Cocktail Confessions

Okay, maybe you guys might think I’m a huge blowhard (that’s okay, I’ve been called worse) but I got some exciting news last week and I just found out the results today.

As some of you may be aware, I joined OC Yelp just over a year ago because I like to write reviews and I love try new places to eat.  Most of the time I review only restaraunts, but occasionally I will write or comment on various service establishments.

I really do pride myself on being absolutely fair, impartial, and balanced.  I take all things into account when crafting reviews: taste, quality, friendliness of staff, decor, and of course….overall cleanliness.  I won’t give a place 5 stars just because the food is outstanding.  If the floor or bathrooms look like crap, or the staff is negligent I score appropriately and explain why.

Well, it looks like my hard work paid off.

Last week I received a personal email from one of the staffers over there at Yelp who apparantly took notice of my writings and asked me if I would like to be nominated for the 2012 Yelp Elite Squad.  In my book, that’s a kind honor to be recognized for your work and efforts.  Of course I said “Yes” and had to fill out a simple questionaire which would then be submitted and reviewed by senior Yelper’s.

Today I received yet another official email congratulating me and my online profile here shows my new “Elite” badge of honor.  I’m very excited and hope to do Yelp well over this next year, and hopefully be recognized on a year to year basis.

Anyway, if your interested in Yelp, or already a member of Yelp and wanna be my friend there, please drop me a line again here.

My wife's message to Mercury

Painting my train models is something I enjoy.

Painting parts of my house, (i.e. floor to ceiling walls, or the ceiling itself), is not something I enjoy.  Especially if it comes about by necessity from unexpected repairs done to our house.  In this case, a recent slab leak under our kitchen floor forced my wife and I to re-route the hot water lines through two of our walls and the ceiling.  In events like this, you’d think that your homeowners insurance would cover repairs like this…that is, unless you have Mercury Insurance (which of course Murphy’s Law would indicate that we do (soon to be “did”)) in which they didn’t.  Bastards (another post for another day).

So about $2000 in repairs are coming out of our pockets.  Again, despite the fact I pay what seems to be a useless homeowners policy with Mercury.

Needless to say, our kitchen and dining room have both been in a state of disaray for more than a week now.  Our fridge stands in the middle of the kitchen while chairs, appliances, and other free standing items are either in hanging out in the garage or in various other rooms of the house.  We haven’t been able to use the kitchen for meals in over a week now. 

Another resulting side-effect is this fine sheen of drywall dust (ground white gypsum) finding itself onto just about every square inch of free surface area in the house, including the dog.  No matter how many times we vacuum, or try to dust, we keep finding the stuff all over the place.  That to me has been the most irritating by-product thus far of this whole escapade.  No matter how many times I wash my hands, or put on clean clothes, it’s only a matter of mere minutes before I have this chalky substance all over me again.

Repairs have finally been compelted this past Saturday and new drywall has been affixed to our walls and our kitchen ceiling has been patched.  The finishers came in to re-texture everything…and of course it had to rain that day as well, so the drying and curing time put us *supposedly* another day behind getting back to normal.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Despite the fact that the finishers told us to wait two full days to dry, my wife (who often says I have no patience) just had to start priming the walls the following day.  I didn’t think too much harm could be done, so I agreed and we bought two gallons of Kilz 2, water-based latex primer.

Do you know how hard it is to paint white on white in low-light conditions and make sure you covered everything? Do you know what it’s like to paint an overhead ceiling with a roller while standing on a step ladder and moving said ladder every few minutes around misplaced furniture and other obstacles.  My shoulder and my eyes will tell you it sucks donkey balls.  It also doesn’t help one’s frame of mind one bit when your daughter is in the living room watching the LOGO network.   For three straight hours all I could hear when I was working was Ru Paul and other transgender ”fellas”(?)  (yet another discussion for another day) putting the ‘spark’ in sparkle and ‘fab’ in Fab-u-lous.  Oy.

Dining room wall, textured and ready to be primed

Now to get to the reason why I’m here today.

I don’t claim to be the best painter in the world, and like I said, I don’t like painting walls if I don’t have too.  I’m very upfront and…keyword….realistic about my lack of talents, but I’ve been around a paintbrush on many occassion and know about proper “prep” work. 

