An Imaginarium Project

There was this strange little cubby up in the Imaginarium, almost like a mini closet with no door.




I had an idea for something I wanted to do with it - I wanted to put little shelves in it, and use it for storing some of my stuff. With Greg's help, I devised a plan of using small pieces of wood for shelf supports, then just laying the shelves across those.

He cut all the pieces for me, and I set about screwing them into the wall - the walls are plaster, and nailing anything in is an excercise in futility, so we settled on this as the best way to go.





It worked great, though I'll tell you, those supports wouldn't come out without ripping the wall apart. They aren't going anywhere.

Then I stained the shelves ...



Then I painted the inside of the cubby, and a bit of angst set in. I'd decided on what I hoped was a lightish shade of purple, and I bought a whole gallon of it, knowing I'd want to use it in other places. But when I painted the cubby, it was a bit too dark.

I didn't want to take it back to the store to have it lightened, because I'd only have basically one shot to get it right. They'd show it to me in the can, I'd have to guess whether that was a good shade or not (something that never works well for me), bring it home, and if it still wasn't right, I'd be stuck.

I'd read online that the easiest way to lighten dark paint was to just buy white, and add the dark to it until you get a shade you like. I thought, that actually sounds like a better idea ... I could use the white and some canning jars I have to mix up various shades from this one gallon of purple and have a lot of options for my Imaginarium decor. So I started one batch, testing colors on a scrap piece of lumber until I got one I liked.

Then, instead of just repainting the entire cubby, I 'pounced' the lighter color on. Kind of like sponge painting, except since I'd forgotten to pick up a sponge anywhere, I just used a rag (but didn't 'roll' it - just pounced it).

It turned out absolutely fantastic. I couldn't be happier with it. These pictures don't quite do the colors or patterning justice, but they're the best I could get. The patterning is really awesome because the colors blend so well, it's very subtle, almost like suede or something. Just really cool.






One thing I'm especially pleased with is how, at the edge on one side, I blended the pouncing into solid color, just because I wanted a more finished look, and didn't want the pouncing all the way to the corner edge.



So yeah, I'm pretty happy with this. I'm planning to install a rod and hang a curtain in front of it, in part to keep out dust, but I haven't gotten to that part yet, and I'm still enjoying admiring my painting job.

The Imaginarium is very drab, color-wise ... off-white walls, olive-ish green carpet, dark brown wood trim and cabinets. I plan to drastically change that over time, and this project is the first step in that direction ... it's now a tiny little color oasis in a sea of drab, but it's inspired me as to how great the whole area is going to look once I get some of my other ideas completed. Well, with it getting into winter now, I plan to spend a lot of time working on this in the coming months.

Tyler - Great News!

Tyler's blood test results were beautiful. All his values were well within the reference range of acceptable values.

Most importantly, the indicators of kidney function - BUN (blood urea nitrogen) and creatinine -had dropped significantly.

The normal reference range on creatinine is .5 to 2.0. In May Tyler's was 2.1, which they flagged as high, and indicative of already advanced kidney dysfunction. This is because kidneys are so good at compensating for loss of function that 'bad' test results don't begin to show up until the kidneys have already lost 70% to 80% of their function - a disturbing thing, but one I've not only been told by the vet, but read numerous times.

The normal reference range on BUN is 8 to 30. In May Tyler's was 29, which when coupled with his high creatinine reading, they said confirmed early kidney disease.

But his creatining reading this time was 1.7, and his BUN was 26.

All because instead of rolling over and putting him on the prescription low-protein diet, as they recommended, and "enjoying our time left," I did the research, and devised a home-cooked diet for him that follows current research instead of outmoded mythology: moderate (not low) protein, and low phosphorous, together with some useful supplements (fish oil and CoQ10).

Okay, I'm not claiming I've permanently cured him and this will never again be an issue. It may creep back up, especially in light of the fact that once the numbers go up at all, it indicates significant kidney damage. And more adjustments may be needed.

