Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Sunday, August 30, 2009 Stopped Up On some level, I’ve known for a while that I was just going to have to rip out the entire bathroom ceiling and put up a new one. In fact, the only thing stopping me was that as much as I'm confident that I can do it, it's not something I want to do on an annual basis. But let me back up. To June, in fact, when I first tried to call the contractor who built the addition to ask him, politely, why the fuck is water coming through the top of the piece of house you put on? After getting his voice mail a few days in a row, I simply assumed he was on vacation. When his vacation stretched into August and his office number got disconnected and his Web site disappeared from the Internet, I began to be concerned that he wouldn't be returning in a time frame that would work for me, i.e., before the house fell down. By this time I had things in motion with our insurance agent, and was looking to hire another contractor to do, well, whatever needed to be done. Here's the timeline. Monday morning: Insurance adjuster visits. Checks out the internal damage, climbs around on the roof, advises us to get a contractor this week or it might not be fixable. The good thing about something not being able to fix something is that then you don't have to fix it, but Trash doesn't see it that way. That day I rent a ladder that's tall enough to allow me to climb up and clean out the gutters, because I don't really have any other ideas. In the afternoon I am felled by one of my rare but language-center-debilitating migraines, and take to my bed after I realize that I am needing to sound words out loud in order to understand them. Later regret not attempting to write an entry in that state. Tuesday: Dude from contractor specializing in water damage repair shows up in the morning. Gives everything a very thorough inspection, including waving an infrared camera around the walls and ceilings to see how wet it is all up in there. Answer: saturated. He invites me up on the roof (using the rented ladder I haven't returned yet) to show me what he's found: of the four vents, pipes, stacks, and what-not poking up out of that half of our roof, one or two of them may not be sealed all that great. The path marked by the cool, blue-green areas of the infrared display seems to bear this out. Explaining how the infrared camera works, he asks of I've seen Predator. I lie and say I have rather than admitting that most of my experience with heat imagery is through the night-vision cameras on Big Brother. He tells me to get "blackjack." "To hit my original contractor with?" I ask. No, it's basically roofing tar that comes in a tube you can stick in a caulking gun and then use to seal cracks in your roof. I go get two tubes of the stuff. That evening I walk around on the roof laying down neat lines of blackjack until my caulking gun breaks and the metal rod pierces the butt end of the tube. Fortunately the stuff is too thick to spill properly, and I'm able to use the rod to smear stuff where it needs to go. I lay on thick layers of pitch with a primitive tool. I feel like a pirate. Better still, I'm 95% sure that I've plugged the leak. I'd haul a lawn sprinkler up there to be sure, but since the inside is still wet, that wouldn't necessarily establish the fact. I could give it a few days, but I have to have the ladder back before then. For the first time all summer, I find myself hoping it'll rain really hard in about a week. In the meantime, I climb down off the ladder. Fail to die. Wish the drying equipment would hurry up and work. Through this all, even though it's a pain in the ass, there's the relief of knowing that I've finally taken steps to address the problem, even if I don't know where those steps lead. I no longer look at that wet, rotting area of the bathroom ceiling with a sense of helpless dread. In fact, I no longer look at it at all, because I've already torn it down. What's that? Oh, did I not tell you about the "drying equipment?" I'll get to that next time. Hint: it's not a towel. posted by M. Giant 7:59 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Thursday, August 27, 2009 Heads Up Oh, hey, I owe you an apology. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned we were having some new water damage on our main-floor bathroom ceiling, but I never got around to taking or posting a picture. I'ma take care of that now. Just to bring you up to speed, here's what it looked like this past winter, after I scraped away everything that was loose enough to come off with a putty knife:  And here's what it looked like after I had put on a few coats of drywall compound to try to patch it up:  And here's what it looked like as of about seven o'clock tonight:  And just for comparison, here's a photo from a similar angle to the first one:  It's a long story, and I promise I'll tell you the whole thing (if only to give myself a week or two off of having to come up with new post topics), but this week I learned another great thing about telecommuting: if you want to work a few hours at night and then put on a mask and goggles and gloves and permanently fuck some shit up in the middle of the next business day, nobody really seems to mind. You think I could have gotten away with this at the office? Just the amount of sweating I did alone would have gotten me written up. Stay tuned. Lots of time doing manual labor means lots of writing in my head, you know. posted by M. Giant 8:41 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:If you need someone to run camera while you're doing all of this work, I'll be glad to whip up some girly drinks and head over. This looks like fun. I'll bet there's lots of swearing as well!
