Back to Work

I've been terrible at working hard as of late. It's oppressively hot in Providence, plus super muggy, and I've been getting sucked into sitting on the couch. Add to that the fact that Al Medina, General Contractor and Richard, The Guy Who Hands Me Money were on vacation for the past three weeks, and you get an unmotivated Ryan. I stink.

Things got back to full tilt this weekend. I finished up a lot of little things and the Guy Who Hands Me Money will be coming over today to take a look. Hopefully he'll sign away the last of the money and I will be able to schedule the final inspection (with the terrible city inspectors) for Friday (right before Amanda and I fly to Philadelphia for the weekend).

Here's a sampling of what I did over the weekend:

Painted outside
Painted inside
Glued some trim in the bathroom and fireplace hearth
Caulked a terrible shower enclosure
Cleaned some windows (more time consuming than you think)
Etc

There are a ton of little things left to do, but I got a lot of little things done over the weekend, so I'm starting to feel a little better about where the house is. Hopefully it will be inspected a few times this week, and pass. Once inspected, I get to tear down a shower stall and replace it with a tub (long story). Once the tub is finshed, it'll be on the market. Hooray.

Also, great news from Friday: Jeff Doors is done. Really, very great. He finished up his kind of OK work, I didn't yell at him, and he was on his way with some of my money.

On Friday, when I got home from work, he was there, as was his gigantic girlfriend (?). As I am obliged to do, I stopped to chat with the enormous woman while she was in her white Caravan waiting for Jeff to finish packing up. Since it's been so hot, the conversation obviously took a turn for the weather. I explained that the house isn't too bad heat wise, plus we have ceiling fans, so while hot, it could be worse. She then let me know the following, white sweating, possibly panting and leaning halfway out of her car with the door open. I have typed it up as best as I could from memory:

"When I get home after a day with doctors or taking Jeff around town, I usually go straight in the house. It's too hot for being outside this week. It's just awful. When I get home I just lock the doors and strip off all of my clothes. I strip 'em off and try to cool down in bed or something."

Really. She said this to me. Ugh.

In other, less debilitatingly disgusting news, here are a few pictures of some progress.

Amanda, scraping a freshly painted exterior window:

The Master bedroom (also known as "Dan's Bedroom"):

The Master Closet (it's huge):

And lastly, not house related, this great mural:

I drive past it everyday on my way to work. It is just fantastic. Not only is the art style great (terrible) but there are two very peculiar portions of the mural.

Here they are, side by side:

The first one, of the basketball player, first caught my attention when we moved to River Ave, all of those months ago. You cannot tell me that the person who painted it said, "this is not a person squatting, and pooping out a basketball as a gift for an unsuspecting mailman coming to pick up the letters in the adjacent mailbox." I cannot be convinced otherwise.

The other, I just noticed this morning, while snapping these photos. It appears to be an adult man, calling over a running midget in semi-business attire for a warm embrace. This made me laugh for the entire 10 minute ride to work.

The question is: what kind of person is that little one? He looks kind of like a midget, but his proportions aren't midget-esque. His face and hair are much too adult to be a child running to hug his relative/mentor, plus what kid wears a tie? Does he attend a private school, with a dress code? If so, what kind of self respecting private school allows shorts? This isn't a movie set at a boarding school in Leeds, England, so that option is out.

On the other hand, and presuming that the man on the bench is a giant, what adult male wears red shorts with a shirt and tie? Does he work behind a desk, and thus, only have to appear to be dressed professionally from the waist up? Is he a Telemundan news anchor?

On the third hand (that's poor writing), was he in the middle of changing, when the obviously creepy man on the bench somehow caught his attention? If so, why would he tuck the professional looking shirt into his obviously casual shorts? Is he afraid of looking slovenly to his seated friend?

Sigh.

The point is this: think about things before you paint them. If you don't, I will be forced to over-think about them when you've finished. Idiots.

Lost Bets and Neighbors

Minimal updates, as usual.

