A Christmas Story theme

A very happy holiday to you!  Whether you celebrate Festivus, Kwanza, Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, Hanukah, Eid, Christmas, or are just enjoying a three-day weekend, may it be a joyous one.

We decided to use the movie “A Christmas Story” as our theme this year, but we were a little late getting started.  Even so, we’ve been getting great feedback on it.  I guess nobody has done this theme before.  Next year we plan on adding the kid in the red snow suit who couldn’t put his arms down, the teacher/wicked witch saying “You’ll shoot your eye out!”, and a Santa on the roof with a big boot at the beginning of a slide going down into the yard.  If we can do it right, it will be a hoot. 

More pictures after the jump.

This actually happened to me when I was a kid!

Isn't it beautiful?!

You'll shoot your eye out!!

Before Pictures

After Pictures

In the meantime, here’s a YouTube clip I ran across today that I thought was very good, and should probably be included in any sensitivity or anti-discrimination training.  It’s about 10 minutes long, but worth watching.

Last night, though, I found a story on CNN that touched me.  This is the story of a 47-year old woman named Susan Boyle.  She has a slight learning disability.  She spent most of her adult life caring for her elderly parents, and doing charity work.  She’s never been married, never been kissed.  Her mother died last year, but before she died, she told Susan to follow her dream, and go on this show, if she could.

The link will take you to a YouTube clip of Susan’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent, a kind of British American Idol.  The clip is phenomenal.  It brought tears to my eyes.

Britain’s Got Talent – Susan Boyle

This is one of my favorite songs of all time.  I’ve posted the lyrics below.  They are especially poignant to me, for some reason.  This woman finally got to live the dream she dreamed.

I Dreamed a Dream – Les Miserables
Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, Music by Claude-Michel Schonberg

I dreamed a dream in days gone by
When hope was high and life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die.
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.

Then I was young and unafraid,
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,
No song unsung, no wine untasted.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder.
As they tear your hope apart,
As they turn your dream to shame.

He slept a summer by my side.
He filled my days with endless wonder.
He took my childhood in his stride.
But he was gone when autumn came.

And still I dreamed he’d come to me,
That we would live the years together.
But there are dreams that cannot be,
And there are storms we cannot weather.

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living,
So different now from what it seemed.
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

We were unexpectedly invited to the Kitsap County Democratic Victory Party tonight, and decided to attend.  Aside from actually voting, this is the first real major political gathering either of us have been to. 

Gawds, what an experience.  The energy in the room was electrifying.  I volunteered for future events for the Democratic Party.  I’ve always registered as non-affiliated, because sometimes I used to vote for the Republican candidate, sometimes for the Democrat.  I’ve been trying to think of the last time I actually voted for a Republican, though.  The only one that sticks out is Reagan in 1980.  I made the mistake of voting for him the first time, but not the second.  I started reading up on the issues, learning everything I could about the candidates and their positions.  None of the Republicans have measured up to my standards.  Since the Religious Right took control of the party, I would have been voting against my own self-interests had I opted for them.

I’m proud to say that I am now firmly a Democrat.  The Republican Party has become a bastion of racists, religious nut-jobs, and big-business fat cats.  Thanks, but no thanks.

This past weekend, we mostly finished the master bedroom’s trim, painted the guest room and laid the new floor in there.  We’re still trying to figure out what trim pieces go where in the MB, because we didn’t mark it as we took it down.  We DID manage to finish the guest room, though, trim included.  The color came out a little different than we expected.  We were going for a light peach kind of color, but wound up with more of a deep pumpkin.  With the bedding, curtains and art work, it works out very well, though.  I’ll have pictures as soon as we finish getting art work up and Jeffrey can take pics. 

WE HAVE CENTRAL HEAT NOW!!  The company we hired to convert us from the ceiling radiant heat finished the work converting us to an electric heat pump and central heat/air on Friday.  The difference is amazing.   They also retrofitted one of the gas fireplaces so we can burn real wood in it, and fixed the other gas fireplace so that it works as intended. 

Jeffrey bought a dart machine.  You know, one of those electronic, quarter-eating machines you use to play darts on in a bar.  He found a great deal on one through Craig’s List from a guy down in Olympia.  I was able to dig up most our darts, and we’ve been getting our game back a little bit at a time.  I’ll post a picture when I can.

