Not/Awesome
Things that are not awesome:
Getting your house broken into.
The bastards warping the door, and finally having to break the frame to get in. This has nuked the old door, which needed replacement tout suite, because due to the warping where they kicked in and the breaking of the frame, B had to nail board across the door to keep it shut. Barring windows, that's one of two exits from the house. Not safe, not good.
Getting your kid's/your old laptop and portable DVD player (from Daddy, she just got it for Christmas) stolen
Lack of sleep due to the break-in
Losing research hours as you take care of the pile of shit that is required to be taken care of after a break-in that broke part of your house
Finding out when getting the door-hole evaluated that the shit (albeit steel) door, combined with the stupid (albeit VERY SOLID) deck install, that was there has caused a certain amount of rot at the base of the door hole.
Basically losing my entire monetary contribution to the house because of this shit.
Things that are awesome:
My new back door has a window in it so that A), it lets natural light into my dark kitchen and B), someone could break the *window* to get in, which is cheaper to replace than a door and its entire frame.
The door hole rot issue is fixed and ameliorated for the foreseeable future.
The new door has to be painted - so I'm going a bit overboard and painting the entire kitchen.
I AM PAINTING MY HOUSE IN COLORS. FIRST TIME EVER.
I will have a cheery yellow kitchen
With blue accents.
And possibly the pantry door will be painted to be TARDIS-like but I'm not sure about that now, as I've needed to change the blue that I chose for the room, since there's now more light
This door is properly fitted into the frame, which means that the weatherstripping works, which means a lowered electric bill. (Basically, we moved into an ex-rental and the folk before us trashed the place before they left, necessitating replacement of external doors before it would sell, which was done on the cheap, which meant that the frames weren't replaced, just new doors plopped on. This is not a good idea. Neither was the Pepto pink that the folks before us had painted the main bathroom and hallway, as evidenced by paint left behind on some fixtures in out-of-the-way places.)
The alarm they heard when they busted in made this a smash-and-grab instead of a wipe-them-out.
They took away the two push lawnmowers that were largely irreparable paperweights. Now B can no longer futilely try to fix one while avoiding taking care of the yard, with a pushmower I can't use even when in working order.
In daydream, someone broke their foot on my door.
As a result of the break-in, we have a dude mowing our yard. His rates are, well, they were too low, frankly, and I insisted on paying him at least a bit more. His work is great, he's maintaining our edges well and he's pruned the Bradford pears and the bushes in front. They were, uh, long overdue. He's Round-Upped the perimeter, which is fine by me, as I don't want anything growing there, anyway, and won't grow stuff on a fence (Although we did tell him to leave the blackberry canes on the back fence).
Nemo is currently napping and purring on my lap. He is the awesomest cat, ever.
OMG pretty, painted kitchen! Also, we took down the useless hutch and put it into storage yesterday. As a result the kitchen looks really, really big, now, and I have a sideboard.Haven't really been working on the smock in the past while. The neighbors have a little boy and he is getting a seriously cute Aran sweater. I finished the body today, having kitchenered the shoulders together this morning. I'll cast on sleeves in a bit, maybe, but I'm leaving in a while to go to Sock Club.
Got rye bread in the oven. Okay, I've been trying the 5-minute, no-knead technique and it really doesn't use a lot of yeast at all. I tried a loaf's worth as an experiment about three weeks ago - and it worked. I made a decently respectable though rather flat white "peasant" round bread - and didn't need an epi pen/tons of Benedryl. Got enthusiastic about it and tried it several more times and.... same result! So I bought the book for my Kindle (Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes) because I wanted better technique (something was off and sure enough, read the book and poof! it's fixed!) and the recipes seemed good. Works like a charm for me. I'm pretty sure this is the combination of allergy shots (really, I've been keeping them up and am now at the point where I can go for them once every other week) and low yeast levels. I do need to be sure I've taken my usual allergy pill - but I can make bread again for my house! I'm largely still establishing things so I haven't really tried proper "sandwich" loaves, yet, but I'm trying out a deli rye right now, so we'll see. If it doesn't, oh, darn, bread for us to eat. I may even buy the authors' other book, Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes. We'll see, there are a LOT of recipes in this one, and really, this bread is healthy and varied, so I'm not sure what else they'd be doing.
