a busy little bee...

Lots going on this week. I've got a lot to do to the house before company comes, and miles to go before I sleep.

Ever more crashing waves of realization break on the shore as I work on this house. It's a cute house. Its core was well-done. The funny thing-- considering I've had a major renovation house project previously-- is that I naively thought this wasn't THAT big a reno when I bought it. Goodness me, but if I re-do everything here in the way I really think it should be done, this house will be essentially built again, and at a cost of materials no one would ever see back out of the place. Therefore am I led down the primrose path of justifying ethnically engineering the shit out of the place. I'll just try to make less of a pig's ear of the job than the previous owner.

I could recount for you here the myriad ghetto-assed touches which spring forward upon closer inspection like mushrooms after a rainstorm, but that would perhaps try your patience.

There's a lot of paneling here.
In this region of Texas, drywall is bad to crack as houses shift with varying degrees of moisture in the ground due to rainfall or the lack thereof. At first I thought the painted-over paneling was beastly, but I have come to genuinely appreciate that I can paint the ever-lovin' dickens out of it, and it won't crack. In fact, I rather like the painted surface. Is the redneck rubbing off on me?

The paneling in the bathroom was thin plywood paneling with an ever-so-lifelike photocopy of actual wood effect, never having been painted. Quelle horreur. I have a lot of other stuff to accomplish, but I concluded Tuesday that I could bear it no longer, and I whipped out the Zinsser and commenced to cover this offense, with intent to paint over that at the soonest possible moment.

The Zinsser's fumes are foul, but it covers paneling and wood surfaces well. My being vertically challenged, Himself will have to get some of the upper-most bits, but suffice to say I have about put the kibosh on the lion's share of photocopied woodwork in the house, glory be.
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Tuesday, my phone line crapped out, that being the phone line I jabber on 40 hours a week for money. Into the office I had to go, because the phone company told me they couldn't send a technician. A couple hours after I arrive at the office, I get word that a technician was at the house and-- lo-and-behold!-- more ethnic engineering had struck again-- someone had lopped off a phone line from the box to the house and it all went wonky in a windstorm Monday night, apparently. They got it all squared away, but I stayed at the office in town, though, because some people begged me to. I'll be there Wednesday, too. Someone came by the veal cube of a vacationing person to talk to me, but I was on the phone and she went away. She came back two hours later to tell me to disinfect the cube. Knowing she actively detests the vacationing regular occupant of that cube, I chuckled. She said "no. seriously. That person has staph. You better disinfect the hell out of this thing."

Remind me again why I wanted to start working from home?
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Like I said, miles to go before I sleep.