Learning a little more about the neighborhood.  Somewhere, someone has horses.  I keep hearing the whinnying, and I’ve seen people riding them up and down the alley.  I guess we’re in a slightly more rural area than I thought.  We’ve also got racoons in the neighborhood, not that I’m surprised considering our proximity to the state park.  I see them in the neighbor’s yard every once in a while, at night.

Perhaps the most thrilling thing for me, though, is that I can hear sea lions (or seals) from my back yard.  I knew we were close to the water (meaning Puget Sound), I didn’t think we were THAT close, though. 

Gawds, I’ve missed being in the Pacific Northwest.

Any commentary I care to share regarding the political situation and the upcoming election will be witheld until after the election, with one exception.

Unless you are willing to vote against your own self-interests, be sure to vote a Democratic ticket this year.  Republicans ruled Congress from 1994 through 2006, and we’ve had a Republican president since 2001.  We’ve seen and experienced what the Republican vision is, since they’ve enacted most of their “wish list”, and it is not healthy for the USA.  Think before you vote, and if all else fails, remember which party is fighting for the little guy.  It sure ain’t the Republicans.  John McCain thinks middle-class includes people making $5 MILLION a year.

Addendum:  I almost forgot.  Washington State is transitioning to mail-in ballots only.  We got ours a week or so ago.  We’re going to be casting our votes tonight and mailing them tomorrow. 

Be sure to vote, if you are eligible.  It’s the most important thing you will do this year.  Maybe this generation.

That’s what the debate about I-1000 is really all about: your body, your death, your choice. The passage of I-1000 doesn’t impose anything on terminally ill people who reject physician-assisted suicide for religious reasons. But the rejection of I-1000 imposes the values of others on terminally ill people who would like to make that choice for themselves, who should have a right to make that choice for themselves.

And, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing about physician-assisted suicide—or, as it should be called, end-of-life pain management—that precludes the presence of loving caregivers. You can be surrounded by love and have access to the best medical care available and still conclude—reasonably and rationally—that you would rather not spend the last few moments of your life in blinding pain or gasping for breath or pumped full of just enough morphine to (hopefully) deaden your pain without deadening you.

…

If religious people believe assisted suicide is wrong, they have a right to say so. Same for gay marriage and abortion. They oppose them for religious reasons, but it’s somehow not enough for them to deny those things to themselves. They have to rush into your intimate life and deny them to you, too—deny you control over your own reproductive organs, deny you the spouse of your choosing, condemn you to pain (or the terror of it) at the end of your life.

The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don’t approve of abortion? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of gay marriage? Don’t have one. Don’t approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ’s sake, don’t have one. But don’t tell me I can’t have one—each one—because it offends your God.

[f-word] your God.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  I don’t believe in your god, and I don’t believe in your holy word.  If the god of the Bible exists in some way outside of your fevered imaginations, it is a petulant child not worthy of respect, let alone worship.  More like the character of Trelane from a Star Trek episode.  For you to impose your supposed god’s will on me not only precludes MY free will and that of others, it is inhumane and goes against everything the Founding Fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution.  It also goes against your own “holy” scriptures.  Publicly, and for the record, I have directed that no extraordinary measures be taken to preserve my life should I be incapitated and unable to make that known, and if I find myself in such a situation as Dan describes in the article linked above, I would hope that those nearest and dearest to me will understand if I decide to end my life rather than deal with the pain and suffering whatever my end-of-life circustances might bring.

Think about it.

That being said, on to other updates.

We decided on a company to update the electric radiant heat in the ceiling to a forced air system.  They’ll be here Wednesday morning to start installing it.  Just in time, too.  The last couple of weeks have been getting cooler and cooler.  Some of the trees are starting to show their autumn colors, and it’s cold enough outside in the mornings that I can’t leave the dogs out for more than 15 or 30 minutes now.  Yesterday I had to turn the fireplace on for most of the morning just to keep them from shivering INSIDE the house.

More debt we have to take on.  [sigh]

Aside from putting up some finishing pieces of trim, the master bedroom is done.  We should be able to finish that this weekend, and I’ll try to have the before and after pictures available then.  Jeffrey got ambitious last weekend and also put the new flooring down in the hallway, and I started removing the wallpaper in the guest bedroom so we can paint and pull up the felt-like carpet and lay the new floor.  We’ve gotten some new tools and chemicals to remove the wallpaper, so the process will (hopefully) not be too painful.  We haven’t decided which room to do after that.

