Kitchen Remodel - And on and on it goes.....

I think it looks spectacular. The handles that I stressed over go very well with all the colors, the stain is a good match for the granite and tile and the lights that seemed like a difficult choice, go perfectly. However, and isn't there always something?? Our cabinet guy has a long way to go to be finished. There are obviously a few doors missing and almost half the doors have some issue or another. Saturday is another day. Sears will be here to take another crack at fixing the fridge. I'm happy to report however, that all the crap is out of our backyard.

Words to Live By

This poem was read this morning on Michael Josephson's Character Counts segment on KNX1070. His segments get me thinking, perhaps too much at 6:45 am but I suppose a little self examination is never a bad thing. I am very guilty of rushing through life and it's only been in the last six months that I've slowed down some. Perhaps that is just age or perhaps I've realized that I'm half way through my life (hopefully) and I need to start smelling the roses a little more. Dena will probably disagree about my slowing down but I have. I used to be at a social event and be thinking about when it was over so I could get to the next event or task. That is definitely not living in the moment, that is just racing through life and not experiencing it.

So here is the poem from this morning,

Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round,
or listened to rain slapping the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight,
or gazed at the sun fading into the night?

You better slow down, don't dance so fast,
time is short, the music won't last.

Do you run through each day on the fly,
when you ask "How are you?", do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed,
with the next hundred chores running through your head?

You better slow down, don't dance so fast,
time is short, the music won't last.

Ever told your child, we'll do it tomorrow,
and in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a friendship die,
'cause you never had time to call and say hi?

You better slow down, don't dance so fast,
time is short, the music won't last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere,
you miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,
it's like an unopened gift thrown away.

Life isn't a race, so take it slower,
hear the music before your song is over.

About the Author
David L. Weatherford is a child psychologist with published poems in "Chicken Soup for the Soul". If you want to enjoy more of David's beautiful writings, please visit www.davidlweatherford.com

Kitchen Remodel - Almost there

Kitchen Remodel - End of Week 9

I know you were all expecting some exciting pictures today....but alas, the kitchen is covered in tarp, paper and the new stove and hood is all covered over by a "bridge" that they made out of wood for installing the new hood. I can tell you that it looks fantastic though.

Sears repair is here today to fix the new fridge. Yes, it was installed improperly. Now he's blaming my contractor for not clearing the water line for the ice maker and that the filter is clogged. Filters are not covered - $ 50 down the drain, literally. The freezer has frozen condensation in it because the door doesn't seal properly on the left side and they neglected to drop the feet down, so every time I pull open the french doors the fridge slides out 12". Nothing irritates me more than incompetence.

They are finishing the grout, moving in the washer/dryer, finishing the plumbing, installing the under cabinet water filter, and the list goes on. I have high hopes that I'll be making dinner Friday on our new stove, washing dishes in our new dishwasher and drinking a bottle of wine chilled in our new wine cooler. Hope springs eternal....

Kitchen Remodel - Day 4 Week 9 or something...

An Exciting statement emanated from the mouth of our contractor today..... he proclaimed he would be done with the kitchen Tuesday October 13th. Perhaps he should have picked a better day. In true Dawn (reads....pessimistic) fashion it will probably be more like Friday the 16th, but hey, that means one week from now we'll have our kitchen back. That has got me all whipped up into a frenzy for sure.

Kitchen Remodel - The Lizard

This is the behind the stove back splash. It's done in a herring bone pattern and has taken our contractor 4 days to complete. It is quite a detailed pattern, especially using smaller 1" x 4" Japanese tiles. As you can see the cuts on the sides are quite small, combine that with the fact that the cabinets are not perfectly straight or the wall or something is not straight, perhaps the owners, and you get minute differences in lots of cuts. It's a shame really that the hood will cover a portion of this pattern. Our contractor has taken to calling this the "lizard". It fits.

We look forward to tomorrow which will hopefully mark the end of the tile as Thursday is granite repair day and Friday the stove arrives.

Kitchen Remodel - Delays and More Delays....

No project is immune from delays. The current delay is that the floor has been re-sanded and the second and third coats of varnish put on but it will take 48 hours to cure. This was unexpected as we were originally told that it would be available after 24 hours. This has the effect of pushing all the trades out. Granite repair had to be moved from today until next Thursday, tile will hopefully begin today, appliances are still being delivered Friday but the stove was pushed out until Friday the 9th.

