Frog and Goat

I read the following blurb in the NY Times this morning about the hanging of Saddam Hussein:

At President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex., a White House spokesman, Scott Stanzel, said Mr. Bush had gone to bed before the execution took place and was not awakened. Mr. Bush had received a briefing from his national security adviser Friday afternoon, when he learned the execution would be carried out within hours, Mr. Stanzel said. Asked why Mr. Bush had gone to sleep before hearing the news, he said Mr. Bush “knew that it was going to happen.”

I’m disappointed in the President once again. Saddam Hussein was the reason why we invaded another country and are still there getting ourselves killed and getting Iraqis killed. He was the man who murdered millions of people and was the poster boy for evil. He was the man who could be considered Bush’s arch nemesis. And Bush can’t even stay awake long enough to sit and ponder the meaning of this person’s execution. I’m not saying Bush should have toasted with a martini but a moment of silence to sit and think about what it meant would have been appropriate.

Is it even possible for Bush to show a little bit of class?

The better-half installed a platform for me over the back stairwell so I could perch on the 6-foot ladder and get cracking on the painting of the stairwell and back hallway. I needed to move the ladder off the platform and started to fold it back up. That’s when my middle finger (what other one would get hurt) got pinched in the ladder.

The cloud of blue that flew out of my mouth was enough to make it impossible to see much of what was going on. I seriously considered opening the bedroom window and hurling the ladder out the second story. But, I chilled.

I cleaned up the wound which is actually a big chunk of flesh gone from the pad of my middle finger–on the part that would be covered in nail if this were the top of my finger. I then threatened the ladder, the paint, the platform and the house that if everyone didn’t get their shit together and leave me alone I was going to get the reciprocating saw out and go off. All the inanimate objects in the house took in a deep breath and I finished painting with only some difficulty as I kept trying to not bang my finger.

The better-half got home and said he couldn’t believe I didn’t destroy anything in my rage. I told him about chilling and threatening.

He’s the one who got to clean up the brush and roller since the thought of cleaning up paint with a gaping hole in my finger made me a little faint. Don’t say ain’t, your mother may faint, and your daddy might fall in a bucket of paint. Must be the paint fumes.

Here are the pictures of the bathroom renovation over at my sister’s.

The room is very small. If you stand in the center of the room, you can touch most of the walls and you don’t need freakishly long arms to do it. Now the room seems more spacious.

The paint on the top half of the wall is called Restful and the lower half of the wall is Bright White. My sister’s friend painted the room and did a great job.

My sister had a good idea to get some storage space without using any more space in the room. She thought there must be some way to put a cabinet into the crawl space that runs along the back of her house between the master bedroom and the upstairs bath.

The better-half built a cabinet:

My brother-in-law thought of the idea to use towel hooks instead of towel rods to free up space:

When we took the old sink and cabinet to the landfill, the cabinet popped like a balloon as it hit the ground. This new sink won’t be going to the dump anytime soon:

The beadboard you can see in all the pictures is also new. Nearly everything in the room is new except the tub/shower.

My sister and I went to the Home Depot on Christmas Eve and bought some supplies. The glass shelf box was devoid of brackets (thanks Home Depot). We took that back the other day and got a complete shelf/bracket box and now the shelf provides storage space without looking too heavy:

The toilet is one of those ADA models because my sister occasionally has back problems and it is easier to sit higher. The cool part of this toilet is how fast and efficiently it moves the contents out of the bowl. That toilet doesn’t mess around.

We had to pull out the drywall on one wall because it wasn’t the right size to match all the other walls and it didn’t actually go all the way to the floor in one spot (the original, crazy jack-legged things done in this bathroom boggles the mind). My sister’s family had been looking at 2X4 studs for 9 years. When we ripped out the half-done drywall, we had to replace the door so all the trim would match up. My sister and I couldn’t find a threshold that would work so we spray painted the old one to make it match the nickel finish selected for the other hardware bits in the room. Here’s a shot of the new floor:

It’s been a bit quiet around here lately because most of our time has been spent over at my sister’s house. In her upstairs bathroom in particular. We’ve been renovating the room and it has taken us much longer than we expected, but today we finished.

My sister has a few places where she needs to touch-up some paint but mostly all the room needs is to be used. She promised to take pictures and send them to me in the next day or two. I’ll post those over in the House Proud section, because even though it isn’t my house, it was some proud work.

I don’t think she has any before pictures and we didn’t take any ourselves before the demolition started. But I think I’m being fair in saying that the room was pretty bad. My sister and I were talking about that show on HGTV about saving the bathroom. Her bathroom needed saving.

Update 12/29: Pictures are now over in House Proud.

We just threw down at 10+ dB. I couldn’t let him go without some dancing.

Shake your arm, then use your form
Stay on the scene like a sex machine
You got to have the feeling sure as you’re born
Get it together, right on, right on.

I’m considering this a holiday card from my car:

To the woman sitting in the window at the New York Deli around 1:30pm on Thursday, December 21st:

Pull up your pants or pull down your shirt because as you leaned over everyone on Cary Street could see your thong.

Sincerely,
The Frog

Several weeks ago, I was walking along Main towards campus and I had a serious craving for rice salad wrapped in a pita. There once was a restaurant–more like bakery/sandwich shop–where we like to vacation that had the most marvelous rice salad. That shop has changed hands and, sadly, there’s no rice salad on the menu. Anyway, that shop is six hours away. They also had the best black cherry strudel I’ve ever had.

I’m still looking around for a rice salad recipe (have one?). I’m feeling a bit lazy but my first use of The Google didn’t produce the result I was looking for. Now I think I’m going to have to hunt down the grains and beans cookbook we have. I’m not sure of the name of the cookbook but it only features recipes made from grains and beans. Perhaps I’ll put on my birkies while I look through recipes.