neurotwitch

Sunday, August 07, 2011

moving right along, despite the rain

By Friday evening, Stanley had the tongue-in-groove deck placed. The next steps are trimming the end, sanding, rounding the edges, priming, caulking, then painting. I get to choose the color—I’m not sure yet what color it will be yet, other than it will not not not be battleship gray. He managed to figure out how to deal with one of the framing boards that was way warped. This porch is solid!

Wiping up the puddles that got under the tarp—there was an inch of rain last night! (click to see it big!)

The deck done, not yet trimmed. (click to see it big!)

The edge trimmed, in the middle of sanding. (click to see it big!)

A closer look—it’s looking so good. (click to see it big!)

Assessing the sanding. (click to see it big!)

Getting ready to round the edge. (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 08/07/11 at 07:42 PM
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Thursday, August 04, 2011

lumber delivered wednesday, progress by thursday!

Stanley replaced rotting clapboards on Tuesday, and ordered the lumber from Torno in Westport. The wood for the new porch cost about $500, delivered. It came around 10:30 a.m. He moved quickly on getting the framing done.

Stanley assessing things. (click to see it big!)

The base framing board. (click to see it big!)

The frame is in and caulked! (click to see it big!)

Taking a cookie break. Now for the deck ... (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 08/04/11 at 07:31 PM
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Monday, August 01, 2011

lot of progress monday

Stanley accepted that the frame was way too far gone to try to salvage. Not surprising, since it’s about 60 years old.

Some rotten clapboards were found and needed replacing. (click to see it big!)

The whole is in the crawlspace under the addition—it used to hold the dryer vent. The crawlspace is now Slink’s domain. (click to see it big!)

It looks so weird! (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 08/01/11 at 07:22 PM
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Sunday, July 31, 2011

it is rotten and it must go!

Stanley got a bee in his bonnet and decided that, at last, the back porch must be replaced. Why today, I have no idea, but I’m glad.

The porch, about 30 years old, was rotting and needed replacing about five years ago. It’s 16 feet by 4 feet.

Damn! He was hoping the frame was ok, but no ... (click to see it big!)

Overwhelming! (click to see it big!)

Just too much rot to salvage. (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 07/31/11 at 06:56 PM
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Saturday, February 05, 2011

the strain

Well, I don’t normally go for vampire stories. I tried the Twilight stuff and found it utterly insipid. We tried to listen to the audiobook and didn’t even last ten minutes. I liked Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, but she lost me with Queen of the Damned. Oh, and of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which scared the hell out of me when I read it in high school.

So, vampire stories is not a genre I seek out. My not-so-secret addiction is reading books (and watching movies) about the end of the world. More specifically, The End of the World as We Know It. Doesn’t matter much how the world as we know it ends: asteroid impact, plague, economic collapse, political suicide. I’m interested not in how the world is saved from apocalypse, but what happens afterward. How do people survive? What do they do? What changes?

One day I was taking a look at my recommended books on Amazon and I saw The Strain, by Guillermo del Torro and Chuck Hogan. I love del Torro’s movies—Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone are on my top-100 list. So I took a look at the description.

Hmm. The End of the World as We Know It caused by a plague—in this case, vampirism is the disease. And it costs less than the maximum I will pay for any Kindle book ($9.99). So I downloaded it.

The story starts out with a jet from Germany landing at JFK—it lands perfectly, but nobody opens the doors to get off. Eventually, it’s established that all the passengers and crew are dead, so the Center for Disease Control is called in to deal with it. Ah, a plague! Turning a person into a vampire is to pass them a virus that transforms the host’s internal organs into structures that keep the virus alive and transforms the trachea into a stinger ...

These are not your insipid, Stephanie Meyer vampires. Not at all. They are ugly, evil, virulent things that suck the blood out of their victims and shit and piss all over themselves and turn increasingly horrifying as they turn. They are an ancient plague, pre-dating Christianity and silly countermeasures such as crosses and holy water. There is nothing romantic about them. And they are wreaking havoc on Manhattan, Queens, and Bronxville. And spreading.

