Water lines by Rube Goldberg, aka what happens when you tell the guy at Home Depot that you want to hook up a dishwasher without soldering anything.

Eh — maybe I should have just left well enough alone.

Another couple run-throughs without leaking and I’ll put the cover panel back on the dishwasher. You were wondering.

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And for as extremely polite as they are to your face, southerners are the most impolite drivers in the country. There, it’s been said.

Meanwhile, cool battlefields and cemeteries:

This is an artillery piece from the Yorktown National Battlefield. For as important a battle as it was (it was the last major action in the Revolutionary War), there wasn’t a whole lot to look at. OTOH, the movie was informative and didn’t make me hate George Washington like Mt. Vernon’s did.

Some monument commemorating the battle. The setting is pretty, fwiw. I’d rather have died of a musket shot here than most places.

This artillery is from the Petersburg National Battlefield. There was a lot to see there. It was sort of the South’s last hope at keeping the North out of their one industrial center in Richmond. Was struck by how similar the tactics here were to those employed in World War I (a lot of trenches, stalemates, and unfortunate runs across no-man’s lands). Also thought that the whole thing with the Pennsylvanian miners digging tunnels under the Confederate lines in order to blow them up with dynamite was pretty cool, even if it wasn’t decisive or anything.

On a side-note, Petersburg is as run-down a town as I’ve ever visited, but otoh lunch specials at the Chinese place in town were under $6. There may be a correlation.

Here’s what the Blandford Cemetery looks like:

It was kind of cool. The church there was, after the war, turned into a “memorial chapel”. The Tiffany Company donated stained glass windows for it, with one window for each state that was aligned with the South (including Missouri and Maryland). I pointed out to the tour guide that the windows’ backgrounds corresponded with the actual direction you were facing (e.g., the western windows had mountains in the background, eastern had ocean), which apparently had never occurred to her. Maybe they don’t get many visitors.

Her: That *could* be what it is.

Me: Well, the sun is rising over the ocean in the eastern windows.

Her: Or is it setting?

Me: Assuming that’s the east, I hope it’s rising.

Although it’d be interesting if the earth started spinning the other direction. Kudos to her for keeping that dream alive.

Jefferson Davis’s grave:

Seems weird he was buried in Richmond rather than in Mississippi, where he was a senator. I dunno, whatever. He moved around a lot.

The cemetery is called the Hollywood Cemetery. There are some CSA generals buried there, IIRC, and a couple of forgettable US presidents as well. They also have this:

You just don’t hear much about the Jewish Confederate experience.

Monroe and Tyler Too were the presidents. I guess there are more forgettable ones out there.

And then driving out of Richmond, I cruised down Monument Boulevard, which includes monuments to six of Richmond’s favorite sons (most of whom were not from Richmond):

• (Gen.) Robert E. Lee
• (Gen.) J.E.B. Stuart
• (Pres.) Jefferson Davis
• (Gen.) “Stonewall” Jackson
• Matthew Fontaine Maury (renowned oceanographer (?!) and Confederate “Chief of Sea Coast, River and Harbor Defences” in Virginia)
• Arthur Ashe (the tennis player)

One of these kids is not like the others. Nice houses on the street, though. A lot of statues of guys on horses. One statue of a guy with a tennis racket.

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Hoping to get the sink, dishwasher, and disposal done this weekend still. Today? Sure, I’ll hope that, whatever.

Still to go:

• Sink
• Faucet
• Dishwasher
• Disposal
• Sink Cabinet Doors
• Toe Kicks
• Caulk on Countertops
• Outlets (2x)
• Backsplash (this might not happen soon)
• Over-the-Range Microwave (ibid)
• Window Blinds
• Baseboards
• Paint Touch-Up
• Floor Transition Strip

So I got that going for me.

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That’s the White House of the Confederacy. The exterior is pretty unprepossessing. The side shown above is actually the back — the front is plainer. Supposedly the back was done up more because it’s the side that faces the (James) river and the place where guests would have hung out. Richmond city planners didn’t exactly go out of their way to preserve the “sanctity” of the location. The brick hospital that surrounds it on all sides is one of the uglier hospital complexes I’ve ever seen in my life.

For that matter, Richmond’s an aesthetically disappointing city generally. The topography should lend itself to something cool, but it hasn’t happened. Probably because all the good stuff got destroyed in the war (although they’ve had 145 years to recover).