But get this. Tyler's 15 years old. I don't expect to make him immortal, but every bit of additional time I can not only have him, but have him healthy and happy, is a big bonus to us. Just throwing him on low-protein diet and forgetting about it was a guarantee to watch his condition slowly but steadily deteriorate.

This way, for now at least, his numbers have dropped far enough back into the normal range that it isn't even an issue at the moment. That doesn't mean he can go back on the 'old' diet. That means this diet's working, and he's going to stay on it. And it also means I bought us some more time for Tyler to be doing well and feeling good. Because even with the apparent kidney damage (due probably just to his age, not any particular 'disease' condition), if this diet can have his numbers in the normal range, then that means that the kidneys are doing what they do so well - more than compensating for the loss of function, and keeping his levels in an acceptable range.

And that is worth every second of research I had to do on my own, and every second of devising those diet plans for him, instead of rolling over and buying the 'prescription' diet because it was 'easier.'

(It's not cheaper, either -that stuff is expensive - but this home-cooked diet is not, since it only requires white rice, eggs, cottage cheese, and a few veggies).

So I'm really happy at the moment. I know that some day his numbers may begin to creep up again, and more adjustments will have to be made, but guess what - it ain't right now, so I'm happy. And so is Tyler.

2012: I Can't Take It Anymore

The History Channel's end-times programming has finally pushed me over the edge. Why do I watch it? It used to be interesting. I've always been interested in post-apocalyptic worlds (for reasons I'll go into another time).

But they took something mildly interesting, and blew it all so far out of proportion that it's become downright ludicrous.

Why am I picking on the History Channel? Because they have the biggest track record of throwing these types of shows together, often it seems from absolute cheesecloth (full of holes), and presenting it in as serious and 'scholarly' a way as they can manufacture. No, they're not the only ones - but they are one of the worst, in my opinion.

So to put some perspective on it, I found an article that I think is the best information I've read so far on 2012. I provide you a link to it so you, too, can know the truth.

Moving On ...

I can't dwell on that mess with the robbing, lying thief anymore. So I'll post something more positive.

Today was awesome! The weather was beautiful, sunny and in the 60s. We finished up almost all the leaves in the front yard. There's just a few around some shrubs in my dining room garden area, and on the far side of the driveway. But tomorrow's supposed to be sunny and in the 60s again, so we can get back out there and do the last of it then. But the worst of it's done - two huge piles that were in the front yard. I'm really glad we got some late-season good weather to finish that up.

I got to take Tyler for two nice walks today, which he always enjoys. He had a vet checkup today, and blood work - to check his kidney function. After last time, I did about a month's worth of research, till my head was spinning and I couldn't take it anymore. I'd finally devised a diet for him I thought would be okay, but as the months have gone by I've been less and less happy with this current diet. No reason in particular, just ... not too happy. So I'm waiting to see what his blood test results are (will get them Monday). Hopefully, hopefully, his numbers will have come down - which will tell me this diet was, after all, working. If there's any other change, then I'm going to be changing his diet, although I don't know in what way yet. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

But the vet said Tyler seemed to be doing well, he commented on his strong, slow heartrate - a good thing, usually seen in more athletic animals. I have been taking Tyler for more and longer walks lately. Maybe that helped. And Tyler himself seemed to have a very good day - seemed in a good mood, enjoyed his outings and spending time in the yard. (The vet trip was stressful, but he bounced back nicely).

And, I started on my first real Imaginarium project. There's a small cubby in this one wall, sort of like a tiny closet with no shelves or door. I've decided to turn it into just that - a small closet with shelves, and not a door, but probably a decorative curtain covering it. I bought all the supplies last weekend - 1x6 for shelves (cut at the Home Despot where I bought it), stain, paint, etc. Today I begain staining the shelves.

