Category: Daily Life

So yeah, that was a longer break than I'd intended.

Since my last post, I walked across this (both ways):

I took well over 200 additional photos in San Francisco while on the job as part of the PR team for the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk. Even though I was working the entire time, I think it was my favorite trip to San Francisco to date because it really gave me a feel for why people love the city so much.

On my airplane trips back and forth, I read all or part of three books:

All very different, but each quite entertaining in its own way.

When I got home I was beyond tired. I almost fell asleep in a post-work meeting on Wednesday after a day where everyone I encountered told me how horrible I looked. I think I'm finally caught back up on sleep.

When I got back, I set about filling up my calendar to a ridiculous extent. I have three things to do today and five tomorrow. One of the things I'm doing tomorrow required me to sign a release form that says I won't blog about it. Sigh.

Somehow it's already mid-October and I feel like I missed the better part of a month by jetting in and out of town so much. Fortunately I have a delightfully warm hat that I purchased in San Francisco to stave off the cold winds by the bay, so I'm ready for anything.

NaBloPoMo is approaching and I am prepared to tackle it again rather than break my streak. As with previous years, I'll probably put together an editorial calendar so I'm not at a loss for topics when I'm facing each day's blank text box.

Did I miss anything important? What's going on with you?

Don't get me wrong, I love fall. In fact, it may be my favorite season. I'm enamored of the quality of the sunlight, the beautiful leaves, and the crisp air. There's nothing I enjoy more than driving to Weston for their annual Applefest (which I'm going to miss this year because of my travel schedule, darn it!). I also care a great deal for chrysanthemums and pumpkins.

However, there's the little matter of the shorter days. I don't use an alarm clock, so I'm already experiencing the daily disappointment of waking up in pitch darkness only to discover that, indeed, it's time for me to get up. It won't be long before I'm driving to work in the dark and driving home from work in the dark, too.

I'm aware of the futility of complaining about the angle and rotation of the Earth, and yet I'm doing it anyway. Maybe a nice pumpkin pie will make me feel better.

I went to the doctor today for my annual checkup. For once, I actually had a pretty solid mental list of ailments ready to rattle off so I wouldn't forget to address anything with her while I had the chance.

Toward the end of our chat, I mentioned a couple of warts that had been bugging me and resisting my efforts to make them go away. She casually said, "Oh, they're a virus and very common. Really, the surprising thing is that people aren't just covered with them all the time. And fungus, too."

From a scientific perspective, I found that quite fascinating. But a big part of my brain couldn't get beyond thinking, "Ewwww!"

I have a business trip every Thursday for the next three weeks. Tomorrow's is a quick there-and-back jaunt, but next week I'm going to the Type A Mom Conference in Asheville, North Carolina, and the following week I'll be at the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk in San Francisco.

I'm crossing my fingers hoping that I won't get sick from all of the flights and exposure to the general public. Just last night I was eating in a crowded restaurant and a guy at the next table started coughing and coughing. I actually slid to the extreme end of my booth seat away from him and ate my meal pressed against the wall. So yeah, I'm a little paranoid about germs.

In other news, it looks like I have two bands going that are both making progress. The new one I joined a couple of weeks ago is already on track to have almost two sets learned by this weekend. The one I'm in with my husband has had a good response to ads looking for a bass player, so I'm hoping we can audition a few on Sunday.

Friday is my sister's birthday, so I'm having her and her family over for dinner. I've already made a chocolate cake roll with caramel praline ice cream filling. For dinner, we're having baked ziti with roasted vegetables, many of which are from my CSA share. Oh, and probably a green salad.

Last but not least, I've started a virtual team for Lee National Denim Day. If you've never participated, the whole idea is that you donate $5 and get to wear jeans to work on October 2nd. Obviously since we don't all work together, the jeans thing is up in the air. However, a $5 donation should be pretty manageable for most people, even in this economy. The money goes to breast cancer research. If you're interested in joining my team, just click here.

That's it for now, folks. Enjoy your Wednesday!

When we bought our house in 1995 and up until recently, it never occurred to me or my husband to closely question the build date of 1950 that had been printed on all of our mortgage paperwork. However, serious doubt has crept in of late.

It started when a band came over to record a few months ago. Several of the band members were contractors and they casually mentioned something about our house having been built in the 1930s based on the limestone block foundation.

When I took the home repair course a couple of weeks ago, I got more ammunition for the argument that our house was built before 1950 based on the original fuse box.

The more we thought about it, the more the 1950 story didn't add up. I dug out the inspection paperwork from our purchase and discovered that even the inspector judged the house to have been built in the 1940s.

