Saturday, June 21, 2014

crawl space redo

Here are before and after pics of my crawl space. It didn't turn out as nice as I had hoped but it's still a lot better than it was. I spent $120 on this project and am hoping to pay for it by selling two ladders I don't need anymore.
 
before: looking down into the crawl space, or as some of my friends used to call it, the dungeon

after: bought some cheap outdoor rugs from world market; they're made out of recycled plastic
before: dirty old corner, and gross mold on an old bamboo rug

dry lok should keep the bricks from crumbling, and now it's much cleaner
before: the whole reason I decided to redo my crawl space is because I love my furnace and was worried about it getting dusty

after: moved some old bath mats that I accidentally fucked up with the vacuum and taped the plastic against the furnace so it won't get dusty inside (well, won't get as dusty)

two words: yikes and yuck
after: looks a little ghetto, but at least it's clean

not quite the exciting friday night that might be implied

Wednesday and Thursday nights after work I dry lok-ed the bricks in my crawl space. I've been meaning to fix it up since I moved in, and it's my last official project for my house (got my front outdoor light fixed on friday - no more projects until something breaks!!!!).

Yesterday after work I decided to put down the plastic sheeting I got to cover the dirt floor. It's a special plastic that lets the ground breathe but keeps the dust down. I had envisioned a certain look for the plastic, and even bought a nail gun to hold it in place on the wall.

That, of course, didn't work.

And my idea for neatly laid plastic didn't work either.

In any case, I ended up doing what was recommended on the This Old House blog, and duct taped the plastic to the walls. Of course, half way through I ran out of duct tape so I ran down to Guiry's and got there 5 minutes before closing.

Obviously they wanted to get rid of me in a hurry so they could close, so as I walked in the store the guy behind the paint counter asked what I was looking for. Without thinking really, I said "I need duct tape! And knee pads!"

There was a slight pause and more employees gathered in the paint department area, looking at me strangely. It made me nervous so I said "And, I need two rolls. Of duct tape." (I didn't want to run out again and not get my project finished last night - I have other stuff to do today and will be working at the british bulldog tomorrow for world cup)

There was a burst of laughter from the paint department people. One guy said "sounds like a fun friday night for somebody!" Another guy said "maybe she's just duct taping people up tonight". A third guy said "you know, duct tape is rated to 80 MPH, so if you need to duct tape someone to the hood of your car, don't go over 80 MPF".

Ech.

This jeering continued and got worse when I tried to explain that I was putting plastic sheeting in my crawlspace. And as I walked out of guiry's the first paint guy yelled "have the BEST friday night ever!" and, as I headed toward the corner of Park Avenue and was accosted by two homeless guys wanting money, the third paint guy stuck his head out the door of guiry's and said "I'd stay away from her dude! she just bought a bunch of duct tape and she works for the CIA!" (note, I have NO IDEA why he would have said I worked for the CIA except perhaps to make fun of my huge sun hat and dark sunglasses which I didn't take off in the store because they were making fun of me and I go there a lot and am afraid they will recognize me again and make more duct tape jokes).

Anyway, I finished putting down the plastic sheeting around 9 last night. Heading to IKEA (oh dread, IKEA on Saturday) to see if I can find the same bamboo carpets I found there in 2001 to put over the plastic sheeting. Then I'll post pictures.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

more treadmill repairs

It appears, after 5 months of use, that I have burned out the motor on my treadmill. Luckily the motor has a lifetime warranty and the guy who fixed the incline gave me insider information so I was able to get a better, bigger replacement motor. It arrived today and the same guy will be installing the new motor. He knows how enthusiastic I am about my treadmill so he rearranged his appointments so he can come fix it tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.

I should be able to get in at least 14 miles tomorrow!

And, on another note, I got up early this morning to do some editing on the prologue for my children's book. I fixed up a few things but when I re-read it I didn't think it was as bad as I did last night. I was not in the mood to write last night but forced myself and now am glad.

Time to find a writer group, or do something...I'm hoping to write a good pitch and maybe get myself invited back to the new york pitch fest. Part of me thinks maybe this book is an easier sell than my memoir and part of me thinks this will be another adventure in frustration and failure. I can just hear some expert saying a prologue to a book should only be one page...

Oh well, anyone who thinks being a writer is easy has never been a writer.

Thinking positive thoughts and soldiering on.

Monday, June 16, 2014

prologue - finished draft

I finished my children's book in 8 days. Then Jeff from my writer's group said it needed a prologue. I started writing the prologue in (embarrassing) February 2013. But I couldn't remember the scientifically accurate situation I had made up to tell the story of why croco-diamonds are so lucky (to justify why the Giant Man lets the croco-diamond wreak havoc on his farm).

