Bloggus

Day 5 or A Tale of Two Marty's Finally we have paint going up in the living room. The color, Deep Garnet, is nice, a little lighter that I expected, but when its thicker it looks really good. The second coat will be great. Marti was back to help cut in from the edges again. She enjoys that more than anyone else I know, and I'm starting to worry about her. Such focus and precision, so unlike me. If I ever need a life saving medical operation, and I have a reasonable suspicion that it could be performed with an angled paint brush, I will definitely get my HMO to include her in their coverage area. We were also joined by Marty Weaver. It is safe to say that 100% of the people I know named Marty, or anything phonetically similar, were in attendance last night. The downside of this is that it makes conversation with anyone who isn't Bridget or me virtually impossible. Marty, hand me that flashlight. No, not you, the other Marty. Marti, would you like a drink? Yes I know I just asked you that, I was talking to Marti, Marty. Marty (With a "y" denotes the masculine form. I'm not going to explain this any further, you can figure it out) was my designated Competent Person in the areas of tools and hardware last night. This is better for me, my wife, the house, and most of South Glenwood Avenue. The closest thing I could find for an antonym to handy, which describes Marty, is maladroit, which describes me. Not only does my left hand not know what my right is doing, my right hand doesn't even know what my right is doing. I'm more of an idea guy, good for planning, organizing, and supervising. Physical things distress me, really. If technology existed to allow me to move things with my mind, I'd be Bob Vila, but until then I'm more like Bob Barker, standing around telling people what game to play next. "And because you were closest to the actual price of the solid gold fondue pot without going over, we're going to play....Cut The Countertop With a Circular Saw!" So I actually did very little hands on work last night anyway, because Marty is such a handy and willing dude. He also drives a pickup truck, which is the vehicular equivalent of linesman pliers. We took the truck to Home Depot to buy countertops, because I needed an eight foot piece that probably wouldn't fit in my car without removing the windshield, which would have been ok until it started raining. We decided yesterday to only replace the tops of the counters for now, although they made a great appetite suppressant and would do wonders for my diet. I've renamed the color on them Festering Melon. And boomerangs? Boomerangs? I'm going to have a nightmare where we try and throw out the counters and they keep coming back to us. The largest counter in the kitchen is eight feet long. It was held in by three screws, which we located after lifting the counter off the cabinets and saying "Oh, were there screws there?" According to my calculations we had 0.375 wood screws for every foot length of countertop. The smaller, two foot counter top had four screws in it, which is 2.0 per foot length. Marty did most of the cutting, drilling, and actual work installing these counter tops, while I had the awesome and crucial task of saying things like "Looks good to me!" and "Can I get you a drink?" I bought some little hockey-puck shaped lights to install underneath the top cupboards in the kitchen earlier this week, and last night I tried installing them. If I had only read the fine print before making this purchase, I would have noticed the following: "WARNING: Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to install these lights on, in, or near anything. Attempting to do so will void the warranty on this product, your car, house, and will cancel your life insurance policy." The other side of the packaging simply reads "Made in Hell." I think that actual hockey pucks may be more useful than these lights, at least in my kitchen. For starters, they come with loose wires, and little plugs are included separately in a plastic bag. Any company too lazy to attach the plugs to the wires themselves is immediately suspect. Why not just send me some sheets of plastic and let me fabricate the whole contraption myself? The mounting equipment included three wood screws for each light. The screws are very small, and come pre-stripped, for your convenience. Its so handy to not have to spend all that time with a screwdriver carving the Phillips head slots out into perfect circles myself. I'm going to leave them off for now and let someone less Barkeresque give it a whirl later on. Tell 'em what they've won! I may add more later...