There are lots of little details in the unrenovated parts of the house that hint at a pre-1950s origin, including glass doorknobs,

picture molding (and lath-and-plaster walls and ceiling, for that matter),

the original hearth tile,

and possibly even the hinges on the basement cabinets.

Our doubt intensified when we looked at the real estate listing for the house next door to us that's currently for sale. It clearly states that our neighbor's house was built in 1939. When I told my husband, he recalled that our elderly neighbor across the street had once told him that our house was built before that house. So the 1930s estimate of the contractors may have been right on the money.

It seems pretty clear that we were misled about the age of our house when we bought it, either purposely or due to poor record-keeping. We know that our subdivision was established around 1950, so it's possible that some dates got mixed up on a form at some point and never corrected.

One of these days, I might go down to City Hall and do some additional research just for my own amusement. Until then, I'll just have to look for more clues right in front of me.

A couple of weeks ago, my sister's Facebook status was "is getting burned up by her 4-year-old about when he can have a sleep over!"

It occurred to me that my nephew, Ian, had never stayed over at our house, despite the fact that his sister was a sleepover veteran by the time she was his age. Thus, I volunteered to have him spend a night over this weekend. To make the whole thing even more exciting, I decided that we'd set up my tent in the back yard and sleep there.

I put the tent in the back of the yard near the fenceline. It didn't occur to me until my husband pointed it out that I'd put it pretty much exactly where we saw bobcats in our yard a couple of years ago. Heh.

My sister dropped him off yesterday a little after 5 p.m. as I was finishing all of the prep for our picnic supper of grilled hot dogs, yellow watermelon, corn on the cob and potato chips. He was very excited and kept declaring that it was going to be the "bestest sleepover ever!"

After dinner we made s'mores. It's harder to toast a marshmallow over a charcoal grill than you might think.

Notice that my niece, Shay, made a point of marking her presence before she went home. According to my sister, she was rather jealous that her brother got a solo sleepover.

Ian enjoyed his first s'more. Well, about half of it anyway.

We had some time to kill between dinner and bedtime, so we took our sleeping bags out to the tent and checked it out.

After that, we went inside and bugged my husband for a while (drums are fun!) and then watched a few episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants. Around 8:30, Ian declared that it was dark outside and thus it must be bedtime. I'm certainly not one for staying up late, but 8:30 is considerably earlier than I usually like to turn in. Nevertheless, Ian was insistent.

We borrowed a flashlight from my husband and made our way to the tent. After two trips back into the house for water and Ian's stuffed puppy, we were ready to settle down for the night.

Well, I was ready to settle down for the night. Ian was more interested in playing with the flashlight and discussing the trains that we could hear in the distance. Eventually I zipped him into his new Lightning McQueen sleeping bag for the umpteenth time and we both fell asleep.

My sleep was pretty typical of all of my camping experiences. I had a sleeping bag and a sleeping mat, but the mat doesn't cushion the ground as well as I'd like. I kept waking up with one arm asleep or my lower back hurting.

On one of my wakeup occasions, Ian happened to be awake, too, and he was in a chatty mood. I checked the time on my cell phone and it was a little after 3:30 a.m., so I was hoping against hope that he would settle back down. After another discussion about the train, we both fell back asleep until 7:30.

After confirming that it truly had been the best sleepover ever, we went inside to say goodnight to my husband. We then made a quick grocery store run for breakfast supplies and I made us bacon and waffles. We watched a couple more episodes of Spongebob, then Ian said he was ready to go home. Since I had run out of ways to entertain him, that worked out pretty well. We packed his suitcase (forgetting only his OU hat), and I ran him back home.

In other news, yesterday's audition went well, so I'll be working with a new band starting next weekend. This one seems like it'll come together pretty quickly with a set list that's similar to the kinds of things my last working band used to play, so I'll keep everyone posted on gigs.

That's all I have for now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

I didn't mean to leave that last post up so long, but our AT&T U-Verse router went bad and I was 'net-less for much of last week.

Hey, if you're interested in taking one of the home repair classes like the one I described in my previous post, you can get a 15% discount for being my blog reader. Just sign up for a class at http://www.k2workshops.org and use discount code BF15AJ091X during checkout.

I've been auditioning with bands quite a bit lately – an average of once per week. I think the party band has finally stopped circling the drain and has, in fact, gone down it. I showed up for practice on Tuesday and there was no one there. I called the band leader to ask about it and still haven't heard back so…yeah.

Today I have an audition with a band that practices just a few blocks away. That would be convenient. I'm still working with my husband and a guitarist to get Earthquake Jake revived as a contemporary hard rock cover band, but that's going to take a while.