By Tuesday, August 25, 2009 Schoolhouse Rock of Ages This summer, I've been thinking a lot about the kinds of amazing feats people were able to pull off in decades past despite not having the technologies and capabilities available to us today. I mean, yeah, the moon landing, sure, but what about those old Schoolhouse Rock cartoons that get stuck in your head FOR LIFE? On the one hand, I know I'm dating myself with this, but on the other hand, I also know that there plenty of people reading this right now who watched Saturday morning cartoons on ABC and to this day cannot count by fives, recite the Preamble to the United States Constitution, or recall the definition of a noun without having one of those insidious tunes go through your head, 36 years after they were first aired. Or maybe it's just me. M. Edium has watched a lot of different kinds of "educational" videos, but among his favorites are his three "Schoolhouse Rock" tapes: "Grammar Rock," "America Rock," and "Science Rock." He doesn't have "Math Rock" yet, which is why I suspect he gets frustrated with numbers. We'll have to fill in that gap soon; how can he grow up to be an astronaut without "My Hero, Zero?" Obviously some of these hold up better than others, both in our memories and upon viewing as adults. In the age of Pixar, the animation looks beyond primitive, like cave drawings on a whiteboard; and most of the songs are only "rock" in the loosest sense of the word. Still, I defy you to watch this and not get it stuck in your head: Plus these days, Bill wouldn't be a trim roll of paper, but a giant brick lumbering around the capital, or better yet, pulled around by that kid in his Radio Flyer. By the way, interesting fact about that geeky little wonk: he grew up to be Josh Lyman. True story. As a writer, I obviously have a soft spot for Grammar Rock, and I don't really care to admit how much of my knowledge of the parts of speech I owe to these things. "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly" has a jingle that's almost catchy enough to make up for its suicidal business model; I don't know how old I was when I realized that Handel hadn't ripped off "Interjections;" and "Verb" starts with the priceless line, "I get my thiiing in action," which is not only a handy mnemonic but a surefire pickup line. An unwise attempt to resurrect the series was made many years later, with "Busy Prepositions," a total departure from the old style of animation, with a terrible song and a cast of creepy-ass bugs. Would have been better to stay dead. But at least it ended with "The Tale of Mr. Morton," a sweet little ballad about what subjects and predicates have to do with social anxiety syndrome. Although the animation is a little more advanced than back in the day (color backgrounds!) the only other thing that gives this away as a product of the 90s is the goateed hipster dad who lives nearby. A much better validectory to wrap up the series. Not that I’m wrapping it up here. I’ll have more to say in the next few entries. Be sure to prepare by digging up your old DVR recordings from the 1970s. Or noise-canceling headphones, for your own self-preservation. Your choice. posted by M. Giant 8:05 PM 7 comments 7 Comments:Conjunction junction, what's your function?
By MathRock that kid. "Three is the Magic Number" was awesome even before someone borrowed it for a rap song, and "Figure Eight" will haunt you for days.
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Don't forget History Rock! Rockin' and a rollin', splishn' and a splashin', over the horizon, what it could it be?
By Elbow room, elbow room!
By What you're calling "History Rock" is the same as "America Rock." The "Splishin' and a splashin'" song is on "America Rock," as is "Elbow room."
By Our six year old LOVES the Schoolhouse Rock DVDs. I must admit we enjoy watching them with her and find it amusing to hear her walking around the house singing them to herself.
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Gosh, remember the anticipation after the quick "Schoolhouse Rocky" jingle as you'd wait to see which cartoon was actually going to run? And sometimes it would be a *new* one?! Damn, we're old.
By Sunday, August 23, 2009 I Want to Believe There's something I've been wondering about lately. With the advent of cameraphones, there are more people walking around prepared to take photographs and videos on the spot than ever before. And the Internet allows those photographs and videos to be disseminated widely, and quickly. All of which raises an obvious question: why isn't there more proof of the existence of flying saucers? I was a lot more into this in the nineties. I dragged Trash to Roswell, read the book about it on the plane home from Albuquerque, and talked like a semi-serious true believer. Once I even met Glenn Dennis, although that was more by accident than anything else. But eventually I lost interest in it, even to annoy Trash. The timing coincided with when The X-Files got stupid, I suspect. But now, the majority of the populace is equipped to record incontrovertible proof of alien visitors at any given time. Why haven't they (assuming, of course, that they're not all like me and do a shitty job of keeping their phones cleaned out so if something happens they need to record they can record it instead of getting stuck looking at that maddening "No Memory" icon). What gives? And yes, I know I can find lots of examples on Flickr or YouTube, but all of those are followed by not discussions of what it all means in a geopolitical, strategic, or even philosophical sense, but how and why they're faked. The real thing should have shown up on the evening news by now. Not that I watch the evening news, but I'm sure The Daily Show would cover it, too. But it hasn't happened, and it can only mean one thing. I suppose it's time to give up and accept the truth. I am nearly forty, after all. I have a kid. I need to be a responsible person, not turn into some old crank who goes off chasing aliens based on some wild theory. And even if I weren't, it all points to one inescapable conclusion. The aliens have technology to help them sense and avoid all types of cameras. Wily fuckers. posted by M. Giant 7:57 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Followed you over from Twitter.
