Week 1, down

... Fourteen to go.

Project Updates:

Chalkboard: 90% complete
Wallpaper: 60% complete
Driveway: 5% (ok, so I've -thought- about doing it a few times)
Painting Car Port: 5% (yup, you guessed it.)

The chalkboard that I've been working on with Josh is almost complete. This past Friday I got the board and we primed it with two coats and then put on two of the black, chalkboard paint. Today was the application of the cork board border. I know me and I will definitely have a few dozen things posted up on the edge of reminders and designs or projects that I'm progressing. The wallpaper has all but been removed from the walls of the middle, or "living" room. I have to continue to scrape and sand the wall here and there to remove any loose bits of paper that refuse to be scraped free. This is, essentially, the easy part. Once all of that is complete then I can start the arduous task of -FINDING- a replacement wallpaper. Putting it up is fairly easy.

As for beating the driveway into submission or painting the carport - well, both of those have suffered this first week of my summer vacation.

I'll post some pictures of the two projects that have gotten any kind of attention as soon as I figure how to yank them down from my new phone.

Until then -

Go see Star Trek.

-Tom

Freedom

Well, it's that time again.

As of 5 p.m. this afternoon, I have posted the last of my exam grades, handled the last of the emails sent to me by students hoping / pleading for "understanding" or "assistance" with their grade.

It may be yet another constant in the universe, but whenever I assign extra-credit for my classes, the only students who actually complete it are the ones who don't need the extra points. All those who blow it off are those who could have really used the help by the end of the year?

What does this mean? Well, it means that I can usually shut down any of the begging, pleading, and general childishness that I get from some students by simply asking, "Did you do the extra-credit?" When they reply, "Well, no, but I had a good reason." I usually end the conversation. Life is too short to hear yet another excuse for poor preparation or performance.

Now that I'm on my summer break (aka, being unemployed), I can work on my house projects. Last summer started off with fixing a bathroom sink. This year it's been ripping down wallpaper in my living room. The old wallpaper was put up some time ago and needed to be replaced. It shouldn't cost too much to repaper the old walls, but more on that later.

As for now it's late and I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow I plan on attacking my driveway with a sledgehammer.


See ya.

-Tom

A Tree Grows in Ohio

Today was one of the first not-rainy days of this spring break and after three years of planning, I finally got a tree planted in my front yard.

In years previous, there was always some combination of forces (lack of money, weather, time) that conspired against me planting a tree in my front yard that would hopefully provide some kind of shade in years to come.

I would have liked to have put an oak tree out there but they were hard to come by (in a large enough form that would make it easy to transplant) so I settled on a Silver Maple.

So out into the weather and just before a large mass of "green" (rain) came my way, Josh and I pulled out the post-holler and shovel and got to work. It didn't take a lot of work since the ground was already semi-muddy from the previous two days of rain. I hadn't handled a shovel in a while since I'm just now recovering from winter and the ensuing plagues so it wore me out a bit but it felt good.

This spring break was fairly uneventful - nothing really was accomplished except for the tree - but very restful; and that was needed even more so. With only five or six weeks left in the term, it's going to be a mad dash through April and into May to finish out the school year.

And then who knows what I'll get into.

-T

Home Remedies

I'm sick again.

Sometime on Monday night I started to feel a bit below the weather and by Tuesday morning I was sporting a massive cold.

So I canceled classes on Tuesday and slept. Then Wednesday I woke up hoping that it was just a twenty-four hour bug.

Nope.

So then I canceled my class on Wednesday and continued the sleeping process.

So this morning I was hoping to grab yet another shower and see if that would help solve the cold. I got down to campus after a quick stop for more tissues and meds. My criminology class is supposed to last for 1.5 hours but I was out of there in 40 minutes. I couldn't keep talking, blow my nose or sniff in any combination to keep the conversation going.

On the way home I grabbed more supplies with grim determination to finally kick this cold and be done with it.

Soup, more meds, tissues, and sanitizer.

After sucking down more tomato soup than a Twilight Fan on a weekend bender, I realized that the one thing I'm really wanting is Egg Drop soup from "Uptown Chinese" in Athens.

I'm not sure if the restaurant is still there or not, but whenever I got sick while I was going for my BA - that soup would fix me in a day.

Unfortunately the only approximation for the soup down here is not exactly the same thing. It's more like egg-glaze because it's been left to sit in a warming tray for days on end.

I'll have to see if I can find a way to make something close to egg-drop down here. It won't be the same but I'll see if I can get some hints from my friend the chef.

Photography after the storm

This past weekend, once the storm had passed, I decided to go on a walk over to the local cemetery and see if I could snap a few photos.

The photo to the left is part of the monument of "The Lady", a well-known statue within Greenlawn Cemetery. I saw the snow on the top of the cross and thought that it was an interesting image. Once I processed the photo and cropped it to size, I decided to do something with it. I still can't decide on whether it should be sepia or black and white.

Once I found that shot, I continued to walk around the place for a bit and found another shot that I think is one of my best. The cemetery is a great place to take pictures.

This photo definitely suggested to be made into a black and white image. The barren tree stands directly center in the image with each branch covered in a sheath of ice. The shadows of the tomb stones and the conifers around it just kind of made it stand out that much more.

