The Ligers won again!!!!!!!!

Our stats: 3 wins; 5 losses; 2 tied games. A -7 run differential and our current streak is 3 wins in a row. We are currently ranked 8th place, out of 16 teams in the NE league. Not so bad considering that none of us have ever played before.

But I have to now admit that our last win was a forfeit. The other team didn't show up. Not a single person. I guess they were just too scared of our prowess.

The Playoffs/Finals Tournament is this next Saturday. We play the 9th ranked team first and then more if we are lucky. I'd invite you all, but I'm sure no one will show up, considering the first game is likely to be at 8:00 (ouch).

Instead of playing them, our two captains picked teams (just like the humilation of grade school - though I have a patented system of looking unconcerned when not picked), and we played each other. I was on the Evil Ligers team, and we kicked butt. I had a LOT of fun playing first base and making some amazing catches (I'd been hiding my skills until the end of the season). Once, I almost took a digger in a large puddle of mud. And once I was running backwards, and I would have caught the ball had I not, at the last moment, tripped over something, and fallen backwards onto my back, the fall broken by the ball landing first and under my head. Ouch. But I have the most fun when I get to play "balls out." It engages the crowd.

Halloween party was fun. We didn't go as the planned duo of Sonny and Cher. It would have been wonderful, with a zombie Sonny and Cher doing a skit/song from their horrible comedy show. Audio was the concern, we just couldn't figure out how to spontaneously burst into our routine without it looking like a lot of effort. Oh well, perhaps next year. Instead I was a pirate, and a quite good one at that, having found a velvet jacket that make the outfit wonderful. Sadly, there were two other pirates there. My costume was the most elaborate however. HA. Because of a rush out of the house, there were no pictures taken until I was home and took them myself. Thus the drunken quality of the images. Steve was already in the shower, so I was only able to get a shot of his face and makeup. It wasn't a pretty costume, but scary and slightly demented, and definitely no one else had the same.

This morning was spent making adjustments to my chain downspouts. It has rained so hard here that the water was splashing all over the place and getting into the basement. I used a funnel made out of screen to direct the rain onto the chain (thanks Larry), and all seems to now be well. The ideal situation would be to have several chains out of the same hole, as one chain just can't handle that much rain.

Sadly that allowed me to discover a leak in the garage roof. I will be unable to repair that for a while though, as the 10 day forcast says more, much more rain.

A podcast you must have

Looking for Hi5 music, here's what Itunes came up with: A Klingon Word from the Word. Something about the Bible, but the words from the Bible are read in Klingon. A new form of ministry, for the Trekkies. I'm seriously amazed.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet, I just found the fellow's blog.
"mu''a'vo' mu' - A Klingon Word from the Word
Thinking about the Scriptures, through the lens of the Klingon Language Version of the World English Bible. "

And here is the Klingon Language Version (KLV) of the Bible. Here's John 3:16: "vaD joH'a' vaj loved the qo', vetlh ghaH nobta' Daj wa' je neH puqloD, vetlh 'Iv believes Daq ghaH should ghobe' perish, 'ach ghaj eternal yIn."

Humanity amazes me.

And more, sorry, I can't stop. The Bible website allows one to read many versions of the Bible, the best part is that one can choose several and then compare them side by side. The Joseph Smith translation is in the Questionable section (and the Klingon isn't). Anyway, here's a comparison of Klingon, Esperanto, and Joseph Smith translation. That makes me giggle.

An observation

I cannot figure out what this group is doing with a fan base, but I guess that is the nature of pop music. Check out the Hi-5 Theme and tell me how many Hi!'s you see. Looks like six to me.

Anyway, for more fun, meet the members of Hi-5. My favorite is Kellie Lynn, here's her bio, there's so much to enjoy:


Star Sign: Taurus
Fave Food: Ice
Fave Film: Close Encounters
Fave Actor: Harrison Ford
Fave Animal: My poodle Cassy

Describe Yourself In 3 Words: (as described by Hi-5) Beautiful, understanding & sensitive
Best Feature: My new car!
Worst Feature: Lack of confidence in myself
Person You Would Most Like To Meet: Madonna
Hobbies/Interests: Extra Terrestrial life outside of this planet, horse riding, sports, four-wheel driving and writing music.