Oh well, I suppose after 9 weeks of no sink and living in a state of chaos, what's one more week? I vacillate from complete frustration (which normally occurs when I have to kneel in front of the bathtub and wash dishes) to just surrendering to it all. Dena and I both wander the house each day looking for something that we've moved and can no longer find. Nothing is where it was or where it should be. At various times throughout these 9 weeks we've even had to change doors we come in and out of.

Humans are creatures of habit and I find great comfort in my habits. Think about it. How lost would you be if you had to put your keys, cell phone, garage door opener, etc in a completely different spot every other day. You wouldn't be able to find anything. It puts a small but constant level of stress on your mind. We rely on these small but very consistent habits so that we can function at our higher human level. Please......give me my consistency back!!!!

Assholes and Range Rovers

I've long held the belief that if you're driving a range rover, you're probably an asshole. It's about a 90% certainty. Call it a personal stereotype if you will but it is so true. Think of the type of person that could afford to buy one of these vehicles. The cheapest Range Rover is $80,000. So to buy or lease one you have to be upper middle class bordering on leaping over that glass wall to rich. If they had already leaped over the wall, they wouldn't be driving a range rover, they'd be driving Porsche Cayenne. After all, the British Made Range Rover since its resurgence 5 - 7 years ago as a status vehicle does not have a great service record. It is notoriously finicky, not being able to put up with any climate change, dirt, dust or hard driving. It certainly is a distant relative to it's inspiration, the original Range Rover that conquered Africa from a tourist perspective.

Male drivers of Range Rovers are the worst assholes of the species. That deep feeling of entitlement and right of way. I am everything to everyone, the world revolves around me, get out of my way - sound familiar? Just this morning myself and 3 other drivers were cut off by an entitled black Range Rover whose life was obviously more important than ours.

Take your own poll. For the next month, watch all the range rover drivers. How many times do you see a range rover and not say, "asshole". Seriously, try it.

Kitchen Remodel - Monday - 9th Week

The tile layout begins. It should be fascinating and interesting. Only a special contractor could put up with our design demands. Wes is patient and creative which is quite conducive to progress occurring. Here Dena is approving a tricky tile layout with these small, Japanese 1" x 4" tiles. You have to give her credit, who else could pull off a mission style kitchen with cherry cabinets, green tile, granite with a millions shades of green and some white and rust quartz thrown in, and yellow walls...

Kitchen Remodel - 8 weeks

The granite has arrived. It truly was like Christmas. There were 6 guys working in the house that day and it was about 100 degrees outside. So I suppose it wasn't much like Christmas... The granite is beautiful but apparently nothing can be accomplished without problems and drama. There was a large scratch on one of the pieces and the installer decided to attempt to fix it even though he told me he wasn't the specialist at this. What resulted was that the scratch is gone but the polish is gone as well. So, we will wait and see what Monday brings, and it had better bring the specialist over and it had better magically be fixed when I come home from work. These are all the photos Dena got before I came home and freaked out that it wasn't covered. That's all I need are more scratches! It's covered now!

Our new iMac

We have recently purchased a new Apple iMac. At first I was pretty cool to the idea and had a mindset that this was going to be Dena's computer and I could just use it for doing videos. Now that I've had a chance to play on it a little I'm getting quite excited. Using iPhoto for sorting pictures seems pretty cool, especially using the facial recognition. I'm starting on a couple hard cover photo books as well and hope to move into digital scrapbooking in a couple weeks.

We purchased this Apple One to One package , $ 99 for one year of basically personal one on one training. I think that is pretty cool. My first class is this Saturday at 8am. What can I say, I'm a morning person. I need to be trained as there is no right click in the Mac world. What is up with that? And sometimes windows move around and blur out and it's confusing. I'm sure I must be doing something but I have no idea what. I'm also sure that all the shortcuts I know on the PC are somewhere on the Mac but I need to be trained on what they are.

