A tale of two Brians

I was gonna send this in an email to Marilyn, but decided what the heck, nobody cares but it will be interesting to look back on the blog printouts and see what was going on. Well, I've been working in the basement. Dunno if I told you but there's so much junk I decided to work on half of the room at a time, starting with the South end. I moved all the junk into the north end and for the South end I've got all the framing up, the electrical in, and have started sheet rock. (ugh!) Have I told you that I'm not as young as I used to be? ;-) I'm putting a bank of built in shelves in the SouthWest corner against the South wall for toys. (Where the main house water shut off and pressure reducing valves are). I've contemplated various ways to do this. I first was thinking of putting a closet door in front of them, but to do that I would either have to cut the shelf depth back a lot or bring the shelf closet out a foot or so more into the room than I want do do. The reason being is that a closet folding door, or a couple of regular doors for that matter, make it so you can't get to the top shelf if it is as deep as I want it to be (about 22"). Also, putting doors on it, it would be a REAL pain in the pattutie to get the shelves in. I would have to cut them in half and splice them once they are in. I decided on open shelves. That way I can have them as deep as I want, but not have the enclosure cut into the room space. It will also be a lot easier for little bodies to pull what they want off the shelves (and hopefully to put things back). I figure we'll just get a bunch of matching totes to put on the shelves and it won't look so bad, for a play/sewing room. My next task will be to move the light switch from around the corner in that room to the inside of the staircase like the switch for the workshop area. Once that is done I can finish sheetrocking that end of the room, put the shelves in, texture, paint, then put the dropped ceiling in. When that end of the room is all finished, I'll move all the cra...er....jun...er....stuff from the other side of the room into there and start on the North end.

Yea, that's pretty much my life. I work on it until I get too tired. There's a lot of carrying heavy things, getting down to my knees and up again, etc. It's hard on an old guy like me with joint problems. Last week I recorded a whole slew of movies to DVDR before they cut the cable off...which they did on Monday. We're back to limited basic (yes hon, you do have Ch 21) and save about $40/month. I figure we have enough stuff recorded now that if we started with the first DVD and worked our way to the last DVD, we'd have forgotten all about the first DVD and could start again. :-) I even recorded a couple of chick-flicks in there with my man movies.

I got a lovely valentine from my sweetheart and one from Benjamin (and a big one from Chad/Erica if you consider they spent their first Valentine's evening playing games with me!) I like to talk to Benjamin on the phone, but it's hard because I only can understand about 1/4 of what he says on the phone. :-( I do like to hear his voice though.

If anyone comes over (and if Marilyn comes home) be prepared for a messy house. Usually when mom's gone, I take good care of the house. This time I've been busy in the basement so have kind of let the household chores slide. I fix my meals, wash the dishes, and do my laundry and that's about it. I haven't made the bed since she left. Yer mom will probably be thrilled because usually when she's gone and I'm fending for myself, I get frustrated with the overstuffed cupboards/fridge/freezer and start rearranging, which gets me in hot water when she gets home. This time they're as she left them so you can breath a sigh of relief dear.

We've had some nice warm days this past week and a lot of the snow we had piled up has melted...there's still plenty left though. The air outside has been TERRIBLE so I've been doing my walking on the treadmill. Someone goes outside to walk/jog for their health these days and they are liable to die of black lung. Not as bad as we've had it though. They said yesterday was the 7th red air day this year when last year this time we had 30 of 'em. There's a storm brewing for this weekend though so Marilyn, watch the weather reports if you're planning on driving back this weekend. If you've read this far in this blog entry, you deserve a gold star on your forehead. Love ya all. - oh...Steve, one thought. When I bought that Treo, it was set up for AT&T, which then became Cingular but my plan was always AT&T so that may make a difference in getting a new SIM for it. Dunno. Bye.