There are only a few who know what’s going on—some working behind the scenes to enable the spread of this plague, and some battling to stop it. There is a professor-turned-pawnbroker who’s been waiting since World War Two to battle the Master, whom the professor first encountered while he was a prisoner is a concentration camp. There are two doctors from the CDC who know what’s going on, and the teenage son of one of the doctors. There’s an exterminator. This group are fighting the good fight. And there is a gangbanger who’s kind of off in a sidetrack who also knows what’s going on and is looking to take them on.

The Stain is just book one of a trilogy. Book two, The Fall, is now out. I haven’t read it yet as I’m in the middle of another book right now, and then will decide if I want to read it next or wait until book three is out (I’m not very patient—when I’m in the middle of a series, I want to keep reading until the end).

Oops, I forgot to mention: I really like this novel. It’s scary, exciting in parts, keep me reading and staying awake much longer than I should have. I’m looking forward to the next book, whenever I decide to read it. I like two of the characters (the professor and the exterminator) a lot, and buy the villians (human villains, I mean—they’re not different from our current real-world villains, not at all ... ) I’m very interested in seeing how it all turns out and don’t necessarily expect a happy ending.

I love my Kindle—but that’s a tale for another post (it’s time for dinner!)

posted by lee on 02/05/11 at 07:54 PM
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Thursday, January 27, 2011

noooo, please, uncle, enough already!

More snow. Another 17 inches. Or 15 inches, depending on what measurement you believe. Yesterday we got three inches. I am so tired. Another day of work lost to shoveling. Stanley did most of it (he’s still out working on enough more so we have a turnaround). We’re legal, the sidewalk has a foot-wide path between 3.5-feet-tall snow walls. The car is cleared off, including the top so we don’t get a ticket.

posted by lee on 01/27/11 at 05:17 PM
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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

just ‘cause

posted by lee on 01/25/11 at 05:52 PM
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ruby again

It’s been such a worrying thing I dread the thought of posting the entire story, so I’ll just refer you to Stanley’s blog (which he is finally resurrecting) to read the details.

What he doesn’t go into detail about is that the perforation was caused by the Deramaxx that was prescribed by vet Matthew Palmisano of VCA/Norwalk, who did the fifth knee surgery operation. We still don’t know why he prescribed this as he KNEW—or should have known since it was on the paperwork we gave him—Ruby was getting carafate and pepcid—stuff to soothe her stomach because an ulcer was suspected (she did not get Deramaxx after her 4th surgery). I suspect he didn’t bother reading what meds she was on and just prescribed the standard post-op stuff—SOP for far too many specialists, both animal docs and human docs. So, he might be a fine orthopedic surgeon and he might have done a fine job on Ruby, but if he kills the dog in the process because he’s careless about reading her case history, he’s not such a great vet, is he?

What really made us angry was the people at VCA—the receptionists treating us like shit and the vets we saw, one of whom was the medical director or something, denying VCA did anything wrong, arguing with us about it. And then telling us that it would cost us between $6500 and $7600 for them to fix Dr. Palmisano’s mistake with only a 50% chance of Ruby even recovering.

All I could think of is all the pain Ruby would go through at that place, how frightened she’d be, and to go through all of that with a shitty prognosis, I just couldn’t do it to her and we just couldn’t afford it, not for such an awful prognosis.

Dr. Kurose and the staff at Strawberry Hill Animal Hospital saved Ruby—she’s still doing well (knock on wood)—which amazes us. He asked if he could try to save her and assured me that he would make sure she was on pain medication, and we knew she loves the staff at SHAH, so she wouldn’t be so alone and frightened. I wept when he offered to try to save her. He and the staff did a wonderful job—we just have to figure out how we can repay them for all the extra miles they went to save Ruby’s life.

Since our encounter with VCA, we’ve heard nothing but bad things about them. We weren’t especially happy with them after our first encounter with them when Ginger needed to be rehydrated back in 2008 during her battle with lymphoma. They charged way too much money for what they did and when we got her back, she smelled so bad we couldn’t believe it—she didn’t smell bad when we brought her in less than 24 hours earlier. So I have my doubts about the sanitary conditions there.

One colleague told us they ruled out the condition that actually killed his dog, and another colleague told us they charged a fortune for exploratory surgery to try to figure out what was wrong with his dog.

And this time, VCA charged us $1000 for a two-hour emergency stay, giving her an ultrasound and some tests to see what was wrong with her (they didn’t even locate the perforation).

The VCA receptionists were horrible—we had no idea why we had to fill out more paperwork for Ruby when they had just seen her a couple of days before we brought her in and one receptionist tracked us down in the clinic to hand us a bill when we had no idea what was going on, and laughed when we told her we had no idea what was going on.

We need to find another emergency animal hospital—I never want to go back to VCA unless we have absolutely no choice. I’ll drive to New Haven if I have to.

Okay, my rant is done I think.

posted by lee on 01/25/11 at 04:58 PM
pet news • miscellaneous everything • (20) comments • permalink

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

more than 38 inches since december 26

The Boxing Day nor’easter dropped 16 inches of snow here in Norwalk. Last week, we got another six inches. Last night and today, it snowed another 16-18 inches—officially it’s 16 inches but 18 inches in our yard. I was hoping the weather gurus were full of it, but damn, they were, if anything, a bit on the optimistic side!

Since Ruby is still in a cast, we couldn’t let her go out in it, but Bingo, oh wow she loves it!

Doggie joy—Bingo loves the snow. (click to enlarge)

The Weather Service got the timing right on this one, saying it would start here around 10 p.m. last night. And it did. It was a fierce storm—and one point, I couldn’t see out the window it was so heavy, a sheet of white. I was amazed when I woke up around 7 a.m. and took a look out the window. I updated some closings on WestportNow (lots of great snow photos here), then went back to sleep.

Bench in the snow. (click to enlarge)

Stanley did most of the shoveling—we really, really need a grown-up snowblower and he promises he’ll get one. The little Snow Fox snow thrower he got me (my wedding present, which I loved, believe it or not) does a decent job but just isn’t able to handle more than six inches at a time without you having to put in a LOT of work. It’s just too exhausting to use it (and the electric cord is really a pain in the ass!) with deep snow.

Stanley (yelling for Bingo here, I think) did most of the shoveling today. (click to enlarge)

We got the part of the driveway that will let us get the car out done and the sidewalk—the sidewalk was really a pain—finished, and called it a day. We don’t have to go anywhere tonight, so we’ll dig out the car tomorrow and maybe even the van. We met our legal obligation (schools are closed tomorrow, anyway). We each had a mug of hot cocoa—stuff Jamie sent us for Christmas—it was good enough to almost make the effort worth it. Well, it was good but maybe not that good.

I know I’m going to be sore tomorrow and Friday and ... and I lost a day of work, some of which I can catch up with this evening, maybe. If I can stay awake—I am really, really tired. I put a put of spaghetti sauce and sausage together before my second round of shoveling—I love my crock pot—we’ll probably eat dinner and collapse.

It’s beautiful out. But enough already.

posted by lee on 01/12/11 at 05:32 PM
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Friday, January 07, 2011

winter

Another snow storm today. Not nearly as bad as the Boxing Day blizzard, but wet, sloppy, and beautiful. A daytime storm, so we watched it as we worked.

Twitch, keeping warm by the exhaust fan. The scene out the window was heavy, sloppy snow. (click to enlarge)

Stanley hung a couple of bird feeders for me. We have a huge bag of seed, which I thought would last a couple of years. But no—it’s amazing how much seed they eat. Stanley has filled the feeders several times in just a couple of weeks.

It’s hard to get good pictures through the window. There is a pair of cardinals that gorge themselves daily. Mama cardinal likes the gourd feeder, but papa cardinal likes the perch feeder. And, so far, the squirrels haven’t figured out how to steal the seeds.

A sparrow chows down (click to enlarge)

Hard to see in this shot, but here is a male cardinal getting ready to perch on the bird feeder and eat dinner. (click to enlarge)

posted by lee on 01/07/11 at 04:37 PM
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