I hate laundry!!!

Or maybe it is laundromats either way, I'm not a fan.

M thinks that the laundromat philosophy is great! You can leave the laundry until you have absolutely nothing left to wear and then wash it all in 2 hours and spend the next three days folding it! Then you are done for the next month or so, depending on the amount of underwear you have.

I on the other hand, would prefer to have my own washer and dryer. That I could use whenever the mood or need arose. I could do a load here a load there and then sit down and fold it in a matter of minutes. And, if I didn't have time to throw it into the dryer I could wait an hour or two, maybe more, without having to worry about someone stealing my cloths, pulling them out and setting them somewhere. It is all in my control.

So, here at the Bass M has won this battle and we use the laundry in the basement. We honestly do not have room for a washer and dryer in our 600 sqft, and boy do I miss them. M and I have worked out a system here at the Bass, he washes and dries and I fold and try not to bitch too much about how he mixed up the colors, washed at the wrong temperature, etc. And for the most part it works for us. But sometimes the system breaks down.

See, I have this other small problem. Keys don't work for me. Yes, I know, you insert it in the correct lock and turn it and the door magically opens. Not for me, they don't turn in the lock, or I loose them. Although I secretly think they run away and hide on me. Every single door in the Bass is keyed. There are a couple hundred people living here, using their keys day after day and the locks have become super-screwy. I can open my apartment door, a few of the outside doors, but that is it. If I don't walk up to one of the doors that I have figured out how to finagle. I'm stuck. Luckily for me, the laundry room is never locked. Not so with the business center.

Yes, all of that background does lead up to a story.

This morning I get woken up twice by text messages from M. My phone chirps and the cats start running then it takes me forever to get them settled back down so I can go to sleep. The first text was at 5:40 AM. No sleeping in for Zilla. I end up talking to M about 8, his plane to the ATL is delayed and he won't be in until closer to 11:30. Drat! I thought I had gotten out of doing the laundry. "We" decide that I should get it started so that it would be done and I would have clean clothes in San Antonio next week. So, I ask M how much is on the laundry card, he says $10 or $11. So, as long as I didn't do too much I wouldn't have to try to open the business center door.

I gather up about four loads of essentials. Packed them in a couple of duffles after trashing my laundry cart. Another saga in the life of Zilla and M. And went down to the basement in my pjs at about 9AM. Got down there checked the card $6.25, great. I have 4 loads at $1.25 to wash and $1.00 to dry, I'm at $9. I'm going to have to do battle with the business center door in order to refill the card. Happy Sunday Zilla!!

Well, nothing I can do about it. I did say I had 4 loads of essentials. I piled them in the washers got it started and prepared to do battle. I ran upstairs, grabbed my spare keys, maybe they would work better, and some cash. I rode the elevator back down and started fussing with the lock, switched keys, fussed some more. Pulled the door tightly closed, pushed it as open as possible, jiggled the handle. Tried it all again. Maybe I could jimmy it with the laundry card, nope wrong kind of door. After 10 minutes I had no luck. What is a girl to do? Maybe I could stalk the lobby and see if anyone was up to help me. I ran upstairs and looked around. All the doors were dark, after all it was now 9:15 or so on a Sunday morning. If you are not in church or climbing, you should damn well be sleeping and not madly trying to do laundry. I looked at the bookshelves in the lobby, found a couple of good ones, while not a soul stirred. Now, remember I'm still in my pjs, in this case sweatpants and the '08 boatrock comp shirt, looking very attractive, let me tell you! After finding the books, I decided I really didn't want to see anyone anyway. I ran downstairs tried the lock one more time, nope, nada, nothing. And you thought this story would have a happy ending!

When the 4 loads were done, I crammed as many of the essentials into the one dryer I could afford. and brought the remaining clothes upstairs. I currently have 7 pairs of pants hanging in the shower, a rather large load in the dryer, which hopefully will be mostly dry, and a bruised thumb from trying to get into the business center. Better luck next time!

Actually, I think M may be doing the laundry for awhile and I may have to find a course on how to open doors with keys. Do you think that is offered somewhere?

"you're not a digging girl"

Yes, my husband knows me well.

This past week "we" began our first home improvement project. AKA: "We can save some money and get better quality waterproofing if "we" do it ourselves." Yes, the ubiquitous "we", luckily for me, M knows that "we" really means "he". Not that I am not willing to help, but I have a tendency to make him nervous with power tools. Little does he know how dangerous a kitchen aid mixer can be! But still some how I ended up with a Remington nail gun in my hands...

So, this past weekend M decided that "we" were going to waterproof the basement. There were only a few issues:
1. the supply store isn't open on the weekends, it's not like you can walk into Lowes and get this stuff

2. we both work during the week and the times we could get out of work were not the same

3. M was going up to North Dakota to shoot little innocent flying creatures on Wednesday. Not that I am opposed to him shooting creatures, they are good eatin', but it severely limited the amount of time "we" had to get this project done.

So, with all that in mind M was convinced that "we" could start it on Monday night and he could finish on Tuesday morning while I was at work. He then could be in to work by noon and we both could catch up with respective friends that evening. He would pack for the trip when he got home and we would crash so I could take him to the airport in time for his 6 AM flight on Wednesday. Not a problem, right?