...just pulled it out, and yeah, it's bread for us to just nom upon, I think. It's lovely, and it smells just as delicious as these others have been (omg, y'all, I made the MOST PERFECT BOULE EVER LAST WEEK). We'll get square boring sammich bread this afternoon while we're out, I suppose. If I want a sammich loaf, I'll have to go for a much bigger dough lump.
I've been at the farmers' market every weekend since we changed the hens' bedding and they decided that they wanted to feed us eggs instead of hand-raised chicken. We did lose one of the hens to either illness or really bad pecking order issues, and separated one for a while until we could buy some of the spray-on blue antiseptic and let her vent heal - the dead hen got head-pecked, this other hen got vent-pecked/plucked. She's back in the general population and things seem fine. I'm keeping an eye out for signs of more such behavior.
Research goes apace but it's at the steps where I can't really talk about anything. We have actual group meetings, just like it's academia, and there's a Ph. D. student in the lab and we all get along well. It seems to make for a much healthier environment than I have been hearing about from other universities. I'll definitely take it. I've also found out the new organic chemistry text and now have a chance to buy it at good discount instead of the uni bookstore, where the motto is, "If we ain't gouging the student, we ain't doin' our job."
Well, that's about it, and I'm kind of salivating here because I smell that bread and man, it just smells amazing and I want it in my MOUTH. It doesn't help that I haven't eaten yet, today. I slept in till 9 this morning - oh, yeah, my days have moved to the 5 AM-ish wake-up, which doesn't go well with my late-night habits but did have to happen if I'm going to really have a chance at the weird, early hours ahead of me if things go as hoped and planned.
Okay, off into the rest of my day. Maybe if I go change clothes I can put off breaking into that loaf before it's really ready. Hope springs eternal, but honey butter is in the making. Bread! And I made it with yeast! And it's in my house! Love.
Getting your house broken into.
The bastards warping the door, and finally having to break the frame to get in. This has nuked the old door, which needed replacement tout suite, because due to the warping where they kicked in and the breaking of the frame, B had to nail board across the door to keep it shut. Barring windows, that's one of two exits from the house. Not safe, not good.
Getting your kid's/your old laptop and portable DVD player (from Daddy, she just got it for Christmas) stolen
Lack of sleep due to the break-in
Losing research hours as you take care of the pile of shit that is required to be taken care of after a break-in that broke part of your house
Finding out when getting the door-hole evaluated that the shit (albeit steel) door, combined with the stupid (albeit VERY SOLID) deck install, that was there has caused a certain amount of rot at the base of the door hole.
Basically losing my entire monetary contribution to the house because of this shit.
Things that are awesome:
My new back door has a window in it so that A), it lets natural light into my dark kitchen and B), someone could break the *window* to get in, which is cheaper to replace than a door and its entire frame.
The door hole rot issue is fixed and ameliorated for the foreseeable future.
The new door has to be painted - so I'm going a bit overboard and painting the entire kitchen.
I AM PAINTING MY HOUSE IN COLORS. FIRST TIME EVER.
I will have a cheery yellow kitchen
With blue accents.
And possibly the pantry door will be painted to be TARDIS-like but I'm not sure about that now, as I've needed to change the blue that I chose for the room, since there's now more light
This door is properly fitted into the frame, which means that the weatherstripping works, which means a lowered electric bill. (Basically, we moved into an ex-rental and the folk before us trashed the place before they left, necessitating replacement of external doors before it would sell, which was done on the cheap, which meant that the frames weren't replaced, just new doors plopped on. This is not a good idea. Neither was the Pepto pink that the folks before us had painted the main bathroom and hallway, as evidenced by paint left behind on some fixtures in out-of-the-way places.)
The alarm they heard when they busted in made this a smash-and-grab instead of a wipe-them-out.
