The Blog Show

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Coming at you live and in person from the 6:15 express train! Heeeere’s the Exurbanite! Appearing today will be a full recap of the bathroom renovation, another tuna grill and any other random thoughts Mr. Incredible manages to come up with before his battery dies.
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Thank you Johnny. As always a fine introduction. Hey everyone, let’s hear it for the Exurbanite blog band!
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They just got back from performing at Bonaroo and booing Kanye West off stage, so let’s forgive the patchouli and stale beer smell coming off them for now. We’ve got a good blog for you tonight so let’s jump right into it. First of all, this is the inaugural commuter rail edition of the Exurbanite. I’ve had a really old work laptop for the past few years. When I first got it, I cleaned a small sweater’s worth of cat hair out of the keys. Despite the grunginess, it was a stout, if slow piece of hardware. I had some real triumphs with it, but the battery life was only good for about 40 minutes. If you take into consideration the 20 minutes of startup time, 20 minutes of actual operation was really inadequate, so it never went mobile for anything more than an emergency pinball or solitaire game. So here we are with an improved piece of hardware – hopefully it will last for the ride home. Unfortunately, I’m on the circa 1978 train tonight, so the free wifi I had been looking forward to will not be happening.

Did anyone know that over at Bandmeltun we were doing a bathroom project? That’s right, the exurbanite who wrote about not being a home fixer actually tried to do something beyond changing a lightbulb and it seems to have paid off. After I chipped off the tile and partially destroyed the wall, I did a little research and spent 3 days plastering, waiting and sanding until I had a reasonable facsimile of a wall.

Despite crushing humidity, it dried in time to be painted this weekend. A Michelangelo fresco it is not, but it’s not bad. While the plastering was going on, I also removed the existing sink and vanity top and mirror. It’s sitting up in the loft at the moment, not unlike a modern art masterpiece. I’m considering leaving it on a pedestal and shining a light on it. With everything removed, it was time to tape and prime. Mrs. Incredible did her super fast tape job while I made a toilet tarp out of masking tape and grocery bags. If the work thing doesn’t work out, I can always make a super slick hobo survival suit out of random trash. After I got green on the freshly repainted ceiling, M booted me down to the crayon-level tasks, where I stayed. I hadn’t hugged a toilet like that in years – at least this time I remembered it.

The greenish primer did a good job on the red and after a night of drying it was time for real paint. At some point in the project we lost our backup light source due to an outlet failure. I need to learn how to use my volt meter before I can tackle that one though. We persevered and did our two coats before humidity sent us to bed again. I was all for a speedy finish, but even after 2 hours the last coat hadn’t set yet, so I gave in to fight another day. Sunday started with a vengeance. We finished the space saver. I hadn’t had much experience with these growing up, but I’m starting to appreciate them. M’s new one was kind of a time suck, requiring more thought and improvisation than I think it intended, but it’s sturdy and much better looking than its predecessor.

Not it was time for the final assembly. Having forgone a custom piece, our out of the box granite countertop needed some masonry. It did come with an awl and instructions on where to hit. After a few tentative taps, I realized this was a piece of granite and not a Faberge egg and got my sculptor on. Hole punching complete, next up was fitting. I’ve seen enough home improvement shows to know construction isn’t as precision as say, watchmaking, but a 90 degree angle should be expected with most corners, right? Not at Bandmeltun. At least not according to the vanity top. We did have sidesplashes to cover the gaps. Next time you come over, don’t mention it and you’ll be invited back. After a fitting and consult, I had my first run with liquid nails construction adhesive. Wow. If I knew about this stuff as a teenager there would have been trouble. I did a few strength tests to determine how much to use, quickly realizing than a little is quite enough. It lists LIMESTONE as an ingredient. That’s like saying you tossed some carbon steel into your tinfoil to make hold an edge better. I believe the Roman coliseum is made out of limestone. I don’t think the next owners will have as good a go at removing the new vanity top and sidesplahes as I did with those weak tiles and particleboard vanity top. With the counter in place, it was time for plumbing. I’ve never done plumbing beyond supergluing pvc remnants together to make a potato gun. Fiery flying onions aside, I was a little skeptical of this part of it. After reading all 1 page of instructions though, I figured it was worth a try before asking a more accomplished home improver for a rescue. I knew I needed to turn the water off and I had already disconnected the existing hardware without any floods, so now it was just reverse the process and turn it all back on. And. It. Worked. Sort of. After we got it all assembled, the 5! Year old cold water supply shutoff decided it was cranky or dry and started leaking. I’ve lived in houses that had freezer occupants older than Bandmeltun that didn’t freak out when the water got turned off. Of course those houses are built out of pure asbestos, lead and radium, all the building blocks a growing house needs, while our little unit is a little less lethally built. A few choice curses, silicone injections and ¼ turn of a nut and we were back in business.

