Bathroom: Laying tile

Over the weekend, my dad finished drywalling and plastering all the walls and then he put in the new vent fan (with light).

He waited until the end to put this up because he was hoping we wouldn't change out the old fixture. But we really wanted a light in the shower and a higher powered vent, none of which made sense to my dad. The virtues of light as you shower didn't resonate with a man who says, "You shower for 5 minutes and then you're done. Why do you need light?" You would never guess my dad has ever lived with a woman with the way he talks sometimes.

This morning he came in bright and early (luckily I was up) to start laying the tile. Or as they are otherwise known around these parts, "Those damn pebbles." I had to give my dad a hand this morning and let me be the first one to say it, they are not easy to put down. I was glad we were just doing the shower floor (3' x 4'). Cutting them is easy per se (no tile cutter, just an exacto knife), but there was a lot of creative pebbling going on: pulling pebbles off and fitting them into spaces. I really hope it looks good when all is said and done. Fingers are crossed.

After the shower floor, he moved on to the bathroom floor where I wasn't needed to help, and to be frank, I couldn't if I wanted because there just isn't any room. This bathroom is tiny. And ti didn't take my dad long to cover the floor with the new marble tile.

The Bathroom: Weeks 2-3

I've been side tracked and haven't downloaded photos in a while of the bathroom, which is moving along nicely. My dad thinks it's moving too slow, but we're okay with it. Although the toilet is now gone so that might change things ...

We haven't lived with one bathroom since we moved out of the condo in January 05. One of the reasons for the move? One bathroom is not enough if there are more than One bladder occupying the household. You know how they say that women who live together start to get their periods at the same time? Well, Matt and I are starting to have the same bathroom schedules. Last week I was hanging outside the occupied bathroom door like a mexican jumping bean...

This is how the shower currently looks. The structure is complete and my dad even changed out all the pipes to new copper plumbing. All that it needs now is the tile (which my dad is still complaining about the pebbles).

This is the wall where the sink was. The plumbing got shifted and upgraded. Also, we moved some electrical outlets and the main junction box that was at the top of the right-hand wall. We also removed the piece of drywall where hidden underneath were some florescent tube lights. This area is now all drywalled up as of tonight.

The tile floor pulled off easily, and the old sink and toilet are now sitting in the garage (another winter our cars won't get garage space!) The new vanity/sink/faucet was delivered this morning; it's just sitting in the garage waiting to be brought in (hopefully tonight since it's like 25 degrees outside).

And right now we're researching toilets. We were initially not going to replace the toilet, but we know it's not water efficient and with everything else new, it's be nice to have a new throne as well. Right now we're eyeing this fancy piece of waste-hauling machinery. Shweet.

The Industrious Spider

Every year this huge spider builds his tunnel in our front window. And several times throughout the season I get rid of the web with the vacuum while the spider hides in a crevice wishing he could chomp my hand off.

But this year, he was extra industrious and managed to build himself a full length house the entire size of the window. He did this so fast, and I was so amazed at his fortitude, that I decided not to vacuum it up and let him hang out -- as he never did, after all, chomp my hand off.So it was a sad day the other day when I found his little body at the bottom of the window well. He must have gotten hard hit by the freeze the last couple of days. (I don't think spiders last through the winter.) So I took the photo of the web, it'll soon get vacuumed up.

Train Jerk

When you take public transportation, you live by a set of unspoken rules. And sometimes these rules are spoken and written down, but people try and pretend like they're not real rules.

For example, an unwritten rule is that everyone is quiet on the way home. I had some friends get spooked out by this eery silence. The fact is, most people zone out, read, sleep, listen to music. For 30+ minutes, you can just chill out before you get home. The written rules are less eery: don't talk loud on your cellphone, don't block the doors, don't leave your humongous rolling suitcase in the aisle. Blah Blah.

One rule people try to forget is that on a crowded rush hour train, you will be sitting next to someone. In only the rarest cases will someone not notice the empty seat next to you. This leads me to another Metra Tails train story courtesy of Matt.

