Success

Two weeks ago I had the misfortune of having my car and bicycle break in the same week. I schlepped the bike to the bike shop and paid to have the tire replaced. I then took the car to the mechanic, because I have always vowed that I will not do car repairs. I just have to draw the line on repairs somewhere, and some number of years ago I decided I would focus on home DIY and leave the car to others.

Until I heard that it would cost $700 to repair my window, that is. The motor had quit working, so the window would go down, but not back up. My father convinced me that I could do it, and he was right! I allowed two hours to do what the Internet said was a 45-minute job, and it was just about perfect. The power window goes up and down, I managed to have no leftover parts, and I am brimming with new-mechanic confidence. Oh, and I saved almost $600, so this was a total win.

Yahrzeit

Six years ago today, Andrew died. Today I mourn him, the brevity of his life, and the loss of the person I was, someone who laughed more and took life for granted.

Mud

I'm still here. And I'm still mudding the bathroom. It turns out I hate this job, and my mother has offered to pay to send me to mudding school if I ever have to do this again, because she said that's cheaper than therapy. I will admit that I've been tracking how much I've spent on rewards to bribe myself to do this; if it's cheaper to hire someone next time, I will. 

My work is made a bit better by my new bathroom construction buddy. His name is Maxwell (aka James Clerk Maxwell, which is pretty much a perfect physicist name) and I have the privilege of taking care of him while my friends S&N&Sons are on vacation. He is enormous fun, and I am reminded why I love kitten-sitting and why I never intend to adopt my own. I'll be eating my dinner, when suddenly he's up on the table with me, trying to help himself. Or I'll read a book in bed, and suddenly he's there attacking my hand as I turn a page. On the other hand, not much beats the cuteness of a kitten falling asleep on your arm.

Unfortunately, Wesley hates the kitten, so my roommate and I have spent the week doing complicated cat-introductions, alternating them in rooms, letting them see each other through a window, etc. I'd like them to be able to share a house, or Wesley will have a tough time when I take a vacation in September and stay with Maxwell. 

New Bathroom, Part 42

Since Thanksgiving, I've had an almost-usable bathroom. See how pretty it is below? Working lights, a functioning sink, toilet, and bathtub, with pretty green drywall walls.

Okay, so I'll admit that drywall is not actually that pretty, and it is not a long-term wall solution. For those of you who don't know how houses are built in the US, you may be surprised to learn (as I was) that walls are basically made of dust. After you build a wooden frame for your walls, you attach drywall, which is basically sheets of powdery material held together with a paper backing. If the drywall ever gets wet, it completely disintegrates, which is one of many reasons why flood damage is can be so serious. 

You keep the drywall dry by applying a water-resistant coating (aka paint) on it, but before you do that you have to mud the seams. This means applying a plaster-like substance to the edges and smoothing it to be pretty. I turns out I hate this job. Even with friends helping me get started, I did not want to do it. And if you look at the picture below, you might partially see why. My semi-functional bathroom is now gone so I can make better seams.

I decided this job was better done quickly, so I used my mad project-manager skills to create a 10-day plan involving a task breakdown and (most importantly) rewards for each step. Hopefully I'll have good "after" photos in about a week and a half.

In completely other news, let me distract you from construction debris with this beautiful garden picture. Everything is colorful and blooming!

NYC

The July Fourth holiday meant a four-day weekend for me, so I decided to visit my good friends M and J, who live in New York City with their daughter, J2. I've been to the city enough that I've seen the regular tourist stuff like the Statue if Liberty and the Empire State building, so I decided to let the "free or very cheap" lists guide me this time.

The very best activity was a tour of the Grand Central Terminal, telling the history of the building when it was a beautiful, turn-of-the century train station, which fell into dirty disrepair as the car replaced trains, and it was used by the homeless and full of crime. It was almost torn down on the 70's, when the case to remove its landmark status went all the way to the Supreme Court. Recently they spent millions of dollars to remove the decades of accumulated cigarette tar and make it beautiful and profitable again.

Today I took J's recommendation to experience the quintissential summer New Yorker summer excursion and went to Coney Island. It was fun to see the beach and amusement parks made famous in the first half of the previous century, although I made a serious tactical error in not eating before I arrived. For the record, there are NO vegetables in Coney Island.

The next neighborhood over, Brighton Beach, is known as a Russian enclave. I had an excellent dinner of Georgian cheese bread and beet salad, and now I'm enjoying a enormous German beer at a bar while the other patrons watch soccer. Alas, I can't tell who is playing because I don't read Cyrillic.

I am really glad I visited.