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“Kitchen cabinets falling out of ceiling. Whee!” This was my post snippet to remind me to post about this stuff later. I should delete it to start in properly with what’s going on with the house right now, but that snippet really sums it up. What I should also do is change it to past tense, but that’s getting ahead of myself slightly.

When we bought the house at the end of 2009, one of the issues the home inspector brought to our attention was the kitchen cabinets above our sink island weren’t anchored securely into the ceiling. We instructed the sellers that they needed to fix this or else we no buy their house, kthxbye. A contractor came in, put some very heavy duty looking screws into the cabinets and everything seemed hunky dory from then on. Until Mother’s Day.

I had noticed the gap for a few weeks at that point, but it wasn’t until Mother’s Day that I became increasingly concerned. There was some caulk/glue along the back edge of the cabinets and as the cabinets pulled away from the ceiling, it created holes in the glue. Holes that I could see clear through to the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen. Not good. The husband and I swapped the heavy glassware from the sinking cabinets over to a more secure location and housed all our nice, light, plastic storage containers in the fail cabinets.

For the most part, our cabinets are just fine. Except the door style. They lack personality and are just bland bland bland. Blech. So, Superhusband (because he is my hero) told me to shop for different cabinets. That’s how we would fix the problem.

And panic set in.

I was convinced I would spend too much money on cabinets that I would not, in fact, like. I have several family members and friends with kitchens I adore. They have personality, style, FUNCTION. They’re all wonderful. I had worked myself up in a tizzy convinced that mine would not.

So, that idea went out the window pretty quick.

Instead, we opted to get someone to repair the falling cabinets. Superhusband was going to call a professional to pay to do it. This is, of course, ridiculous. We have a very good friend who is a professional and calling anyone but him first, is kind of silly. If it is urgent and he is unavailable, by all means, call someone else and pay them. We really do try our best not to take advantage of his goodwill because he is our friend.

So, Jim came by and we started taking down the cabinets to find out why they’re falling out of the ceiling and what needs doing to get them back up there and staying up there. In my head, I was fairly convinced that despite the contractor coming in and “fixing” the cabinets post home inspection, there was nothing on the other side of the drywall for the screws to hang on to and that was going to be the problem. We would need some piece of wood up there to reinforce the structure.

Jim cut a hole in the ceiling so he could place the wood he brought for just such a repair. He smacked at it with his hammer. Repeatedly. It wasn’t making a hole. Drywall isn’t the strongest of stuff. When you smash it with a hammer, it makes a hole. After further investigation and successful hole-creating, we found wood up there for anchoring cabinets!

So why were my doubly anchored cabinets pulling away from the ceiling?

This is where math comes in handy. Slide rules at the ready? We have a 1.75″ stile + .5″ drywall + .5″ plywood = potato?

No, not potato; 2.75″, akshully. The contractors must have thought potato, because they used 2″ screws. That plywood in my ceiling intended to anchor the cabinets was probably pristine and unblemished apart from where it was joined to the frame for hanging aforementioned drywall.

Not only did they use 2″ screws. They used 2″ screws TWICE! Different contractors! Used the same wrong screws! GAH!!!!

After fishing around in his toolbox, Jim found as many 3″ screws as he could find, my kitchen cabinets are now happily secured and not falling out of my ceiling.

Unrelated to cabinets at all, Jim managed what a previous contractor I had paid, could not. He made water come out of a pipe and make ice in my refrigerator. Sure, the ice was brown the first dozen cycles of the ice making system, but that’s not HIS fault.

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So, we needed to get our gutters cleaned. They were gross. It caused us problems during the Snowpocalypse of 2010 with hugemongous icicles forming on the side of our house. They dangled from the gutters and attached to one of the spare bedroom’s window.

And then it melted.

Into the window.

Onto a box of comics.

So, yes, needed to get that taken care of. We also had a few additional things around the house we wanted done like the light switch in our master bathroom needed replacing and we wanted our beer fridge moved to the garage.

