Oh…wait…that’s a different movie. Ah well.

This weekend was a change. A real change. I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet. See, for the first time in like 4 months…it wasn’t raining (or 10 degrees!) all weekend.

Wow! Ground that doesn’t go “schluuuup” and suck your shoes off when you step on it. Birds can fly with their mouths open again (they would drown if they did it before). We can actually SEE the end of the backyard! There was sunshine on Saturday!

Unfortunately rain was scheduled for Sunday, so we wisely did NOT peel the roof back on the corner of the sunroom for needed repairs.

We did get stuff done though.

1) We scraped a lot of paint in the sunroom…there is more to do but it has reached that stage where it looks like it has a particularly disgusting form of cancer so that means it’s getting close. We should have it ready to paint with a few more days work. (I am SO looking forward to shooting that room with a coat of primer! The pepto-bismal pink trim and putrid yellow ceiling and walls are a bit much, even for my strong stomach.)

2) We got PRIMING done! WoooHoooo! We’ve been trying for a couple months to get the exterior French doors primed and the windowframe in the mudroom stripped and primed. I can’t mount weather stripping till the painting is done on that stuff and it’s been simply too wet/damp/cold. This weekend brought us one step closer to weather-tightness in the mudroom! Woot!

3) I helped a friend (Hi Larry!) install a new fan motor in one of his heat pumps. That was a success (nobody died AND he can still use the heat-pump). I’m pleased to report there were no aliens in the ductwork.

4) And I did some tool maintenance. Namely, I fixed the lower controls on the Left-handed Fargle-snorker. This means the boom can be operated from the ground as well as from the bucket. Mainly it’s a safety feature, but it’s also so that things (within the weight limit) can be lifted and also the bucket can be brought lower for easier in/out than climbing the boom.

Sooo…full power restored. That’s a good thing. I’ve a project for that machine next weekend! (should be some cool pictures!)

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Instead, we concentrated on scraping the paint off the billion or so linear feet of beadboard in the sunroom. We hope to paint that room quite soon.

It’s a large room…but it seems to grow even larger when you’re on the ladder scraping paint off the ceiling. I think it started out being 27 feet long…after this weekend’s work it must be up to 50 feet or so!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

This year the 2010 Clarksville Fine Arts Festival will be Saturday, May 22, 2010, from 9:AM to 4:PM on the historic square in Clarksville, Texas.

This year’s festival is shaping up to be a great one. There will even be glass blowing demonstrations!

I’ll be there signing books and will also have original art and some prints.

Art. Music. Food. Fun. What else could you need? Come on by and see me!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Pulled all these out of the right shoe.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

This building has been a pharmacy downstairs since it was built. It’s been rearranged a couple times, some merchandise no longer carried, the soda fountain taken out…new ceilings…you know, typical changes. It was doctors’ offices upstairs until around the 1960’s or so…the upstairs has been mostly vacant since (and thus, filled with junk from wall to wall).

Along comes us. We are, apparently the 3rd owners. We’re not a pharmacy so just as a starting point, we are cleaning it out to the core.

You might imagine some interesting things can be found in a 120 year old building…and you’d be right. Why, I have no less than 20 cash registers…from every concievable era…and printers! Printers of every make and model…printers progressing over the years! Dozens! All of them broken of course…Oh, and then there’s the cases of labels/receipt blanks left over for each and every one of the broken printers…

And remind me to someday tell you about the stuff…I can’t tell you about.

But that’s not the story here. The trash is the story here…something like 35 giant contractors bags full so far…maybe 3000 pounds hauled out so far…

So today, in a little used and obviously forgotten store-room (nook under the stairs) we found the ticking time bombs…

Cokes so old they had eaten through the can. 20 oz plastic bottles so old that they were smushy as there was no pressure left in them. Some glass bottles. When’s the last time they made 20 oz glass bottles? Oh, and the older style too…the tall narrow glass bottles with the crimped on metal caps? Except the caps were corroded through.

And then there’s the juice.

Cases of it.

I think the color’s a little off on this batch…what about you? Maybe it needed refrigeration for the last decade or so?

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

12 cartons…96 shingles/carton. 3 different patterns (fancy-ing this up just a bit).

I’m pretty sure they are a thin cedar veneer over a solid gold substrate (based on cost).

Shipped in from Canada.

So, I’ve got the tools…

The Left Handed Fargle Snorker is ready to work

…and will shortly have the material.

That about does in my spring budget…

(sigh)

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Okay, I freely admit it…I can’t sing. I once had someone tell me that at gunpoint…but that’s another story.

Anyway, this weekend. Trash. Lots of it.

Not much as far as cool pictures this weekend…we had priming to do…an exterior door and window…but it was too wet. The weather was chilly, so we figured we’d just clean.

Now…cleaning. That’s a thing you can do with low budget, and some time. It’s something we tackle when other things are at a standstill due to weather or budget.

And cleaning we’ve got…lots of it to do that is.

Not only do we have the construction mess and typical dust of the Old Vic project to deal with, we also have our “new” 1880’s era historic building on the square to work on.

Why talk about that? Well, part of our Old Vic project…the point of it in fact…is for us to eventually LIVE in our new chosen town. We always expected to open a business in town…perhaps later…during our retirement…but we also considered maybe earlier as my writing career accelerates (hint: buy my books!). I really want to make a living as an author!

Something we could take some time to establish. We’d be further along on the house. We’d keep our eyes open and perhaps in a couple years…

Well…later or maybe earlier? Heh…”now” came up as the building we loved came on the market and the price was right. We looked at our means and intent and decided that if we were serious about it, the opportunity just could not be passed up.

So, the building, like it or not, is part of our project. Of course, since it has a tower…and is actually older than our Queen Anne Victorian, we figure most of our readers shouldn’t mind.

Yep. Opportunity. Gotta take it. Sieze the day. He who hesitates. All that good stuff.

Bottom line is…if you currently have the means…and you have the dreams…NOW is the time to buy. Prices will never be better.

Just please, nobody show me any more old buildings with towers for sale anytime soon…

Yes, we have the means…but…that said, we moved more quickly then we would have under other circumstances, and so, have stretched the budget a little.

Some work that doesn’t involve $1000 worth of stuff from the hardware store is therefore most welcome.

Something that came with the building was a massive cleanup project. The second floor really hasn’t been used in a few decades or so…and has been the “go to” place for anything the previous two owners didn’t know what to do with.

The building is roughly 25′ x 100′…so upstairs alone is 2500 square feet of junk…most of it not worth the effort it took to haul it up the stairs in the first place. Old retail racks. Some 1970’s era furniture. Old rotten clothes. About 10 old artificial Christmas trees. Old bags. Plastic shelves. Old air-conditioners. Very little of any value at all.

Add several hundred pounds of pidgeon poop, mix well, and you’ve got more than a few bags of trash to haul.

A good view through the rooms upstairs:

Home Depot carries some really nice trash bags just for such an occasion…the 8 mill contractor’s cleanup bags. Tough. Very large. Tie flaps. Don’t break or tear. Even hard to punch through. These bags are so good…and we’re going to use so many, that when my Mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for trash bags.

Yeah. I did. AND she got them for me. TWO boxes!

We spent a few hours Saturday cleaning up and hauled about a ten or so trash bags out of there this weekend.

Ten bags of trash is approximately 700 pounds.

That’s on top of 12 bags (a half-ton or so) we got rid of a couple weekends ago.

And we have not yet begun to clean.

At a guess? There are 98 bags of trash left on the wall.

And then we’ll get to the big stuff.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

I putter. Watching some TV. Listening to music. Reading. Writing. Plotting my next project.

Sunday I manage a nap…and for the first time in days, my dreams don’t wake me in a cold sweat, yelling for people to get down…to run…to get away from the laughing drug dealer who, even as he steps over bystanders’ bodies, just won’t run out of bullets.

The wife sits across from me, reading, occasionally looking up at me. We share a look then…a promise…a reaffirmation…that only intimates can make or understand. Nineteen years and my heart still gives a lurch.

The caffeinated kitten, who now (and seemingly rather suddenly) inhabits a big orange cat’s body, bounds in through the gap we left in the patio door for some fresh air…his collar jangling. He prances up and proudly deposits his latest catch at my feet…a large leaf from the front bushes. It joins the growing pile of similiar prizes he’s left me in the last hour.

He gets some praise and a quick skritch behind the ears and he’s off to his next big adventure.

The Maine Coon is upside down, half in and half out of a bag on the kitchen floor…his natural habitat methinks. He snores.

Bills to pay. Back to work tomorrow. Normalcy.

And yet I wonder…is that okay?

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

The prosecution’s case was very carefully put together. He knew his business. The defense had nothing. There was no reasonable doubt. There was no doubt at all. The verdict was inevitable, and even with our diverse jury, quick and unanimous.

And then the other shoe dropped.

The case was far more than it seemed, as we suspected from the extreme care the prosecution had taken with the case, and we discovered for certain during the sentencing phase.

I ended the week with the images of an innocent bystander murdered…caught in a shootout…in full color/motion and from every angle…burned into my head.

It shook me up far more than I can explain.

Yeah. The jaded, world traveling, burly, biker dude.

And I can’t find the damned erase button.

To the defendant…whom we put away for 85 years…may God have mercy on your soul…if you even have one…because surely I have none for you.

And damn you for making me face that fact.

Ride. I think I need to ride.

But I need to vomit first.

And I really, really need that damned erase button.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Painting? Uh, no. Not only do I not want to be outside, but the paint would be somewhat solidified. We may have lost some paint anyway…since some of it was stored in parts of the house that no-doubtably froze. (durnit)

Plumbing? Nope. Too cold to crawl around under the house.

Wiring? Attics are cold too.

Insulating? Well, maybe. Lord knows it needs to get done. But no. Too durn cold.

Roofing? Oh hell no.

Aside from that, I put in some “hours” this week, and needed some extra sleep.

Heh…yeah, I didn’t stir out of my bed until 11am Saturday. The warm, willing wife lying there with me was some incentive I expect.

Guy’s gotta have a day off every now and again.

This week the UPS fairy brought me a full-body harness and some orange traffic cones. Along with the pads and chocks I made last weekend, those will go in the toolbins on the left-handed fargle-snorker to be used as needed. Or perhaps never to be seen again, but at least I have them.

Of course, as much as I like to play with tools…there is no way in HELL I’m breaking out the left-handed fargle-snorker in temperatures in the teens and twenties…I mean….elevating onesself 40 feet in the air…the twenty degree and 30mph air…seems somewhat masochistic…even for me.

In the mean time though, I thought it prudent to test out the traffic cones.

Yes, the traffic cones.

As most of you know, they are used for marking hazards.

Let me introduce you to…

The most dangerous couch. Ever.

We’re supposed to have milder temperatures next week…so maybe we’ll get some work done then.

Until that time, y’all take care!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer