Well then: Ambitious home improvement projects!

So it seems i have a bunch of days off unexpectedly. Apparently, the revised schedule of which I failed to take note had me working Monday, but then gave me off Tues, Weds, AND Thurs. If they decide to be assholes, then I am suspended Friday for not reporting to work on Monday (they may be lenient, given that I had absolutely no fucking clue I was even scheduled for Monday, as they'd stealthily entirely altered the schedule since last Friday when I wrote it down, but then they may not).

Which means I'm right smack in the middle of an unexpected five-day vacation. Holy shit.
The car is, unfortunately, going to be in the shop for some dumbshit recall thing from tonight until tomorrow night (they need it for 24 hours for something to dry or set up or whatever), so going somewhere is out of the question. (Also, you can bet your ass they won't tell me until Friday morning whether I'm working on Friday.)

Now, this is an unpaid vacation, mind you. But. I worked a bunch of overtime last week. I bet I'll live.

What should I do with this vacation I suddenly find myself in the midst of? Given that it is an utter certainty that I will not have another like it for probably another twelve months? And given, also, that it is not even given that I will have so much as two days off in a row in any given week for the forseeable future?

Well. I'm thinking it's time for ambitious home improvements!!

1) Update the wiring, at least in my bedroom, in the outlet by the kitchen sink, and at least one place in the living room so that the outlets are grounded. (Preferably, by the sink, put in a ground-fault interrupt.)

2) Put in at least one real outlet in the unfinished second storey, instantly transforming it into a usable space rather than wasted storage we don't need.

3) Dig out the weeds and put in a border around the garden in the front which is rather exuberantly overgrown with some mysterious thing I emphatically did not plant. Also, dig out the damn hostas that are coming back up in the herb garden and move them to the south fence that I hate mowing.

Impediments to this are largely that I've only ever installed one electrical outlet before and I'm more than a little rusty. So I may be on the phone with my dad a bit this week. But it was easy as pie last time, so I can't see it being too terrible-- I know which circuit breakers are the ones with the outlets I want to update, and I can see for myself that they're missing the big copper wire that means grounded. So I just gotta buy a huge pack of the right kind of wire. And I never threw out the box last time so I can just bring in the damn box and say "one of these only bigger". So...

Here's hoping I can maintain this flash of inspiration here. :D I am optimistic, given that I managed to haul my ass out of the very comfortable spot in Dave's bed it was in, and went for a jog, and actually managed to jog the whole way because I am just that good a person. I am optimistic.

Edited to add: Ha ha! Triumph: I found the entry where I wrote myself an instruction manual on electrical wiring. I am a genius.

mother should I build the wall?

God this CD is excellent.
One of the best parts is that one of the female vocalists has the heaviest Canadian accent I've ever heard, and so in The Trial when she sings about throwing away the key she pronounces it "aweee" and it's quite amusing.
Actually I sorta wish Luther didn't have such a heavy put-on generic-hick accent; it gives the proceedings a slightly more cartoonish aspect than they need.

Now I've forgotten what I set out to blog with this. Hm. Oh yes, we just looked up our zip code on the USPS website and it informs us that we're in Kenmore. Which a lot of Dave's friends have said-- seeing where we live, they've said "oh that's Kenmore isn't it?"
But I've gone walking in this neighborhood a lot, and it's two blocks over that there's the sign about Kenmore's parking ordinances. So I really think that technically we're outside the village. Though, we know fine well that the school next door lists its address as Kenmore, since they send Dave begging letters all the time.
Meh. We could also write "Tonawanda"* and don't; we just put "Buffalo" because we're not that interested.

Dave is next to me in the midst of composing a cover letter for a company in Cheektowaga* that sells VoIP equipment. He was inspecting their website and telling me a bit about what they do: using the equipment they sell, you can cheaply assemble what amounts to a corporate telephone system, using Voice over IP technology. Now, he used to work for a company that did traffic studies and security audits on corporate telephone systems, so he's reverse-engineered corporate telephone equipment before (the non-VoIP stuff tends to be poorly documented and worse-supported). So he finds it amusing that he probably knows more about what these people do than they do. He's trying to think of an advantageous way to phrase that in his cover letter.

I've just had far too much fruit for breakfast. But Wegman's had nectarines on sale, and plums, and I haven't had a good plum in years. I also bought a quart of heavy cream, so I may be doing experiments with fruit-based ice creams later. But first: to dismantle the sheet rock in my basement, and do some measuring... And yes, I'm aware that doing extra blogging is just a delaying tactic. Expect to hear from me a lot over the next couple days.
______

* as a non-native of the area (I may have mentioned this before) I personally find, on a simple phonetic level, that both "tonawanda" and "cheektowaga" are inherently humorous.
Given that I live in one and work in the other, the humor has faded through sheer overexposure. But just try pronouncing them and tell me the result isn't funny.

choreography

Urgh. It's the choreograpy bits of smut that make it take so long to freakin' finish.