First Job: Acting in a commercial
A Talent You Wish You Had: To be more assertive
The Best Advice Given To You: To sit, listen and learn
What Can You Never Leave Home Without: My hat!
If you were a cartoon character, which one would you be? Scooby Doo
If you were told you had a minute to live, what would you do? Call my family and sit and meditate.

Make your own stamps

Flickr and Zazzlestamps have united to allow you to make stamps of the photos you have stored on Flickr. Only $16.99 for a sheet of 20 - 37cent stamps.

Even more Flickr loveliness

QOOP flickr Photo Printer. With this service, one can make coffee table books or presents for the grandparents.

Yum

After a hard day's work, there is not much better than eggs benedict (with turkey) on fresh baked bread. YMMMM. Here's the secret: take Saran wrap, line a small bowl or glass with it, crack the egg into it, and then tie the top. That way, no crazy messy eggs or need for vinegar. I tried it tonight and it worked wonderfully.

Still painting V's house.

Officially bored with my own company. Luckily, tomorrow night is book club for girls. Yeay! The book, Thanks for Smoking. I'll review it after book club. I'm currently reading Wicked. I know, it's old news by now, but I'm not one to jump on a bandwagon just because it's driving past my house. It started slow, but seems to be getting better (1/3 through).

And trying to find time to get my costume together. Otherwise, I haven't even had time to surf the net.

sweetness

I have a halloween costume. Oh my, it will be wonderful. Steve and I are going as a duo, and we're rehearsing! Invite me to your party and perhaps we'll show up and be the entertainment. You'll be awfully sad if you don't.

I'm finally done painting V's bedroom. It took a lot more prep work than I thought and a double coat on the trim, which sucks. But it looks fantastic, so all is well.

This weekend was a wash. We did nothing, didn't want to. Just a weekend in. This weekend will be much better.

I've really done nothing else. Planning for Halloween and painting have been the only thing other than kickball that I have been doing. I'll try and get some pics of the costumes for you. If anyone could tell me how to post videos on the blog, I'll make a movie of it.

More on the game

I just went for a walk and was able to process the game a bit more. We really did well as a team. We caught, we kicked, we hustled. One of my favorite moments was watching, mouth agape, as the ball bounced after Jennifer, threatening to make her out and she was able to make it to the base, safe. Then the whole lot came home. Brilliant. I made it to third once, hit a double, and came home once. A sucessful game for the stats.

We made some mistakes, but our heads were in the correct place(except for Ted who will never likely listen to my base coaching :). We played smartly, soundly and were a team. It was a pleasure to play and win 13-7 to a middle ranked team. I love the Ligers.

The Ligers

We won another of our kickball games. We are now 2-5-2. We did a really good job this time, though because of a few misinterpretations of the rules, we got a little riled up. It's a fine line between having fun and not taking crap from the other team. The only time I don't have fun is when the call is unfair or completely random. Otherwise we rule! We even had a substitute pitcher that performed quite well. I think the only thing we really have to work on is trying to be more quiet. Everyone yells all the time, and with a quiet umpire, we often had no idea whether the play was fair or foul. Me included, I love to yell. Sadly, so does the rest of our team and the other teams too. Oh well, there's much room for improvement next season. One more game this season and the tournament. We're moving up in the ranks, so we'll be lucky enough to play a similar caliber team at the single elimination event. November 5th, mark your calendars.

San Francisco made out of jello

The City Look through them all, they use molds for the buildings, making the detail amazing, plus, there is a video at the end showing the effects of an earthquake on this city.

Where have I been? This is incredible.

GAME BOY MICRO. Talk about something else I don't need, but this is as small as my phone and STILL uses all the old cartridges. Brilliant.

Sup?

Check out my footer, five random photos, different everytime you load the page. Now, that's innovative. Pardon my revisions, I'm going through another change, and the blog follows.

Well, another day at work, and I've realized that S and I have completely reversed roles. I now work about 6 hours a day. He works 9 hours, then to class, then sometimes to band practice. It's an interesting mix-up.