Day 2: The Ice Commeth

Well, we're closed for another day down here at Shawnee State, and it's all because of the wonderful freezing rain that's been falling since about 5 p.m. yesterday evening.

When I woke up this morning I immediately grabbed my camera and ventured outside to see what I could capture for my blog.

The power and cable lines are drooping because of the added weight of about a quarter-inch of ice encasing them. I've already heard that several homes out in the county are without power because of trees that have become too heavy with the ice and fallen through the lines. My uncle David, my mother's brother, has already lost power this morning because he lives -way- out in the county with lots of ice-coated trees between him and any main road.

I tried to focus in on a seed pod on a bush in the back yard to show just how thickly encased things were in the grip of the freezing rain. I think the plant is milk-weed but I couldn't swear to it. It looked so interesting with ice caught within the remains of the pod as well as coating all of the branches and vines that I had to try and snap a picture of it.

What really surprised me was some old scrub plants on the hill behind the house. Each branch and twig is coated with the ice and together they create quite a cool effect.Sometimes it's hard to see where the branch ends and the ice ends - as though the whole structure were somehow converted to a crystalline-based plant.

Wintery Blankets

Normally when it snows, I grab a picture of Tseo the Raccoon to show how bad the weather has gotten. Today when I went out into the backyard I realized that there was actually some measurable accumulation.

This morning he sort of looked like a raccoon ninja - hidden by the wintry blanket.

Shawnee has already closed classes for the day - originally only canceling classes until noon but then expanding it. So, it's a Tuesday and I have little to do.

Blood Stains in Carpeting

Sometimes I get some very weird phone calls; usually the more weird come from my friends. Tonight was no exception when a buddy of mine called up with a tone to his voice suggesting that he was somewhat upset.

"How do you get blood stains out of carpeting so that there's no trace?" was the question asked of me.

Before I could even ask, "Now why would I know something like that?" I ended up splurting out an answer.

"Soak a rag in peroxide and then dab / rub the blood and it should come up. If there's a bad place or it's turned brown already, coat it with a mixture of salt and water."

I have no idea where I'd heard that before but I knew that it would work.

Sure enough, my friend tried it while on the phone with me and the peroxide did the trick.

It turns out that his girlfriend had gotten bit by their dog and she bled... a lot.

So... in the spirit of "Friends help you move, Real Friends help you move Bodies"... I add this.

"Friends tell you things. Real friends tell you how to clean up blood stains without asking why."

Bones in Portsmouth?

From WSAZ:

PORTSMOUTH, OH (WSAZ) -- Police have found three bones in the backyard of a house in Portsmouth, but they are not those of a human, like they orginially thought.

This after Portsmouth Police and the Portsmouth Daily Times got identical letters that were very specific about the location of the bones. The anonymous lletter referred to a body being buried in late 1964.

Investigators found the bones Friday night at a house in the 2200 block of Vinton Avenue in Portsmouth.

After the discovery Portsmouth Police called forensic investigators from Cincinnati to take a closer look.

Investigators say at this point the case is closed, unless they get more information from the person who wrote those letters.

"The information contained in the letter indicated the person knew exactly what they were talking about," Portsmouth Police Detective James Charles said.

BSG the musical

After watching about ten hours of BSG this past Friday to catch up with the series, I listened to one of the characters singing a lament.

The character was one of the side-line characters who had been there since the series started. Lt. Gaeta was sort of the guy that everyone over-looked until he wasn't there; a backbone of the CIC who would leave a big gap in their operations if he was gone.

Through the course of the series, Gaeta ends up getting shot in the leg and they have to amputate it below the knee. While recouperating in sick bay, he is half-drugged on pain killers but can occasionally feel the twitches of his missing limb. The doctor told him to sing whenever he felt it to help get his mind off the sensation. It's an interesting idea considering that they can't just keep pumping him full of morph - they're not making it anymore.

It reminded me of the scene in Return of the King where one of the Hobbits sung some depressing dirge while a force of men charged in on a suicide run to retake the ruins of Osgiliath.

Well, I had wondered if they had borrowed the song from another source (like they did with the song that gathered four of the last five cylons together) or if it was original. So I started digging and finally found the words to the song and that it was originally composed.

To give you some idea of how the song was used in the show I've put a link to the Youtube video here.

An Original

With the end of BSG coming soon, I returned to the beginning. Thanks to youtube, I was able to find the introduction to the original series.

"Life here...began out there"

Powerful. Simple. Thought-provoking.

See ya.

Click here

Classes

Well, it's that time again.

Classes are starting.

Today I'm in my office and it's a few minutes before my first course of the term; Sociology 1101.

There's not much to do in an intro course on the first day but I like to basically discuss how I run my class. It's easier to lay out the ground rules for how things work right off from the start so that if the students don't like it they can find another class.

In three years of teaching, I haven't had a student complain or argue any point for the first lecture but I've had several plead that they "forgot" when it comes time to make up a test or the like.

Oh well, after my one and only class today I'm hitting the gym to get back into some sense of a workout schedule.

It's too easy to be lazy when it's cold.

Ugh.

See ya later.

-Tom