Wallpaper Is The Devil

This morning I decided that I'd finally take on the task of removing the wallpaper (seen in the picture above on the wall to the left) from the room that I previously used as a home theater. When I had a projector set up I painted the walls, ceiling and pretty much everything except for the carpet black. Now that I'm trying to sell my house I thought that it would be better to make the room look a bit more normal. It seemed like the logical first place to start was to remove the black wallpaper that was in the room when I bought the house; I removed 1 strip of wallpaper before giving up. It took me an hour to remove that 1 strip. It was the shortest strip in the room.

Wallpaper is evil. There is no doubt about that. If you are a parent, PLEASE teach your children of the evils of wallpaper abuse. There is NO good reason to ever dabble in this Dark Art. If you think that you should use wallpaper in your home, please stop and ask yourself these questions first:

1) Would I enjoy walking on a fresh carpet of broken glass shards?

2) Do I have a deep and profound hatred of my fellow Man?

3) Do I enjoy taking the longest, slowest, most traffic light congested route to work?

4) When I wake up in the morning, do I wish I had less sleep?

5) Do I often hope that the dentist will forget to use Novacaine when I have a tooth drilled?

If you answered 'yes' to 5 of those questions, wallpaper MAY be worth considering. You should stop by your nearest Home Depot and pick up a roll on the way to your therapist.

Removing that 1 strip of wallpaper was a good experience, though. It helped me realize that I have reached a point in my life where I have no patience to do things that I really have no interest in doing (and that I can pay someone else to do). I called for professional help and I'll leave the task of 'normalizing' my old home theater to hands other than mine. My free time is too important to me to spend it on chores like this.

Mythical Tiki Shirt

The Bear has a knack for finding things. He located the rumored, mythical tiki shirt for Grant. You can see it here along with our new friend. In this photo you can see it hanging triumphantly above a machine where I am testing some software on a French OS. I'm not going to get into work related discussions in this blog, but I will say that debugging in a foreign language is a bit more difficult than I had previous imagined it would be.

Paper Towels

The picture you see above was taken Monday morning. Yes, you are looking at an empty paper towel roll. This isn't the first time that someone has left the paper towel holder in the office kitchen empty. It's easy to replace the towels when they run out. DIRECTLY ABOVE the towel holder is a cabinet full of paper towels. I took my picture and replaced the towels with a new roll.

The second picture is from today. I'm fairly certain this is the roll that I put on the holder Monday morning. AGAIN, someone decides it is too difficult to replace the paper towels after using the last one. Maybe it's because I expect people to do the right / reasonable thing under most situations, but I'm still constantly amazed when I observe this kind of idiotic behavior.

Yard Day

My dad came over today to help me clean up the yard. We started by going to Home Depot to pick up a few bags of rocks, some cyprus mulch and yard waste bags. He then proceeded to mow the grass while I spread rocks, trimmed hedges and edged. It doesn't sound like much, but a little bit can go a long way to make an untamed jungle look a lot more inviting. Before and after pictures would have worked beautifully to illustrate my point; too bad I didn't think far enough ahead to take any.

A Good Week For Shirts

Grant bought TWO shirts for me this week! He's been on the lookout for a mythical tiki shirt at Kohl's. None of the stores yet visited had it, but apparently they have had a good selection of shirts for me.

I've earned this one since I may, on occasion, not really pay much attention.

And for this one, well, who could pass up a squirrel?

It Was Serendipity

I had some carpet cleaners over at the house today. They did a great job, largely because of the powerful equipment that sits in their truck.

Of course, the door has to stay open so that the hoses can reach from the truck. Well, a yellow jacket unfortunately found its way inside. On general principals, I can't kill a yellow jacket, so I had to find a way to safely capture and release the critter. Aha! I have a large, stinger-proof can that I just found in my pantry! I rounded up the coffee can and slowly worked my way up to the rather pissed-off visitor. Gingerly, I placed the can over it while it was sitting on a curtain. Success! Except, I neglected to bring something with which to cover the open end of the can so that I could deliver my captive to the mother land of the great outdoors. I stood there for a minute or so not quite knowing what to do when I saw my laptop bag about 6 feet away. I proceeded to slide the can down the window as I slowly lowered myself to the floor and extended my toe, followed by most of my body. I nabbed the bag and pulled it towards me. Success (take 2)! Inside was enough paperwork to safely cover the open end of the can, keeping my fingers and stinger well apart. I took my visitor outside where it is now free to roam and sting something other than me.

I'm glad I found that can.

New, Favorite Music Store

I just found my new place to buy music. It's a store called Rowan's. A friend from work told me about it a week or so ago, so I decided to check it out when I was in the area. They have used CDs for $5 and new CDs for $9. If you buy 4 used CDs, you get a 5th free. The selection was pretty good, too. There is another section of the store that sells toys and various other items, but I didn't look at that side very closely. If you're in Marietta near the Big Chicken, it's worth checking out.

Lucky First Post

Today is supposed to be a very lucky day. The date can only be written as 7.7.7 once per century. That being the case, I decided to make the FIRST POST for my blog be today on precisely the 777th minute of the day. I don't think I can make it any more lucky. How can this be my first post? I don't really subscribe to the linear nature of time; it's too confining.