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Shuffling Around
May. 9th, 2011 01:40 amIt's been sort of a work on the house weekend. Ciro and I bought Mom a variety of plants for Mother's Day, which then had to be planted. Mom is a gardener, and Winchester in general is a town of gardeners, which makes it beautiful to walk through this time of year. Mom and I also have similar tastes in plants and planting styles, so it's a very easy gift to buy; I just have to walk around and find alien-looking shade-tolerant perennials. I continue to pine for my own as-yet-nonexistent container garden on my balcony, but at the moment have neither the time nor the money, thanks to the film; both will free up in July, but midsummer isn't the best planting season. We shall see.
Otherwise, Dad and I replaced the coat hooks in Ciro's and my closet; now our robes hang more securely and at the right height. And I changed the window treatment in the bathroom (which is temporary; but I suspect real renovations are two months off, and it's worth it to me to be free of the awful blinds for even a few weeks). Ciro and I tried to repair Scarlett's elliptical machine, but the people who made the machine used horrible bolts which we're going to have to Dremel through, if that's even worth it, to access the panel where we need to install the part. I'm sure the company that made the machine (Proform) did it on purpose in the hopes that we'd pay $700 to replace the machine instead of $40 to replace the part. (The bolts are made of a soft metal that deforms under almost any pressure; you can barely touch them without stripping them, even using a socket wrench. They also use European threadings and sizes despite Proform being an American company headquartered in Utah, hoping we will not have the correct tools to deal with this.) (What we will of course actually do is throw out the machine and not ever buy anything further from Proform.)
Ciro spent most of the last week painstakingly reproducing the Hayseeds edit frame by frame so it would be formatted correctly, and in an unexpected but welcome side effect this has given him enough distance from his performance that now he can watch the film instead of watching what he does in the film. Consequently, it is like he is getting to see the film for the first time, and he's enjoying it a great deal.
Another wrench in the film work, however; Val and Acevedo's plumbing has exploded out of their walls, which means Ciro and I likely have to scrap next week's trip to New Mexico as we will have no place to stay and no place to record. Val and Acevedo are currently in a hotel themselves. We're looking at our options, which include buying sound equipment and flying Lady J (lead actress; in New Mexico) to Boston; flying Ciro and Lady J to Dallas, where there's sound equipment; flying just me to New Mexico, but later; and not flying me or Lady J anywhere but flying Ciro to Dallas (it's complicated). Whatever way, it's a money sink and a headache, and who knows whether I can get time off work on another week, but sunk cost, sunk cost. Hopefully the airline will understand and let me change tickets without much penalty, although I'm assuming at the moment I'll lose everything. At least pipes didn't bust out of my wall.*
* Dad points out that PVC piping (liable to bust out of walls) and aluminum wiring (liable to burn down your house) were popular at the same time, and for the same reason - that was the last time we had a big run up in commodity prices, and people were trying to get out of using copper. So if you get your wiring stolen by copper thieves this time around, the lesson is: you really still need to replace those with copper. Chemical properties are not really transferable, even with transition metals. Especially with transition metals.
Otherwise, Dad and I replaced the coat hooks in Ciro's and my closet; now our robes hang more securely and at the right height. And I changed the window treatment in the bathroom (which is temporary; but I suspect real renovations are two months off, and it's worth it to me to be free of the awful blinds for even a few weeks). Ciro and I tried to repair Scarlett's elliptical machine, but the people who made the machine used horrible bolts which we're going to have to Dremel through, if that's even worth it, to access the panel where we need to install the part. I'm sure the company that made the machine (Proform) did it on purpose in the hopes that we'd pay $700 to replace the machine instead of $40 to replace the part. (The bolts are made of a soft metal that deforms under almost any pressure; you can barely touch them without stripping them, even using a socket wrench. They also use European threadings and sizes despite Proform being an American company headquartered in Utah, hoping we will not have the correct tools to deal with this.) (What we will of course actually do is throw out the machine and not ever buy anything further from Proform.)
Ciro spent most of the last week painstakingly reproducing the Hayseeds edit frame by frame so it would be formatted correctly, and in an unexpected but welcome side effect this has given him enough distance from his performance that now he can watch the film instead of watching what he does in the film. Consequently, it is like he is getting to see the film for the first time, and he's enjoying it a great deal.
Another wrench in the film work, however; Val and Acevedo's plumbing has exploded out of their walls, which means Ciro and I likely have to scrap next week's trip to New Mexico as we will have no place to stay and no place to record. Val and Acevedo are currently in a hotel themselves. We're looking at our options, which include buying sound equipment and flying Lady J (lead actress; in New Mexico) to Boston; flying Ciro and Lady J to Dallas, where there's sound equipment; flying just me to New Mexico, but later; and not flying me or Lady J anywhere but flying Ciro to Dallas (it's complicated). Whatever way, it's a money sink and a headache, and who knows whether I can get time off work on another week, but sunk cost, sunk cost. Hopefully the airline will understand and let me change tickets without much penalty, although I'm assuming at the moment I'll lose everything. At least pipes didn't bust out of my wall.*
* Dad points out that PVC piping (liable to bust out of walls) and aluminum wiring (liable to burn down your house) were popular at the same time, and for the same reason - that was the last time we had a big run up in commodity prices, and people were trying to get out of using copper. So if you get your wiring stolen by copper thieves this time around, the lesson is: you really still need to replace those with copper. Chemical properties are not really transferable, even with transition metals. Especially with transition metals.
