All posts by tim

so tired

Updates

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.

I love my neighborhood.

Personal

So I realize I have posted almost nothing about my new house and neighborhood. We love it here.

I’ve been working from home because my work still hasn’t figured out how to get me into work. I sold my car shortly before they decided to move and then they picked the one location they were looking at that wasn’t accessible by bus. “No problem,” they said, “we’ll find a way to get you there.” They haven’t yet, but I’m not in a rush. It’s wonderful being at home every day. The view out the windows is fantastic, and I like being able to give Stella a hug whenever I want. Plus I’m much more productive without a commute. I have no problem adding the 30 minutes to an hour that I would normally commute on to my work day. It’s nice.

We’ve realized that this neighborhood is full of cool people. Everyone is friendly and actually talks to each other. It’s quite a change. I’ve found out one of the bloggers I read lives in this neighborhood as does the respected artistic director of a local theater.

This week we’ve mostly been Christmas shopping and making quick trips to Ikea to finish up our house. We had to pickup a dining table and chairs for our new dining room. We ended up choosing this table and these chairs:

The chairs are actually office chairs, but they look great. You can’t get as many under the table, but we’ve figured out a way to get 10 settings at it anyway. Of course we had to test out the chairs at Ikea which meant I had to carry a chair from the office area over to the dining room area, which of course is the furthest distance possible from one Ikea’s “short cuts”. I was waiting for a comment from the employees in Kitchen design, but they didn’t give me any guff.

Other than that we’ve been settling in. Last night we went to a neighborhood watch meeting and learned more about our neighbors. How to call in about suspicious characters in the neighborhood. Good stuff.

At lunch this afternoon I went running. There’s a hike and bike trail just across from where Santa Monica dead ends into Burleson. I jumped off and found myself on Pleasant Valley just a couple of minutes later. I ran all the way up to Riverside and Pleasant Valley before having to turn back (Julie asked me to be back by 1:30).

All in all we love it here. The neighborhood has some rough sides, but all in all it’s really cool.

I’m currently working in the backyard, watching Stella. Julie’s gone to get her haircut. It’s in the mid-seventies and this my view:

Stella looking for the march hare

turning blue

Politics

Just wanted to key in people who don’t read as many politics blogs as I do. Dan Barrett just won a house seat runoff in Fort Worth last night. This narrows the difference in the state house to 79-71. Democrats have been winning in districts deliberately redrawn by Tom Delay to prevent them from winning.

Next time someone says that Texas will never be a Democrat majority state again, remind them that we’re awfully close.

you can’t spell xmas without x

Ramblings

So we talked about the origin of the word Xmas in church a few weeks ago, and I wanted to share. Apparently Xmas as a substitute for Christmas is religious, from wikipedia (search:Xmas):

The word “Christ” and its compounds, including “Christmas”, have been abbreviated for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern “Xmas” was commonly used. “Christ” was often written as “XP” or “Xt”; there are references in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as 1021 AD. This X and P arose as the uppercase forms of the Greek letters χ and ρ), used in ancient abbreviations for Χριστος (Greek for “Christ”), and are still widely seen in many Eastern Orthodox icons depicting Jesus Christ. The labarum, an amalgamation of the two Greek letters rendered as ☧, is a symbol often used to represent Christ in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian Churches.[1]

All you atheists are on notice to come up with a new way to mock the birth of the Christ child.

But hopefully you’ve learned something. I like to learn things. I guess this is why I have no desire to buy this new product from the people who brought you “The War on Christmas” – Brawndo.

feelin’ blue

Updates

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:

Fresh off the success of Little Murders, Loaded Gun Theory presents a reading of our next production, The Automat, a NEW play by LGT resident playwright, Timothy Thomas. The show won’t be performed until February 29th-March 16th at the Dougherty Arts Center, but you can get a sneak peek at the script in December!

Loaded Gun Theory is having a fundraiser to read The Automat and raise funds for its production. Admission is by donation and we’ll be selling baked goods,

javascript countdown

Updates

Figured I should put up my ultra-hackey code for posterity. I found lots of javascript day countdown timers, but none that did hours. I’ve put the code below. Just change the 5 variables at the beginning to what you need. Javascript counts January as the zero month so subtract one from your month (the example below is 12-6-2007 at 10:00 am):

putin’s a problem

Politics

So while Bush was spending today arguing why he should be allowed to bomb Iran even though they’re honoring all their nuclear commitments and are generally behaving themselves pretty well. Putin followed through on some promises and started moving a permanent naval presence into the Mediterranean. And by Mediterranean can we point out that they’re hanging out around Syria? Oh, and in case you missed it they’re also flying long range bomber patrols. You know, within range that they could launch nuclear missiles at the United States.

But keep freaking out about Osama Bin Laden kiddos. If he’s lucky he can kill a whole 3000 people at a time. So he’s about 2% as effective as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. They might have even improved the technology of what can be transported in those bombers since the 1940s, but I’m no military expert.

Good thing Putin’s a “good guy”. Better pray that’s true.

sidetrack

Ah, a great quote from Joe Biden after Bush’s spectacular waffling about Iran today. You really should read some transcripts if you haven’t. It’s spectacular. You start to get the feeling that Bush may not be dumb. There may actually be absolutely no communication going on between the white house and the white house staff and the entire government at large. Here’s Biden’s quote:

“I refuse to believe that. If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in modern American history, and he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.”

Oh, and the reason why the president is right and the new intelligence is wrong is because we still need to do due diligence to make sure the new intelligence is right. And by right we mean, why the new intelligence is not supporting the president’s facts.

I can accept the fact that Iran might have stopped their nuclear policies because of Bush’s constant insistence that he was going to bomb them, and I guess this could pass for a type of diplomacy. And maybe he can trot this out every third speech to make sure they’re behaving themselves. But c’mon, lets move on. There are bigger threats out there.

bust ’em up!

