Newsy Chat

The work on the house continues with new draperies in the living room and a huge load of junk... i mean useful stuff foisted off.... i mean 'donated' to Freecyclers in the area here.

Meanwhile, I have had some spare time & found that I really like to comment on blogs that talk about news stories. So I thought, "why wait for someone else to blog the good stories?" Thus, Smukke-Speak was born.

I'll continue to post here about 'adventures' and my personal life. But my thoughts on what's happening out in the crazy world... that's all for Smukke-Speak.

Makin' dough

Once upon a time, I bought my dad a bread-making machine. I thought he might enjoy having a gadget that did something fun & easy. As I understand it, he used it 2-3 times, then set it in a corner to gather dust. Now, mom & dad have sold their house in preparation of moving into a new one they're building, and they are trying to be good about throwing away stuff they have not used in more than 10 years. Thus, the bread machine has come to be at my house.

Calling a device a "bread machine" makes it sound as foolproof and easy as a "coffee machine" or a "vending machine." You put something in the machine, and you get some other intended thing out of the machine.

Unfortunately, the bread machine is not a coffee machine. If you put the ingredients in it and set the timer so you have hot, homemade bread first thing in the morning, you may well wake up with an overwhelming smell of oh so ymmy bread, only to find that what is in the bread machine is a lump of bread-like stone.

"Yeast," mom tells me, "is the culprit."

Bread is not coffee. It is not chocolate chip cookies, and it is definitely not a frozen chicken pot pie that you can pop in the microwave for 5 minutes & eat up. That's because it contains yeast, a mystical substance that thinks I keep my house too warm and Houston, in general, is too humid. Only under exactly perfect conditions will it deign to rise, and then only if you praise it lavishly for doing so. Thus, forget about letting it stew all night alone.

As with most good stories, this one is a bit of an exaggeration. My first loaf of bread from The Thing was small but tasted pretty darned good. The loaf that's in there now smells like heaven but doesn't appear to have risen worth beans. In another hour, I will know whether I have a rock or a loaf of yummy-bread.

The way I see it, the bread machine is just a technological reminder that we are somehow less capable than our forebears. My great-great-great-etc grandmothers baked bread in ordinary ovens. Or over campfires. Or on rocks. They gave birth without epidurals, and they washed clothes in the river. I have a "bread machine," a grocery store full of fresh live yeast packets, yeast boosters and 'bread mix" boxes. I live in an air-conditioned house with electricity and running water. But I can't make the lazy dang yeast rise up off the couch.

The bread does smell good, tho. Mmmmmmm!

ADDENDUM: The photo is the actual bread. It did rise into a happy little loaflet and it is not hard as a rock. Whaddya know? My ancestresses got nuthin' on me!

Tax-Free Chaos

This weekend is Tax-Free Weekend in Texas. Apparently this happens every first weekend in August, as the state graciously agrees not to collect sales tax on clothing to encourage parents to boost the economy by buying new school duds for the kiddies. Most stores add to the savings (and the lure to the mall) by putting everything on sale.

The nice thing is that it applies to parents & even singles like me. The catch is, that you have to get up at 0-dark-thirty if you want to avoid the chaos of a million mommies with 2.3 unleashed kids each.

So I was at the mall early enough that there were still parking spots in my 'favorite' parking section. I have a Speed-Shopping technique that basically involves taking one of everything presentable, and trying it on. I'm very happy to say that none of the stories I shopped today had any crazy ideas about "limit x items per fitting room," because there's pretty much no way I could have accommodated that sort of limit in my Speed-Shopping technique.

The technique usually results in purchasing about half of what you try on, because that's about the fraction that actually looks as good on a lumpy human being as it does on a hanger. Having arrived at the store fairly early, I managed to get checked out with no line, no waiting. (Cha-ching! There goes $300.) However, I had such a large bag of goodies that I didn't want to carry it over to the next store in the mall, so I went out to the car in the now-full parking lot where a line of cars followed me as I walked, hoping to snag my parking spot. But I wasn't leaving... just loading the trunk...

