Frozen

I-C-E
Originally uploaded by jasonhunter.

Yeah! Flickr is working! Pictures! Yea!

In This Home of Ice

You may have heard how it's shockingly cold here in the D.C. metro area. We are now on our third day of below freezing temperatures and we don't get a break until this weekend. I wanted to show you just how cold it is, however Flickr is cranky tonight and not uploading my pictures. Therefore I am reduced to explaining how on Monday morning I noticed that there was ice on our front door windows - ice on the inside of the door. Now, I knew we had a drafty door, however I didn't know it sucked this much. So, I hear by pledge that I will at the least replace the weather stripping around the door. I may even go so far as replacing the whole door. First however, it needs to warm up a bit.

I'll attempt to post the pictures tomorrow.

Seeing Green

Green!
Originally uploaded by jasonhunter.

With no football on the TV this weekend I decided it was time to paint one of our basement closets. This closet was repaired after the flood so a coat of paint was necessary to hid the new drywall. Green was chosen because 1) it contrasts nicely with the 70's brown wood paneling and 2) its leftover paint from the dining room. If you follow the Flickr link you'll see the wire rack that we moved in there. In addition to the wire rack we were able to move in everything we took out. Amazing!

Your Roof, Your Roof, Your Roof Is On Fire

I'm embarrassed to typed that we didn't get anything of note done since the last post. Our greatest accomplishment is that I vacuumed out the dryer vent. Not earth-shattering, but it apparently weighed on my mind. Upon finishing the task I said to Dawn, "The dryer vent is cleaned out like you wanted". Turns out I'd talked about doing this so much that I got it switched around. While the task was appreciated, it turns out that I was the one who kept talking about cleaning out the dryer vent.

This post must be the low point of this blog. Yes, cleaning out the dryer vent keeps potential house fires at bay, however a spotless dryer vent isn't going to rocket our house to the top of the real estate market. Of course a house on fire sells for even less than a non-fire house in our neighborhood.

A Game Of Cricket

It's a game that I've played for a number of years. It started in a duplex in Falls Church. The game was to place a plastic cup over a cricket in the kitchen. Then wait a few days until the cricket dies and throw both the cup and the cricket away. As I changed locations, the nature of the game changed. When we moved to Alexandria, new rules were invented. Rules like "Let the cat eat them" and "Let's drop cookbooks on them". Then, the crickets struck back. They threw their hordes at our Dustbuster in such numbers that they choked its delicate machine parts.

Then we called in the heavy artillery - an exterminator. Mr. Exterminator sprayed their chemicals and in about a month the crickets were nowhere to be scene. Our glue traps still catch a few guerrilla fighters in the electrical closets however we feel that we've got the crickets on the run.

Cat Sratch Fever

Give Up
Originally uploaded by jasonhunter.

Add this to the list of reason why last year was the Year of the Basement. Shortly after we had our replacement carpet installed, our Bean developed allergies from the new carpet. This isn't a new thing - around the time he turned one year old he developed allergies to plastics. Unfortunately, he kept scratching at the inflammation, never allowing it to heal. Thus, the vet recommended the collar. Bean absolutely hated it. The first night he had it on he pulled it off three times. Eventually he got used to it and in two weeks time his face healed up and we all celebrated when the collared came off.

Three Times a Basement

Looking back, 2006 was the Year of the Basement, for better of worse. As most of you know, it flooded earlier in the summer. In my mind, the basement is last year's focal point; we expended a lot of energy down there. I removed and/or relocated the contents of the basement three times: right after the flood, right before the carpet went in, and finally before the pest control people came to spray for crickets. What is most irksome is that a lot of this energy was wasted. There is little pride in saying, "Repositing the couch 2/3s of an inch from it's original position really sets up the room nicely." Especially since I thought the room looked fine in the first place.

We still have to prime the drywall the was replaced, at least that will be forward progress. To 2-0-0-7 and progress!

Blue Christmas

DSC01875.JPG
Originally uploaded by jasonhunter.

While Christmas cheer was in full spirit, there were hard times for others. Homer, Marge, and Mr. & Mrs. Smore took a tumble off of the Christmas tree. This story does have a happy ending. All pieces have been reattached and each ornament is ready for next year's holiday season

Red Reindeer

At the Door
Originally uploaded by jasonhunter.

I wanted to document our holiday decorations before Christmas passed by. We try to strike a balance between celebrating the holiday and going overboard with hundreds of decorations. Not think I think there is anything wrong with that. Sometimes, I wish these people would move to our neighborhood. Happy holidays!

Message in a (Tin) Bottle

ThankYou01
Originally uploaded by jasonhunter.

Our Boston buds Adam and Jill sent us this "Message in a Can". We watered the can as per the instructions. In a few days out popped the above bud with its secret message (it reads "THANK YOU"). We've continued to care for the plant and it's now almost 2 feet tall.

Halloween

Oh my it's been a while but that's for another post. For now enjoy some zany pictures from Halloween. Can you guess what we were for Halloween?

Pictures of You

Once again I was truant in posting something. However, this time I have something tangible to show for it. I spent two weeks working on this for my sister's wedding. They showed it at the rehearsal dinner. There was much fuss - the good kind - made about it.

The wedding was excellent. The sister looked wonderful and it's nice to have Dan as an official member of the family now.

Shadows & Tall Trees

My lucky (few) readers you are about to find out the answer to the age-old question: If a tree falls and no is around to hear it - does it annoy your neighboors? The answers is: Yes.

