Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2005 July
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 March
2004 February
2004 January
2003 December
2003 November
My Links
flaring, 1st edition
Aquamaniacs
Andaloo
Apples & Oranges
Dangerkitty
Dirt Dirt
Dreamer
filbert
Ftrain
The Logodrome
lynne
News Trolls
Rhetorical Device
Making Light
Rosie
Sillygrrl3
Susan of Pudlin
Squee
Textism
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
Blogarama
Review My Site
Weblog Directory
|
| day 2 |
| 10.31.04 (11:13 am) [edit] |
Another beautiful day. I got the first coat of stain on the table and the chair seats. Tomorrow I should be able to get the second/last coat, but I won't be able to get started until around noon. I have to drive up to Harrisonburg to see a doctor who wants to stick a camera down my throat.
For those of you who haven't been taking notes, I've been fighting chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia for a number of years now. I've had some trouble finding doctors who really want to help me. Finally, I've gotten someone to listen to me about GI stuff. He thinks I might have an bleeding ulcer and blames it on the pain meds I've taken over the years, which were prescribed to me by another doctor. Anyway, tomorrow I'll have a consult with this new guy and see about scheduling a look-see. I'll try not to blame him prematurely for the failings of his colleagues.
The 29 gallon tank is a little bit of a mess. The water is okay but the algae is thriving and the higher orders of plants are not. I've got a dwarf lotus so desperate for light it's only sending runners to the surface, which, of course, does nothing but shade the other plants. Right now it's a low-tech tank with 55 watts of fluorescent lighting and no CO2. I'm going to upgrade the lighting to 110 watts of compact fluorescent and add a DIY CO2 generator and diffuser. The lights come in a DIY kit from ahsupply.com which greatly reduces the cost. I've never ordered from those guys, but I've heard nothing but good things, so I'm really looking forward to getting the kit and putting everything together.
I read Paul M Ford's blog today, which had this bit at the end of his Wednesday entry:
What bothers me most is something trivial, something that shouldn't worry me, but there you have it—it's the pollsters under the sink. There was another infestation last week, and I had to call the landlord. He was testy. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Are you undecided now? Is that why they're there?" I told him that, no, I was exactly the same as I ever was. He came over, shaking his head and swearing, and sprayed in the cabinets, ignoring their scuffling and shrieks, their requests for just a moment of our time. He also put poison in the walls, and I believe that will kill them, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3%. Pollsters are worse than telemarketers ever were.
|
|
|
| |
| opening my mouth |
| 10.30.04 (11:19 am) [edit] |
I haven't posted in a very long time, but someone I respect a great deal said one of the nicest things I've just about ever heard; and so I'm going to try to get going on this again.
My cat Sophie loves the fall because, no matter how careful I am, I always track leaves into the house. She crouches over them, looks around suspiciously, and picks them up carefully in her mouth. I find them later where she has secreted them: under the bed, behind the commode, next to the pillowcases in the linen closet.
Today has been a beautiful day, sunny, breezy, warm. A welcome change after early cold and rain this year. I've tried to take good advantage of it. For years I've had an old table that was in my Mom's kitchen for about as long as I can remember. It's beautiful pine, but stained with a dark walnut (as was only appropriate in the 1970's) and was coated with thicknesses of yellowed polyurethane (also 1970's). For a long time I've wanted to take the tabletop off the trestle legs it was on, refinish it to a lighter color, and place it on some understated, real table legs with chairs instead of benches.
So, a number of weeks ago I found an inexpensive table with the legs I wanted and five matching chairs. The wood was not so great, but I decided to get it anyway and *paint* the chairs, table apron and legs a dark, warm grey and refinish the tabletop and then stain the chair seats to match the tabletop. You know, that doesn't sound like so much when written down, but it's been a lot of work. I've sanded all the chairs, painted two coats of primer and two coats of "one-coat" paint. Except for attaching the seats, the chairs are finished. I stripped the factory-sprayed poly off the chair seats and sanded them down to 220 grit. The table legs and apron are sanded, primed and painted with two coats. They need a couple of touch-ups, but are otherwise finished. The table top has been stripped of a good eighth-inch of old poly (that took two applications of stripper), washed with lacquer thinner and denatured alcohol, and washed with TSP. All *that* failed to remove all the old stain, so I sanded lightly and applied bleach three times.
If this table were less sentimental, I'd just sand out the old stain (well, not it were actually valuable in some monetary way, but I don't have any actually valuable furniture), but this table as wonderful marks on it from my family eating at least two meals a day on it. There's even a place where I wrote my name on some homework or something and it transfered through to the wood. There's a place where my brother decided to stab a fork repeatedly into the wood (I actually remember that happening.) So I've tried to take as much of the old color out without sanding. It's not going to be perfectly clear, of course, especially since it's pine, but it's looking pretty good.
Today's good weather let me get the use of the major icky chemicals out of the way. Tomorrow's supposed to be nice too, so I hope to get it stained and maybe one or two coats of tung oil in place.
|
|
|
| |
|
I'm reading:
Aquamaniacs
Picture of the Moment
Betta Links
Betty Splendens
BC Betta
Bettas R Us
Biloxi Bettas
Classic Bettas
Jeff Hiller
Phil Lafferty
Majestic Bettas
Sailor Johnny
Jim Sonnier
Aquarticles
Dr. Tim's Library
Hypertextbook: Mendelian Genetics Chapter Directory
DIY CO2 Systems for Freshwater-Planted Aquaria
Member of
|
|
