Axes of Evil

This is just a funny aside....

Eugene has been chopping wood because we've had a downed tree in front of our house for awhile. Yesterday, he said that he'd like to get a wood maul because it would make splitting big logs easier. For all of you city dwellers (and people like me who have always lived in the woods but for some reason have never heard of a wood maul), a wood maul is like an axe, but specially designed for, of course, splitting and chopping wood.

Demonstrating, my sometimes macabre sense of humor, I said, "If we get a wood maul, you wouldn't kill me with it, would you?" I expected him to say something along the lines of "Don't be stupid. I would never hurt you." Or maybe that he would have just acted annoyed at such a stupid question. Instead, he said in a "don't be silly" voice, "Babe, I've already got like five axes."

Buy a house for $50 (seriously!)

So I'm at work today, and somebody is telling me how this guy in Edgwater (south of Annapolis) couldn't get his house to sell, so he's raffling it off with tickets that run $50 each. The website claims the house is worth around $1 million, although who knows what that means in this housing market. Part of the money will go to a charity, and the leftover I suppose goes back to the guy running the show.

It is a true "luxury" home - 6 bedrooms, 4.5 baths, 2 kitches... plus (if I'm reading the map correctly) fairly close to the Severn River...

$50? Hey, why not.

Sailors and their ships

When I started this blog, I promised myself I wouldn’t delve into the so-called “mil-blogosphere”… and I’m not about to start.

However – I will share this Navy press release. As a former boarding officer who inspected 60+ ships in the Persian Gulf a few years ago, I congratulate this team for a job well done. And as a San Antonio plankowner – I am happy to see her finally getting some good press. This ship and her sisters have lots of potential - and I'm proud to have served aboard her.

You can read more about San Antonio and Combined Task Force 151 here.

Never retreat, Never Surrender!

MIA

So in my last post – over a month ago – I talked about how I was slacking off in the posts… and then I let it slide again. So, what’s new? Well… I finally started my new job. The commute is a bit longer, but the work is definitely much more interesting and rewarding. Then of course there were the holidays, and reserve duty… Finally, as Leah mentioned, we declared war on the disaster our house has become. This literally has consumed every free second I have had over the last few weeks. Then there was more work… and yesterday Leah and I made the trek into DC for the inauguration (more to come later). Oh yeah, and we put in a closet (also more to come).

The previous owners, in addition to having 9 cats and seemingly using about 100 nails for every square foot of molding in the house, were kind enough to leave this huge pile of wood in the crawl space adjacent to our basement. Apparently, the pile started when the house was built (over 30 years ago) and has grown with subsequent home improvement projects. We finally decided last weekend that for various reasons it had to go.

One problem of doing any kind of renovation is dealing with the debris… either the stuff you are taking out, or the stuff that’s left over (or that you messed up on). Twice now we have just accumulated so much junk from demolishing things (original tile floor, old bathtub, toilets, etc) it’s too much to 1: either put out on the street, or 2: haul to the county dump. In case you didn’t know, Anne Arundel county has some very nice public dumps you can bring just about anything to. However, in this case, we decided to rent a dumpster. For those in the Anne Arundel/Prince George’s County area, the best deal I have been able to find for dumpsters is at Hatfields. $250 for a 10 yd dumpster for 7 days – not a bad deal, especially when you compare it to Home Depot.

It's finally gone!

Disorganization is expensive!!!

Eugene and I formally declared war on our house. We've been living here for almost two years now, and still hadn't unpacked a bunch of boxes until this past weekend. Our garage was full of boxes, and the basement was getting out of hand. We also have an office on the first floor, which we had gotten into the bad habit of using as a repository for random stuff that we didn't feel like dealing with.

The lesson from all of this? Disorganization will cost you! Over the past year or so, we'd been buying random household goods, and in unpacking and organizing, I realized that we already had a bunch of the stuff that we went out and bought. I would catalogue all of the ways that we could have saved by being organized and simply knowing where the heck all of our junk is. I've found that the same thing applies at my office. I'll print a document, which then gets buried under a pile on my desk, so that when I look for it, I can't find it and then re-print only to discover later on that I've printed the same document 20 times. Bad Leah, Bad Leah!

So, the next time you are tempted to let yourself become disorganized, remember that it will cost you!