The last bit, the whole reason we did this job, was the sink. The sink sits on a little collar, giving it an almost anti-gravitational look. We got the cheap chrome collar after the flamboyant home depot expo guy said we could spray paint things brown and then smear black paint on it to get a bronze look. M and I are established spray paint decorators, so it was the lower priced chrome collar over the bronze one. The collar was so successful, we may try bronzing other things, like the fridge. Who wants stainless when you can have bronze?? So the sink went on its little stand, and we attached a drain that didn’t quite line up with the trap. Luckily the store sold an industrial crazy straw for this exact application. A little adjusting and we were in business. Not a bad project overall. I think this earned me some credits towards more aggressive attempts, like the staircase hidden behind the bookshelves I’ve always wanted…

After a successful bathroom reno, what could we do for an encore? M and I decided grilling was in order and broke out some tuna streaks and burgers for dinner. M has really been expanding her palette lately, which has been great. I thought she’d be game for the Ahi tuna this time, but it was just a burger for her albeit with grande veggies. On our first date, we went to a bar that had some really wild burgers, and I figured it had something for everyone. And sure enough it did. The ’naked’ burger was the winner for M. Meat, bun, done. I got something that had onions, cheese, peppers, bacon and bbq sauce. I think I needed a fork and knife to eat it. If M could sit through watching me eat that, I knew she was the one. So on this night, we grilled up the tunas, a burger, some sweet potatoes and M steamed some edamame. We finished it off with ice cream and some PBS. It was a good day.

So that’s the blog for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Come back again soon when we have new material. Have a good one out there.

(the new laptop survived the trip admirably. Even more impressive was me typing 1298 of these words with just my right hand - seating conditions prevented me from using my left. My typing style is unorthodox at best, typing with 3 or 4 fingers, but years of video gaming have honed the muscles to taut pounding machines. 1298 words in 1 hour, that’s 21.633333 words per minute!)

FIOS, food and bathroom humor

So what’s new out there? I am working from home today because Verizon is drilling holes in our ceilings. Aparrently this is a Regional Emergency, because the whole complex needs to be home to let these guys in. At the last owners’ meeting, they let us know that the town technically hasn’t approved Verizon FIOS yet, but it will soon be here. The crowd seemed really excited to get this for some reason. I have seen the Verizon employees taking their thrice hourly cigarette breaks outside the downtown building and I don’t know if I want those people even sitting in the car next to me, much less maintaining my phone, internet and television connections. I am sure the Charter people are just as lazy looking, but my interactions with them have been satisfactory. The rest of the complex is waiting with pitchforks and torches to run them out of town. I’ve heard more than a few horror stories about Verizon from some smart, competent people, so this looks to be a toss-up. I can’t imagine what these people are downloading that is taking so long that they think they need a fiber optic connection (or whatever snake oil Verizon is selling). So I’m home, waiting for the guy to show. They’re already destroyed most of the landscaping that M and I liked when we bought the place. I can’t wait to not use the multi room DVR and not watch Lost reruns in every single room in our condo. Here’s a pic of what the Ditch Witch did to the yard. It wasn’t beautiful to begin with, but it had started to recover from the french drain install.