Ramblings

I’m so tired of AT&T. Why do we have to put up with monopolies? It just blows my mind. We broke them up because they provided horrible service, and now they’re almost completely back together again. And Wikipedia cites the Center for Responsive Politics when it says that AT&T is the second largest political contributer in the US since 1990.

Hello Cold War

Politics

It seems like we only recently learned how to miss you. This article makes it look as though we’ll be back to the same system that was called Communism under the Soviet Union quite soon. I imagine the Cold War will reemerge soon. We have our new Stalin. He looked good for a few years. A reformer. A man who could make his completely broken country work. But we’re back at the same point. The major opposition candidate in jail. All industry controlled by the “democratically” elected state party. People forced to vote or face loss of job or disappearance.

It might be my lack of sleep, but I’m feeling a bit emotional about this. I remember 1990. Everyone was talking about Perestroika. We went to see a Russian museum tour in downtown Dallas. It seemed so distant and yet so possible that something was happening. We’d seen the Berlin wall fall. Things could change.

We moved to the Soviet Union in August of 1990. We spent the most miserable 9 months of our lives there just trying to survive. The system was crumbling, and while they were still trying to present a facade of a functioning economy they couldn’t provide enough even for foreigners (for years they had a massive propaganda machine to make it look as though all was well). We horded food. I found sugar once at a store while out picking up a loaf of bread and carried home 100 pounds. My parents bought something like 8 palettes of eggs in one grocery trip. My sister Caroline went out several times a week to stood in line at 4am to fill a 5 gallon bucket with unpasteurized milk from a tanker truck in our neighborhood. We spent all day pasteurizing milk. Washing clothes and cooking food. We fought like cats cooped up in our apartments. Only the adults were willing to make any effort to leave the confines of our apartment building.

After that year we took a 3 month vacation in England. In a small pastoral suburb of London. It was heaven. And then we watched in August 1991 as the putsch threatened to oust Yeltsin. The countries first marginally democratically elected leader. It was a tense few days. We had our entire lives back in the Soviet Union. We had our friends back there. And we had a Russian friend staying with us. If things had gone differently he would have probably defected and I would more than likely have a brother.

And then it was over. And we went back to the Soviet Union for another year and things were better. And people were mostly more optimistic. I say mostly because there are probably still people there complaining and praying that the czars will come back. And there was food. It was expensive. Too expensive for most of the people who lived there (more legitimate complaints). But there was food again. And stores weren’t completely filled with empty shelves. And in February of 1992 I sang the star-spangled banner as the American Flag was raised for the first time over the new independent country of Kazakhstan. A new country. Trust me. It’s pretty amazing to be around when a new country is formed.

And when we left in May of 1992. On our way out of the country we stayed in the American Embassy in Moscow. And we looked over the walls where Yeltsin made his stand on top of tanks. And where they hoisted the Russian Flag. And where the back of communist party was finally broken.

And now we’ve circled back. 15 short years. We’ve been witness to a pretty amazing piece of history. 15 years of calm more or less. Of not thinking about mutually ensured destruction. It’s depressing to think that my children will be back to living with that fear.

And my new play “The Automat” takes place in the cafeteria of a missile silo.It’s amazing how the subconscious works.

…haven’t slept a wink

Ramblings

I get more creative at night. I say this because I had to leave to drive my parents to the airport at 4:20 this morning. So I didn’t go to sleep. I’m much worse off with a little sleep than I am with no sleep. My grandma is dying. That’s why I had to take them to the airport. I’ll miss my grandma, but most of all I’ll miss my grandma and grandpa’s house. Located in Flint, MI it was the Thomas Family hub. I remember summer spent days down in the bowels of its basement, or playing in the sprinkler in the back yard, or doing gymnastics on the front lawn. But there weren’t many of them.

Days in Flint that is. Not Thomases. There’s are plenty of Thomases.

No need to get maudlin though. If Flint’s real estate market stays the same I expect that the house could be in the family for generations.

Just remember. If you’re feeling priced out of Austin you can always move to Flint. Houses on my Grandparent’s street average around $32k. 2 story. 2000+ ft2 4 bedroom houses. I believe my Grandparent’s is 2 bedroom. 3 if you count the converted basement.

So I wrote last night. And then I took them to the airport, and then I tooled around Austin.

First stop I wound around east riverside. There’s a lot of cool stuff over there. And it’s gentrified a lot since I lived over there. There are some amazingly large expensive houses across the street from some of the skeezy places on Montopolis. There are entire suburbs over there. Tons of stuff off the Golf Course. It really looks like people have realized that there’s a bunch of property over there that’s on a lake or a golf course.

Then I drove by our new house. Yeah, I’m buzzing neighbourhoods at 4:30am. So what? Does that make me a stalker?

Then I was bored so I drove through our old new neighbourhood. The house is still looking very unfinished. They haven’t painted it, and they had every light in the place blazing. At 4:30am. Green building it is not.

Then still being bored I drove by our old old house. That one is still up for lease. Some of my plants might eat the neighbors soon. The Thai Basil looks like it’s 4 feet tall.

But the house is still up for lease. It’s been 4 months. Hopefully our Californian investor will sell it at a loss and a nice family will snatch it up.

So I’m back at home waiting for Stella to wake up any minute now. Then off to work, and another night of write, write, write!

We’re going to Evant on Saturday and Sunday so hopefully that will afford me even more opportunities to write.

WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! Dah, dah, dah, da, da, da, da…

oh, and go read the Austin Contrarian’s explanation of what a VMU is and how they work. Everyone should be edumacated. I can’t wait until the redo riverside. I’d post a link, but I’m lazy, and sleepy, so use the Google.