An anonymous guest wrote:

I find you a little hypocritical. First off, those fire pit things you get at Home Depot can be considered illegal in the city. Not to mention the burning things isn't the greatest thing for the environment, remember? Secondly, your talk of living in a mansion is wonderful, i guess i would like to hear about some serious energy saving improvements, windows? insulation?

Dear anonymous person,
I suppose you are talking about the fact I criticized the Central Terminal for being heated by a coal plant all its own and for having a solid stone structure over a hundred feet high which is hard to heat.

We keep our house really cold in the winter to save energy. I wear a hat and scarf in the house and we keep all the lights off in the places we are not. We plastic the windows in the winter, use heavy drapes, recycle and have a compost pile for all the food scraps that the squirrels and tortoise don't eat.

We also bought vent-free gas stoves to heat localized area in the house that are 98% efficient and cost only about $1/day to run on high because of the way they use the gas so efficiently. In fact, our heating bill was only higher than $300 for the coldest month and that is for about 3500 sq. ft. of living space.

But really I don't care what you believe. I think you are just jealous but we can't all live in mansions.

Fuck you.
--paul

Here is the offensive chiminea being assembled by e:matthew and e:terry as they plot to destroy the earth.





Where is e:matthew


In my crazy earth destroying rage, I threw out all the Teflon pans in our house. In this case my environmental concerns were overpowered by my unwillingness to battle cancer.



Luckily, I replaced them with long term copper-bottomed, steel pans. I figured that way I should never need to replace the pans again, like you have to with the Teflon ones as they "decay." Normally they cost $360 pans but my bargain hunting mother found the on sale for $154. Here they are being washed in our environmentally sound dish washer. Paid $700 for an energy efficient one, instead of the cheaper high energy/water use ones. It is supposed to adjust the amount of water based on the weight of the dishes.



e:matthew found this root with a boner in the yard


This robin likes our worms


Got rid of all the remaining trash from the previous owner. Finally, we are done. None of the remaining crap was even worth bringing to amvets, most of it was molded due to a leak in the garage roof.


When we brought the garbage to the garbage transfer station on South Ogden I noticed someone lives right next door. Holy crap. It smells so bad there. The only way I can describe it is liek a mix of bologna and oregano with diarrhea. The previous time we were there it was a Saturday, I would not suggest ever going to the dump on a garbage day - although it was so busy they didn't weigh us or even check if we were citizens.








Here is e:lilho saying she wants to move to the rianforest, lol.

And then the food

Globe market on Elmwood - ate the turkey sage and cranberry mayo sandwich


I also bought the strawberry, whip crea puff


Then I ate at Ming Tea Cafe on Main Street again. This was e:enknot's chicken with eggplant. This place really renews my faith in the tastiness of chinese food. Lunch is only $8.


Found this picture of chinese girls on the wall there that reminds me of the painting in e:twisted's bedroom.



I'll leave you with basra eating.

I just don't get the cushion structure on this couch at New York Pizza On Allen. It is clearly uphostered with macthing fabric but the cushions don't match up? Seems like a lot of re-uphostery work for something that doesn't fit properly.

Last night at like 3am I was standing with e:lilho and e:tina in front of underground on Delaware waiting for jeremy to pick up e:tina when e:lilho had a breakdown that no one would ever love her, etc.

During the episode, some thugs in a car pull up and start threatening to "kill all the faggots."

e:lilho is oblivious to the whole thing. I have to admit I was scared after our car was knifed on that corner two years ago while we were in it. This time thoug, some big gay dudes step in a walk up the car saying, "Go ahead and call me a faggot to my face" and the thugs got scared and left. You can hear that somewhere in the clip.

So there are no pictures but e:lilho says at least enough words to be worth one.

::download sound::

I wish I had my camera to record both incidences.

Here are some pics from the camera.

I got a dremel and a bunch of other home repair electronics this weekend. It seems pretty fantastic for stripping paint away from those hard to get to places on the fireplace.




Ate at empire with e:lilho and e:terry They have the best Lime calamari with rock shrimp appetizer.


Here it is up close.


Afterwards we got a picture of our reflection in their Hertel side window.


I love Ming Tea Cafe. I ate there again - you really need to check it out if you have not been there. They do not have bubble tea though e:james,39169





On saturday, we toured the Lockport Caves. At first I thought it was going to be dumb but the tour was pretty neat and there is even a cave boat ride.




It was almost impossible to get pictures down there. These were taken at ISO 1600 but we were moving on the boat and it would really require stillness.


I am scarping the porch to repaint it dark brown.

The nightmare rental situation I had going on in one of the apartments I rent out is over. It has been several years of constant drama and I am so happy it is over. Unfortunately, they left in the middle of the night it looks like. There was even food on the stove and in the microwave, which is so freakin' weird. I can't believe they didn't clean up anything.

Luckily, my mother helped me clean it last night (garbage day) and now it is under control. I took her out to icecream afterwards. Like the reverse of when I was a kid.

Who leaves an apartment like this. Especially considering I gave the a break on the rent for like 3 months.






This is the view from backyward the showhouse tour we went to on Sunday. I thought it was cool to see those buildings from another angle.


I can't beleive they shelaced newspaper on the floor as a decorative style. That is so tacky.

