Friday, September 29, 2006

Paparazzi, Part Deux

My new hairdo seems to be the key to outrageous attention. This week Hambone and I appered in the Baltimore Sun for simply being "fabulous". The article is here for today, but may be gone tomorrow. Mostly they took lots of pictures of our home, and then spelled our names wrong in the article. Ah well. I suppose that's the way of the fabulous.

The funny part is that when the photographer came to the house, there was a live rat in the yard in one of Hambone's traps. It was screaming and thrashing around in a very conpsicuous way. It lent a little "white trash" to the event.

The rats keep us grounded. LOL

Monday, September 25, 2006

Technically Speaking

Sometimes the error messages that come on my screen are kind of funny. For instance, lately I get this message every time I use my wireless mouse:

WARNING: THE BATTERIES IN YOUR WIRELESS MOUSE ARE CRITICAL

And I have to wonder, "Critical of what?" Are they insulting my hard drive and this is my computer tattling on this aftermarket mouse?

Or are the batteries criticizing the mouse itself, and this is the mouse asking me for more polite batteries.

Maybe the batteries don't like my new hairdo, and my motherboard is sick of hearing about it.

Either way, I suppose new batteries wouldn't hurt...


In other news, Hambone and I found this handy rack at an antiques store in Pennsylvania:


Tuesday, September 12, 2006

What We Did Over Labor Day

While many of you out there were attending barbecues and having big social time with family and friends, Hambone and I got it into our heads that we needed to find a Wardrobe to put in our living room because we currently lack a coat closet there.

After shopping the antique malls in the morning, Hambone remembered suddenly that he had a "perfectly good" wardrobe in his warehouse.

When we arrived at the warehouse, we found that the wardrobe had been walked on by his employees with drywall on their shoes, and some of his partners' dogs had peed on it, and the front door was broken in three places, and the shelves were torn out.

Here's a picture:

It didn't look like much, but I had faith. Hambone seemed dedicated to repairing the doors and every other structural problem you can see here, so I thought about how to clean this thing to make it look good again.

I settled on washing it with a scrub brush and dish soap for the really nasty stuff (including the pee) and then this great aerosol wood polish/oil that I found at the Getto Walmart by our house. As a finishing touch, I used Old English to camoflage the scratches and skishes.

Here it is in process--

And, after about 6 hours of just plain swearing at the thing, it was finally finished -- and I have to say it looks great. It's a nice addition to the room.

A Footnote About City Birds

I know you have already heard my adventure with feeding birds, so I won't bore you by rehashing it all. However, what has been interesting is that my yucky neighbor (the one who air dries his underwear on a clothesline in the back yard) has now been inspired to feed the birds.

He sprinkles crumbs in the alley every day, which is only good for attracting pigeons. Great.

Now when Hambone and I leave the house, this is what we see. Every day.


I have to say that this starts our days out on a rather ominous tone. Alfred Hitchcock would be proud of my neighbor's psychological handiwork...