I have an update on the Fathers’ day cookout extraordinaire. M and I made 5 side dishes to go with the ribs and chicken – Potato Salad, Macaroni Salad, Tomato and Mozarella, Orzo and Cucumbers with a ginger-lime dressing. The names don’t really do the food justice. It was definitley not school fundraiser picnic fare. The ‘tater salad started with the cooked potatoes drizzled pickle juice and mustard that was left to cool before adding the mayo and extras. This gave them a little something extra. The Orzo and the Cucumbers were the boldest and most popular sides. I think it was the toasted pine nuts in the Orzo and the fresh ginger in the cukes that put them over the top. They’re definitely on the list for a sequel. The meats were a total success. I woke up at 5:30 to get the grill going. I stole a load of black walnut logs from the parental farm and supplemented them with some hickory chunks I had. The ribs got a brine and a rub while the fire got hot. At 7am the skies opened up and I though the rain would make the grill too cold to cook, but the Char-Griller stood tall. After 5 hours, I flipped the ribs and started the chicken, which had been brining for a couple of hours. The chicken got a jerk rub and smoked for about 2 hours while the ribs finished. Remembering the last chicken fire, I had raised the coal bed in the smoke chamber so that it would diffuse the heat a little better. This worked a little too well, because the bird was sufficiently smoked but lacked the caramelization I remembered. So I lowered the pan to let some fire in for the last 30 minutes and sure enough, we had another conflagration. There’s something in the fire or smoke that really brings out the extra flavor. I think a grease fire is necessary from now on. Here are some pics of the meat portion of our meal.

Last, but certainly not least, we have begun demolition for the bathroom renovation. After we got back from my cousin G's wedding in scenic Scranton, PA, I jumped back in the car to get some supplies for removing the tile back and sidesplash the previous owners left for us. I had done a ton of research about removing tile and what was the best way to accomplish this. For the most part, it depends on how the tile itself is adhered to thewall. If the tile is stuck directly to the sheetrock, the best idea is to cut the wall out and patch it, since any removal will cause so much damage that a repair of the existing wallboard is inefficient. The second scenario I read about would be a wall mounting on cement board, which is sturdier than the sheetrock option, but also much more difficult to remove. Of course, our wall is C) None of the above. I took out my Dremel and ground out some of the grout on a single tile to see what we were dealing with and it turns out we had the tiles mounted on plaster that was backed with wallboard. The tiles came off with no problem, but they took the plaster with them. Again, not an issue, except that the surrounding wallboard is also covered in plaster and where the tile was is now 1/16th inch recessed from the rest of the wall. The wallboard is in perfect condition, but since the rest of the wall is raised, I now need to build this up and smooth it out so that it looks like a regular wall. Not the worst case, but not what I expected, either. So repairing the wall is what we have on tap for the next few days. I also need to get a special square drillbit to remove the countertop from the vanity cabinet. I haven’t done much cabinet hanging ever, but I don’t know what advantage a square bit has over a normal one. Here’s how the bathroom looks without the tile on the wall.

In the year 1008...

Let's say that when you go to the bathroom in the next hour or so, when the door closes behind you, instead of sealing you in a room of peace and quiet, you get dropped into the middle of a field somewhere in Europe one thousand years ago. You only have on you what you are currently wearing and have on your person and in your pockets. We shall for the purpose of this exercise, pretend that women are not limited to the three options of Nunnery, peasant woman or 'working' woman and have equal opportunities, such as they are, as the men-folk have. Besides being 6 to 9" taller than everyone, relatively free of scar tissue, physical deformity and medieval grime, you are clothed in brightly colored and exotically made leathers and fabrics and contain a full set of dazzling white teeth inside your head. Latin is only the language of scholars and the highest levels of the church and modern European languages don't come into existence for another 400 years or so. I don't remember Tuscan or Frankish being exchanged out on the street, so we're all speaking a wildly foreign tounge and do not comprehend the local dialect. You are ill suited for the 14 hour days of backbreaking physical labor required to grow and raise your own food, although a few weeks of this work will toughen you and your soft hands a bit. You have no practical knowledge, i.e. how to thatch a roof, till soil or herd sheep. Do you wander around to find a Church and beg for mercy? Do you show your cell phone to the villagers in an attempt to awe them - that may get you killed or robbed if you are lucky. You may appear to be a lost noble and be held captive by the local lord for ransom. Upon close inspection, due to a 20th century medical practice common with newborn males, most American-born men would be unable to pass themselves of as Christians – a dangerous position to be in at this time. Some of us have gold rings or fillings that may be bartered or sold. A good watch might be useful to a navigator if you could explain how to calculate longitude with it (latitude has been known for a long time by now), but how many of us can explain longitude? I suggest you hold on to your shoes for as long as possible.