This evening I decided to stop fucking around and just write something. So here's the draft prologue to the book:

The Legend of the Croco-diamond


From The Legends of all the Creatures in all of The Worlds, by Baron Joseph von Noseworth-Socks and Dr. Mimsy A. Crumbles:

In the time of the time in question, which is much earlier than time is now, there existed a King Muckles-string who oversaw the kingdom of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea (though in truth it was just close to the sea). And the King had a terrible problem.

There was a building central to the town, The Raincoat Keeper, where all the raincoats, back up raincoats, raincoats for future use, and previous raincoats which could no longer be used were stored. It rains quite frequently in New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea. The building was old, and, as the town people often said, a bit wobbly.

In any case, one day the King had arranged a parade for all of the heavy things in the town. He was trying to promote fitness. So the townsfolk dutifully gathered up all of the heavy things and loaded them onto carts for the parade. There was a statue of a camelsaurus (the King was quite fond of dinosaurs), and Mr. Elmsberry’s fish tank which contained, among other rare species, a leafy dragon eel. Also in the parade was a giant sack of pennies that the elder Mrs. Fungalstinn had spent her life collecting, a model of a volcano used during National Lava and Explosions Week, a giant egg whisk made of solid metal that commemorated the mention of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea in book nine of the poggly woggly adventure series, the local cat that ate all of the rats, and finally the De Confetti family’s collection of bricks.

The Parade of Heavy Things was meant to start at the edge of town, circle The Raincoat Keeper, and then proceed to the other edge of town. But as the Parade of Heavy Things began circling The Raincoat Keeper a terrible thing happened.

The building shuddered, then sighed, and all of the walls and the roof collapsed into a pile of dust as if the Raincoat Keeper had never existed. Raincoats began to blow around New Dunsley Clackyshire. People were seen walking down the street with red children’s raincoats stuck in their hair, yellow crossing guard’s raincoats plastered to briefcases, and blue fishermen’s raincoats caught on the bottom of shoes.

As New Dunsley Clackyshire is in a valley, the raincoats blew in a circle around the town. Pretty soon everything was covered with raincoats – the sidewalks, the houses, even the camelsaurus. If one saw it one would imagine it was just a giant coat rack and not an esteemed dinosaur. The people of the village picked up the rain coats but had no where to put them and, in any case, more blew in to take the place of the ones people picked up.

Around this time a Croco-diamond came to the village. He seemed out of breath as he arrived. One might have thought he had been running though Croco-diamonds aren’t normally known to hurry. He was dragging behind him a large corked bottle. Something grey and cloudlike was swirling around inside it.

“Greetings good people of the town of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea! What a fine town you seem to have! I am amused by your decorations. Perhaps it is National Raincoat Day? I do love holidays. Especially ones that last a week. Why just the other day I was telling King Ramsley of North Cuffsley…”

A breeze picked up and blew a pink polka dot raincoat onto the Croco-diamond’s head.

“Well, I see I have now joined in your raincoat celebration. I thank you, the good people of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the…”

More raincoats landed on the Croco-diamond, sticking to the jewels on his spine and tangling around his finely manicured nails.

“Mmmphff. Well. This is a bit of a situation.”

The king rushed forward and pulled the rain coats off the Croco-diamond. Croco-diamonds are considered royalty according to Von Murray Royalty Reference and the king was embarrassed about the rain coats landing on such an esteemed figure.

“Oh pardon,” said the king as he held up his royal robe to shield the Croco-diamond from further rain coat assaults. “We had a parade of heavy things and…”

“I am very much in a hurry,” said the Croco-diamond, interrupting the king. “You see, my favorite uncle has fallen into an abysm while looking for a button and I must rescue him.”

“An abysm?” asked the king.

“Yes, he was strolling through the moors with Lord Fangerly when he lost a button. While looking for the button he fell into an abysm. One can only be grateful he fell into an abysm and not a schism. Or a crack. Or a fissure. Or a rent or a rupture. Imagine if my uncle had fallen into a split or a sunder. Though I supposed one might not be able to fall into a sunder. And all for a button…”
“A button? I mean, an abysm?” asked the king again. He was very confused.

“Yes. I see you understand. So I have created a vortex to pull him out of the abysm.” The Croco-diamond pointed to the bottle with the swirling cloud inside. “I must make haste to the moors! So if you would be so kind…”

But just at that moment a rain coat landed on the head of Mr. Elsmberry,
who stepped backward onto the tail of the cat that ate all of the rats
(who was, at that moment, trying to eat Mr. Elmsberry’s fish),
causing the cat to jump on the De Confetti family’s collection of bricks,
causing a brick to fall onto the bottle next to the Croco-diamond.
There was a sharp CRACK and then a loud WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.

