3 hour tour...

so its been almost 3 years since my last post. Wow. Well here I am typing inside where the giant hole used to be in my roof years ago. Let's see what's worth sharing after all this time. Hazel's all grown up. Hotdogs are still affordable. Lots of snow. Still need to finish the stair handrail and a few pieces of window stop. While I was away my last post has been occupied by spam squatters. Check it out its funky.

Troubles

One way to stay out of trouble when your wife goes out of town for 2 weeks is to cut a giant hole in the roof of your house. Of course, this is an excellent way to get into several alternative forms of trouble- not finishing before said wife returns being the primary one. Massive self inflicted flood damage runs a close second.

To make a long uninteresting story into a short uninteresting story: tonight I put the windows into the new dormer after 6 long beautiful rainless days of endless stair climbing and on this night there is a 100% chance of rain. Bring it.



Thank you Paul for letting me borrow your camera! Thank you little Hazel for being so damn cute and always smiling at my grizzly mug.

Now I can spy on the hippies in the pumkin orange house!!

A new friend

So I just got off the phone with the European continent for the first time ever and I thought the experience was worth documenting. I'm trying to get in touch with my wife who is currently in Prague. It took me four or five tries but it is in fact relatively easy to phone Prague.

transcript:

Funny euro beep....euro beep...

Mario-"praguepraguepragueprague?"

Me-"Uh, Hello. I'm trying to reach Ada Volkmer."

Mario- (slowly) I'm sorry could you say that again I don't understand you.

Me (slowly) I'm trying to reach my wife Ada Volkmer. She's a guest there.

Mario- Can you please call again? I cannot connect you.

Me (confused)- Again? A different number?

Mario (patiently)- the same number. I will pick up a different phone.

Me- okay

So again I get to practice international dialing and am in fact getting pretty good at it.

euro beep...

Mario- Yes you are calling for Addo Wolkmar?

Me- yeah. A. D. A. Ada

Mario- please hold

Hold music: Donkey Kong/Pitfall-ish themes- no kidding

Mario (inturrupting my early 80's Atari nostalgia)- What country is she from?

Me- She's from the United States and is traveling with her Mexican family.

Mario (lightbulb!)- OHHHHHHHH!

Mario- They are out in the city. Which one is your wife? The blond one?

Me- Yeah.

Mario- Good Choice!! (Czech's love blondes!)

Me- Er. Thank you.

Mario (practicing to himself in a low voice) Ada....Ada...

Then I leave a message and Mario introduces himself and tells me it was good to meet me and to have a nice evening. Mario's such a gentleman that, even though he is scoping my wife, I am filled with happiness at my first successful European telecommunications experience.

I even gush to my new friend Mario- "you're the first person from Prague I've spoken with."

Mario, veteran of transatlantic communication- "yes, for many it is their first time."

Meat and Doughnuts

Ross tells me the ash reminds us of our mortality. Dust to dust and such. Back in the day some grueling pennace or sacrafice was in order. Now folks give up doughnuts or meat goods for the Lenten duration. I'm calling my dust bath pennance enough and heading to Fudruckers for said meat items and fries. Also I accidentaly discovered beignets this week while disposing of my leftover fishfry batter in the pot of bubbling oil. So I'm sticking with doughnuts as well.

Ash Wednesday

I decided to go for the full immersion forehead. I'm working for a priest now and it's his dust on my head so I guess that's like going to church. Sort of. I should have asked him about the ashes. Why forehead ashes? Is it like passover? If so I was not passed over today by the angel of perpetual dustyness. This is my life. From dust to dust to dust. Rinse. Repeat.



Behold, the new miter saw!! 12" sliding dual bevel action baby. Also I made the miter table. It's modular so it transforms into a regular work table. It's got a 14' wingspan. Not that I'm bragging but that is one hell of a wingspan. Really I just like writing wingspan.

Cheap thrills with polyurethane tonight!! Probably should have left that window open...

whadahell?

So much to cover since the last post. Family update: my cousin Virginia has been coronated. My uncle Tucker was made her robot butler. Somehow the terrifying monarch from the Burger King commercials is involved. Yes, mom's dress is made from real gold. Details of court intrigues will follow...

