New shoes

They really need to finish this damn kitchen soon. The past few nights, I've been dreaming about food and eating.


Nearly despondent, I thought today's post would only have my new tires as signs of progress in my life. Thankfully not the case. I hope it's a trend. Though it probably has something to do with the multiple irate phone calls I've been making. But at least the kitchen cabinetry is done. Finally. SOMETHING. is finished.


I highly recommend these cabinet makers. Beautiful work. Strong, well made with no cut corners or cheap materials. They even put little color coordinated stickers on the back of the screws for the knobs mounted at eye level, so you don't see the metal. And they spaced the knobs at the corner cabinets so when they open, you hit another knob instead of denting the wood. Really cool.


Surprise arrival of my much needed tires at Costco this afternoon. And I have been hankering for a slice of Costco pizza this morning. Must be psychic or something. The fellows there were a bit puzzled at my online order since they normally stock those tires at the store. But sometimes, a guy gets a hankering to buy a set of tires at 2am in the morning. Where are they then? And now with the new tires, I feel taller in the car. Yeah, I ignored the tires until they were dangerously bald. Like Bruce Willis, post Die-Hard 3, pre-Ashton and Demi.

But found out today that I'll be traveling to Asia on business again. Aie-ya! We've really got to revisit the habit of sending me on insanely short duration trips. Chicago is not meant to be a day trip from LA. Last time I had meetings in Korea, I spent more time in the airplane than I did on the ground.

Pressive

Last night, I took apart of the corner of my engine compartment to change a burned out headlight bulb. I did it with my dressy work clothes on. And nary a smudge of schmootzh on the clothing. Slightly rumpled, yes. Impressive, no? And I took out the garbage too.

Pissing water

The rain this morning shorted out the power to the new pool pump. I am pissed off right now.

Tomato envy

Emergency pool equipment transplant today. Sigh. Wasn't in the budget.


New pool pump and filter. Old one circa 1978 gone to pool pump heaven. Can't say I'll miss it. That old pool pump 'twas a noisy bugger. Salty in temperment.


Went to Aaron and Jenne's for no-kitchen pity dinner. I am so jealous of their tomatoes. But I will take comfort with my kick-ass heavy duty home made tomato cages.

I insisted on using the whisk to make whipped cream. It's been so long that my whisking muscles were all sore. But I needed to touch a kitchen untensil.

Little shop of horrors

It was Detra's birthday last Thursday. I brought in flowers for her, and did not ask how old she was.


I finally got to building tomato cages. Three weeks of back of the brain, finally banished. The tomatoes were going all Audrey on me. Gotta rein them in. Home Depot cages were pretty flimsy. I made these sturdy ones from a roll of wire fencing. Note the new chile pepper seedings in the foreground. Yippee!


Persimmon tree is blooming right now. Tons of tiny flowers are misleading. Last year, we had just as many flowers, but only 10 fruits. I was walking Preston last night and got completely jealous of the neighbor's tree. Their tree already has baby persimmons, pollinated and growing in evenly spaced increments.


Kumquats. Tonight's dinner.


Door locks finally came in. Ordered them in early March I believe. About time I say. I didn't want to wait months for more cabinet knobs to spontaneously appear at the store, so I spent much of Saturday driving 100s of miles to Chino Hills to find more cabinet knobs. Needed only 4 more, but for schlepping such a distance, I bought 9. Just in case.

Hot catepillars

Much much craziness at work since I got back from vacation. I really don't want to be back. My mind is still in Italy. I'm wiped out every night from endless meetings and conference calls. It's going to get worse in the next few months. Sigh.

Still no progress at the house, but more bills coming in. I've been reduced to celebrating the pool guy coming this week as progress. Clean-ish pool. Yay!

My chili pepper plants came via UPS today. From New Jersey, the Garden State. Seems like half the things I get over the internet come from New Jersey. Chili pepper plants, kitchen sinks, toilets...


Chili pepper seedlings. Organically grown. 12 varieties. Half are super hot and flavorful, and I chose the other half dozen for their strangely shaped pods. One of them produces peppers in the shape of worms and catepillars. Certainly, little ole me will not be able to eat all these hot peppers, so I'll be freezing or drying most of them this fall. Let me know if you want some. I'll have plenty. No guarantees on quantity though. Preston tends to eat half of what I try to plant in the garden. And the squirrels get the other half. Years ago, I tried that hot pepper spray that discourages puppies from chewing things. Preston liked eating it.

Glue and milk and booze

Today, I learned that Elsie the cow of Borden dairy products fame is married to Elmer the bull. Elmer the mascot of Elmer's glue. They have 4 kids. OK, since they're cows and not goats, they have 4 calves, not kids.

