The weekend it was about 30°F. This morning it was a little warmer, like 39°F. On the way home, however, it was in the FIFTIES. I had to stop on the way and take off my fleece and long sleeve shirt. It was 54°F when I got home and it’s still going up. I was able to walk to the gym in shorts. It was crowded today, but it probably wasn’t New Years Resolutions kicking in. It’s always crowded on Mondays and even though it was full when I got there, it was almost empty when I left.

In any case, the weather is almost tropical compared to the last couple of days, so I should take advantage of it. Maybe I’ll have a barbecue. Or, maybe I’ll just EAT some barbecue. MMMMMM.

One problem is all the dust I’m creating. I can’t go too long without trying to cough up a lung.

Of course, I made a larger hole than I needed to, but someone had to do it. Me or the guy who is coming to replace the door.

I have to move the light switches and the electrical box over to the right hand side away from the door frame so it doesn’t interfere with the new door frame. I also think I need to buy a mallet to hit the chisel with, since my rubber mallet is falling apart. Oh, the joys of construction.

We had freezing rain today, and for those of you who live in flat places, it’s a lot worse here where it’s hilly. It was really quiet out because no one with any sense was driving. There were pictures on the news of a nice red Miata sliding down a suburban street (hah, I hate the suburbs) but also of buses with tire chains that were also sliding. And, guess what, fully loaded fire engines with chains that were sliding. It was a bad time to be outside.

So I spent the day making a big hole in the wall where near the electrical work needs to be done. I was busy cutting a nice hole in the lath and plaster until I BROKE THE BLADE OF MY SABER SAW. Of course, I wasn’t about to go out in the ice storm to buy a new blade, so I just watched football. Sawing in an old wall is incredibly dusty and nasty, and as an added bonus we had cellulose insulation which is even dustier.

Well, at least I had something to do so I didn’t go stir crazy.

Yesterday, there weren’t many people at the gym. Thursdays usually arent’t crowded, but there’s usually a bunch of people. It almost seemed empty. It made me wonder what sorts of resolutions people were making.

For the guy who suggested a Sawzall: it won’t work well on lath and plaster. Trust me, I know. Cutting a hole in lath and plaster is a pain, and the Sawzall is more likely to crumble a large section as it beats against the wall. I have experience with both, but the last time I used a Sawzall I was 70 feet up a tower cutting an antenna off of a mast. The antenna was probably over a hundred pounds and it banged the tower on the way down. I think we could have been safer about taking it down. Anyway, Jason gave me some specific tips about how he uses a saber saw on lath and plaster (larger foot = less banging on the plaster).

So not only did Jason give me advice on how to cut lath and plaster, he was also giving me dating advice. He kind of told me that a cute pharmacist is probably out of my league, since she sees lots of guys and gets plenty of attention from non-geeks. Oh, well. At least we get a “downtown discount” at the pharmacy since we work downtown.

Today someone was wearing a perfume that smelled like Pez. No, actually, I think it smell like Smarties. And it was kind of nice.

So, besides my bazillionaire boss (who is related to a famous ex-president) most people think I got an incredible deal on getting my door frame fixed. My contractor friend Jason told me that there was nothing I could do but get the door replaced, and that the TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR washer/dryer set were the way to go. He wouldn’t let me consider any other option, and even gave me pointers on how to cut a proper hole in the wall to move the light switch.

So, that just leaves my sister as the only one who is against the fancy washer and dryer. She was mad at me because she thought I’d gone and bought them on my own volition. She forgot that my mother specifically told her to look at washers and dryers while she was up here visiting. She forgot, because she was too busy buying yarn and hanging out with her friends. What an idiot. Er, I mean, how rude of her.

Funny, since Stage One didn’t have anything to do with the washer, dryer, or the laundry room. Stage One involved having Mike from Doorworks come over and fix the front door. He also got the info to give me a bid on the laundry room door. I’m going to bust out some of the lath and plaster to get to the electrical wiring, but also because I want to hit things with a hammer. Maybe I’ll even buy a new hammer.

The only bad part about taking all this time on the washer project is that I’ve been working from home and taking the bus to and from work. No exercise and I’m back to being a lump. Oh, well, I’ll just go to the gym tomorrow and miss Joey.

So I’ve only watched two episodes of Alias and I think it’s hilarious! It’s like the A-Team but updated 20 years. It’s really corny, but instead of being out in the California sunshine, they’re on weirdly decorated sets. Why didn’t anyone tell me it was so funny?

Actually, I called a friend and he said I should be glad that I don’t have a Korean sister. He’s got it real bad, not only is she a Korean sister, but she’s also a doctor. Not only is she a doctor, but she’s a radiologist.

Anyway, it looks like the two thousand dollar washer/dryer set is going to be more like a three thousand dollar washer/dryer set. When the guys came to deliver it, it wouldn’t fit in our door and they had to take it back. I measured the space to see if it would fit but I forgot to measure the door. Our door is only 28″ wide, they needed at least 29″ of clearance, and a normal narrow outside door is 32″ nowadays.

There are several options here:

1. Get a new door put in, at a cost of at least $1000 more.
2. Have a whole new laundry room built which really needs to be done but it would start with a new foundation and that’s probably around $40,000.
3. Dig stairs into the basement including cutting a hole into the foundation and pouring lots of concrete. That can’t be cheap.
4. Get a cheaper washer/dryer for about $600, which means it would be about $1400 less.
5. Don’t do anything since the old washer and dryer haven’t completely broken yet.