Last weekend, Amanda and I went to a local state park and hung out. No big deal. Big deal? It was time to pay up on a bet I lost. Here's the set up:

Before we got married, we made a bet about a friend of hers. I was of the opinion that this friend of hers would be proposed to by her then boyfriend when we were all in Puerto Rico. Amanda said that it wouldn't happen. We made a bet with the following terms: I win, she eats a big spoonful of mayonnaise, which she hates. I lose the bet, I take a big bite out a a disgusting, probably poisonous tomato.

A month or so before the wedding, Amanda informed me that these two had broken up. F.

Here are a few photos of me trying not to throw up:

Gross.

I know that had nothing to do with the house and it's various projects, but it was worth mentioning.

Next up on the picture tour? The neighbors. I snapped a few shots of the crazy neighbor lady and her poor husband. How those tiny legs support that forward leaning mass of rolling fat is beyond me.

I made a comparison of her body to three stacked ring-shaped pool floats on top of legs and feet. It's apt I think.

Lastly, some house news. I'm going to try to get the final inspection scheduled for next Wednesday. General Contractor Al Medina should be getting back from Portugal this weekend, so we can finally get it done. Good times.

Dining Room

Here's the Dining Room. All it needs now is some more crap to fill up the shelves (this is our biggest problem right now. We have bookshelves everywhere, but not enough stuff to fill them up). More to come next week.

Update

The house is coming together. I guess. I have been lazy this last week, both in house work and updates. My apologies.

I'll post some picture updates this week, as rooms come together (for good), but for now, my update is Crazy Jeff Doors oriented.

He hasn't shown up for a week. It's the best. He called me yesterday, while I was at work, and left a message for me. I don't have it, so I cannot transcribe it word for word, but I will do my best to give you the gist of it. Here is the gist of it:

He has been off of his medication. He got medication yesterday.

Holy.

Moly.

He is crazy, this has been documented here. Literally crazy. Text book crazy. I was unaware that his craziness was at the 'need medication' level. Astounding. I fear that his enormous companion is dead. More on this as it develops.

Last week, he started to put up some crown moulding in the dining room. I had purchased hundreds of feet of the moulding and corner pieces so I could install it myself. Since Jeff was around, I asked him to start things. Big mistake.

One day last week, the only day he showed up, I listened to a voicemail he left while I was driving home. In it he described how he cannot use the MDF moulding that I purchased because he is, "a carpenter. Carpenters use wood."

When I got home, he told me the same thing and I told him that I would gladly install it myself. Below is his attempt. Judging by the look of things, he would not be able to put up wood crown either. The corner he attempted, and then abandoned, is terribly misaligned:

The only problem with my idea? The corners in each room are not square. Thus, the generally square corner pieces I purchased, to avoid crazy mitre cuts, will not work. They have huge gaps between them and the walls, and thus, the walls will be painted, the moulding returned, and the house crownless. I lack the skill to put up crown without cheating by using corner pieces. Lame.

Another Crazy Jeff update: I found his last name. It is Gagne. I spoke with the man who referred him to me, the man who took care of my sod, and he let me know. He also told me that he does a background check on everyone who works for him, and informed me that Jeff has two DUIs from 9 years ago, and that was it. I suspected as much, as Jeff doesn't drive, nor does he drink any longer.

I still searched around on the internet for a few minutes, looking for more recent transgressions, but there are none. Jeff, as usual, was a terrible manager of my expectations and led me to believe that he molested a child just two weeks ago. Instead, it was a crime or two from the 90s.

For your pleasure, I took some guerrilla style photos of Jeff and the Behemoth the last time they were at the house. Enjoy:

Jeff:

America is tops. It produces a lot of pharmaceuticals.

And her:

And her ham arm:

I will try to get some better images of them, but this was the best i could do without them noticing.