They're not turning out quite as I envisioned, yet. The stain was lighter than I thought, and isn't going on particularly well. So I just put a second coat on, and it's starting to look better. They'll probably need one more, and if I'm still not getting what I want, I may look into getting a darker color (I assume I can stain a darker color over a lighter color, if I haven't polyurethaned them yet). But I'd really prefer just to get what I have to work - this project cost way more than I thought it was going to as it was (and I'm not really done yet, as I don't have the material for the curtain or anything for a rod to hang it from yet).

Tomorrow I'll get the support pieces cut, and work on starting to get them installed. Then I can paint (and continue to work on the shelves). Once the supports are installed and everything's painted, it's just a matter of slipping the shelves onto the supports, and hanging the curtain.

I'm excited ... my first Imaginarium project, thought up entirely by me, and put into motion. I hope I can finish it tomorrow (though that's going to be tricky what with needing paint and stain to dry, etc). When it's done, I'll post pictures.

On that note, I think I'm ready to go crawl into bed and read for awhile before a good night's sleep, and sleeping in tomorrow.

A Tale Of Lies and Theft

Here's what happens when you push an otherwise easygoing, sympathetic kind of person too far.
In September we hired a guy to do some work at the house - specifically, to re-insulate the walls and ceiling of the Imaginarium, as it's under-insulated and was pretty cold up there last winter. He quoted us a price, and wanted half down to buy supplies, preferably in cash. That's not an uncommon request from the individual handyman/contractor types, so I gave him the $1,100 in cash, and got a receipt.

He was supposed to start the work that weekend, September 19. But he never did it, and every weekend that he didn't show up, he had some new excuse why he couldn't do it that week. Except I began to get suspicious back in October when this had gone on for a month, and his excuses were starting to sound more and more like - well, just that - lame excuses, not legitimate reasons.

He was referred to us by the real estate agent we used when we bought this house, so I got hold of her to tell her what was going on. She contacted him, and initially told us that he was having some health problems that he hadn't wanted anyone to know about ('he's a private person' she said - we'll see why in a minute). Although I sympathized with his having health problems, I said "When you're holding $1,100 of someone's money and not doing the work, they kind of have a right to know the truth. If he didn't want to tell us, he should have simply said he couldn't do the work and returned our money." She agreed, but suggested we give him a few more weeks, at which time he'd told her he was confident he'd be able to complete the job.

Two more weeks went by, and we called him again this Monday. He didn't answer, but left a message back for us that he was still sick, but getting better, and anticipated doing the work in another couple weeks.

I tried to call him twice the next day, but just kept getting his voice mail. I was fed up and wanted my boss (an attorney) to send him a stern letter just telling him we wanted our money back. Problem was, no one had his address. I'd only ever had his phone number, and when he wrote out the receipt for taking our money, it wasn't on a business invoice or anything - just a plain white piece of paper. The real estate agent didn't have his address either.

I decided to do some research online to see if I could turn up a business address for him. After a lengthy search, I did find him - not in any place I expected to find him - in a local court system's online docket, with a string of traffic and criminal charges two pages long.

Turns out he'd had so many charges of driving with a suspended license that they'd permanently revoked it - three days after I paid him to do the work. And it was suspended even before they did that, so he knew when he came to my house, took my money, and agreed to do this work, that he didn't even have a valid driver's license to be driving around on. (He also had no insurance on his truck, as a side note - one of the charges was about that - which means there's a chance his truck may have even been impounded when he got that last charge).

He's also on probation for a felony burglary charge from last year. Which had nothing directly to do with my situation, except that (a) he's apparently proven himself capable of robbing people, and (b) being on probation, he should be even less willing to continue to break the law, as that puts him in serious danger of having his probation revoked and sending him to prison on that original burglary charge.

By the time I found all this out, Wednesday of this week, I was - well, seriously concerned wouldn't be putting it too strongly.

My boss recommended I tell him he's got one week to return my money, or I'm filing felony theft charges against him (a prospect that should have gotten his attention, as I said, another felony charge now will cause his probation to be revoked). I called him, got his voice mail (of course - he quit answering phone calls from us quite some time ago), and left that message. I also told the real estate agent what was going on, and she called him, too, and left him a stern message telling him he'd better pony up and do the right thing. (She was, by the way, mortified at this turn of events, and felt really bad for referring us to him in the first place, then encouraging us to trust him back in October - but it's not her fault, she didn't know any of this either).