A handyman was called, he came out and did an estimate for us and took a look at everything we wanted done and took a look around the house. He found a few extra things that we needed to have looked at and said he’d be back.

While cleaning the gutters, they found some fairly significant holes in the frame of our master bedroom window. While repairing the light switch, they found burn marks on the 2nd light switch and replaced it as well. While moving the fridge, they noticed that the window in the kitchen wasn’t terribly insulated and was leaking in cold air like a pro. While replacing the fan in our guest bathroom, they found mold in the insulation.

Everything they did, they found something else wrong with the house. Going to the doctor? Much the same thing, to me. I’m terrified of going in for something simple and being told I need a complete inner tune up and everything must go because it just plain doesn’t work any more.

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The mild-mannered feline pictured at left is my eldest and first kitty, Felix. I adopted him in Richmond when I was going to college there, much to my cat-allergic roommate’s chagrin. He wasn’t always mild-mannered, of course. And he still has some terrible habits. When he was wee, he would pounce my head in the middle of the night. Bored kitty was bored. He taught himself to fetch, and whenever I did two chores in particular, he tried to help me with them.

The first chore was laundry. When I sorted my laundry and emptied everything out of my hamper, Felix was in it the second the last sock was removed. Being a meanie, I would close the lid on him. He could care less. When I was feeling jolly, I’d throw one of his toys into the hamper just to watch him hop in after it . . . and then I’d close the lid on him.

That particular hamper is long gone, sadly, however every empty laundry basket since has been fair game for kitty-hopping. I suspect the motive is to inspect the vast emptiness such baskets provide and to contemplate it. Cats are very existential. . .

The second chore Felix liked to help with, and is somewhat related to laundry, is changing the bedsheets. I thought it was a particularly kitten-y thing to do. But alas, he still gets excited about changing the sheets to this very day, 10 and half years later.

Take the sheets off the bed and immediately, there’s a wide-eyed predatory Felix on the mattress pad, chasing invisible gremlins along its surface.

Putting the fitted sheet on the bed is an invitation for sheet spelunking and diving under before the third and fourth corners can be tucked into place. (I should mention here, I have made an entire bed with a big lump in the middle because he refused to come out from under the fitted sheet)

Adding the top sheet is like a declaration of war. Forget military corners, just try and get those edges tucked under the bed without coming back with a bloody nub.

If you’re the type who likes to fold over the top bit of sheet to cover the middle blanket, its best to just let Felix go diving at the fold. He prefers the sheet flat at the top and will let you know by attacking the fold, diving under the fold, and chasing the fold back up to the top of the bed until the fold has been vanquished.

Also, it’s not just me he likes to help with changing the sheets. So, yanno, if you need a good laugh and a simple chore to take three times longer than it ought to because a senior cat is recapturing his kitten-y youth, c’mon over.

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This year has been a crazy roller coaster of things! Some bad but most everything very good. We’ve been in our little blue house for a whole year now and married for almost 7 months. We lost a very sweet and beloved kitty but are looking to find a dog to round out the menagerie.

Games have been played both video and boxed. Crafts have been crafted. Comics have been collected.

2011 has quite a bit of adventure planned already but I’m still basking in the warm glow of this year. It’ll be hard to top but I’m sure we’ll do our best to try.

Hopefully one of those 2011 things will be me posting in this thing more often!

Continue reading »]]> I am a bad blogger. I promised an update during the long weekend and didn’t deliver. I apologize. Lots. I even had a fun post about shoes drafted that I never bothered to post. Some day soon. Promises.

It has been super hot here the last few weeks. We haven’t hardly had a chance to enjoy our kickass patio set we bought because the heat and humidity has been so oppressive. Such is life in Maryland. Our in ground garden has been pretty productive now that we’ve fended off the deer and weeded it. Our container garden has not done as well. Note to other container gardeners: ceramic pots create too much heat and cook the roots of your plants. Next year we’re going to fork over the cash and go with some whiskey barrel pots instead.

