Floor no more!

Thumbs way up.

Gaze your eyes upon this marvel:

You might wonder why I would be so excited about a rather tacky-looking part of our house. Well, cease your wondering and hear this: last night I finished the last non-closet piece of hardwood flooring in the house. Considering that we started laying the floor almost a year and a half ago, this is quite a cause for celebration! You might notice that the final row of wood there is way skinnier than the other rows. I ended up ripping it lengthways. It got pretty tricky in the place where part of the drywall comes down lower than the rest - I had to chisel out a section of it so I could squeeze the strip in place. Lucky for me I'm so danged handy and clever.

So that's Done with a capital D (and a -one tacked on right after). Like I've surely said before on here, I'll say again - you should buy me a beer! Seriously, you should get me one.

I've got some closets left to finish, and in the remodeling of our main bathroom there will be some tile to lay, but getting to this point is a huge milestone. When projects drag this long, I tend to lose sight of the end, and suffer a lack of hopeful imagination. To be perfectly honest, if we ever buy another house, and someone tries to pitch to me that the house "has potential", I will probably go momentarily insane and give them the most painful wedgie ever experienced (this side of the Mississippi, of course).

Oh, and in case you're wondering what type of floor this is, it's cherry birch. I think the "cherry" part of that is really just the stain, 'cause the wood doesn't have a hint of red underneath.

So, in sum:

-All room-hardwood done,

-Buy Joe a beer, and

-Consider it wise (had to find a way to start this one with a C)
(and -onsider) to never tell me a house "has potential" unless you realize the same is true for your underpants.

Housies!

It's official, folks - we've got people living with us! As Kathryn noted, Ryan and Chalyce moved in last night. Whoop! Despite apparent subconscious anxiety and an overall challenge of succintly describing "them living with us", I'm super-stoked.

Let me deal with the latter of those caveats first: how to refer to them. It's trickier than you might think. Some people throw out the term roommate without any regard to etymology. (I know, I know, it's a crazy world we live in. Words aren't just words, you know.) But hello, they're not sharing our bedroom. So "roommates" is out. I also thought, Hey Joe, maybe call them "cohabitants". Unfortunately, this word has a connotation that prevents it from being appropriate to our context. So that's out too. I think I've figured it out, though. I'm gonna go with housie. (Disclaimer: we haven't actually sat down to have the DTR talk yet, so this is subject to change.) It even checks out okay on Urban Dictionary if you go with the second meaning.

If you know me, you'll know that it's rare that Urban Dictionary and I see eye-to-eye. But this time, we're cool.

So we've got housies! People who live in our house in a non-weird way in a part of it that's enough on the other side of the house that we all have some privacy but also we share a kitchen and living space and generally get to know good friends better by living in close proximity! Housies! Yay!

Those of you who know me better than just my dramatic history with Urban Dictionary might be thinking, how is Joe's subconscious handling all of this? You might be wondering that because you knew that I grew up as kind of a loner-nerd and have only become super-cool in the past few years. Yes, I know this comes as quite a shock to those of you who have only known me in recent years, but I used to be socially awkward.

How does this play into being around people all the time, and not just in public? I'm going to have to work that one out. I'm not worried about stuff coming to the surface as far as wanting more isolation than I'll be able to have, I'm just trying to be ready for it if it does come up.

Then again, my subconscious may have had something to say about it all, based on my dream last night.

I dreamt that I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. (Our bathroom is across the hall from our bedroom.) I open the door to go in, and Ryan is standing there. One of us says, "Oops, sorry". (I forget who. By the way, the part of the house they're living in is on the far corner from our bedroom, and it has its own bathroom.)

Pretty wild stuff. Probably a bit of a letdown with all the buildup, too.

So. Here's to good times with the new housies! Here's to building community and people not being fazed by other people's crap! Here's to sharing lasagna, pillow fights, and having someone else to mow the yard! (Heh, heh.) Or something like that.

Here's to a true thumbs-up event.

It dances, I geek out!

(This post brought to you by the "up" thumb.)

This is not news, really, though it was to me. If you haven't heard of the Sony Rolly, check out a demo of it here.

I don't know exactly why, but this strikes me as one of the best possible uses of technology. Sure, it might seem like some kind of technology with medical application would easily be more important, and I would agree to a degree since I am a contact lens wearer, but a lot of those technologies are aimed less at enabling disabilities and more at prolonging the inevitable. Whatever, right? That could just be a dumb opinion of mine that will change "when it happens to me", but bodies weren't meant to last forever, and we can't make them that way.