A few hours later my real estate agent got a call from a friend of the guy - he wouldn't even call himself - with a message for me, which was: (a) he's pretty well hit rock bottom and doesn't care anymore, so if I file criminal charges on him, he's just going to run, and we'll never find him, and I'll never get anything out of it; (b) he spent the money, it's gone, so he doesn't even have it to give back to me; and (c) but if I'd be willing to not file charges he'd be willing to make payments to me till it was paid back.

Okay, really? First of all, this guy lied to me for two months, so why in God's name am I going to trust him now to make payments? Second of all, he now has no source of income whatsoever. The only truth he told in all this was that he is having health problems, so he hasn't been working for months, and has no other source of income. He's now wrecked his local reputation (a large portion of his business came from referrals from local real estate agents, and when this happened, a mass bulletin was sent out telling them all not to refer him anymore, so he lost his reputation and a large chunk of his potential business referrals over this), besides which he has no driver's license and maybe no truck - so he has little chance of continuing to generate enough work in this area to earn enough money to both live on, and pay me anything reasonable. And lastly, I don't want stupid payments - I need the money back so I can hire somone else to do this work. That's the other part of all this - it's still freezing in my upstairs, and we're still wasting money on heating costs, because the insulation work didn't get done, and I gave this thief the money I had to do it with, which it took us all summer to save up.

I wrote the friend an email (it's someone I know too, ironically), and my boss called both the friend and the guy who robbed me, and left a message with no room for doubt. He's been advised that I will not accept anything but the return of my entire $1,100, in cash, the way I gave it to him. And if I don't have it in my hand in one week, I'm going to contact his probation officer and tell them what happened (which will result in the revocation of his probation and, as I mentioned, probably eventually prison time), and then I'm going to file felony theft charges against him, which under the circumstances might also carry jail time, since it's now his second felony offense.

We gave the guy a week to get the money, because there's a slim chance that maybe, to keep himself out of prison, he can find someone - some relative or someone - who can loan him the money. Maybe I'll get at least part of my money back, which would be wonderful. Because otherwise, I'm out $1,100, end of story. If he doesn't come up with it, and I proceed (which I will), there's no chance then of ever getting it. Even if the court ordered him to pay restitution, he's got nothing - he's apparently destitute, he won't be working if he goes to jail, even out of jail he's got little chance of working again around here. He also has a civil judgment lien against him from a company in Pennsylvania from 6 or 7 years ago, so they'd get first crack at any asset he did have. He has nothing and no means to pay me back. I'll never see that money again, unless this last ditch effort works, and someone feels sorry for him and loans him the money.

Do I think it likely? No. But I figured it was worth a shot.

When my boss talked to the friend, the friend denied that this guy was going to run, to leave the state. But that is what he threatened the night before. I decided it was a chance worth taking, because he's not smart enough to go create a whole new identity for himself and start life over somewhere else. He'll get caught eventually.

And I am so pissed off about this. It's bad enough he lied to us for weeks on end, but I think what galls me the worst are two things - first, his cavalier attitude in having his friend tell me "Yeah, I spent your money, it's gone, and there's nothing you can do about it." And second, the fact that even as recently as this week he was still just blatantly lying to us, when he left the message saying he was planning to start the work in a couple weeks. He knew damned well he wasn't going to do this work, because he'd already spent the money - and hadn't bought any of the supplies necessary to do the work, which is in part what the cash advance was for. He had no money of his own with which to buy the stuff to cover his theft, and I sure as hell wasn't giving him any more money - he wasn't to get the rest of his payment until the work was done.

So he had no way to do the work, and he knew this, yet he still sat there and promised me he'd be doing it in a couple weeks.

