So, several of the weekend’s many projects are being derailed either by laziness or circumstances beyond my control. That’s o.k. – the naps have been splendid. I might still paint, though.
Anyway, pick a paint color.
by Lloyd 7 Comments
We have some projects on deck this weekend, and one of them was to find a solution for sliding out of our angled bed. It’s not so bad, but I’m a little concerned about what will happen to the heated mattress pad come wintertime. (I really have to dig my feet into the mattress to shove myself back up toward the pillow, and that worries me with electrical wires below.) Also, the mattress tends to slide down the box springs over the course of a week or so. We needed something that could brace the mattress and the people upon it.
So here’s the first prototype. It’s not actually the first design, since I was completely prepared to just drill through the L-brackets into the floor – right through the carpet and padding. I knew full well the screws would probably bind up, but the thing would be sturdy as heck.
But no – Lloyd saw me carry the wood, drill and L-brackets up from the basement through the dining room. Drat his sneaky eyes and his concern for resale value.
“Sheesh. What are you doing?” he sighed.
“Um….. laundry?”
Drat. Drat. Drat. He helped me carry stuff upstairs, talked me down from my instance on floor anchoring, and we tried a few different, yet less good, configurations. We settled on making an upside-down ‘T’. Part of it goes under the bed, the other part is the ‘floor’ for the L-brackets.
Now we have something to rest our feet on when we’ve slid down, so it’s a little like standing in bed.
Maybe sometime we’ll make a ‘pretty’ version – perhaps something more bench-like with proper in-floor support – but it’ll do for now.
by Lloyd 19 Comments
I have the closet cleaned out now, and I have a computer setup in it. Okay, two computers. Okay, at least two computers. Moving me into a closet ended up costing Lincoln Lutheran 2 new computers, a couple of decent monitors, a really pricey keyboard and mouse, and a fairly expensive KVM switch. But I made my own Ethernet cables to help keep the total cost down.
It’s not so bad as long as I keep the door open. And an unforeseen benefit to living in a closet is that there is no phone. I get a little more work done because it is harder for people to get ahold of me.
Which leads me to the point of the thing. A few years ago I put one of those sign plaque thingies on the door and got a few signs to swap out. No one ever knew what was in this closet, so I had a few funny signs made that I would swap out seasonally. Over the years I’ve lost a few of them, and, more to the point, I’ve run out of ideas for new signs.
So I’m fishing for ideas. Obviously, the geekier the better, but I’m not proud. I’ll steal any idea. A former student stopped by few days ago, thought it was funny that they stuffed me in a closet and offered a few of his own:
So, there you have it. Help make my closet more homey (funny signs are like geek curtains).
by Lloyd 15 Comments
When last we left our intrepid me, I was unceremoniously kicked out of my classroom. Feeling somewhat homeless, I contemplated moving a desk out into the hallway, but there seemed to be several drawbacks to that plan.
Two of our office staff quit recently, and so there were empty desks in the office. I worked from there during the first week of school, but they went and hired someone else. They said that it would be impolite not to give the new people desks.
Now, there are three computer labs at Lincoln Lutheran, and I could, in theory, have simply claimed one as my classroom. This seemed like a good solution except that I was, at least nominally, not teaching middle school math so that I could get more computery stuff done. It’s hard to get computery stuff done when students and teachers keep interrupting with things like classes.
So, there’s this closet in the Mac Lab. I wish I would have taken a before picture. Lauren called while I was cleaning it out and told me to take a during picture, but I had already spent a few hours working on it. I threw out a lot of computer stuff that I was saving “just in case”. And I made a couple of stacks of things that can just live out in the open for the time being.
It’s not a bad closet, and when I talk to students I get to say, “I’ll be in my closet. I mean Office.”
We interrupt Lloyd’s ‘Post in 4 parts’ for a meaningless explanation.
I got my first piece of hate mail.
A concerned cat lover let me know in no uncertain terms that putting the cats to sleep was a terrible idea. I wrote back, explaining the decision, and Lloyd thought perhaps I should tell all of the internet the whole story. If you already know this, feel free to skip ahead to tomorrow.
Cricket and Pfennig were 15 1/2 and 14 1/2 years old, respectively. Our vet told us that they were becoming geriatric. They’ve lived through a lot.
About five years ago, Cricket woke me up howling one morning. She was holding her paw like it was broken, and I rushed her to the vet. After they x-rayed her (and she bit them all), they told us she had arthritis. A cortisone shot helped, but he said she needed to keep skinny so it wouldn’t become aggravated. (Remember that part.)
When Pfennig was a wee cat of 3 years old, she had pretty bad urinary problems – peeing all the time, peeing blood and peeing in visitor’s suitcases. We put her on prescription cat food that cleared it up, but she had to be on it for the next 10 or so years, and she got really fat. A year ago, it stopped working. I took her to the vet to find out why she was drinking so much water, and he said she might be diabetic. There were tests he could run, but we decided against that. (Cat lovers, hate me here. I decided against giving my cat a shot everyday. I’m the devil incarnate.)
As you know, over the next year or so, the cats switched bodies. Pfat Pfennig became skinny, and skinny Cricket became fat (aggrevating her arthritis). Then Cricket had the anal gland trouble that required the antibiotics that messed up her system. She never had a regular bowel movement since then, despite yogurt, probiotics and several kinds of expensive cat food. When we took them in again, we were told just to watch her and see how it went. Oh, and Pfennig had a heart murmur. “Watch for strange breathing – it might be her heart.”
Then there was the summer ‘poop all over the basement floor’ issue that preceded the digging of the grave. The vet said that they might just be getting senile. We changed food again, added another litter box, put litter attractant in the boxes, changed the litter daily, and put a step up to the litter box. I should mention that when Cricket would pee, it was not a normal amount of pee. Something was wrong. Daily scooping yielded 3-4 giant bricks of clumped litter.
So now it was down to this. It wasn’t just ‘missing the litter’ box, it was pee in my closet, in Brad’s closet, in the play room, all over two twin guest beds, their chair in the basement, the floor in the tool area, the floor in the library area, the floor in the laundry room. (I got out the blacklight last week, and nearly fainted with what I saw.) Pfennig had become a skinny ghost that only slept and ate, and Cricket had a hard time jumping up onto my lap.
And the barfing. Oh, the barfing. Beth can attest to the barfing.
I loved my cats. I’m sorry that my cheap cat food post made it seem like I only fed them crap. They had other, non-cheap (IAMS, Purina, some organic stuff, and yes- Meow Mix) dry cat food in addition to that (several kinds – nothing worked).
So, forgive this overly-detailed post. I’m left with a freezer full of different kinds of cat foods that didn’t help, various items in different stages of de-stinking, and now, a heap of guilt from a stranger. No, wait. I don’t feel guilty. I just feel sad.
So here’s the wrinkle. I want to take the high road here, so no support of me and no bashing of the letter writer, or vice versa. Your comment must be about your feelings regarding mustard, or I will delete it.
by Lloyd 8 Comments
So that was last year. Here’s a photo of my room a week before school started this year.
Kicked out. It made sense; they wanted me to have more time to do computery things, so I wouldn’t be teaching middle school math. But it was hard to pack up 8 years of stuff. Sorting through it was sad, and I took a couple of big boxes home for the next time I get to have a middle school classroom. Lauren said she almost cried when I started singing (this is not an atypical reaction to my singing).
Then, as if to add insult to injury, when I asked where I should go, they hadn’t really given that any thought.