At the next store, I managed to find another pile of "needed" clothes; then I found a lovely Brighton belt (ok, that one was a special treat). At one store I tried on a lot but bought nothing because I could not justify buying any $89 items (not on sale!) when I had just filled my bags with complete outfits for less than that. Plus, some of their cutest items were more than $100 -- thus not qualifying for the tax-free deal. Go figure: I'm a cheapskate! Anyway, I'll watch for those items now in the store's outlet.

I have promised myself that the result of this trip will be a closet-cleaning of all the stuff that I have moved 2x from New York and then Phoenix because "I might need it in my next real job." Mom brilliantly points out that in Houston it's unlikely I will need the 30 heavy wool sweaters that I have stubbornly refused to give up "because I love them." And since I have not had to wear a suit for any reason since I started here, I can probably Freecycle most of those, even tho they are "pretty" and "expensive to replace."

Anybody have any other favorite excuses for not getting rid of stuff that you have not worn for 10 years? heh

By the way, my maid, Ruby (the Roomba), has vacuumed 2 rooms of the house while I've been writing this. Seriously, I love this thing.

Just a small brag

I'm vacuuming my excellent new floor & rugs while I am typing this. Or, rather, my Roomba is vacuuming while I type. This morning, it did one half of the wood floor space while I was in the shower. Now it's doing the rest. This is the coolest toy EVER.

I'm thinking that maybe my Roomba needs a name. Feel free to offer ideas. Meanwhile, I realize I have never offered up a photo of my not-so-new Mini Cooper (purchased in May -- oh it's ancient, right?) and so ... here she is. She does have her personalized license plates now: Sunny 6. (Texas only lets you have six characters, and someone already had just plain "Sunny.' Go figure. One of these days if she can stay clean long enough, I need to take a picture of her with the plates. The problem with keeping her clean is that Mini brake dust is apparently extremely attracted to Mini wheels, and they are always dirty, dirty, dirty!

Here's another view of Sunny with all her Mini pals, at a Houston Mini Motorists' Society meeting at a go-kart track. The place was very cool & let us drive our Minis in for photos before we did some good, competitive karting. Did I not ever write about how much fun we had there? (It would have been fun even if I had not won my races...)

Floor!

Fireplace and reading room with old floor


Fireplace and reading room while they are still working


Fireplace and reading room after mom & the dog have gotten comfortable with the new floor & rug!


TV space & cool front window with the old floor


TV space and cool front window with the new floor & rug


When I look at these pictures in the preview mode of blogger, I realize it's hard to see the difference in colors between the floors. The old floor was very light and didn't look very much like "wood"; this is more rich & cherry-stained with more realistic graining and wood color variations. Maybe this photo shows it best, although I didn't copy over a similar one of the 'before':


Entry to the house with the new, darker floor

I'm thrilled with it :) I'm still mad at Home Depot for making me wait two months for it without any communication, but I'm happy that it's finally in. The installers that Home Depot subcontracted did a great job & were very professional, and that part, at least, went great.

I have a Floor!!!!

Without some photographic explanation, you will not understand how excited I am about having my new floor installed. Therefore, I open with the part that makes you say, "And you paid money for that house?!" Yes, the floor was a mess. The previous owner had installed it in hopes that it would gussy up the place for sale. Bummer that -- should have actually followed the installation instructions. (The empty boxes are there to keep the dog's paws & my toes from getting pinched between the pieces of laminate. Nice, eh?)


I won't go into the specifics of the problems, but suffice it to say that the floor was a mess. Not only that, but it was ... cheap. The seller did offer to have it repaired, but I said oh no, you just discount the house & then I can install what *I* want. So that's how it happened that I've been waiting since the end of May to have a floor.

On Friday morning, the guys from Sunshine Flooring -- subcontractors for Home Depot -- showed up to rip out the nasty, cheap laminate and install my pretty new floor (still laminate, but pretty and definitely not cheap). I was at work during this segment of the festivities, but mom reports that they had a jolly old time tearing it out.