In other news, have managed to clear out weeds in front. Good, nice, but now it looks like hell. I need to plant something in there.
Grumble.

In still other news, Dave got an iTunes music store gift card for graduation. He's just used it to buy the latest Beastie Boys CD, "The In Sound From Way Out"-- instrumental stuff, vaguely funk. He's still got like ten bucks left, though, so there's some pondering of what else to buy going on.

Yes, yes, I am updating because I have many things to do and don't want to (or have to, really) do any of them. And also, because it's very hard to concentrate on smut once you get to the nitty-gritty parts of it. (Well. No nits orgrit, really, but saying "the sticky parts" just sounds like TMI.)

In still other other news, Livejournal is having a sale on permanent accounts and really it's a huge savings to just get one (not to mention the nifty features) but I'm still recovering from the $6 I spent last month to renew my paid account, so it's actually laughable to consider that I would have $150 to spend on a permanent account. Which makes me very sad. But, to anyone else who's interested-- check it out here: Permanent User Account Sale. Totally worth it.

dirt under nails: check

So. A quick trip to the hardware store later, I am now the proud possessor of a large quantity of grounded household-wiring wire (twelve guage copper), assorted accoutrements like wire clamps and outlet faceplates and outlet bits, and... some seed packets. I know, I know. I'm addicted. I can't stop.
So I've filled in the new bare patch in the front yard with some topsoil and nasturtium seeds, so hopefully the nasturtiums will grow there. I don't remember what they look like...
I also got some morning glories and have painstakingly stuck the seeds in along the south fence and the west one. We'll see if anything grows. Urgh.
Have also been scolded by the neighbor for stuffing unwanted plant bits and dirt behind the garage, where we were sort of hoping to get some composting going. Her objection was not that it wouldn't compost, but more that it just didn't look nice from her side. OK, point taken, but it's very hard for me to care. Mostly it's just that we've thrown dirt back there; she referred to it as 'garbage' and instructed me that garbage needs to be put in a garbage bag and put into a can. Gosh! I hadn't figured that out before! So I am a bit miffed that she was so rude about it, especially as I listened to her for about three hours going on about her son in Germany the other day. Also, I'm annoyed, because she'd never noticed until she saw me chuck the root system of a hosta back there today. So if she hadn't seen me do it, she wouldn't have noticed that the weed-strewn wasteland behind the garage was any differently weed-strewn. Grumble.

I am unused to the concept of neighbors, and thusfar have not managed to become accustomed to it. Eh well. I just shrugged and said I'd tell Dave. We're totally going to get a Mr Fusion (one of those plastic composter things) and stick it back in the corner behind the garage, if only to spite her, now that she's annoyed me.

The neighbors on the other side we also see rather too much of because the porch has a huge window right out onto the fence we share with them, and so if they go into their backyard, we can't not interact with them. Also, confusingly, the woman's name is the same as mine. Urk. And her husband calls her by a nickname people insist on calling me which I pointedly don't answer to because it sets my teeth on edge.

My hands are really dirty, though. I should go wash them and make dinner. Urgh, hands and feet. The latter is more a problem than usual because I earlier managed to rip a bunch of the skin off my toe when I tripped on the stairs, and so my toe is less than pleased and isn't putting up well with the usual dirt and water nonsense I subject it to as a matter of daily living.

playlists

Am making playlists to burn into CDs to send to Katy, who finally mentioned that yes, she sometimes gets tired of her CDs.
Her most recent letter contained this somewhat disturbing paragraph (Iraq, apparently, has beautiful sunsets):

... I usually take the long, scenic walk back to my room and watch the sun go down, the birds play, and just try to pretend I'm not in Iraq. It's my spirit calming walk, (even though I got to walk by one of the craters where a rocket hit yesterday-- it's comforting to know they're not really trying to hit anything. And it's the first in a couple months, thank goodness.)

Yes, the punctuation is hers so don't edit it. I didn't edit it. See how good I am?

So far, I've managed to complete one reasonable-length playlist that'll fit onto an audio CD. It's a "Best Of" compilation of the collected works of Roger Clyne, incorporating both his Refreshments stuff and his more recent Peacemakers stuff.
( track list )

Dave, in the meantime, has utterly shamed me by making a fabulous playlist (as he does tend to do) on the theme "blues-pop". (His working title is just "the sand" because that's where he's sending it.) He is a true playlist maestro, attentive to the smallest details of tone and transition, mood and tempo, and so forth, and is much better than me at distinguishing between songs he likes and songs that fit.
( track list )

Yes, I've posted like twelve times today, I know. And no, I still haven't finished the smut. I just can't concentrate enough on it when Dave's in the room. Actually I've done virtually no writing thusfar in this mini-vacation, which is tragic. Maybe Dave will take a nap or cease being so fascinating tomorrow. (Maybe he'll wash dishes. He's finally realized that my tolerance for filth is now greater than his.)