He wants to try to get us to believe that he's really a good guy, and he's just down on his luck, rotten ex-wife took him to the cleaners in his divorce a few years ago, his health is wrecked from stress, but he really wants to make good on this ... while he blithely went out and spent MY money, then lied to me about it.

Life's full of disappointments, and people do unscrupulous things all the time - but I'm about as pissed off at this guy as I've ever been at anyone. Despite what a temper I can have, I'm usually actually a pretty easy sell for a hard luck story. If this had only involved a hundred dollars or so, I'd probably figure the guy had made enough of a wreck of his life that he didn't need me piling more grief on top of it, and I'd probably just write it off and walk away.

But for $1,100? And such blatant flat-out thievery and lying to me? No. He just crossed the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong way. I'll stop at nothing (legally) to hound this guy until I get whatever I can get out this - if not any of my money back, I'll at least make sure that he gets whatever punishment the courts find suitable under the circumstances ... and if he does run, I'll make sure he gets found. He's going to wish to hell he'd never heard of me, and I'm sure the grief I'm going to make sure he gets wasn't worth $1,100. I hope he enjoyed it, because he's definitely going to pay for it, one way or the other. (by legal means, of course)

Halloween 2009

Our first Halloween in the new house was fun. The Dread Reverend has plans for really decorating the place up over the coming years (and I'm getting psyched about helping, too - all the holidays are becoming fun again in the new house ...), so for our first year he began to put his plans in place. He decorated up the front yard pretty nice this year.





It's hard to see in the picture, but those are pirates hanging from the rope, with a sign that says 'Pirates Ye Be Warned.' Although later, since we are all pirates, I said maybe having hanging pirates in our front yard isn't the best thing for us ... seems kind of disloyal. So we might think of something else next year.

Then he made a spooky 'soundtrack' to play during trick-or-treat. It was very well done - he did all the sound effects himself, and it was really creepy! The background was a constant sound of a creaking ship, with all kinds of other sounds cycling through - creepy sayings, discordant music, a few random screams and yells. Really good!

The Dread Reverend and Paddy dressed up to pass out candy. (I dressed up a little, too - wore my pirate coat, anyway). Even Tyler wanted to get in on the fun.





We didn't have nearly as many trick-or-treaters as we'd thought we might, so we have tons of candy left over. But that's okay ... it's not like it'll go to waste, and I'd rather have too much than run out.

There was one truly scary thing that happened, and not in that Halloween fun kinda way. We had the leftover candy in the dining room, but on one of the chairs instead of on the table. We decided to run out for a few minutes to stop by a friend's house a few blocks away, and to stop in the local mini-mart for cigarettes. When we got back, the first sight that greeted me was Tyler snuffling through shredded candy wrappers on the floor around him. Holy cow ... he'd gotten into the candy. And chocolate is toxic to dogs!

After an initial moment of panic (and being really, extremely pissed at myself for leaving chocolate where he could get to it, when I'm usually so very careful about those kinds of things!), I went through the wrappers and figured out that he'd eaten two Reese's Peanut Butter Cups candy bars - not two cups, two whole candy bars, four cups. But, since they are mostly peanut butter with just a thin chocolate coating, I talked it over with the Dread Reverend, and we agreed that he got only a minimal amount of chocolate, and he would probably be fine.

He ate almost an entire bag of chocolate covered peanuts one time years ago, and I called the vet to ask about it - but they told me since it was actually a very small amount of chocolate on each peanut, it wouldn't hurt him, and the worst that would probably happen would be a stomach ache from the peanuts.

Tyler did drink an awful lot of water last night, and his stomach was growling loudly for awhile, but otherwise he seems fine. If he had eaten any more, or any other kind that was more solidly chocolate, I'd have panicked and had him at the emergency vet's ... but fortunately for us, he loves peanut butter, and picked those Reese's cups out of a wide variety of other candy bars. So I think he'll be fine.

And I capped off the night with a nice, Halloween-y fire in the Captain's Parlour. Really beautiful!