Not exactly sure why this text is being underlined... Ryan's laptop has some strange keys that make strange things happen, and I'm really not that good at figuring out kinks in formatting. I am, however, really good at figuring out how to make kitchen floors.
You have two boxes of floor boards. Each floor board is 19.3 cm across, 138 cm long. You are given the lengths of each wall (within 2-3 mm, since Ryan and I aren't the best with a tape-measure), but you need to compensate for floorboard expansion due to humidity by leaving a 9mm gap around the perimeter. To add to the chaos, you must not have any joints within 40 cm of one another (this means that where floorboards join on the short end must be staggered as you move across the floor, otherwise the seam will be weak and visible, so you can't follow the same pattern lengthwise).
It took us the whole day (we started around 10 am, and finished at 8pm). But I'm so proud of myself, and so confident in my newfound flooring skills, I want our landlord to buy a few more boxes of the stuff so we can do our bedroom. It'd be beautiful. There's only one problem. Closets. Closets add another 16 corners to the equation, where otherwise there'd be only 4. Curse them. CURSE THEM! But I think I'm up to the challenge, if Brian will fund my mad renovation streak. We'll see. This flooring stuff is on crazy sale - $1.09 per square foot. No better time to get the place looking awesome.
In other apartment news, our bathroom should be finished this week. The windows are going in tomorrow (Wednesday) and hopefully we'll finish the
tiling around them on Thursday. The toilet will be done while we're in New York for the weekend, watching Neil Young and some other guys that Ryan doesn't like. He told me they're pretty much the same guys as Buffalo Springfield, who I really like judging by that one song from the Forrest Gump soundtrack. I'm talking about Crosby, Stills and Nash. I'm more excited about seeing Kevin and Ellie, and using my fantastico tent - the concert is just gravy. Mushroom gravy. With cheese and sauteed onions, smothering a baked potato. Mmmmm...The final bit of apartment news is not so great. We killed a mouse-rat-thing last night. It's some sort of wierd hybrid animal... too big to be a mouse, and a loooooong, hairless tail, but a little cute face with round ears. I don't know. Maybe it was a baby rat, maybe a super-mouse. Whatever it was, it's dead now, but not before it chewed a hole in the wall behind the stove, and also chewed through our surround sound speaker wires. We snapped him/her up in a trap last night around 2:30 am. I felt bad about it for a little while, but really, it can't live in our house. It had to die. I've been watching lots of the show 24 lately (Kiefer Sutherland the counter-terrorist super-agent? saving America one torture-session at a time and loving it? if you aren't familiar, you should definitely get into it - it's so bad that it's good, and highly addictive). I figure all the torture and covert-operations to do bad things for the sake of the greater good has compromised my moral fabric a little. I find myself shouting at the tv for more violations of basic human rights and freedoms, all in the name of America the great. It's bizarre. So counter to my actual real-life political leanings, but yet it seems so straightforward on the show. Propaganda at its finest, let me tell you!
So with that, I've pretty much updated y'all on everything that is of significance in my life right now. I'm sure things will pick up once I remember I'm a grad student with a thesis to write, and stop poking around the apartment looking for distractions. We'll see, though. The sooner I put my nose to the grind-stone, the sooner I get to go home.
6 comments:
Hey Shauna and Ryan:
Great job - Daddy will be proud of you two!! I am too, but having Daddy bless your corner cutting abilities is way more prestigious than me - considering I have only "watched" the procedure be done, never actually having done it!!
And the bathroom is really taking shape too. Now, don't get too attached to the place - you are still coming home in the spring, aren't you??
Yes, thesis is calling. Remember when I had to do mine - I was cleaning and sorting the house...it is contagious...
Thanks for keeping me up to date on the rat/mouse thing. Check out the internet to identify it - I would guess mouse instead of rat - just a hunch.
Cool,
MOM
You are a renovation expert.
the other day I was cuttin brush around the apartment and I cut down some baby robins I tried to but them back up there but its true that their mother wont come back if they get moved I watched them all day. Then the next day I tried to feed them some milk with an eyedropper but I think baby robins can only eat regurgitated worm. Its really painful to think that I had to destroy their family to support mine as I was cutting that brush for my landlord and it really had to come down. But I think I would have left it there if I could go back in time, and Id say sorry kevin those are babies dont touch em. I guess Im just hopin someone can make me feel less shitty about this.During the night Im assuming a crow got those Robins which put an end to their suffering which is mebbe what I should have done but couldnt. I cant help but wonder if I could have saved them somehow.
Oh man, you shouldn't beat yourself up about it too much. It sounds like you cared for those little birds, and that is more than what most people would do.
I once rescued a baby mouse from my cat and since it was too little and injured to go free, I kept it in a cage and tried to feed it. It died two days later, and I felt terrible. But at least I tried, and it sounds like so did you.
I bet those little birds are thanking you from birdie heaven. And if you want to be practical, I bet that crow is thanking you as well. Hmm. The circle of life is a son of a bitch sometimes.
Awww, Rudy, it's one of those things. You are definitely sharing that story with the right people. My heart goes out to you. Sometimes I think that the life and death of everything is somehow connected, and our ability to think and rationalize and be logical and stuff not only puts us at an advantage over animals, it gives us a strange and artifical disconnection from something we are intrinsically linked to. Now, I don't want to get all metaphysical or silly, but when it comes down to it, my belief system incorporates the value of caring about the death of animals (hence the vegetarianism). I believe that if you cared for (and felt sorry for) the death of those little creatures, you have mitigated the effect somehow on a grander scale. By thinking about them with respect and care, you mitigate the cruelty. If nothing else, your mindset keeps the world a better and safer place for other babies (yours included) to grow up. You're doing good work.
thanks girls.
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