So, the City has decided to fix a hole that appeared about 1.5 years ago, only 1.5 feet in diameter, but dangerously located in the middle of the street. It reappeared twice after the first fix (which took two weeks), and finally, they've decided to get serious about it. Now, they've cut a 8 x 8 foot hole. I'm curious to see what this amounts to, hopefully a fix, likely a retirement fund for the city worker assigned to it. The exciting part is that I now live on a street that is closed to thru traffic.

More sanding and scraping and cleaning and prepping today. I had planned on priming today, but decided the best plan would be to get all the dirty work done first. So, now just to paint. I do hate oil paint, gives me a headache every time.

Last night I worked later than I intended, missing kickball practice. S was also working late so I met him downtown for sushi at Yuki's, the best sushi I've had since Nanaimo. I was incredibly impressed with the sushi on Vancouver Island. Which reminded me somehow that I was the only one that swam in the ocean while on vacation.

Boring, I know, but I kinda like my life at the moment. Now I'm off to walk the dog and get my exercise.

Just checkin to see if anyone is paying attention

Hello,

Tired and dirty. Today I did some scraping and sanding at V's new house. Whew, that's some work. I cannot wait to start actually painting, which will look smashing by the way.

Thus, I have little to say today, I forgot the main thrust of my errand running to Home Depot, then was locked in traffic with a bunch of Couvers.

Now I'm off to sushi, Yeay.

Smurfs Get Bombed

Here's the good part of the commercial about the horrors of war. Smurfs Get Bombed

My Ligers

The Ligers kickball team, pre-victory. Notice how we all were so optimistic about the game even though we were 0-5-2.


Notice here how we WON, that's right beyotches! Now we're 1-5-2. We have two more games to play, which will determine our placing in the playoff tournament. If we win both, perhaps we won't have to go against the best of the best and might have a chance at playing more than one game that day. Come and cheer us on!
That will be our end-of-season score:

Adult Christianity TM | For Christ's Sake

Adult Christianity TM | For Christ's Sake It's blasphmeous, but tasty!

Kickball and the weekend

I forgot to mention, that we won our Kickball game on Sunday. We were playing the nicest team that we've yet to play (Twisted Kickers) and we WON (7-2)! We are now 1-5-2. That's pretty good considering this is the first season that any member of our team has played organized kickball. (We are only down 18 kicks, which is not so many, really).

My little baked potater hit a homerun, and I actually got on third base this time. I also whilst in the catcher position, caught a bumbling ball for a good out in the last inning. So we all did some good this game. We also all made some big mistakes, but little things that just need to be ironed out with experience.

I think it most important to just repeat every thing you want to be good at until you get it right. To that end, Steve and I have been kicking the ball at the park on weeknights. It not only gives us some exercise, I know much better how to bunt, and kick and control the ball. It's quite handy having a soccer boyfriend.

I skipped poker this weekend. Instead, Sara and I played Gauntlet (old skool) at Ground Kontrol, until we just ran out of quarters. Then we discovered that we can play Super Mario Bros. on an old skool Nintendo at the bar for free. So we drank and played and I discovered Sara is actually realllly good at the game, and showed me some new moves...slide, slide, slippedy-slide.

Other than that, I watched a documentary/art film on a fellow that builds rock cairns and such, but not in an annoying way. Normally I knock over un-important rock cairns because they disrupt my tranquility, but this guy had some skill. I even learned how to build a rock arch. Sweeet.

Also watched the Family Guy (Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story) movie, good, though I wouldn't purchase it, as it's not worth watching more than once.

And I finished Christopher Priest's "Prestige." I really enjoyed this book. It seemed headed toward a predictible ending, but really ended up different than I had imagined. I would like someone else to read this so I can discuss what the heck the ending was about. The book made me want to look at the last page for the entire second half of the book. Resisting is mandatory. It's a nice mystery surrounding an 1900 feud between two stage magicians. Clever and well-written, I'd actually keep this one to read again in the future.

Today I made beef stew in the crock pot and way more monster cookies that I should have. If you need a homemade cookie, let me know.

For you comics fans...you'll love this edition of webzen

Check it out: web zen. See Superman doing a Nestle Quik commerical, read the incredible Hulk's blog, ponder Spiderman's crayon reviews.