The white house is a nice mansion. The stuff inside was cool. Plenty of smoking parlors, very tasteful. George Eastman and I could’ve hung out there and felt at ease, although I guess we both probably would’ve been weirded out by the slaves there. The tour guide looked like he was half-man, half-bloodhound, but he knew the heck out of that mansion, Richmond, Jefferson Davis, and the Confederacy. And fwiw, Davis didn’t really live here very long. Three years IIRC.

It  also didn’t cost much compared to less historically-relevant mansions (I think the museum + mansion ticket was $12; I mean, not *cheap*, but not hilariously awful either).

The museum was all right-to-good. It didn’t hammer home the Civil War story of the Confederacy like I thought it would — mostly just short write-ups on key battles posted next to displays of flags and uniforms. They had some cool artwork that I liked though. I think this is the most famous Confederate painting that exists:

Depicts the last meeting of Generals Lee and Jackson — before Jackson died from pneumonia at Spotsylvania.

My favorite part of the museum, though, was the more proletariat-focused art. Like this:

These are just a couple of pencil sketches done by some confederate soldier. I’m guessing they’re depicting one of the better days in camp (fishing with your buddies, hanging out by the fire smoking your pipe), but I think it explains a whole lot more about the Civil War experience than does Stonewall’s revolver — not just in terms of content, but in terms of perspective. It also supports my thesis on humanity that even the most horrendous situations become normal to people over time. Yep.

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It’s where George Washington sort of took over from aristocratic old-school British General Edward Braddock in the French and Indian War. Supposedly Washington also sort of helped spark the war by leading an attack on a different French fort. And at some point Washington decided he needed to build a fort or else his guys would be unprotected from the French (ergo: “Fort Necessity”), and so this happened:

Soldiers were smaller back then — to them, this was palatial.

The pathway for tourists was not original to the fort. I’m not convinced these are the original earthworks, either. “Unprepossessing” was the word that kept coming to mind.

I mean, if you were to claim that the French and Indian War is the event that precipitated the American Revolution and  that George Washington’s sort of chicken move on the position of a nation that his wasn’t at war with yet was indeed the start of the French and Indian War, then this is a really important historical location. Anyway. Valley Forge and Bunker Hill better name recognition; that’s tough to fight. Plus there’s nothing to see here.

The fort lies along US 40, aka “The National Highway”. This was a highway originally dreamed up by George Washington, who, as I learned at Mt. Vernon, is responsible for everything good in the world. That Pat Sajack movie at Mt. Vernon really made me dislike George Washington, who apparently looked like a 50-year-old when he was 30. Different trip to Virginia though. Highway was meant to connect stuff east of the Alleghenies to stuff west of them (i.e., The Ohio Valley). I think that just because he started the French and Indian War, ol’ G-Dub had to make out like the Ohio Valley was super-important.

I probably like George Washington. That movie at Mt. Vernon really sucked though. Whatever. There’s an old tavern that’s on the same parks service site as the fort.

I didn’t go on the tour, so I don’t know if this tavern’s actually important. The highway was sort of important in that it actually got built whereas the canal system never quite made it. Not long after they finished the highway, though, the railroads made it obsolete. Except that now if you want to drive from Pittsburgh to Richmond, it’s useful again. Everything’s cyclical.

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What the in-store sample tiles looked like.

It wasn’t very gauged, either.

The dry run. Also on the floor: a hammer, wire strippers, small wonder bar, four-foot level, joint tape, and a Dremel.

Thinset.

It’s like an under-utilized veterans’ cemetery where there was in-fighting about what direction the crosses should face.

Spray away, buddy.

All done but the grouting.

The float at work. I’m not sure in what sense it “floats”.

Semi-dry grout awaiting clean-up.

Light’s green, trap’s clean.

It occurs to me that life is like a box of slate tile: (1) you never know what you’re going to get; (2) even once you see what you have, you have no idea the ramifications of it or how it’s all going to work out; (3) then you cement them to your floor because, man, you gotta do *something*; and then (4) it becomes permanent and you live with it.

Was also weird to me how different the floor looked before and after grouting. Before: wild, like there were a bunch of rocks on the floor. After: like the floor in some fairy-tale castle. Kind of liked the wild floor better. Maybe I’ll see if I can get a three-inch-deep stream of water to flow over it permanently, that might help.

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PS, Next time I’ll over-order by 25-percent rather than 10.