The lawn is still waiting to be mowed because the weather hasn’t cooperated with our schedules.  Even though I work from home, I can’t take the time to do it during the week, and it’s been raining on the weekends.

I’m getting used to the rapid decline of daylight hours now that the seasons are changing.  It’s not something I noticed a lot in Florida, but this far north it’s noticable on an almost daily basis.

Work is going well, both for me and Jeffrey.  We’re down a person due to a reorganization, but everyone is working to pick up the slack.  Jeffrey’s starting in a new position the beginning of November as Managing Attorney for a new division in a successful lawfirm.

Cat is getting used to the dogs roaming inside the house, but still doesn’t like it much.

Good friend/realtor John’s new business is doing great so far, which is very good news since we invested in it.  I’ve put together a dummy website for him, but haven’t made it public yet pending some design and menu changes.   Once it’s finalized and if he agrees, I’ll post a link here.

I’ll refrain (for now) from commenting on the presidential and vice-presidential debates.  I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about politics.  I might change my mind later, though.

We decided that the first room we need to re-do, and immediately, was the master bedroom, mostly because that king size bed is such a pain to take apart, move and get back together.  The room was in sad shape.  Old 70s wooden panelling on one of the walls (painted over, naturally), and ugly painted over wallpaper borders along the ceiling and about chair rail level.  Last weekend, we started our first major project on the house.

It was supposed to be a kind of catch-up and high priority kind of weekend.  Saturday, we drove up to Silverdale to pick up our Costco membership cards, then drove up a little farther and caught the Bainbridge ferry over to Seattle.  We drove up to visit our previous hosts for a while, and to pick up any mail they had for us.  The mail forwarding update is working now, so we shouldn’t have to do that particular task again soon.  But we do like visiting with Bill and Esther.  We’re going to go over again the next time our honorary god-daughter comes back to visit, and they’ll be coming over for the house-warming party.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey was checking out different places for new flooring for the house, and found a place right here in Bremerton with great prices, and stock of a particular wood floor that was on clearance.   They had enough for two of the bedrooms, so we wound up buying their remaining stock.   Sunday, Jeffrey laid the new floor while I was in the backyard putting up chicken-wire fencing so we could finally let the dogs off of their tethers.  It only took a few days for them to find a shallow place on the north fence to dig under and get out of the yard.  An alert neighbor noticed them and let me know, and I got the dogs back in the yard, found the hole and plugged it.  They were on the tethers for another few days while I made sure there were no other such areas, and to hopefully start training them that if they get out of the yard on their own, there will be consequences.  Hopefully, not fatal (think cars and trucks).

Back to our first project.  We had the foresight to take “Before” pictures, and as soon as we finish the final touches, we’ll have “After” pictures, and I’ll post them somewhere on the main website.

The floor was gorgeous.  We had to take the bed apart again and get it out before we could do the floor.  Jeffrey decided that while we were doing the new floor, we might as well tackle the walls.  That was this weekend’s project.  Yesterday (Saturday), we spent the day pulling down the faux wooden panelling, finished the drywall underneath properly, pulled out as much of the wallpaper as we could, and evened out the walls with joint compound and spackle.  That had to dry several hours before we could do any more, so we invited our friend (and realtor) John over and watched a few movies that he hadn’t seen before.  An enjoyable evening all around.

(Side note on John: Because the real estate market is in the toilet [Thanks, republicans], he’s branching out into his own business, and we’re going to be his initial backers.  He found a sweet deal on some prime real estate downtown [he used to be a French chef, and had his own business], and is taking over a business running a cafe and catering.  The space is on the main floor of a government building and central to downtown.  The previous owner didn’t know what he was doing, and it has some fantastic potential.  We’re putting up some of the start-up money, and I get to manage the website.  More on that as it develops.)  Now back to the rest of the story.  Honestly, people, if you keep getting me side-tracked like this, we’ll never get to the end of it. 

Today (Sunday), we were working almost from the time we got up until 8:00 tonight.  We had to do some more joint compound in a few places and let it dry, then smooth out the walls.  Jeffrey did the detail for the priming, and then did some work for his Florida job while I did the broad roller work.  After that dried, round two with Jeffrey doing the detail work again with paint, then we mixed up the paint with a texture treatment and I did the rest.  The problem with using a textured paint is that you tend to get a lot of paint splattering, not only on the floor, but also on yourself.  One gallon of the textured paint was enough to give the whole bedroom a decent coat, but there were some areas that needed more of the texture treatment, and where I didn’t get the paint on thick enought with the first coat.  So, let the first coat dry, take a short break and catch up on my internet stuff, then mix the second gallon and start round three of painting. 