Lastly, we don't have cable. I explained this awhile ago. Since that decision, I have been trying to find ways to make the most of my huge TV, despite the lack of HD programming. Late last week, I found a fantastic little program that turns my computer into a virtual server for Hulu, Netflix and other such streaming video sites. Here's how it works:

The wireless network in my house talks to my desktop computer, and my Playstation 3. My desktop computer sends the Netflix, Hulu and other site information to my ps3. My ps3 displays said information. We choose from hundreds of movies, shows, etc. My ps3 sends the request to my desktop, which sends the request to the site. The site then serves up the information to my desktop, which sends it to my ps3, which sends it to my TV. It is just awesome.

Images to come this week.

Crazy Jeff Doors and a Day Off

This is long. Enjoy.

On Saturday, Amanda and I hosted a kind of housewarming cookout. The house isn't done, but it's far enough along to show pretty well. In order to get it fro m "paper on the floor, dust everywhere, bare walls" to "you want to take the tour?", we worked a lot on Friday night and Saturday morning.

Luckily, Dan Riley, friend extraordinaire, was coming into Providence, from Philadelphia, for the cookout and was more than willing to pitch in. He got there on Friday evening, after a million hours on the road, and he helped clean up, hang doors, etc. He also played some Wii tennis. Poorly:

His trip to Providence was hopefully pretty good on it's own, as he got some fantastic steak tips, got to listen to my sister talk constantly, and found out what the best Nerf football ever made is (it's this one). Also, he got to meet not just Crazy Jeff Doors, but also Crazy Jeff Door's female companion. Lucky him.

As if meeting him wasn't enough, he also got to witness not only the craziness that is Jeff Doors, and on top of that, me yelling at Jeff.

Three days previous, Jeff didn't show up at my house. He called me at 6:30 in the evening to ask if he could come by and do 'a couple hours of work'. I told him absolutely not, as there's no way I want him crazying up my house past nightfall. He seemed miffed, and hung up.

The next day, he didn't show up at my house. I gave him a call (which is really giving his huge female partner a call, because he doesn't have a phone) and I found out that he was working on a deck somewhere else. She said that he would be wouldn't be there the next day either. I asked her to have him call me so I could get the story from him. She said OK, and we hung up.

At 9:30 that night, my doorbell rang. I was intrigued. I checked the front door, and no one was outside. I started to make my way to the kitchen door and heard Jeff announce himself. Amanda had just finished showering, so I warned her to stay in the bathroom, as "it's Jeff Doors".

Livid, I answered the door, after some more impatient knocking by Jeff, and he explained that he needed to pick up some tools for the next day of deck building. I glared at him, but held my composure and let him in. He grabbed some tools, made a list of things he's missing (which he has found) and headed out the door, closing it behind him. Upon hearing that, Amanda made her way to the second floor bedroom, which didn't yet have a door on it, to get dressed. Not two minutes later, Jeff burst through the door and bounded up the stairs. I was in the living room, and hurriedly went to the foot of the stairs to see what was going on.

Jeff was gathering tools on the landing. Awesome. Luckily, Amanda, still in a towel, heard him coming up the stairs and got out of his line of sight. That was a close one.

Thursday came and went with Jeff not working in my house. Friday, however, he had promised to come by and do something. When I got home from work in the early afternoon, there was no sign of Jeff. I immediately called him and reminded him , once again, that I was having friends/family over the next day and he needed to get his crap cleaned up. He happily let me know that he was going to get something to eat, take a shower and head over. I hung up.

Two or three hours later, I called him again. He let me know that something had come up and his girlfriend's son's engine "would have blown if he didn't do something". I told him that I didn't believe him, and that I didn't care, and that he needed to come clean up. He told me he'd "be there in an hour". I laughed at him. He then said, "well, an hour and fifteen minutes." I laughed again and hung up the phone.

Two and a half hours later, he arrived.

He did some more work on the banister on the landing, talked way too much and I tried to avoid him. He summoned me a few times with questions and I did my best to remain calm and answer them. He also provided a little comic relief by asking, "do you know who the best carpenter in the world is?"