Rant over, geek start. This little dancing robot is so cool. (I've got robots on the brain lately since a friend of mine did this cool little project.) I think that's because it reminds me of the genius and purpose of art - and what it is and isn't. A conference on the arts I attended last year stressed that art shouldn't have utility; instead, it is what it is. It will resist attempts to use it for what it's not created to be. It's useless, but in a good way. It's there to be enjoyed and appreciated. (At least, that's what I took from the conference, whether I'm butchering the concepts or not.)

Rolly plays music and dances. So I guess it's useful in terms of having something around the house that plays music. But I don't think you can use it to make a call, or take a picture, or manage your calendar. You just enjoy it, and that's the beauty.

I don't care if you buy one or not. But if you do, I'll probably invite myself over and sit and watch it for hours. And drink your beer, if you have any.

Thumbs for the road: life is like a (fill in the blank)

So my post title is probably a bit confusing. Here's what I'm trying to accomplish in the following few moments of your time:

-Give a "thumb report" for something crazy that happened yesterday, and

-Make some deep, I'm talking real deep observations about what life is like (I'll explain more about the "thumbs" theme tie-in when I get there).

Thumbs way down

So, apparently I'm terrified of mice. Last night I was working in our extra bathroom to start pulling up the floor (we're prepping it for a plumber who can go in and move some pipes so we can put the toilet in a location that makes more sense than the one it's currently in). This involved taking screws out from the hardibacker board I'd so carefully put down a few months ago, as well as starting to saw through the plywood subfloor (I know, boring details, but I promise it gets good). All of this must have been quite unsettling to the poor mouse who'd made his home in the area recently, because seconds after I hear some kind of pitter-pattering sound behind me, I see THE STREAK. (At this point, I feel it necessary to point out that the animal was still a rat rather than a "mouse on steroids" as Kathryn later put it.) THE STREAK evokes THE SCREAM. THE SCREAM is immediately followed by THE FLIGHT. During THE FLIGHT there is somehow THE SECOND SCREAM. Soon enough I'm in the same room with Kathryn, which upon entering earns me THE LOOK and THE PUNCH.

Here's the same story, this time told from Kathryn's perspective (this portion of our program is brought to you by Vantage Point - own it on DVD and Blu-Ray now!). "I was in the kitchen making a pizza. In the other room I could hear the sound of the drill, which had been going, off and on, for a while. One of the times when it stopped it was immediately followed by Joe screaming. Over the course of the next 2 seconds, here's what ran through my mind: Oh my gosh! How many appendages did Joe just cut off? Can I find a container to put ice in? Will I be able to find the severed parts? Where will we go? Is St. Joseph's the closest hospital? What's the quickest way there? About this time Joe comes in and I do a quick scan - he doesn't appear to have any bloody stumps anywhere." At this point both stories converge with THE LOOK and THE PUNCH.

In my defense, that mouse came out of nowhere. Seriously, it's like he materialized right through the wall of the bathroom vanity and charged right through my line of vision. Also, this mouse was in no way "mousy" - the thing was big enough to be a small rat. And I have seen mice on the run before. They look like little blurs. Not large, ravenous rat-mammal uber-blurs. I swear the thing was ravenous.

Anyways, since my wife works with lab-mice on a daily basis, I went ahead and let her take a look in the bathroom to see if she could spot it. (I figure since I'd led the charge on the roach wars I could take a more cautious approach this time.) Later on I put my adrenaline-induced frenzy aside and placed a baited trap in the area where we saw some mouse droppings. Nothing yet, but I think we'll get the beast in due time.

Thumbing a Ride on the Road of Life

I've had some thoughts stewing around in my head for a few days about what life is like. (You know - life is like... "a journey" or "a box of chocolates" or "it is what it is" - those types of things.) The impetus for these thoughts have been life circumstances that have forced me to become more comfortable living with unfinished things. Goals not yet accomplished. Tasks sidetracked. Sidetracked sub-tasks sidetracking other sidetracked sub-tasks. Those types of things.

Buying a house that was so much further from being done than I realized when I bought it is one of the things that's got me on this train of thought. Another is a project I may soon take on at work (which would involve slowly redoing a large database and website) that could drag on for months or years. Paying off debt and getting financially stable is another fun one.