I've been wearing my Italy ties this week. Freaking people out at the company. Hee Hee.


Tracked down some cynar last night. Some effort required to find it. It seems that in Southern California, all the liquor stores are stocked with a gazillion bottles of wine, Budweiser, and nothing else. Turns out there's a great liquor store less than 2 miles from the house. Within dog walking distance. Cynar was in the back of the store, dusty corner, behind some wine boxes. When I brought the bottle home, I realized, there is no kitchen and therefore no barware or ice cubes to drink cynar with. So disappointed. So so disappointed.


Angels trumpet tree blooming this week. Smells "heavenly" when it releases fragrance at dawn and dusk. Coincidence with the election of a new pope? I think not.

Smooshed my right pinky trying to unseat a stuck bathroom window. Dern painters. Makes typing quite annoying. Because punctuation keys are on the right side of the keyboard, typing punctuation hurts. Who would have thought that grammar would be occupational hazard?

Runaround sue

I managed to hit all the big box home centers in the area over the weekend. Home Depot, Osh, Lowes, Expo Design Center, and The Great Indoors. AND, I didn't find the square headed bolts. Phooey.


I got fed up with seeing lack of progress that I'm changing the scenery by moving boxes of stuff closer to their final destination. Maybe they'll magically install themselves. One can hope.


I bought out the entire stock of these cabinet knobs in Los Angeles County. I still need 4 more. Phooey. I may have to FedEx these in if they don't come in stock soon. At $3.29 a piece, and I only need 4 more of them, the expedited shipping will cost more than the knobs themselves. But if we're really doing the budget numbers with that much granularity, I must have burned about $18 worth of gas running around town looking for them. Gas at $2.91 a gallon. Though, I will have to deduct part of the costs for gas since I was also looking for the square headed bolts which don't exist at all in Los Angeles County. I'm showing my Nerd again.

I made lots of progress on the Italy2005 web site last night. Hopefully I will be able to post soon. Stay tuned. I hope I don't have work travel this week, that will put a monkey wrench in the schedule. But hey, if I don't get it done, so what. Any lawyers reading this?


Finally put up mobile from Taiwan. I found it while cleaning my desk the other day. I should clean my desk more often. I might find more long forgotten treasures.

Taxing

More than 6 months and counting. Will it ever end? I asked that question to the architects today. As suspected, the answer was evasive. I'm not encouraged. At our meeting this morning, the word "demolition" was uttered more than once. Arrghh... But I did decree to them that I wanted paint colors inspired by Italy. Yellow, orange, slate blue, and pale green.


They know how anal retentive I am about certain things. The wood grain matches and continues from one cabinet door and drawer to another.


From a single piece of plywood, drawers with wood grain that match so well you can't tell there are actually 6 drawers here. I'm very happy with these cabinets.


I drew fish on the windows to my office neighbor who's on vacation this week. I hope he doesn't read this blog before he gets back to the office. Otherwise, the surprise is spoiled. Nobody leak this to The Smoking Gun please.


The school of fish started swimming from my office next door.


Welcome Back has turned into a word game. This is the tame version. At one point, somebody spelled out "Male Cock." Which promptly got changed because our HR rep was coming into the office this week.

Knock on wood

Sick today. Both a frog and a horse decided to colonize my throat. Cough.


Framed small town Italian election poster. Standard IKEA frame. $20. Quizzical looks, priceless. If I wasn't sick today, I'd iron the folds out of the poster. But I don't have the energy to be that anal retentive today.


I was hoping to rest and sleep and recuperate today. But of all days, the cabinets decided to show up at the same time I'm sick at home. Two weeks of missing in action cabinets, and they show up today- when I need peace and quiet. They didn't stop banging and sawing until 9:30pm tonight. Arrgh! I've considered canceling my Chicago trip tomorrow to rest, but I think I'd get more rest on the airplane and locked in a focus group observation room.


But here they are.


And here.


And here.


Even here.

Starved for attention

I've been absolutely starving for food every morning this week. My body got used to eating 7 course meals in Italy. Mornings in LA just happen to be dinner time in Italy. So much for adjusting back to life in California. Can't eat the crap we call food here either. I'm inspired to cook Italian food, but no kitchen. Crapola.


The only progress this entire week since I returned is the appearance of 4 orange dots in the shower. I'm guessing the shower enclosure people have been here. But I'm curious.

1) I was not notified that we're doing a shower enclosure.
2) I was not quoted a price for shower enclosure.
3) I did not approve of anything to do with a shower enclosure.
4) The orange dots do match my color scheme for the kitchen.

