January 30, 2006

Lena's sisters and other close relatives sat a couple of rows ahead of us occassionally leaning to one another sharing quick acknowledgements of memories. Lena Hunt left a lot of antiques behind she collected over the years. She even anticipated her estate would be auctioned this way, so she wrote meticulous notes on various items.

A perfect example was a fresh water pearl mounted on a very simple 14K gold ring. The hand written note left by Mrs. Hunt gave a man's name and told how he found it in the Caney Fork River in 1930 and had it made up for her as a gift. Mrs. Hunt married someone else.

I bid on two boxes of Prince Albert tobacco tins and got them for $18 and $16. Vince bought a 1935E Silver Certificate. Later into the auction, Lena's sister Faye sat down next to me and pointed out her daughter. Faye's daughter bought a few things, and her two cute dogs in a doggie stroller protectively guarded them. Faye had come down from Indiana and joked that her daughter wasn't going to have enough room in the car ride back for her.

The gazebo arrived Friday. It's really gorgeous. It sits among some cedar and elm trees in the corner of the property. The door faces north. The gazebo was built by Kauffman's Gazebos. This will be connected to a deck later and will add a lot to the backyard.

January 25, 2006

The landfill's convenience center is only open on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. It's not too far down the road, and they don't charge you for taking things there that you can't fit into the trash can.

I had just started to unload a lot of boxes from the move into the cardboard bin when Bud came over. One time before he stopped me as i was about to toss an old couch pillow and asked that I give it to him. He punched at it and told me that could help keep his boney ass comfortable in his truck.

Bud pulled a lever opening up the bin and told me I didn't need to break down any boxes. The first time I came here, a fat man came barking out of a shed like a dog and told me I couldn't put boxes in the dumpster. I didn't see any sign, so I asked him if there was anything else that can't go in the dumpsters. He became very pleasant all of sudden and pointed where the boxes go and where any recycling, metal and things like that went.

The sign on the cardboard bin said you should break the boxes down. Bud said the dumpster would do just fine breaking them down, and then told me the fat man was sent to Smthville where he's running people off there with his tude. I asked him what was up with that, and he just said he didn't know, but that one day some woman went home crying and her husband came back the next day with a baseball bat. She probably just tossed a box in the wrong dumpster like a junkyard newbie.

Six ton of rocks arrived today. Eight stones in all. Five will be part of a crescent-shaped flower bed on the corner of the property and three around the mailbox.

January 22, 2006

The rain will keep the gazebo delivery, stump grinding and rock delivery postponed. The ground has to dry before any of this happens.

January 21, 2006

Rock The Casbah
The Clash

Now the king told the boogie men
You have to let that raga drop
The oil down the desert way
Has been shakin’ to the top
The sheik he drove his cadillac
He went a’ cruisnin’ down the ville
The muezzin was a’ standing
On the radiator grille

The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah

By order of the prophet
We ban that boogie sound
Degenerate the faithful
With that crazy casbah sound
But the bedouin they brought out
The electric camel drum
The local guitar picker
Got his guitar picking thumb
As soon as the shareef
Had cleared the square
They began to wail

The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah

Now over at the temple
Oh! they really pack ’em in
The in crowd say it’s cool
To dig this chanting thing
But as the wind changed direction
The temple band took five
The crowd caught a wiff
Of that crazy casbah jive

The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah

The king called up his jet fighters
He said you better earn your pay
Drop your bombs between the minarets
Down the casbah way

As soon as the shareef was
Chauffeured outta there
The jet pilots tuned to
The cockpit radio blare

As soon as the shareef was
Outta their hair
The jet pilots wailed

The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah
The shareef don’t like it
Rockin’ the casbah
Rock the casbah

He thinks it’s not kosher
Fundamentally he can’t take it.
You know he really hates it.

January 16, 2006

When our Ikea closet organizers arrived, I could see we had a problem. The nasty construction-grade carpet. Rather than having to remove the shelving systems to change the carpet later, I went ahead and did it now.

I basically ripped up the carpet, padding and tack strip and then cleaned the concrete pad. Then I laid tile by applying a cement like adhesive, pressed the tile down and placed tile spacers. After a day, I came back with cut tile for the corners and doors. Then the next day I put in the grout.

By day three, I was aching all over and living in isle 13 at Lowes. After the grout sealer went down, we finished building the closet organizers and put away all the clothes laying around looking for their home.

January 08, 2006

I fired up the reciprocal saw after breakfast and cut back dead branches on most of the cedars on our property. The tree service comes tomorrow to take out a few trees and grind the remaining stumps. Shortly after that, the gazebo will be delivered. It's being built by a Mennonite community near Smithville dedicated to quality craftsmanship.

Before heading out to run some errands and seeing Brokeback Mountain, I brought in a smaller cedar branch to show Vince the deep red pith and how it can be whittled down. We then added Buck Knives to our shopping list.

The packaging for the Buck Knives was kinda surprising. We got them because I always remembered my grandfather carrying one. They were high quality, American made, and often passed along from father to son. The ones we bought from Wal-Mart were not likely the same kind, although it was made by the same Buck family. Unlike my grandfather's Buck Knife, this one was made in China.

That's right. Most of the products sold at our local Wal-Mart Supercenter are made in China. On a closer look at the inside packaging for our new Buck Knives, I could not believe the audacity and ignorance of the Buck family considering this very fact. Take a look at this:

"Now that you are family, you might want to know a little more about our organization. The fantastic growth of Buck Knives, Inc. was no accident. From the beginning, management determined to make God the Senior Partner. In a crisis, the problem was turned over to Him, and He hasn't failed to help us with the answer."

No, it wasn't an accident at all. And what was God's supposed solution for the Buck family? Shipping jobs to a communist country that suppresses and jails Christians so the Buck family can make more money.

What an outrage. I called Charles Buck and left him a voicemail expressing what a disgrace to the Christian faith it was to not employ more God-fearing Americans to build the quality knife I remember as a kid. I think most Americans are willing to pay for real American values, not values that make outrageous and fraudulent claims that God is a partner in the outsourcing of American jobs to China.

I don't expect to hear back from him.

January 06, 2006

I wonder if Pat Robertson also believes that the Sago mine tragedy is God's special way of reminding a slothful nation at war to conserve energy?

After John comes over and gives us a sense of how much it will be to extend some kitchen cabinetry, I'm heading into town in search of a socket extender. Yesterday, I replaced close to 1000 watts of exterior flood light bulbs with compact fluorescents, but the ceramic ballast of the new bulb prevents these particular flood lights from making proper contact inside the flood light paulding. Each new bulb puts out about 75 watts of light using only 18 watts of power. If you do the math, you can quickly see the savings on that one simple chore.

OLD BULBS: 1000 watts (1 kilowatt) per hour (8 150 watt bulbs) for about 10 hours per night = @ 10 kilowatts. If a kilowatt of power runs about 8 cents, that's 80 cents per day, or $24 a month in electricity.

NEW BULBS: 144 watts per hour (8 18 watt bulbs) for about 10 hours per night = @ 1.4 kilowatts. That's only about 10 cents per day, or $3 per month. We save about $21. You can save even more by adding motion sensors available at Lowes of Home Depot and using much nicer exterior accent lights for constant night light source. We are testing a few solar compact fluorescents.

Throughout the new house, we also replaced about a kilowatt of light bulbs with smaller 12 watt compact fluorescents. We calculate we save about $5-10 per month throughout the house as not all of these lights are on at one time. Overall, the saving is pretty substantial, accounting to for almost a quarter of the home energy bill.

You can get these bulbs at Home Depot or Lowes. They are more expensive, but they do last much longer, and most of the time burn brighter. Check the lumens comparisons usually on the package and you'll see. Save the receipt and take advantage of the warranties. It may cost you shipping down the road, but it's better than buying them again. Get a couple extra to use as replacements while the new ones are being shipped.

Some people say they don't like the look of the spiral fluorescent, but who ever sees them in proper home lighting with lamp shades, globes or wall mounted fixtures? And besides, we're at war.

January 04, 2006

Our PODS showed up this morning at 8am. For a couple of weeks, we've been living without all of our stuff and doing just fine without it. As each day passed, Vince and I had a growing sense of dread that we had a house full of schtuff on the way. Shitmas was coming, and Schanta was driving a greasy truck.

Last night, on Shitmas eve, Neill came over and had dinner with us, drank beer and watched VH1 classics. Adam Ant was so gay, and someone needs to remake a couple of his songs. I could hardly go to sleep with visions of shitty furniture and excessively unnecessary kitchen appliances dancing through my head. Merry Shitmas.