Missed It By That Much

I took the day off on Thursday and Friday to give my wife an anniversary present (our anniversary was Thursday). We have had a palette of laminate flooring sitting in our garage for three years.

My wife went to the local discount flooring store and bought an odd lot palette for $100. We ended up with about 250 ft2 of a deep cherry, about 100 ft2 of a light cherry and a whole bunch of light oak the appears to have been from a job that was started and the homeowner decided to go another direction. Most of the boards are out of the box and several of them have various cuts made to them but there's plenty to cover the 300 ft2 and have a bunch of unusable boards left over.

The plan was to clear the room, remove the carpet and lay the flooring in four days. Thursday was delegated to clearing out the living room and hallway. Friday involved removing the carpet. It had to be cut into pieces small enough to fit into 30 gallon trash bags purchased from the city (we're on one of those one big trash can deals and have to purchase bags they will pick up).

On Saturday we... Well... We were moving slowly on Saturday, took a lot of breaks and ran into difficulties. We're using the existing moulding but figured out that the door trim goes lower than the moulding in several places and the flooring won't fit under it.

We started out trying to make all of these weird cuts. It took up most of the 2.5 hours we were working in the hallway and looked terrible. We broke for dinner and ended up making another trip to Lowe's and buying a saw designed to make those sorts of cuts. And we started over Sunday morning. We had as much done in about an hour - including cutting the bottom of the door trims - as we did in the time the previous night.

We were on a roll but it wasn't meant to be. We finished the hall and got about 1/3 of the living room covered. We were slowed down by defective boards, closing gaps from walls out of square and drywall hung on an angle, and an idiot operating the saws (that would be me).

I figure we have another day to finish the flooring then another 1/2 day to get the trim taken care of. I don't have a great amount of flexibility for taking leave so I need to go to work in the morning. I will see if I can take Tuesday and possibly Wednesday off to complete this project.

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The Weekend In Review

I woke up Saturday morning feeling fantastic. Of course, when you enjoy a nice cocktail of Demerol and Versed (because of the EGD), you tend to sleep well. The wife and I drove around and visited a few of the sparse garage sales. Nothing to write home about. I think I picked up a copy of "The Last Action Hero" on DVD for $1. No, it's not The Greatest Movie Of All Time but it's kinda fun and for a buck, how can you lose? Oh, and we picked up a small TV for $3 to mount by the treadmill.

After scarfing down a breakfast from Carl's Jr., the wife drove down to Oklahoma City to borrow a larger vehicle from her mother. She's been keeping an eye out for a new, more appropriate, breakfast nook table (we don't have a dining room) and there was one on sale a K-Mart... but it wasn't going to fit in the trunk of a Honda Accord (1998 or 2004). I had other plans.

After she left I set out in search of coaxial connectors (the kind on the end of the cable/satellite TV cable). I knew where the wire in the attic was that leads to the bedroom with the treadmill and we already had a line that runs from behind the TV in the living room that had previously fed the front bedroom that I used to use as my office (I'm now in the back bedroom). We had asked the builder to run an additional line for the front bedroom and he simply clipped the main line, put in a splitter and ran the signal to both the South wall of the living room and the front bedroom from the same main feed. There was enough slack in the cable I had run from behind the TV in the living room that I considered pushing the line down through the wall and swapping out the main feed but the treadmill room is far enough toward the front of the house that I didn't want to work in such a cramped space kneeling on support beams. (go ahead. Read it again. I did most of that wiring work and even I had to read it a couple of times - I'll wait). I decided to splice the cable.

I ran to Wal-Mart but all they had were the screw-on connectors. Can you say 'crappy'? In the end I bought a couple of crimp-on connectors for $2 and paid $11 for a crimping tool at Radio shack. Turns out, the existing line is all-weather coaxial cable that is double shielded, double insulated and slightly thicker than the average cable most homeowners work with. Translation: The connector was too small. I got it on well enough that you can see a picture but it's kinda snowy. I need to find a proper connector and re-do the splice. But I had more plans and didn't really feel like rushing back out to RS. So, I put away my tools and closed up the attic ladder.

I then proceeded to the shed and rolled out the lawn mower. I was a little concerned because a) there was still gas in the gas can (that I'm pretty sure I didn't treat with Sta-Bil) and b) There was still gas in the mower. D'OH! I put it away 'wet' at the end of last season. (In case you're wondering, that's bad. Gasoline does break down over time and can damage an engine). I needn't have worried too much, she started on the second pull. Not surprising since I bought her brand new about 4 weeks before the end of last season (my $7 garage sale special had finally started pushing up the daisies instead of chopping them down).

The front yard wasn't too bad. It was just starting to look a little shaggy. It appeared to be mostly grass, too. I think it's bermuda grass because we're really the only yard on the street that was ready to be mowed (because of grass, at least). The back yard was my main concern. It has needed a 'shave' for the past month. Some of that stuff was downright thick! And, despite running the mower in mulch mode, she only stalled out once.

I chilled out until the wife got home and we loaded up and headed for Tulsa. We might have waited but the dining room furniture was all on sale at K-Mart and the sale ended Saturday. While we were in KC last weekend, we had seen a solid, round table we liked that came with four chairs so we were off to make our purchase. But we didn't buy that table.

When we got there, we found a simpler, rectangular table that had not been on display in KC. It was considerably cheaper, but didn't include any chairs. They had some padded parsons chairs displayed with it that I preferred over the hard wood ones on the other table so we snagged a couple of those while we were at it.

Now it was dinner time. I wasn't being too particular but the wife suggested Olive Garden. I enjoyed a couple of plates of salad (we practically emptied the bowl) with generous amounts of Parmesan cheese grated on top and about half a serving of eggplant Parmesan (also with generous amounts of freshly grated Parmesan cheese in addition to the Parmesan cheese already melted on top of it). We saved some room and elected to have dessert. I had a new Chocolate Ciottoli Cake (Dark chocolate cobblestone cake chunks layered with chocolate mousse and a soft brownie topped with hazelnuts). It was so rich and sweet... up to a point.

About half way through dessert, the intestinal distress kicked in. I had to visit the restroom twice before we left the restaurant. Then, I had to make two stops on the way home. I took something to staunch the flow as it were and things started to settle down a bit. By the time we got home, I had to take another dose and that may have been what actually did me in.

I no longer had any urgency but my tummy was still a bit upset. Basically, it felt like an old fashioned belly ache but it wasn't too bad... at the time. We finally got to bed about 11:30. I couldn't find a comfortable spot and my stomach wasn't settling at all. I finally just got up and went out to the living room where things only got worse. By this time it was about 1:30 or 2:00 am and I was hurting. I was doubled over and on a scale of 1 to 10 I rated the pain at an eight... that's pretty bad.

We discussed the situation some and decided that, perhaps, with my family's penchant for lactose intollerance, I shouldn't have had so much cheese. So, at 2:30 am on Easter Sunday my wife, God bless her, went to Wal-Mart to pick up some Lactaid (as well as a couple of other easy-on-the-tummy food items).

She hadn't been gone five minutes and I just couldn't stand it anymore. I hurt and I was concerned that, maybe, this was some sort of complication from the EGD procedure. I didn't want Lactaid, I wanted to go to the ER. I picked up the phone, dialed her cell number, and heard The Magnificent Seven theme from across the room... she hadn't taken her phone with her.

I did the only thing I could do. I kicked back in my recliner and sat perfectly still. This accomplished two things. First, it gave the cat a nice, warm, stable place to curl up and nap (and get loved on a little bit). Second, it settled my stomach enough that it had become somewhat tollerable (probably down to a 6). By the time the wife got home, thoughts of the ER had left the building - but I was still a little concerned.

I took a dose of the Lactaid and sat still (and loved on the cat) some more. Within a few minutes, the pain was down to a 3. Still worried about a post-procedure complication, I called the hospital operator and asked to have the doctor who had done the EGD paged so I could report my issues. She ended up calling my primary care physician. After describing what had transpired over the past several hours, he surmised that it was most likely something I ate. With things mostly settled down, I went to bed and finally got some sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, there was still some lingering discomfort. We visited the walk-in clinic and, after some blood tests, the doctor there agreed with my doctor's diagnosis that it was most likely something I ate. My mind was at ease that it wasn't a post-procedure complication and life went on. By the end of the day on Sunday, my tummy had settled enough and life returned to normal... but I didn't get a damn thing done on Sunday.

Hop To It

The wife and I spent part of this past weekend looking at houses. We're not looking to buy just yet but one of the communities to the West of Boise was having a Parade of Homes. It gives us a chance to check out some of the other communities and to see what we might get for the money.

I'll tell you, there's a lot of sticker shock for us. Three years ago, we paid ~$140K for our house in Stillwater, OK. The house was new construction with 1800-2000 square feet, a moderately sized yard (something tells me it's at least 75 feet to the back fence... but I could be wrong), large deck and a wetland to the North.

In SE Boise, the area we are renting in right now, we saw one house that was ~1300 square feet, small fenced yard, built in the 40s, recently updated kitchen and bathroom, and recently refinished hardwood floors. Price, $389K!

Granted, that's an extreme example. As you get away from the downtown area and move West, the prices get better (not necessarily more reasonable). The houses we were looking at are anywhere from 30-40 miles from where we are now. Houses of similar size to our house in Stillwater were $240K - $300K and had much smaller yards.

Most of the houses we looked at were single-story but there was one I had to see. Most of the house was on the first level but, on the plans, one of the rooms was marked FROG ROOM. I had to find out what a FROG ROOM was.

When we arrived, I looked around the house, which was actually quite liveable - unlike several others. As I ascended the stairs to the FROG ROOM, I observed that is was simply what my wife and I would refer to as a BONUS ROOM. We asked the agent who was in the house what was meant by FROG ROOM. She explained that it had confused her at first but it was explained as... wait for it...



Family Room Over Garage (F.R.O.G.)