Garage progress

I'm going to call it Day 2, since it was day 2 of actual work. Real Day 2 was spent trying to figure out wiring issues, and day 3 was spent eating at BW3 and not f'ing with the garage.

Day 2:
Installed the majority of the 2nd of 7 roll of insulation, hung 3 of 20 of the drywall sheets, went back and added the first upper section just to see how bad it'd be.

Things learned:
It's very easy to get carried away with a rotozip-type tool when cutting out outlet boxes (whoops)
Hanging 8x4 sheets of drywall by yourself is a massive PITA.
I suck at hanging drywall. My first sheet wound up wonky, even though it was perfectly butted against a wall stud on the corner. 2nd sheet followed suit, so I corrected with the 3rd sheet, actually leveling the top, resulting in the nice-ass gap. I'm putting a lot of faith in tape and joint compound.

Pics:



The 'fun' part is gonna be that window. And by fun, I mean "something I'll surely screw up". All in all, I'm pretty happy with the progress, considering I only have 2 actual nights of work in this, about 3 hours a night, and last night I stopped to eat and make a Sears run. This weekend is lost to Champaign. Monday night I'll button up all the wiring on this wall (need to replace some 14/2 wiring with 12/2 to keep my mind at ease), and hope to have all the drywall hung on this wall by Tuesday/Wednesday, hopefully have it taped and mudded and sanded by Friday. That will give me the weekend to doink with wiring on the other wall, move shit, and start the other side, which should go pretty quick since there's no windows/cabinets in the way.

Project'd!

So, here's what we went to HD for Sunday.... Gonna put up insulation and drywall/paint the garage, basically just finish the thing out so it's a little nicer/cleaner.

I didn't think to take an actual before pic, best I could do is get pics of the place after I'd already cleared off a wall:

Then, all the crap from that wall shoved over to the other side of the garage:



First step was to pull all the shelving and 20 years of random nails and screws put into the studs over time, drill out the studs up top to run the outdoor speaker wiring, and start throwin up the insulation. Here's bag 1 of 7 installed:




The goal is to have the entire thing done before Elloween (11/10). Of course, we're going home this weekend, so this is basically gonna consume my weeknights for a couple weeks. The demo is taking the longest, because of ALL the crap that's on these studs, just tons of random nails and shit. Also, there's a dead outlet on the other wall I want to fix before I drywall it in place, and I might add another outlet or two while I'm at it, so I have to spend some time in the attic, which is where a shitload of birds were living this summer. Hoping they're gone.

Creeping (up) :(

Morning report: 221. Odd only because I didn't do my normal amount of binge drinking this weekend, so I figured the loss of extra empty calories woulda helped, but on the flip, it might be the lack of dehydration/water weight. Or, I just need to stop eating like shit. :)

The definition of a "good news day"

When "Deputy mayor dies in monkey attack" and "Waffle House brawl lands Kid Rock in jail" share the front page of CNN.com.

Dedicated to the blogger strike of 07.

Let's see... Haven't done this in a while. I'll start with my life in descending order of occurrence, up to the point I can recall and/or is interesting. In as many one-sentence fragments/run-ons as possible. With bullets.

• Rocked the hottub after a long day of shit, awesome, always say "we should use this more", but fail.
• Watched Transformers on HD-DVD, fuggin awesome in terms of ooooh/ahh, movie wasn't as bad as I'd feared, but definitely had moments I wanted to punch my TV.
• Went to the mall, attempted to buy shoes, failed, went to Orange Julius, tried the Strawberry Julius, discovered my meaning in life, which is to order Strawberry Juliusesses. (Julii?)
• Decided to go home next weekend, forgoing Beatallica, cuz of logistics and whatnot.
• Went to Home Depot, bought 20 sheets of drywall and 500' of insulation for garage, pimped the $19 HD rental truck, love that damn deal.
• Sugarmomma Ellen bougth me some much-needed clothes at Kohls.
• Went to shoe carnival, where there was no funnel cakes, but plenty of shoes, yet nothing I liked.
• Fuggin dog woke me up, had a redbull and bagels, was wired.
• Passed out after the Illini game, rouging the punter, more like roughing the game up for your dumbasses, who names their kid Juice?
• Helen locked herself out of the house, so was hanging out at ours when we got back from BW3, Eric came over a little later.
• Ate BW3, grabbed Transformers HDDVD @ Bestbuy, Asian checkout lady was all OMGAWESOME.
• Spent most of saturday on couch, watched Vice Versa with Fred Savage/Judge Reinhold, who names their kid Judge?
• So hungover.
• Went to bed at 330 after chatting with Brett about random IT/career/Champaign shit.
• Karaokee'd at Lil Peeps, which is a complete shithole, filled with bad KJs and 10 other people, danced to random 80s shit in a manner unfitting to a lady, or sober person.
• Hit Fridays south, Paul hooked us up, per usual, Champaign guys are too good at Golden Tee
• Chillaxed at Hurricanes, had shots, played much Cricket
• Chatted with guy outside Hurricanes about Mustangs for seriously 30 minutes, really cool guy, proceeded to buy me a shot, ellen thought he was hitting on me until she saw him hit on chicks at the bar.
• Cruised blaring some Pantera cuz we're dumb
• Ate Ramon's, fuggin awesome for some reason, prolly Magaritas.
• Rachel, Brett, Barry, and Jess arrived, and we drank a bit.

Some shit happened last weekend, but I honestly don't recall what.

The end. Or beginning.

Downward spiral... kinda

Morning weight... 217. I did got a bit of bender last night, so I'm assuming that's mostly water weight, but who knows.

New career path:

Hot sauce namer-guy

Sir Fartalot's Hot Sauce 1315-01
Habanero Mustard From 1546-01
Hell
See Dick Burn Hot Sauce 1367-01

--------

100% Awesome.

Of Poptarts and Alzheimers

So, I was running late this morning. As such, I didn't have time to eat any breakfast at the house. I had to run through the store on my way into work anyway to stock up on Diet Dew, so I figured I'd just swing through the cereal aisle en route and grab a box of Pop-Tarts. Simple enough, right?

Holy shit. Have you bought Pop-Tarts lately? I was faced with a wall of possibilities that went on for what seemed like an eternity. Mint Chocolate Chip. Apple Strudel. Strawberry Milkshake. Wildberry. Hot Fudge Sundae. Double Berry.

I figure, well, I guess shit evolves. The last time I made a serious in-store "box of Pop-Tarts" purchase was probably 1998, so something's bound to change. My problem was this, though. I had gone in with very high expectations of walking in, grabbing "Old Faitful", the Frosted Strawberry love, and rolling through my day. Instead, I stood in the aisle, mumbling like Ronald Regan, trying to find the most basic pillar of the Pop-Tart family, while trying to figure out the new Half & Half series.

Finally, I did find that which I sought, nestled between the Mint Chocolate Chip (which I'd picked up and pondered for a good 2 minutes) and the Half Chocolate/Half Vanilla pastry abortion.

I'm normally a man of variety, but I was starving this morning, and my stomach had already decided nothing could be done but be filled with the Frosted Strawberry love, thus my dillema.

Anyway, got my shit, I think I was somewhere between 4 minutes and 2.5 hours late for work this morning due to my detour through foil-wrapped varietal hell.