Curious as Hell

What job is this? Who the hell drives around in a truck with 2 other guys wearing hard hats and totes around a household vacuum cleaner (this word vacuum always looks mispelled). Everything is wrong with this picture. The guy riding bitch helmetless. The fact that they only need enough tools for one side box. Nobody has just one side box. And what kind of vacuum is this? This is not a shop vac. No one has ever used a vacuum like this in any place where hard hats are required. Not ever. These guys are spies or terrorists or jehova's witness, most likely.

The Beast

Behold the beast in all her glory! Nemesis, teacher, engineered lumber. I'm thinking of composing poetry or creating a shrine. Something to ward off danger and repeated mistakes. This is the beam that made me a believer in back braces, proper lifting mechanics, the brevity of youth, etc. Here she is still lurking behind the treated fencing and posts at the Home Dog. Any volunteers interested in helping me take her home to my hoard?

Pots

Mayhaw Pepper Jelly


Chicken + Sausage Gumbo


The everpresent stock pot

Christmas in Louisiana is all vessels of opportunity. Wrapped gifts, stuffed animals, perpetually steaming pots, twin freezers parked in the garage filled deep with sealed packages of dark carnivorous treats. Here diets are lost causes and filling is the law of the land.

The Good Guys

So my 3 yr. old nephew Trey and I have been discussing things. Here's a few things I've picked up.

The good guys listen to the truth.
The bad guys go where the wild things are and bump into things.
We're the good guys.
We race the bad guys on motorcycles.
The good guys are big helpers.
And they listen to the truth.


Things are great here visiting my folks in Louisiana. I am, however, gaining approximately 5 lbs a day and have eaten samples of approx. half of the animals on Noah's boat. Samples include: catfish, alligator, wild pig, tame pig, flightless pigeon, cornish hen, rotissary turkey, etc.

Getting sleepy... Must escape land of crawfish lotus eating...

Thumbs Down Louisiana Transect

No pictures this post. It was too dark and the rain too thick to document all the delay and carnage on I-10 across southern Louisiana.

Here's the quote of the trip, though. Michael says, " Look at those A-holes on the onramp stuck in traffic. Wait a minute... they're merging with us. WE'RE the A-holes!"

So blizzards in Colorado turned into biblical rainfall in LA which turned our trip into an endless slomotion rubbernecking extravaganza featuring a car-carrier trailer split in half with all cars aboard roasted- and then a few miles after that another tractor trailer with the trailer exploded into charred wreckage and then a few miles after that on the super steep bridge over Lake Charles two cars wrecked on the bridge. Slow down and get off your cell phones or cb radios or crack addictions, people! Don't you know that Louisiana roads are designed to support the carnage industries?

Thumbs up Abita Springs, home of glorious Abita beer and some fine Acadian cottage architecture.

Thumbs-up for the Mississippi Welcome Center (MUCH nicer than the Alabama and Louisiana Welcome Centers)! It's this really nice brick mansion with this super hospitable hostess who offered us free beverages and gave us unsolicited directions and an update on the progress of rebuilding Jefferson Davis' house (a mere 25 million to rebuild the White House of the confederacy).

We didn't check out the Texas Welcome Center. We pretty much knew where we were going at that point plus I was sleeping.

Merry Christmas to all and I don't want to hear anyone bitching about taking shoes off at the airport. Try 6 hours of thundersquall and rubberneckage next time! People stuck in Denver are allowed to bitch all they want.

Ketchup and Time Travel

Here's the blog entry where we time travel together to catch up with the ghost of not-yet-christmas-recent-past. Here we go...

let's see, there were adventures in crawlspaces
















There were rooftop adventures with the worm drive saw.





There was snow!




I bought a Bosch Colt trim router...




And a Plymouth Colt Vista...


I did some finishing for Caroline.



There was keeping up with the Jones...



And a nice sunset tonight on Highland Street.

