Flat Amy

Remember last post where I was letting some floor levelizing cement dry?  Turns out I mis-mixed that cement and it turned into a minor disaster, solidifying into a dried up lakebed:

After much rip up and many apologies to my overworked vacuums, I finally got it right on the 4th application:

Then continued laying planks nights and weekends:

Here I am on row 100:

For my 25 IBM anniversary 5 years ago I got a nice set of DeWalt cordless tools. Finally put them to good use:

My $110 table saw has also been getting a good workout. I figured about 300 cuts so far:

Last weekend, I finished the living room!  See if you can tell the difference … before:

And after:

As a reward, I treated myself to a floor cleaning robot.  This guy is a $300 Mint 5200:

Unlike the Roombas, these guys don’t vacuum up stuff, they collect it on their replaceable Swiffer or washable microfiber cloths.  Works great!

Next up is our bedroom.  I got the carpet ripped out … if anyone one wants some used stuff, only partially pet peed, I have a nice pile:

I had intentions on laying the bedroom floor his weekend, but I tweaked my back, so am taking a flooring break for a bit.

Yesterday I wandered around Park City while Helen presented and attended at a conference.   I had the most fun wandering around the trails around the 2002 Olympic jumps.   This one has artificial snow with a big pool at the bottom they fill up in the summer so they can practice all year round:

One of our friends from New York, Amy, sent us flat version of herself to take on some adventures and then send back to her school with stories and pictures.   Her she is contemplating the long jump:

If you look closely, you can see here joining this billboard sized sledder for a ride:

This is at the start of the bobslead run … just after I took this, a wind gust took Amy and dropped her deep underneath the bobsled track.    The tracks were closed, and nobody else was around, so I slipped under the fenced and rescued her.

After that Flat Amy was ready to return to New York.

Bruce

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One more … I’m going to skip the caption for this one.    If I tried one, you all would start having an unsettling sense of Déjà vu.

1/2 floored

Our flooring makeover is in full swing.  I’m waiting for some cement to dry, so time to post!

A construction (rather de-construction) mystery photo:

This is our basement, as it was last month:

And this is it today.   Note, the poky, dying cactus on the right didn’t make it to the new home … he is now outside. I never liked him much as he is they guy who killed 2 of our sitting balls.

We decided on tiling the stairs, rather than wood:

That mystery photo was a closeup of the carnage left in the wake of my destruction of the glass fireplace hearth.  They used a lot of glue putting those mirrors down!

I’d like to take credit for the stone and tile work, but that goes to the pros, Noah and his brother.  They did a great job!

They finished last week and I started on the living room wood flooring.   The carpet under my workstation was the last of the living room carpet to go … I worked off the floor for part of one night:

I invested in a $110 table saw:

And 3000 lbs, ($3k for 1100 sq feet),  of 14 mm laminate flooring:

I started in the corner last weekend:

We had a guest for the week, Irena.   She helped me here by standing on the floor while I hammered it:

After 2 weekends, here is the current state, about 1/3 done:

I messed up two cuts for circular floor outlets before we got smart on how to mark them more accurately.  I was looking for lipstick, to paint on the outlet to transfer to the plank, but Helen doesn’t use lipstick (neither do I).   So she suggested deodorant instead, works great!

There are several places our floor is not level enough, so I poured about 200 lbs of levelizing cement, which is drying now:

Looking at my photos for the month, the only non-flooring photos I have are from when we took Boris and Irena to our first concert at the Salt Lake Symphony Hall:

They have one of those amazing, but (in my opinion) fairly ugly glass sculptures by that famous one-eyed glass blower in the lobby:

Next month I’m guessing you will get more floor photos.   Sorry about that.  After that set, you will probably be safe from floor photos for a couple of more decades.

Floored

Greetings from a couple of snowy people

We had a fun snowstorm that included some low flying clouds that, when parked over the university, combined with the university lights, made it look like they was a massive fire!

 

We just marked our 1 year anniversary here.   Seems that was a long enough penance of living with carpet to cover any past sins, so we are about to renovate 1700 square feet of flooring, a combination of travertine, tile, and wood.    To pick the wood, we did stress tests of a bunch of samples.   Here I’m doing the wrench drop:  

And Helen did the knife test:

We also did water, sandpaper, and rocks.   Here are some of the samples looking the worse for wear:

Today I started, with some pleasure, ripping out the carpet:

I’ll do the wood install and hire out the stone and tile installs.

In other news, Nick has been hard at work on porting Skritter to the Ixxx universe.   He has a fun preview video here:

    http://www.skritter.com/ios

And in slightly older news (from December), here is an article about one of the activities that has been keeping Helen busy:

 http://healthcare.utah.edu/neurosciences/news/pressreleases/sep_directors.html

And in amazing stuff from the future news, here are some of the latest things those amazing flying robots can do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YQIMGV5vtd4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S-dkonAXOlQ

I was impressed.   This guy was not impressed:

Bruce

Harvesting Mangos

The LDS Salt Lake Temple is pretty amazing.  40 years to build, 210 feet (120 cubits) tall, 9 feet thick walls of hand hewn granite.   Care to guess the difference between these two photos?   Same wall, same night, one is backwards:

I’m guessing you’ve guessed it.   The first one is upside down, taken by looking into a reflecting pool.

This is what the Utah state capital would look like after being buried by 100 feet of ash after the Yellowstone super volcano erupts. 

And this is what a biker would look like if he stopped to watch the super volcano erupt: 

And this is what Helen would look like if we went out for a fun ski trip with Marie, one of the residents:

And this is what I would look like if I was being chased by an angry turtle on a snowmobile:

And this is what Helen would look like if I coaxed here up the trail for a sunset hike:

We enjoyed fun New Years visits from both Aya

and Noah.

  Here Helen is instructing children on how to harvest garlic:

This is Aya teaching Noah how to harvest a Mango:

And here how to harvest an mp3 file:

And here Aya is harvesting knowledge from a school book:

And here they are both harvesting Chess men:

Which Helen did not find very tasty:

We took our first trip to Park City:

where we passed on the opportunity to buy $10,000 wolf fur coats or $1,000 cowboy boots.

Finally, I also had the opportunity to eat two exotic foods.   The first was this boxelder bug, who is wintering with his clan in our house: 

The second was this hand crafted cinnamon sugar snowball:

I decided to save the bug as a treat for our next visitor.   Anyone up for a visit?

Bruce