What’s Your Poison?

Well, as a reward for going away to New York City for the weekend, we let someone come over to our house and install our new carpeting on Monday in the basement! Finally, what I thought would be a day off. Well, the carpet has been laid out, and it looks fantastic. They did a good job (Giant Carpet). The new carpet is much lighter, so it doesn’t show Jonah’s hair as much, but will be prone to show dirt. Oops, can’t win them all I guess. Of course, now that the carpet is done, I have to work on putting quarter round trim along all the walls at the floor. Pain in the ass. I also started wiring the speakers up. They have been mouted on the walls, and I bought a fish tape to get the speaker wire through the walls / ducts to conceal the wiring. Again, major pain in the ass! But worth the effort, as there are no wires criss-crossing the floor. We’ve also got word back that the new couch may be in by Christmas, so now I’m gonna have to hurry up and get the bar built. That way, the whole basement would be done for Christmas! Yay! Hopefully I’ll have the whole home theatre set up soon, and I’ll post pics of what that looks like. Next purchase for me: wireless controller for the xbox. I’m also hoping I win a 52″ Toshiba HD TV at work. I bought 3 tickets for $10, with proceeds going to the United Way. Boy, would that TV look good in my new basement!

Well, the bar is still coming along, albeit at more of a sloths pace than a gazelle, but what can you do, right? It’s winter, yes, but I’ve still got other things to do. In this picture, you can see most of the rought cut pieces for the bar. Before building, I plan to cut, rout, pre-drill, sand, stain, and varnish most of the wood, so when the time comes to assemble the bar, it’s more like an IKEA project, although much nicer. The little green stickers are the numbers for each piece as per the project plan. If you want to see a few more pictures of where the bar project is at, check out the pictures on flickr. I’ll keep adding more as I go.

Apart from having all the wood cut, I’ve also started tackling the routing. This in itself is proving to be a new challenge, since I’ve never actually used a router. Just to make sure I do an alright job, I snagged a brand new plunge router, as well as a routing table. I’ll say this. After spending 3-4 hours playing with it yesterday, I can safely say there’s no way I would’ve got the project done without those two additions. Now of course, I’m thinking I want a drill press as well. Sheesh. This bar is suddenly getting really expensive! On the plus side, I’ve decided that when I retire, I’ll definitely start doing woodworking much more frequently. Although it can be frustrating at times, I enjoy the precision and the satisfaction of doing something with my own hands. No doubt I’ll tackle a few more projects in the coming years. This bar will be the biggest one in a lone time though I’m sure. There are just so many steps and things I’m learning along the way! Oh well, I guess that’ll make future projects seem that much simpler.

I just thought that I’d post a pseudo-update to a post I made last week regarding obesity. In fact, this post will more closely resemble the antithesis of obesity. Last week, on Thursday, I had the good fortune of taking a day off the daily grind to contribute something to society as a whole. I volunteered at the Ottawa Food Bank. In case you are wondering, one of the elements in my union contract (yup, that’s right, I’m unionized, not by choice, but it has certain benefits) is that I am entitled to a paid day of leave for volunteer work. Personally, I think it’s a great idea, and rather than just pretend I took a volunteer day, I really did volunteer. Some people (okay, probably a lot), just take the day off claiming volunteer work, but don’t do anything, since technically, no one is allowed to question what you did! Actually, come to think of it, I think this is a government-endorsed thing, not a union thing, but I digress. My tasks for the day were quite menial, which was actually fine by me. People that are there frequently complained about how slow 8 hours goes by when you’re sorting food. Personally, I found the opposite. I found it quite enjoyable to do something manual for a change. Turns out I’m quite adept at mindless physical labour. Of course, I knew that from my two years doing shift work at Michelin Tires at the Granton plant close to my home in N.S.

UNDERSTANDING ENGINEERS – TAKE ONE

Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?” The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.”

The second engineer nodded approvingly, “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

UNDERSTANDING ENGINEERS – TAKE TWO

To the optimist, the glass is half full.
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

UNDERSTANDING ENGINEERS – TAKE THREE

A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, “What’s with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!” The doctor chimed in, “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such ineptitude!” The pastor said, “Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let’s have a word with him.”
“Hi George! Say, what’s with that group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?”