Well..it finally looks like people are getting tired of Facebook pushing hate and supporting right wing fascists across the world….over the past few days, facebook stock has lost about 25% of it’s value and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person as Mark Zuckerberg…that means the market cap of facebook has dropped by 200 billion dollars and poor old markie himself has lost 24-26 billion dollars in the past week…and it’s all because people are getting tired of facebook’s bullshit and markie’s love of everything repub and have been leaving it in droves….I’ve never been able to understand the allure of facebook and the only reason I have an account is that the Miata club I belong to moved over to facebook from Yahoo but I very seldom use it for anything else other than to wish people happy birthday and to post photos of the progress on the house….I sure as hell don’t get my news from it since it has been proven that ole markie has built algorithms that overwhelmingly push right wing bullshit in it’s news feed over the facts or truth…so, people…keep it up…keep leaving facebook and keep making ole markie pay…maybe some day he’ll be that has been that people point at and laugh…it can’t come soon enough…
This is new…
Well…as you know, I have been bathed in dust for the past couple of months filling and sanding the cupboards and today the doors for them…and now I think I’ve become sensitized to the dust with breaking out in rashes everywhere that itch and hurt like crazy…and this has never happened to me before even using all kinds of chemicals my whole life…so, I slathered myself in hydrocortisone lotion and I really hope it helps since I am really uncomfortable and don’t need to go to the emergency room…I think I’ll try some antihistamines later if the cortisone doesn’t work and this does not bode well for completing the rest of the house….crap, crap, crap…it’s bad enough that I’m beating the heck out of myself working hours and hours on this place every day…but I can deal with that pain since I live it every day…but this is new for me…at least I got everything sanded and I even got all of the insides of the doors painted two coats today…so tomorrow will be painting the fronts of them and that will be pretty easy since the fronts are all done with a roller and it only takes about two minutes to do each one…but then I have to wait for an hour so it can dry some before the second coat…so, another all day of work but at least there is no dust…other than cleaning up all of the dust from today…but, I’m not going to do that until I have the drawers done since they need to be filled and sanded before I can paint them….owww….
Doors are ready…
Well…are you getting tired of me chronicling every damn thing I do restoring this house? I’m not tired of it yet so if you don’t want to read more about it, just skip over these and get to the political one that I’ll be doing later….I did get the doors finished sanded this morning and looked like a damn ghost by the time I was done….the sheeting I put up to create a room to contain the dust downstairs worked pretty well and it was funny how much dust I had on me when I finished…and I left dust footprints when I went over to shut down the music and then upstairs to get a towel to brush myself off outside before I tracked more of it into the upstairs…but, I still need to go back down there to change the setup and get my other two sawhorses set up so I can paint 5 or 6 doors at the same time since I need to put two coats on and wait an hour in between coats…so, tomorrow is going to be a long day getting the backs of all of the 11 doors painted…I think the doors came out okay and I’m sure they will look much better than the did with all of the excess paint, runs, and drips they had on them…and the grey should hide some of the flaws that remain but if it doesn’t, I can live with it knowing I gave them the best finish I could and they are not dirty anymore. Man, I can’t wait to get my dishes and food back in the cupboards but I am going to wash everything that is going back into them…the dust is just pervasive and got everywhere even with the airlock I had up in the kitchen….at least I made it though with my toes not hurting any worse…
February 3rd
Well…damn, that sucked…up and down all night and I’m not sure why that would be other than today is going to be a long work day with doing the final sanding of all 11 doors for the kitchen and keeping the doors straight so they go back in the same place they came off…I think I’m only going to have to fit one of them after paint since I did the big doors before I started…at least I hope I don’t have a lot of fitting to do since that would mean drilling new holes in my nice white paint on the cabinet frames….so, it looks like I’ll have the doors hung by Tuesday of next week since I am going to take Sunday off after painting Friday and Saturday….my toes are still hurting and I may have to take some ibuprofen before I get to the work today with being on my feet for another 3 or 4 hours…still not sure what the problem is with them but I need to survive the next 3 days of sanding and painting and then I can put my feet up Sunday and rest them….it was a nice surprise that we only got an inch or so of snow when they got lots south of here and I didn’t even have to shovel…but, I may go out and skim what snow there is off the walks and get them salted again since there is a little ice on them and I want to stay ahead of it…had a really cool grocery bill yesterday with not buying cocktail materials anymore…only 11 bucks at Meijers and 8 bucks at Aldi’s and I can’t remember spending less than 20 bucks for a week…not much to do today….just the bike ride and then eating dust for a few hours and I am going to set up my pedestal fan to blow some of the dust out of the little window in my glass blocks…not sure how effective it’s going to be but it may help…more later….
A few last things…
Well…I would be remiss if I didn’t bring today’s date to everyone’s attention…2-2-22…and it’s groundhog day where there is no consensus on whether or not we are going to have 6 more weeks of winter…from what I’ve seen, it’s about 50/50…back to the date…this is probably the last date like this I am going to see since the next one is 3-3-33 and I’m really not sure if I have 12 more years in me…that would make me really old and, while there is longevity in my family, it might be a bit much to hope for 12 more years….it looks like they are putting a second house on the lot across the street that is going to be about 3 feet from the first one that went up…and I know they are going for over 150K but who the heck wants to pay that much to live right on top of your neighbor? It won’t be much different than living in a damn apartment and you will be able to hear everything going on next door and I really, really hated that when I lived in an apartment….but, at least it will block out my view of the ugly, run down rentals that are one street over and they are new so that is cool…and I can luxuriate on my double lot with my big lawn and I don’t have to hear the neighbors…and I didn’t pay 150-180K for mine…and the forecast for price growth for housing this year is about 16%…so if mine is worth 110K now, it will be worth 126K by the end of the year and I will have made almost 40K in the year and a half I will have been here….and that means I’ll have almost 80K in equity by the end of the year…not bad for being broke three years ago…
Damn, I’m old…
Well…you know I’ve been complaining about getting old and all of the aches and pains that comes with it when I work hard around here…I still have the energy to do it but there is a much larger price to pay in pain as I get older…okay, that was the preface to what I really wanted to talk about and it has to do with what I got in the mail yesterday…my only mail yesterday consisted of two pieces…one a solicitation for “final expenses” insurance that you see all over the tv these days..at least during the day when every damn commercial seems to be about it….and the second piece was advertising for bargain cremations from a local mortuary…now, if this is the only kind of mail I’m going to get from now on, I’m going to be pretty pissed…what happened to the new car adverts or the ones for travel or sporting goods? I wonder if they think I have one foot in the grave because I’m getting old? Now it would be nice to get some for bargain kayaks or used Miatas or motorcycles, but I really don’t want to start thinking more about how short of a time I have left so they can just stop with this crap….so it went straight into the trash as the rest of them will if they keep sending them to me….grrr….
Greasy doors….