The most exciting thing was the earthquake yesterday. It woke Trey and I both up at 5am when it happened. I remember my cat growling waking me up. Apparently, Trey woke up and asked why the headboard was shaking. I told him the whole house was shaking and that it was an earthquake and to go back to sleep (I do not remember saying this, but he swears I did). He told me it wasn’t an earthquake, this is Maryland, it was just a low-flying plane. When he got up and checked the Internet, my earthquake claims were confirmed.

It is a little known fact that there is a very large, dangerous fault line underneath the Eastern seaboard. It is often forgotten because it is not very active at all. We’ve been hearing a few more reports of other earthquakes steadily moving west. Like dominoes.

Next week, we head to San Diego for our honeymoon. This includes two days at the San Diego Comic-Con. We are very excited. Trey gleefully enjoys telling people where we’re going for our honeymoon. Then, even more gleefully, he enjoys telling people that it was MY idea to go to Comic-Con for a honeymoon. I am the nerd girl. It is true.

So, that’s really all I’ve got going on. Work has been picking up in busy-ness rather steadily the last few weeks. Planning for the honeymoon has consumed a lot of my leisure Internet time. Sitting down and writing has not been foremost on my mind, sadly. I hope I’ll have more to say post Comic-Con.

Continue reading »]]> Our house has a really nice sized deck. It has an excellent view in the winter and a good mix of view and privacy in the spring and summer when the trees have leafed out. It also gets quite a lot of sun. This is both good and bad. Good for container gardening and plants that needs lots of sunlight. Bad for just hanging out on the deck because it gets ridiculously hot. And you can forget spending any amount of time on the deck barefoot.

Because of this particular limitation, I refuse to purchase a metal patio set. It would get too hot to sit on and then what’s the point of having it? So, I insist on buying a wood patio set. I found a perfect teak one at a seasonal store a few months back. The season came and went and I do not have a teak patio set, unfortunately. I was at Lowes the week before the wedding for something not patio-related and saw a 5-piece wood patio set. I decided to come back after the wedding and get it. My patio set problem appeared to be solved.

Trey and I went to Lowes this weekend to purchase said patio set. As we pulled out the chairs and sat down in it, I came to a horrible realization. The chair was cold. Cold? Wood doesn’t get cold in air conditioning? The wood patio set was metal painted to look like wood. Naughty decoy patio set!

I would not be foiled. We continued shopping around Lowes in the hopes that something else would catch my eye. Such a set did, it is dark brown wicker and on clearance! The naughty decoy was trying to keep me from finding the killer deal in the next room. Obviously.

I honestly would have much preferred the teak patio dining set from the other shop, but I will be very happy with the set we found. Now the tricky part is getting my victorious find delivered. It was supposed to arrive yesterday. No such luck. Some sort of mishap involving no one having put together the thing and it not getting onto the truck yesterday. I should get it tomorrow. Expect a volcanic hissy fit if they fail a second time. Lowes, you’re on notice. I usually <3 you, don’t disappoint me.

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As anyone knows, when you have a problem with your cable, phone, or Internet and it’s a really weird, erratic, hard-to-pinpoint problem, when a tech comes by to fix it, the problem is no longer there. This was my problem. My voip modem would just stop working of its own volition. I have called Comcast 3 times to fix this mystery problem.

The first call, the tech told me there was a short in my phone line and that was probably causing the modem to short out and that’s why it was being a bastard. He was only half right. There was a short in the phone line and he did fix that, but that wasn’t what was disconnecting me.