They took away the two push lawnmowers that were largely irreparable paperweights. Now B can no longer futilely try to fix one while avoiding taking care of the yard, with a pushmower I can't use even when in working order.
In daydream, someone broke their foot on my door.
As a result of the break-in, we have a dude mowing our yard. His rates are, well, they were too low, frankly, and I insisted on paying him at least a bit more. His work is great, he's maintaining our edges well and he's pruned the Bradford pears and the bushes in front. They were, uh, long overdue. He's Round-Upped the perimeter, which is fine by me, as I don't want anything growing there, anyway, and won't grow stuff on a fence (Although we did tell him to leave the blackberry canes on the back fence).
Nemo is currently napping and purring on my lap. He is the awesomest cat, ever.
OMG pretty, painted kitchen! Also, we took down the useless hutch and put it into storage yesterday. As a result the kitchen looks really, really big, now, and I have a sideboard.Haven't really been working on the smock in the past while. The neighbors have a little boy and he is getting a seriously cute Aran sweater. I finished the body today, having kitchenered the shoulders together this morning. I'll cast on sleeves in a bit, maybe, but I'm leaving in a while to go to Sock Club.
Got rye bread in the oven. Okay, I've been trying the 5-minute, no-knead technique and it really doesn't use a lot of yeast at all. I tried a loaf's worth as an experiment about three weeks ago - and it worked. I made a decently respectable though rather flat white "peasant" round bread - and didn't need an epi pen/tons of Benedryl. Got enthusiastic about it and tried it several more times and.... same result! So I bought the book for my Kindle (Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes) because I wanted better technique (something was off and sure enough, read the book and poof! it's fixed!) and the recipes seemed good. Works like a charm for me. I'm pretty sure this is the combination of allergy shots (really, I've been keeping them up and am now at the point where I can go for them once every other week) and low yeast levels. I do need to be sure I've taken my usual allergy pill - but I can make bread again for my house! I'm largely still establishing things so I haven't really tried proper "sandwich" loaves, yet, but I'm trying out a deli rye right now, so we'll see. If it doesn't, oh, darn, bread for us to eat. I may even buy the authors' other book, Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes. We'll see, there are a LOT of recipes in this one, and really, this bread is healthy and varied, so I'm not sure what else they'd be doing.
...just pulled it out, and yeah, it's bread for us to just nom upon, I think. It's lovely, and it smells just as delicious as these others have been (omg, y'all, I made the MOST PERFECT BOULE EVER LAST WEEK). We'll get square boring sammich bread this afternoon while we're out, I suppose. If I want a sammich loaf, I'll have to go for a much bigger dough lump.
I've been at the farmers' market every weekend since we changed the hens' bedding and they decided that they wanted to feed us eggs instead of hand-raised chicken. We did lose one of the hens to either illness or really bad pecking order issues, and separated one for a while until we could buy some of the spray-on blue antiseptic and let her vent heal - the dead hen got head-pecked, this other hen got vent-pecked/plucked. She's back in the general population and things seem fine. I'm keeping an eye out for signs of more such behavior.
Research goes apace but it's at the steps where I can't really talk about anything. We have actual group meetings, just like it's academia, and there's a Ph. D. student in the lab and we all get along well. It seems to make for a much healthier environment than I have been hearing about from other universities. I'll definitely take it. I've also found out the new organic chemistry text and now have a chance to buy it at good discount instead of the uni bookstore, where the motto is, "If we ain't gouging the student, we ain't doin' our job."
Well, that's about it, and I'm kind of salivating here because I smell that bread and man, it just smells amazing and I want it in my MOUTH. It doesn't help that I haven't eaten yet, today. I slept in till 9 this morning - oh, yeah, my days have moved to the 5 AM-ish wake-up, which doesn't go well with my late-night habits but did have to happen if I'm going to really have a chance at the weird, early hours ahead of me if things go as hoped and planned.
Okay, off into the rest of my day. Maybe if I go change clothes I can put off breaking into that loaf before it's really ready. Hope springs eternal, but honey butter is in the making. Bread! And I made it with yeast! And it's in my house! Love.