By Thursday, August 20, 2009 Scrat's Pantry I don't know if it's the cool summer we've had, or what, but there's been an unusual number of acorns falling on our property the last couple of weeks. In fact, it might even be an irrational number. I could blame it on Squirrel Goodnut, but we haven't actually seen him for a while. Yes, M. Edium pretty much called every squirrel he saw Squirrel Goodnut, even ones that were normal-sized. Those used to be called "Squirrel Goodnut's Tiny Baby Cousin," but since the original has been missing ever since it either turned into a raccoon, fell off a branch and busted its fat ass, or got so large it collapsed into a singularity, the other squirrels have had to fill the void. Which is a bit like placing a small pouch of sand on a couch to disguise the fact that it has just been vacated by Jabba the Hutt.. So I guess it's just as well that all squirrels have been renamed Scrat, after the saber-toothed squirrel in the Ice Age movies who's like a Harold Lloyd character, except that he actually falls. I think I'll just blame Scrat. After all, it was he who was eating acorns in the tree directly above me a few weeks ago while I was trying to work outside on my laptop. I'm here to tell you that he has horrible table manners. Maybe he wouldn't have to spend so much time searching for acorns if he didn't drop entire halves of them onto my keyboard, causing the insertion of seeveral r4andom, charac ters.. But that was just the beginning. This past weekend, we spent most of the morning raking up acorns, acorn shells, acorn fragments, and acorn clusters, as well as sweeping them off the deck, fishing them out of the kiddie pool, and combing them out of our hair. The next day we saw that we shouldn't have bothered, because it looked like we hadn't. But even before that, we had to clear a bunch out of the garden plot. Even if we didn't mind the risk of all our vegetables getting crowded out by a new oak tree, the acorns themselves were becoming an impenetrable carpet. Just as we were wondering why there seemed to be a greater concentration of them in the garden than in the rest of the yard, an angry chittering from next door and twenty feet above cleared it up. This was Scrat's stash. Not that figuring that out slowed us down any. We just kept right on, raking double fistfuls out of there and tossing them into the grass. I didn't know a squirrel could make some of those noises. In fact, if I'd been able to concentrate on listening to them without their being drowned out by M. Edium hollering, "SCRAT, QUIT SCOLDING US!" I would be able to curse in squirrel quite fluently right now. We've cleared it out a few times since then, usually accompanied by M. Edium howling further protests to the trees above, whether they're inhabited at the moment or not. I'm okay with this, honestly. He'll be five in October, and that's a little old to still be thinking of neighborhood vermin as adorable friends out of a Disney movie. If all goes well, by this time next year he'll be shooting at them. posted by M. Giant 7:26 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:Tuesday, August 18, 2009 The Next Level I've written before about how much I suck at Grand Theft Auto III,, but I don't think I took into account that if I spent more time on it and really practiced and concentrated on completing missions, I could get so much worse at it. That's not to say I haven't completed any missions in the time since I told you about my previous failures. I've actually done several, although if I went back and counted, the actual number would probably be distressingly low. For a long time, I was stuck not being able to go any further in the game until I completed one of two missions. But I completed one of those, and now there are four missions I'm stuck on. That's progress. Big N'Veiny This is not an abrupt change of subject, but the name of the mission I've been stuck on the longest. In it, El Burro of the Diablos (or El Diablo of the Burros, I can never remember) assigns my character to follow a trail of his porn magazines around town, picking them up before the clock runs down. There are two challenges. One is that I start with 25 seconds on the clock. The other is that I have to do it with a van that steers like a shopping cart on a glacier. If you hit one of the stacks of magazines when you roll the van, it apparently counts, but that doesn't help you unless it's the last stack on the trail. Since I have never seen the last stack on the trail before running out of time, you can see why I'm stuck. The other four are missions that were unlocked after I completed one called "Sayonara Salvatore." I was stuck on that one for a long time, too, because Salvatore's goons would blow up my car with me in it whenever they spotted me, no matter what I was driving. I eventually discovered that the secret was to simply stay out of sight and out of trouble and wait for Salvatore to expire of natural causes. Paparazzi Purge The goal here is to get rid of a tabloid photographer who's taking shots of a Yakuza princess from a motorboat in the bay. What I'm supposed to do is steal a police boat and sink the reporter's boat using the built-in cannons. What usually ends up happening is the reporter gets away. Upon returning, though, I discovered something fun: when you dock the boat, you can actually drive it entirely up onto the dock! But then I fell in the water and died. Kenbu But-Out It took me a while to figure out how to steal a cop car. It's hard to get away clean with one of those, because cops don't like being stolen from. My method is to try to get in the passenger side, then when the cop comes around to punch me, I run around to the driver's side and drive off, sometimes not even falling off a bridge. Getting the car rigged with a bomb and parking it outside the police station is easy enough, but the Liberty City Police Department, who don't care about any moving violations less serious than squishing pedestrians, stealing a car, or crashing into them where they can see you do it (and they quickly get bored of chasing you even for those) suddenly get real persistent when you blow a hole in the side of their HQ and drive off with a suspect in their paddywagon. And they way they keep chasing and crashing into me makes it hard to find the Pay & Spray (the place where you can get a car disguised to shake off the cops, which I can never find anyway). Eventually I rehearsed the getaway route so I could find it again, which worked -- except the Pay & Spray won't disguise a stolen paddywagon! Fuckers. So I did what anyone would do: crossed the bridge to Portland, where in addition to swarming cops I also had to deal with Chinese Triads and Italian Mafiosos who have orders to shoot me on sight. The mission ended shortly thereafter. Uzi Rider To be fair, I've only attempted this mission twice, so it might not be as difficult as I think. What happens is I get into a crappy old station wagon with a couple of militant Rastafarians, drive back over to Portland (listening to Reggae the whole time, which I hate), and try to track down and kill a bunch of Diablos (or Burros, as the case may be) on behalf of the Jamaican Bobsled Team or whatever. The problem is that the guy I'm driving with wants me to 1) stay with the car and 2) not wreck it. Well, which is it, mon? I'm no good with guns in this game, so vehicles are my weapon of choice. Maybe next time I'll try to figure out how to drive his station wagon up into a touring coach, which I will then use to squash Diablos/Burros. But maybe I don't want to complete this mission, because if the Diablos/Burros get as mad at me as the Triads and the Mafia are, will I ever get to finish Big N'Veiny? In the end, it all adds up to a vicious cycle from which there is only one possible escape: buying Rock Band II. posted by M. Giant 3:08 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:No! Don't go buying Rock Band anything. Your entries about GTA are really bringing me back. I love that game. Wish I still had my PlayStation so I could go back in time. My biggest problem was driving. It would say go right, I'd turn left. I'm not a big drive under pressure kind of guy I guess. Oh, and don't get me started on driving with a gun in my hand...
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Wow, that sound frustrating, but enjoyable to read. I'm just a lurker, but thought maybe you could use a link to some cheats that will help you out.
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I have been working on this game--with no cheats--forever. I am at the final mission, but don't have the money to even start it, so I have to go back and do the missions I didn't want to do.
