Fish and I are finally making some visible progress on the sailboat. 

( Delays, and progress, and delays, and progress. )

Finally, after a year of working, watching, and waiting, the Red Mantis is the proper color.  We'll add a couple more coats in the next few days, along with replacing some rigging hardware with new stuff that Fish picked up yesterday.  I need to make some phone calls to our helpers, but there's a distinct possibility that we'll be on the water on the 8th, and failing that, it's almost a certainty that we'll launch on the 14th.

I'm so excited, I could pee!

Photos & captions:  April and May;  July

No, I didn't hit last night's MegaMillions drawing.  But we did get a buoy on Lake Calhoun at the Parks Department lottery!  Lake Harriet was our first choice, but it filled up before they drew our card.  Calhoun's not a bad runner-up, though.  Nearly the same size, with plenty of other "big" boats, and it turns out that the Lake Calhoun Yacht Club started a keelboat racing program last year.  Prolly goes without saying that Fish and I will be giving them a call to discuss details.  I'm sure our friends on Harriet will be disappointed, but they can come visit -- it's right next door.

( It's just that there's so much to do... )

It's a fairly daunting list, but with Fish and I both working on it, I don't think it'll kill me.  Lemur, on the other hand, may kill me if I don't spare some time and energy for the house and the yard, both of which need plenty of attention in their own right.  The house paint is shot, the front yard is a disaster, the stump of our former boulevard tree needs to be dealt with, the flower beds need a new layer of mulch, and the garage seems to be listing to starboard.  I'm starting to think that I may have to take a couple of days off so as to have some long weekends to work with.

Better yet, maybe I'll win the lottery...

Some quick updates:

Kat came to visit us over Easter weekend.  She arrived late Thursday, and we spent Friday and Saturday eating our way across the Twin Cities.  Sunday was Easter dinner with my family at my brother's place.  Highlight of the day was my youngest niece giving Kat a hand-drawn card that read, "EVEN THOAGH I DONT KNOW YOU I MADE YOU THIS CARD.  HAVE A HAPPY EASTER!"

Leems and I have decided that the green in the kitchen isn't really working for us, so we're going to have to pick another shade and try again.  Fortunately, it shouldn't take much work to recover things.  Plus, it's the lower half of the wall, so there won't be the six hundred trips up and down the stepstool.  We'll have to go get some paint some night this week.

Last Wednesday, I got a call at 4:50 from the Chairman.  "I need to see you right away.  Meet me in Nick's office."  (Nick is my grandboss.)  Having just sat through my annual review on Tuesday, I was wondering what horrible thing I could have done in the intervening 24 hours.  To my relief, it was just a special project for which the Chairman needed my wizard-like skillz.

In a similar vein, I'm doing a demo on Friday for the monthly corporate meeting wherein I shall show off the whiz-bang new product I put together over the winter.  I'm hoping it goes well.

This past weekend, we wrapped up the radio station pledge drive, spent a small fortune on boat paint, helped Fishtie clear some brush from his back yard, and got new cell phones that have keyboards so that Lemur doesn't have to use a regular keypad to text her brother.  Plus, I did our taxes.  (Not planning to give up the libertarian leaning any time soon.)  I also dug out our bikes and tuned them up a bit.  I actually rode my bike to work yesterday!  (This morning was thunderstorms, so I wussed out and took the bus.)

Tonight, I'm off with Fish to attend the Minneapolis Parks lottery for mooring buoys.  Hopefully, within the next couple of hours, we'll find out where our baby will live for the summer.  Yay!

Last night, Janice came home around eight to find me trying to get the stubborn white residue off my hands.  After more than an hour of playing with caulk in the shower, I'd managed to make quite a sticky mess.  That stuff just gets all over the place, y'know?  It's like it has a mind of its own. 

I'd hoped to have things put in order before her arrival, but you know how it goes -- once you start playing with caulk in the shower, you're pretty much committed to finish the job, no matter how long it takes.

On the bright side -- I think I'm through playing with caulk in the shower.  At least until the next time it needs it.

Finished painting the kitchen on Sunday.  We went with a buttery yellow on the top half, and painted the paneling a dark green.  It's darker that what I had in mind originally, but that's the color Lemur wanted, and I know better than to argue with the spouse on matters of interior design.  It looks good now that it's all finished.  I still think the lighter shade would be better, and Lemur mentioned that she was leaning in that direction herself, but I'm not sure if I care enough to repaint.  We'll see.

Spent a couple of nights last week filling and patching and sanding and smoothing, so Saturday was just prime and paint, and Sunday was second coat and touch-ups.  Still, that's an awful lot of stretching and crouching and going up and down the stepladder, and I was feeling a bit creaky yesterday.  Guess it's time to break out the bike and see if I can't put on a few miles and take off a few pounds.

Our friend Kat is visiting for the weekend, so it looks like there's no rest for the weary.  Tonight it's re-caulking the downstairs shower and generally making the basement a less scary place for visitors.  (Overheard at Chez Squid last night: "Honey, what are you doing?"  "I'm pulling off some caulk in the shower!"  "Well, try not to go blind!")  Tomorrow it'll be the upstairs.  And we're expecting temps in the 70s for the next couple of days, which means I should probably take the plastic off the windows and give them a good cleaning, as well.  Thank Mantis that the main floor got its good scrubbing already!

Paraphrasing one of the commenters over at Throwing Things:


I'm not sure which camp I fall in; I suspect it would have a lot to do with my mood on a particular day, or perhaps on how early I started drinking.  But I'm pretty sure this guy is right -- any review for this one is about as superfluous as you can get.

On this date in history, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the Stamp Act of 1765.  Popular reaction was such that the tax stamp distributors resigned their commissions, and the tax was never effectively implemented. 

Just a little bit of trivia for all you history buffs.

We received a shipment of round tuits this weekend, and promptly used 'em up.

( Domestic chores... )

Now, if I can just keep up this momentum...

A bunch of my work revolves around financial forecasting for cities and counties, and so I spend a lot of time looking at property value reports.  As luck would have it, our property tax assessment came in this week, and our house has dropped another 10% in estimated value since last year, which is consistent with trends in our county.  This follows an 8.4% drop last year, and a 4.5% drop the year before that.  Essentially, my property has reverted to its 2002 value.  (It should come as no surprise that this trend has many of my clients going out of their flippin' minds.)

Since I have the CPI values for the last fifteen years handy (another job hazard), I thought I'd plug in our home value from when we bought it back in '99.  Sure enough, our house is worth exactly* as much as it was the day we bought it, in inflation-adjusted dollars.  On the bright side, at least we're not upside-down on the mortgage.  Nor have we ever treated the house like an alternate source of income, pulling equity out to pay off credit cards to maintain a lifestyle above our means.  Too many of my cow-orkers can't say the same.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to writing my report.  Anyone know of a diplomatic way of telling an elected body that the gravy train has run out, and they need to revert to 2002** revenues and service levels?  'Cuz I'm pretty much stuck.


* Okay, not exactly.  We actually made $1,050 since 1998.  Woo hoo!

** It's way worse than that, actually, since their personnel costs have gone up way quicker than the CPI.  I wish diplo-speak was easier.

So, here's the deal: I took the last bottle of beer out of my fridge last night and drank it.  Ordinarily, this would mean a trip to the liquor store to purchase reinforcements.  But here's the thing: it's St. Patrick's Day, and I'm in the middle of very Irish Catholic St. Paul.  Do I really want to venture in there, today of all days?

Oh, such a vexing quandary!

In other news, I shaved my head last night.  My scalp is all tingly.  Pray we don't get a late cold snap!