After only 2 weeks of using the Mac on a cursory basis I have to say that I would strongly recommend it to anyone needing a new computer. The AppleCare package and the One to One package allowed us to drag Dena's old desktop into the Apple store and they magically transferred all folders, documents, calendar and contacts over to the Mac. There was some cleanup to do but that was inevitable. The computer is 7 years old for crying out loud. All in all, I'm very happy with our new purchase, especially since it was 12 months, no interest financing :-)

Update On Life

We have a pause in the kitchen remodel. Hopefully just a couple days but now it's really all about the granite. The granite fabrication is being done right now at SMG Stone's shop out in Sun Valley. We are scheduled for installation this Friday. That will be incredibly exciting. Maybe I'll have to take the day off or maybe I should work and just be surprised when I come home. Much needs to be done in preparation to drive for completion next week, finalizing flooring, some cabinet tweaking, baseboards, molding and the list goes on and on and on. The devil is truly in the details when dealing with all of this but we are now looking toward the future and the eventuality of a house re-warming party.

Appliances are scheduled for Friday October 2nd delivery. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Kitchen Remodel - Week 7 Cabinets Stained

The cabinets are stained and apparently we will have two days of peace and quiet. That will be nice. Everyone now waits for the granite.

Kitchen Remodel - Start of Week 7

This day was about as exciting as Christmas for me. I was awake at 4:19 am, my mind awash with anticipation, worry, excitement and fear. A day we've anticipated for almost a year was here, new cabinets. I was worried that something wouldn't fit. I was excited that a major milestone was getting wiped off my schedule and afraid it would look terrible, shrinking the kitchen to a tiny footprint. Almost all my freaking out was for naught. Almost.....there was a little moment of hissy fit between the contractor and the cabinet guy, but once over that it all moved along fairly well. A couple little tweaks here and there that our wonderful contractor will have to be made but all in all, it went well and more importantly, it looks FABULOUS!

Tomorrow the stainer will be here to mask for staining and the granite tech will be here to measure. Whew. Projected completion date.....October 3rd.

This Says It All

This really says it all. This guy was spotted at lunch in downtown Los Angeles yesterday. Job sites say you need to be creative in finding a job in this economy. Yes, you do, but if no one is hiring your creativity will get you blogged about perhaps, but not get you a paying gig.

8 Years Later

A day that touched everyone

A moment that endures year after year

A vision etched into our memory

An act that changed the world

And the lives of so many

Such is the legacy of September 11th

May we never forget

the loss of so much

and so many

of innocence

of lives

of peace

-- Dawn Armstrong 9-11-2009

Kitchen Remodel - The Other Shoe

In true pessimistic fashion I knew we were moving along too well, even despite the fire and flood. No remodel or contractor/sub-contractor experience is complete without some bullshit. I had a feeling it would be with the flooring guy. As you can see by the picture he laid flooring underneath most of the cabinets. That's bad if you have a leak because you now need to replace wood flooring that disappears under cabinets that you don't really want to move. After all, there will be granite on top of them! Also, what you don't see is that he neglected to put down a vapor barrier between the wood sub floor and the red oak. While it is not absolutely necessary in the Los Angeles climate it was part of the quote to my knowledge and I feel ripped off. I had a feeling about this guy even though I'd never met him. You should trust your intuition I guess.

As Dena would say, look at the bright side....the floor looks good.

Kitchen Remodel - 36 days

Saturday - what a day. Our Saturdays have been jam packed every weekend for the last 3 months. Always one or more things to research, price, shop for, measure, or buy for the kitchen. Today was no exception. We were at Mission Tile in South Pasadena at 9am when they were supposed to open to order all our tile. They apparently decided to close down shop for the entire Labor Day weekend. That was a drag. Then it was off to Crown City Hardware to return a handle (an expensive one), then off to Woodland Hills to the Ferguson Lighting Showroom to look at LED under cabinet lighting. We have finally made a decision on the under cabinet lighting deciding on the direct wire CounterMax LED strip. Apparently, you practically need to be an electrical engineer to figure it all out. I think I've rambled on in previous posts enough about all the challenges of it. They are, of course, back ordered until October 1st.

It is now just after noon, we're home already and discovered a coat of primer had been applied to the kitchen and our new unfinished red oak flooring delivered. That funny little "window" in the wall above Dena's head is our new built in spice rack. We added that at the last minute last week.

Kitchen Remodel - 35 days

Amazing progress has occurred I have to say. The drywall is done and tomorrow, on day 36, they will prime it all up to prepare for painting. Also tomorrow, our flooring guy will drop off our oak flooring and plywood covering. Today we lined out tile design and nailed down how many square feet of each tile type will be required.

Kitchen Remodel - Cabinets....