And then there are things people start that they don't even get to see finished. Like people who already have kids. They know that at some point they'll die and the life they helped start will continue on after they're gone (what a horrible thing that sometimes it happens the other way around). Who are we to think we can accomplish anything? What do we know about finality and worth?

I know people who are addicted to "getting things done" because "it feels good to". I'm not going to lie - I've got a pretty long list of things I'd really like to get done - not necessarily because I'm eager for that sense of accomplishment, but because I'm tired of having things on my list. But lists never clear and stay cleared - we know that, right? I don't know, maybe there are some super-nazis out there who push through and get stuff done on schedule despite the odds and challenges, but I certainly don't operate that way.

Really, I think this is the kind of thing that leads people to say things like, "Life is a journey, not a destination." (Or Ralph Waldo Emerson - whatever.) I guess maybe people who buy into that would see the value in challenges being character-making, and they would rank that above personal achievement. Or maybe they'd take a balanced stance and say personal achievement (arriving at your destination) only gains its value when it's viewed holistically, together with the character-making process of facing challenges (being on the journey).

I looked around a little bit to see some people who have been quoted with thoughts on the subject. (Note: I wouldn't necessarily trust that this guy got his sources right, since apparently Emerson ripped his quote off of Steven Tyler.)

I like the Martin Buber quote because he mentions the secret destinations. It's hard to think of a journey, much less a destination, when most undertakings involve so many detours that you go from "we'll get there when we get there" to "by the time we get there, we'll already need to be somewhere else."

By the time you settle into a new technology, a newer is already taking its place, making it obsolete. By the time you finish the house, you're moving to a bigger one or taking a job in another town. By the time you pay off debt, something (or someone) breaks and you're scrambling to pay for repairs.

That's why when Jesus says, "It is finished", that has to be a really big deal. He's either full of total bull crap or he's totally the man who succeeded in something we've all been failing at all along.

It's nice to know that, in this world, at least somebody is getting something done.

Ride on, King Jesus, ride on. Just as long as I can hitch.

Daily Thumbs Report - February 4, 2009

Thumbs Down

Finding a roach on the curtain behind our heads, above our bed, first thing in the morning.  BLECH.  Thankfully, it was on the other side of the curtain.  But I think it'd been there most of the night, because I remember looking up at one point and noticing some kind of blob above my head.  Not cool.

Thumbs Up

Store-brand Irish Creme non-dairy creamer.  Pick any store-brand, they're all pretty consistently good.  I wouldn't try applying the up-thumb to other types of non-dairy creamer; many of them are so fake they're nasty.  And this one's probably fake too, but somehow it just works anyways (enough for me to buy a thing of it to keep in my desk at work).

Thumbs Down

Weak coffee.  So we have two types of coffee in the office, one generic (it's actually pretty good, though I don't think it's your typical Folgers or Maxwell House or any of those) and also Starbucks Verona - very nice.  Except when people think that since it's bold they can only use part of the packet for a whole pot of coffee.  At that point it's not real coffee, at least not any more than Pierce Brosnan is a real singer.

Thumbs Up

Martin's Barbeque.  Sausage wrap, fries, tea with free refills, and a 24% tip: $5.10.

Thumbs Up

Navasota Theatre Alliance.  Kathryn's involved in a play called George Washington Slept Here.  Last night I went to watch them rehearse.  Fun stuff!  I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.  Teaser: Kathryn will be showing off her Lamplighter barnyard skills...

Thumbs Down

More roaches.  We got home and I got to clean up the carcasses of five dead roaches from around the house since I sprayed strategically all over the house before we left for Kathryn's rehearsal.

Thumbs Up

Dead roaches.  The best kind, of course.  If nothing else, the sheer number of dead ones tells me that my strategy of spraying this stuff in strategic locations paid off.

Thumbs Up

I don't intend to end this blog post on a gross note.  So I'll leave you with a positive, warmly happy story:  

A family was sitting around their living room one sunny afternoon, enjoying life and each other, laughing at the antics of their crazy, but lovable ham of an uncle.  Suddenly, their new puppy, recently rescued from the animal shelter, scampered into the room happily, sliding on the floor and into a fluffy bean bag chair.  Promptly, the too-cute puppy turned its head to the side and made a quizzical face.  The beautiful family in their sunlit living room all burst into laughter at the utter adorableness of the puppy and enjoyed a moment they will cherish forever.