Home Ownership Year 1...Part 2

One of the biggest things I've learned is that there is a constant list of things that need to get done. And if anything is going to get done you have to do it yourself. There's no landlord you can call and no maintenance guy that's going to come do it. I personally like that. I've been waiting for a long time to start doing the things I watched my dad do growing up. I just didn't realize how long the list would be. Since we own the place, we can do whatever we want. So all those times I walk around thinking, "Gee, I really wish we had xxxx," means anything item just got added to the list. We didn't have a water spigot on the outside of the house. 1 trip to TrueValue, some masonry work, some copper pipe work, and several hours of sweaty work later we do. We don't like the size of our bedroom closet, that's on the list. No electrical outlet outside? List it. We don't like where the attic entrance is and the fact that we don't have a linen closet. List it. Cable TV wiring upstairs sucks. List it. The soundproofing b/t us and the neighbors isn't as good as we'd like. List it. The front and back yards don't look so good. List it. It just goes on and on like that. All the time. It's great that I get to do home improvement projects, I just wish the list wasn't growing so quickly. I just can't keep up. Granted I'm not the most motivated home improver you'll ever meet, so it's not like I'm killing myself everything weekend to knock things off the list. I like to use my weekend to relax, not busting my hump building closets over the stairwell.
I also suddenly feel like I'm a part of the community instead of just living somewhere. I want to get to know the neighbors. I follow the local town news. I make wild claims of becoming a fan of the high school football team (which I will do this coming fall!). I know stores and buildings and can notice when subtle things change and comment on it to myself. I'm not in the 'have you seen what they did to the old Davidson place' league yet, but maybe someday.
But all in all it's been great. It was just a great feeling to sign those papers and take those keys to your first house. It's a crushing blow when I look at the monthly mortgage statement and actually think about the number on it. It's big and it's only gets a wee bit less big every month.
Hmmm...this didn't end as insightful and memorable as I hoped it would. Oh well. Besides, I should probably get Hayley to help me label the circuit breakers while she's home and not doing anything work-related. Aka, cross something off of my list.
Done and done.

Home Ownership Year 1

Hayley and I are nearing our 1-year anniversary of buying our condo and I’ve been reflecting on everything I’ve learned over the course of that first year. Everything from failed projects to stunning victories, and there’s been plenty of both. So it’s time to start sharing some of those, probably over a few posts so none get too long. We’ll see. My short attention span might kill it after just 1.

Now that I have an actual yard (front AND back), I have a new appreciation for what goes into growing a nice carpet of green grass. As in, I haven’t quite gotten there even after all of my work to date. I’m far from a yard pro and didn’t really know anything about growing a decent yard when I started. And the former owner didn’t do me any favors by letting the entire front yard become nothing but crabgrass and the backyard become very thin and patchy (with a good dose of crabgrass). I have managed to significantly improve the backyard with constant re-seeding and watering, but resigned to just re-starting in the front. I raked out all of last year’s dead crabgrass, turned over the soil, and started from scratch. Now I’ve got a patchy collection of grass going up there, but at least it’s a start. It’ll probably be another year or 2 before it’s filled out and ready to battle weeds on its own. The back yard is slowly but surely getting better. There are still quite a few thing spots, but those are filling in little by little. I still need to rake out some dead weeds from last year to give the new grass a better shot at growing. Poor seeds can’t see any sun! And of course I spend lots of time pulling new weeds. Until the grass thickens up a bunch more it won’t be able to choke out weeds before they can get a foot-hold. But that gives me a great excuse to go outside and play in the grass on a sunny weekend afternoon. And I just scored a free electric lawnmower! Thanks again, FreeCycle Watertown! So now the taller weeds that could evade the “reel mower” don’t stand a chance. That means I’m much better equipped to prevent this year’s crop of crabgrass from going to seed.

