Stonewerks.net

I ran in the Fifth Third Riverbank run in the 5K race. I wanted to finish the run under 30 minutes and I just missed it as my time was 30:18. Arrrgggghhh I couldn’t have picked up 18 seconds anywhere on the course! I am actually quite pleased with my time because my training has been horrible and to come out of the race with a race pace of 9:46/mile is something I am happy with.

Last night we realized that the door going into the utility room is only 24″ wide. The dryer is 27″. We have to remodel the utility room at some point anyway so we are just going to remove the door frame and that will give us enough room to get the dryer into the room. Due to space restrictions, I will not be able to put a larger door in place so that door frame is not going in real solid as it will have come out if we ever have to replace the unit.

Sold the TV to some guy from the U.P. for $400. His kid is in school in Big Rapids so he sent him down to pick it up. His kid looks at the TV and says “I don’t know why he wants a TV this big and he can’t even get HD where he is at”. I think the kid was ticked he had to come down and load a TV during exam week.

We had a contractor come and take the island counter surface a couple of weeks ago so that he could fix the broken corner and then shorten the surface. He came and put it in today and it looks great and nice polished. He also polished the other counters and the solid surface sink. They look brand new now.

When he was done I started out to the car to get the check book so I could pay him for the job. I got about half way to the car and saw a German Shepherd coming down my drive way. His mouth was covered in white frothy foam and he had some on the top of his head. I froze. There are only two reasons a dog looks like that, one is he is rabid the other is he was running like a moron. Then I saw his tail wag and I knew he was not rabid. Continued to my car and went to open my door to get the check book when all of a sudden I was pushed to the side and this dumb mutt jumped into my car and sat down in my driver seat! He was filthy and I had big muddy paws in my seat and this drooling monster was soaking my seats, steering wheel, shifter etc with nasty dog spit. I have a recessed area in the center console where I keep spare change and it was full of dog slobber. For people who know me, you know how much I hate dogs and this animal just put me into a level of rage that I was ready to break his neck. Instead I went around to the driver side of the car and opened the door and went to drag this mistake of creation out of my car. He jumps up and launches himself between the bucket seats and into the backseat. On his way through the seats he applied a thick layer of wet slimmy slobber all over my seats and headrest. I opened up both the back doors and began to yell like a maniac at this dog. The contractor came out to see what the commotion was all about only to see a large dog with a white foaming mouth sitting in my back seat. I ask him if he has something to poke the dog with and he grabs a 2×4 and begins to ram the dog with it like a knight wielding a lance. The dog whimpered with each poke but would not leave the seat. At one point the contractor gets the dog pinned and he is able to read the phone number on the dog’s tag. I call the number and the owner says he is on the way to get the animal.

The contractor and I retreat to his edge of his truck and begin to call the dog. After about 5 minutes the mutt slobbers his way out of my car and tries to get into the back of the contractors truck. I run over and close my doors. We try to get into the house and the door tries to get in also. We end up getting him a bucket of water to drink and at about that time the owner pulls into the drive. The dog notices the car and must recognize it as he drops his head and tucks his tail. This dog is in for it now. The owner pops the trunk on his Honda Accord and the dog runs over and hops into the trunk and the owner closes the trunk shakes my hand and leaves.

I go over to my car and open the door. It stinks of dirty dog and there is a string of dog spit dangling off my steering wheel. The owner doesn’t even want that mutt in his car yet he leaves me with a messed up car. For the next hour I have paper towel and cleaning products trying to clean out my car and get the muddy foot prints off the seats. The whole time I am getting more furious at the dog and the stupid owner. The filth is mostly gone from the car, it still stinks and as I drive there is dog fur flying all around the car. I have also found two holes in the door upholstery where the mutt’s claws went through.

Once again I don’t own a dog and have to suffer the mess that comes with a dog because some inconsiderate dog owner. This will go in its own chapter of my manifesto about how dog owners are the worst neighbors in the world.

The floors did not turn out as good as we hoped for so it looks like we will need to sand the floors one more time and put down a 4th coat of polyurethane. We have done better and I would be very disappointed if we kept the floors as they are right now. At this point it looks like we are going to do that Sunday afternoon as we will have daylight that will help us see what we are doing and since we are busy Monday night that gives us 2 full days of dry time. The wife has already called and pushed out the appliance deliver until next weekend.

Ok here are some math story problems involving last nights work in the house.

Q1) If a husband and a wife were working in the house and had to sand down 1500 sq ft of hard wood floor with a second coat of polyurethane and only had one 5″ orbital sander and a hand sanding block, how many hours would it take to complete this job?

A) Way too many!

Q2) When the husband and wife have finished sanding the entire floor and they now have to use tack cloth to lift all the dust off the same 1500 sq ft floor, how much will their arms and knees hurt?

A) A lot!

We got the third and hopefully final coat of polyurethane on the floor last night and left at about 12:30am.

And the closing saga continues. So we accepted the offer, the house appraised for lower so we agreed to sell for less. They accepted. She is still in college and coming to GR to finish up, he is leaving a job for no job here. So now she is coming off the mortgage and his parents are going on as co-signers. Problem is their realtor is from the dark ages and apparently has not heard of fax or scan to email capabilities. He is next day airing all these documents around and wasting huge amounts of time in the process. We originally had a May 9 date for closing and we have everything scheduled for that. This weekend when they realize they need a co-signer the paper work begins again. Ours was done in hours via scanned documents and emailed. Now we have to wait for mail to go back and forth on the other side and our realtor says he is not hopeful for a closing this week and thinks that May 16 is probably when it is going to happen because now the buyers and they buyers parents have to be at the closing also. This is a lot of people’s schedule to coordinate and I am getting impatient.

After some messing around we got the floors sanded down and got the stain on Saturday.

Sunday we came back to start the first coat of polyurethane, the odor of the stain and a closed up house about knocked us on the floor. It took about an hour to put the first coat on and then made our way to Sears to buy some appliances for the new house. After blowing through $4700 we now have new appliances scheduled for delivery on Saturday. The instructions on the can had stated we could put the second coat on after 4 hours and if we waited 12 hours we would have to sand before the second coat. So we let it sit for 8 hours and went back over to the house to put the next coat on. Opened the door of the house and the scent instantly made my eyes water. I have never been trapped inside a can of polyurethane, but I bet I know what it would be like now. After an hour we had the second coat on and were out the door by 10pm. Now it has to dry for 24 hours which means we really won’t be back in the house until Tuesday after work. Then we will have to sand all 1500 sq ft and put on a third and final coat of polyurethane.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, not sure if we have really reached the end or if that freight train is going to grind us under.