Cleaning Up A Mess

In the most desperate days of my long stretch of unemployment — I mean freelancing — I drove all the way down to Dominguez Hills in the summer of 2007 and applied to be a dependent contractor for DirecTV, installing their satellite TV systems. In fact, perhaps the only reason I didn’t take the $10-per-hour …

I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Meeeeee

Way back a couple or so months ago during the ongoing remodeling project, Ranger got a little defensive against one of the electricians working outside and lunged against the lower pane in the corner window of the library and it cracked. Ranger was uninjured, thankfully. But since then the window’s been left in its broken …

Chock Full O’ Chores

I got home early enough yesterday afternoon to get started and finished emptying the contents of this 200-pound box and assembling the various parts into a love seat, two chairs and a coffee table, otherwise known as The Anniversary Present That Almost Wasn’t. While putting everything together I was very pleased that Susan was very …

Truly A Happy Anniversary

I had a veeeery disappointing experience ordering our anniversary present via target.com last week. Placement of the four-piece wicker “conversation set” for our front porch was simple enough, but it rapidly descended into a flurry of  form emails informing me of problems with my credit card and requesting I “update” the info — which I …

Upstairs, Downstairs

Well, there she is. Done. Finis. Born the dream to reality, it is the centerpiece of our remodel; the connective tissue reuniting after some 50-plus years apart the upstairs to the downstairs and the downstairs to the upstairs. Traditionally the core of a home is its fireplace — just take the last “h” from hearth …

Beaming Me Up!

Susan might dispute this, but I stand firm in my potential delusion that during the early stages of the demo when the bedroom ceiling came down it was my suggestion rather than rehang the 8-foot-plus ceiling we go vaulted, augmented with a couple decorative, non-structural beams going across. I qualify myself as being possibly incorrect …