I finished round three of painting while Jeffrey followed along behind cleaning up the new floor.  I finally convinced Jeffrey that the new rule for any other room we do needs to be walls first, then floor.  While Jeffrey finished cleaning up the floors, I took all of the outlet covers outside to strip the paint off of them.  I can’t believe how lazy some people are.  It takes all of 60 seconds to remove a wall plate and paint underneath it.  They just painted over the plates, the electrical outlets and the light switches.  By the time we finished, it was almost 8. 

Some lazy downtime to watch TV and have dinner.  Tomorrow, we put the baseboards back on, the bed back together, and get some artwork up on the walls we just refinished and painted.  I haven’t broached the subject with Jeffrey yet, but next weekend HAS to be a relax and unwind weekend.  Oh, and we need to decide on a date for the house-warming, then design invitations (with detailed directions on how to find the house) and start getting them out.

I haven’t checked with Jeffrey yet, but I thought it might be nice to invite my family up for Thanksgiving weekend.  Let them see the new house, get caught up, and get Lori’s husband’s input and suggestions for the other projects we’re lining up for ourselves.  We’ll have to play it by ear, though.  I understand last winter up here was a bit of a bitch, and we don’t know what this year is going to bring yet.  Snow in the mountains would almost preclude a visit by car, and airfare is way too expensive for that many people to come up with.

Hopefully, I’ll have more next weekend.

[NOTE:  post edited 9/22/08 for continuity and spelling/grammar)

We’re finding some interesting things out about this house.  Apparently all of the walls were wallpapered at one time, and instead of taking the wallpaper off and painting, they painted the wallpaper.  It looks crappy.  It’s going to take longer than we thought to clean that mess up so we can get our stamp on the interior.

I mentioned in a previous post that we had been pricing hot tubs.  A couple of days ago, we found out that there was already one in the back yard.  It doesn’t show on any of the pictures I posted earlier of the new house, but there is a three-tiered small garden area in the upper terrace of the back yard.  The backside had some of that black material you put down to keep plants from going through, and Jeffrey lifted it up to see what was underneath.  Lo and behold, it was a hot tub.  No idea if it still works or not.  The neighbors across the alley confirmed that they just stopped using it and covered it up with this garden-type setting.  Very creative, I must say, but it’s going to take us weeks to get it cleared out and see what’s there.

Last week we got our drivers’ licenses, registered to vote, and I now have local plates on my car.  Jeffrey has to wait a while for his plates, because Washington has some law that they need a copy of the title, and the company that financed his car can take up to two weeks to fax a copy to the DMV so he can get his plates.  That puts us closer to the deadline of 30-days for changing everything over once you move to the state.

We’re learning more about the neighborhood, too.  The neighbors are all very friendly.  Next door to the south invited us to a little neighborhood party for Labor Day.  We got to meet and get to know a few of our neighbors.  One lady was so impressed with us that she asked if we would be willing to be a “safe house” for her kids.  I guess she went through a very nasty divorce, and her husband is a bit of a psycho.  We were very flattered, to say the least, and since I work from home and am here all day, I agreed.  The kids love the dogs, by the way.

We also learned that the street we live on is called “Candy Cane Lane” by the locals.  I guess it’s been a tradition for years, but this street is “THE” street everyone comes to to see christmas lights and displays.  Normally, we just put up lights, and the tree in the front window.  It looks like we need to stock up on xmas stuff for this year.  Jeffrey is already searching eBay for things like that.  It seems all of the holidays are a lot of fun around here.  I can’t wait to see what goes on for Halloween.

We got a chance to visit the state park at the end of the street, and drive down to the beach.  It wasn’t far at all, so we’re a lot closer to the water than I thought we were.

Today, we actually had time to do some work on the outside of the house, all of it in the back yard.  We pulled all of the ivy off the wall.  Bought an electric lawn mower and weed whacker.  Replace a few parts of the back fence that had started to rot (they still need priming and painting), and I mowed the upper terrace, after picking up all of the apples that had fallen from the tree. 

We even started to get some of our art work on the walls.  Right now, it’s mostly just deciding where we’re going to put everything, but even having a few pieces up feels like an accomplishment.

More when I have something else to relate.  I’m keeping the family stuff private for now.