floor it

A quick collage of what has consumed the past couple of weeks of my life...

Starting point: the bathroom floor is covered in cheap vinyl tile, which managed to crack. Worse yet, the floor creaks like an old lady being run over by a steamroller.

A few painful days later, I have no floor. My dad helped me rip out the plywood underlayment (secured by many sharp nails), which exposed the floorboards in various stages of degradation.

Fast-forward some more: new plywood is in, covered in enough self-leveling compound fill lake Eire.

And, finally, after much tile-cutting, grouting, and swearing, we've got something that resembles a floor:

bye bye moon

Caught the lunar eclipse today - pretty neat! I'm amazed yet again that I can see the night sky fairly well in my back yard. We'll just chalk that up as yet another advantage of living in suburbia.

giving back the jumbo way

I got roped into representing my company at the Tufts career fair, and you know what - it wasn't all that bad. We had a decent poster, some good stuff to give away, and some serious positions that we were hiring for. We even gave away USB keys with our home-brewed recruiting game on it, just to show young people how "with it" we were.

Looking at these wide-eyed kids sure did take me back to my time on the career fair circuit... and you know what: these rookies don't know how to get free stuff if it hit them in the face! Hopefully, they will learn some day. I, on the other hand, still enjoy the fact that half of my wardrobe has been paid for by companies I had no intention of ever applying to. Ahhh the memories...

the one good thing about winter

Roman's family invited me for a weekend skiing retreat at Bretton Woods, the largest skiing area in NH, and boy, did we luck out with the weather! On Saturday, we went cross-country skiing, and the conditions were next to perfect - right around freezing, no wind, not too much sun. Beautiful. As usual, cross country skiing kicked all of our collective butts, but the ride back to lodge was awesome. Not even sure why; you certainly go faster on downhill skis, but for some reason it just felt better on those skinny matchsticks... maybe because we had to schlep for miles to get high enough to ride down.

Next day, we started off on the downhill slope, and the view from the top was simply astounding. The whole valley was in front of us, with Mt. Washington as the backdrop. Just that alone was worth the trip.

I'm not even joking when I say that skiing makes this climate a little more livable - at least we have something to look forward to when the summer ends ;)

super thursday

Yesss

tues news

Ya, so Super Tuesday, eh? Suddenly, I get a shiver any time I hear anything that's preceded by the word "super". But hey, Obama seems to be doing OK, and Romney is getting the shaft most everywhere (except, regrettably, Massachusetts). Did anyone catch his speech tonight? I can summarize in one sentence: "America is the best country ever in the history of this universe - but the damn illegal immigrants are trying to ruin it". Well, Mitt needs his scapegoats, just as Hitler needed the Jews.

But enough about politics. What really IS super is what's happening in my bathroom - namely, me being able to shower! Wow was this a lot of work, but judge for yourself whether it was worth doing. Before:

... and after:

I'm certainly not done, but today was a breakthrough. Even if I had to break through the kitchen ceiling to achieve it.

ohhhh

That was awful. Even a Giants fan would have to admit that this was just a bad game overall.

On the bright side (if there is a bright side), all the polling stations are gonna be open in Boston...

first blood

The squirrels were really getting to me, so I decided to take decisive action and got a squirrel trap from Home Depot. It's basically a long wire box with trap doors on either end and a tray in the middle where you put peanut butter as bait.

I set up the trap close to where the squirrels were burrowing, on top of the air conditioning unit about 20 feet from the ground. The first few days were fruitless - sometimes the trap would get set off by rain or wind, and sometimes the squirrels would get inside to munch on the peanut butter without triggering the doors. They probably thought I gave up, and was giving them a peace offering. Finally, one day I came home to find the trap thrown onto the driveway - it followed approximately the same trajectory as those moth balls I was trying to use to drive the squirrels away.

Still, I regrouped, tied up the trap, adjusted the trigger - and today, I'm happy to report I have my first POW!

Beforehand, Susan and I had a long conversation about what to do with the captives. It went approximately as follows:

Me: ... so the guy at the store suggested that I drown them, but I feel bad - I'll probably just drive them somewhere...
Susan: And have the cage rattle in the trunk? Nah, you should totally kill them!
Me: Wow, talk about being bloodthirsty! Well, OK, how would I drown them?
Susan: I dunno... maybe in a kiddie pool or something?
Me: So you're saying I should get a pool just for drowning squirrels?
Susan: You're right. You know, our neighbors have a pool...

gooo team!

My work looks like a football training camp - a good portion of people showed up in Patriots jerseys, myself included. In every meeting, there's at least one Brady, sometimes a Maroney or a Bruschi. Ahhh nothing brings people together better than an overhyped sporting event...