By Sunday, August 16, 2009 I Said What? Every once in a while, you see a news story about someone doing something dumb or ill-advised, and after you get done laughing, maybe part of you thinks, "Well, that could have been me." That was not the case with the story I'm about to share with you. There are many reasons I will never find myself in this situation. For one, I am not a Catholic archbishop and am highly unlikely to ever become one, barring some pretty cataclysmic life changes. For another, I am not in the habit of having to defuse parishioners who bring priest-abuse allegations. I wish I could say that is one of the reasons I am not a Catholic archbishop, but this turned out to be just an unexpected bonus of my non-archbishopric. Thirdly, I admit that the last eighth or so of the year 2004 passed in something of a blur for me, but I am confident that I never said to anyone, "Go to hell, bitch," because I've never said that to anyone at all. And I am even more confident that if I had said it, dealing with an angry parishioner, as an archbishop of the Catholic Church, I would have REMEMBERED IT. What part of it does he not remember? Is he in the habit of saying " go to hell, bitch" on a regular basis? If so. I might give him a pass. I fully admit that I could certainly never remember all the times in the past five years that I've used phrases like "It's nice to meet you" or "Good morning" or "No bedtime stories unless you eat your dinner." Or maybe it's the particular bitch he was instructing to go to hell. He must encounter scores of them every day, doing the Lord's work. How can he be expected to remember everyone he speaks to, hears confession from, counsels, blesses, or, in this case, damns? Or perhaps it's the exact choice of words that slipped his mind. He doesn't want to say for certain he said "Go to hell, bitch" when he may have said something entirely different, like "Fuck off, cow" or "Eat a dick, slag." You don't want to commit to an exact phrase. Whatever the case, what disappointing behavior for a spiritual leader. You'd expect an archbishop to be, at worst, arch. Which is why archbishop is the only rank I would want to hold. Unfortunately, you don't get to skip ahead to that. I checked. You know what they told me when I called and asked? "Go to hell, bitch." Apparently it's some kind of liturgical phrase or something. posted by M. Giant 8:35 PM 5 comments 5 Comments:
"Go to hell, bitch." Apparently it's some kind of liturgical phrase or something."
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Also laughing like an idiot. I have so many questions though!! Was this during an exorcism? Might be ok. Did he pronounce it be-yotch? Might be ok if he wasn't a middle aged white guy in a hat. Do we know if this alleged woman was particularly unfriendly? Might be ok in that instance, as I use that phrase all the time (though I've never been mistaken for a clergyman - Jesus, yes, but not a clergyman). Was this phrase quoted from some some lyric? Might be ok in that instance, also.
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To be semi-fair to the guy, it was 1am outside his house by a woman who he had a restraining order against.
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I should also point out that the way the Victorian Diocese has been handling these kind of cases has certainly been unhelpful as well.
By Used to read your blog every day, but life got busy, and now it's been a few years. So I pop in today and I am rewarded with "non-archbishopric"! Awesome! Reminds me of Fritz Leiber's referral to a seven eyed magi as "the septinocular one." If Trash ever needed to hear it, you do have fans, and they are loyal, and appreciative.
By Thursday, August 13, 2009 Movie Malfunction Last week, M. Edium and I walked to the video store and rented Ice Age. While Trash was out at a social librarian thing, M. Edium and I watched it on a portable DVD player. He enjoyed it very much. In between gales of laughter, he told me -- and this may not be an exact quote, mind you -- "Dad, this cracks my shit up." Sunday morning, while Trash was at the farmers market, M. Edium and I attempted to watch some of the extras on the bonus disk. Except the bonus disk wouldn't play on his portable DVD player, no matter how well I cleaned it. It also wouldn't play on the big one hooked up to the TV downstairs. Instead I got a big error message on the TV screen, complete with a long, zero-heavy string of digits. The problem was clearly not with the players, but with the disk itself, as I discovered when I held it up to the light a certain way. Irregular areas of the silver reading surface had been stained with a shimmery orange. I may not be an electronics genius, but I know a virus when I see one. Later, when M. Edium and I were going out for errands, it occurred to me that maybe we could stop by the video store and exchange the defective disk for a good one. I mentioned this to him in the car on the way, and he said, "Yay!" That is an exact quote. But then, when we got back to the shelves, I realized that the only 2-disk Ice Age set was the one I had in my hand. I was glad the store was Sunday-morning abandoned so I could talk to the one cashier while M. Edium wandered around, staying as far from the horror shelves as I could telekinetically keep him. The cashier didn't understand me, at first. She looked at the scratches on the back of the feature disk and said they might be the problem. I said, no, it was the bonus disk. She seemed confused. Why would anyone care about the bonus disk, let alone come back to get one that worked? It's like going back through the Burger King drive-through, wondering why your order of onion rings is missing the one French fry that's always in there. Or storming back to IKEA because your dresser kit only had three extra bolts that you didn't need. She literally said, "Nobody has ever tried to watch the bonus disk before." I'm not sure how she could say that with such authority. I do believe that nobody ever told her they'd tried to watch the bonus disk before. Or, more accurately, confessed to having watched the bonus disk before. Clearly it had at least been out of the case some time in the past, at least long enough for someone to have sneezed rust on it and caused that virus. And I freely admit that it was my fault for making it an issue in the first place. I'd been the one to ask M. Edium if he wanted to watch the short film about Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel who provided his biggest laughs. If it hadn't been for me, he never would have been let down at discovering that the Scrat extras had been eaten by malware. This is one of the dangers of having a parent who used to review DVD extras, I suppose. In the end, though I couldn't have been happier with the customer service I got at the store. The clerk swapped the half-defective Ice Age two-disk set for a DVD of its first sequel, at no charge and to M. Edium's enthusiastic approval. When I put this option to him, he said, and again this is not an exact quote, "Hell, yeah." Instead of a few more minutes of frozen wackiness, he got a whole other feature's worth. Now he's all up to speed to catch the second sequel, although that won't fit into our schedule until this weekend at the earliest, probably after it has already left theaters. Oh, well, he hates 3-D glasses anyway. In related news, Squirrel Goodnut is now known as Scrat. As are all neighborhood squirrels. He wanted to change Exie's name too, but I put my foot down. posted by M. Giant 8:17 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
"It's like going back through the Burger King drive-through, wondering why your order of onion rings is missing the one French fry that's always in there."
