glad to be okay

Tuesday night was pretty uneventful until about 7:45. After eating dinner and watching some TV, Sarah was checking her email one last time while I played a few songs on guitar. Unexpectedly, we heard our town's warning sirens begin a slow, "WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNN."

The city tests the sirens every Wednesday at noon. My first thought was, "Hey, it's not Wednes... Hey! Wait a second!" I immediately checked the weather online and saw that there was a Tornado warning for our specific city. Not just our area. Not just a 'watch.' A warning for our city.

After seeing images of the devastation in Joplin, MO, we weren't about to take any chances. We immediately headed to the only windowless room in our house: the guest bathroom. I did some more checking online and saw that the nasty stuff--including baseball-sized hail--wasn't forecasted to hit for another 15-20 minutes.

We went back out to do more preparing. We got our cell phones. I put a mattress over the tub. We turned on the TV to check the radar. In retrospect, we should have done a little more (e.g., brought food, water, and flashlights into the bathroom). Then Sarah wondered aloud if we should bring one of the cars into the garage. I quickly made room for it (all my re-modeling stuff was still spread out in there), and the hail started just as we got it inside. I parked my car in the driveway. It was partially protected by an overhang and two trees. As I ran back into the house, I got pelted by a few pieces about the size of a dime. It hurt.

You hear forecasters say a lot about softball-sized hail or golf-ball sized hail. Usually it's all hype. Not so fast. 

I collected those pieces after the big ones stopped falling. Given that they had about 15 minutes to melt in the 80-90 degree heat, I'd say we probably did have softball-sized hail. And the back yard was covered with these (and others that were smaller).

We spent most of the rest of the night in and out of the bathroom with all the pets. Things could have been a lot worse. We're thankful we still have a house. I'm working on getting somebody out to look at our roof, but I think we sustained some damage that will reduce the life of our already middle-aged roof. We hope the insurance will cover it. My car also has about 20 dents on the roof and trunk lid (the size of nickels and dimes) and a broken tail light. I don't think we'll submit a claim for that, because it's probably pretty close to our deductible in damage. I've already ordered a new tail light online, but I'm pretty bummed about driving around a dented car for the next 10 years.

isn't that 'convenient'

I bought new handles for the drawers. Worst decision so far with the kitchen. The old handles were an oddly narrow width, so I knew from the outset that I was going to have fill the original holes. I used a 'convenient' pre-mixed spackling compound made especially for filling holes in things like wood. It even came in a 'convenient' tube. About a week ago, I used it to fill the holes, beginning my descent into the abyss of 'convenience.'

Today I drilled the new holes. After I finished, I noticed that the holes on the right side of each drawer had slightly merged with the old holes because the spackle wasn't nearly as hard as the original wood. The drill bit got sucked right into the 'convenient' spackle and eviscerated it because it was so weak. The holes on the left side weren't affected because they were far from the original holes (like I said, the originals were a weird diameter). Maybe the 'convenient' pre-mixed spackle from a tube wasn't as convenient as I thought. Oh well.

I got to work putting on the handles. "Wait, why does this look like it's going to be crooked? Oh, that's because the holes on this drawer are crooked. Wait, they're crooked on ALL the drawers!?!?!" "Oh, but didn't you want crooked handles on all your drawers?" "Well, no, 'convenient' spackling compound, I didn't." Oh well.

It was then that I noticed that the screws that came with the new handles weren't long enough to go all the way through the super-thick faceplates on the drawers. Oh well, I went to work on both problems. I fixed the length problem by countersinking the holes (countersinking is a procedure in which you drill big holes partway through your piece of wood and on top of your little holes; this allows the heads of the screws to 'sink' partway into the wood in order to reach all the way through on the other side).

Unbeknownst to me, this extra drilling further compromised the 'convenient' spackling compound. And by further compromised, I mean that it destroyed it entirely and made it impossible to install these handles or any others. But I didn't notice this, of course, until after I had drilled giant new holes into all 8 drawers. I drilled them in an assembly line fashion for 'convenience,' but the destruction only became apparent when I went to re-install the first handle. Oh well.

Tomorrow I'm going to use the last of the 'convenient' spackling compound to fill the millions of holes I created in the drawers. Then I'll sand, prime, and repaint all of the newly-filled holes. Then I'll install knobs. Then I'll wish that the inventor of 'convenient' spackling compound had never been born. The end.

September it is

One coat of primer and three coats of paint later, the outside of the cabinets are done. I still have to paint the final coat inside the cabinets, and put 2-3 coats inside the drawers, but I think I'm making progress. A little: I also still have to get new pulls (or repaint the old ones, I can't decide) and put all the hardware back on (hinges, pulls, etc.).

Yesterday, I put what may be the coat of on the walls and ceiling. I still have to do some touchup and paint the trim, but that shouldn't be nearly as difficult as what I've done so far. I think I took for granted how many nooks and crannies we have in the kitchen (two levels of ceiling, several outcroppings, lots of corners, etc.). Painting the ceiling a different color (white) than the walls (light blue) may have been a little too ambitious.

I'd hoped to finish my project before I head back to school today for the start of my summer classes, but I didn't quite make it. I guess I'll have to shoot for September. Oh well, painting will be a nice distraction from statistics. Or maybe vice versa.

Home Improvement

I've been busy since Tuesday 'remodeling' the kitchen. Really all I'm doing is painting the walls, cabinets, and ceilings, but there's a lot of tricky/tedious prep work. First I had to take the cabinets apart. Then I had to remove 50-year-old wallpaper. That latter part took two days. Then I had to wash everything (walls, cabinets, ceiling, etc.). Twice. A lot of grease and grime builds up after a half-century of use. Then I had to sand everything. Then I had to wipe everything down. Then I had to fill 50 years worth of nail holes.

After three days, I've finally reached the point where I can get a stomach ache...I mean start applying primer to the walls (maybe I'm not allergic to paint anymore?).

birthdays are the worst

Somehow Sarah's birthDAY became an extended three-day-birthWEEKEND extravaganza. We went out for breakfast. We went to the zoo. We went out for ice cream. Twice. And that was just this morning. I also made homemade pizza, cake, buttercream frosting, and chocolate-and-sprinkle-covered cake balls. I had to widen the doorframe just so we could go to the store to get more food.

All this just reminds me that my birthday is coming up soon. Traditionally, what I do to celebrate is to get in a bad mood for approximately a week. It starts by chastising myself about poor career decisions and contemplating my mis-spent youth. It transisitions to fretting about my mortality, and telling Sarah that I don't want to do anything for my birthday. It ends when I realize that it's too late to actually do something, at which point I spend the rest of the day lamenting about how we didn't do anything to celebrate and vowing to do something fun the next year. Rinse and repeat.

I think the real problem is that I go into some sort of sugar-induced funk after coming down from the 'high' of Sarah's eatingfest...I mean...birthday...I mean birthmonth.