Well…I know you’ve heard me go on about how filthy the kitchen was before I got started tearing it down to clean and paint…but today, I found that it was even worse than I thought…when I was working on the doors for the cabinets above the stove, I had to scrape what looked like a quarter inch of grease off the tops of the doors that had collected there over the years…and that grease had penetrated the paint to make it gooey and damn near impossible to sand off…it was gooey and hard at the same time and I can’t figure that out but I know I’m sitting here in pain from using the sander so much today…can barely move my thumb and I still have the fronts of the last 4 doors to fill after the backs dry in another hour or so….and I need to get ready to eat dust all day tomorrow sanding the filler smooth…I am so sore from being on my feet the past few days that it may be a huge chore to do all 11 of them…and I need to seal myself into my dust room downstairs and open the window to try to get the fan to push some of the dust outside…but, it should be my last day of huge dust since the rest of the windows and the baseboards/door frames don’t need that much repair…at least I hope they don’t since I am really hurting myself with all of this work…at least I’ll be able to paint Friday…I hope…then I’ll need to spend a few days just cleaning up the dust downstairs…owww…
I’m beginning to hate the NYT…
Well…damn, I’m not sure who is running the New York times but there has been so much bullshit bothsiderism that it is squandering the hundred plus years of great journalism that made it the “paper of record”….throughout the Hillary Clinton e-mail non scandal, they had breathless coverage of the nothing that it was every damn day and they were responsible for getting the idiot trump elected with all of that crap…and today, they had a huge article about how badly we are doing controlling the covid virus with more cases and deaths than any other country….and, because they are kissing the right wings ass constantly, they tried to cover up the reason for our poor performance…every damn report from the CDC, the NIH, and every other study highlights one thing, the vaccination plateau we have reached where almost every dem is vaccinated and boosted by only 52% OF repubs are…and they act like the reason for that just can’t be figured out and they leave it at that…and that is the problem..it CAN be figured out and yet they just don’t want to say it…it is fox news and the daily loads of misinformation that come from it and the whole right wing ecosystem that are actively trying to keep the pandemic going to hurt Joe Biden…it’s as simple as that…the repubs are willing to kill for political gain and that is the cynical calculation they are making every day…to sacrifice their own voters for the next election…why can’t the NYT write that? Because the owners are also making a cynical calculation to keep in the good graces of right wing billionaires who infest this country…and let’s put it bluntly, the NYT has been sliding to the right for decades now and no one left there has any journalistic integrity anymore..the truth is the truth and it doesn’t need to be analyzed or put in context or anything else…just frickin print the truth…that trump tried to overthrow the government or that fox news is responsible for the anti vaccine bullshit that is pushed on every one of it’s shows…geez….
February 2nd
Well…that was a little crappy…tossed and turned all night and feel it this morning…the worst thing is the lack of consistency in sleep when I do exactly the same thing every night…there should be some way to build a routine that will let me sleep better every night…especially after a full month of no cocktails…so, needless to say, I feel a little run down this morning and that will make it a little bit of a pain to do the bike ride, the grocery run, and do the doors I need to do today….but I still feel better than when I was having cocktails every night so I guess I can suck it up and get things done…and I have to do the grocery run a little late today since I need to get more allergy meds and the pharmacy doesn’t open til 9…so I guess I can take a little time to have some coffee and read the news…still don’t know how I hurt the toes on my right foot but they seem to be a little better this morning and it’s still a pain to walk…it feels like I walked barefoot on concrete and abraded them but it’s winter and I always have socks on…probably should have put shoes on when I did the filling on the front of the doors yesterday and will do that today….still going to be on them for hours today and that is going to hurt…not much to do today…just the grocery run and then I’ll be in until Sunday when I go out for the paper and I hope I get the doors done by then…the blinds for the last window in the kitchen have shipped so I need to clean the dust off that window so I can mount them when they get here…the kitchen is slowly coming together…more later…
Lots of work today…
Well…man, you know I usually complain a bit when I have busy days and not a lot of time to just live…but, after how lousy I felt yesterday, a busy day that I could get through with energy left over is welcome…although the small toes on my right foot are hurt somehow and it may just be from standing on my feet for 4 hours today…and that didn’t help my back either with nasty pain in the lower part and stiffness that I am going to aggravate tomorrow with doing the last 4 doors….but, I did get the bike ride in, washed the car, got 4 doors done, and did my laundry….so, it looks like Thursday is going to be dust day with sanding the filler I had to use on the doors to repair them…and some of them were so bad that I had to skim coat almost the whole face to fill all of the dents and gouges in them…and there were a few of them that had food grease that had run down the back of them that I had to take the putty knife to and scrape it off…who the hell lives that way? It’s a little after 4 and I am done for the day after getting after it since 7 or so this morning….going to have leftover beef stir fry for dinner so I don’t have to work too hard for the rest of the day…my hands hurt and they aren’t going to get any rest until I’m done painting this weekend…ow…