PPS, Where you see all the dark tiles grouped together, those are the areas getting covered by cabinets and appliances.

And now I have a power tool that shoots muddy water at me. Finally.

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There’s nothing like a medical condition that makes you feel old while at the same time emasculating you. Because it’s most common in women over 40. Anyway.

• Basically the tendons are swollen, such that if my left ring finger or right pinky is curled up, the middle knuckle “catches” when trying to extend the finger out straight.
• It’s like that when I first wake up, but as things warm up during the day, the fingers act normal.
• It started coming on back when I was doing the floor. Apparently it’s a bad thing when, after finishing sanding, your hands feel like they’re full of springs.
• Working with my hands every day since then apparently exacerbated the situation, until maybe three weeks ago when the “catching” started.
• It doesn’t hurt (all my fingers have been a little stiff and sore since mid-May), it’s just disconcerting and likely to progressively worsen without measures being taken.
• Recommended course of action is to (a) stop doing things that require me to grab stuff, especially power tools that oscillate or vibrate; (b) splint the affected fingers, especially at night; and (c) maybe pop some “anti-inflammatories” (ibuprofen). Should heal itself in four to six weeks.
• If that doesn’t work, then I can go in and get some cortisone injections. I’ll feel like a professional athlete! Like an old, emasculated professional athlete.

Not sure whether this means I just stop doing anything with the house or what. It’s going to be hard to be here without trying to do stuff, since:

• All that’s left to do in the kitchen is install the cabinets (and sink and dishwasher and disposal).
• The den is looking good, but needs bookshelves that I’d need to build.
• I ordered five sets of slat blinds that should arrive next week some time; it might be hard to avoid hanging them once they get here.
• Now that the master bedroom is basically ready to go, it’d be cool to put a door on the room — but the door needs to be painted and hung, which require grabbing and tool-use.
• With the kitchen floor done, I can start moving stuff from the basement into the living room, but carrying all that stuff might be proscribed.
• The upstairs bathroom is still a no-mans land and it sucks having to go downstairs to use the toilet.
• Plus the whole rest of the house and all.

Guess I should’ve gone to Oregon for the family reunion. It’s amazing how pretty much everything I sort of am interested in doing requires me to grab stuff. I’m not sure I should even consider hiking in WVa, since all the interesting hikes there have river crossings and I’d be mad trying to do them without poles. Also unsure about fishing, since it’d require me to have my hands in curled-up positions.

Instead I’m heading to Southern Virginia — it’s cheaper than Oregon on short notice and most of what there is to do there is passive (read: a lot of looking). It’ll keep me off my hands for a few days and then when I get back I can maybe re-evaluate. Also, in case you were wondering, it doesn’t make sense to visit a doctor until September when I have real insurance and not the kind with the $5,000 deductible.

I dunno. Maybe this is the blown transmission of the house renovation months. I swear I’m not just trying to find excuses to avoid painting doors.

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Coming in from the east (or south), the recommended parking is all downtown. Works out pretty well — $5 parking and a 10-15 minute walk, depending on what garage you ended up in. The walk is also cool as the closer you get to the park, the more fans you’re walking with and then crossing the (pedestrian-only on gameday) Roberto Clemente Bridge makes for a pretty dramatic final leg of the journey.

The views from the park side of the Allegheny River are also pretty good.

Otherwise:

• They really play up the pirate theme on the big screen; it’s kind of cool.
• They have this big animation sequence before every game wherein a Pirates-themed galleon is taking on a galleon flying the colors of the day’s opponent. You’d think that should be no contest — pirates should be better seamen than, for instance, Franciscan friars — but it’s still pretty satisfying when the statue of Roberto Clemente hits a flaming cannonball out of the park and drops it right on the bad guys’ deck, sending them and their crew to the bottom of the Allegheny.
• It’s as nice a ballpark as I’ve been to. Destroys the Big A and Dodgers easily, more interesting than Petco or Camden Yards, probably on par with Safeco.
• Most of the fans there seem to think that “Willie Stargell” is the answer to every Pirates trivia question.
• As losing teams go, the Pirates are easy to pull for — they’re bad because management is cheap, not because it’s incompetent.
• And it’s fun watching some of their young guys just starting to get established (Alvarez, Walker, Tabata), not to mention guys who weren’t going to get a chance elsewhere seizing the opportunity (Jones). If they sign Cliff Lee in the off-season, they could win as many as 70 games next year!
• It’s surprising how many fans the Pirates have given that they’ve been “re-building” since 1992. They probably deserve better.

