The City of Austin picks up bulky trash twice a year. This is our day for putting say, that old gun safe that’s been sitting in the garage, on the curb. We can’t put these things out on just any trash day like many cities. Which I think is for the best. My mother-in-law, however, thinks it’s insane.

So last night everyone put out their bulky trash. And today has been a non-stop feeding frenzy. People in my neighborhood are seriously into bulky trash. When we moved in we had some things we needed to get rid of (including an 6′ tall entertainment center that hadn’t done well in the move). We just put these things on our front yard with a “Free” sign, and they were gone within 24 hours. Most of them were gone within the hour.

We don’t currently have any bulky trash. We’ve managed to go a fairly long time without doing any home improvement projects and we mostly like the stuff in our house. But as I sit here I can watch the crud my neighbors across the street put out. In the past hour there have been a minivan and a truck, and both have taken something from the pile. The pile now appears to only contain a while chunk of lattice work and a cardboard box (which the city won’t pick up, but maybe they’re gambling that someone else will).

I’ll keep you updated.

So, I took the time to figure out how the cabinets we bought in Houston fit together. It looks like we’re missing a shelf, since there are holes for 4, but we only got 3.

Time for more of that viral marketing. Tickets for “The Automat” are now on sale. This show is really fun and light. Plus I think that Ian and I are going over the top on building this set. It’s going to be really cool.

Here’s a button to put on your blog or other site:

And here’s the code:

<img 
    src="http://www.loadedguntheory.com/images/automatButton.gif" 
    alt="buy tickets for the automat" />

Also, we’re now on facebook:

And you can still add us on myspace:

My ankle was giving me fits until yesterday. Nothing major. Just the occasional shot of pain. You know, a “Hey they’re buddy, how ’bout treatin’ me better” type of thing. But it has been fine today. Haven’t gone running yet, but I did do a ton of yardwork with no problem.

Speaking of yardwork. We bought a new weed wacker today. It’s been quite a debate. I’d previously always used electric. But to edge certain parts of the yard will require dragging a cord across at least two flowerbeds and constantly maneuvering back around trees. And that’s just the close-in parts. I didn’t really want to test how many extension cords I could string together. So I looked a battery powered. Which apparently get about twenty minutes of use. What is that? I can only dream of having a yard where twenty minutes makes a dent in the edging. So I went with gas. I hate myself for it. But I also kind of love it. We spent a lot

Man, I am tired. It’s been a rough few weeks which is why I haven’t been posting. I’ve been up against a ridiculous deadline at work that had me working until 2:30 am last Friday night. Or Saturday morning. However you like to structure your days.

I couldn’t really sleep in on Saturday. Stella was in a loud talking mood, and my body just refused to fight it. So I got up with less than 5 hours of sleep. Make that much less. Roxie woke me up twice that night.

Roxie.

Roxie. Bane of my existence.

Roxie is our dog who walked into our front door after deciding she was done riding the rails. She’s a depression-era hobo dog. When we took her to the vet initially they said she was twelve years old at minimum. That was three years ago.

One of my shows is playing at Frontera Fest tomorrow night. It’s called the nymph, and it’s a bit of a twisted fairy tale about what happens when a river o’er runs it s banks. Fun stuff.

You can still get tickets here:

http://4thwalltickets.com/store/show/72

Just scroll down to Jan 23rd and buy some tickets. I recommend buying in advance. Frontera often sells out. And by often, I mean almost always.

This is probably my favorite show I’ve written, and I hope to return to it some day and make it into a full length script. Something along the lines of Neil Gamine’s Coraline.

So, I’ll admit, I wasn’t really paying attention when Julie said she wanted to get the outside of our house painted over the Christmas holidays. I always want to play video games over the Christmas Holidays, but Julie’s got plans. So I wasn’t really paying attention. It’s been a busy season. We moved into a house. Moved at work. Had 3 Christmases. I had other things on my mind. Until Thursday that is. When in preparation for painting we rented a pressure washer and I washed the house. I was freezing, wet and realizing that we were in way over our heads. I voiced my concerns to Julie, but she noted that I had blasted paint off of large sections of our house and there was no turning back now.