Makes you go, "hhhhhmmmmmm..."


I had custody of Preston this weekend. I feel like a divorced single parent. A guilty bad single parent. Deadbeat Dad. Poor Preston is still adjusting to the changes at home. I miss doggie, and there isn't much I can do about it.


Kitchen cabinet colors. The middle color is called "Jack-O-Lantern." That's what I'm supposed to be getting. Though the phantom cabinets are still nowhere to be found. I'm not sure they actually exist.

Coffee talk

Back from Italy. Sorting through thousands upon thousands of photos. Phew.... But not much progress in the house after two weeks. There was a hint that I may see kitchen cabinets by the time I got back, but alas, broken promises...


Italian glass mosaic tile up. Somehow, this doesn't seem as special after witnessing the amazing mosaic murals in Italy. They did do a good job of tiling though. But I'm certain that without adjusting for inflation, my tile budget could cover an entire ceiling of a church with 24 carat gold mosaic tiles in Roman times.


Roof deck kind of done-ish. I think the paint is too purplish, but at this point, I just want everything to be done and over. So, I'm not quibbling and making them repaint. Next year. Sigh.


They took the time to round the edges of the stairs. How considerate. I didn't expect that. Good.


Looks can be deceiving. The electrical isn't ready for the AC and heater unit to be installed. It's just unpacked, but not working. Taunting me... Why oh why can't this be done?


Floors are done. I think. Grout and all. Very tempted to go rollerskating.


And the HVAC vent for the guest room has finally arrived. Though it seems like it's messier than before. So close... It seems like we're going backwards.


Porta potty is now gone, leaving dead grass in it's wake. Lots of trash to haul away too. Getting tired of this house stuff. When is it ever going to end?


Back to work and jetlagged. Needed some caffeine in the morning and went to Starbucks. I took a swig and nearly spit it back out. Bleeech! What is this swill that Americans call coffee. So disappointed.


And now my office has a sticker of a cat with bunny ears on it. They must not have been working too hard when I was gone. Too much time to decorate my office, I say.

Concrete plans

In baking parlance, this would be the crumb coat. Where the cake is smoothed out, but not yet ready for the finish smooth frosting. Since when did I become so food obsessed? The poor guys had to cut little teeny tiny tiles from the giant one.


The tile setter team's items. All neatly set up and stacked in my living room. I'm tempted to put a garage sale sign out front and sell these items.


I spent the morning elbow deep in concrete because the tile guys have been using my pump well as a drain. Scooping and chipping out concrete is not how I want to spend my mornings.

I need to pack.

Chocolate cake

Mmmm.... chocolate. Like building the Hansel and Gretel house. The colors havn't acquired any patina, so they don't match too well. I'm hoping it'll look better in a year. Yeah, everything does remind me of food.


The frosting layers in what is the layer cake of my roof deck. Leveling compound, steel mesh, morter, and then tile. The poor guys that have to haul giant 10lb tiles up and down the stairs. I feel their pain. I still feel their pain from working in Mexico this past weekend.


Smoothed out concrete wall. I hope to see my glass mosaic tile here soon. They've been sitting in boxes since November. But at least my bathroom door is no longer in the shower.


Bathtub, right side up once again. The pain. This thing is heavy. If you look closely at the tub, you'll find a hidden Mickey where the water spout will go.


Door to my heart. Or more accurately, door to my junk drawers. I can't believe I'm living here. When all this is done, I'd have built up so much character for my own sitcom with an ensemble cast.

Smells like concrete

Large tiles downstairs two by two
All laid out straight and true
Joints undone, have my doubt
When they will finish all that grout


Running bond pattern
repeated outside
but it's 2 inches off
when they applied


Ferns with white coating
Too warm to be frost
It's slate dust from cutting
Those tiles of high cost


Crates of stone
down to last one
Still, it's a lot,
weighes like a ton
I hope they are careful,
and measure and cut
I have no more money,
I'll kick their big butt


Stucco now primed,
with some quality primer.
Old world craftmanship
Like from old-timers.


Tub window now opens
Great for fresh air
Good for smelling roses
While shampooing hair


Big fuzzy rollers
remind me of muppets
so squeezably soft,
that I must fluff it.


It smells wet because
Walls now concrete
Still no toilet installed
Oh where to excrete.


Windows open, door removed
I'm freezing my ass off
Must get under blanket
Please no virus, no cough.


Easter bunny showed up this morning.
It's a weird sight to see.
Boy I wish my bathroom was finished.
I'm cold and I need to pee.