“Oh dear,” said the Croco-diamond. “There goes the vortex. I fear a bad result for all.”

The vortex rose from the ground and swirled above the crowd, spinning faster and faster as it rose.

“The camelsaurus!!!” cried the king, running to protect his beloved dinosaur.

BUT.

The vortex, in fact, was slowly sucking in all the rain coats. As it spun around the town, looking somewhat like a tornado but also like a cone of multi-colored cotton candy, it sucked up the polka dotted rain coats, the firemen’s rain coats, the ancient rain coat of Great Aunt Ethel, and all the other rain coats (except for those that were properly hung in the closet).

And after all the rain coats were cleaned up, the vortex rose towards the mountains and disappeared from sight.

The Croco-diamond sighed and peered up at the sky. “How sad. I was going to rescue my uncle and then patent my vortex.”

But soon the jubilation of the town people, who were finally free from rain coats, raised the Croco-diamond’s spirits. Mrs. Fungalstinn made him a very fine sash proclaiming the Croco-diamond the rescuer of the people of New Dunsley Clackyshire on the Sea and Grandpa De Confetti took a picture of him standing regally next to the camelsaurus in his sash.

The king declared that the Croco-diamond was the luckiest creature in all of the worlds so that any town and every person would, if they met a Croco-diamond, welcome him and take care of him. 

The best luck would belong to any person who met a Croco-diamond.

acaraje - YUM!

Jess and Edglas are at the British Bulldog today so I walked over at lunch because I wanted to try their sandwich but have been afraid to do so at the festivals because I have so many crazy allergies.

Delicious!

I got the vegetarian - the packet the sandwich is in is what I was working on last week, the yellow spread is vatapa (cocoanut milk, cashews, and peanuts), and the outside is the black eyed pea fritter

they'll be at the british bulldog for the world cup games - go by and try acaraje!!! you know you want one

Sunday, June 15, 2014

brewgrass!

Yesterday I had to be at Jess and Edglas' house at 7:15 to pack up a U Haul van they rented for brewgrass. I was so worried about oversleeping that I set 2 alarms. I woke up at 430 and couldn't go back to sleep so I read for a while and then got ready to go.

Which makes what happened next so ironic. I kept thinking I should leave but didn't want to show up at their place too early. When I finally left, there was some bike ride thing going on on my street. I crawled along at 5 miles an hour behind a group of about 20 cyclists. It was like something out of a 60s italian movie. 

Finally I got to their place and we packed up and headed to the festival (well, lots of stuff happened but you probably don't care). Once again, we were the first vendor to arrive and we ended up getting moved to a better spot. Also, Jess had not realized she needed to reserve a large space because she thought we could use the side walk behind us (turned out that was not the case). As luck would have it, another vendor had cancelled Friday night so we got to use their spot for free (so far Jess has been super lucky at events).

We started to set up and Jess realized she had forgotten the crock pots where the meat for the acaraje is kept warm. I ran back to their place and picked them up. Also, they had forgotten to bring an umbrella (there was a chance for rain in the afternoon) but I had grabbed mine that morning. We were joined again by Jess' sister Erica and her room mate whom I will call Romeo. We talked about our goals for the day. Erica and Romeo wanted to flirt with cute guys. My goal was to talk to as few people as possible and to learn how to mix the dough.

The festival started at noon and went until 10 pm. With so many of us there we got all the prep work done without too much craziness. We got the first order at 12:17. From that point on we were never without an order, but they were trickling in one at a time. I worked the dough and cooked. Edglas said I was good at mixing the dough and the acarajes were coming out picture perfect.

Then all hell broke loose around 3. We had a line and it started getting longer and longer. I was bouncing between the dough, cooking shrimp and chicken, and helping prep the sandwiches. And right as we were in the thick of it rain started to fall. That ended up being a bit of a blessing in disguise as it was the only break we would get for the rest of the day. At first we tried to keep cooking with me holding an umbrella over the fryer but it wasn't working.

at first it was just a light drizzle - 5 minutes after I took this picture it turned into a torrential downpour and we scrambled to move everything under the tent
Then it started thundering. People left or huddled for shelter. I decided to take some pictures since we couldn't do anything else.
Jess, Edglas, Romeo (a wine vendor had just come by and traded us wine for an acaraje), and Erica

me in the land of giants - at 5'8" I'm not used to being the shortest person in a picture - I started to think of the four of us as the amazons, with me being the runt of the litter
 I was then put on cloud duty to try to apply what I had learned in my meteorology class to figure out how long the storm was going to last. Jess and Erica frantically searched weather map sites to see what the radar was capturing about the storm.

