To Paint, or Write of Painting

That is the question! I've been busy with the work of improving curb appeal for the house while we have this stroke of warm weather that will allow for painting, See the picture below shot at dusk. The Front door is now gray (rather than green) and the rail and cement pedestal are now dark gray as opposed to green and purple.

The deck still needs washing and painting as do some of the white rails. I also scraped primed and painted the downstairs windows that were flaking and looking like they were falling apart. A little cosmetic work goes a long way!

But the physical punishment is not insignificant. To paint the side of the rail by the rosebush first required pruning... or really removing about 80 percent of the bush. My forearms show the scratches pokes and thorn splinters of wrestling branches into two large yard waste bags.
And then there is the ladder incident... I fell off the ladder as I was descending. I stepped on the bottom rung in a funny way and twisted my ankle. I was surprised how quickly I was lying on the ground. It took me right down, I started feeling nauseous and dizzy and it was immediately clear that I had either sprained or broken my ankle. I wiggled my toes and found that that was no problem. I lay there for about 5 minutes and then cautiously stood up. A sprain. And a mild one. Can you tell which ankle is swollen?

See the smallish bruising below my ankle?

Awww... Poor me!!

Another project this week was was solving a technical problem for the CMC; my former employer. They had installed robotic cameras in the Wealthy Theatre auditorium but they were just plain not working. It took two days of troubleshooting and down to the last possible alternative theory but it turned out to be the correct one. Shazzaam!! Everything works. They were nice enough to write a little thank you blurb on their website.

In other CMC news, the Capital Campaign that busted my butt and caused great stress for a tear and a half of my life is officially over. They reached their goal which kicks in the Kresge challenge grant award of $300,000. This grant is tough to get and co-writing and submitting it was the last thing I did before handing the Executive Director job over to Laurie. You have to reach your fundraising goal to get the award. I'm pleased she was able to make it pay off.

Tonight, Abby is away at her birthday party with her girlfriends at Craig's Cruisers and I am entertaining Marlee and her pal Karlee as Mary is out with her girlfriends.

I need to get started editing the Children's Museum video. The deadline will be here before I know it. I was going to put it on the portable hard drive but apparently it is dead. I have nothing recent on it, just old projects.

Buzzed

Fireworks

Celebration on the Grand was this weekend and with it the Hispanic Festival and the local Native American Pow Wow. We pretty much stayed away from downtown this time around because there is so much damned road construction that it is near impossible to get there from here anymore when there is a traffic event. Instead, Mary and I dropped in at Bill's house which has a view of the downtown skyline from a high bluff at the end of his cul-de-sac. He had some friends over and was making pina coladas. They were delicious but I started thinking they were a little too delicious. Sure enough. He forgot to put in the rum. At 9:20pm, we suddenly heard the booming of fireworks. They were started early. We later intuited and much later confirmed that they were trying to beat this big rain cloud that was coming. They were not quick enough. It started pouring about halfway through. But it was not bad for us beneath a great big tree. here are some crappy photos from my camera phone.




Saturday we went for a bike ride to Riverside park. We stumbled on the Indian PowWow which seemed like an excellet destination for the trip. We locked up our bikes and checked out the craft and food vendors. We bought some stuff like blue lemonade and cheap jewelry and ran into all of our Native American Friends. One lady was selling fur items. Since I had neglected to bring vials of blood to throw at them, I decided to just see what they had. My favorite was a skunk that had been made into a handbag. It occurred to me that though fur is politically incorrect, in the Indian crowd it is a tradition. Hard to find fault with that. We stayed a bit longer to watch a hand drum/singing competition. Totally cool.
Last night we decided to watch Dream Girls on DVD. I guess you need to see it on the big screen because we were mostly bored.

Today we were going to go to Mary's sister Margaret's house in Grand Haven for a beach visit to make up for the lack of beach time at our last couple of beach trips. Turns out there is a cold water mass sitting there at Grand Haven. (click to enlarge)



Drat! foiled again.

Delinquent Correspondent

Wow, it just hit me that I've been slacking on my obligations to keep this blog current. It's the humidity... THAT's IT! If we could only have a DRY heat. Kidding aside, It has been freaking hot and humid these last couple of days.

Quick update that will be of interest for Alice in the category of "brush with fame". Her former babysitter and dance company cohort will be dancing with Britney Spears to open Sunday's MTV Awards show. And to think... we knew him when!

I think I am honing in on the final version of the Grand Rapids Community Foundation underwriting spot for Ken Burns' "The War". It is a lot to squeeze in 15 seconds but my client seems to be happy. The images, by the way, are Bill Hebert photographs. I really enjoyed learning the "Ken Burns effect" with slow zooms on photos. It's real easy in Final Cut.

As promised, a conclusion to the story on the garage door disaster from my first blog entry.

We finally gave up on the repair guy who came and measured about a month ago. How many phone messages can you leave for a guy? And now what? Who repairs garage doors?

The answer came in the form of a wrong number. I dialed a number of a client from a brochure but no sooner had I punched in the last number than I realized that I had mis-dialed. I quickly hung up and called my client with the correct series of seven digits. Thirty seconds after I hung up from that call, my phone rang. It was the wrong number I had first dialed. The guy identified himself as working for a roofing company. I explained the SNAFU but then asked him if he did garage doors. He replied, "NO, for that you should call Bouma Brothers". They're great guys."

I looked up the number and scheduled a site visit for the following morning. Bright and early, a big black pickup truck showed up just as I was leaving for a breakfast meeting. I showed him the door mand explained that repair would be great but I fully expected to replace the whole thing. When I returned from the meeting, the door was fixed. Not only was it back on track, but it has NEVER worked that good. I can raise and lower the door with my pinky finger! Inside, there on the counter, was the bill. Drumroll, please... a whopping $67 dollars. He also quoted that he could put in a power door for an extra $350. I think we are going to do that. Bouma Brothers ROCK.