And if you are not into comics so much, look at their archives, I'm sure you'll find something you like. They take a theme and provide lovely links. One of my favorite is "your name zen" where you can find your smurf, pimp or evangelist name. Good stuff.

I apologize

This is the GoogleReader. It's pretty slick, though I do like the personalized search page quite a bit (that was what I thought was the reader - it kinda acts like one, but a bit more bulky). They both have their advantages, I guess it depends on what you are looking for. I would highly recommend looking at them all, and having a Gmail account is a must (let me know if you need one). Also, seems they just fixed the login process so that it is not continuously logging you out, which was making me angry. Now one log in works for mail, the personalized search page and the reader. Enjoy!

Also, check out http://www.misspelledauctions.comis a great way to get a good deal on ebay items that people list under poorly spelled titles. Just type in the correct title, and it will come up with misspelled entries.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

The movie. It'll be out in March, evidently. YES!

A new color

A bit of sunshine to brighten up these dreary sunless days. Let me know what you think. I was also going for ease of readability...

Umm, I drank way too much last night. That's right. One of my comrades fell last night, but I stayed in there to take the dog for not just one walk, but three. He evidently needed them, as he pooped each time, but I just really like to be mobile when I'm tipsy. That way I can seem to control events, events like taking out the yard refuse to the curb at 1:30 in the morning, and then taking a walk to go and watch the trains. Yep, it was a good night.

That's how a book club should be, drunken ribaldry continuing even after it is over. The book was a collection of short stories by Aaron Hamburger. They are all set in Prague, and most of them are gay- and or Jewish-themed. I didn't really like the book so much. It was interesting, but repetitive and seemed to contradict itself between some of the stories, trying to be clever, I think. I would give it a 6/10, for readability, clarity of presentation, and entertainment value, though lacking in overall luster.

Next book is titled "Thank you for Smoking" by Christopher Buckley. Looks interesting. Two weeks to read it. In the meantime, I'm gonna hit Christopher Priest's "The Prestige. " I'll let you know what I think.

For now, I'm gonna crawl back into bed and take a little nap. I feel awfully sorry for those bookclubbers that had to work today...My sympathies.

Music day

I forgot how dreary Portland Fall/Winters are. Don't get me wrong, they are a large step-up from those WI winters (which I never want to live in again), but the lack of sunshine really sucks the life out of one.

So, I'm trying to take more things off of my to-do list, which seems to grow everyday, no matter how many things I accomplish. Ah well, at least I currently have the time and physical resources to do them.

Today is take care of organizing some music, updating the ipod and fixing the shuffle for S to listen to Spanish with. I would like to say that Missy Elliot is amazing. Her new album, Cookbook, is just perfect, wonderful, fantastic. Thanks, a bunch!
I've also discovered that the Brian Jonestown Massacre's old music is all available for free download at the official website. If you haven't seen the rock documentary Dig!, you should, it will at least make you curious about BJM and the Dandy Warhols, their feud and the crazy-ass genius of Anton Newcombe.

To satisfy curiosity and to prepare for the movie viewing, I've read the first two Lemony Snicket books. They are quite entertaining, well-written for children and tell a good story. I don't think I need to read any of the rest of the series, they are really written for younger kids and the story doesn't capture my attention like it could, but I still very much would like to see the movie. I wish I had been able to read these when I was in elementary school, likely they would have made life a bit more bearable.

Off to research how to refinish a claw-foot bathtub. We would like to paint it before installing the new hardware. That's it to the left. It will be for our claw-foot tub, and won't have tile behind it. Instead, it will look so lovely, and feel so amazingly wonderful, that we are going to be thankful there is limited hot water in this house.

Also have to list some things on eBay that I no longer need and try and recoup some money from the GST spent in Canada. That and try and figure out how to successfully unzip and play .ogg files in itunes, so I can get them on my ipod.

So the rest of my day is decided. What I like best about my current life is that I have no timelines. I only have to worry about getting outdoor chores done in the daylight, and the rest I can do whenever. Sweeeeeeeeeet freedom.

gutter chains

were placed on the house today. Yeay. They work wonderfully and saved us millions of dollars. That's what I did today, that, and cleaned out the garage and made arrangements to get rid of some stuff.

Steve has a new position at work, which seems to be making him more responsible as far as getting to work on time and working later. With that and his Spanish class, our roles have very much reversed in this house. Now I have all the free time. That will soon change however, with November putting me back to the grind.

For now, I'm gonna walk the dog and watch a DVD of "Curb your enthuasism." More tomorrow...

"Nig, you ain't no G."

ummm, I'm only, like half-gay, but

Happy NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY to all ya'll queers out there.

A tutorial on RSS and Atom

Because I like sharing the cool things I figure out:

I like to look at several different websites everyday to see if they have been

updated. There is a much easier way to do this than clicking on each one. Here's how:

First, one must have a feed reader. Google now has one and it is amazingly easy to figure out. First, go to www.google.com. In the upper right hand corner, click on "Personalized home." Set up an account.

Then, click on the button in the upper left hand corner that says "add content." This will show you a stock list of news/entertainment/etc feeds that are interesting, click to add what you like.

Third, and this is the good part, click on "create a section." This will allow you to add any site that has a published rss or atom feed. Any blog on blogspot has an atom feed (if the owner has turned it on). If you look to the left of this post, under "My Shit" you'll see "my atom feed." To add my site to your Google homepage, simply right click on "my atom feed" to "copy the shortcut" and insert in the box on the Google "create a section" input box. There you have it, the section will be titled Drunken and will allow you to see the most recent posting, or will save you effort if I haven't yet posted.

Have fun, and holler if you have any questions.

P.S. If you have a blog...let me in on your site feed (look in settings, and turn it on "full").

Update: seems the Google/reader is still in the beta stage, and may not work so very fast just yet. However, the ease of having all things in one place, will make this a wonderful system as soon as the bugs are worked out.

As Carl would say "Jesus poker chips are frickin AWESOME!"

I like how they are selling them as an "ultra cool mini tract to hand out." And the best part is that I am certain the hostess of our poker games would actually love these. (She hates when we take the name of her Lord in vain.) My personal favorite (so clever!):

More gutters

So, gutters are repaired, cleaned, aligned and replaced. I only have one other thing to do and that is install two chain downspouts, one in the backyard (no, the Dr. Seuss one wasn't for real), and one on the side which will be experimental. I'm going to simply cut a hole in the gutter, enlarge it and place a chain to direct the water away from the house. That seems like a better option than replacing 50 feet of gutter that does not drain correctly.

Thanks to anon on the last posting - my kicking has greatly improved. We lost our kickball game, but again, could have done much worse. I believe the score was 3-7. We got shafted on a few of the calls, and their first base person didn't seem to understand staying out of the base line, but I'm getting over it. I got on base a couple of times. There is definite need for improvement, but I think I'm getting the hang of that big red ball. Playing an organized sport is an interesting mix of competitiveness and trying to remember that it is just for fun. When it is just our team, we seem to have both. Sadly I don't think some of the other teams can do that, thus making it very competitive for us as well, and a bit too stressful.

In other news, well, there's not much. Looks like I might put my car on the ice for the winter and we'll turn into a one-car family for a while. Save some money and incidently, the planet.

We had a fantastice crock-pot chicken with purple potatoes and gravy and green beans last night, then took the dog for a walk and MAXd downtown to buy some books (Snicket, to read before the movie is seen).

We also bought a snowshoeing in Oregon book, so that we don't get too chubby this winter. If anyone knows of any cheap deals on snowshoes, please advise.

Then we went to a couple of new places, one ended up being a gay bar and I didn't even know it, hahaha, the irony; and the other a "fusion latino" restaurant that has been open for one week. The chef (Jeff?) let us try some of his mom's habanero salsa. We just ate a carrot from the mix, but my tongue was seriously on fire. Ouch. I cannot recall the name of the place, but they do have window service and stay open late on Fri and Sat nights, so if you are downtown, keep your eyes open for the "fusion latino" on the sign (they have bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers with a chipotle-blue cheese dip that you will want to have more of).

That's all for now. I'm gonna read today, clean the house, then help a friend saw some things and/or get some kickball practice.

