Oh Dear. I Think I’ve been Skewered.

Change Is Afoot

The original plan was to put nice, high-grade Stainmaster carpet upstairs in the bedrooms, then maybe swap in some hardwoods on the main floor over time.

C worked some great deals with some otherwise idle floor install contractors. One of these guys apparently had a whole bunch of surplus  Brazilian Cherry that he hasn’t been able to unload for a LONG time. So long that, instead of $22/sqft, he’s installing it at our house for $7/sqft.

So, C has Brazilian Cherry going into the main entry, dining room, hallway, living room and dining nook area. The office will stay carpet; the kitchen and powder room will stay tile.

Instead of high-grade Stainmaster upstairs, C is backing down to a lower grade of carpet (still VERY nice) and working a similar deal with an installer who’s idle and will work VERY affordably.

I’ll try to post a couple photos. This is C pinching pennies at her finest. We thought we had a good deal for new floors in ONE third of the house. WE DID have a good deal, in fact – half price on the carpet from Marion’s because it was a remainder roll. But now? Now, for just a bit more, we're replacing the floor in TWO thirds of the house. With carpet *and* hardwood.

Change is afoot; problem solved.

UPDATE [10/8/09]:  I took some pictures yesterday of the raw wood floor installed. These guys move fast. Today they’ll finish installing the final three feet at the front door, then move on to sanding and finishing. At 3PM or so, they’ll put down the scratch coat finish. We have to let it cure overnight, so no work on the house for ME tonight.

Top Gear: Prius vs. the BMW M3 on a MPG showdown

 

link to the youtube video

Apophis Update

 

From the press release:

NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large  asteroid known as Apophis and now say it has only a very slim chance of banging into Earth.

The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields and updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million, NASA stated. 

Initially, Apophis was thought to have a 2.7% chance of impacting Earth in 2029. Additional observations of the asteroid ruled out any possibility of an impact in 2029. 

[link]

Fans Re-make Star Wars … 15 Seconds at a Time!

Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

Tipping Points

I’m dredging up an old metaphor – a cliché, even. The idea that a tipping point does not usually come from a single change, but from the cumulative effect of a number of aligned small changes. Like tossing coins on the pan of a balance scale, most of the work of change causes absolutely no outward change until, suddenly, all the little changes contribute to one significant change.

It’s an interesting experience to watch a balance scale sneak up on its tipping point, when the pan has not yet tipped but you can sense  it quivering with a pent-up desire to suddenly jump into motion. My fingers get twitchy at that moment. So Exciting!!

It’s somewhat more nerve-wracking to watch one’s life at a tipping point. See, we go through them, too. Life changes and life transitions are, perhaps  surprisingly, built up of classic tipping points where a bunch of otherwise inconsequential and low-impact things all line up to create a powerful and influential body - acting either like links of a chain down taking us down into the pits of struggle, or the rungs of a ladder leading us back out to the meadows of prosperity.

We’ve all seen them both. Chains down and ladders up. Undoubtedly.

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been having that ‘tipping point’ experience again. I’ve been watching things shift. Little things, changing and re-aligning. Things that were hard obstacles moved, rearranging themselves into avenues of progress instead of roadblocks. Each shift has been a like little bit more weight on the pan. In the past couple days, it just seems like the pan has reached the point where it’s quivering. Like we’re sneaking up on the tipping point.

Back in 1993/94, I went through an experience like this. It was as if my whole life unraveled in about six months’ time. The pan just emptied, and the scales thumped hard against my success. But then, after a period of emptiness, things started to rebuild. Fast. Scarily, eerily fast. As if I weren’t steering, even. I remember saying to a friend, “My whole life came apart in 6 months, now it’s rebuilding itself completely in about six weeks, whether I like it or not!”

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was spot-on. The stuff that happened in that six week time period set me on my new course in life that took me further and higher than before; the course that has taken me to where I am now. And I am the better for this new course. My experiences in 1993/94 were the rehearsal for what was still to come.

Which is what brings us to this blog post. See, that same cycle has been playing out in my family for the last few years. We’ve had a series of challenges to work through. Sometimes, the amount of challenge has been overwhelming. But we’ve gotten through. I remember the feeling of despair that accompanied the six months of emptiness; it’s similar to what we’ve weathered recently.

And, and-and-and… oh, i love this next part….

I feel the same sense of tension and excitement that makes my hands twitchy. The pan is starting to quiver. Back then, my life rebuilt in six weeks. This time may take a bit longer, but I '*feel* it. I feel it coming. And I am hopeful that my family and I will find ourselves embarked on a new course that takes us further and higher than before. And we will be the better for this new family course.

We’re Painting Dragonfly

Okay, so we’re working on Dragonfly. That’s the house in SW Portland, you see. Strictly speaking, it needs some new flooring and some wall paint. That’s about it. The carpet is all the original contractor-grade from 2002, so it’s time to upgrade at any rate; a surprising number of the rooms are still painted the original eggshell white dating back to construction as well. So, while we may feel overwhelmed with the work - what with everything else going on - there isn’t that much to do in the big picture.

Outside, for example, about two hours of work covers the must-do items:

• Mow the lawn a couple times over the next week to get it even and under-control
• Take out the dead ornamental tree next to the backyard tree house
• Cut the Wisteria back to size

Over the weekend, we got to following rooms under way:

• Office:  the dark colors covered with primer, ready for a lighter shade of paint
• M’s room: painted with some background colors, ready for a mural to emerge over the next few months
• R’s room: from off white to a color called ‘Glass’, which looks grey but with a hint of blue/purple
• Kitchen/Nook: the same ‘maple’ color we used in the Stark Street kitchen
• Guest Room:  prepared and taped for painting. C deliberated on the color for  a while. She finalized that today. Paint starts tomorrow

Other painting projects on the list:

• Epoxy on the garage floor
• Living Room (first time repaint)
• Stairwells
• Entry
• Dining Room
• New color in the office
• Woodwork repaint with enamel.

In other words, we knocked off 3.5 items from the 11 item list just this last weekend. That’s something like 30% complete already!

The kids helped. I taught R the basics of roller painting. M helped in her own way. Both kids did great service wiping down the woodwork and getting surfaces prepped for paint. They also got their homework done Sunday morning, leaving them at-ease for the rest of Sunday and painting.

There are a number of other things to do – mostly in the form of replacing door hardware that got changed out in a haphazard way.