We went out looking at our new cabinets today and we liked them. More decisions had to be made and new things were discovered. We only have 1.25" for the valance for under cabinet lighting. This will further restrict our choices. Under cabinet lighting is in my humble opinion akin to rocket science. There are a vast number of choices, each of them with pros and cons and everyone has an opinion.

Kitchen Remodel - The New Panel!

Remember when remodelling to document everything especially when the walls are open. You want to know where every pipe, cable and vent is.

Kitchen Remodel - Electrical Rough In

I learn so much every time we do work on our house. The more I learn the more I realize what shoddy work many people do. When we added our bathrooms 8 years ago we paid the electrician a lot of money to put in a new main panel and do other wiring. The left side of the picture is part of the crap that he did and the right side of the picture is our new proper subpanel. There will be no wire nuts in the new subpanel!

Fires Rage....

We were in Pasadena and Burbank looking at our cabinets and shopping for drawer pulls and this site greeted us at every turn. It was eery watching flames lick down the hills even at that distance. I feel for those people in the foothills worrying about their homes every minute of every day.

Kitchen Remodel - 30 days

One month into the project and we are starting to see real progress and starting to get so excited for the end. Please let the end be near! The rough in electrical is finally done, that was 10 days of slow but steady progress, the insulation is going in and the drywall is starting to go up. There are a few more rough in plumbing/gas items to take care of but all in all we should start to really see movement over the next week. I'm hoping that cabinets can get dropped in Friday September 4th. Wouldn't that be something? I found out that after the granite fabricator comes and measures it's 2 weeks for fabrication. That was depressing. They cannot measure until the lower cabinets are in.

Kitchen Remodel - Making Do

This is how we're living now. Doing dishes in the bathtub, we have one burner in that old PureAire 1943 unit in the guest house that we can reach. The washer and dryer are blocking most access to that unit. As you can see, Dena is holding breakfast over the washer. The other picture is our old Kenmore fridge, still surviving, despite it's new home in the dining room. The birds, pantry and prep area are all in the dining room now.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 22

Today marks the beginning of the 4th week of the kitchen remodel. For almost 3 full weeks there has been nothing but destruction. Each week the demolition continued until I couldn't fathom how there was anything more to remove from that kitchen/laundry room/breakfast nook area. Finally, right near the end of week 3 we see rebuilding. Some rough in plumbing is done, as you are all well aware....

Probably 50% of the rough in electrical is done. It is amazing the number of decisions that are required for each trade. For electrical you need to decide where each light goes, which lights are on what switches, where the switches are going to go, if the switches will be 3 ways, will they be dimmable, what size recessed lighting? 4", 5" or 6", what type of trim? White? Chrome? brushed nickel? What type of lights? Florescent, incandescent or LED? Well, we had our eyes set on LED but the technology just doesn't seem to be there yet and it is way too expensive for any kind of decent ROI (return on investment). I've also spent hours researching under cabinet lighting. You'd think that would be easy but it proved to be extremely challenging with the end result finally going to fluorescent tubes for two simple reasons, it made that granite just pop with color, texture and detail and cost. You can't beat the price.

All the walls are removed, the pocket beams installed, hold downs are in and amazingly enough, drywall should start going up tomorrow. Can you believe it? It seems like it's been an eternity that we've been washing dishes in the bathtub yet seems like only yesterday that the demolition started. Life is funny like that I suppose.

Kitchen Remodel - Tough Decisions

I find one of the toughest decisions when doing a bathroom or kitchen is tile and the whole color scheme thing. I find it increbibly challenging to visualize the entire wall, tile layout and how everything will go together. This time, I made sure that some of that visualization was helped with samples, a sample of the cabinet door, sample tiles, even a sample of the sink. This is what our final product should look like.....

We had struggled with colors of stain, tile and over all color palette for almost a year and for some reason had not gone back to our favorite tile store, Mission Tile West - South Pasadena. Nancy has helped us in our tile choices for, well, a decade? We've always appreciated her input and a big shout out to Nancy!

Into Each Remodel a Little Rain Must Fall.....

After the Dodger Game we came home to a note on our gate. The note said that our good neighbor turned off the water to our house after they heard water running and saw it cascading down our driveway. That day was rough in plumbing day so a pipe must have burst. Obviously, I was upset. After checking out the kitchen, in the dark, it was obvious that water was all over but not as bad as it could have been. I called the contractor and told him to get his a$$ over here early in the morning and we gave thanks for good and vigilant neighbors.