Sunday, sunday

I'm up sooooo late this morning. Not due to partying however, certainly not like Friday night (Bishops grand opening was fun, though some of our party suffered greater than others, ahhhh, good times). I'm just up late because I can.

Today my excitement will be taking the dog for a walk out at Kelly Point State Park, and playing kickball at 4:30 (I think?). I have cleats, and have been practicing my kicking. Watch out!

Boing Boing: Google launches a feedreader

Boing Boing: Google launches a feedreader

Here's my gutter project, finished. I replaced all the gutters on the extension.

Here's a detail shot of my gutter project. Notice the clean lines.

New pants

Sweet, everytime S throws pants away, I steal them outta the garbage and wear them for several more months. I need to have an income source, seriously.

Well, I've got little to say. Nothing has happened in the laast day. I am going to finish the gutters today if it kills me and post photos when I'm done. I was interrupted yesterday by rain of all things. Though initial results are that the pitch of the gutters is correct and they are draining well. Today, I may just figure out a way to capture the water for irrigation. That and, since I set up the X box yesterday, may just play a little of a new game we got (and get it outta my system before November when it will be time to start studying again for the bar).

Tonight is a grand opening of Bishops on Alberta, which I feel is my street, but driving down it has become as treacherous as Hawthorne, so I don't like to do it. However, I'm making an exception for tonight. You should join.

I just realized

That the father of Superman is Bo Duke!

Thursday

Last night was a blast. We played a scrimmage kickball game amongst ourselves that was really fun. We were able to play with much less pressure and I even kicked a home run, beyotches. But the best was a catch I made after taunting Swills, who kicked it to me and I had to jump and scramble to actually catch it. I pulled something in my ass, making that nerve rather painful today.

But nothing will keep me from finishing this darn gutter project. I've hit another bump in my road, but I think with a bit of tin snipping I'll be able to keep the water flowing out through the downspout.

After kickball last night, I went out downtown with a couple of friends, one of whom had just got her shipping out papers from her wife. Sad story, even sadder as she seems to be the one on the receiving end of what my situation was nearly two years ago. So, some insight and some sadness, but I was able to drink and get a ride home to my "fucking awesome" S.O.

And then up late this morning for some cleaning, laundry and work outside. Reading the survey results were quite funny (see yesterday), seems that not signing my name to someone's birthday card was a mere oversight of my significant other. Thanks to all participants. I would just like to say that I'll be making that mere oversight from now on, since it seems to not matter. I just wish I could take back the past times I assisted peace and happiness by signing names, to show everyone how much it does matter. Oh well, I'm gonna let it go now (even the blatant attempts to rankle my ire through the lame "I have testicles" excuse).

Btw, I've fixed the link on the bottom of the page, to now go to October, so that you can see the last few days if you've missed anything. Sorry it took me so long, I cannot figure out how to make it go to the latest and have to change it each month manually.

Back to work. If you are bored, check this out and tell me how it works.
Here's what BoingBoing said about it: "Last Call Poker is an alternate reality game built around the frame of a dodgy poker site. The site asks for your "date of death" when you register. After filling out a profile and playing poker for a few minutes, you start getting phone calls, emails and had strange images show up on you screen. There seems to be quite a bit of story hidden within the site including movies (with ex-child star Todd Bridges--better known as Willis from 'Diff'rent Strokes'), audio segments, and live poker games played at cemeteries around the country (using the tombstones as cards)."

Survey

The situation: You have NO idea when your significant other's mum's birthday is/was. You've been dating significantly long enough that you are co-habitating. Your significant other sends a last minute birthday present to his/her mother. He/she signs the card, but does not add your name.

Was this an incredibly thoughtless thing to do? Or a mere oversight?

Aqua Teen Hunger Force - sorry this post will make little sense, and don't worry it's not, strictly speaking, poetry.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force
by D Schoolly
album: (I like to substitute Sointula for shake-zula)

My name is...
Shake-Zula.
The mic-rula,
The old schoolah,
Ya wanna trip? I'll bring it to ya.
Frylock and I'm on top, Rock you like a cop
Meatwad you up next with your knock-knock.
Meatwad make the money, see.
Meatwad get the honeys, G.
Drivin in my car, livin' like a star.
Ice on my fingers and my toes and I'm a Taurus

Check it.
Check it, check it.