The second call went not quite as well. Got on a call with a really super excellent tech chick who was so empathetic and awesome, but she couldn’t get me an appointment earlier than nearly a week later. She tried transferring me to a different area to possibly get me more expedited service and an earlier time. That guy was a dick. Total douchebag dickweed. Those Comcast commercials where they say “If the customer’s not happy, Comcast isn’t happy”? Yeah, he didn’t get that memo. I understand that they contract out their service calls and there’s always service calls, but there needs to be a better system to help customers who aren’t receiving service. It is not cool to have to wait 4 days for my problem to be resolved. Fix it the next day. So, I scheduled the service call for a day I wasn’t going to be home and let them dangle in the wind. It was petty, but it made me feel better.

The third call almost went the same way as the second, but I was channeling something oddly zen that day. The earliest available appointment was great if the tech came at the back half of the service window. I asked if there could be a note telling the tech to do that. And there must be some sort of asshole clause, because the dude I talked to got cold as ice as soon as I made mention of that stating that was not possible because it is a window and they show up within that window. Achtung, Herr Scheiße Burger. Slow your fucking roll. So, I said fuck it, that won’t work for me, gimme the following Monday. A week+ from the time of the phone call. Fiance was confused. He was pretty convinced I was going to give them hell. Honestly? Not worth it. The problem was inconvenient as hell, but manageable overall.

Dude-guy who did my original install was who came by on Monday. He was all set to head into the basement where he’d originally put it. I told him, “Yeah, I moved it. That wasn’t really working for me.” So, he did all the usual things plugging in his meters and yadda yadda yadda. And then it happened. The most wonderful thing that could ever happen on a service call. The impossible to predict and reproduce random problem happened. That little bit of vindication, “See! I’m not crazy! It does do what I said!!!”

Water + Cable things = Bad News. Apparently. Dude-guy replaced the stuff on the outside of my house, came back in, tested it and not only was it working, the signal was better! Kick. Ass!

Only one downside, tho. I was this > < close to getting a new modem out of the deal. No trouble found with the modem = no new modem

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So, I’m a nerd girl — In the country — (It is the name of the blog, after all) and as such a nerd country girl, I work from home. My needs are simple when working from home:

• Solid, fast Internet connection
• A comfortable work area
• Land line telephone with speaker phone and mute functions
• Electricity

These are not complex or intricate demands. Yet, at several points in the day, today I lacked 50% of those things. As amusing it would have been had my chair just up and collapsed from under me and as tragic as having no electricity would have been, those two requirements to remain steadfast and true today.

Thanks to dear old Comcast, my phone and Internet went on walkabout for several hours this afternoon. Not only did they take their post-lunchtime sabbatical, they decided it would be a fine time to do so during a conference call.

When my work laptop loses lan connection as ungracefully as the modem deciding it is tired and wants to take a nap, I get one of these:

So, it came as no surprise to me that when I lost connection, it took me an hour of cajoling my work laptop into shutting down gracefully before having to give up the ghost and holding down the power button and start from a fresh reboot.

Needless to say, I got kinda angry.

Hopefully the weekend will prove to have better things in store.

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Since moving in to the new house I have moved the modem 3 times. (Did I mention we’ve only been here a month?) Already, I am making evil plans to move it again. This time though involves super fun construction! Obviously this 4th reconfiguration gives me more pause because it involves drilling holes in walls. I think I have a really good plan for making this work. I have lofty goals.

Continue reading »]]> Another day done and more updates and polishing done to the old home domain name: viciousgrin.com.  Most of the work was done on the Writings section and a lot of removing broken links and other fun stuff of that nature.  I think the next polishing steps are going to be adding the links from the boring home page into pages on the blog design.  Or!  Adding all that lovely and glorious content into the wonderfully-not-designed-by-me WordPress site.  Very exciting for me.

I haven’t done any real, solid, good site design work in at least 2 years since I stopped working for VetInsite (now VetStreet).  And even then, those were your average static websites.  /shrug.  I enjoy appreciating the more than excellent talent of more gifted folks than me.

Tomorrow’s blog post should hopefully detail the new desks, various furniture purchased this weekend, status of the home unpacking and various other actually exciting things that have happened over the last few days.  Yay!