Recently on his commute home, he made one of the rush hour trains with just under a minute to spare. As he was running alongside the train he spotted an empty seat on an otherwise full train car. He boards the train and heads for that seat. The current occupier looks up and says, "No way." And then proceeds to ignore Matt while talking on the phone. Now Matt could've taken this opportunity to be an equal jerk and shove the guy's bag over and squeeze himself down, but he didn't. He just stood there and stared at the guy, who said again that he wouldn't let Matt sit there. When Matt said, "If you have two tickets you can have these two seats," the guy just answered back, "Oh you just didn't say that." More standing and staring.

Finally the guy lets Matt sit there and he tells his friend on the phone about the "jerk" he has to sit next to and how he's going to talk loud on his cellphone (another rule no-no) the entire ride just to annoy him.

But he didn't talk the entire time, because the slug fell asleep. And Matt made sure to get his million dollar shot before he got off.

Sweet revenge.

My little brother is 30

My brother turned 30 yesterday, and we had a huge party for him at Dave & Busters on Saturday night. My brother has been planning this party for the last 3-4 years. His main request? a 70's and 80's theme.

So we did the best and had 70's and 80's TV tunes being played in the background -- talk about nostalgia! -- and the disco ball flashing lights. We also had his Kitt and Dukes of Hazzard Cars on display, and the balloon holders were bobble heads of Bo, Luke, and Daisy Duke.

The rooms at D&B are cool because they're open to the rest of the restaurant, so you're not closed into a room and anyone can go and play the arcade games. Plus we had a pool table and shuffleboard in our room, too.

Everyone who was invited came -- over 40 people -- so it was hopping. All of his special recreation friends came along with their parents and then all of our immediate family were there. He had wanted to invite the "entire" family, but that would have meant a party of wedding-nuptial proportions and a bigger room. My in-laws were in town this weekend so they got to come and meet Tony's friends.

Everyone had a blast, but most importantly, did Tony have a good time?


Looks like it!

This time matters!

So today we finally are going to elect a new President. After 8 crummy years, I can't believe this day would ever come. And it's pretty exciting being from the city of one of the candidates.

Rally Being Set Up
AP photo by Paul Beaty / October 31, 2008

Part of me wants to rush out of town on a 3PM train (well, I still need to vote) and avoid the crowds (trains are all running on a special schedule today). And Part of me wants to go downtown (it is after all a beautiful day) and see some history in the making, and just be part of it.

TV Satelites
Tribune photo by Kuni Takahashi / November 3, 2008

Or at the very least, see what our local newscasters look like in real life.

The Gilmore Girls

When this show first aired, I watched almost the whole 1st season. But that was the time before TiVo and aside from Seinfeld in the early 90's, I never remember when tv shows are on. I'm not that person who plops my butt on the couch at exactly 6:59 for my 7PM show on Tuesday night.

That said, I only watched a few episodes of this show in it's first season and I never watched it again. Until recently.

Our library is chock-full of TV shows on DVD and so if you need to catch up on some shows -- sans commercials -- this is your place. And it's not like Netflix where you only get 1 DVD at a time, here you can take out as much as you can watch in a 3-day rental period. So thus began the renting of Gilmore Girls, from the beginning.

I started watching it by myself because I have a husband who I prefer to have more testosterone than me; but I could tell he was feeling left out so on occasion he'd catch an episode and what d'you know, he liked it. At one point I actually heard him say, "Do you wanna watch Gilmore Girls tonight?" After I got up from the floor from laughing, I told him I was going to get audio Christmas cards and when the recipient opens the card instead of hearing "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings!" they were going to hear my 34-year old male husband say, "Do you wanna watch Gilmore Girls tonight?" Yes, I am cruel.

So after being late with 3 DVDs and vowing not to show my face at the library for a while, I was getting Girlmore (my nickname for the show) withdrawal. I was in the middle of Season 3 and I was missing them. I knew I had hit a low point when on vacation I dreamt I was a new cast member on the show and I got to hang out with everyone (and they were fun -- not the real people, the characters of course beause you know it is a real place), and at one point I was walking and talking with Loralei (the mom) and I could tell she was bored with me, that I wasn't fun like Rory (the daughter) and I could never be part of the gang. But then I said to myself, the writers wrote this segment, so she's not being forced to talk to me, this is the show.

I woke up thinking that I might need an intervention, but Matt thought the dream was funny. So now we're back home and I am watching the last 4 episodes of Season 3. Whew. It feels better sitting on the couch.