"Please don't say Jesus," I replied.

"It's Jesus," he said.

"Ugh. He's dead. He's not a carpenter anymore. That's ridiculous."

"Oh, he's not dead."

"Yes he is," I countered. "He hasn't made a table in years."

"He's alive, sitting at the right hand of the father."

"No. He's dead. He may be sitting there, but there are no living people in Heaven. Being dead is an entry requirement as far as I know."

I'm ok with people being religious, but don't say stupid things like that to me. Please.

Also in our conversation? He asked me if I had looked him up on the internet yet. I said no, but my interest was piqued. He informed me that if I did, I would find out that he had been a, "bad boy". I am dying to find out what he is talking about, as he wouldn't divulge the info, but I have no idea what his actual last name is, and thus can't look him up. He told me once (it was some convoluted story about how he has two last names, both of which I have since forgotten), and he refused to tell Amanda (probably because she is a female, who he generally lacks respect for). I will certainly relay the news as soon as I find out.

Jesus and probable felonies aside, I let him know that Amanda, Dan and I were heading to dinner. It was around 7pm. He told me that he'd be there when we got back. I cringed.

After dinner, I was about to pull into the driveway, but his girlfriend's van was sitting in it. We saw her shuffling slowly towards the house (roughly two minutes after we discussed the probability of the two of them necking while we were gone). I parked in the street and we made our way into the house. We quickly learned that his girlfriend should not "have gotten that iced coffee and Burger King" while motioning to her stomach. Gross. Super. Mega. Extra. Very. Gross. No one ventured to the bathroom to find out why.

A few more hours thereafter, and Jeff had finally finished up. Or so he thought. The main reason that he absolutely needed to show up and work was to clean up his stuff so we could get the house prepared for guests. I looked upstairs and asked him what all of his scrap wood was still doing up there. I let him know that he needed to get rid of it. He started to do so and Dan, Amanda and I continued the process of house keeping.

On one of may trips to the garage with garbage, I noticed that Jeff was not, in fact, getting rid of the scrap wood, but instead, he was throwing it in the driveway next to the house. I told him that it was unacceptable and that he needed to actually get it off of my property. He refused. I slowly lost my ever harder to keep composure over the next few minutes.

I don't remember the specific order of things (not because I was a raving lunatic, but because my memory is generally bad), but I'll do my best to record the transpirings.

I told him that he needed to get rid of the scrap wood. He said that he wasn't going to take it. I told him that he has to take it, as it's not my job to clean up after him (even though I had been doing it for months). He then said that "all you have to do is cut it up and put it out with the garbage". I let him know that it's not my job to do that, it's his. I told him to take the wood with him. He said he couldn't, and I told him that I didn't care how he got rid of it, but he had to.

My voice raising, his lowering, I bellowed at him to, "be a effword professional."

He responded that he was, in fact, a professional. I wasn't yelling, but certainly speaking with more power, "you come here whenever you feel like it and only do half of your job. A professional actually cleans up when he's done. Effword be one."

Sheepishly, he told me that he'd be there in the morning to clean up. I immediately snapped, "what time?"

"Ten o'clock."

I laughed at him. After a beat or two, I said, "if you don't effword show up at ten o'clock, you're going to owe me $50."

He raised his voice a little, "like hell."

"If you show up at ten, like you say you're going to, then we won't have a problem. Get this essword cleaned up."

I went into the house thereafter and Jeff followed. He started to try to talk to me.

"Shut up Jeff. Just do your effword work."

Not the best, most mature response, but I was kind of mad.

A few minutes later, he muttered, "screw it, I'll take the wood."

Hooray.

He left around 10 o'clock that night and that was that. Rereading this, it seems like I was a little harsh on poor Crazy Jeff Doors, and that may be the case, but his wood is off of my property. I never insulted him or actually yelled (only spoke more powerfully, and peppered in some vulgarity, for seriousness' sake), so I guess it could have been worse.