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that every project takes at least twice as long as I/we think it will. Some of that is due to inexperience-driven estimation problems. Some is due to my still-growing pool of tools and skills. Growing up my dad instilled in me pretty much everything I needed, tool and knowledge, to tackle minor repair jobs and basic things. How to properly use pretty much any tool, painting, drywall repair, etc. But being able to apply those basic skills as a part of a much larger job is trickier. And many of those skills are a bit rusty from not needing them in years, or even decades. So while I know how to do various things, it takes longer than normal because I haven’t done it in so long. However, a very important factor I’ve picked up is that spending a little extra time planning and thinking beforehand pays of in triplicate later. Sometimes it’s hard to go slow and it seems like you’d be better off doing instead of planning, but you never regret that later. I learned that when my dad helped with the dishwasher install, and applied that with the hardwood floor install. Being very diligent about cutting and planning each row of flooring definitely paid off in the end. And it came in handy last weekend when I installed the water line to the fridge for the ice maker/filtered water output. No leaks, no mistakes, no extra holes in the floor, no busted pipes, nothing. Just clean, cold water and ice comin’ out the front of the fridge.

So until a possible next time….done and done.

Washington Just Wasting Time

So once again the House of Reps and the Senate are just wasting our money and everyone's time. Seems like they only things they do is go after sports teams/players and try to break our economic mold. They have no business getting involved in the sports/entertainment industry, so I'll just walk away and save that for another day. I'll stick to a better topic; high gas prices.
They decided that it would be a good use of tax payer money to make the oil execs fly in to Washington to explain why they are simply following the laws of supply and demand. Why are oil companies making record profits? Because Americans, and the world in general, are using more oil every day than ever before. The supply hasn't even come close to keeping up with the demand. Therefore the price of oil will just keep climbing further and further until we stop using so much f'n oil. And those that provide an increasingly rare commodity will keep getting richer and richer all the while. But of course that's not good enough for Washington. They expect the oil companies to just be happy with meager profits so Joe Schmo can fill up his giant, fuel-wasting truck at a reasonable cost while he drives alone on the 50 mile drive to work. And actually, if said oil companies were to intentionally lower their prices and make less money in order to help people, they would be sued by their shareholders. All those CEOs have a board of directors, shareholders, employees, and their own families to answer to. They can't give their employees nice raises if they slash in their profits. The board of directors has to answer to angry shareholders when the stock price and dividends start dropping because they wanted to be nice.
I understand that the problem goes beyond fuel for cars, trucks, semis, etc. Heating oil has seen the same price increases as fuel because of the jump in crude prices. However, being a free-market commodity it faces the same laws of supply and demand. Heating oil and gasoline are coming from the same $130 barrel of crude oil. If the government if so concerned about home heating oil prices they need to make that a government-regulated commodity like water, sewer, and electricity. That's the only way you can ensure that heating oil prices are kept at a reasonable level. Just wait and see what happens to those prices as we get closer to the infamous Peak Oil. Then we'll really have some fun. (No, I'm not saying we're on that doorstep. We've clearly got some room to go, as we do keep pumping an ever-increasing amount of oil every day.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If people want to get the price of gas to go down they need to use less of it. Lower the demand and the price will follow. Since we clearly aren't going to drive less or drive more fuel efficient cars, we should focus more effort to alternative fuels. Ethanol, why delivering less energy per gallon and requiring quite a bit of energy to create, is a good start. But even there we would need some extremely expensive upgrades to our current pipelines and gas stations in order to safely dispense alcohol. That shit would eat right through the current infrastructure. But it would be a step in the right direction and demonstrate that people are serious about finding alternatives to gas. Hybrids are another good movement. And as more and more get built, the auto companies learn more about how to make them cheaper and better. Better batteries, more efficient ways of delivering power to the road, more efficient ways of capturing kinetic energy during braking, etc. So there are some positives on the horizon.
If you're hurting from your gasoline bill and need something you can do right now, slow down. Every mph faster you go your mileage drops. In fact, you can estimate that for every 5mph over 60mph you go you're mileage drops enough to effectively cost you an extra $0.20/gal. So if you pay $3.80/gal and drive 70mph, you can instead drive 60mph and effectively pay $3.40/gal. But I'm sure that 10 minutes you shave off your commute by doing 70mph is worth it, right? If that's not good enough, carpool. That'd be a quick way to cut your gas bill in half or more. If you've got 2, 3, 4 people splitting the tab, that's less money than you're all paying today. Not as convenient, but at some point the cost of gas will exceed the convenience fee you're willing to pay to all drive alone. You could also use public transportation. Not a station close enough? Buy a bike to bridge the gap. That also requires some sacrifices, but every inconvenience has a price tag. What's it cost to not ride a bike and shower at work? $100/wk? $200/wk? At some point the cost of gas will make it worth it.
Oh, and that gas tax holiday they're proposing will just make things worse. Lower prices = higher demand = even higher prices when the holiday ends. So if they do it, enjoy your $3 gas or whatever it ends up. Cause you'll be paying $5/gal when that holiday ends and everyone's demand is above what it is right now. Simply economics. How about we show Washington that we do know basic economics and pressure them to stop wasting our times with crap that doesn't actually solve the problem.
Done and done.

Compression Short and Digital Music

I’m just going to put this out there; I love wearing compression shorts. (For those that don’t know what I mean, essentially spandex shorts.) While I’ll gladly wear any pair, I like the heavier grade stuff. No thin, wimpy spandex for me. If it wasn’t for the fact they…how should I put this…have a negative effect on the comfort of the man bits after awhile, I’d wear them every day instead of boxers! Just so you don’t’ think this is more than just quasi-random, I changed into my hockey undergarments at work tonight, since I head straight from work to the rink (via the batting cage). So I was strolling around work for ~30 minutes in my baggy shorts and compression shorts. It was great. And now I finally can confirm that Tiffany was right. Heaven really is a place on Earth, and today that place was in my pants. Giddy up.

Okay, moving on to things that don’t directly involve my genitalia.

I’m finally converting all of my CDs to digital. WMA files, to be exact. I thought about doing mp3, but from everything I can gather WMA rips at a noticeably better sound quality at the same file size. It’s a long, arduous process consider I have something like 230 CDs. But I’m trying to do at least a few every night, more when I have some down time, and eventually I’ll get through it.

This started as me just burning a few so I’d have new material to get on my non-Ipod for the gym. But as I’ve been meaning to do this to keep a backup, it quickly blossomed. Now I’m protected against the next time someone steals my car, takes all my shit, and burns the car. I lost some CDs that just can’t be replaced and that kills me. Of all the things I lost in that ordeal, probably 3 CDs were the worst. A good chunk of really good college memories were lost for good.

Now that won’t be an issue. If someone steals all my shit, I’ll just burn some CD-Rs and motor along like nothing happened. And I have a virtually unlimited amount of stuff to put on my gym mix. A 2GB digital player will hold a lot of shit. 333 songs at the rate I’ve been ripping them, more if I didn’t crank up the sampling rate to the max.

It’s also serving as a great stress test for my CD drive. I wonder if it’ll make it through all the CDs, or crap out before I get there. My money is that it won’t even bat an eye at this, but who knows. Either way, combo drives are a dime a dozen nowadays, so it’s no biggie even if it does crap out.

Apparently I’m more wiped out from hockey than I thought, so I’m just stopping here. Seem remembering things that happened 30 minutes ago is too much for me, so it’s time to just call it a night. And yes, its hockey and not the scotch I had when I got home.

Done and done.

Really Annoying Commercial

I’m really starting to get annoyed by a commercial that plays quite often during Cubs games on WGN. (Not sure if this speaks very highly of the demographic they expect to be watching!) It’s a new weight-loss pill that’s on the OTC market. The annoying part is all the testimonials they show and one in particular. They have a middle-aged black woman (with golden blonde hair for good measure) talk about how easy it was to lose weight on their product. Her big closing sentence: “You just…can’t…do it…alone!” Shit like that is like nails on a chalkboard to me. No, you CAN do it alone; you’re just too lazy to do it. Losing weight is simple math. If you burn more calories than you put in you lose weight. If not, you gain weight. Doesn’t matter what diet you go on, the caloric math is identical. If you go on Atkins and eat 3000 calories of chicken breast and only burn off 2500 calories a day, you’ll gain about 1 lb each week. If you eat instead ate 2000 calories of pure carbs every day, you’ll lose about 1 lb each week. People that can’t lose weight are either too lazy to increase their caloric burn through exercise or too undisciplined to limit their eating. Period. Bad knees and can’t run? Stop eating double portions and/or work with a trainer to find exercises you can do. Don’t want to give up your fatty, salty, fast food? Better become good friends with a treadmill.

Maybe my annoyance is partly due to the fact I usually under-estimate my achievements. I figure that if I could do something it really can’t be that hard. So the fact that I could lose about 20lbs in 1 year without doing anything drastic tells me that really anyone should be able to do it. Given that, I get really annoyed when people are convinced they just can’t do something that looks pretty easy to do to me.

It’s really just another sad commentary on our society. People have this strange desire to have a pill that fixes everything. Why put forth even minimal effort when they can do less and just pay a bunch of money for a pill?! Don’t worry about the cost, the side effects from short- and long-term use, or the fact that the pill is probably worthless at best. Just like herbal supplements, a lot of these infomercial-type products don’t require FDA approval. Thus, they don’t have to back up any of their claims. They don’t have to contain any of the active ingredients they site, or prove that the form the ingredients are in can be digested and absorbed by the body.

I grew up being taught the notion that you didn’t really need a pill for anything. That includes minor aches and pains. Obviously I don’t strictly adhere to this, and there are always exceptions for more extreme situations, but I try to avoid taking any medicine for as long as I can. If you see me taking some Advil you can bet that something really hurts. Hayley had to fight with me to get me to take some Tylenol when I had a fever of only 103F. Had she not been at work at the time and becoming very worried about me, I wouldn’t have done it. But that’s just me. My sister is the exact opposite. Anytime she’s less than 100%, she tries to find something she can take to reverse it.

Anyways, I got nothing better to post and I’ve tried unsuccessfully for a couple days to rewrite this to be interesting, so I’m just going to post it. I’ll see if I can do better next time. Just don’t hold your breath hoping.

Movie Review: Last King of Scotland

Here is my official movie review of “Last King of Scotland”. Mind you, I’m not trying to be anything like a real, quality reviewer. But I figured I might as well start doing movie reviews here as well as just blathering on like normal. Keep in mind, I do give away various things in this review, so don’t read if you want everything to be a perfect surprise. Maybe I’ll learn to give a non-spoiler review in the future. But today is not that day. So without further ado…

I liked the movie. But I didn’t love it. Nor did I like it as much as everyone else apparently did. The acting was phenomenal. Forest Whitaker was simply amazing as Idi Amin. I can’t remember any scene in the movie when I wasn’t 100% sold on the character. It never seemed like he was acting, but that you were watching the real person on the screen. James McAvoy was almost equally good as Dr. Nicholas Garrigan. It possible he was just as good, but just had a less challenging roll with which to work from.

My problem with the movie is the way they end up glazing over a few of the seemingly important plot elements. The first 15 minutes of the movie really moves fast; but not in a good way. The director, Kevin MacDonald, for some reason chose to just give you a small taste of various plot pieces before moving on to something else. I’m sure that it was done to save time for more important scenes, but it left me a bit unfulfilled. The dinner scene with his family, why didn’t they spend more time getting into the relationship between him and his dad? I’m sure there is some important insights that we could have used later to explain his choices. Then there was the relationship between Dr. Garrigan and Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson). MacDonald touches on this for 30 seconds, enough for you to realize something is going on, before tossing it away like a hot potato. In fact, the entire aspect with the free clinic was really underdeveloped. This clearly is an important element as he turns his back on them to take the job with Amin. I really think some extra time spent letting the viewers get involved with his relationship with his Dad and the commitment to the clinic would have made the middle portion of the movie better. At the very least it would have helped to better understand his thinking as he’s making the tough decision. The viewer would have had a more emotional connection with his actions instead of just watching and seeing it.