'Cuz we are the aqua teens,
make the homies say ho! and the girlies wanna scream
'Cuz we are the aqua teens,
make the homies say ho! and the girlies wanna scream

Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Number 1 in the Hood, G

Look out your window

Because Mt. St. Helens is pooping something white. Click on the pic for the most current.

What a rip off!

Gutter Love It! - Low cost gutter protection This is the same crap that you can get a million feet of at Home Depot for $30. Besides, I'm not putting it in regardless of how cheap I can get it. The best part is that they'll install it for $4.50 per foot. Installation is simply setting the thing into the gutter. I hope they can track back this link and rebut my contentions.

So, more gutters today. I think I've figured it all out and just have to get someone to hold the end for me while I install them. I'll get it all laid out and prepped and then have the boy be my helper tonight. Though I have Kickball practice, which may have to wait until I'm able to get the gutters up. Sorry kids. Unless someone wants to come over early to help.

So, out to get mucky again. Wish me luck.

Gutters suck

Little did I know that cleaning the gutters would lead me to learning a new skill. I have now taught myself to install gutters (with a little help from the internet). What a messy, and horrible job, but I will be able to install anyone's gutters in the future (for a fee, of course).

The blog will likely be mostly about my chores from now on (or at least for a while). Not paying rent, I can pay my other bills through November and will be ok. After that, I'm gonna need some income. In the meantime, I'm the slave of Steve. Admitedly, happily so. I do enjoy getting to all the things that need to be done around the house and I'm actually learning some new things. Damnation, I gots me some Mad Skills!

I have quite a few nicotine patches to give away...first answer wins (though Meg gets first dibs).

I'm dirty...feels good.

E-mail not working either....patience with me please...which reminds me, if anyone wants a g-mail account, please let me know. I have 100 to give away.

gutters

Well the rain stopped long enough yesterday to allow me to repair one side of the house worth of gutters and clean them out. However, this project is gonna take a bit of time as one side slants away from the drain spout and on another side, there is one section that has rusted through. So, today will be more on the gutters. I have to hit Home Depot first for some supplies and would like to take this opportunity to rant about neighborhood stores:

I know that it is difficult in this world to run a small business. However, that doesn't mean that you should just give up and run things like you always have. Carrying a shitty selection of poor quality hardware will not entice me to return to your store no matter how close I live to you or how horrible I believe meglo-mart. So, please, all I'm asking for is a non-plastic caulk gun, that doesn't cost $10. Thanks.

In other news: I've made split pea soup in the crock pot (with ham hock); and chocolate mousse. I'm being such a good little house wife.

I still have no idea where my cellphone is...haven't for several days. I'm thinking about getting a land line again. I think it would be much better for me and how I use a phone. Then we could completely cancel cable, and get DSL.

This blog looks more and more like a diary these days. But I guess if you don't like it, you don't have to read it.

Howdy

Today I begin on all the home improvement projects that I've been meaning to do for a while. Clean the gutters, repair various things, put plastic on the windows, etc. It feels good to be outside (when it is not raining) and getting things accomplished.

The weekend was good. Friday night was date night and we made pizza, went to a party and hung out with some good friends. We decided to walk home from their house, which ended up taking us an hour. It was fun though and I would definitely do it that way again.

Saturday night was poker night. I was able to stay in for a good period of time, but still lost. We played no-limit Texas hold-em, just like on TV, and I have to say I really don't enjoy losing my money. I think I would just rather stay away from gambling all together. It's hard to see your money being given to someone else when you have none.

Sunday we woke up and cleaned the house (whew!), then went to play kickball. This time I put no pressure on myself and had so much fun that I actually want to go again. We lost by only one run to a very well ranked team. We are quite good, and yes, we all need to learn how to kick. However, I've noticed that it doesn't matter how good you are at kicking, the results are completely random. The worst kicker can get home, or the best can strike out. Kickball is not like softball or baseball when there is required coordination. With kickball, just being able to make contact with the large and cumbersome, ball that is traveling at a rather high speed is an accomplishment. I think knowing that will make the game much more fun for all.

Back outside...the rain has stopped.