the.sawhorse.postulation

well hello, hello, to all of you out there in the blog-o-sphere. i hope youre all having a pleasant monday so far, and if you are one of the millions of fanatics out there who are annoying me about "opening day," please go away... now.

no, i dont have any interest what-so-ever in opening day of baseball. i hardly even like baseball. if it werent for the beer and the hotdogs, i wouldnt at all and i dont think youd see me anywhere near a baseball game, ever. why? well for starters, its got to be one of the most boring sports ever. it takes an entire game for anything of signifigance to happen, and in the end whatever that thing was only lasted about 10 seconds and then it was back to the snooze fest. it seems like all baseball is is just a lot of waiting around to see if something might happen that you can brag about having seen to all your buddies who didnt and also actually care about as much as you do. blah. and dont even get me started on the legitimacy of "professional" sports and their associated absolutely insane overpaid salaries, because its hard to stop me once ive started. the whole thing is a crock, a sham, and to be quite honest it makes me sad for our society... [well, ill admit i do enjoy a football game occasionally, but at least it keeps you engaged throughout the game, and then well, theres chearleaders bouncing around and such.] but anyway, enough ranting about all of that, none of you care anyway, and most of you are probably glued to something sports related as i write this anyhow.

so on to our weekend update then, shall we? well, it was a successful weekend, in that we got plenty accomplished.

[friday]

well i suppose ill start where i left off. on friday evening afterwork karen picked me up and we went home to get our special whole-foods wine glasses, and then made our way to the wine tasting. well, traffic on a friday night is pretty terrible so it took a while longer than anticipated and we got there about 15 -20 minutes late, but we got there at about the same time half the group arrived as well, so it was no big deal.

so the fun thing about this wine tasting is that it costs 4 bucks for starters, theres a bunch of fun people in the group that we get to talk to and have a good time with, and then well, the wine and food. theres usually 5 or 6 stations set up around the perimeter of the whole foods and you basically go from station to station where youre given a small serving of a wine [about a quarter of a glass] and food pairing [usually hors-derve sized]. supposedly the wine is meant to compliment the food selection, or visa-versa, however i dont always agree. anyway, this particular night we had mostly good wines, and some not so good food pairings - in my humble opinion. the last time we went it was the oposite, so you never know i suppose... anyway, we had a lot of fun chit-chatting and doing our little tastings and by the time we'd made it round we were pretty much all in agreement that we were hungry and wanted to move the party elsewhere [theres very limited seating usually, and this time even more so after they'd remodeled a section that used to have tables and no longer did.]

so eventually we all agreed to go around the corner to this little pub, aptly enough named, the pub. dont ask me why, because i still dont know, but everyone decided it would be great fun to pile in the back of my truck as we circled the parking lot to the pub where i dropped all of them off while patrick and i went in search of a parking space - yeah, we got plenty of funny looks, lol! by the time we met up with everyone else, theyd ordered drinks and we were waiting on a table. soon enough we got one and sat down for a while. we had a good time at the pub as well, a couple of drinks a bunch of food shared across the table, and more laughs and good conversation. by the time we were saying goodnight to everyone it was getting late and karen was already starting to drift off, haha, so we headed home.

[saturday]

we got up around our usual time on saturday [9:30ish] and just kind of lounged around for a little while before eventually getting up and making our way down to blue jay. we had a very nice breakfast and karen tried the french toast and found it quite pleasing, haha. after breakfast we decided that the best thing to do would be to run some errands in the morning and then work on house stuff. karen and her partner had needed to switch days to do studio work for the weekend so we wouldnt be getting to do our usual sunday routine.

so we headed out to the grocery store and on the way i decided it was time for a haircut and we made that stop first. ive been less and less satisfied with my haircuts at the place id been going since we moved here, and so we decided to try another place. we were heading to the hyde park biggs to do our grocery shopping, and luckily enough there was a hair salon in the same shopping center, so we went there. well ill tell yah, i was pretty happy with my haircut. this chick obviously knew what she was doing and not only did it take her half the time the other place used to take, it looked pretty decent as well. so check that off the list. =]

after the haircut we walked down the strip to the starbucks to check another item off our list, more coffee. can i just say that i love the deal where you buy a bag of coffee and get a free tall drink? its awesome. whoever came up with that is a genius and i could kiss them. so as we enjoyed our iced coffees, we headed over to biggs to get our grocery on.

we'd made a point to limit ourselves on what we were going to buy and only get what we actually needed and then even made a deal with ourselves to only allow 3 items that werent on the list as well. haha, we always end up getting a ton of stuff that isnt on the list, and while we do always eat it, we always spend way too much money and we agree we need to stop doing it, lol. anyway, because the list was pretty lean and we actually stuck to our 3 over rule, we got our shopping done pretty quickly and it was one of the leanest pricetags for the grocery store in some time as well. so im betting the 3 over rule sticks around, haha.

after biggs we were on our way home and decided to stop at a bookstore nearby to see if they had a book that karen was looking for. we spent quite a while searching for it in a number of different sections, and found a bunch of things that were close, but not quite what she was looking for, and disappointedly we left 30-45 minutes later empty-handed. guess the internet will have to do... hopefully.

so at this point we went home and decided to get started on house stuff for the day. and number one on the list anyone? yeah, you guessed it, bookshelves. karen is desperate to get these things finished so we can finally put away all of our books - weve practically got a library's worth between us, so its more of a necessity than a luxury at this point. well, the last time we worked on them we were having issues and dont ask me why, but i woke up that morning having figure out the solution in my sleep. now this is probably obvious to most anyone, honestly its obvious to me now, i just never gave it any thought before hand. so the situation basically is that i have this pretty nice set of sawhorses that i came by quite accidentally. but thats not the story for now, and its not really all that interesting, so we'll move on. anyway, theyre a pretty nice set of folding aluminum saw horses but the issue we were running into was that the way they are formed makes it nearly impossible to clamp to them. the fold into themselves and the top is about a 6 inch solid panel of aluminum, so when you take that 6 inches plus whatever you have on top, well, thats a pretty large space to clamp, and then its just open under the panel, so the clamp is awkward if you can manage to get it on there. well the other day when i was taking the door off in the "shop" i idley noticed that there were pre-drilled holes in the top of the sawhorses on either end, and found that curious. anyway, then the solution occured to me in my sleep and i woke up smacking myself in the forehead. duh. screw a 2x4 to the top of the sawhorse with a little overhang to clamp to. obvious right? im retarded sometimes, i swear... so anyway, the first thing i did when we got started was to screw some scrap 2x4's to the sawhorses from underneath and voila, perfect. so with that issue solved, i didnt even need karen to help me hold the wood anymore thanks to my handy clamps, so she got busy painting the pieces as i finished them. however, i was able to streamline the cutting process quite a bit and before long i had them all cut and she didnt have enough room to paint half of them while we waited for the first half to dry. =]

so at this point the next item on our list was to finish the last 6 pieces of mounting wood while we waited for paint to dry. well, again id figured out a better way to do it with my trusty speed square [i LOVE my speed square!!] and they ended up being the best pieces we mounted of the whole group, haha. man i wish id thought of that little trick earlier... so anyway, by the time we were done with that it was getting late and dark and karen needed to work on some school stuff, so we decided to have dinner and call it a night. karen cooked some little steaks we'd gotten and tried to re-create some sauce her mom makes that she likes, but apparently didnt quite get it. idunno one way or the other, but it sure tasted good to me. =] while she fixed dinner and while we were eating we watched "the happening" from my netflix - this is m. night shyamalan's newest film. and i gotta say... im a little disappointed. ive enjoyed all of his other movies a lot [the sixth sense, signs, the village, etc.] and while a lot of people feel that theyve all been going down hill, especially his last one, lady in the water, i enjoyed it as well and was really looking forward to this one. well... i dont know what it was, mark whalburg's serious over-acting, the banality of zooey dechanel's character [although her acting was right on, as always! love her!], or just the overall corni-ness of the surprise twist... i was just a little disappointed. i liked it, but not nearly as much as all his others.

anyway, that was saturday.

