Chris & Joy's Critterweb » Ramblings

What we replaced the carpet over the plywood with…

Chris — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:49:57 +0000

So we’ve got our living room back together more or less… still have a lot of molding to put up, some cracks to fill, and the project of the two patches where the walls were removed, but the plywood in the addition part of the living room is now covered with vinyl planks we spent all day putting in. They look real good, are durable, and were cheap. A good solution for the time being.

The Great Carpet Removal, day 1

Chris — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:07:44 +0000

We had held off on doing anything with the rug while Lindsy was still around, knowing she wouldn’t be able to walk on bare wood. But since she’s gone now…

Once I made the first cut, we were committed…

A few hours later a bit more progress has been made.

Finally we call it quits for day one. We’ve got about half of the area we’d planned on ripping out. The area around the fireplace will have to stay until we can get someone in to refinish the floors, as that area is just plywood. We’re going to clean it up as best as we can for now.

Once all of the carpet shreds, foam bits, and wayward staples are picked up, it’s safe to release our pica-prone dog. The white speckles and smears are old paint. The black area in the kitchen doorway looks like linoleum glue. Another unanticipated surprise was the area where the original dining room walls had been removed, and instead of hardwood there is 2″ x 4″ for flooring.

This is a LOT of work – pulling up the carpet and foam is the easy part; removing the nails, carpet strips, and staples is what really kicked our butts.

We were out of Cheerios, so I had some Gloom-ios for breakfast today

Chris — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:33:41 +0000

After spending most of my early AM hours following my usual blogs, news sites, and feeds, I decided to look for the lyrics to “Aenema” by Tool to add a few lines to my quotes page. Then I wondered if it would be a copyright violation to add the entire song because it just so fits how I feel about the world in general. Then I decided maybe I need to shut down the computer and spend some time outside with the birds and plants and trees, since the Internet is definitely not improving my disposition this morning

So I am off to garden a bit (and fling slugs) then spend some time volunteering at the shelter, and maybe after Joy gets off work we can sit out on the patio, watch the hummingbirds at the feeder and not think about oil slicks, wars, ecological destruction, the economy, genetic engineering, the decline of our culture, corruption, greed, corporatocracy, and things like that for just a few hours.

But here are the lyrics anyway… Just substitute “modern society” for LA.

From the lyrics page on Tool’s official site

Ænema Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will. I sure could use a vacation from this bullshit three ring circus sideshow of Freaks here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay. Fret for your figure and Fret for your latte and Fret for your hairpiece and Fret for your lawsuit and Fret for your prozac and Fret for your pilot and Fret for your contract and Fret for your car. It’s a bullshit three ring circus sideshow of freaks here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA The only way to fix it is to flush it all away. Any fucking time. Any fucking day. Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay. Some say a comet will fall from the sky. Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves. Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still. Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits. Some say the end is near. Some say we’ll see armageddon soon. I certainly hope we will cuz I sure could use a vacation from this Silly shit, stupid shit… One great big festering neon distraction, I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied. Learn to swim. Mom’s gonna fix it all soon. Mom’s comin’ round to put it back the way it ought to be. Learn to swim. Fuck L Ron Hubbard and Fuck all his clones. Fuck all those gun-toting Hip gangster wannabes. Learn to swim. Fuck retro anything. Fuck your tattoos. Fuck all you junkies and Fuck your short memory. Learn to swim. Fuck smiley glad-hands With hidden agendas. Fuck these dysfunctional, Insecure actresses. Learn to swim. Cuz I’m praying for rain and I’m praying for tidal waves I wanna see the ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom please flush it all away. I wanna watch it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in. Watch you flush it all away. Time to bring it down again. Don’t just call me pessimist. Try and read between the lines. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t Welcome any change, my friend. I wanna see it all come down. suck it down. flush it down.

http://www.toolband.com/album/lyrics/aenima.html

Goats, goats, and more goats… and some chickens and a neat old house

Chris — Mon, 24 May 2010 00:38:55 +0000

Yesterday we had some friends visit from Canada. Anne and pat gave me my very first job when I was sixteen, helping renovate their house, and I’ve kept in touch with them all of these years since then. It was great getting to see them again, and we all went to the Carl Sandburg House down in Flat Rock. We enjoyed the tour and seeing the house and grounds, but had particular fun with the goats.

I wanted a close-up of a goat, and while I was hunkered down focusing, suddenly got even more of a close up than I had anticipated with another goat that came over to see what I was doing.

I love the architecture of this bay window!

Mr. Rooster gives us the hairy eyeball.

