Uncategorized 27 Jan 2009 11:47 am
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I’m still alive. Just wiped out. I signed up for a pretty stressful couple of months, working some emotionally demanding gigs at Bastyr and the UW.
Now it turns out that I have to make some lifestyle changes this month, too. When we got married, Josh and I made some compromises, of course; when it came to food, I did most of the compromising, I think. My diet used to be pretty much tomato-based, but Josh hates tomatoes; for the past five years, my cheese and sausage consumption has skyrocketed. Well, it’s finally caught up to me, and now I’ve got to clean out the garbage dump I’ve made of my bloodstream, and fast. So I’m returning to my tomato-based diet; Josh and I will just have to fend for ourselves for a while.
It’d be nice if I could exercise, too, but I can’t really move right now. I don’t know what I did to my back last week, but I suspect it has something to do with the ongoing psoas problem from last November. I am wondering if an MRI might be in my future.
Today I can walk very slowly and carefully on level ground, if I don’t try too hard to straighten up. I know! I could use the treadmill! It goes slowly and evenly! But wait, I can’t. Why, you ask? Because it’s folded up with boxes in front of it. Which I can’t lift. And there’s nowhere to put them anyway. Why? Largely because we don’t have attic storage, a year and a half after trying to start that project. What’s the holdup now? We still do not have an electrician. We get these recommendations, we call them, and we never get callbacks. WTF. I’ve gone past “steamed” and right into “gritting my teeth and ready to snap”. Often I think that we should call it all off and just throw away half our stuff. (Does anybody need a small women’s wetsuit? Size sixish, I think.)
So, all my processors are busy right now. How in hell I am going to make the next six weeks work, I do not know.
But there’s good news, too: the chickens are laying! More about that at House of Cranks.
on 27 Jan 2009 at 12:19 pm 1.Savannah said …
Let me ask a friend about whether their go-to contractor does electrician’s work. They used the same guy for years on several projects and were very happy with him…
If you’re really considering getting rid of your wetsuit, I would be interested to know if it’s thigh length or ankle length, and how much you want for it.
on 27 Jan 2009 at 12:48 pm 2.mia said …
You can have a perfectly healthful diet that is low-tomato. Just sayin’.
on 27 Jan 2009 at 10:01 pm 3.Wim said …
Man, half the reason I’d like to own my own house is that it’d be legal to do my own electrical work on it.
Between the two of us, Kylee and I avoid tomatoes, peppers, and dairy … it’s a PITA. We eat sausage, though…
on 27 Jan 2009 at 10:48 pm 4.Cam Sculpin said …
Savannah: iirc, it’s thigh length. (It’s under some boxes that I can’t lift right now or I’d check.) I dunno — I think I remember that similar wetsuits went for about forty bucks on ebay, so maybe twenty? Or some Fogliana?
Mia: Yeah, I know. There are some healthful things I like besides tomatoes. Examples: shiitake mushrooms (Josh: “Eh.”), olives (Josh: “Yech!”), nutritional yeast (Josh: “Whaa?!”), tabouli (Josh: “Bleh!”) and eggplant (Josh: “Nyaargh.”).
Actually, he’s come around on the nutritional yeast front, at least as far as putting it on popcorn.
on 28 Jan 2009 at 12:22 am 5.Josh said …
Man, I wish I were comfortable doing this particular electrical work. Most other things I would be, but this involves either moving the old knob&tube wiring or replacing it with romex, and replacing it probably means replacing the whole panel, and at least half of the house wiring, which is more than I want to do. And moving it means that I have to be 100% confident that I know what I’m doing, because the wiring is currently covered by blown-in insulation (which, come to think of it, our inspector should have mentioned. I wonder if she did and I forgot?), and if something I do causes a spark to ignite the attic, I’m pretty sure insurance won’t cover it.
Also, I like eggplant. But mostly in baba ghannouj form, or in that one eggplant dish Snappy Dragon does.
on 28 Jan 2009 at 11:40 am 6.Ian said …
Josh, run out to your favorite hardware-type store, and pick up a contactless voltage sensor. They cost $10-20, and when you wave it near a hot circuit, it lights up or beeps or makes winky-eyes at you. When the wire isn’t hot (and this includes neutral or ground wires), no lights. It completely revolutionized my willingness to work on circuits where I couldn’t plug something in to determine whether it was powered.
The point being that you can use it to make sure the knob-n-tube is unpowered, and then wire-nut it into some lovely Romex. You don’t even have to take out the old wiring, just chop it off and make sure there’s no connection.