What do you know that would really be of use to you and those around you? Would you survive more than a few days? weeks? Our bloodlines have built up sufficient immunities to a lot of the scourges that wiped out pre-Columbian Americans, and we've been vaccinated for most of he rest. Most of us have an innate concept of hygiene that would get us a little farther than the commoners of the time. If you made a rudimentary soap, you could keep yourself healthy for a lot longer than your average person. Even the knowledge of keeping a wound clean or keeping cats as pets to kill flea-bearing rats would give you a huge advantage. We have a concept of basic math using Arabic numerals and the ability to write using a Roman alphabet. These would set us apart very quickly as highly educated, even if no one understood what we were showing. We understand decimal notation and have all balanced a checkbook before (somewhat). Banking or Moneylending is a possibility. Usury laws haven’t come into existence yet. Just being able to interact with our modern banks has given us an understanding of monetary concepts that won’t be invented for at least a couple of centuries. You could be useful to a merchant or noble in this regard. You know that boiling water is good, but how do you communicate the need for this to a peasant? There are “bad things” in the water? Prove it. You may get killed just for insinuating the idea. Can you justify burning that much wood to get clean water when they can drink some barley wine instead and keep their buzz going? Alcohol distilling wouldn’t require any tools or technology that didn’t exist at the time. You could become a rather wealthy brandy or vodka merchant.

You’d use your knowledge of warcraft and gunpowder to raise a techno-army and rule the land? Have you ever made gunpowder? Charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur. Do you really know where to get this stuff? Do you think you could make it without blowing yourself up in the process? You could potentially advise a noble on modern military tactics or use your understanding of history to avoid certain political situations or plagues. If you’ve ever watched Discovery channel, you’re aware of a catapult and a trebuchet, but can you really explain how these work or display a working prototype to a local craftsman? Think of a pencil, that’s probably the result of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of man-hours of engineering and development. Think about locating, extracting and processing the graphite necessary. Think about harvesting, milling and gluing the wood and the rubber eraser. What about the mining, refining, stamping and adhering the metal for the eraser? The pencil is a relatively low-tech item in the 21st century, but it’s an astounding piece of engineering for an 11th European, far beyond even the most powerful and wealthy royal. The best the Roman Empire came up with was a stick and some wax. Most high school students are forced to learn what a feat the printing press was, but in this age of laser printers, how many of these high schoolers really conceptualizes this accurately?

The best place many modern people could hope to go would actually be the middle east. Cities like Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Istanbul/Constantinople were teeming with world travelers. You could even pass yourself off as a traveler from a ‘far off land’. Your knowledge of geography and the ability to draw a world map would make you an instant celebrity with the seafaring classes. When you draw a sailboat, what shape is the sail? Arabs invented the triangular sail hundreds of years before Europeans started using them. If you managed to get a catamaran built, you’d be able to out-run any navy on the planet. Unless you remember any of that calculus though, you’d be a middle of the road mathematician in Cairo.

I think some of the most effective things that you could do are some of the most basic items that we take for granted. In any location modern cooking would be a big hit, as would any songs or dances you have memorized. If you can play an instrument or juggle you’d be useful as a jester or courtly entertainer, just watch out for any utterances of ‘Magic’ or magic tricks, lest you be set ablaze as a heretic. Anyone’s knowledge of playing cards and card games would make them a fortune as a professional gambler or at least a valuable entertainer. As would being able to play chess, checkers or backgammon. Understanding how to build a windmill or a waterwheel would make you the best mechanical engineer in Europe, but average in China. If you made some rudimentary paper and folder up a paper airplane, the first time you threw it, people would faint. Boiling seawater to make salt would provide you with almost limitless income. That is until someone saw you doing it and stole your idea. Growing herbs and spices would be the equivalent of growing gold, as these were at least as valuable as the metal was at the time. You could invent scissors 400 years early. A hot air balloon could be achieved, but testing it would be tricky. A lightning rod might be useful, but explaining it would be difficult. If you could get it built, re-introducing rudimentary indoor plumbing and toilets to the royals would make you a home-renovator extraordinaire.

Re-writing history to cast yourself as the pre-renaissance renaissance man is unlikely. If you were a really smart person and started predicting comets and eclipses, the Catholic Church would find out about you very quickly and roast you like a marshmallow. If you happen to know the locations of any great coal, silver or gold mines, you could acquire these lands and exploit them to great benefit. Becoming a wealthy merchant using your knowledge of geography and basic accounting/banking would be doable. Telescopes, crossbows, stirrups and metal farming implements would be doable technology starting points that could improve the local lot in life. Based on these achievements, you could convince a Noble that infrastructure like maintained roads, irrigation and sewage and larger scale projects like suspension bridges would make their lands more productive and defensible and from there you could achieve lasting fame. World domination isn’t possible because you are not from a royal family and have no access to armies and land. You could kill the local noble and seize power or if you became wealthy enough, you could hire an army, but this is also not good long-term plan.

Try this exercise out for different time periods. Would you be better off in Roman times? Egyptian? Revolutionary War – America? Civil War-era America? 50 years ago?

Weekend recap - Ribs, Rides and The Coolest Guy on The Planet

I was having a hard time coming up insano adventures to share and I started to wonder why. I realized I spend a lot of time and energy to keep unpredictable and uncontrollable events from happening. That could mean that my planning skills are competent and admirable or that I’m boring. In my work role I have started to become one of the more senior (in terms of chronology, not experience) people in my group. I get to interact with people 4 or 5 years my junior, and when we do the ‘how was your weekend’ chat, my conversations are devoid of many of the antics that the younger guys pepper theirs with. Some of this is because I have no desire to relive these amusing but embarrassing episodes anymore. I was there, I did that. I have stories, but no one wants to hear the old guy bragging about something that happened 5 years ago unless it was truly amazing or involved minor jail time. I see the Friday faces and know how it feels to wish there was a ‘skip’ button to jump ahead to the scenes that start Friday night instead of watching the first 8 hours crawl by in slow motion like a never ending C-Span loop. Those were good times, but ultimately not great times. Somewhere along the line, I learned that to have a truly great time, something that produces lasting memories and motivates you to get more, you have to plan or at least build up towards the great moments so that they can be a good as expected or better. At this point, with all that buildup, you’re probably expecting the all-balls, no quit best story ever and I am going to completely let you down. So there.

I did, however, keep up with plans that will hopefully bring about some of these wonderful-type stories. First, we’re going to be hosting a dozen or so people at Bandmeltun next weekend for Fathers’ Day and there needs to be some food prepared. I’m hoping to take things to another level with combined pork rib/ chicken smoke. I’ve been devouring technique and tips on how to do this and the only thing I have learned is that no one agrees. This makes me feel good, since I can pretty much do anything and find someone who agrees. Alternatively, I will find 90% of the interweb disagreeing with me. Cooking pork ribs is more or less the whole purpose of the offset smoker. You can do steaks and basic chickens on a hibachi, as I have proven with the BBQ Pro ($12.99 at Kmart). But to do a full rack of ribs, you need space and wood smoke. If I manage to pull this off, maybe I can convince M that a whole pig is a good idea. To go along with the food, M and I have been scouting appropriate side dishes and things are looking good. It (hopefully) won’t be as intricate and overwhelming as the Thanksgiving throwdown, but it should be pretty good. Our deck is another issue. We don’t really have seating or tables for 12, and despite my assurances that picnic tables are the answer, we do need something a little classier and larger. Ikea offered a potential solution, so on Saturday night we headed out for a 1.5 hour drive (one way) to that Swedish answer store and got smacked around pretty hard. The table we wanted was out of stock and the alternatives were weak at best. We did try calling ahead and checking online, but technology was not as helpful as it had promised. So we turned around empty handed. We have some ideas for the cookout but it won’t be perfect.