The next day, we cleaned up some more, had a killer cookout, saw some friends and family, listened to my sister talk too much, and played some video games.

Sunday brought breakfast with Dan and not much else. I decided to take the day off. Amanda and I went to a movie theater and saw the first thing that was playing (sadly, it was the new Harry Potter) and that's about it.

Even though not much work got done, it was still fairly productive. We live in a relatively clean house and not much remains on the work front.

Back at it tonight.

If You Listen Closely, You Can Hear the Heat.

I've documented, many times, the ridiculous workmanship in the house I currently live in. There have been wiring issues, hair problems, and gutter problems, among other things. I guess, in a strange way, you can say that this house is a custom home. Not because it's remarkable design wise, but because of all of the interesting quirks it has come with. I discovered yet another one yesterday.

I grabbed a radiator cover for the mudroom, to paint it white. In the grill of said cover, there is a weird input of some sort. Behind it, there are a bunch of wires sticking out. I didn't think much of it when I first saw the cover, months ago, but yesterday evening, I got a good look at it.

Here's the input hole:

Upon closer inspection, I still had no idea what it was. Even seeing the back side of the input left no real clue as to what it was:

Luckily for me, there was some writing on the little canister thing that housed the electronics:

The weird mystery hole in the radiator cover, was, in fact, a headphone jack.

What?

Who would do such a thing? There is, as referenced earlier, some very terrible/strange wiring in the house, but this is just ridiculous. Someone actually sat in the Mud Room of this house, plugged their headphones into a radiator, and, in theory, had this system wired to some sort of music player to enjoy some Haitian music.

I have so many questions about this house and the previous owners. All will, sadly, remain unanswered.

Hard Work and the Beach.

Sorry, again, for the lack of updates. The reasons behind the reluctance to post are twofold: I'm not doing anything interesting, and I am constantly working, so I don't have much time to update this thing.

That said, on Friday, I finally mustered the juevos to ask Crazy Jeff Doors why he goes to counseling. I may or may not have mentioned this before, but one of his frequent excuses for not showing up to work is because he has counseling. Such things always pique my curiosity, so I finally asked him what type of counseling he goes to. I find that I am more and more willing to ask uncomfortable questions of people for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity. This will probably end badly for me in time.

I had three theories about what type of counseling he seeks. The first, based upon his repeated comments about how he no longer drinks, is the obvious alcohol avoidance treatment. The second theory, based upon his generally skittish personality, is treatment for some type of general craziness. The final theory, and this is the most speculative of the three, is based upon conjecture. His personality, which, as described previously, is fairly up and down, leads me to believe that he has 'outbursts' from time to time. Since he swings so effortlessly from depressed to happy, it is not too big a leap to infer that he sometimes swings to the 'enraged' side of the swing set.

Theories aside, I, as delicately as I could, asked him why he goes to counseling. He said, with a nervous laugh, "because I'm crazy". He stopped the laugh immediately thereafter and pretty much stopped talking.

There you have it. Theory number two is the winner. He is actually crazy. The nickname I have given him is, and will remain apt.

As for work on the house? It continued. Saturday was a day off, as it was Amanda's 25th birthday. We got some breakfast, went to the beach, got some lunch, watched The Jerk, and ate some dinner. I did no work. It was both great and terrible. Mostly great.

It was mostly great, for reasons obvious. It was slightly (maybe .05%) terrible, because no work was done. In order to make up for lost time, I worked from 9am to 11pm on Sunday, with only breaks to urinate or eat. It was a rough one.

The house is coming along and the painting will be finished tonight. Awesome. Only touch up painting left. This Saturday, we're hosting a cookout/housewarming party for some friends/family and will spend the rest of this week getting the house presentable. We'll work tonight, but after that, it's only cleaning/setting up furniture until Sunday. A friend of mine is coming in from Philadelphia for the weekend, so unless he wants to caulk some floor trim, not much work will be done.

It will be mostly great. And, considering I won't be doing any work, it may also prove to be slightly terrible.