of leaded glass in our book case, chopped some wood, had a piano lesson, racked some beer, did some laundry, and slightly sanitized Norman World. He's still with us and still swimming upside down...on occasion.

7:51 PM: Susan is working her catering job tonight and I am mincing about doing this and that. More this than that, actually.

I think I'll go do some that now!

Return to Reality

Nothing is open on Mondays in Wallace so we drove to Kellogg for some breakfast. I had an Waffles and Susan had an French Toasts. 

Susan's knee was quite a bit stiffer and more painful this morning so we decided to just head for home. We got to the house before noon. 

Susan called her Doctor and got an appointment to be seen. It turns out, she sprained it or pulled it or did something to it. Take Ibuprofen and go easy. Pretty much what she thought they would say.

So now we are winding down our three day weekend and preparing to return to the world.

But first, we are leaving shortly for the No-Li Brewery to watch the WCC Championship game between the Gonzaga Bulldogs and the St. Mary's Fighting Nunnery. I'll post the results when we return.

Gonzaga Won! Number One Ranked Team in the Nation!

Fabulous Birthday Ski Weekend for 50% of Us

I am writing from the comfort of the Hercules Inn, our little oasis of comfort and pleasure in Wallace, Idaho. As I write this, it is almost five o'clock on the first day of Daylight Savings Time Sunday.

We are on Day Two of three day weekend of skiing at Lookout Pass.

We left home Saturday about 10:30 and took a leisurely drive to Wallace. It takes about an hour and 20 minutes to get here. We stopped and checked in to the Hercules. We off loaded the stuff we didn't need and then took off for the mountain, arriving to find a great parking spot. We ate some sandwiches that Susan made from the comfort of our great parking spot and got on the lift just before one. We managed nine runs before they kicked us off the lifts. 

It was a great day for me and Susan enjoyed most of it until she caught an edge and fell and kind of screwed up her knee.

Then it was the 15 minute drive back to our apartment and HOT TUBBIN'!

We got ourselves together and went out to the 1313 Club where we enjoyed dinner while watching the Gonzaga Bulldogs (Ranked Number One in the Nation of the these United States of America where Gonzaga is Number One) defeat the Fancy Boys of LMU by a comfortable amount.

We returned to our little hideaway and vegged.

We slept in until about 8:30ish and meandered our way to the Red Light Garage for breakfast. The couple that owns the Hercules Inn also owns and operates the Red Light Garage. 

We had a great breakfast and had fun looking at all the nicknacks around the restaurant. The Pianola shown above is one of the nacks. The space ship out front is a nick.

The sun was shining and the sky was clear blue when we arrived. We headed for the top and skied the front of the mountain for a few runs. Unfortunately, Susan caught another edge and screwed up her other knee. She skied a total of five runs before taking a break...which ended up being the end of her day. She's kind of limping right now. 

She graciously insisted that I keep skiing and so I did. I skied another four runs before taking a bar break. After a quick beer, I returned to the slopes while Susan went to the car for a nap. I skied six runs in just over an hour. I was really going for it. 

It's the first time I have skiied by myself in a long time. I really enjoyed it and took advantage of the ability to try whatever run I want to whenever the moment (or Run) struck me.I was trying to make as many turns per run as I could. That really got my thighs burning. Then I found a great spot where I could just let loose and go. 

The advent of GPS technology has allowed me the fun of tracking how fast I go. I started doing this several years ago. It's fun when you're with a bunch of guys to see who can go the fastest.

My first attempt today got me up to 35 mph. When I got to the spot at the bottom of a run called Cloud 9 where I could let go and fly, I got up to 55. On Lucky Run Number 13, I hit 60.2 mph. 

At 56, I'm not sure how smart it is to be going faster on skis than my age.  But I've never been accused of being a member of Mensa!

I ended up skiing 18 runs which is a very number for me. I consider it a good day of skiing. Other than Susan's knee issue, it was a GREAT weekend of skiing. It was pretty inexpensive too. Our passes for skiing were free and we brought a lot of our own food.

The above picture shows a little party going on down in the parking lot. It also shows my great parking spot on Day Two. I'm five cars down from the end. We just walked right on to the lift.

6:57PM: We have just returned from dinner. We found a new place to go, which is always very exciting. The place is called the City Limits Pub and Grill. It's a very rustic place located in an old produce warehouse just outside of the downtown area of Wallace.

They are a Micro Brew Pub and they have a pretty good menu. We liked it a lot.

"Sixty Minutes" is on now and that begins our Sunday Night 
Veg n'View routine. 

Good day!

Lazy Multi-Tasking Saturday

We are fresh out of the hot tub after a semi productive day working in and around the house. 

Our semi productive day began with sleeping in until 9:45. That was sweet! Then we had to dodge our local representative of Jehovah who stopped by to witness to us, as he does every few weeks. That occurred in the middle of a stunning scrambled egg breakfast.

Most of the morning was spent preparing for the Living Room work. We bought a new big sheet of plastic to put up between the Dining Room and Living Room. A mostly futile attempt to contain the dust from the drywall sanding.

While Susan was at the store getting the plastic and other stuff, I did a little yard clean up...not much. Just enough to fill the garbage can with leaves.

I had to leave at 1:00 to go to my piano lesson. Yup, you read right. I've started taking piano lessons. I wanted to play the piano more and this seemed to be the only way to make it happen. Problem is, I've got a ton of bad habits to unlearn.

I never really learned to sight read. I just practiced a bar until I got it memorized and then went on. Now I'm trying to play without looking at the keys. That means I can't play any of the songs I've known by memory for years. I have to look at the keys in order to play them. This is going to be tough.

I got back about 3 and got changed and got to work being helpful. Susan had already gotten a lot of the sanding done. It created quite a mess. I kept sanding while she began re-mudding. She's much better at it than I am.

While working, we listened to the last regular season game for the Gonzaga Bulldogs. They handily won against Portland and ended their season with a record of 27-2. It is very possible that they will be ranked Number One nationally on Monday. All the cards have fallen into place for this potential ranking.

So we spent a few hours on the Living Room and are not at all happy with the results. It's going to take a lot of meticulous work to get us satisfied with a nice smooth ceiling.

So we quit working around five and got in the hot tub. Ahhhh! That feels nice.

Susan had fired up the Crock Pot at the beginning of the day and her efforts yielded a tasty chili. We both had two bowls.

The Washington State B High School Basketball Championship was scheduled to start at 9. Defending Champion Colfax was going up against the St. George's Dragons. I am a graduate of that fine institution and felt compelled to see the game. we considered going down to the Arena to watch but opted for better seats at the Hub.

St George's won their first State Championship! Pretty cool!

We walked home from the Hub as the clock approached 11:00. We tried to watch SNL but I faded quickly.

I should add that I received my Business License from the State.  I think I filed back in November. Jeez, what a night mare to become legit. That's right! We're going to start selling pot!

No, I got a business license in order to properly operate my business of Susan and I painting windows for businesses.

Norman continues to swim with the fishes, he just does it upside down most of the time.

Val Day

It's Valentine's Day. We had a wonderful Valentine's Dinner.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday so Lent has started. That means Susan and I are following the South Beach diet. No alcohol for two weeks, lots of protein, no carbs.

Dinner was two barbequed steaks, some lemon green beans and cauliflower processed to the consistency of mashed potatoes. Yum!

Plus jello for dessert. Yum!

By the way, Norman is floating right side up again...at least for today!