February, 2005:
Clean Garage; Clean Yard; Mexican Hippies Unite
Today, we hope to tackle the rest of the garage and the yard work. We’ve got about 6 hours (startiiiiing…. now) to get dressed, go to the grocery store, prepare some food items for this evening, and get those two things done. That’ll be a little tight, but not impossible.
Tonight, we’re heading out to Randol Mill Park (in Arlington) with a few friends for a Mexican picnic (carne asada… mmmmm) and various hippie activities, as it’s being called (interesting combination, no?) — hand drums, guitars, fire spinning, good times. I’m sure there’s room for one more, if you’re interested in coming. But, I think just about everyone I know that would be interested is already planning on going.
The night shouldn’t be TOO late, after which, we’ll head home, get to bed, and go back to the grindstone tomorrow.
Just like I said, but in a different order
Today was quite productive.
We brought back some crap we bought at Lowes that we never used, got the wood we needed and two saw horses (which I’ve been wanting for a while). Came back home and floored the half of the attic above the garage that’s doable right now.
Then, since all the boxes we were planning to put up there were all busted up, we went through them, threw away a lot of stuff, and made a pile of stuff, in good boxes, to store, a pile to put in the house now, and a pile to throw away.
We also took down the Christmas lights, so we don’t look so ghetto any more.
In addition, we made some headway on the bed finding and have decided to go with an inflatable bed. We don’t really need two guest rooms with beds in our house. This’ll make it easier to pack the bed up when we’re done.
In less an an hour, we’ll be heading out for Sushi. Afterwards, I’m sure we’ll hang out with Justin and friends for the rest of the evening (maybe even play some poker… woo!).
So, starting tomorrow, we’ll pick up where we left off. We need to finish unpacking the boxes we decided to keep, and move the boxes from our bedroom and the upstairs room out side. I know that was planned for next weekend, but it just makes more sense to do it now so we only have to make one trip up and down the ladder into the attic. Hopefully, we’ll get the bed squared away and all the yard work done tomorrow as well.
It feels good to have gotten so much done, and, really, we only put 4 or 5 hours into it.
Jess’ parents are coming: a plan of attack
Jess’ parents (and her brother, and grandfather) will be here in two weeks from today. That means we have 4 weekend days to do everything that needs to be done (smaller things can be done on the weekdays).
We need to get a bed for her grandfather. Probably a double sized mattress, box spring, and frame. We also need to put down flooring in the attic, move all the stuff that we’re storing in the garage up there, and then clean the garage out. There’s also some yard work to be done. Both cars need to be cleaned out and washed. The Christmas lights need to come down (yes, we’re that trashy). It would be nice to get some patio furniture. I’d also like to get something on the walls in this place — it looks so barren. Jess’ computer needs to be moved upstairs, our closet needs to be cleaned out, and I’d like to do something about all the wires behind the entertainment center. Jess needs a new mouse (thanks, Toby), and the fridge needs to be cleaned out. All the boxes in the smaller upstairs bedroom and in our master bedroom need to be moved into the new floored attic. We need to paint two small spots in the smaller upstairs bedroom, and two other small spots in the game room. In addition to all that, we need to do all the basic cleaning — mopping, dusting, vacuuming, polishing, etc.
That’s a lot. It seems almost impossible. When something seems impossible, I break it into smaller tasks that are easier to grasp and prioritize those tasks so that, if everything can’t be done, at least the most important things are done first (all items include driving time, which is significant. If multiple purchases can be coupled into one trip out, time will be saved).
# The Attic (4 hours). There are lots of things hiding in this house that are merely clutter because we’ve been too lazy to take care of them. Since we have very little storage in the house, there’s no place to put the stuff until we sort out a good home for it all. Taking care of it the right way would consume way too much time. By flooring the attic we can throw anything unsightly up there and deal with it later.
## Measure the attic.
## Buy the boards.
## Cut the boards.
## Install the boards.
# Grandpa’s Bed (2 hours). If he doesn’t have a place to sleep it’s not going to be much of a vacation for him. If Jess opts to try and find a used bed, this could take quite a bit longer since we’d have to go from place to place (or call around) until we found something we liked that we were willing to pay for. This estimate assumes it won’t take more than 30 minutes to find one to buy.
## Find a bed.
## Buy the bed.
## Install the bed.
# Christmas Lights and Yard Work (2 hours). Our yard looks terrible until this is done. It’s a little bit of work for a large payoff which makes it high on the list.
## Take down Christmas lights.
## Clean yard by driveway.
## Find a place to take the Christmas tree.
## Remove the Christmas tree.
## Pull weeds.
# Clean the Garage (1 hour). Jess’ grandfather hopes to assemble some birdhouses and a herb planter for us while he’s here. He needs a place to work.
# Move boxes and assorted junk into the attic (1 hour). Again, this is a huge payoff for just a little effort.
# Clean the Fridge (30 minutes).
# Re-organize entertainment center (1 hour).
# Deep cleaning (4 hours). We’ll do this as late as possible (most likely throughout the week before they come) so that it’ll still be clean when they get here.
# Wash cars (1.5 hours). It’s hard to get anywhere without a car. And ours cars are too messy to hold any number of people comfortably. This should be done as late as possible so they’ll still be clean.
# Painting (30 minutes). It’s not that noticeable and, therefore, not that important.
# Move Jess’ Computer (30 minutes).
# Get Jess a new mouse (1.5 hours). I can do this one day at work and cut that time down to 0 hours.
# Buy patio furniture (2 hours).
# Put something on the walls (unknown).
With any luck, we should be able to get the Attic and the Yard work done today.
Tomorrow we should be able to get Grandpa’s bed and clean the garage.
Throughout this week, we’ll take care of the fridge, the entertainment center and the painting. I’ll buy Jess a mouse during my lunch break at work one day this week. Maybe even get the boxes moved into the attic.
Next weekend we’ll wash the cars, move any boxes that didn’t get moved, and, possibly, look for patio furniture. I’ll also move Jess’ computer. We can also consider some of the deep cleaning that’s less likely to be ruined over the course of the following week.
Throughout next week, we’ll handle the deep cleaning, and put the finishing touches on everything.
Then, that weekend, they’ll be here.
Seems like a good plan. Now, to put it in action.
Stuff…
Stuff you might want to know:
“Yahoo!”:http://yahoo.com/ bought “Flickr?”:http://flickr.com/ (Find out March 1st) ( “more”:http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/02/rumor_yahoo_has.html )
“Odeo”:http://odeo.com/ is to podcasting what blogger was to blogging. Maybe. With “evhead”:http://evhead.com/ and “Noah Glass”:http://noahglass.com/ on board, and “Ruby on Rails”:http://rubyonrails.com/ powering portions of the system, I can only expect good things. ( “more”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/02/25/BUGDRBGDTL1.DTL&type=business )
In “Paris Hilton’s footsteps”:http://thetrack.bostonherald.com/moreTrack/view.bg?articleid=69583, Fred Durst got his T-Mobile account hacked. Among other things, a sex video starring Mr. Durst himself, along with a (so far) unidentified female was found. I’ve got a copy if you can’t seem to find it on your own. ( “more”:http://www.pycs.net/bbum/2005/2/25/#200502251 )
Yesterday was “Ruby’s”:http://ruby-lang.com/ 12th birthday. ( “more”:http://www.hyperionreactor.net/node/44 )
Podcasting is just a really dumb name for sticking an audio file in an RSS feed. Despite that, the culture surrounding it is quite a bit of fun. If I could ever come up with something interesting to say (or a partner to say it with) you might hear something from me. Until then, the “Dawn and Drew Show”:http://dawnanddrew.com/ is the only Podcast I’ve liked enough to go back and listen to archives of. Maybe you’ll enjoy it too.
Rails 0.10.0 is out
“Rails 0.10.0″:http://weblog.rubyonrails.com/archives/2005/02/24/rails-0100-routing-web-services-components-oracle/ is out. Lots of nice stuff in here. In fact, the only thing this doesn’t have that 1.0 will have is some Performance tuning, better Packaging, and some bug fixes.
_Web development just got a whole lot easier_.
