OMG

So tired. Demolished fence bits and dug half a hole for one of four posts. Feel like I've been hit by a supertanker. Ugh.

And it's raining. WTF?

With pen in hand

I write to you my dear gentle readers to share a story of three men, some ladders, a mini pickup truck, and several buckets of paint.

They arrived on Monday morning, shortly after I got to work. While I toiled away at making a brand new piece of instrumentation made largely of aluminum, the began the awesome transformation of our 60 year-old house made largely out of wood.

In the twenty-year span since our house had been painted it had become really shabby looking. In places, the paint was peeling off, not just a little here and there you see, but in great large areas. It was noticeable to even the casual noticer. It was, my friends, an abomination before men.

Now in addition to the condition of the paint, there was the color. The last color selection was done by my beloved mother-in-law. Her tastes are more traditional than my dear wife's. (Sharon's more avant gardé color palette was but one of the several reasons that I proposed to her, and not her mother.) Thus the muted blue-gray with darker gray trim was termed "boring" and "ugly" and a flock of other pejorative adjectives - sometimes in thrilling combinations with modifiers like "butt-ugly" (my personal favorite) thrown in for good measure. I, the dutiful colorblind husband, wholeheartedly agreed.

Thus the search began for just the right color combination. We have been discussing this (rather Sharon has asked me about my opinion of various colors to which I have always replied, "It doesn't matter to me, Honey.") for literally several years now.

Back to Monday morning...

Having hired out several of the huge jobs - roofing, exterior painting, obstetrics - it never ceases to blow me away how much work you can get done in a week if there are several of you (or ten of you) and you don't live at the house and therefore aren't subject to requirements of sleeping in, putting away laundry, filling/emptying the dishwasher, fiddling with the pool, or any of those other things that distract me when I am working up the gumption to actually get started on a big job. (Sorry about the run-on sentence there.)

In five days, these three guys got as much done as it would have taken me 15 days to finish. Amazing. They'll be back on Monday and probably Tuesday too to finish up the trim. Seven days for them would have been an entire month for me. I have a lot of vacation time, but not that much.

You can see the view from the pool in the picture at the top there. It's fuckingorgeous. (Try and just look at the house, not the towels hanging off the fence.)

Not so fast, buddy

So, the job kinda ate my life there for a few weeks which I'm sure that you, my gentle reader, noticed as a distinct lack of posting here at the old flaming scroll. Fear not. Posts will be coming fast and furious now that the product is launched.

So let's start with the job thingy. We had a successful launch of the two new instrument products on the same platform. I put in a whole lotta hours and received lots of thanks and kudos from co-workers, my boss, and the president. I think of it as running the last leg on a relay race. A lot of other people did a lot of really smart work. I just ran the last lap. Now, there was a LOT of catching up to do in that lap since there were numerous delays but no negotiating on the final date. That final date was today.

To cap things off, we had a whole mess of orders for product we had in stock, making for a record sale day, a record month, record quarter, blah blah blah. Is a very good problem to have in the current economy.

Let's talk about HOME IMPROVEMENT for a moment. The casa here was painted about 20 years ago. Now we are re-doing it. It'll be grand. Now I'm a REALLY AVID DIY dude, but scraping, washing, sanding, patching, priming, and painting a big-ass house like this one was way beyond my effort budget. So we are paying professionals to do it up right. Importantly, they know when to stop finessing and move on. I'm a perfectionist and frequently spend 50% too much time in a combination of overdoing things and not having the professional's knack.

Sharon picked out a really nice pumpkin color, and got a big sample part painted. She and the kids and approved it and the green trim color. I'm trusting them completely on this, my colorblindness being well-known. Do you think I should post pictures?

OK, now we get to the sign-off and me going to bed part. I'll write you all some more delightful posts real soon.

Return of the king

Dude, I'm back. What the hell has been happening?

First, we went to teh renfair at Tahoe AKA Valhalla. Check out the Good Old Times...

Her's Kurt relaxing as Wagstaff (get it?) next to a courtesan. Rydell, as Lord Leicester commanded me to feed him since he (Wagstaff) is a worthy pig farker. Rydell is shown here trowing grapes into his mouth as Shawna holds it open.

We took Frannie along for the second weekend. She had a great time.

We saw Kate and Shery there. The goofballs.

And Amy played Juliet to make Her Majesty cry (in her new gown that she sewed up at our house).

We were feeling a little sheepish once the sun came out on Sunday. We were then presented to the Irish as a present from her Majesty. Baaaa.

Here's Nathan as Thisbe. He (she) was absolutely hilarious. Pyramus (Silas) lies dead on the right.

When it rains and it's bitter cold, I grin. Apparently.

Maggie and Lauren stopped by court. We tried not to fawn over them too much.

This is Sharon's all new gown. It's fabulous.


This box is what I have been working (very diligently) on at work. It is a very big box that we will sell for a buttload of money.

Hit me! Hah!

So there we were, minding our own business, stopping for the car in front of me who was stopping for a pedestrian. The I hear, "wham - WHAM". And, yeah, that last wham was the lady behind us smacking into us after getting hit from behind.

The Suburban, not too bad. Bent the bumper, pressed in the sheet metal a tiny bit, about the size of a silver Dollar. Back doors undamaged. The car behind us - lots of obvious paint damage to both bumpers. Lady in the middle had a pretty sore shoulder.

Car in the back, totaled. Front smooshed in about 18 inches, airbags deployed, windshield broken. Mom and two kids pretty shaken up.

I should have taken pictures. Delayed our departure from the Bay Area for 40 minutes placing us in way bad traffic It took about six hours to get to Tahoe as a result.

Please watch where you are going.

Silver, with golden bands

I couldn't let today pass without marking it here. Twenty five years ago today, it was really hot in what is now my back yard. About 120 guests arrived for the grand event, and soon we ran out of beer. There were balloons, and blue slacks, matching ties, and bride's maid dresses from Laura Ashley. There was a pastor named Bob, all of our relatives, and quite a few friends. The catering didn't go so well but the people being honored that day looked like a million bucks.

Every picture of me has me with my mouth open. Most of the pictures are slightly tilted because our "official photographer" who took pictures on a point and shoot camera was in the early stages of Alzheimer's. Most of the good pictures are snapshots from friends.

We started mostly on time, as I recall, though it seemed that some family members rushed things a bit. The vows were sweet, though not nearly as sweet as the 25 years hence, or as my pretty young bride.

I still remember that day very fondly. We were wed where our swing set now stands.

To all of our friends and family who were there, and all of those who we met later, I would like to say thank you for being there for us and supporting us as a couple. Thank you for the interest you have shown in us and our lives.

My biggest thanks go to my wife, of course. Thanks for putting up with me, through good and bad and worse times. Thank you for sharing your life completely with me, and for believing in me even when I deeply doubted myself.

Any of us who could go back in time with the freedom to change what we didn't like would do so in a moment. I would change a lot of things - and buy Netscape too - but there are few no decisions that I have made that have that have had such a profound and positive influence on my life as the decision to marry Sharon. I can't imagine a better choice and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

So friggin busy...

Well, here is one of the three tables. As of tonight they are stacked in the garage drying. This project has been much more time-consuming than I expected. Sheesh.