The reason I hesitated is that I severely underestimated the size and architectural complexity of the size of our house. When I look at it I always think of the houses they built in the seventies that are like it. Only the ones they built in the seventies have all the architectural detail simplified, and the size of the house cut by 400 square feet. When I was pressure washing I realized there was a massive amount of trim to paint. It doesn’t look it, but our house has almost as much detailed trim as some sort of New England Gingerbread jobbie. There are beams everywhere. Criss-crossing. Coming out from the house. There are probably over 40 on the front of the house. I am not exaggerating. And these aren’t 1970s, “think about the earth” crossbeams. They’re 4x16s I think. Simply massive. You would have to special order these beams today and they would cost you a fortune.

So I was feeling like we might have a problem. Then we got to home depot and purchased 20 gallons of paint. Which should have been another red flag. It takes us a weekend to paint 3 gallons of paint and we’re going to paint 20?

So I decided that we had to try a paint sprayer. No way we were getting that much paint on there. So I tried the paint sprayer. It worked fantastically for about 5 minutes at which point it started seizing. I went over the directions again and in fine print it was noted that you shouldn’t paint at a greater that 45 degree angle off of center. Which was pretty much everything I had to paint. So I cleaned out the sprayer.

Then I tried it again the next morning. And it seized up. And we bought a 12 foot stepladder. Because I wasn’t going to be able to paint the house on a 16 foot extension ladder. Without dying. And we rented a paint sprayer from Home Depot. Which worked great pointing up at the trim, but applied paint at roughly a gallon per minute. Which was far too much. You squeezed the trigger from five feet away and you had so much paint it was dripping. We called home depot and they couldn’t help me. They seemed to think that was normal. So I had to clean another paint sprayer. And at this point we’ve got about 10 feet of trim painted, and so we just hop to it by hand. And Julie got most of the back finished, and I finished most of one side.

Then yesterday my Dad came over and helped, and we finished about 2/3rds of the front. Yes. 3 people. 2/3rds of one side of a houses’s trim. Trim. Not actual walls. Just trim. Today we finally finished our first coat on all the trim around 3:30. We managed to get a second coat on the trim on the back, and 1/2 of the front (although the easy half of the front, the part that doesn’t require a 12 foot ladder).

So hopefully tomorrow we’re going to get some color at least on the back. And we might cheat and just put a second coat on the parts of the front that will impact us putting color up there.

But good grief, this has been a massive job. We’ve already put on 7 gallons of paint. And we’ve painted the trim. It hurts to rinse the paint out of my hair. It hurts to hoist this beer. We’re hoping that by the time I go back to work we’ll have the front and back done. And we’ll finish the sides this weekend. We hope…

I need to pay better attention.

Sorry I haven’t written much lately. As my blog pen pals you deserve better.

But the move took a lot out of me, and we didn’t have internet for a while. And what Internet we did have was a blistering 386kbps. Apparently they’ve upped it to the super speedy 768 kbps. Which technically means at the very least we need a discount. Cause their 786kbps service costs $5 less a month than what we’re paying.

But I’m feeling blue cause today is my last day working downtown. I’m then going to be moving to the hole of humanity that is office space off of 360. If you like views of hills studded with ugly architechture, then it’s the place for you! Also if you like to drive up and down 20 mile highways with no cross streets! Thrill to accidents that back up traffic for hours!

And this office is the exact same location that DMi was when I started. Even down to the same floor. Granted they own the 2/3 of the floor that Digital Motorworks did not own at the time, so I’m not in the exact same office. But I get to use the same bathroom which I think is close enough. I can take the stairs down for a smoke if I wanted. And still smoked.

I don’t really want to go back to where I’ve been.

And I have to finish the Automat tonight/early tomorrow morning. This is first draft number 8. I’ll probably be better tomorrow afternoon. Speaking of the Automat. Be sure to Join us under the Oak for the reading of my new play, won’t you? You know you want to check out our super-cool mid-century modern ranch: