Catching Up
As Mark Twain once said, “the rumors of my demise are quite exaggerated.” Truth be told, I have been quite busy of late:
My tile arrived the other day, so I have been working my fingers to the bone on my kitchen floor, getting it ready for the fateful day. One nice result: the tile photos from Daltile were over-Photoshopped, making the Fargo Gray tile look as if the tile contained far more red than I had anticipated, and only on some tiles; the tiles that arrived were grayer and lighter than I expected, which is a blessing.
I worried, originally, that the tile would be too dark and too red, and wreck the vision I had for the kitchen. As it turns out, there is a hint of red, which matches the cherry cabinets, a hint of light blue to match the walls, and a large hint of white to match the wall tile and trim moldings.
In other words: it will turn out better than I anticipated, and my color palette will stay intact. I’ll post a photo when all is done.
The floor contained one more surprise: evidently, the former owner (the Recto-Cranial Invert) turned the heat down a bit too low during a winter vacation. The obvious result happened (frozen and burst pipes), which explains the funny plaster jobs and water marks on certain wood structures around the baths and kitchen.
All well and good: I replaced a rotted part of the kitchen floor myself; I used my trusty 3-in-1 Black & Decker Drill/Router/Circular Saw to cut the section of floor out and trim down the replacement plywood to fit. Sometimes, I amaze myself with my ability to learn to tackle new challenges in new tasks — with good results.
My floor is now as good as new; I am ready to lay the HardiBacker underlayment and start laying tile. Hoorah!
~~~~~
One advantage to working third shift during home renovations is that I can’t work on the renovations all night long; my bride sleeps at night, so I still have time to pay attention to the Web…
My cousin John in Michigan emailed me another gem this week. I haven’t shown this to my bride yet, as she has been on vacation for the last couple of days; I’m waiting for her to go back to work so she can pass this one around the news room and layout desk. On nights that I am off work, we watch Aaron Brown on CNN for this very feature.
I’m not sure where I found this, but in the wake of mainstream media’s recent exploration (and some bashing) of blogging, I found this article to be refreshing and informative. I have similar rules for this site, as well, even though my writing is a little more op-ed oriented than breaking-news-oriented.
On the web design front, Eyetools Research recently posted an eyetracking analysis of a couple of designs on CSS Zen Garden, with eye-popping results. They are also offering a poll to select another of the 160-some designs listed at that site for eye tracking analysis. Makes me wonder if I made the proper decisions during my latest redesign…
Lastly, one of my tasks for Tuesday is to write individual thank-you notes to a group of folks at a local company I cannot name yet who met with me for over two hours yesterday. I left the meeting energized, excited, enthused, intrigued and definitely interested. I’ll keep you posted on the results…
Leave a Reply