Kitchen area, textured, and ready to be primed.

On the other hand, my wife claims to enjoy painting…..but (truth be told) she’s not really that great at it.  Let me clarify that in case she ever reads this.  I mean, I know her heart is the right place, and I’m glad she’s motivated to paint, but lets just say she likes to….uh….cut corners…. and speed the process in some areas, while taking her sweet time in others. 

Some of her time saving techniques I have witnessed and observed for myself:

• Failure to remove electrical face plates or air vents/returns even though they generally only use one or two screws to hold them on the wall.  To her, you can just paint right up to their eges.  Hell, why stop there?  You can just paint on them ensuring that dry paint will now adhere them to the wall so it almost impossible to get them off again if need be.  
• Taping off straight lines and edges, to her, are optional.  You can save a lot of time if you don’t tape things off…like fixtures, or where walls and baseboards meet.  Also looks like shit when done.  Oh, paint on the brass door handle…you don’t like that?
• Recommended drying and curing time by professionals, is just that….recommended.  If they say 2 days, my wife is happy to wait one.  If I say it’s raining outside and request that she  just finish the priming, where then I can come home, continue to tape off, and then we can resume the next day when it’s dry and sunny.  Sounds reasonable?  I think she waited all of a few hours, thus again, confirming she has no patience either.  But GOD forbid you critique or criticize any of this, or point out obvious mistakes and flaws.  If you do, then you’re an asshole who doesn’t appreciate all her hard work in cutting corners.
• Rinsing out expensive brushes after usage is considered “bush-league”.  To her, when you’re done with a brush, just go ahead and let the paint dry on it until it’s hard and un-usable for the next time you need it.  There’s a Lowe’s just down the street, so lets go ahead and spend extra money on replacing items we already have, but can’t use at the last minute.  Why buy $.99 paint tin liners, when you can just let let the paint dry in the $6 aluminum trough?
• While on the subject of home improvment stores, why plan out on what you need when you’re at home and the project is staring you in the face, when you can easily just keep dumping items in your cart whether you’re unsure if you need them or not?  In this case, I’m guaranteed to get mutiple size brushes, paint pans, and other impulsive tools of the trade…..most we’ll never use or ever need.

I’d gladly pay a professional to paint, but in this case, since we are already out $2K, and any bit we can do ourselves right now is fine by me.  So, despite not wanting to spend my free Sunday in an impromptu painting project, we did infact spend 7 hours priming the walls and ceiling and only got about 85% done.

Me, almost 4 hours in and taking a 'ceiling' break by sitting and painting the dining wall

As I pointed out earlier, at one point I watched my wife begin to prime precariously close to a faceplate.  I asked her, “Why don’t you take it off?”, in which her response was, “I can’t get it off.”  Well no kidding you can’t get it off if you don’t have a screwdriver in hand and “attempt” to remove it.  Instead of arguing, which I have learned after eight years of marriage gets me nowhere, I just went to the garage, got a screwdriver and…. (wait for it)….UNSCREWED the single screw in 10 seconds safely removing the already slightly painted on faceplate.  That shit drives me insane.

And after painting about 50% of the ceiling myself in just under two hours, my shoulder was aching.  My wife was nice enough to offer to take over for a while as I concentrate on the walls.  I handed her the roller and for the next 15 minutes I watched her paint all of…oh…2 square feet, and 1/2 of that was an area I had already painted.   She kept saying we needed to change the roller itself, but just minutes before it was working  just fine for me.  Are you kidding me?  F___ this.  At this rate the ceiling will be done by the middle of next week, so I just asked her to hand me back the roller (without changing it) and I just powered through it. 

While I returned to my overhead duties, I asked her to ‘cut in’ the primer about 1.5″ (to be safe) on the ceiling where the roller didn’t hit.   I then proceded to watch her do 5″ cut-ins instead, thus tripling the expected time.  It takes all of my power to bite my tongue and this is why we will both admit we don’t like painting when the other is in the room.  It’s not what either of us consider bonding time.

So after allowing yesterdays post to sink in for a bit, you’re probably expecting the not so subtle follow-up for what I want to accomplish in 2012.  Well, if you were looking for something stoic, earth-shattering, and mind-blowing…I’m about to dissapoint you like so many of my first dates in High School.