...RIGHT

To start it off, things got started late on Monday. I always have a late day on Monday, but arrange to take my 5PM conference call at home, so I could be over to the site soon after 6. M called me as I was scrambling to finish up at work, Damn those addictive spreadsheets!* He was stuck on 285 trying to get to the supply store.

* yes I truly think spreadsheets can be addictive, I guess that comes with being an uber-dork.

M and I met up about 6:30 and he had gotten the goop and the sheeting to go over the goop, but they didn't have any rollers. So he wanted to head to Lowes to get rollers and a shovel while I was going to head to the grocery store and then meet him there. Oh, and he was still planning to go to the climbing gym that night. We also had the offer to go out to dinner with friends. And it was getting dark.

It was then that I suggested that we could shovel off the foundations together and speed some of this up. But luckily, M sometimes has more sense than me. He looked at me and said, "you're staving" and "you're not a digging girl" Right there ladies, is why I married the man. Yes, he knew that by the time we got back from Lowes with the supplies I would be one whiney, hungry, girl and would work through my hunger, but he would pay for it later.

So, we ended up dropping the goop and supplies off at A&Ws and I went off to dinner with A&W and friends, it is wise to keep me well fed. While, M ran to Lowes and then to the gym for team decrepitude training.

In the morning M got up and "we" got working. By that I mean, I slept a half hour later, got myself to the mothership and sat through about 4 hours worth of meetings. M, on the other hand, began spreading goop on the walls. Luckily, I had outfitted him with some top of the line gloves and glasses from the said mothership.

I talked to M at noon, and he said that it was going slower than he thought, but he was starting to get the hang of it. He figured that he still might get to work later in the afternoon. About 2PM he left me a message, he wasn't going to make it in. I called him back and then waited for him to call me back. The goop was so sticky that he couldn't get the gloves off in time to answer the phone. Yup, the "we" project had officially turned into a WE project, he had determined that he would need my help to get it all done. That is how I ended up with a Remington nail gun in my hand.

I got to the site about 5:30 and M's coworker was there helping him out. It was determined that the coworker and I would begin putting the protective fabric over the goop while M continued to paint it on. We secured the fabric to the walls using the gun. After another trip to Lowes, we finished in the dark and had dinner at ElMyr* at about 9 at night.

*No one blinked when we walked in covered with goop. Yet, another reason to love L5P, no matter what you are wearing, or covered in, someone at the next table is most likely more outrageous than you.






M, after it was all done. His clothes are clean only because he changed before he left the site. He didn't want to ruin his truck. Some day the black goop will be off his arms.

So many, many kudos to M's coworker, we know there were better things he could be doing with his time. Thanks to everyone else who helped especially A&W for allowing us to borrow your garage, so someone wouldn't walk off with a $1000 worth of goop. What would someone do with that stuff anyway??

And please admire "our" handiwork. As soon as they fill, it will only be a fine memory, and hopefully a dry basement!



Beautiful, isn't it.

Oh, and you can check out the rest of the progress here.

We have Walls!!

Or at least a basement! That in itself is pretty spectacular for Georgia. Yes, that is M checking out the work from above. He was really pleased with how the guys did the form work. All the rebar was centered and construction stuff like that. AKA if M's happy Zilla's happy!

Now, for all you out there that have not been able to make their way over to the site, I have set up some online tours. So click here Mum! That should take you right to the slide show. There is also what the action looks like from the street and general goings-on.

All-in-all it has been a couple of pretty exciting weeks in the our little world. They start framing next week, M is thinking that will take about three weeks to complete.

Happy Birthday Bud!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUD!!

I had a great time visiting Bud this past weekend and celebrating his birthday. It was a weekend of sports, fun, and just a few drinks in Salt Lake City. I arrived on Friday night and had dinner with Bud and our Cousin MW. We had a great time chatting and I got to experience my first 3.2 beer, not terrible, not great, just kinda sweet tasting. Bud and I also spent part of Friday watching the curling epic "Men With Brooms". He and I are already planning for a repeat performance at the Stevens Point Mixed next year. (yes, not only did Bud get my fabulous presence as a birthday present I got him a DVD of Men with Brooms)

The next morning we got up an walked in the rain to The Park Cafe. The breakfast was stellar with the potatoes getting my ultimate compliment. Yes, I did not use ketchup, they were that good. We then went to the Tracy Aviary and had a ball. Daddy, they even had a crow!

My favorite bird was the kookaburra, although it brought up one of the many camp songs from childhood:

Kookaburra sits in an old gum tree
Merry merry king of the bush is he
Laugh kookaburra
Laugh kookaburra,
Gay your life must be

After a few minutes Bud made me stop singing it, but it continued to play in my head all day long.





That night, after watching the Brewers win, we headed out to the Tavernacle. I'm not quite sure what Salt Lake City thought of our Wisconsin-style celebration. But, I am sure the dueling pianists have had that much fun in a while. Let's just say, no one got hurt and we made some new friends.

Here we are at the end of the night, a friend of Bud's, MW, me, Bud and some random guy who popped into the picture.







On Sunday, Bud's actual birthday, after watching the Brewers and the Packers lose, we headed up to catch the tail end of Octoberfest at Snowbird. The mountains were gorgeous, topped with their first snowfall and Bud and I took in a little polka!

While I was away, M was keeping track of the house progress. We now have forms up for the basement/garage and things look like they are coming along.