The shock came the next morning as the sunlight illuminated the truth. It wasn't so much that there was a flood, it was that the fire was so hot that it melted the sodder on the copper pipe that then burst, causing a geyser of water that put out the fire. Does this sound over the top to you? Well, it should, because even as I type it I still cannot believe it. There is truly someone or something watching over me. The what ifs are endless but none of them relevant as a miracle truly occurred.

As you can see by my friends' artist rendition of the actual event in the blog post below, all of the planets were aligned. During soddering of the copper sink riser an ember must have manifested itself in the dry 1920's redwood 2x4's. There are a few termite trails in these from days past and perhaps the ember smouldered in there. The smouldering took what we figure was about 3 hours to ignite before the water was turned off. Below is also a picture of the melted PVC drain pipe.

Kitchen Remodel - Is it Hot in Here?

Kitchen Remodel - Day 16

Here they are putting in the 2nd pocket beam. This will support the wall that was between the laundry room and the kitchen.

Kitchen Remodel - Discovering History

During our tear out of the last floor level in the kitchen we discovered an intact newspaper from November 7th, 1933. In the old days if they needed an eigth or sixteenth they would just use the newspaper as a shim. That appears to be what they did here. November 7th, 1933 was election day. They were voting to end prohibition. Here are some pictures of that paper. We hope to frame it and hang it in the new kitchen. By the way, you could get a pack of smokes for .15 cents and a new toaster for .69 cents, but if you wanted a cord on that toaster it was .20 cents more.....

Kitchen Remodel - Day 15 - 5 Floors?

We knew we had 3 floors, the blue linoleum, followed by a 1/4" wood chip filler layer, then the "stone" linoleum, followed by another 1/4" filler, then the lovely green Armstrong flooring. We were surprised to find below that a mix of douglas fir vertical cut and solid oak hardwood flooring for another layer. This all had to be removed as well. In the interest of time and money I decided this would be a good weekend demo project. It was cathartic and great exercise.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 11

There has been much progress. All the debris is removed including the 4 partial walls that basically opened up the entire space into one big room. As Dena says, it's a blank canvas now. Naturally, problems were discovered, as happens in houses, old and new. We have a couple new beams and feel generally better about the structural soundness of the house. While the marriage is still in it's honeymoon phase with our contractor things are going very well and thus far we are happy.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 10

This is our second huge debris pile....and they are not quite done with "debris".

Direct Buy Follow Up

Short post today but just wanted to comment on how many comments and emails I get regarding Direct Buy. I've gotten 2 just in the last few days.... My position still stands on what a scam it is. I've spoke to people at cocktail parties and gatherings about it and some of them have been there and sat through the presentation and then ran and some were always curious but never went.

It's interesting that my original post was from 2008 and they are still hounding people today with new dining rooms, new living room sets, expensive watches, etc. Have they not heard that we are in a deep recession? I suppose they don't really care as long as they have your initiation fee. Oh, and don't forget, initiation fees vary by geography and demographic and of course, there is a monthly fee to go along with that....
For the original blog post, see below.


http://dawnarmstrong.blogspot.com/2008/09/direct-buy-scam-or-consumerism-at-its.html

On Top of the World in Los Angeles

Here I am standing on the helipad 55 stories up atop the LA Live building. I was "supervising" the Sprint promotional film crew that was doing a piece on my company.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 4

Here are a couple demolition pictures....there's really nothing left and after those partition walls come out.....there will be even less.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 3

Here I am cooking amidst the old cabinets outside in the backyard.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 2

Ah the mess.....It's exciting, yet freaky. It turns out that there is termite damage, but not much. The window is coming out and being replaced with a high energy star compliant window but the real problem, because let's face it there are always problems with an old house, is the fact that when this "new" window in the 1950's was put in they just cut the studs and did no reinforcement whatsoever. So that coupled with termite damage and there's not too much holding up that section of the outside wall.

Kitchen Remodel - Day 1

Today we finally, after 5 trips to granite yards (or was it 6?) we picked our granite. This turned out to be quite a difficult task where at first we picked something called Rainforest Amazon and that turned out to be marble. Marble is no good for kitchen counters, it's too porous. Live and learn. We discovered a granite that was like our amazon (green with brown and white quartz veins) and it was called Verde Borgonha. But, we dragged our feet to think on it a little more and all the slabs we knew were around at a couple yards were now spoken for. Even if you find something you like, you have to pick the actual slabs as it could be slightly lighter or darker or whatever depending on the cut.

