This 1 post a month thing has got to stop

I've been terrible with posting over the past few months but hopefully that will change. I've been doing a lot of planning for my house and been working extra hours so I can take off an extended amount of time and get a lot done in one shot. Some random stuff from the last month.

The holidays were a lot of fun and it was nice to spend time with the whole family.

We had our first big snowfall of the year; getting about 20ish inches. Chloe had a lot of fun but decided to run away when she got wind of a deer. Of course since she couldn't catch the deer, she decided the next best thing would be to find a group of dogs playing while their owners were shoveling. While posting my "lost dog" craigslist ad after searching for about an hour, I got a call from one of the people who's dog she was playing with. Only about 5 minutes away from where I turned back during my search, I was thankful she was found and went back out to get her.



The house directly behind me is being gutted and a sign on the front indicates they'll be building up, adding a third level and a rooftop deck. While cleaning their back yard, they tore down the cement wall between our property. I'm pretty sure this was mostly on my property and now there is nothing preventing people from breaking into the back of my house. I think I am going to research if I can take them to small claims for the cost of the wall, and they also broke some of my concrete yard. I'll post pictures when I take them tonight.

Lastly, I'm having trouble finding a vendor for metal stringers. Right now the company I'm planning on going with is in Canada and freight would be several hundred dollars. I may contact a contractor, but I'm planning on installing them myself and don't know how that would go over just to get the info from them.

Progress, but not on MY house

I haven't really had much of a chance to work on my house because I have been installing flooring at my friend's house. She bought engineered hardwoods from Lumber Liquidators and decided on Brazilian Walnut because she liked the level of variation among the boards. The floor is around 650 square feet and the layout has some fun challenges.

When she ordered the wood I took a couple days to prep everything while waiting for it to come in. There were three types of flooring that needed to be pulled up; pergo-type, carpet, and linoleum with a thin subfloor underneath. I moved all the furniture around and with the exception of the craptastic subfloor that was stapled down every 2 inches in the kitchen, it was all pretty easy. I started rolling out the underlayment and decided to start the wood along the front of the house, since it was the longest continuous wall.





It took a lot longer than I anticipated because of a lot of unusual angles and obstructions in the floor I had to cut around (such as floor outlets and central air registers). I finished the floor and am pretty happy how it turned out and I think my friend is too. I do like the color variation a lot, but don't know how well it would go with the brick in my house.



I still have the molding left to do, but am only going to cut it and she and her dad are going to hammer it in. I enjoyed this project and hopefully it will get me back on track to work on my place (probably not), plus, I got some saws out of the deal and now have just about everything I should need for my place.

Meet my new roommate, Chloe

Meet Chloe.



Chloe was lost and followed my friend's wife and their dog, Sneaker home one day. After trying to find an owner and not having any luck, I decided to take her in. Her first visit to the vet determined that she was somewhere around 6 - 9 months old and most likely a Pure White Husky (even though her eyes look blue-ish, they are really a milky white). She is right around her full size and will probably just add some weight to her frame (ending around 45-50 lbs). She's a fairly independent breed and very intelligent. Another thing I found out, she doesn't do floating stairs (the kind without risers) and had to take the elevator up to the check-out room.

She got the full work-up of shots and tests and needed to be spayed so she stayed there overnight. When I went to pick her up the doctor said she did great and was a really well behaved dog. I took her home, gave her the pain meds and let her sleep (she wanted nothing to do with her food that night).

I guess my next move is going to be getting a hamster and black tuxedo cat to round out the pack.



She loves sticking her head out the window, but isn't so much a fan of car rides in general.



I've taken her around Patterson Park once so far and we saw 4 other huskies on our walk but they all had normal coloring and were a lot fluffier than Chloe. We've also gone to the dog park in Canton a couple times and she's very reserved with the other dogs and just seems to go with the flow. Her favorite walks seem to be down along the water between the 1st Mariner Bank building and Fells Point.



I know I haven't been posting much lately, but hopefully I'll get back into a more regular schedule. My internet has been out at home for a while and I'm really not in any rush to fix it.

U2 360 Tour - Washington DC - FedEx Field - 09-29-2009

I went to the U2 360 Tour concert on Tuesday night with Muse as the opening act. I'm not much of a U2 fan and was more looking forward to seeing Muse, but I've heard that the U2 concerts are an "experience" and if you get a chance to go, you should go.

I was amazed how easy it was to park and get into the stadium; even traffic on the DC beltway wasn't all that bad and we got there with plenty of time to spare. I figured that 5:30 on a Tuesday evening would be congested without the 80,000+ people trying to get to the concert. We parked and went to our seats and then others in my group took a lap around the club level (where our seats were) before Muse went on.

The place was relatively empty when the stadium lights cut out and Muse came on stage around 7:30 PM. They opened with Knights of Cydonia and tore through their set list without much of a break between songs. They brought a lot of energy but it didn't seem like a lot of people knew them and were just waiting for U2. I thought they were great and was glad I was there early enough to see the whole set. They played for about 45ish minutes.