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Nine switches down, four to go — upstairs. Then I can hit the basement! Good times, good times.

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Not pictured that should’ve been:

• Dremeling the underlayment to fit.
• Applying the latex underlayment putty to a couple uneven spots.

It was just the area where the old cabinets used to be and the floor exposed by taking out the wall that needed new sub-floor and underlayment. Took a few tries to figure out what thickness both of those needed to be (19/32 for the subfloor, 5 mm for the underlayment). Learned that all wood screws aren’t the same and that just because two boxes of nails have the exact same description on them, that doesn’t mean they’re the same quality of nail.

And if anyone in the Pgh area needs help installing a new plywood sub-floor, I’d be happy to help.

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Amazon is proud of its European-American heritage.

I think they meant that the love seat is just comfortable with itself. Maybe too comfortable with itself.

Will it be sneezing or how will I know?

This one’s just about the audacity of Major League Baseball — selling multiple ad units within their own advertising. Play ball indeed. And seriously, how big could the overlap possibly be between baseball fans and Evony aficionados?

So that’s it. Now I can drag and drop into the trash can.

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The Road, then:

• I liked the book a lot better. I don’t think the movie did anything wrong per se, but it didn’t really do anything right, either. Just came off as dim and lifeless.
• Liked when Viggo Mortensen lost control of his accent, especially on the word “food”, where he sounded like an owl. Hi-larious. To me.
• The movie plays like a revue of post-apocalyptic fiction cliches — cannibalism, scrounging for ammo, pushing grocery carts, bloody-thirsty gangs, people kept in pens for food, etc.
• You’d think that a kid who was born at the onset of the apocalypse would be used to it by the time he was 11 (or whatever). This kid was freaked out by everything. Defied credibility.
• Plus his dad babied him too much.
• And there was no credible sense in which the kid’s degree of worrying about everything was equal to his dad’s.
• Why can’t a movie show characters eating without showing them eating with their mouths open?
• If it’s after the apocalypse and roving gangs driving around in trucks are a major threat, wouldn’t you probably STAY OFF THE ROAD?
• It doesn’t seem like ammo should be harder to find than food.
• And what kind of apocalypse is it where humans survive but cockroaches don’t?
• And given that there’s still plenty of water on the planet, how is it that nothing can grow?
• Also liked seeing Guy Pearce dressed up like Eddie Vedder at the end.

Etc. A lot of those problems derive from the source material — but they’re a lot easier to ignore in book-form in that the book doesn’t really call that much attention to them. When they’re shown in moving pictures, though, it’s hard to not notice.

I like post-apocalyptic and bleak in itself isn’t a turnoff, but yeah: no.

Final score: 5/10.

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Of those two areas, I think I dug the early years part the most, maybe just because it’s a more-forgotten time. It covered a lot of “expansion era” Marine Corps activities, where the Corps acted as an expeditionary force in securing colonies in, frex, the Philippines.

Like the rest of the museum, these new areas do some cool stuff to help the visitor experience the history they’re viewing. Like in the Philippines occupation area, you walk through this “tent” and through one “wall” of the tent, you can see shadows of marines hanging out by the fire, wearing expedition hats, whittling sticks, and smoking pipes. It’s simple and not very data-rich, but it’s ingenious in its ability to convey how it might have felt to actually be a marine stationed in the Philippines at the turn of the century (minus the heat and humidity). No plaque could have conveyed that.

Photo:

The World War I exhibit was also strong, although it started off with a short, made-for-museum video loop of a kid dressed up like in the old days hawking newspapers on an in-studio streetcorner. Hated that. The kid actor was terrible, like he was trying to channel Meeno Peluce. Children should *never* be allowed to act. I don’t know why I’m the only person who seems to have realized this universal truth. I guess this kind of intro might appeal to blue-hairs, but man it was tacky and over-the-top. To me.

The rest of World War I was good, though. They had a short Belleau Wood reenactment video (yes, made-for-museum) that I liked a lot. They did with it what I always thought every war movie always should have done (but did the opposite instead) in that I think they saturated the colors on the film. Most (recent) war movies (e.g., Private Ryan, Band of Brothers) have de-saturated the color (= made the colors less vibrant) in order to give them an “authentic”, sentimental, old feel. OTOH, every first-hand account of front-line warfare that I’ve read has expressed that, in battle, combatants’ senses have been in overdrive. In that sense, it seems to me like an over-saturated color palette would best convey the image of warfare and I think that’s what they did here. (I can’t prove that they saturated the colors, but they definitely didn’t de-saturate.)