And then it started hailing.

at first it was just little bits of hail, and Romeo and I were commenting that it was a typical little summer shower with some hail thrown in

then it started REALLY hailing and we worried the tent was going to fall down - it's hard to see in the picture but some of the hail was bigger than a marble - side note, do kids today still play with marbles? I loved marbles when I was a kid
At that point all of us were freezing, and thinking the festival would end in disaster, and just when things seemed to be totally hopeless, Romeo ran out into the hail storm and raised his hands to the sky.
"hail - FUUUUCK OFF!!!!"
I am not sure what mysterious incantations he used, but it worked. Five minutes later the sky cleared and the sun came out. Before we had a chance to even think about wiping the hail off the tables we were mobbed with people who patiently waited 20 minutes while we got the fryer heated up and the booth reassembled.

By 5 pm we had a longer line than any of the beer tents. Probably the only line longer than ours was the porta potty line which is why I ended up not peeing for 8 hours. Not that there was time to drink anything anyway. I worked dough, then cooked meat, then helped Romeo make sandwiches. The only thing I refused to do was take orders and money from customers. We could hear the bands really well because the speaker was right next to our tent so Erica, Jess, and Romeo would spontaneously start dancing. The customers loved it. They're all good dancers. I just stood there looking awkward.

Speaking of customers, we ran into some total assholes at brewgrass. There was a completely drunk woman who stuck a $10 in Jess' face and said "do you see this money? do you understand that I have money and want a sandwich?" (she had cut in line in front of everyone). Other people try to order from me so they wouldn't have to wait in line. And some guy complained about having to wait 5 minutes for his order (we were slammed and he had ordered 6 sandwiches - we deliver each sandwich as we make them so he already had some of his order but was just being a drunk dick).

And then there were the idiots. One woman told Edglas that the proper name for the sandwich was something ("acar" is what it sounded like she said) because she had been to Portugal and had something similar. Then she started lecturing him on Portugese (apparently she took a class once) and the derivative of the name of the acaraje sandwich. After I purposely bumped her twice she went away. Another guy tried to speak to Edglas in Spanish and then told his friend Edglas must not really be Brazilian (this was a common snot ass remark heard from customers: "but is anyone working in your tent REALLY brazilian?"). My favorite stupid comment from people was "oh look, they're frying potato salad". Do people actually do that? One drunk guy kept insisting that he didn't want to try an acaraje but he did want to try the fried potato salad and could I make that for him since he couldn't order it from the front. He finally went away.

Then there were the assholes who would come up right behind me and ask what I was doing, or put their food on our prep surfaces even though there was an area full of tables and chairs RIGHT BEHIND US. I was as polite as I could be but it pissed me off that people would put a PLASTIC CUP right next to a stove where I was trying to fry shrimp or set their plates of food (from other vendors) on the table right where I was putting cooking utensils.

And for what ever reason, children of all sizes would make a bee line right for the fryer. I can't even imagine the catastrophe that would have unfolded if all of us in the tent weren't constantly scanning for the toddlers of drunken parents. The fryer is barricaded but there's only so much you can do to keep people away from it. One drunk guy told his friend he was going to reach into the fryer and pull out some dough. He really looked like he was going to do it. Edglas gave him a death stare; the guy left.

Oh drunken people at music festivals.

We started running out of food around 8 pm. By 9:15 we had served our last order. People in line were practically trampling each other trying to get the last sandwiches. One guy started yelling at me and I was like "who the fuck waits until 9:15 to get food?" All the other food vendors were already shut down except the guy next to us who was selling popsicles.

All of us were exhausted but managed to get the tent broken down and everything packed up in record time. Having the van was great because we didn't have to make multiple trips. And I finally had my first beer of the day (and also my last, I felt light headed after I drank it). I finally got home around 11:15 and had a hot shower, and then watched Magnum Force because I was too tired to go to bed. I had a lot of fun and felt a huge sense of accomplishment from helping out.

As an interesting, to me, ending to this story, I would just mention that the five points jazz festival is in what's considered a "poorer" area because we have low income housing. The brewgrass was held in a yuppie-ish area of Denver. Who do you think were the better tippers? Obviously five points. Maybe people who attend events like brewgrass don't know how hard it is to work in the food service industry. You have to be physically strong, have good people skills, and be quick on your feet so you can figure out how to solve the crazy problems that happen when you're trying to feed people.

Something to think about next time you're eating out and aggravated by the service...