There is no new mantra this year.  I kind like the theme and original thoughts behind last years “Taking it back”, so I guess I’ll stick with that.  Oh yay!  I’ve already let you down and deflated your giddiness within the second paragraph, so negative 1 karma point for me.

Here’s a few things (some new, some not so much) I want to accomplish this year:

• Get back to dropping the weight.  As I stated yesterday, I had gained most,….not all (but what’s 2 lbs in the larger picture?), of my weight back and I’ve officially started yesterday a new regime to drop the excess baggage that seems to have migrated about my stomach and love handles.  Once again, a realistic goal for me is to shed about 20 lbs by mid-March.  That gives me about 11 weeks to get down to around 214.  If I can do more, awesome, if not….well, if I’m close I’ll be happy.
• Podcasts: Strange, I didn’t think many of my friends actually listened to them, but over the last few weeks I’ve had a few people ask me when I’m going to do more.  I actually still have one recorded in a raw audio format that I recorded earlier last year when my friend Brett came down to visit, but just never got around to editing and posting it.  I’m going to do it this year.  Promise.  My buddy Brian also was gracious enough to buy me a brand-spanking-new Yeti USB microphone for Christmas (pictured above) that I was just blown away with his generosity on that.  That gift in and of itself has started a new spark of desire to record some content.  And if it isn’t for my site here, then most assuredly I’d like to make some recordings for my train site: WilloughbyJunction.com (Pssttt…check it out).
• Vacation & Trips: I’d like to say that I plan on taking a few short vacations this year.  I’m hoping my buddy Brian will still drag me out to Arizona laster this year to look at some property he considering purchasing…a road trip is always fun.  If not, then I’d still like to rent a small RV with my wife and maybe head out to Oatman, AZ or someplace local (Apple Valley comes to mind) for 3-4 days and maybe take the dog with us and try our hand and camping outdoors.  I’m also very interested in attending the Central Coast Railroad Festival in October this year…maybe do some wine train excursions, etc.  The icing on the cake, however, would be to take a cruise.  We happened to watch a two hour show on the Travel Channel yesterday evening, and I so want to go.
• Plan a few more ‘eatery outings’ with my friends liek I did last year.  I like to organize those and we always have a ggod time.
• Get my CTP+ certificate for work…just to say I can still hang and study and achieve career orientated goals.
• Really publicize and make my Willoughby Junction blog a popular spot amongst model train enthusiasts.  Maybe add some podcasts to there as well.
• Get a tablet…As soon as I can find one I really like at an affordable price.  I still really liek the Amazon Kindle, but would like one a tad more robust than that.
• Learn airbrushing.  My wife bought me a beginner airbrush for my modeling but I have never used one before.
• Actually start contruction on my railroad.  I have the benchwork done, bought the foam, have the track and train, and built plenty of structures…but haven’t yet started on actually building my fantasy railroad.
• Brew more beer, make more sausage, do more BBQ’ing of meats and share it all with you.
• And finally, make an effort to share some stories here.  Either written blog entries, or audio recordings with the new Yeti mic.  I have a lot of funny stories to tell, but never seem to sit down and get them out in a ‘planned’ fashion.

So the above list is a little loose and open for interpretation.  Everything listed is feasible, but can I maintain the willpower to follow through with it.  I’m hoping I can check off more this year than I was able to last year.  I also hope to have a more positive outlook on life in general.

See you in a few.

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I remember sitting right here at an empty blog post thinking that I was going to take 2011 by storm and own it.

In fact, it’s been a year. 

A year exactly.  To the day.

Today is January 3rd, 2012 and I’ve been spending the last few days actually thinking on what I was going to say right here.  As usual, it just seems to be a mish-mash of ideas that really never solidified into something coherent….until now….and even just now, I’m just winging it.

If you’ll recall (or maybe your new here, so you won’t at all), I came up with a mantra that was to define my 2011.  Simply stated it was “Taking It Back.”  What exactly did I mean by that?  Well, I seem to remember that towards the end of 2010 I was taking stock of my last few years or months leading up to 2011 and not being overly impressed or happy with myself.  So many opportunities came and went as I stood on the sidelines like a geeky Junior High wallflower at the dance…..afraid to make a commitment or chance on anything.  In case you’re interested in all my pontificating back then, you can read that entry right here: “A new year to take it all back“.

