By Billy Reisinger, The Ridiculously Thorough Guide to Making Your Own Pizza is a great tutorial on doing it yourself, and although I made pizza from scratch for years in my mother’s kitchen, this is an excellent refresher course and covers detail (such as moisture levels in cheese) I’d never thought of before.
Cool: from the site 360 electrical – outlet plugs that rotate, so if the plug you have is too big and blocks the other outlet, you can rotate the plug.
I need this for practically every outlet in my house.
I’ve linked to the awesome magazine ReadyMade before, but they’ve got more back issues online now, including this article on how to build your own awesome CD rack. I think my girlfriend’s dad would love the heck out of this magazine; he’s a whiz at building his own stuff in the basement.
This time to my truck. I went out this morning and found my gas door open and my gas cap off and hanging. There was no gas missing (I had just filled my tank) and the truck seemed to run fine. (I have a warning light/beep that goes off in the car if I try to drive with the door or cap open, so I couldn’t have done it myself.)
I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, short of patrolling my backyard with a lead pipe. I’m thinking a new fence is in order; on that goes around the parking area with a motorized gate. Now I have to figure out how to afford that.
UPDATE: I think I’m going to go with a much cheaper, high-tech option… wireless motion detectors that turn on a spotlight and set off a chime inside the house. What’s cool is that you can also get them to set off an alarm, or set off a sprinkler. Heh.
So far… I rented a 60 lb. jack hammer, and with a great deal of help from my friend Kathy, we broke up the 6 foot by 9 foot patio and the set of cement stairs at my back door. I discovered that a 60 lb. jack hammer is pretty damned heavy.
Yesterday, I loaded much of the concrete that has the feature of Solid Crawl Space Encapsulation from Seepageseal, into my truck and took it to a cement recycling place and unloaded it. The cement guy who helped me unload asked me on a date. It’s the truck.
Anyway, I also bought the pavers that will go in the patio. I originally bought 24″ pavers, but after some reflection, I realized they were going to be too heavy for me to move around by myself, so I cancelled the delivery and bought 16″ ones instead. Coordinating that caused much running back and forth between Menard’s stores on two different sides of town. The pavers and sand will arrive today. I will also be digging out the trench area for the patio today, and hopefully getting started on putting the sand in place.
Check out the ReadyMade site, for people who like to make stuff. This is great!
They have a whole page on how to make iPod speakers out of Altoid tins and playing cards. That rocks!
Date on Friday night. News about it later. Saturday night I went to a very fun party at Troy’s (beautiful) house and had a great time, and got complimented on how good I looked, which made me feel great. I had some great conversations, and also meet Troy’s foreign exchange student Frederick, a German kid who really seems to dislike America and won’t hesitate to tell you about it. Which is entertaining in and of itself. I left with spirits lifted.
Dyeing my hair — it will be bleaching obviously, rather than dyeing (that’s Stacy’s department) and instead of grabbing a box in drug store, I’m getting an appointment at a Salon. Let the professionals do it.
My library is finally moved, and for the first time ever, all my books are in the same room, on the same bookcase, and organized well. Strangely, I have way more non-fiction than fiction. That really surprised me. I like the organization I did, but not how I have them sitting on the shelves. That will require some creative thinking on my part, but I’ll have to let it stew for a while. I’m also surprised that I don’t have more empty space on the bookcases. I thought I’d have more room for knick-knacks and decor than I do. I think I need to do some more thinning out of books I don’t need. That’s much easier to do when I can stand back and look at all the books in context.
I went furniture shopping, but didn’t come up with anything good. I need to replace both the couch and the chair, and I’m debating the best way to do it. I’d rather have both pieces match, but I’m nervous about spending that kind of money all at once. Replacing the chair is the priority, really, because that’s where I’m going to sit most of the time. I want more of a club chair than a big cushy overstuffed thing. And I tried a bunch of them out in the store, but the comfortable ones weren’t cool looking, and the cool ones weren’t comfy. The ideal couch and chair were at Eddie Bauer’s, but the price tag was way out of my league.
On the furniture plus side, I recovered my ottoman. I had an old one that I covered with a sheet a long time ago, but it was looking shabby and I had covered the wooden legs as well. So I took off the old sheet, got real upholstery fabric from JoAnn’s, took off the wooden legs, and recovered the ottoman with a brown textured fabric, then replace the legs. It looks great and for a thrown together Sunday afternoon project it went astonishingly well.
And I moved the dining room table into the dining room, along with the chairs that go with it. I know that’s jumping the gun since I’ll be painting in there, but I couldn’t stand having a totally empty room. I need to do something about the work room, though. It’s pretty disorganized. I need a workbench.
Kathy helped me finish the baseboards on Saturday. They didn’t come out as neat as I would have liked, and I was upset about it, but she helped talk me down. Then we moved all of my living room furniture in. The bookcases are partially moved in, and the rest will be finished later this week. By next weekend, I’ll be done.
I was doing a weekend recap when my power went out here at home. It was only out for an hour and a half, but that was long enough for me to realize I don’t have my emergency procedures down. I have camp lanterns, but the batteries were dead, I don’t have a battery radio, and I only have one regular phone line. That will all change this afternoon.
I’ve got all the baseboards stained, and 2/3rds of them completely finished. I just have one more coat of polyurethane to put on the last set of baseboards, then I have to install them. Then the living room is done; potentially on Saturday.
And then the migration into the room occurs. I’m already planning that. I’m very excited.