Sunday afternoon the wife and I went to get the bikes out of the shed and discovered our neighbors pruning the branches off a massive tree limb. A limb the fell on Tuesday; that we were just finding out about on late Sunday. That was partially reasting in thier yeard. Sigh. We were shocked that a fallen limb sat in our backyard for 5 nights. More so, we were shocked that it missed both our fence and our shed. So shocked that I forget to take pictures of the intial mess. Instead, I give you the aftermath:

Hunter household performs "Back to the Apple"

Now, the stunning conclusion to 'Traitorous Machines'....

We have resolution. Better yet, we have a new Macbook Pro. Apple decided that it was unacceptable that I wait until Oct. 11th for the replacement part to arrive at their repair facility. Finally! That's what I was saying all along guys!

To Apple's credit, they did right by me. This whole experience, with the crashed hard drive and misleading, contradictory customer service, was frustrating. The constant delays made the bad situation even worse. I just wanted my laptop back; but as my friend said to me, "If Apple wants to give you a Macbook Pro, you take it and run".

The return of a laptop in the house means a return to regular posts. I could have easily typed this up on our desktop computer but, eh - the laptop was so convenient; I can type this up while watching TV with the wife and cat. How ironic, then, that I'm posting this from the basement, using the same desk that the desktop is on.

The Sound of New Carpet

What does it sound like? It sounds like no more walking on cold asbestos tiles anymore.

Our new carpet arrived last Friday. It is similar to our old carpet that, for those who've just joined us, was destroyed during the great June flood. For the months that we were without I didn't think carpet would make that big of a difference. Oh, how I was wrong! The basement looks like an functional room in the house, not just some place that we threw a bunch of furniture in. Also, once the insurance money came in, the new carpet cost us $24 dollars. Certainly the price is right, however what is most valuable is the solace I get from seeing our home rebuilt and refurbished to its pre-flood condition.

Traitorous Machines

The last 30 days have given me a strong case of ludditism. First, the hardrive on the Powerbook died, taking with it photos, music, calendars and our ability to e-shop while watching Law & Order reruns. Then came various hi-jinks with data loss on the iPod, the last refuge for the data from the Powerbook. Today, I flip on the Dish Network DVR to find that it reset itself in the middle of the night. Where once was 65 Gigs of television, is now nothing. Its like someone stole our DVR and replaced it with one out of the box.

The farce of 'owning' things stored on computers has become apparent to me. I'm now scanning the Sunday advertisements for deals USB jump-drives and cases of DVDs. I'm also familiarizing myself with data back-up and recovery programs.

I want to battle robots; all colors, not just pink.

Alt.End

Our beloved Powerbook crashed last night. Sealed up inside it's corrupted hard drive are all of our photos from this year, music, and lots of work in progress. I'll shop it around for data recovery but I'm not expecting much. I'll write a make-up post this weekend, when I'm feeling better about the whole thing.

Weekend Warrior

With Dawn off in NYC helping with my sister's wedding shower, neighbor Tim and I ran some electrical and put up a kitchen ceiling. Most of the credit goes to Tim who did all the wiring and cut all the paneling for the ceiling. I stood around a lot and tried my best to be helpful.

The new recessed lighting is amazing. It's so bright! The first night with the new lights I kept turning off the lights thinking it would some how dim the lights, rather than simply turn them off (oh....that's how electricity works!). When Dawn came home from NYC on Sunday she was floored with how great everything looked.

The only advice I can give for anyone thinking of trying this is to have an electrician help you. Even with Tim's expertise it still took us 5 hours. If I had tried this by myself I'd either still be working on it or dead from electrocution.

Blog Note: Next week is a vacation week so there may not be an update. In fact, I'm almost positive there won't be one.

The Battle is Won, but the War Continues

Saturday Morning 9am









Protective covering for last week's efforts








The glorious finished product.

It's done. We finished the upper cabinet renovation on Sunday. We accomplished the same amount of work in one less day than last week. Overall, the second phase went smoother than the first. There wasn't as much grease and grim on these cabinets which speed up the amount of prep time before sanding. We bought more expensive brushes this time which made a huge visual difference with the paint. It was totally worth the extra $1.76 at the register. We still had some difficulty with putting the doors back up it. We concluded that it was the difference between the new hinges & the old ones. The new hinges stood off the doors by a quarter of an inch. Double that and there goes all the space between the doors. The doors do close, however they are pressing against one another to the point where the paint is coming off. SO...if you do try this at home please consider the difference between your hardware.

We are pleased with our efforts. The new cabinets make the kitchen much brighter. Dawn is already motivated with our fledgling efforts that I got served homemade quiche one night and ribs with corn on the cob another.

I'm running electrical and putting up the new ceiling this weekend. The next post will be about that. Unless I forget to turn off the power and both my hands are wrapped in gauze. Then the post will look something like this:
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Someone's in the Kitchen ...

removing ceiling tiles...








...and painting the cabinets...










...a bright new happier color...









I should have taken a picture with the cabinet doors attached, which is what we did Sunday. If you've never tried it, re-attaching cabinet doors isn't as easy as one would think. I took us 4 attempts and a trip to home depot before we got it right. So now that we know the ropes of taking apart, sanding, priming, painting and re-hanging cabinets, we hope for the same success with the other side. I'll post pictures of the finished project.
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Halo, Sister-in-Law!
We were graced with an overnight stay by my sister-in-law, Lauren, last night. She was very excited that the XBOX was repaired. While I am very familiar with the single-player campaign I had no experience with the head-to-head mutli-player feature, of which she was familiar. It took me a while to get acquainted with the maps and the rules of the board. Once that occurred, there were frags a-flying. Frags to the face, frags to the back of the head, frags off of the ladders. With all the fragging going on, you might think there'd be no room for anything else. Oh, but there was amble room for trash talking. And later root beer floats.