By Tuesday, August 11, 2009 All Wet Considering how one of the primary functions of a house is to keep the rain off, it's kind of upsetting how much free-range water has been getting in here this summer. It started, appropriately enough, with the water heater back on Memorial Day weekend. As I've already written, my dad had that fixed up and squared away within a matter of hours. I should have just called him on all the other issues that have come up. Like when we got deluged with rain in June. Remember the bathroom ceiling? I never did get that finished, because threecap season hit and then I hurt my putty-knife arm and I just never got back to it. Which turned out to be just as well, because as much as I know you shouldn't ever repair water damage without having dealt with the source of the damage, I guess I didn't feel it way down deep in my duodenum where it really counts. Maybe I thought that rule didn't apply to me. I got straightened out on that in a hurry when I discovered that after that June rain, a lot of the drywall compound I had painstakingly spread on the ceiling in early January had flopped into the tub. At least now I knew where the water was coming in: the upstairs bathroom, where the top layer of the wall against the ceiling was coming off like the label of a mayonnaise jar, if you expose that jar to as much water as was apparently leaking in through the roof. Ever since I made this discovery, I've been trying to call the contractor that did our addition three years ago that includes this section of roof, but apparently he doesn't exist any more. One wonders why. Or like in July, when the main drainpipe that runs from both bathrooms down to our basement started leaking. Apparently this was an ongoing problem, but this whole time I'd been thinking that the dampness there was just seepage from external moisture, or maybe condensation from the deep freeze, or an extension of the leaking that was affecting the bathrooms upstairs or, given the proximity to the litter boxes, just "bad aim." But then we started noticing that the puddle got bigger every time one of us took a shower, and the conclusion was unavoidable. On the bright side, it was something we could call a plumber about, and sure enough, the "master plumber" plugged the leak. After the second visit, with a second plumber. The first visit only made the puddle grow faster. I don't know why that's the only visit we had to pay for. Anyway, the worst part was cleaning up the damp sludge that clumpable cat litter turns into when the cats kick it out onto the damp floor. That shit is nasty. In fact, I left the litter boxes over by the laundry tub, in case that leak ever comes back. I never want to have to clean that crap up again. Which brings us to August. Finally, last week I gave up on getting the contractor to come out and fix the roof (and the walls, and the ceiling) and started putting things in motion with our homeowners insurance (maybe they can get the guy on the phone). That night, we got the biggest rainstorm we've had all year. I discovered that not as much of my repair attempts had fallen into the tub as I had previously thought, because the next morning, that's where the rest of the them were. Fortunately, the next day, we discovered that the cause of the problem might be a lot simpler than we thought. Looking up at that section of roofline, our next door neighbor spotted what looks like some young plant life sprouting from the gutter. I may not be qualified to fix a leaky roof, but even I can remove the beginnings of a new-growth forest from a gutter. As soon as I rent a 26-foot ladder, that is. Oddly enough, with a check promised by the insurance company and a possible remedy on the horizon, it took a load off my mind. And then, Sunday morning, I was downstairs with M. Edium when he said, "Uh-oh." The washing machine was running and apparently the laundry tub drain was clogged. As I tried to clear it out, several dozen gallons of dirty water spilled onto the floor. Right where the litter boxes were moved to when the drainpipe was leaking. I don't think I've ever looked forward to Labor Day so much in my life. posted by M. Giant 7:01 AM 4 comments 4 Comments:Wow, this blog is a really excellent cure for that itch to go out and buy a house. Labor Day is comin', my friend.
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I'd tell you to move to a semi-arid climate, but considering the weather patterns this summer, god alone knows where that might be.
By Suggestion is very nice but m it does not sure what will happened on tomorrow.
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Really nice post about All Wet.
