I am so normal these days, it's disgusting.

I take my dog for a walk in the morning. She likes short walks. Sometimes she runs, but that's still my walking pace so I consider it a walk. In a very normal fashion we walk down the driveway and out to the side street. And as a very normal pair we walk out and back and when she stops to sniff or do doggie things, I stop on the sidewalk and do calf raises. Sidewalks are the perfect height. And once we get back to our cul-de-sac we slow down a little bit so I can do lunges around the circle. Naturally.

I was out running. And I had a 3-4% grade downhill and I was stretching out the legs a bit so I was going fairly fast in running terms. Then a car pulled out in front of me. I mean right in front of me, if I hadn't changed course, it would have been a matter of tires over toes. I did, however, change course, the crisis was averted and I finally have developed the emotional maturity to not be pissed off at the oblivious driver. I am sure that somewhere in these archives is a post griping about cars cutting me off and how I wish I had a sharp object to scratch them with.

Well, no more. Now I merely wish that I was prepared enough to seize the instant of opportunity to continue running my line, catapult myself onto the hood of the car and sprawl out dramatically. I wish I had the guts to actually do this. Only because I really think it's possible & because I think it would be funny. The problem is that I wouldn't know how to deal with the aftermath. Imagine. You're out running. Car stops on a side street, doesn't look, pulls out in front of you, but slowly enough that they would be able to stop & it's a small SUV with a nice wide hood. You successfully do a slide across the car. Then what? You have some poor soccer mom absolutely horrified because she thinks she's hit you & there's three kids in the car that start screaming. Unfortunately you can't just roll off and run away from these types of things. You'd really have to explain to the driver that you were just playing, don't worry.

Awkward.

If I thought I could avoid the awkward interaction post-slide, I would totally do it.

I disappeared for a couple of days last week. Into the world of internet research. Maybe I should put quotes around "research." I decided I wanted to raise some baby quail. They had them down at the Big R farming store. It seemed like the perfect project. I could raise them for a month or two and then release them behind our house (there's a wetland corridor). (And it's perfectly okay here to release quail, people do it for hunting purposes, you only have to get them banded beforehand.) The little quail chicks were so adorable. If you think chicken chicks are cute, you will absolutely die for a quail chick. Finally, research was done & I was prepared to go out and get my brooder to set up a home for the babies. CA was completely fine with this idea until I was ready to execute. Then he brought up the question of where I was planning on brooding the chicks. Um, the bathtub, of course. Who takes baths anyway? it's the perfect place to set up a brooder. CA than made the valid point that we didn't have our occupancy permit for the house yet. And the inspector would not be psyched if we had quail chicks living in the master bath.

So I suspect all my quail research had been for nothing.

I've been thinking a lot lately about cutting off my finger.

And I don't mean that in the same way one says, "I've been thinking about getting my hair cut."

We've been laying tile. My job has been cutting the tile. Somehow it works out that I always get the fun job. There's a ton of other jobs that I get to do too which aren't as fun. As I use the saw I can't help but be very aware that it wouldn't take much effort for it to go through a finger. We returned the tile saw this morning & the grout people are grouting as I type. Grouting the floors we decided to farm out. I have decided that I particularly dislike grouting and there's still two more countertop surfaces that need grouting. Therefore, I am being satisfied with cutting and laying and occasionally breaking a tile.

The most fun cuts are around the vents.



beautiful!

And once the actual covers are on it will look perfect.



One of the grouters put a pair of gloves in a vent. I'm not sure why. I thought someone was trying to climb up out of the basement.

Marcus Hellner. Winning the Gold in the Olympic 30k Pursuit? Easy. Choosing between red and yellow BootBuddies? Hard.

www.SkiTraxx.com

Labels: skitraxx

Ivan Babikov... 5th in the Olympic 30k for Canada. Ivan took care of the skiing. BootBuddy took care of his ski boots.

www.SkiTraxx.com

Labels: skitraxx

I'm hereby declaring anytime you lay hardiebacker to be talk-like-a-pirate time. Y'all know that the official talk like a pirate day is one of my favorite days of the year. That day doesn't happen until September, but tomorrow will be a mini pirate celebration for me. CA doesn't know about this scheme because I literally only came up with this brilliant plan mere seconds ago when I typed "Hardiebacker" in the blog title. And I couldn't resist the "argh."

Less brilliant was yesterday when I was putting in a doorknob. First went in the "dead latch" (that thing that actually holds the door in place). I had already screwed in the strike plate and swung the door closed to make sure everything lined up. Except the door actually really closed. Which would have been fine except that I was in the empty room and all my tools were sitting outside the door, along with the doorknobs which would have greatly increased the ease with which I could have turned the door mechanisms to withdraw the latch. This happened directly after I hit my thumb with the mallet while pounding in the same dead latch. (CA was working in the garage so I was on my own.) Luckily for me there were pieces of... you guessed it, bamboo! lying around this room. So I escaped thanks to the beautiful concept of leverage.

side note:
One of my friends introduced me to Boo Bicycles. Bamboo! Bicycles! Carbon Fiber! I want!

boring stuff:
Hardiebacker is a backerboard that you put down (with thin-set liquid nails and a bajilion screws (a bajilion is a lot. I am a math major. trust me.)) before you lay the tile. So far we have not touched any tile. Only backerboard. And liquid nails. And screws. And my rollerskiing calloused hands are developing a hotspot from u s i n g a s c r e w d r i v e r.

Twelve days to finish the flooring. Sounds easy, it's not that big of a house, and it's not like we're creating a sand mandala (although now that I used that comparison making a mandala out of one of the room floors sounds like a brilliant idea). There are, however, so many places that slow us down. First of all, the original house builders put in the trim already. It's beautiful white trim, perfectly spaced 1/2" above the floor. Problem is, the bamboo is 3/4" thick. So all the trim boards along the floor have to be, well, trimmed. And I'm not sure of what the trim is made, but it's not something you want to be breathing. So while my comrade in arms saws, I hold the vacuum to save his lungs. (I try to position myself so that I can stick my head out of a window. No sense in us BOTH dying of lung complications.) Then, the pattern is going to be continuous throughout the entire upstairs, so through the 3' wide hallway we can't simply lay down a row of 3' long boards, we have to measure and cut, measure and measure and cut. And then there's corners and door frames and funny angles.

But, a bamboo day is a good day and the floors are looking bea-u-tiful! I don't even want to ever put anything in the rooms, just have spinning-in-your-socks space. Which is what happens in twelve days... the furniture arrives. Which is why the floor must be finished.