Talking to my friends, the first option was the only one that made sense. However, my sister seems to think that my parents need a new cheap washer, not all this stuff. I pointed out that if we were being cheap, we could just keep the old set. The only person who has trouble with the current washer and dryer is her, since she turned all the whites pink once, and put holes in her clothes. No one else has that kind of trouble. She got mad and hung up on me.

I know, I don’t do much of the laundry lately, but I’ve never dyed the clothes or put holes in them either. I even had to use cheap Japanese washing machines where there’s a wash tub and a spinner tub. There was also no agitator and the clothes all spun into one big ball. My only big problem is that guy landry is easy, and chick laundry is impossible. The most delicate thing in guy laundry is probably the underwear, and that could be made of denim or burlap for all we care. Anything else that is unwashable goes to the dry cleaner.

Anyway, my mom wants the fancy washer, so we need to put in a bigger door. The only downside is that the door leads to a small addition that probably should be torn down and rebuild. Plus getting things into the laundry room doesn’t mean they can go anywhere else since the door from the laundry room to the rest of the house is an even smaller 24″ wide.

In any case, my sister has spent more money on a just a turntable and cassette deck in the past (and I’ve spent more on my ham radio crap) so I don’t know why she’s so against buying a decent washer. This is the first time she’s ever hung up on me. Maybe she wants a larger inheritance. Who knows?

Gaze upon the glory of the Gillette M3 Power!

Well, gaze upon the fuzziness of a picture from my cell phone.

Really, the best part of getting the razor was having the cute pharmacist say hello to me. It’s like when I was in high school and I’d ride my bike to North Portland to go by this girl’s house who went to my high school. She had some junk in the trunk, especially for a high school girl, but it was a pleasant diversion. I never did see her when I rode by, but it did give me somewhere to go on my new Univega 10-speed. Somehow I’d keep going and make it all the way to Vancouver, Washington. After all these years, I’m not sure how I got from St. Johns to Jantzen Beach, but I do remember a lot of dead possums roadkill on the way.

Yep. That describes my high school romance (as it were), riding my bike hoping to see a girl but really only seeing a bunch of rotting marsupials. Oh, once there was a time that I met a cheerleader from Lincoln High School and kept her from riding the wrong way on the freeway (it was tricky following the bike lanes onto the Interstate bridge and she almost made it into oncoming traffic on I-5) but I was too stupid to do much about that. Other than make sure she didn’t ride into oncoming cars. So there’s the other part of high school romance. Utter obliviousness.

Last season I quit watching when I wanted nothing but Jack to shoot that Chase guy in the head. And what was up with season 1 and the whole amnesia thing? Anyway, instead of watching that, I was reading Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen. Oh, how I should have avoided this. Every time I pick up one of his books I end up reading it straight through until the end. And they all seem to be about the same story, too.

Did I mention that the cute librarian was wearing a big rock on her left hand? It didn’t quite look real, but who knows with the library lighting.

To clarify on the washer/dryer, I got a Kenmore HE4T which has an internal water heater (for boost, since the hot water heater in most houses isn’t all that hot) that uses less water and less energy than standard washers. It’s SPECIAL. I also got the matching dryer. The newest electrical codes for dryers require different plugs and the installers won’t hook up the dryer unless you have the correct outlet. For TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS it should run on whatever electricity I give it.

Say it isn’t so!

After spending over TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS on a washer/dryer set, you’d think they’d come and do everything for you. However, there’s lots of preparation involved, including the changing an outlets and opening a door that hasn’t been opened for about FIFTEEN YEARS. In fact, the last time it was opened was to bring in the last washer and dryer.

Anyway, we’ll see how my mom likes her new Kenmore washer and dryer. (And we’ll see if I electrocute myself tomorrow.)

OK, time to find the crossword puzzle.

And perhaps I am. At the gym I talked to at least three people I’ve never talked to before. One guy with a Reno Air Race t-shirt about the Reno Air Races and two women about magazines. I also talked to a couple of people I’ve talked to before, including a relatively well known realtor from the neighborhood. I got out of there as quickly as I usally do, so I think I wasn’t screwing around that much, but I have not reached the level of “ALL FOCUS” that other people have.

Oh, and my blog is still pretty broken. I tried updating things and it told me all my posts were from December 1, 1969. That was a mess. The worst part is that I have to edit my posts using sql on a command line. Good thing I’m a geek.

I use pretty current versions of just about everything. For that reason, this blog is broken form time to time. This is one of those times. I noticed earlier that I couldn’t edit the time of my posts (I had WordPress misconfigured and it thought it was still PDT so every day I had to edit the time.) Now I realize that all of my edits aren’t taking, either. So if you see some oddly written text (well, more odd than usual) it’s because I write these things willy-nilly and can’t edit them.

On the other front… wel, there is no other front. The sick girl called me on her crackly phone and told me that peapod.com was what she was trying to use to get gingerale delivered to her sick self. But to me it sounded like “P<crackle><crackle>d”. 2.4GHz phones are a bad idea. Fortunately, it sounds like she’s getting better and her big dilemma tonight was which TV show to watch. She likes dramas (or whatever you’d call the OC) and I like dumb shows like Joey so I really was no help at all.

Anyway, I’m typing into an odd web form, so I’m not sure what it looks like. We’ll see if it updates correctly.