The following picture is from a little before U2 went on after the place filled up for the most part (more people showed up and most of the seats except the top few rows of the stadium were filled):



U2 started their performance in much the same way Muse did, shutting off the light in FedEx Field, but they came on stage in a more theatric way introducing each member individually and (from our distance) just appearing on stage. The "360" aspect of the concert was pretty amazing. The video screen wrapped all the way around the stage and would transition from showing the same video to each of the 4 sides to becoming a single video that wrapped all the way around. The screen was also able to expand and take up the entire space from the top of the open area to just over U2's heads or be lowered completely in its more compressed size. It was pretty awesome just to see that, regardless of what music was being played.

Throughout the 2+ hour set (including encores), Bono made sure to bring up his political beliefs whenever there was a break. He did it in more of a "this is what's happening" way than a overly preachy delivery; which was appreciated. It actually flowed pretty well with their songs and the overall atmosphere of the event.

U2 is a pretty remarkable band. After attending this show, I'm still not going to go out and buy any of their music, and I'm still going to change the radio station whenever one of their songs comes on, but I am going to remember this as one of the best concert experiences I've had and also realize that this band is so ingrained in our culture (not what I want to use, but it kinda fits) that I was able to sing (or at least pretend to) the words to about 80% of the songs even though I have never actively played a U2 song in my life.

Oh, and don't get me started on the 150 foot tall space ship they use as their stage. It was something I would expect to see at Universal Studios in Orlando as a ride or attraction of some sort. The light show and the way the band interacted with the field crowd on the outer rings made me wish I was passionate about U2 and willing to stand down there for 4 hours so I could be right up front.



On a side note: as we were leaving the parking lot, we saw a girl get hit by a car. I drove after the guy trying to get his tag and I was stopped by one of the cops directing traffic. I told him what happened and another officer got in his car and went after. The girl was OK (at least to our knowledge) and I gave them my info in case they needed someone to testify or something. About a 1/4 mile down the road (once we got back on our way), the guy was pulled over and out of his car with a bunch of cops around him. Maybe this is the Karma I have and why I haven't had to do jury duty when all of my friends that are younger than me have; score one for civic duty.

I got nominated for something

This blog and it's current pace of 2-3 posts a month were nominated for a Mobbie (Maryland's Outstanding Blogs). The Baltimore Sun sponsors them and the winners are determined by reader votes. I am currently 15th in the 'Personal' category ... out of 15. But right now there is a little arrow pointing up, which I can only assume means I am getting more votes than I was. At the same time, I also assume that 1 is more than 0 :-)

I found out about my nomination from my friend Corey's blog (well, it's Corey and Leigh's blog now) Baltimore Rowhouse; which is also nominated in the 'Neighborhood' category. You should vote for them.

Lastly, this is my 150th post. My 151st post will be about the U2 concert from Tuesday night.

And yes UL, I know I still need to e-mail you about my new job.

Watch HGTV tonight at 9:30

Tonight is the night that two Baltimore house bloggers will be shown on the HGTV show, Bang for your Buck.

Corey and Leigh (congrats, btw) over at Baltimore Rowhouse

Jon and Craig over at Project Rowhouse

I've been to both of these houses (and am jealous of both) and followed their work through their blogs and can tell you this will be an interesting show to watch.

Bang for Your Buck is on HGTV at 9:30 EST.

The things under the stairs

I haven't posted anything about my house in a long, long time. Well, I guess I should throw something up here about that. The below picture will show you that I have cleared out the area below my stairs and now have an open view to my basement. My eventual goal here is to have access to the basement through a hatch type thing once I change to a floating staircase and lay hardwoods (or some form of fake hardwood). I think I may have found the stairs I want, and they really aren't that expensive ... but I want to finish some of the other work before I decide to tear out my current stairs.



While clearing out the wall under the stairs, I found a treasure trove and random crap from half a century ago. Everything was just scattered around (with a lot of nasty dirt and dust) in the area under the first couple steps. Well, not everything ... some of it was actually IN the walls.



Here are some of the highlight of what I found:



There were a few more of those playing cards, I think maybe 5 in total. There were a ton of prayer cards from different funerals, but I thought the most interesting one was for a priest that spent a large portion of his time in Japan. The prayer cards were mostly in very good shape. The card with planes on them are part of a set of 144 or something, but they are pretty beat up. The metal thing in the middle is a dog license from the 1950's and will go great with the other stuff I've found in walls from the 50's when I frame them in a shadow box. Probably the most interesting thing though is a Buck Rodgers card from 1936. Like the plane cards, it's in pretty bad shape ... but it's from 1936! Who cares what kind of shape it's in, it's older than my parents.



I guess I'll leave you with a picture of my living room with most of the sub floor put down (ignore all the crap, I took the picture on a whim and didn't feel like cleaning up).