Kunis To Go
If you haven't tried it yet, eat the Bento box at Kunis for lunch. It is only $8.



The Drain
I have off today and tomorrow and wanted to get a lot of house stuff done. I excavated this crazy hole in the wall where the access panel to ur tub should be. It seems as though someone put the tub in and then set the whole thing in concrete and metal so that you could never access the drain pipes again. I just don't get it.

The drain shut mechanism had fallen down the pipe. Seeing as there was no real way to disconnect it, I used an industrial strength vacuum to suck pressure up the pipe while sliding a metal stent into the pipe. Now the tub drains perfect, but really there has to be a better solution.

There is nothing better in life than my industrial vaccuum. I tried to search for a pic of it but couldn't find it, these are just my second tier vacuums e:paul,32725 I will take pictures of it next week.

All the area you see was completely filled in with concrete and insulation and then bound by a rusty metal grate. I really don't understand it. Than god for sledge hammers and industrial vacuums. Don't worry this whole is just in a closet wall.













The Porch
I am stripping the paint off the porch and decided to go the route of power washer pressure gun. I got a gas powered 2200psi one for like $240. I figured it makes sense seeing as they were like $49.00 a day to rent and I am sure I would rent it many times to strip all kinds of things and to power wash for paint preparation.

I got a lot of the paint off the stairs with it, but it was too loud as I started at 8:30PM so at 9:00PM I stopped and will continue tomorrow. I am excited to finally get all the paint off the concrete so I can reseal and paint it properly with a darkish brown color to match the brick and brownstone.

Rollerblades
I tried to buy rollerblades. Seems like a no go. I went to Dick's in the Galleria and the only sizes they had in mens were 9 and 13. The 13s were okay but no what I was looking for exactly. I think a 12 would have been better. Then I tried sears - no luck. Eventually, I ended up going to target where they did have 11s - even if they did have 12s I wasn't buying them for $29.00. I feel that just like there has to be an upwards limit on how much you would spend on something, there also has to be a lower limit to insure quality and I wasn't getting the cheep ones only to have them break a week later. Anyone have an idea where to buy them?

City Life
I find it annoying that I cannot be naked in my backyard because of all the building around. I wish I could just put a big tent over it, but then it would essentially be part of the house.

Tonight, after fixing some site stuff I might get my blog on. I think I have about 30 posts to make. My mother sent me these boxes of stuff from my child to early adulthood which are ripe with blogging potential. Included are all the love letter from the various girls, poems and papers from high school minus my relationship with e:hodown because I think we burned those during a fight. In addition to lets of other nicknacks.

Today is mother's day and e:mike and I are doing a barbeque for my mom here at our house. I will have pictures up later, if it turns out. We bought lots of fancy stuff to eat but unfortunately, neither of us are cooks - so lets home for the best.

Gosh, I have so much to post about, I am starting to feel overwhelmed. The latest box from my mother includes all my journal entries for 1985. I have a years worth screaming to be let onto the internet. It is nice to know that I dreamed of being a computer specialist and thats what happened. Not everyone realizes their dreams I guess. Some of it is really funny.

Anyways, so before that can happen I have to post about e:brit's graduation and Mother's Day.

It started out with e:lilho dressing up e:brit





Unfortunately, the shoes she choose for her, ate the toes of e:brit


I can't believe how commercialized this stand makes graduating.


There was the sign with sangia on it. Imagine being the butt of everyones joke.



Someone lost their toupe in the parking lot.


Hot wrestler guys in the painting - does anyone know this painting


e:lilho was being her usual celebtritant (celebrity-debutant)







Then off to cozumel for cocktails and food.


I had the blue crab tacos.






We stopped by the new head shop on elmwood where squeeky wheel was. They tried to sell e:lilho a pair of sunglasses for $300. She talked them down to $200 despite the fact she was not buying them. It was all very sketchy. I mean who is to say they are real.




Ensuing Drunkness


I peeled lots more paint. Soon it will be painting time. I kind of love the pressure washer. I just wish that it would be 3500 psi instead of 2200 psi.

Mother's Day was a smash hit. We had a ton of food and ate outside. It was nice for my mom to not have to do anything. e:terry , e:mike and I worked so hard to get it all ready. And thanks to e:matthew who cleaned up in the house before having to go to his mom's.







Grilled Lobster is good, now I know.


Somehow I lost the picture of the buffalo burgers.

First time using the fancy crystal bowl. We decided to have a homage to my mothers multi meat meals by having every type of berry. This is a strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, blueberry fruit salad we served with marscopone.



My mother requested shrimp, we made it three different ways. It seriously took like 45 minutes to clean the all.

My favorite kind of things to do are fixing computer emergencies I am totally not familiar with. Okay, really my favorite thing to do is build big systems but sometimes, it is fun to test your skills out being thrown into a problem you didn't really know anything about.

e:enknot was out sick today ;( and he normally controls the online directory but the SMTP server that handles the critical online messaging system was down.

I had to hijack the messages being sent and switch it from using the old smtp system to a escalating new communication system that Roswell purchased. It required connecting to an oracle database through odbc and then sending the hijacked messages as an XML service. I wrote a little logger to keep track of the lost messages while the old system was down.

Solving these kind of problems on the fly is kind of like solving those story with holes game you would play as a kid. Sometimes I wish I was just a contractor - I would be so much richer.