Masters of Mayhaw

I just got these pictures from my dad who by day is a sometimes-mild-mannered attorney and by weekend and whenever he's not hunting and fishing works in his Mayhaw orchard. Here's some behind the scenes documention of the budding mahaw industry. For those of you who don't know what the hell a Mayhaw is, well, use google and educate yourself. What I can tell you is that with the help of this little blue concentrator and the LMA (Louisiana Mayhaw Assoc) board, you'll soon be craving a scoop of Mayhaw iced cream.

Thank you Harvard Machine works in Clinton, LA!
Thank you LMA board!!
Here's part of dad's orchard. Also the little house in the background that Hugh and I helped fix up!

The Soffits of Madison County

Well here's my first post of any evidence of actual work being accomplished while I'm not forsaking this blog or watching netflix or eating at the OE. (which reminds me I have to ask Heather how she does those cool ass blinks on her site- she's got an Over Easy link, that geek!)

So this was the job that was supposed to ruin my back. All those white rectangles are 4x8 sheets of cement siding. Not as heavy as a PPB would suspect but far from weightless nonetheless. Fortunately I thwarted fate by incapaciting myself doing the setup work- that's the part of the job where you take time to prep things to make the jobsite SAFER. It's not supposed to actually cause the injury.

Anyway that's ancient history and recovery and since then Hugh, Ivan (Boryan's grandfather), and I have heroically finished the work. Notice the daunting 8' overhanging soffit. Those are full sized cement boards hanging 15' above would be sunbathers. Don't worry, we used lots of screws. Put on more sunscreen.

Also featured here is the studio and the original house Maria and Jakub designed and built with help from Ivan and Demeter. It was really nice to finally be able to contribute to their little settlement.

Street Mace

This array of pre-war (WW2) spices were perched on the side of this beat up old truck for weeks here on Highland St. Just thought I'd add some neighborhood color to the sphere. Spicing up the blog, ah yeah... 

Amelie will be a carpenter

This is my beautiful niece Amelie. As you can she she's planning on being a carpenter like her uncle when she grows up. She's checking that post for plumb and is obviously not satisfied. Also she's not so sure about the backyard fence. And she's planning an addition to playworld. How does she stay so clean? It's like a miracle in that sea of grass. Almost like she's walking on water. Hmmmm.

I'm still working on those bug pictures.

sin bugs

Just wishing we were in Guanajuato, that's all. Actually I just got the cutest pictures ever of my niece and nephew who are little bugs. I was having trouble posting that picture so Guanajuato will have to serve as a place holder until I can produce the bugs. 

Re: Cleanliness, Matrimony, Rules

Photographs are against the rules at the Buncombe County landfill so I had to drive away a bit and take sneaky pictures from the cab of my truck. I'm not sure what the consequences of dump photography are but I don't want to piss off the guys driving the giant stuff-crushers. It's good to keep on their good sides b/c they push you out of the muck on rainy days plus they could "accidentally" crush you and leave you for the trash archeologists to find in 100 yrs.

This is totally unrelated but I've decided that keeping the house clean and tidy makes up like 70% of the unwritten marriage contract. The unwritten marriage contract, or UMC, is made up of all the things you never talk about or even think about before getting married that end up being crucial deciding factors of marital bliss or discord. For us tidyness is a big factor. This one's tough for me b/c while I'm predisposed to excel in some spousal departments- handiness, sweetness, loyalty- I am in fact a natural mess maker. I spend my days converting perfectly good lumber into housing and dust. I find extreme comfort in eating crumbly things in bed. I like to organize things on the floor in little piles. Apparently some people (name withheld) find this system messy. Intolerable even.
Landfill-ish. I'd show pictures of the house but it's against the rules to take photographs. Kidding. 

This is blogging the future. Tommorrow we're having a Day of the Dead party. It was so great. Everyone had the best time ever and the dead were honored to boot. If this doesn't turn out to be the case I'll make another blog entry to rectify and promise never to record the future again.

Your reward for checking my blog is that you're invited to this party even if I forgot to invite you earlier. Even if I don't know you you're invited. Come it sugar skulls with us. And tamales.