Exceedingly Mundane

Hey, check this out – pretty accurate! I do like coffee because I add so much Splenda and creamer to it to make it taste sweet and flavored! And… I like frappucinos at Starbucks. Very good gauge this time, check it out! 😀

(P.S. I’m having coffee this morning with Tim – he’s working from home. Love mornings like this!)

You Are a Frappacino

At your best, you are: fun loving, sweet, and modern At your worst, you are: childish and over indulgent You drink coffee when: you’re craving something sweet Your caffeine addiction level: low

I say … and you think … ?

Mighty:: fine
Gotta find time to ….:: clean up the office
Statistic:: football statistic
Midnight:: Gin website design (Jeremy’s)
Thaw:: defrost
Hips:: fat
Reader:: Reader’s Digest ???
Related:: to me
Brilliant:: deduction
Posture: wish mine was better!

Are you getting tired of all the posts and updates on our ceramic tile project yet??!! Well, settle in, because it looks like they will keep coming for a while! It’s taking longer than we projected, and the scope has expanded. Since the pipe burst in the laundry room, we will now have to replace sheetrock and repaint that room, which was not part of the original plan.

For those of you who are interested…. read on (with pictures)!

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Suffice it to say that if you are going to begin some level of home renovation project, inevitably, Murphy’s Law will kick in. You know that law, the one that says “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” 😀

I can write more later, for those of you who want to know, but the short of it is that we’ve hit some speed bumps (miscalculated the square footage and so we under bought on tile, mortar, grout, etc) and had a minor mishap (the pipe in the laundry room to the washer burst, flooding the laundry room and requiring a nifty Sheetrock repair and now total room painting job).

Luckily, we have Super Terry to the rescue – Tim’s big brother came to help us today and he’s been great. He and Tim got some copper pipe and soldered it into the wall, and now are laying tile in the breakfast room. We’re being optimistic and hope that they get the kitchen done as well.

Oh, and one other Murphy-ism. Our refrigerator won’t fit through the doors with its own doors attached. Plan B now entails tiling in front of the refrigerator, letting it set, then coming back later to tile behind it. This project, I think, might turn into the one that wouldn’t go away!

Took a few pictures today and will try to load them tomorrow or Monday. For those who might be so inclined as to peek at them. 🙄

There is a lot I had wanted to say today about Veterans Day, the vets in our family, our troops, our President, and my general feelings of patriotism. Now that I’ve found time to sit down and write it all out, I seem to be at a loss for words. I want it to be eloquent and well said, and at the moment, I don’t feel like I could do it justice. I’ll try anyway, me being me….

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1. What is the first thing you did this morning? Had cereal and coffee (pecan praline flavor)

2. How many pictures do you have on the wall in the room you are in right now? Had to count. 4 pictures, 1 small bulletin board, 1 wall calendar

3. If you could go to your favorite store and buy 1 item, regardless of cost, what would it be and why? Nothing that is a necessity!! Well, since we’re about to lay ceramic tile in the kitchen, I’d like nothing better than to go get new kitchen appliances. A nice new stainless steel refrigerator, oven and dishwasher would be fabulous! 😀

Tim got off work a few minutes early yesterday and came home to work on the breakfast room more. I planted one 6 pack of pansies in my deck planters, then went inside to help. We ended up working until about 10:45 PM. Tim had to stop and get on another conference call beginning at 11 PM (which lasted about an hour or so).

We got almost all of the vinyl pulled up in the 3 rooms. The breakfast room and kitchen are completely pulled up. He pulled up what he could in the laundry room, but didn’t move the washer and dryer yet. We have to borrow or go buy a dolly to move those soon, probably today. We did the first spraying of Krud Kutter and scraping on the breakfast room and kitchen, and I worked on the second coat (removing adhesive by hand, on my knees with a scraper and sponge) in the breakfast room. Needless to say, as I figured, I don’t have nearly the same strength and “elbow grease” that Tim does, and my hands and wrists are not used to that kind of work.

So here it is – whine whine, complain complain, groan groan. Today, I am hurting all over. My knees hurt, not from being down on the concrete on them for hours, but from the darn knee pads I borrowed from Tim. The rubber strap was too tight, and they gouged into my skin. My shoulders and back hurt from bending over and trying to scrub and push the scraper. Those are tolerable though. What really hurts are my hands and wrists. To the extent that they throb when I’m just sitting still. Typing right now is not fun. Helping Tim later today and tonight is going to be sheer torture.

OK, go ahead and bash me, I know I’m a wimp and a wuss and a chronic complainer. Poor Tim has to live with me, feel sorry for him. It is very hard work though, and thank goodness I have Tim here to do the lion’s share of it. If I was doing it by myself, I wouldn’t make it. Nice having a big strong guy around!

Without further ado, more pictures in the extended section. We’re making progress, and hope to start laying tile tomorrow!

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I missed almost all of today’s show…we were up very late and we slept in a little. Today, Matt traveled to the Dalmation coast, Dubrovnik Croatia. I will have to go to the Today Show website later today and look at the videos, as I missed most of it.

Even though we’re not completely finished with the tile in the guest bath, Tim is “raring to go” and ready to start on the kitchen. You gotta start somewhere, and with this room (or rooms, really, the breakfast room, kitchen and laundry room), it’s going to have to be slow and steady.

Yesterday, Tim worked from home (after his marathon 7 hour nighttime work session), and got started late afternoon in the breakfast room. He took up all the baseboards from the kitchen and breakfast room, and tore up most of the vinyl in the breakfast room. He was very sweet and left me a walking path to and from the kitchen area so I wouldn’t track up as much. He’s smart and thinking ahead!

OK, here’s what we have coming up in the next couple of days:
1. Seal the grout in the bathroom
2. Reinstall the baseboards, toilet and door in the bathroom
3. Apply Krud Kutter to the breakfast room and remove all adhesive and backing layer of the vinyl
4. Figure out how to tackle the kitchen and move out the appliances (I’m more worried about this than Tim, obviously!)

Pictures in the extended section, although they are very boring. But I’m documenting each step of the way, so there you have it 😀

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I caught more of the segments today, but maybe I missed the best ones, as I was a little “underwhelmed” (is that a word?? It should be you know, opposite of overwhelmed). Today, Matt Lauer was in Shanghai China. Most of the segments I saw were ok, but nothing really stands out in my mind. Most of the people he interacted with only spoke Chinese, and couldn’t answer his questions. The main thing I got out of out of it is that now there are 1.3 billion Chinese. 🙂 And that Shanghai is a very large city, and very fast growing. Oh, and I saw a bit about a place in Shanghai where you can get 16 steamed dumplings for the equivalent of $1.00 US. Now, that’s what I’m talking about! 😀

OK, the clue for the last day is totally lost on me. I have absolutely no idea. He said the clue is “We’ve jumbled Cruella’s evil plan.” HUH?

Here’s the question for the day – you can post your answers in the form of a comment here, or please feel free to copy this over to your own blog! 🙂

List your top five indispensable web sites.

1. Blingo (searching, like Google but with prizes!)
2. IMDB (looking up anything and everything about movies, actors, etc)
3. Hambones (of course!)
4. Wikipedia (online encyclopedia)
5. Cooking Light message boards (get lots of great recipes there)

P.S. Mine are in no certain order! 😀

I just updated the Hambones website with a few new pictures of Nathan that Wendy had sent me. He’s getting so big and is about ready to sit up!

I also added a bunch of fortunes to the fortune cookie section. I haven’t entered any of the ones in a while from our Chinese eating excursions. 🙂 Go check out your fortune for the day!

Poor Tim had a really long night. He started the regular Tuesday night conference call at 11 PM. I woke up several times during the night, and the lights were still on and I could hear him occasionally talking on the phone. Finally, about 5 AM, he came to bed and seemed totally exhausted. The phone rang about 5:40 and they needed him to get back up and work on another problem (or maybe the same problem, he didn’t say). He finally got to bed about 6:10 AM. So, he was up nearly 24 hours yesterday. Poor thing. He’s going to need a lot of sleep to catch up, but the bad thing is now that our timing is really off. I just hope he feels a lot better when he wakes up later today.

Well, apparently Matt traveled to Innsbruck Austria today. I missed most of it, and so far, they don’t have a lot of his video blog up on the Today Show website (today.msnbc.com). Maybe later. I did see the video of him doing the zip line across Innsbruck, which looked beautiful.

This location really ties in with the books I am currently reading (The Zion Covenant). The first book was entitled “Vienna Prelude” and quite a bit of it took place in the Tyrol and in Vienna, of course.

The clue for tomorrow’s destination was something along the lines of “this river city is known for it’s shopping, but the surprise is that there is no Eiffel Tower”. So it could be most any major city in the world. I’d like to guess that it’s Milan (but I don’t think Milan is located on a river); Milan is the next city after Paris that springs to my mind when I think shopping!!

Wow – we couldn’t believe the difference a little grout could make in how the tile looks! We are even happier than we were the other day when we finished laying the tile…

We put down the grout tonight, and then got it cleaned up and buffed. Now, we just have to let it set 48-72 hours, then seal it, and then we’ll be almost done. (The only other things will be to put back the baseboards and paint them, over the new nail holes, and then for Tim to install that important fixture we removed, the toilet. :D)

Click to see more pictures…

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