Project Miner

Mom and Ken are both going out of town this week (to different locations), so Grandma (and her cat, Maggie) is going to stay with us for the week. We’re actually pretty excited about it — we like Grandma and we rarely have house guests, so we are looking forward to it. We don’t have to prepare anything special, our guest room is clean and ready to go. We’ll put the space heater in there, just so she has extra heat if she needs it.

As for Grandma’s physical condition, it has improved a lot in the last few weeks. She still has some dizzy spells and her blood pressure spikes at times, but overall, she’s feeling much better. I don’t anticipate her being overly excited about staying with us this week (nobody likes to be shuffled around, especially Grandma), so hopefully that won’t get her worked up and get her blood pressure spiking.

Sooo excited. Got an email from the Braves ticket crew today, and we get to go and check out our seats in person this weekend. mmmmm, seats. I was getting worried because I haven’t received the tickets yet, but Jol said he doesn’t get his Nats tickets until March, and so we concluded the Braves probably did the same. The email said to print the message and bring that as admission to the park, so that is further evidence we shouldn’t have our tickets yet. I could be non-lazy and write them, but what’s the fun in that?

So, anyway, I get to see my seats in person in five days. It’s like Christmas all over again. They also said something about seeing other seats you like better that are available and trading up, so that has piqued my interest a bit. Can I trade up for the seats right behind the dugout? Pretty please?

As predicted, my weekend to do list was a bit aggressive, even considering I had three days to try and get all of it done. I’m not really upset, though, it was more of a wish list than a to do list, anyway. I did a decent bit of work on the stairs, though I only accomplished removing the stain on the top two treads and prepping the rails. I also got some good work done on staining my office furniture. Richard came over Friday and went hero mode on the back door, raising the threshold thingie (I’m a walking dictionary) so the back door doesn’t let in air anymore, at least at the bottom. I followed his recommendations the next day and made the other door lean just like the door that actually opens, which allowed for a tighter seal. There is still a spot or two that needs cleaned up. I also caulked all the windows shut (they are poo and need replaced fully, so we agreed that just caulking them shut would be the best approach) and used gap filler on all the other spots that air was coming in. The house does feel warmer, but the floor insulation and more appropriate duct work is still a must. Old houses rule. Sigh.

The weekend was still a good time, though. We had brunch with my family and dinner with Katy’s on Saturday. Lots of card playing, which is always fun. We introduced them to “contract rummy” as taught to us by Sean, and they were hilarious playing it. They were a mix of confused, super competitive and anal about the rules, all of which was amusing as hell to me. I’ve always felt I was a bit out of it when playing cards with them, but this was the first time I’ve played a game with them and they were the ones playing a new game. Their confusion made me feel quite validated for all the times I was out of it playing euchre or some other game that was new to me and old tricks for them.

Is it “to-do” or just “todo”. Todo? That looks wicked wrong.

I want to start jotting down my to-do lists for the weekend and/or week ahead. Not so I can try to be all crazy organized or add structure to my life, but just so I can get a list in my head (and in the journal) of what I want to do. Last weekend I was so busy getting ready to start working on the stairs, I almost forgot that I wanted to do a few other things. I have at least two online to-do lists (tadalist.com and rememberthemilk.com), but I use those more for the structured “this has to be done by x” type of list (though, errr, I have about five over due right now). If I don’t accomplish everything on this list, so be it. Anyhows, here is what I hope to do this weekend…

• Work on the stairs. I’m actually going to start this in a few minutes, since today is my “every other Friday off” day and I want to get some work done on it before tomorrow. I’m going to remove the stain on the top two stairs, the bigger “landing” type stairs. That should be fun. Chemicals are always fun. Gotta move Milli’s stuff downstairs and lock her in the front of the house before I do that, though. Cats and chemicals don’t mix. I think. While the chemicals are doing their thing, I’ll continue prepping all the individual rails so they don’t get stain on them when I stain the tops/bottoms. What a pain. If I finish that this weekend, I’ll start sanding and cleaning the parts I will be staining. I also have a few touch-up spots to take care of on the walls I painted last weekend.

• Warm the house up. Richard is coming by today to help with our energy efficiency issues. Our house is cold all the time, and he’s a guru with everything, so he’s gonna help us figure out what to do.

• Sunday, I plan to lay a beat down on Tom on the racquetball court and then probably relax and get ready for the superbowl little gathering. We were gonna go to Katy’s peeps for it, but now we’re having about five people over, so I’m gonna make mini burgers. mmmm. It’ll be the first time I use the awesome griddle Troy and Elaine got me for Christmas. Sweet.

• Business-wise, I really really need to finish my company website. The design is done, I just don’t have the wording completed yet. I need to order business cards, and finish some paperwork for a business savings account with Net Bank. I need to put in a bit more time with the help application, which I actually worked on a bit this week and re-architected some of how it works, making it super brain dead easy to plug in.

• Finally, I want to open the hater site for business and post the first entry. Troy is going to design a fancy look for the site, but I can start it going without waiting on the good design, I’d rather just get it going.

Now that I’ve written it, that sounds like a hella busy weekend for a lazy slacker like myself, especially since it doesn’t include plans like going out for drinkys tonight or having brunch with the family tomorrow. I believe that warrants an “oooh weee”.