They might have shifted things a little to the blue, too.

And for the sake of playing copy editor (how fun!), they had a sign there that referred to German soldiers calling the marines “teufelhunden” (sic). That’d be capitalized in German and pretty sure it should’ve been on the sign, too.

Also watched the museum movie this time (I guess I didn’t last time — it was totally new to me). It’s a great, engaging, and moving ten-minute branding video that hits everything it should and does it without feeling too sentimental, although it did include senators John Glenn and John Warner saying (in effect) that without the Marine Corps, they wouldn’t have become senators, which to me seems like a case *against* the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps: we make politicians! Yikesnothankyou, etc. IMHO. Perhaps Sens. Warner and Glenn also appropriate(d) funds for museums, which doesn’t lessen the problem.

The Marines are still really good at telling stories and this is still very possibly the most cogent, most nailed-it museum I’ve been to. With the new galleries, it’d be kind of a long day to go all the way through in one shot. I’m not sure who my audience is for this post.

Ending so with,

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Other direction.

Done:

• Floor stripped, sanded, and re-finished.
• Closet hardware removed.
• Closet wall and ceiling replaced.
• Ceiling primed and painted.
• Walls primed and painted (“Barraud House Blue” and “Tyler Stone Medium”).
• Trim primed and painted.
• Baseboards cut to fit modern registers.
• New registers installed.
• New light fixture installed.
• New three-prong outlets installed (x3).
• New light switch.
• New closet organizer installed.

That’s really not much of a list. It really shouldn’t have taken so long.

Still to Come:

• Window coverings (x2).
• Ceiling vent replacement.
• Door painted and replaced.

Really looking forward to it.

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I can’t go to an aerospace museum without trying to rank it within the pantheon of aerospace museums and there were some times walking through Udvar-Hazy that I was thinking yeah, this is the best flight museum there is and that was based in large part on how easy they make it to see and photograph the planes. The USAF Museum in Dayton, for instance, is really dark so in order to take photos without a tripod, you have to do flash-fill and be happy with taking a photo of one small part of the plane. And in most flight museums, including Dayton, it seems like they looked at the arrangement of displays as a Tetris variant. Udvar-Hazy gives the planes their due space. Well, except for in the commercial airplanes area, but those planes are kind of big, so I suppose it makes sense.

And if you could combine the National Air and Space Museum component on the mall in DC with the Udvar-Hazy Center, you definitely would have the greatest flight museum in the world. But they’re too far away, so you can’t. It’s like saying if you combined Seattle and Portland, you’d have the second largest city on the west coast. True but moot. Like most of life.

Enterprise, the real fake space shuttle.

The Concorde sees you.

A B-29.

Wouldn’t dream of it.

A galaxy of satellites. Maybe just a cluster.

It couldn’t fly very fast because the propeller was so small.

Hey look, an airplane!

The F-22 is a better value. (This is an X-35.)

A Ju-52.

The well-stocked commercial wing.

Which leaves only bullet points:

• I think the Top Tier of aerospace museums is this one, the one on the mall, the USAF, and probably Pima/AMARG.
• It’s interesting how they don’t tell many stories in this museum — they mostly let the plane speak for itself. There are no big panels explaining the Wright Bros. or anything like that — I think most of that is on the mall.
• Without a doubt the least impressive gift shop of any top-flite aerospace museum.
• Walking through the museum, you start feeling like there are planes that should be there but aren’t, and then you remember that the other half of the collection is an hour away, which is sort of comforting in that you know that they know that this isn’t a complete something.
• They have a bunch of “last one like this that still exists” planes there, including some bizarre-awesome German WWII examples, like the late-war gigantic fighter plane with fore and aft props. Too bad those airplanes are evil.
• For some reason the only planes missing their wings were German WWII planes. There was no explanation.
• They put plexi-glass up around the Enola Gay so no one could throw stuff at it. Apparently that’s happened before.
• Hooray for flight.