We saw Sex and The City this weekend. I know it’s all manly and tough to put down that show but I don’t see why. It used to be on after the Sopranos on Sunday nights and it was always good for some adult-themed entertainment, so I know there are more than a few straight men out there who have seen multiple episodes. I pretty much voided the validity of a board game that purported to pit Men vs Women with my knowledge of the show. The point of the game is for women to answer questions about fixing cars and sports and men answer questions about girl stuff and I ran the table with SATC questions. The best part of going to see the movie? Afterwards I was the only guy in the bathroom. That has never happened before. There can be mitigating factors to the chick-flick, and having the run of the men’s room is one of them. The movie itself was as expected. I suppose if you knew the 6 years of backstory, you got more out of it, but for the most part it was entertaining and the AC in the theater was better than 96 degrees humidity outside.

Post-SATC we did some shopping for Father’s day and I saw something that I really haven’t understood yet. Outside Old Navy, there was a mid-80s Corvette blatantly parked in the fire lane. Not idling, not with someone inside, not even with a baby seat or handicapped placard. This baby was parked out front, VIP style. M and I looked at it and each other, shrugged and wandered inside. Clearly there was a big baller inside to have such a prestigious automobile and premium parking reserved just for them. I was going to have some fun figuring out who belonged to that whip, but the answer was too obvious to be any fun. Sitting on the front display table, not leaning or standing by, but sitting on the display, was a 5’-6”, mid-40s guy with a tank-top and blue-blockers, arms crossed and a shoulder tattoo that said, in 2-inch letters ‘F*** Fear’. Wow. I mean, this was too perfect. This guy was clearly some sort of special forces ninja or pirate because he has no fear of fear. In fact he taunts fear. He doesn’t even have fear of the fire department or a parking ticket because he is too tough, as we can tell from his bare arms and killer ink. Or maybe the blue-blockers make him invisible to fear, Jerry Maguire-style? This guy was so perfectly married to his style of car, I am having a hard time figuring out if he drives the car because that is his style, or he rocks that style because that’s the car he owns.

So here we go with my off the cuff analysis of people and the cars they ride around in.
I cannot start this without turning the lens on myself first and I do this willingly. I drive a Subaru wagon. I used to drive a Saab. These are both well documented separately here. Apparently I am part of a certain demographic. I drove a Mitsubishi Galant before that and a Gold 1984 Lincoln Mark VII Coupe before that. I drove the Lincoln because it was the car I was allowed to use as a recent grad and I more or less stole it when I moved out. I needed an inspection sticker and they wouldn’t inspect it due to massive body rust, so I bought a ’96 Galant. It was anonymous and cheap. Then it started to make noise, so I decided that I made enough money to drive a ‘nice’ car. I was raised in a house of crappy cars and I wanted to have a nice car. Or maybe I wanted to meet women. So I figured out how much I could afford and ended up with a sportier Saab model. It had turbo, leather, 6 speed manual transmission and the coolest cupholder in the world. I had it for 5 months and met M. Mission accomplished. The Saab isn’t too expensive that it’s a status symbol like a Mercedes, but it’s more expensive than a Camry, so it’s somewhere in a middle ground. It doesn’t have a lot of street cred for racing or appear in rap videos. But it does show up a lot at country clubs and Whole Foods parking lots. It’s quirky and a little unusual. Then again, so am I. The Subaru is also quirky and unusual. It costs a little more than a similarly equipped vehicle and doesn’t have a lot of snob appeal. It feels right driving it around and it’s a good vehicle for the area and where I am in life. I am well aware there is an established alternative market out there for Subarus. I happen to agree with the politics of that crowd more than the Hummer bunch and I’m cool with that.

BMW – I don’t think the BMW/Porcupine joke is all that inaccurate. While there are a lot of nice people driving these around, there is a healthy ego behind all of them. No meek personalities need apply. Sometimes the car is paid for at the expense of something else (food, rent, 401k plan).

