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A final update?

It’s time I think to list the trailer for sale. I’ve used it quite a bit and it’s almost finished. Who am I kidding, I will keep changing it around and it will never be done. Anyway, here are some photos.

The dining area is pretty comfortable and the table can hold many beers.

A new gas 3 burner stove and a sink. Lots of storage. My first time building kitchen cabinets from scratch.

Having a real bed makes camping so much nicer. It’s an almost king bed. Took a proper mattress and chopped a few inches off to fit. Also lifts to storage underneath.

A cassette toilet. No more getting out of a sleeping bag to freeze my balls off at 2am on the walk to the campground jacks.

Catio

So this has been sitting in drafts for 2 years…

Nacho has been especially loud of late so I decided he needed to be able to go outside when he wanted. This led to the catio. Urs has wanted one for ages, but she didn’t whine about it as much as Nacho, so it didn’t get done until now.

Basically a large frame (8’x4’x3′) with a roof, a middle floor, a shelf and a ramp.

Build a cat flap for a window.

Put it all together and let the testers out.

Kittens, kittens, kittens

We’ve fostered kittens before and Urs has been wanting to do it again. So say hello to this little guy, Bruce Wayne. Here he is with his bestest friend, a brush.

Then his siblings got trapped and since he could use some non-brush company we have these lot.

The new Mitzi

My last bike died a long, slow and painful death last year and I didn’t get around to replacing it until this weekend. Say hello to Mitzi 2.0, a 2005 Kawasaki Concours. Going to test it out properly next week.

Skyscraper – the movie for our time.

We went to see Skyscraper at the weekend. Excellent, brainless fun. Great overly-clichéd The Rock movie. The first five minutes gives the whole thing away, you know who the bad guy is going to be, you know the secret to saving the day. Everything is obvious but still great fun. Go see it.

But why is it the movie for our time? It teaches us an important lesson. Long ago, Sean Connery showed us that if you want to take over the world, you shouldn’t have an unnecessarily long and complicated way to kill the secret agent. Especially after you explain your evil plans in depth.

Since then baddies the world over have learned from this. Want to take over the world? Shoot 007 in the head and we’re good. Slow death with sharks? You’re going to prison.

Now the new lesson is best shown with this diagram.

Are you planning to take over the world / destroy the world / steal something?

So why is this the movie for our time?

Well these guys didn’t look at my handy flowchart.

About to get their asses kicked.

 

About to kick asses.

Real men don’t do dishes

A man’s place is not in the kitchen dammit, it’s in front of the tv, drinking beer and watching sportsball. So when I bought a house and discovered dishes didn’t clean themselves it was time to earn man-points and not do them. As herself wasn’t going to do them, there was only one thing for it, a robot beer glass washer. A robot’s place is in the kitchen.

So we checked the internets and found a dishwasher on sale and waited for it to come in. “We offer installation” said Lowes. At a price. No Real Man ™ would need that. We have tools and things. We have YouTubes. We can do this. I looked at the video, it looks easy.

So then it arrived and the instruction manual was in some kind of kitchen speak. I don’t know, my place is watching sportsball, not washing dishes so I don’t speak kitchenspeak. Anyway it was a lot more trouble than the two minute video I’d watched on the Google machine.

I called Lowes back. “Oh we don’t install them, we just replace them.” I called a place that repaired them. Nope. No one installs dishwashers. Sure, they’ll charge you a hundred and seventy bucks to swap one out, but a new one? Nope.

So I found the longer video. Manly plumbers with tool belts and ass cracks that go through it step by step. I made a trip to Home Depot for a T-junction pipe. And then another for a thingey-ma-bob that connects a 1/4″ line to a 3/8″ line or something like that. And then another for a GFI socket. I tripped switches, I created sparks as I wired things, I connected hoses. Leaks were sprung. I found it wouldn’t fit because my counter was 1/4″ too low. I bought my first angle grinder, a fancy ass one with a diamond blade and filled the kitchen with dust. Next up is a robot dust remover machine. I pushed, I shoved. I cut some more and grinded some angles and shoved it in. I discovered what PTFE pipe tape is.

Leaks stopped, taps got turned on. Things were plugged in. Sparks stopped sparking. Dishes were given to my cleaning robot and a day after I started things got cleaned.

Just a manly guy with power tools having a beer and thinking about sportsball while robots clean the dishes.

Best Wife Ever

Once again Urs has outdone herself with the Advent Calendars. From beer advent calendars to beer and Star Wars Lego advent calendars we now have the whiskey calendar. Each day has a 30ml bottle, sealed with wax for that authentic feel (and to piss you off as you try to remove it), of an American whiskey.

Since I’m leaving for Ireland on the 21st I have to start early. Last night’s Balcones Texas Single Malt was quite good. Cheers.

whiskeycalendar

What was I thinking?

10 miles? Really? What the hell was I on? I even decided on this before California decided to legalise weed.
Anyway, I’ve been training for it. Mostly. I built up to 3 miles and then just hit the wall constantly. Which isn’t meant to happen at 3 miles. Using the same plan as I did for the half marathon 2 years ago in Vancouver. This time though I had extra time to prepare and it’s not working out. Managed 5 miles on Sunday before I stopped due to rain. And I’m going to run in Ireland?

Now relying on Ireland legalising speed / coke and replacing the water stops with lines. It’s going to be a tough 10 miles.

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