Today we ran out to Walker Zanger's slab yard in Sun Valley where it's so hot the rubber on your shoes starts to stick to the pavement. They had some but it was on hold by some San Franisco designer that had Verde Borgonha on hold at every yard he could find. Nice. But money talks and bullshit walks and it was ours!

Kitchen Remodel - Day 0

Well, tomorrow they start. We've cleaned out everything from all the cabinets. We've had our garage sale, we've donated and done the best we could to be ready. Who can be ready for 3 months of no kitchen? Every room of our house is filled with boxes of dishes and canned goods and wine glasses and, and, and.....who knew we had so much stuff?

The Harvest

The backyard harvest is starting to come in. I'm picking tomatoes faster than we can eat them. Those two strange looking yellow baseballs are actually Lemon Cucumbers. They are quite delicious. Those tomatoes are HUGE and are from the better best boy family.

Is That a Chicken?

On Dena and I's walk the other morning we ran across the strangest sight.....a chicken strutting down the street. Dena, being Dena, chased him (her?) into this parking lot. As a reminder, we are in the heart of Los Angeles here, not Idaho.

A Good Lesson

Often it's challenging to start a project or task that seems daunting in any number of ways; either too large to fathom, it's going to be difficult, or you are not too sure how to tackle it. I heard one of Michael Josephson's commentaries the other day and I thought how poignant it was. Let me preface this by saying that I do not agree with his politics but I do appreciate his effort in the Character Counts arena.

Here is the commentary:

Chris’s parents were proud of him when he graduated from college. But it’s been six months and he hasn’t gotten a job yet. In fact, he hasn’t even looked seriously. He has no idea what he wants to do and is thinking of grad school.
He’s living at home with his parents and things are getting tense, especially with his father, who says he’s lazy and afraid to enter the real world.
Chris thinks his dad is unreasonable. After all, you’re only young once and he needs some space. During a recent argument, Chris said, “I’m not you, Dad. I have my own way of doing things. I want a job I enjoy.”
His dad replied, “That’s a nice idea, but in the end they call it ‘work’ because it’s about making a productive living – not having fun.”
There are many youngsters like Chris who are having trouble getting started and becoming self-reliant. Some, like Peter Pan, just don’t want to grow up. Some are afraid of making a wrong decision or of being rejected. Others are victims of what psychologists call “magical thinking.” They believe when the time is right, everything will fall into place. So they wait for opportunity to come knocking or until they feel inspired or excited enough to take the next step.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way. What’s crucial is to begin. Things happen and opportunities appear most often when we’re moving, not standing still.
Momentum is vital. Basic physics stipulates that it’s easier to alter the course of a moving object than to start movement initially. In the end, it’s not really about finding yourself. It’s about making yourself.

The first steps are the hardest, but the key to success in anything is getting started.

Celebrity Deaths

Perhaps Michael Jackson should have a funeral everyday in Los Angeles. Despite all the doom and gloom or perhaps because of it, the traffic in downtown Los Angeles and all over the downtown LA - Hollywood area has been a dream. I'm pretty sure there is more traffic in the skies over the staples center than there is on the ground. From my office I can hear the constant beating of rotor blades and can see the vultures circling. I count 10 right now and I don't even have a clear view of the Staples Center.

For some reason at my office they watched the live feed in the conference room. A waste of bandwidth if you ask me. When I walked in to address a complaint of too much buffering Mariah Carey was singing. Is she tone deaf? It sounded like a cat in heat.

Alas, another star is gone. I'm sure we haven't seen the last death of a wealthy, famous, drug addicted, abused star and I'm sure we haven't heard the last of the Michael Jackson's drama. Just like cockroaches, nothing can kill the media, except maybe George Bush. He did a pretty good job of muzzling them during his tyrannical reign.

How to

How do you get a 150 pound AC unit onto your roof? This is an interesting contraption, they were almost done before I could get the camera. They hand cranked it up there, used the two 2x4's to slide it over the parapet and the result? We should have AC by Saturday! Thank you Obama for our expected $ 1,500 federal tax rebate and thanks to the Southern California Gas Company for our expected $200.00 rebate. By the way, just so you all know, the unit is an Armstrong "enhanced" AC unit. HaHa