There are 40 more pictures in the album I uploaded, including more of the grounds, the house, and of course, the goats.

Holy Sh** – I fixed it! And I am not even sure how :-)

Chris — Sat, 15 May 2010 14:40:14 +0000

Woo Hoo!

The WPG2 plugin has been restored so that the blog is back to it’s happy self. I haven’t had a lot of time to work on this, but it’s been nagging at me and making me crazy. I had posted on the WPG2 forum to no avail, and was going to contact my webhost and see if they had a fix. While I was driving yesterday, it occurred to me to try one last time to delete and replace the files themselves. I had done this before and it didn’t fix it, but this time it did. I don’t even care that I don’t know how I fixed it, I’m just glad it’s working.

The problem is that WPG2 has been orphaned and is no longer being developed. I assume that at some point, a few upgrades down the road, I am going to have this problem again if Wordpress or Gallery2 significantly change their code. Gallery3 is out there on the horizon, and while currently there doesn’t appear to be support for embedding in Wordpress, maybe that will be added later. Or maybe someone else will pick up WPG2 and continue on with it.

Arrrggghh

Chris — Fri, 07 May 2010 00:34:15 +0000

The Critterweb is still going through some difficulties which apparently were due to the server the site was hosted on becoming unstable. There were no database backups so I’ve had to work to repair the old one, and just haven’t had a lot of time to work on it. Due to all this I’ve had to move the whole site which was a bit tricky with both Wordpress and Gallery2 databases to relocate. It’s mostly fixed but I am still working at getting the integration with the blog back up and running. In the meantime it can be accessed directly but keep in mind there are still a few issues I am working on. If you see a broken photo link, please let me know!

Whoops

Chris — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 11:03:13 +0000

The Gallery is down until further notice, the database has gotten corrupted somehow and I don’t have the time or brain cells right at this moment to fix it. I first noticed I could no longer upload pictures, and when I tried to run some G2 maintenance the database apparently got corrupted. Anyway, that’s why not only the Gallery link is missing but every.single.post.photo has been replaced by a text number. Argh…

What’s the use of an ‘extra’ hour of daylight if you are too sleep-deprived to enjoy it?

Chris — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:45:15 +0000

Daylight saving time is not going well around here. The animals were already in some sort of restless cycle (mostly Simon, and spring-related, I suspect) and I’ve been having some weird pattern of waking up around three-thirty, which is now four-thirty, and doesn’t really leave much chance of getting back to sleep for a decent amount of time before morning. I have also been looking forward to getting back into walking in the morning now that it’s getting light early again, except now it is once again pitch black when I wake up.

This is one of those times I find myself missing Arizona, where they don’t participate in the foolishness. It has been proven not to save energy (which is the original reason behind it) and there’s actually been a study that showed heart attacks increase the first week after the spring time change. Anyway, I’ll stop whining about it…

We’ve got buds on the trees and bushes, the roses are getting tiny leaves, and the parsley is peeking out from under it’s blanket of last year’s leaves. Even though it’s still pretty chilly, spring is definitely on it’s way.

More snow pics

Chris — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:29:25 +0000

The entire gallery can be found here.

Winter thought she wanted out…

…but changed her mind.

The snowcat was joined by a snowowl

if you look real close you can see our power lines – under the weighted hemlock branches.

neighbor’s house through the snowy fence

Even the abandoned rundown house next to us looks pretty in the snow

My favorite pic – one of our dogwood trees, as seen from below.

We ended up with eight inches and the snow was tapering off when it got dark. The roads are now clear. I am assuming at this point that I’ll be able to get out of here and get to Tennessee tomorrow but it should make for an, uh, interesting journey through Sam’s Gap.

In like a lion… or maybe just a snow cat?

Chris — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:46:24 +0000

March is starting off with a bang…as of right now (3:36 PM) we have about six inches of the “two to four inches” of snow we were supposed to get, and it’s still pouring down. This picture was from around noon:

I was originally scheduled to go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee today but had to reschedule for tomorrow. This morning the snow wasn’t sticking and the roads were OK, but I was worried about getting stuck on my way back. That turned out to be a good call on my part, it would be an hour from now before I came back through the mountains and I don’t think I would have made it. Instead, I caught up on some training and inventory work, clocked out early, and built a snowman!

Or rather, an snow cat.

Joy supervised from the porch, and took a few pictures:

snow covered bush

driveway with the Jeep in position in case we get snowed in

abominable snowcanuck

the snowcat surveys his domain (note ears at lower right)

The flakes are getting bigger and falling harder. Maybe time for some hot chocolate and popcorn.