By Saturday, August 08, 2009 How To Win Stuff and Influence Parents Thanks to everyonw for your tips on keeping our kitchen cloths clean. We've put them into effect, and haven't needed to wash one of them since, even after days of using them to clean everything from the counters to the cutting board to the refrigerator shelves to the cat's ass to the cutting board again. Our lives are so much more low-maintenance now. * * * In the last couple of months, M. Edium has entered the "I want" stage. Looking at catalogs or newspaper ads or even just stuff we're passing in the store, he was starting to cry out, "I want that," with alarming regularity. It's a good thing he wasn't in charge of the money, because during this period he had the marketing resistance of Michael Jackson. And don't tell us to just keep him away from that stuff, because it doesn't work. He just invents stuff he wants, like when he spent a week asking us for an inflatable talking fuzzy Auto from Wall-E to hang from his bedroom ceiling. After a while, he got the message that we weren't just going to buy him everything his avaricious eye alighted upon, so he started saying, "I want that for my birthday." Even if his birthday isn't until October, he apparently prefers hearing "we'll see" to "no," not having yet reached the age where one figures out that "we'll see" means "no." The thing is, though, we'd never be able to remember all the crap he's asked for even if we wanted to (which we don't). His fourth Christmas, the thing he wanted most was a remote-control excavator. For months, it was all he asked for. It was so easy to remember, I even remember it to this day, long after the remote control excavator itself fell silent. But now, sitting here with my fingers on the keyboard doing nothing but trying to recall all the crap he's asked for for his birthday and/or Christmas and/or our birthdays the last few months, it's all an indiscriminate blur of Transformers, Star Wars toys, Legos, Star Wars Legos, Lego Transformers, Star Wars Transformers, and Star Wars Lego Transformers. The nice thing about that is that I could go to the store right now and pretty much pick out something at random and have it be something he asked for. But since I'm not going to do that, it just got really annoying. It was like living with a walking, talking, Amazon wish list. One we had to give food to, no less. Ultimately, Trash and I both hit the wall at the same time, and we gave up "we'll see" in favor of "will you please STOP IT?!" And to his credit, he's pretty much complied. Not just because we asked him to, I don't think, but because he gets it. He understands that his acquisitiveness is getting on our nerves. So now he'll say, "Daddy, do you want a Lego Clone Trooper Drop Ship for Christmas?" So when he went on a road trip with my parents to the Oshkosh Air Show last week, our biggest worry wasn't that he'd get lost, or hurt, or deafened, or even sunburned. It was that he'd scam some expensive present out of Nana and Grandpa. I warned all three of them (the latter two not as much) against letting that happen, but the evening they came home, I could see as they pulled into the driveway that M. Edium was holding a big box. With a large Lego logo on it. And an even larger picture of Darth Vader's TIE fighter in Lego form. When he got out of the car, M. Edium told us, "I got it for being good!" We were happy to see him, and wouldn't have made a big deal out of it anyway; grandparents have the prerogative to spoil their grandkids, after all. In fact, we told him we were proud of him for being well-behaved enough to have earned such a substantial gift. It wasn't until a couple of days later that we learned the real story. My dad called while we were camping, to make sure we had survived the previous night's rainstorm and to ask if the TIE fighter had been assembled yet. It hadn't, because we found that M. Edium's good behavior during the camping trip had a direct correlation with how long we were willing to wait to help him with it after we got home. My dad told me a little bit about when they'd gotten it, during a stop when they were almost to our house near the end of their trip. "Don't tell mom," M. Edium had said afterward. It seemed he was suffering buyer's remorse without actually having bought anything. My parents asked him why not. M. Edium was savvy enough to realize he couldn't tell them he might get in trouble, without risking getting in trouble with them. So he came up with another reason: "It'll just confuse her." It should be clear by now to regular readers that as long as common expressions and sayings are not involved, Trash is not easily confused. My parents realized as much, and after they were done laughing, asked M. Edium what he meant. That line of questioning convinced him that his reasoning wasn't going to hold up, which is how he landed on this: "I'll tell them I got it for being good." He's good, all right. He's known for a long time that violent tantrums and screaming won't get him what he wants. He's known for almost as long that persistent whining and nagging are no more effective (at least on an intellectual level; there are still times when he just can't stop himself, just like all of us). As for lying, he's a pretty late bloomer and hasn't figured out how to do it yet. I think he gets that the best way to win us over is to explain in reasonable terms why he wants or doesn't want something. If it makes sense to us, he knows we'll listen. But sometimes even that doesn't work, and failing that, there's something that will get him his way, every time, no matter what, especially with his mom. Whether it's getting to stay up a little later, having another M&M, or being alloed to borrow the car. And that's a good scam. Not one that actually fools us, mind you, but one that makes us laugh. Some parents may reward the wrong kind of behavior and end up raising liars, whiners, or overbearing tyrants. I think we might be in danger of raising a funny con man. Oddly, I'm pretty much okay with that. The TIE fighter was built the very next morning. posted by M. Giant 8:33 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:
For the record, in our house, 6 was the age at which we'll see became translatable as no, as did maybe, perhaps and possibly.