So yeah. ICYDK, the Udvar-Hazy Center is located right by Dulles Airport in Virginia. The Smithsonian (or whoever) built it in order to house planes that wouldn’t fit in the regular museum on the mall. They have elevated walkways along parts of the perimeter that afford the top-down views. The museum is free, but parking is $15. The only food inside is McDonalds. There’s very little to buy in the gift shop.

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PS, If you combined Seattle and Portland, it would still only be the third largest city on the west coast.

The car overstates its mileage by a little bit, but still, 51.1 for a 217-mile ride is probably as good as it’s ever going to get. And, uh — yeah, shoot, I got nothing. Here:

• There are about 18 different ways to get to the DC/NoVa area that all take about the same length of time. On the way down, I took scenic Highway 51, eventually routing through Uniontown, Cumberland, and Winchester. Took 4:15, got 51.1 mpg.
• On the way back, I took the Cadillac route: interstates all the way, including the fantastic Pennsylvania Turnpike: 4:15. And 20 extra miles or so and only 46.8 mpg.
• The car overstates mpg by 2-3 points.
• When I got off the dumb toll road, the tollbooth lady told me it’d be $7.25, so I handed her a ten, two ones, and a quarter and she says, “Did you know you gave me $12.25?”. I had no comeback for that.
• If I hadn’t known, would she have denied it ever happened and then not given me the five back? We’ll never know. We’ll never know.
• The hotel I stayed in for $40/night (plus 20-percent tax) was a real-live, genuine three-star Hilton Garden Inn.
• While I was there, I went to the Udvar-Hazy part of the National Air & Space Museum, the National Museum of the Marine Corps (they had some new stuff there), Mt. Vernon, and the National Firearms Museum.
• People who leave Yelp reviews for Bethesda, Md. restaurants are kind of catty. I’m not speaking of myself. Yet.
• I should have taken the Reader’s Digest book of road trips so I could have hit some highlights on the return trip. There appear to be a lot of forts, battlefields, historic transportation sites, and houses built over waterfalls.

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Here’s a photo I took of the temple:

They showed a movie, but it was kind of long and content-free. Our tour guide was Russian for some reason. He apologized for his accent a lot. His accent was fine, but he didn’t know  how to use definite articles. They won’t let you take pictures inside. There was a woman in our tour group who got huffy when no one else had ever heard some story about the window being cracked because the builders ran out of glass that they’d had imported from London. The tour guide kept insisting instead that there’d been a 2.5 earthquake there recently.

It was very white inside and looked like a church, but without carpet on the walls. Cool gold letters on the pulpits, though.

Then Mitzie, my aunt, suggested that we all drive down to Jack Johnson’s farm, which she said was my mom’s favorite place in all of Ohio.

I should have leaned back some.

Turns out it was John Johnson’s farm, which really didn’t make it any less interesting than Jack’s would’ve been. The tour guides were pleasant and bore fiery witness. The upstairs room where all the extra guests would have slept was sweltering. The one thing that my mom had liked about it wasn’t there any more.

Then we went to Dairy Queen for dinner, where my cousin denied having ever told me that City of God was his favorite movie. It wouldn’t be a bad choice. It’s more interesting than claiming Pride and Prejudice (yes, I’m looking at you every Mormon girl I’ve met in the past ten years).

Then I headed back to my jobsite and they to “somewhere four hours west of here”.

With solemn rectitude,

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It’s a real word.

Never saw the movie, but it was nice of them to get me a gift.

Contains MSG, so you know it can’t be all bad.

Hell is standing around for two hours listening to Tom Brunanski try and tell you how to teach a nine-year-old how to catch a fly ball.

And I still need to write my post entitled “All I Really Need to Know about Humanity I Learned Assistant Coaching My Nephew’s Little League Team for Half a Season”.

“Fewer”, because I don’t think they’re referring to the band.

A photo my nephew took of me before I eventually realized I didn’t know where my phone was.

I just don’t think Uday rates Ace-of-Hearts.

My niece posing with her brothers after her baptism.

My inner left elbow.

Every third Saturday the gunfighters shoot the teachers. Wax bullets.

Watching TV while driving.

Maybe my favorite touch-screen button ever.

Real and functional: we’re not in California any more.

That was probably too many.

Mostly ambivalent,

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The sound in the background is the fan in the living room. It’s 95 degrees outside and I don’t have air conditioning is why. Some of the tiles came off more easily than this one and some were more difficult. I finished about half the floor, but wanted to leave a race track around the edges so I can paint without having to walk on glue residue. The word “residue” seems underutilized.

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