Even stating it like that seems somewhat over dramatic.  The fact is I was 40 years old and just seemingly going through the motions of life: wakeup, go to work, pay the bills, watch a few sitcoms, go to bed….rinse and repeat….like I had for so many years prior.

Expect I was determined that 2011 was going to be different.  I wanted to take the bull by the horns if you will, and charge on, noting certain accomplishments and what-not.  Sorta like a bucket list of things I wanted to do. 

I re-read that post today, just now in fact, and realized that although I did indeed accomplish some of those tasks, others I failed miserable in, and in the end many of those cynical feelings I had back in 2010…I still have today.  One can even say that it rings true: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  Amen.

A whole year, 2011, has come and gone.  Another year lost to the annals of time, more opportunities came and went, some good, some bad.  I checked some thinsg off the list, and left some untouched.  I had my fair share of heart break, highs, lows, and everything inbetween.  Some events I never want to experience ever again, and some I hold near and dear.

So what did I get done?

• I did build a 3.5′ x 6.5′ benchwork for my dream train set, although I haven’t progressed much on the train itself.
• I did infact lose close to 20 lbs from the beginning of January through April, but sadly put most of it back on.  Sad to say, I am a net -2 lbs overall from last year.
• I did manage to plan and cooridinate a mini-vacation with 8 of my closest friends to a cabin up in Big Bear, although the planning phase and getting everyone to cooperate and get on the same page at the time was a bit more stresseful that I would have liked, and I don’ want to that again (maybe a smaller group next time).
• I did make my own sauage and brew my own beer, but sadly, not as often as I would have liked to have.
• I did start a new blog, regarding my train hobby.  Visit WilloughbyJunction.com to learn more.

And my failures?

• I did not work at an animal shelter, but did start volunteering for the Billy Graham telephone ministry.  It’s not same, obviously, and I still want to work with animals.  I think deep down, I must be scared to commit to this.  I have a very soft spot and empathetic heart towards animals, and maybe I’m just not emotionally ready to watch an animal suffer or be cast aside.
• I didn’t do any podcasting.  Although the desire was (and still is infact) there, I just didn’t.  More on this later.
• I didn’t get a highschool reunion bbq put together like I had hoped, but that’s not entirely my fault.  I did invite people on more than one occasion, but peoples schedules and their own lives didn’t always cooperate with my vision, so we just had more of the same with a few new faces.  I did have a somewhat successful ‘Oktoberfest’ in November held in my backyard, but like I mentioned…I can only invite, not demand who shows up.  For those that were invited and didn’t make, you missed a good time…and I hope you’ll make the next one…but if you can’t find a babysitter or re-arrange things for a few hours with 2 months prior notice..then suck it.
• I didn’t post here on a regular basis: my funny bone just wasn’t tickled at times, at others maybe I was angry at something, or just didn’t find the humor in things.  Other times, maybe it was just inconvenient for me to sit down or have a PC nearby.
• My outlook on work didn’t improve much either.  You can blame that on the economy….2011 didn’t show for much in the was of people getting back in the saddle.  As a matter of fact, my wife lost her job of 10 years back in April 2011 and has been unemployed since.  Then all those self-centered, entitlement brats started that whole “Occupy” movement, which just bugged the shit out of me.  Yeah, yeah, I’m part of that 99% paying for you assholes to sit in a park and whine about your shitty and poor decisions that landed you over yoru heads in credit debt and whatnot.  Screw you.  No, seriously, screw you.  With a slow economy, my employer didn’t invest much into anything, including me, so….well…..you get the point.  I came to work every morning with one hand tied behind my back to begin with.
• Finally both my wife and I has found ourselves in some ‘family’ related issues with both sides of the family.  Some of it my business, some of it not, and none of yours, so don’t ask.   Suffice it to say, “No family I have ever met, or have been a part of” is going to win and family-of-the-year awards anytime soon.

So where does all this leave me now?

Why don’t you check back here in the not so far future and find out.