What you really want to know is, is the new stuff beautiful?? Well, of course it is. More pix to come.

Floor update

The delivery dude for Home Depot showed up with a load of flooring on Saturday morning. (Not exactly between noon and dark, but I'm ok with it because it's HERE!) Unfortunately, it looked as if part of the delivery had not arrived.

I called Monday to find out about the missing stuff and scheduling the install, and I got more run-around: "Well, we can't even think about scheduling installation until we know you have everything. But the person who is in charge of deliveries is busy loading a truck so I will have to call you back." (sigh) No one called on Monday.

However, apparently on Tuesday morning they called mom (she thinks they like her local phone number better than my metro-Phoenix area code) to talk about the delivery and convince 'me' that I got everything. It's all there, inside those boxes somewhere, they assured mom.

So she had to come over to the house to look. Part of it she found, and part she did not find so she called them back -- and they hung up on her three times. This, of course, made her very, very happy, and she stormed off to the store to speak to a human. At the store, a human showed her what the 'missing' parts looked like, and yes, of course they were all mixed in with other parts that looked just like them.

So, with everything confirmed, mom managed to get a human being to actualy commit to coming to the house on Friday to rip out this nasty mess of improperly installed (by the previous owner) cheap flooring and come back Saturday to install my gorgeous new, sweet-looking floor.

Believe it? I guess we will find out this weekend!

Let's get ready to Roooomba!!

The dog thinks it is a scary space alien, but I find the Roomba just way too much fun. How can you not love a vacuum cleaner that 1) works by itself while you play comptuer games, paint the bedroom, sew a table skirt, create a scrapbook page, play with the dog, etc., and 2) Even gets underneath the furniture where the icky bugs and dust bunnies hide??

So far so good on the picking up dog hair, etc.; I did already empty the cassette twice but in fairness to the machine, it's (ahem) been a while since I vacuumed in here.

By the way, there is news on the new flooring front: It's supposed to be delivered tomorrow "between noon and dark." No word on installation, but since the flooring has to sit & stew in my typically humid Houston-area home for at least 72 hours, I can still hope to have a new floor sometime next week -- and maybe to unpack all the living/dining room boxes before August (maybe). [Note in lower picture of Roomba under the furniture that it is still wrapped in plastic, waiting for the new floor before we unwrap.]

One of these days I need to remember to take some pictures of the bad spots on the old floor. Not sure how I'm gonna do that, but it needs doing.

Woot! It's a Roomba!

OK, I was wandering around the Houston Chronicle website the other day and stumbled across a tech blog that talked about a website called Woot. Best I can describe it is "think Fry's Electronics with only one item per day."

Anyway, the item for that day was a Roomba. It's a little robotic vacuum thing that -- as with Woot, I've heard about, read about and considered but never bought. Well, what caught my attention this time were two reviews of the thing: One said it's great for people with dogs because it picked up dog hair like mad. The other said it's great for hardwood and laminate floors. I got that.... And the price was right... so I Wooted!

My Roomba arrived today and because it's electronic you know the drill: Plug it in for XX hours before first use. So it's charging. Tomorrow before I go to work, I get to see if it makes the dog totally nuts. Oh and also whether it does a good job of cleaning.

Pix of the Renovation!

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Master Bedroom, looking toward Master Bathroom
Before.........................................After
The "after" wall color is more correct on the photos below. You know how the camera flash & other stuff affects the color of the image...


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Master Bedroom looking away from the Master Bathroom
Before.....................................................................After
(what you can't see in the "before" photo are the spots where the home seller tried to 'touch up' the walls to cover nail holes... with the wrong color paint.)


.. ..
Master Bathroom
Before..............................After


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New draperies (sorry, I didn't take any Before photos but they were PINK -- EEK!)
Master Bathroom..............Master Bedroom



Mom on ladder, sponge-painting the bathroom