Jeep Wrangler – You’re an all American. You have a golden retriever. You have a lot of Bruce Springsteen in your I-pod and you wear Ray-Bans. You aren’t practical and are somewhat impulsive. Or you watched a lot of MacGuyver and haven’t gotten Richard Dean Anderson out of your system.

Miata – for some reason, I see a lot of men driving these. They are either upper middle-aged and think they are Magnum PI (it’s small, red and sporty, so what if it’s not a Ferrari 308 GTSi) or they are suspect. If you drive one of these you think you’re a lot cooler than you are.

Camry/Accord or Corolla/Civic – Your car is transportation. In this area you pride yourself on economy and prudent decision making over flash and curb appeal. Driving is a means to an end, not the end itself.

These are the high level breeds of cars/ owners. I may add to these as time passes. If you disagree with anything here, let me know and I will address your concerns.

Which brings me to what M affectionately refers to “80’s reject cars”. I have long harbored a desire to buy a late 70s to mid-80s American Sedan and pump it full of aftermarket gear. I think this would be a fun and productive activity to have and there is even some potential investment value here. Although given the current oil situation, a 750hp automobile that gets 4mpg may not really be worth anything to anyone. But even at scrap it would still be worth more than Enron or Kozmo stock. I have a few candidates for this: 84 Monte Carlo, 87 Buick Grand National, and anything from the 70s. Unfortunately, when I have introduced this idea to friends and family, the response has ranged from skepticism to outright ridicule. Not only do I not ‘work on cars’, but I don’t have those tools and I lack a garage. I constantly joke about these when I see them on the road and point them out, testing the waters to see how M reacts, which is usually with remarks like “I hope you have fun driving it alone” or “I guess you won’t be golfing anymore”. One car we saw actually got a decent response – it was more along the lines of 30s Ford Roadster with the big rear tires and heavy chrome. When I asked why this was an acceptable alternative, the reply was that it looked kind of cool and was better than “those 80s reject cars” I favored. I guess the images of mullets, Whitesnake albums, acid wash jeans and wispy mustaches are too much for M to bear. Plus, have you seen my hair? No mullets anytime soon, but I can definitley rock that mustache…