I also felt the end comes rather quickly. Just when things start to pick up and get exciting, they speed right to the conclusion. There is no prolonged tenseness and suspense the way I would have liked to have. Once minute everything is fine, the next minute he’s hanging up by his pectorals in the gift shop.

In the end, the acting really saved this movie for me. To be perfectly honest, Whitaker saved the movie. Without his performance I would have walked away from this movie very disappointed. So kudos to him. He deserved every last bit of praise he received for his work, and every last accolade. Would I recommend that everyone sees this movie? Yes. But not because the movie is great, just to see Whitaker. I now officially release him from my private dungeon due to his involvement in “The Crying Game”.

C-Scars and Friendly Refs

Because of Hayley’s chosen profession, I’m often sucked into conversations that I really have no desire to be in. However, I have learned that my dry, sarcastic wit and lack of thinking before speaking would make me a poor doctor. Case in point: Hayley and a friend were discussing how often they get women in the delivery room requesting that their cesarean scar be placed such that you can’t see it when they’re wearing a bikini. To them this is a no-brainer. Of course you want to do that! My first thought? That it would be funny to tell a certain group of these women that it’s not going to matter where the scar is since they really won’t have any business wearing a bikini ever again. And no, not just because they’re having kids. Lots of women return to their former shape after popping out a kid or 2. But clearly some of the women requesting this consideration are not going to fall into that category. Most probably didn’t have a bikini body before getting knocked-up and it’s all just wishful thinking. Or some other women mentioned it as something they need to request. Like when guys make sure their cars can be lowered, the trunk can fit a large subwoofer, and the wheel wells can hold 22s before they buy it. You’ll never do that stuff, but you like to make believe that you will. Anyways, I doubt that the patient in question would find that quip very amusing and instead of laughing would file some kind of lawsuit the very next day.

(Some of you may remember my suggestion that any time Hayley does a natural child-birth that she treat it like a QB going under center. Don’t just look under the curtain and give encouragement, bark out some pre-snap checks and go into a snap count! “Green 15! Green 15! Topper! Topper! hut HUT!” I think that’d be awesome, but apparently would just lead to a malpractice suit.)

I’ve identified another silver lining to my shoulder surgery rehab. While I couldn’t play hockey and do much at the gym and had plenty of free time, I started working as a scorekeeper for HNA (the hockey league I play in). You work the clock and fill out the score sheet (goals, penalties, shots, rosters, etc) and get $20 league credit for each game you do. One of the rinks is literally 5 minutes from my house, so it was a pretty easy gig. But this isn’t just about piling up nearly $1000 in league credit. There was something more important that should come out of this. I’m now on friendly terms with most of the referees that do HNA games, especially with 2 of the guys that do most of the games at the nearby rink. This should lead to some favorable calls for me and hopefully our team. Any questionable penalties should go my way and maybe even a question goal here or there. I’m not positive that the refs will tilt a game towards guys they’re friendly with but it really can’t hurt. They have to be less likely to call a ticky-tack penalty on someone they know. I’m looking forward to seeing how this all shakes out in July when the summer season starts up. I’ll have to start paying attention to what refs are calling what things for/against us. See if there is any difference in the calls depending on how well I got to know that set of refs. Don’t worry, there’ll be updates. I’d consider doing write-ups of the games, but I really don’t pay close enough attention to remember what happened the next day. I may offer to keep track of stats since the league does such a terrible job of that.

Done and Done.