Too old for his tools?

I'm on my lunch break from finishing the basement this Saturday to allow time for muscles to uncramp, blood from wounds to coagulate and my temperament to reset.

We've put our house up for sale and to improve our chances of a quick (or in the case of this market, not too lengthy) sale, I am finishing what was a partially finished space in our basement. This involves some framing, which I enjoy and drywall work which I do not enjoy. Why do they call it "Drywall" anyway? Anyone who has done drywall knows it requires a lot of wet work as well.

Of course for yours truly it's the pleasure of using my favorite tool, the razor knife, that really does it for me. If I don't manage to nick off an ear or puncture a kidney with the damn thing I'm lucky. This morning it was just a slice on my thumb, next to area of skin I removed with the hammer yesterday. As I write this my thumb throbs in two places.

Still, the pleasure of seeing large expanses of ugly basement wall turn into bright finished surfaces outweighs the potential for bodily harm. This basement had a drop ceiling (which I detest) and it will still have one when I'm done. There is too much work involved to reroute pipes, air conditioning ducts, gas lines and electric wires to do a proper drywalled ceiling. Just not gonna happen. Instead I purchased new tiles, some more ceiling members and will clean up the look of the partial ceiling that now exists.

The house was shown by a local realtor yesterday and the follow up conversation with her was very encouraging. I asked for any negative comments and she said there were none. She stated the house was the nicest one she had shown her clients and they loved it. She also said the wife and her mother liked everything about the place, including the proximity to the wife's work. (less than a 5 minute drive)

The couple went away for the holiday weekend and perhaps we'll hear something next week. In the meantime I will continue to finish the basement. It can't hurt to have it done. If nothing else it should get us a little more money in the initial offer. Keep your fingers crossed that I can do a decent job without a hospital visit and that this couple is our buyers.

The Daily Husband

Olympic Impressions

The 2008 Summer Olympics are over. Beijing can go back to being a polluted, overcrowded pisshole. The factories that supply Walmart, America and many European countries with sub par merchandise can get up to speed and churn out the shlock that modern society craves.

Knock-off I-pods and various other worthless, transient and just plain stupid gizmos to entertain modern man and woman can once again make their way to world markets. The coffers of the Commies (Oh, they're definitely still commies, don't think they're not) will gain yet more moola to help them buy oil, steel, and whatever else their little hearts desire.

I am guessing the Chinese are very happy with the Olympics they presented. They kicked every other country's ass in gold medals. Oh, the US shows more overall medals, but that's just something the media here started this year to make us look better. Even with the underage gymnasts out of the picture we would have still got our asses kicked. The Chinese obviously did their homework on Olympic sports and came to win every thing they entered. How many of the wins were legitimate and how many tainted by unqualified participants, cheating, bad or incompetent judges and the like is hard to say. Every Olympics I've watched has had judging controversies where the judging is done by opinion and not clear cut winners and losers.

This two week period offered a variety of sports and events. Here's my take on the whole deal.

1) The opening: Awesome and scary - the Chinese had a message with this show - the message; watch out folks we're coming and we work together very well indeed.

2) The coverage by NBC: NBC sucks, way too much bullshit about Phelps, too many talking heads that knew exactly zilch about the sports they reported on and not enough plain simple coverage. I would love to have C-span cover the whole show and give a menu of what and when. Then you could chose what you wanted to watch without the never ending talking heads. I will give Mary Carillo credit for some interesting if fluffy stories about China; they were at least interesting.

3) I am a boxing fan and therefore very unhappy with this year's fights. The new scoring system is awful and fraught with incompetence and/or corruption. The fighters knew their score from round to round, so if they were ahead in the fourth round many spent it running away form their opponent. There were a couple of outright thefts of medals or medal opportunities and you have to feel bad for the fighters that had this injustice done to them. On a lighter note; I learned that Irish fighters talk fast as hell and you can 't understand a damn thing they say. I'm not even sure is was English.

4) Phelps and Swimming: the guy is great. But there was too much hype about him. There were a few other good stories on the team that were far more interesting than the uber gold medal winner.

5) Track and Field: Wow, what a mixed bag. On the good side we took the decathlon this year. Makes me proud, it's the toughest thing in the Olympics to do. We had some other champions as well. But, we had the same old crap with the relays. Why can't our guys and gals hold on to the baton? Blows my mind, cause it's not the first time our relay teams have done this.

6) Basketball: Awesome, we finally brought a real team to the Olympics and they played like one. Kudos to their coach.

7) Volleyball: Fantastic results this year and great games indoors and out. I enjoy the women's indoor most of all. The digs, the team play and then the inevitable smash.

8) Baseball : Did we win? I hear it's out in the next Olympics along with Softball. And speaking of Softball; how about our women's team.

9) Other sports: Man can some countries play the hell out of ping pong, badminton and a game called handball. You have got to be some kinda badminton player to do it at the Olympic level. Makes my play in my front yard look a little amateurish and I thought I was pretty damn good. We fielded a good water polo team this year, but I agree with my wife that it's totally boring to watch.

10) The closing ceremonies: OK I guess. I didn't catch that much of it and what I did see looked like more of the same. Lots of people doing the same thing at once. Alright already, we get it, the Chinese are genius at team work!

At heart I'm just a guy and guys like sports. Combine that with world class athletes, some pretty damn fine looking ones,(Here I'm speaking specifically of Women's beach volleyball and stuff like that) and you have a venue that most men dig. Still, it's good to get back to a regular schedule. Somehow Women's handball between Croatia and Sweden at 2:oo AM is a little over the top, don't you think?

Hope you were able to view some sport you enjoy this year. Let me know what you liked and disliked.

The Daily Husband

Sunday Morning Breakfast with Vicki

I love Sunday mornings. They usually include sleeping in, church when schedules allow and a great breakfast or sometimes brunch with my wife.


This Sunday was a sleep-in Sunday. Vicki's work schedule kept her at it for 6 days in a row, so we used the day for rest and relaxation. We made a breakfast together consisting of hash with a fried egg on top, toast with marmalade, coffee and juice.

Then we just hung out. That's the absolutely best part of my week. The day or sometimes (if her schedule allows and we're lucky) days we get to be together with nothing to do but be together. Should we decide on some minor project to take on that's fine, but if we want nothing more than to vegetate in front of the tube and get a good snuggle on, well that is all the better.

This Sunday we had visitors. We put our SUV up for sale and some folks came by to check it out. They liked the thing and now we have to get the pay off to the bank, get their funds into my account and deliver the car. All these things we are attempting today. Of course with three banks and the DMV involved it is not turning out to be a seamless endeavor.

Right now I'm on hold with my bank waiting to talk to a lady I spoke with in person this morning. It seems we need some numbers for the wire transfer to our account and it is taking a little time to get to talk to her. Funny, it wasn't that busy when I was there this morning, now I can't get hold of her. Oh well. it gives me time to finish this post and I still have the memory of Sunday morning breakfast with Vicki to carry me through the torments of today's tasks.

The Daily Husband