A little bit of everything

Where to begin? Summer’s here and a lot has happened. M and I are working on an ambitious bathroom renovation. There’s a new attachment for the grill. Our Subaru is spawning clones. We saw Indy 4. Babies R us is an awkward place. That’s a good chunk I’ve bitten off, so I’ll start with those.
First, the bathroom renovation. We started out looking for a fake plant for the living room. Despite inhabiting Bandmeltun for almost 2 years, we still have some big open spaces. Our stuff looks nice and we lack the clutter of people have lived together for 15 years. Sometimes though, the large clean walls look a little Spartan, so we started looking for some plants. Despite a thriving herb garden last year, I haven’t rid myself of old herbicidal tendencies and cannot be trusted with live foliage. M used to have some healthy plants back at her old apartment. They were getting a little too big, so instead of buying new pots, I dug them out of their existing pots and chopped off the roots that were making the plant snug in the pot. Then I packed in more dirt for new roots to grow. The strange garden of Dr Moreau quickly staggered to a state of what can best be described as shock and awe. Short of setting the plants on fire there isn’t much worse I could have done. So when M asked about getting some plants, I started thinking Target instead of the garden center. We ended up at HomeGoods, a store I’ve only seriously considered for ridiculous statuary destined for jaw dropping gifts (mostly of the what the... category, but dropping). We ended up with a decent looking ficus-tree similie. It ended up being a little too tall, so we returned it for a smaller plante-ganger and ended up with a somewhat striking vessel sink. I wasn’t planning on changing the bathroom, but M got 2 separate compliments on her way to the checkout, so this sink had something going for it. We took it home to prevent someone else from stealing it, not knowing what we’re really do with it. Since then, I have immersed myself in preparations for bathroom renovation. We’ll have to replace the vanity top, run some new hot/cold hoses, install a faucet and drain, remove tile from a wall and re-paint the bathroom. Most of the pieces have actually been assembled already, so construction will commence very soon. I’ll document the process while it underway, but no pics beforehand. I’m excited. I think M is a little nervous. The changes will be huge.
As part of the wedding giftage, we received a somewhat unique grill attachment. Normally this would seem like a gift that only I would get pleasure or use out of, but I have demonstrated sufficient grilling/bbq skills to let M give me a chance with this. We picked up the Char-griller firebox attachment at a local big-box home improvement store that we’ve almost moved in to and set it up as soon as we got home. I already had a chicken brining and we were ready to go once the fire got going. The chimney was stocked with charcoal, the woodchips were soaked and the fire was lit. While the coals heated up, I mixed up a Jamaican jerk rub and spiced up the bird. With the coals glowing in the fire box, I put the chicken in the main chamber with a drip pan. We got a ton of smoke with the woodchips and I started to get really excited, but when the temperature got all the way up to 150 and stopped there, I started to get worried. 150 is as low as the grill thermo goes, i.e. there was no heat in the main cooking chamber. The chicken had been there for a while, bathing in smoke, albeit at a temperature you can get in your car trunk on a hot day. We’re not exactly cooking with gas here. So I dumped the chips directly onto the coals and went online. While the chips flared up, I noticed the temp spiked. I went to look at the directions to see if it was ok to burn wood in the fire box, and sure enough, that’s what I was supposed to do all along. Queue frantic forest search for dry kindling that wasn’t covered in fungus or filled with termites. I found some non-pine hardwoods and built a raging inferno. Almost immediately I was satisfied to hear the sounds of rendering chicken fat. After a sufficient time soaking up the fire, I decided to look at the bird. All most real infernos need is oxygen, and at this point I had an inch of superheated chicken fat bubbling and sizzling, waiting for a sweet gulp of oxygen. Open the lid and we had ignition! 2 foot flames roared out of the cooking chamber. I rescued the bird before permanent damage occurred, but lesson learned. The resultant chicken was, to put it mildly, awe-inspiring. Moist, smoky, tender, spicy, sweet - we ate half of a 6lb bird in 4 minutes flat. This was pure eating pleasure. I’ve been thinking about chicken all week. The chicken gave me a fever and the only cure was more protein seared over hardwood charcoal, which we took care of a few hours ago. The summer is going to be a hot smoky mess and I can’t wait.



The Newport blue Subaru outback now has not one but two identically colored vehicles parked within 30 feet of Bandmeltun. I guess people liked it so much, they decided to get some of their own. My consolation is that we got it first and nicer. I can’t help it if they like our style.
We saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – very entertaining summer fare. Spielberg, Lucas and Ford may be a combined 191 years old, but they’ve been very successful at what they’ve done. There’s no reason why this would have been a bad movie. There were parts from the previous Indy incarnations, as well as some of the stuff Spielberg and Lucas have done in separate franchises. I read that Spielberg even dug up one of the lenses he shot Raiders of the Lost Ark with, so this would look similar. The worst part of the movie was all the kids there who didn’t know all the backstory and missed so many of the references that made us laugh. That’s a little movie snobbery, but hey I’m old enough to start playing that card.
Speaking of being old, I got some new jeans this weekend. My recent healthy-eating kick has my 36’s literally falling off my backside if I don’t have a belt. They’re actually kind of baggy and would look better if I had them on backwards and it were 1993 again. Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘em. We hit up a local Marshalls and I actually had a hard time finding anything that would look appropriate on a 30 year old professionally employed married man. I don’t have to rock the dad-jeans, but I can do without elaborate embroidery and skater-baggy legs. I may have to start shopping at an old guy store. Oh yeah, I started eating plain yogurt too. It tastes better with my grape-nuts. And there were some durn kids making noise outside my window too early in the morning on the weekend. These are all true statements. I may have to start watching O’Reily to see how my true peeps roll.
As part of the recent bebe-boom we are in the middle of, M had to get some gifts for a baby shower, which means we got to go to Babies R us. Oh my. This was another place I never saw myself going into. I may not go back for a while. I could go on for a while about the defcon-1 awkwardness I experienced, but I will spare you.


That's about it for now. I have a ton more to write. Maybe a mid-week post can be in store if we're all lucky. BRH