[sunday]

well sunday morning karen got up bright and early at about 8, and then i got up a little more sluggishly around 8:30... she wanted to get some stuff done for the day before she was supposed to get to studio at 10. so i got showered and dressed and before i knew it i was dropping her off at school and heading home. so i decided that my project for the day was going to be getting some of the electrical done. and to start with, i was going to change out the dryer cord and receptacle to the new 4-wire stuff we'd gotten last weekend. well the cord went pretty smoothly, the clamp was being a real pain in the ass, the screws didnt want to go in straight, but eventually i got it after some limited struggle. luckily all of this electrical stuff is getting a lot more straight forward for me, i know what im doing when i go into it and how to do it, its just the getting it done that takes some time occasionally. anyway, the next step was the receptacle. well unlike the stove receptaclet hat i changed out last weekend with no problems, this one was a recessed receptacle and i ran in to a snag. after taking off the old one and wiring up the new one [with a little struggle because the idiot that wired it originally left no slack in the wire at all...] i started to put it back in, pleased with how quickly it had gone so far, only to realise... yeah the new receptacle is bigger than the handy-box the onld one was in. [the handy-box is the little metal box thats behind the wall if you hadnt already picked up on that.] well i thought maybe i could bend the sides out a little and get it to fit but after trying this for a while and jamming it in there, i finally got it screwed in, but in the process the box had gotten loosened up from its mounting and well... there was no way this rigged situation was going to fly with the inspector, so i resolved to go to home depot and get a new one that fit.

well about that time karen was calling me to go to lunch with her anyway, so we went and had lunch at currito, a new burrito place near the campus that was actually suprisingly good. it was about the same price as all the rest of the burrito places out there, only this one had a little gimmic. currito - the cure for the common burrito. their outlook apparently is that most of the burrito places are the same old same old [which is true to a point, although freebirds will always reign supreme in my book, heh] and theyve got a little flair to their menu. basically theyve incorporated a variety of food genres into their menu so you can get a burrito for whatever flavor mood youre in. for example, karen got a cajun burrito, i got a standard mexican style burrito, and there there were other options like a thai inspred, chinese inspired, buffalo wing, mediteranian, well, you get the idea. well i enjoyed mine, and karen did too [we even swaped a bite and liked each others as well] and ill say im happy with my experience. they had a nice decor, the service was quick, and the food was good, not to mention i thought the idea of different genre burrito's was pretty cool, so yeah, ill probably go back. =]

anyway, after lunch i went to homedepot to get the stupid box and it was even more stupid because they didnt really have what i wanted and it took me forever to find one that would work well enough for my purposes. all i needed was a stupid rough-in box, but they didnt have any the right size. blah, whatever. i got something that ended up working and when i got home it took a little effort but i got it in there and got everything wired up with little more difficulty.

after that, i decided to give karen a little surprise. shes been wanting to plant flowers and vegetables for a few weeks now but the weather hasnt been too good and we've been worried about a freeze [which is happening tonight as it turns out, so we were right to be worried]. anyway, karen picked out a bunch of seeds a while back when we were at walmart and after discussing the situation with her mom, decided she needed me to make her a seedling box so she could plant them inside and then in a week or two hopefully transfer them to outside. well, i was planning to do that for her today without her knowledge. so while i was at home depot i got some good potting soil for her and i just happened to pass by a rack of these little pre-made seedling trays. well hot-damn, i didnt have to make anything afterall. they were like 4 bucks and you could plant a bunch of little seedlings in them, so i picked it up while i was there. anyway, at this point in my day i decided to go ahead and get the seedlings started for her and went through the process of planting about half the tray to get her started. well, soon after id finished half the tray she was calling me to come get her, so i put the tray and soil away and hoped she enjoyed her surprise.

well to make it more fun i told her she had a surprise, but she had to find it, haha. shes so oblivious, it took her a good 15 minutes to discover it, but she was squeeling with excitement once she did =] i did good, heh. im just glad it made her happy, she made sure to plant the other half of the tray right away and before long it was getting dark and we were both pretty well done for the day. so we decided to call it quits and head up stairs to relax and watch some west wing before dinner and eventually bed.

and now... its monday, im at work, and well, lunch is over, haha. so i guess i better get back to work. hope you all have a nice monday and a good week. ill post more if anything of interest happens. oh, and just for mom-in-law, ill make sure to get some pictures of the new couch up soon. hopefully we can get the bookshelves almost finished soon as well, and i can get a progress picture of those up too.

oh, and no, we didnt get rid of the damned couch.. i dont want to talk about it.