Last night we had a fun evening out seeing some friends' Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute band called Stadium Arcadium. It kicked off a weekend that is going to include backyard camping with my four-year-old nephew tonight (I'll take lots of photos!), a recording session tomorrow, and some spontaneous fun on Monday (nothing planned yet, but we're thinking about it).

Enjoy your weekend!

My husband is our household go-to guy for computer and A/V stuff and I
seem to remember him replacing a light fixture once, but in general he
is not a handyman. On the other hand, I've repaired each of our toilets
multiple times, replaced several light switches and am always the one called upon to assemble
furniture and things like that. I'll put it this way: almost all of our tools belong to me.

When I got an e-mail from Carrie at K2 WorkShops offering me the opportunity to take their Home Improvement Champion 101: Basic Home Repair Workshop for Women at no charge, naturally I jumped at the chance to improve my skills and learn some new ones.

I showed up at 9:00 a.m. yesterday and was greeted by the instructors, Krista Williamson and Julie Lozano, both of whom are inspiring in their knowledge and curiosity about fixing pretty much anything. Rita and Kelli were there, too, along with Carrie and three other women.

The classroom there is very cool:

Each student has a workbench area with carefully selected tools and a hands-on space behind her which will not be nearly as pristine by the end of class.

Krista started by showing us how to install a towel rack.

Now this is something I've done before, but I've always been a bit lax about things like wall anchors, so now I know how to do it right. In fact, I'll be applying that knowledge today to reinstall the paper towel holder in the studio bathroom. Heh.

The class made me quickly realize that it's high time I purchased a better drill. The old plug-in one that throws off sparks from the motor while I'm drilling needs to be retired in favor of one of these sleek rechargeables with a lithium battery. Ahem, in case anyone is looking for an early Christmas hint…

The next lesson was about patching sheetrock. I'm fine with spackling over small holes, but until yesterday I had no idea how to patch a large area of sheetrock. Now we all know how.

It is a rather messy process, though:

After a break for box lunches from Jason's Deli, we resumed our lessons with some basic electrical rewiring. Julie walked us through replacing a light switch, installing a dimmer switch and replacing a light fixture.

I asked a lot of questions about the electrical in my own house and learned that it would probably be best if I had an electrician replace my non-grounded outlets with 3-prong ones. However, I can easily replace the ceiling fan in our bedroom myself, as long as I pay attention to which hot wire goes to the light and which one powers the fan. Oh, and I really need to get all of the aluminum wiring removed from the finished part of our basement because it's a fire hazard.

The class ended around 4:00 p.m. after an overview of various plumbing drains and how to remove clogs from any of them. Did you know that some people flush dental floss down the toilet? Don't ever do that.

I was very impressed by the workshop. Even though I already knew how to do some of the things we covered, it definitely improved my confidence and taught me useful tips that will make each type of project much easier in the future.

I think the workshop I took would make an excellent gift for someone's wedding, housewarming, graduation, etc. They offer single-topic classes that go into more depth on electrical and plumbing repairs. There's even a class about fixing things around your house before you put it on the market.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head over to the hardware store to get some wall anchors. I have a towel rack and a toilet paper holder to install.

One of the weirdest things that blogging and Twitter have wrought upon my life is that I now belong to a sizeable social group wherein almost everyone goes by an alias.

Yesterday I had lunch with Spyder and Hoochimama.

Last weekend I went to an Elvis-themed party at XO's house and ate grilled peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches with PrincessofWorld, Toast, Spyder, Kanga, Banky, Thundabolt and Well Hell Michelle. Sponge showed up right after we left.

The weekend before that, I played Battlestar Galactica at PrincessofWorld's house with Banky, Logtar and Betizuka. CodeRigger, QueenTuffy, KipKillagin, TaraCuda and Imaginary_Mark were there, too. Kinda sounds like everyone was imaginary, doesn't it? 

I call almost everyone in the group by their actual first names. Some of them call me by my real name; others call me Jane or A.J. I'll answer to any of them.

Renaming myself is not a new development. When I was the staff
writer for a small teen magazine right after college, I wrote a lot of
articles under various pseudonyms so it would look like they had more
writers. In my early band days, I used the stage name "B.C. Irons." In
fact, when I first met my husband, he called me B.C. for quite some
time before he got used to my real name.

My husband has been using a stage name for decades, but has never legally changed his name. Even his family and old friends mostly
call him by the name he chose for himself; most other people would
never know unless they looked at his driver's license or checkbook.

Having
lots of non-musician friends with nicknames – that's a new development.
It doesn't help that I've always been bad about remembering names and
now I have to learn TWO names for everyone…and remember who prefers
not to have his or her real name mentioned online.

I love my new gang, but I can't help stopping now and then to think about how odd the names must seem to anyone who isn't steeped in the world of social media. Fortunately, I'm rather odd myself.