By Very nice way of keeping record
By Wednesday, August 05, 2009 Timber Here's a conundrum for you: if a tree falls in the forest and lands on a blogger, does anyone notice when he stops updating? Let me back up a little. Last weekend, Trash and M. Edium and I went on our second camping trip of the summer, which is something we hardly ever do. We went to a place that's new for us: a sprawling state park on Lake Wissota in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where Leinenkugel's practically falls from the sky. The trees there were like nothing we've seen before. Much of the park's square mileage was given over to these dense pine forests where the trunks were so close together and the canopies so intertwined that looking into them at midday was like looking twelve hours into the future. Other parts of the park were dominated by taller pines that were devoid of branches until about forty feet above the forest floor. The effect created by these trees in large numbers was almost as striking, as bare, silvery trunks seemed to recede into the distance like in a hall of mirrors. It was this latter variety of tree that our surprisingly secluded little campsite was surrounded by. They didn't go as far back, but they came right up to us. One of them was where Trash hung our garbage bag, and the clothesline was strung between the next two trees over. The first night, when M. Edium was asleep in the tent, and Trash and I were about to go in and join him, we stood outside for a moment listening to those tall pines creak gently in the breeze, unable to see a single one of them in the pitch black. If you've read The Road, you know what this auditory scene reminded me of: the part where Man and Boy are bedding down in the woods, and they hear the trees starting to fall around them. It's become a normal thing at that point in the story: nuclear winter is killing them all, so there's no point in their continuing to stand. I started to relate this to Trash, who said, "Do you really want to bring this up right before we go to bed?" Because she sucks at getting to sleep at the best of times, I didn't. But to myself, I quietly recalled how pleased we were upon our arrival, when we saw the volume of fallen wood. In case you're not a camper, we love fallen trees because anything that's dead or on the ground is free firewood, as opposed to anything alive or standing, which isn't. Those trunks leaning against the ground at a crazy angle had looked like a windfall (literally) in the daytime, but now, when I thought of them, they seemed a bit ominous. Still, that was of less concern to us than the ring around the moon, which told us it would rain before morning came. It certainly did that, but we were safe and dry in the tent, and Trash tells my I slept resolutely through it, although I seem to remember hearing the drops clattering against the nylon. As for my feet being wet, I'm pretty sure I just dreamed that. The next day was, if still a little damp, perfect camping weather; not too hot, not too sunny, and the ground, tarps, and folding gazebo covering our picnic table were drying rapidly. We had a marvelous day, exploring the park and eating stuff off of open flames and making plans to explore Chippewa Falls the following day on our way home. Some time after eight, after dinner had been consumed and the dishes put away and the "pre-packing" for the next morning done and the preliminary battle lines being drawn for M. Edium's bedtime, Trash happened to look up at the tree that had served as our garbage-hook. "Was it doing that before?" she asked me. By "that," she meant, "leaning at a ten-degree angle from perpendicular." "I don't think so," I said. We joked about it a little, like, good thing we didn't hang our garbage bag on the other side of the trunk, the side it was leaning toward, I don't think it could take the extra weight, har har, and oh, when it goes, it'll miss our tent by a good six inches, easy, hee hee. And then we looked up again and it was leaning at a fifteen-degree angle. Eight degrees doesn't seem like much, if you're just looking at a protractor. But think about what that means with a seventy-foot-tall pine. You can be standing right at the base of the tree -- noticing with a kind of oddly detached curiosity that a fat surface root pointing away from the direction of the lean has very recently snapped, while your wife says, "That must have been what that loud crack was last night." -- but then, if you want to stand under the crest of the tree, you have to walk over there. And when you do that, you're halfway to your tent. We debated staying the one more night, as originally planned. I even pulled the tent stakes out of the ground in hopes of being able to drag the whole thing clear. But try as we might, we couldn't balance the upside of enjoying another night in the tent and a Sunday of exploring Chippewa Falls against what seemed like an increasing likelihood of being crushed in our sleep. So with the sun already well below the trees and the daylight bleeding away, we got to work breaking camp. The usual division of labor, both on arrival and departure, is that Trash deals with the kitchen while I deal with the shelter. M. Edium was assigned to deal with his toys, set way off at the other end of the campsite, well out of any imaginable squish-radius. Deflating the air mattresses and rolling up the sleeping bags and packing up the equivalent of a hotel room inside a thirteen-foot-square nylon sack takes longer than you might think, so after a while I started just throwing stuff out onto the tarp that served as our front porch. While in there, I was uncomfortably aware of my vulnerable position if that thing decided to come down, even if Trash had time to shout a warning. Not only does our model not come with an ejector seat, but anyone who's ever drank too much beer around the campfire and finds themselves urgently needing to visit the head at four a.m. knows how easy it is to get out of a tent quickly. But the good news was that the tree seemed to have stopped moving. It was now leaning against the next tree over, like that skyscraper in Cloverfield.. Except now that tree was leaning as well, and since Trash had already taken the clothesline and the five kitchen towels on it down, there didn't seem to be much we could do about that. We did learn a couple of things. The first is that with both of us working together and as quickly as we could (with occasional help from M. Edium), we are able to break camp and get everything packed in (and on) Chao's truck in a little under an hour and a half. The second thing is that from the time we decided to pull up stakes and bail, it's about an hour and a half until full dark. We found ourselves very glad we always bring extra lanterns. After I had the canvas cargo carrier stuffed and strapped to the luggage rack (lopsided as hell, but secure), I made another circuit of the campsite with one of the lanterns, looking for anything we'd forgotten. Just for shits and giggles, I pressed both my hands against the tree trunk that was now leaning at a twenty-degree angle, just to see if I could rock it. I could, but I couldn't bring it all the way down. As to whether its angle had changed from my exertions, it was too dark to tell. We got out on the main road just as the final layer of dark mauve was fading to black in the west. Did we overreact? Maybe. That tree probably wouldn't have fallen that night, or the next morning, or even the next afternoon, after we were long gone. On the other hand, we were home by midnight on Saturday, giving us all of Sunday to unpack the truck and do any number of other things we might not otherwise have had time to do. Oh, and none of us were turned into pulp. I'm kind of curious about when it fell, though. If anyone happens to encounter a park ranger near Lake Wissota, ask him or her about that tree at site 110, would you? The one with our names on it. posted by M. Giant 7:51 PM 2 comments 2 Comments:I love Lake Wissota! Did you manage to go to the Leinie Lodge?
By
Sorry you had to cut your trip short, I grew up in Chippewa (the locals just call it Chippewa. Two syllables. Chip-wah.) and it really is a charming little town. Make sure to hit the ice cream store on the main street of town (Olson's, on Bridge Street) if you go back. It's expensive (by Chippewa standards at least), but worth it. And no, I'm not just saying that because I worked there in high school, years ago.
By Monday, August 03, 2009 Wipe This Okay, y'all, I'm doing one of those things I don't do that often: putting out a call for help. It's with a problem that seems minor, because it is. But it doesn't seem minor when I go to blow my nose and discover that my fingers smell like the Well of Souls. Before that clue sends your mind wandering off in entirely too filthy a direction, let me just explain what's going on: our kitchen washcloths get really stank. Okay, I guess that's still dirty, but in a different sense. It became a problem around the time M. Edium was born, I think, and we were wandering around the house in a sleepy haze all the time. Back then, a whiff of a damp kitchen cloth that smelled like old mushrooms could be useful for a jolt, but aesthetically it wasn't pleasant. Trash and I used to blame each other for not rinsing them and wringing them out after every use, but then we caught each other actually doing that, and the mystery deepened. Unfortunately, so did the stank odor. To this day, M. Edium is reluctant to have his face washed, probably because his sensitive nose was submitted too many times to being wiped down with the smell of wet mushrooms. And it's not like we don't wash them, with extreme regularity. Normally we have one or two cloths in active service at any given time, and none of them lasts more than a day before a now-habitual pre-wipe sniff sends it careering floppily onto the landing at the top of the stairs, which is the closest thing we have to a laundry chute. Then they go in the wash, and from there either the dryer or the clothesline, and then back to the drawer. Where they smell fine, if not April fresh, but the minute we take one out and get it wet it assaults us with a coming attractions preview of what it's going to be smelling like in about twelve hours. There was one nice reprieve from this phenomenon this past winter, during the period when our dishwasher was brokenA and we did three or four sinkfuls of dishes a day. During that time, our dishcloths were constantly clean and fresh-smelling, with no lingering odor aside from whatever flavor of Dawn we were using. We'd like to get back to that, but not enough to actually do our dishes manually again. So what's the solution? Switch to paper towels? Use nothing but those disinfectant wipes Trash loves so much? Let the crumbs build up on the counters until we can use a broom and dustpan? Or just wear noseplugs all the time? Admittedly, that last solution will also help me cut down on facial tissue use with my allergies and all, but I can't see Trash or M. Edium going for it. And throwing out all our dishrags and buying all new ones won't help, because it seems to affect them all equally, regardless of their age. But not the rest of our clothes, so we know the problem doesn't lie with our appliances. Suggestions welcome. Worst ideas will win the prize of a damp dishrag sent to your home address. posted by M. Giant 8:22 AM 20 comments 20 Comments:Try washing them with Oxyclean.
By Wash them with bleach. Dry thoroughly. And when you're done with them, but don't plan to do laundry immediately(!), hang them to dry somewhere, so they're not sitting wet in the bottom of a dark hamper. Oh, and wash your hamper out with bleachy water as well.
By
Wipe down your counters with a strong borax solution and soak the dishcloths in the same thing. You just have mold. Get that 20 Mule Team borax--it has a cool label!
By I second the Borax suggestion. It also works great if you add some to the laundry, it removes any and all odors. I just wash my dish cloths and towels in the washing machine with some soap and borax, comes out clean (and stink-free) every time.
By Can you wash them with your dishes in the dishwasher? (I don't have a dishwasher, so I don't know if this would work...)
By
We don't use wash cloths, but sponges, and put them in the dishwasher every time we run a cycle to disinfect them.
By We have a color-coded cleaning system in our house. One color is for sponges and washcloths used only for doing dishes, one color for cleaning counters/appliances in the kitchen, one color for the bathroom, one color for general house cleaning, and one color for people. Wash daily/after use using borax. Sort of anal, but it works like a dream and we never use paper towels anymore.
By
Where do you hang them after the rinse and wring? I found that my dish cloths get musty when I hung them over the center ridge thing between the two sinks. Now I hang them on the oven door handle so they get more air and actually dry out some between using.
By
1. As a previous commenter said, hang them up from the faucet or the side of the sink when after you use them and wring them out well.
By
Hang them to dry after a day's use, then put in the hamper once dry. Replace daily.
By After using them, rinse well with warm/hot water. Then rinse with cold water before hanging them to dry in a place where they get good airflow. Hanging them to dry while they're still warm and damp is an invitation to the bacteria that causes the stank.
By
washer, hot water, laundry detergent, NO fabric softener, 1 cup vinegar. Works great, saved all my towels from being replaced.
By You could try microwaving them (wet, of course) for about 3 minutes. That's supposed to cure moldy dish sponges.
By Our towels sometimes smell like that too and I think it is because we live in a hard water area - the soap doesn't wash out of them completely and then they smell once they get wet. I have tried using washing soda/soda crystals as well as washing powder in the wash for towels and dishcloths and it's really helped.
By Do you use hot water for laundry? if no that is partly why smells come back. I keep a squirt bottle of dilute bleach water on counter top and squirt the dish clothes with them before wringing and hanging to dry.
By Since you have a kid (and pets!), I'd forgo bleach, ammonia, and anything else toxic for vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. Those two sprayed on anything (first, vinegar, then peroxide) kill everything, including smelly bacteria. Then, like many others suggested, I'd rinse and wring out the washcloth and hang it on the faucet or oven handle to dry.
By Vinegar all the way! I had this exact problem. I agree with the vinegar in the washing machine suggestion; it also works to soak the things in a tub with a cup or two of vinegar for at least a couple of hours, and then wash. It honestly makes them like new, and is much healthier (for you and the world, I guess) than the bleach solution. Good luck! --Sarah
By
Like someone else said, I suggest one good scrub down of the counters/ wash of all dishrags with Borax. because of the kids and cats I wouldn't make it a regular part of the routing, but you want to make sure you really got everything out and start fresh.
By The same thing happened to me....we installed a water softener and uv filter and the problem was gone - COMPLETELY! (The uv filter was more for water quality than the rag-stench...from what I understand the water softener alone would've solved the problem.) Call a water system company and have them come and test your water 0 they should do this for free. If you have hard water that could be the reason.
By I'd borax the drawer where you keep the clean ones as well.
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