Sunday, April 29, 2007

Dick Will Make You Slap Somebody

I'm sorry, I have an excruciating headache right now and can't sleep. Rather than watch horrible late night TV, I was watching horrible late night YouTube. This clip is a classic:



Oh wait it gets better:



He won't even buy you some shrimp from Long John Silver's and what's that plate? $2.99?



Here is her website and she has a myspace page. I really am tired, so somebody will need to tell me if this is funny or not.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Proof that there is justice in the universe

This story is proof that there is some sense of cosmic justice. Here is what he was saying the whole time: Play

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

I just found out that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died yesterday. I won't say anything special here other than mention that he was by far my favorite author and his passing makes me very sad.

UPDATE: Kurt is up in Heaven now.

Monday, April 09, 2007

Remodeling and the fun of home demolition

With the recently ballooning size of our family, we've decided that it is time to normalize the house a little bit. When I bought the house, the kitchen being on the second floor seemed quaint and interesting and an issue to be dealt with at a later date. Now that the inhabitants of the house number 3 (soon to be 4) that later date has come. We have to have more living space. We need a kitchen and dining room that are functional. To that end we've begun to undertake the task of turning our first floor office and bathroom in to a kitchen/bathroom/laundry room combo.

Pros:
  1. We already have a kitchen that functions so we will never be without a place to cook.
  2. The space is relatively unused at this point in time so we probably won't miss it much.
  3. The basement below will never be finished so adding more pipes and wires to the existing forest will probably go unnoticed.
Cons:
  1. The space has too many windows and doors and is not very big. This makes placing cabinets and appliances a chore.
  2. The house is old and I'm scared to get an inspector involved. Who knows what he/she will make me bring up to code.
  3. One of the rooms has some water damage and a little bit of black mold. I found this doing some of the demolition and probably won't do much more demolition until I can kick everybody out of the house for the day and finish it up and clean out the mold.
  4. The walls are already riddled with existing wiring, plumbing and heating that will either need to be moved or worked around.
  5. The walls that aren't chock a block full of obstructions are exposed brick that I will probably need to be able to hang cabinets and cut down on the dust.
  6. The floors aren't level.
  7. The walls aren't straight.
  8. It will take a metric shit-load of time to do all of the work necessary.
  9. I'm only qualified to do about 70% of the work.
  10. I only want to do about 50% of the work.
    1. If possible, I will never do sheetrock again. Way too messy and very fiddly when it comes to doing a good job.
    2. If possible, I will never do waste side plumbing ever. One screwup and your basement is filled with poo.
  11. I'm not 100% sure how we will pay for it all.
On the good side, I just noticed that Jackson county has informed me that they value my home at about $20K over what I owe on it. That gives me about 10% equity in the house (if their value is correct) that I might be able to borrow against. We've started to do some planning and should be able to jump into it after the weather warms up a bit.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Here's the news of the day

I haven't written here much lately. I have an excuse. I really do. I have two excuses actually. First off, I'm married. Yup you heard me. I'm married. Actually it isn't just me. It is Jennifer and I who are married. To each other. Yup, this was more or less inevitable given the fact that we got engaged last year but the time line was recently accelerated. Accelerated because we have some other good news. We are going to be parents. That's right. I've managed to reproduce. I have spread my seed. (Please imagine my evil laugh reverberating through your mind.) Back to reality. I couldn't be happier. OK. That is the end for now. I will keep everyone up to date. By the way, the expected due date is September 29th.