Kitchen signed off

Contractors are paid and gone and I can get the cars in the garage again. We have some work left, namely 1) the whole adjoining fireplace room needs painting of walls and ceiling, 2) install two new ceiling fans, 3) organize and store the leftover building materials worth saving, 4) organize and store all the kitchen crap that is (worth saving and) scattered throughout our house, 5) new barstools maybe, 6) new window treatment, and 7) reorganize all bookcases and shelf storage. But it does look very nice.


more later,Bob

Categories: family news

walk through

Our contractor says she may be ready for a walk through tonight. As much as I want this to be over, our relationship has deterioriated and I'm anticipating conflict. photos coming soon. lessons learned also coming soon.


ps. see http://reach.ucf.edu/~technicaled/ for a picture in rotation of me at work.

Categories: family news

My Sweetie

Linda asked me to take a head shot for the Orange County Bar, and we caught the late afternoon sunset out on our porch.


Nice, isn't it?

Categories: family news

and the moral is

The teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment: Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day, the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories.

Ashley said, "My father's a farmer and we have a lot of egg-laying hens. One time we were taking our eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the car when we hit a big bump in the road and all the eggs went flying and broke and made a mess."
"What's the moral of the story?" asked the teacher.
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket!"
"Very good," said the teacher.

Next, little Sarah raised her hand and said, "Our family are farmers too. But we raise chickens for the meat market. We had a dozen eggs one time but when they hatched we only got ten chicks, and the moral to this story is, 'don't count your chickens before they're hatched.'"
Teacher: "That was a fine story Sarah.

"Michael, do you have a story to share?" "Yes, my daddy told me this story about my Aunt Judy. Aunt Judy was a flight engineer in the Gulf War and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a bottle of whiskey, a machine gun and a machete. She drank the whiskey on the way down so it wouldn't break and then she landed right in the middle of 100 enemy troops. She killed seventy of them with the machine gun until she ran out of bullets. Then she killed twenty more with the machete until the blade broke. And then she killed the last ten with her bare hands."
"Good heavens," said the horrified teacher, "what kind of moral did your daddy tell you from that horrible story?"
"Stay the h*ck away from Aunt Judy when she's been drinking!"

Categories: humor

Elephant Memory Systems

Of course you remember these from the era of Duran Duran, teased hair and skinny ties.

Categories: technology

Caroling, Caroling

I have been invited to join the Caroling Company, a troupe of professional costumed carolers who perform a capella in 4-part SATB during the Christmas Season for private and public events.

I'm excited to join my Makeshift singing partners Seth and Pete who have been doing this for a few years. Now I've got to buckle down and learn/memorize 30 songs.

Categories: music and song

Venn Diagram

Do you remember Venn diagrams? Seems they were always covered in the first chapter of my math and geometry textbooks in discussion of set theory. They are also used in language arts to illustrate overlapping concepts or relationships.

I had built this statistical one for work last week (click on graphic for larger version); it illustrates the distribution of student enrollments during one term here at UCF. The circles represent the areas of class types -- Orlando campus, regional campus, or web-based classes. The size of the circles are exactly proportional to the data. The overlap areas are a little off by necessity. I drew this graphic in Photoshop. As an information geek, I think its really cool. This will be used to assist higher ups with some funding and growth planning issues.

Categories: work related

His tractor's not so sexy after all

In the most stunning breakup since Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett, Rene Zelweger cited 'fraud' in court papers seeking an annulment of her 5 month old marriage to country singer Kenny Chesney. Who could have predicted it?? CNN story here.

Categories: humor, music

This Just In

Categories: humor

Day 15 of the remodeling

It hardly compares to the hardships of some of our neighbors this hurricane season, but we are really starting to miss having a kitchen with running water, ice maker, dishwasher, etc.

The refrigerator is plugged in in the family room, and all our kitchen stuff is stacked up.

We're storing things wherever we can, and often misplacing utensils, or condiments.

Here's our makeshift kitchen; we've got to dump liquids in the backyard or down the toilet. We keep a jug of water handy for the coffee maker.

Thankfully, the grill works well. Linda made a decent casserole for a church pot luck on it this weekend.

For those few dishes and utensils we use, I cart them out to the side of the house and wash them at the fish cleaning/paint cleanup sink outside the garage.

Categories: family news

remodeling update

We checked some alternate 16" X 16" floor tile, and it was a fraction of an inch TOO LARGE, and still of a notably different color shade. Good grief, don't they have any STANDARDS in the tile industry???? There would be no internet if it weren't for standards!! So our clever plan is to pull up some existing tile and lay things out so it looks like we planned a varying color. I rushed down to Lowe's and ordered 5 more boxes of tile.

I lined up an electrical contractor for the telephone work, and they were coming by on 9/7 to make a bid on that and a new electrical panel. However, our project contractor is incapacitated due to a bad back (out two days now), and when the electrician called to say he was coming to the house, nobody was there, I was without a vehicle because it was getting a new trailer hitch installed, and Linda was at work with client appointments. So we missed the electrician appointment.

Kitchen colors and finishes

Some small problems have emerged. The new floor tile does not measure the same 16"X 16" that the existing floor tile does. We want to have unified tile across the two spaces, therefore, its not going to line up well, or the grout gaps will have to be larger. The project contractor cannot relocate the telephone outlet because there are too many wires connected, so we need to find a "telephone contractor" to move it.

The electrician reports that we have an obsolete electrical panel with latent flaws that are well documented on the internet. For safety's sake, we should replace it. Cost is probably about $1,000.

Here's some images of the colors and finishes. Below is the slate gray porcelain tile that will make up the countertops, and the blue glass mosaic tile that will be the backsplash. Contrast with the light oak wood finish of the new cabinetry.






We're suspending 4 solid bar nickel finish frosted white glass pendant lamps over the 6' X 6' island. There will be some halogen lights under the over-counter cabinets and one decorative fluroscent fixture with nickel trim on the ceiling. We still need to select and purchase cabinet fixtures and drawer pulls.

Sings like k.d. lang

but she's younger, prettier, thinner, and straighter. Elizabeth McQueen is a country-swing vocalist from Austin TX, who has recently joined Ray Benson's band Asleep at the Wheel. She's got some downloadable songs here. I first saw her with Benson's band on a recent Opry broadcast on GAC. Watch for this one.

Katrina Assistance

I had a request to assist an emergency UCF meeting this morning seeking ways to help displaced students. I ran some quick analyses of our available class seats. The state wants us to cut red tape (which I think we must purchase by the cable spool), and we will probably waive non-resident fees.

I also heard last night that Rollins College (of Winter Park) extended invitations to 30 Tulane Univ. students to attend Rollins for the fall term tuition free.

And we thought we had it bad last summer with our inconveniences.

UPDATE: UCF released this announcement thursday afternoon regarding enrollment opportunities for displaced gulf coast students.

Kitchen Remodel

We had the plumbing repair, and the drop ceiling is taken out, but the electrician was a no-show yesterday which puts us behind schedule.

Here's an idea of what our new island will look like in position. You can see in the 1st photo background the repaired wall with new plumbing behind it:


The new range/oven will be placed in this hole in the island, click on the image and use your mouseover to see what the range will look like: