Everyday Stupidities

Hey there. Sorry about the delay in blogging, but plenty of stuff has happened in the last week and while I've probably had the time to sit down and write I've had other things to attend to. Let's ignore that last full week of March because there's not much to say about it, so starting with one week ago...

• Monday (3/31) I got a call at 8:05 a.m. from my agency, saying not to go to work. My contract was terminated a couple weeks early. My agent seemed disappointed that I wasn't all busted up about it, but a) we all knew the end was coming and when, b) I was already aware that I wasn't going to be sticking around there since the new agency for PleaseGoAway didn't invite me to come join them, c) she'd already told me a week or two earlier that she doesn't have anything new for us yet. No flowers please, I'm rather enjoying being able to get 8 hours of sleep a night and have finally been able to move forward with home projects [ugh, did I just use the phrase "move forward with"?!] that have been avoided over weekends.

• Tuesday (4/1) I updated my résumé and submitted it to a friend (hi Greg!) to pass along to his present job's people, as he'd wanted me to do for a couple months. Of course I haven't heard anything back from those people a week later, but my my résumé has now been updated so I can do good things with it... eh, next week, I'm busting out some home projects this week. Starting with cleaning and priming the empty ceiling space where the soffet had been (see image in previous entry), and applying wallboard joint compound over the wonky fissure between sections of wall (apparently that soffet was put up before the drywalling was complete?). I decided not to clean and prime the wall part of this juncture just yet, only spackle over that fissure, because the window casement was put in so bad that we're going to have Paige's brother, a general contractor, have a look to see what can be done to make that whole space prettier first.

• Wednesday (4/2) I attended to applying texture to the ceiling section then hours later giving it a coat of bright white paint so this span would match the rest of my new ceiling. It's not an absolutely perfect match but it's also not dead obvious from a distance that there was something different here. Not much thought has been given to what new light fixture should go here yet.
• Thursday (4/3) I bought a reciprocating saw, a Black & Decker 'Firestorm' 8.5 amp for $50 at Lowe's. This allowed me to finally trim down the tops of those fenceposts I erected last year and put on the pretty caps (see image at the right of the first couple paragraphs). And while I was at it, I tried to level out the boards on the fence I replaced long ago due to a tree going through the fence, and my aim wasn't quite true *sheepish grin* but that's how life goes. That may be the neighbor's fence, technically, but I paid for those boards and I can screw 'em up if I want.

• Friday (4/4) was my wife's day off so we went up to Bellevue to scope out Crate & Barrel and IKEA. We still haven't bought the buffet or cabinet we were looking at in a catalog, but after much roaming we're now pretty certain that if we're gonna get that piece of furniture we're going to get it from Crate & Barrel because no one else seems to have one that fits the space we intend to put it in, looks as good, or is as well priced. Of course, we'd like to have a word with whomever is in the design department about how the white ones have brushed nickel hardware and the black ones have copper -- when what we want is black with brushed nickel. I suppose this is why they make paint?

• Saturday (4/5) and Sunday (4/6) were spent on a surprise project. When the house was built in 1959, back when that section of the house was a garage, there was a door between the utility room and the kitchen. Previous folks took out the door and slopped paint over the frame, but it still looks like an old doorframe, complete with bolt hole filled with bathroom caulk. (Crackheads!!) So I bought some drywall and taped corners, and spent all of Saturday cutting those to size and putting them in place. By the end of Saturday I had mudded the corners into place. Sunday saw me apply two layers of wallboard joint compound, sand things smooth, and put a coat of primer over the spackle so it'll be ready (after a light dash of orangepeel texture) when we get around to painting the kitchen. Here's the Before & After:
I don't really remember yesterday, Monday, other than applying for unemployment (which took all of one minute, updating the state's website with that last job, because I was re-opening my claim from last October) but what I should have been doing, and will hopefully do today, is run a Swiffer through the house! Seems the sanding I did when I got the drywall strips up in the doorframe so the edges would be flush with the wood, then the sanding I did once all the spackle over the drywall was ready, produced a rediculous quantity of white dust that has drifted down onto every surface within a twenty foot radius (I say "radius" because this includes the far corner of the livingroom, on the other side of the kitchen wall, somehow). Gypsum doesn't taste so bad, if you wondered.

That's the update on me. Next time I'll have stupid things to report.