The Kitchen Project - Part 3 Nearing Completion

Well, we're getting close to the end. Most everything is installed except for a couple of problems with cabinet doors and drawer fronts. Two of the doors are the wrong size and two of the drawer fronts are missing. It will probably take about 10 days to get them. The granite installation went amazingly well. The granite contractor and his people really know what they are doing. The biggest remaining problems have to do with appliances. We can't seem to get a new dishwasher for love or money. The latest excuse is the Federal government's appliance "clunker" program. The story is that California is the only state that did not include dishwashers for the program Thus, California's allotment of dishwashers from the manufacturers was reassigned to other states. The salesman claims that the Northern California district for Frigidaire has over 300 dishwashers on back order! I wonder! The other problem is a real ghost in the machine issue. One of the heating elements on the cook top turns itself on automatically and you can't turn it off. Another of the heating elements turns off automatically after about 30 seconds. We have been getting the royal runaround for about two weeks. Now a new cook top is supposedly on order. We'll see. We would switch brands, but the opening in the granite is too large for our second choice, GE Profile. My advice is to avoid Electrolux. Here are some photos of the current state.

CHANGEABLE AND EXTRA SONGS 1: ends -- Heidi's Performance Art

Well, being a stepmother is teaching me quite a few interesting things.  But maybe none so interesting as what I'm learning about performance art.  Heidi came home last week looking for "old sheets, an axe and a saw."  Well, today is the realization of her planning -- a performance art piece where she and her partner saw wood for 12 hours.  They started at 6 this morning, and will have an open exhibit at 7 PM tonight.  We get to "see the remantns and hear the sonic record of their work."

This should be fun!

The Kitchen Project, Part 2 - The Big Mess

Well, as you can see from the pictures, the Kitchen Project is well underway. All of the demolition is finished, so we can now get going on installation. The granite counter tops are supposed to be delivered and installed on Wednesday. The new cabinet doors and new drawers are scheduled for next Friday. In the top picture, the shiny thing is the new refrigerator. It's already in place because we're having a new enclosure built for the fridge so the contractor wanted it in place to be sure it fits. This is the second fridge. The first fridge only got cold in the freezer, not the refrigerator part. The error code was something like 5Y-RN, which the manufacturer said meant there was in internal communication error. We are prisoners of our technology! But, the new one has been in place since Tuesday and seems to be working fine. Now we are on to the most difficult part of the whole process, picking door knobs and drawer pulls. This is one area where the world would be better off with fewer choices!

The Kitchen Project, Part 1

To help bolster the economy, we have launched in to remodeling our kitchen. Joey and da boys arrived this morning a little after 8 AM for the "demo" phase, i.e., demolition. We're replacing the counter tops, the appliances and refacing the cabinets. We've chosen granite for the new counter tops, so the granite dude comes the day after tomorrow to measure everything and figure out how to cut the very expensive pieces of granite we purchased a couple of weekends ago. Below are pictures showing the "before" and during the "demo". In the third picture, I had the camera flash on and when I snapped the picture both guys were cutting with a Saws-All and they thought one of them had hit an electrical wire. This brought a "Don't do that" from Joey (in the white shirt) followed by "I suppose you'll set off firecrackers next!".

Oh, the indignities of getting older

For those of you what may not have known, I just finished a course of radiation treatments for prostate cancer. There were 42 treatments spread over January, February and early March (5 days a week for 8 1/2 weeks!). Luckily, I had very minor side effects and am now looking forward to a successful conclusion. We won't know for sure for about a year. On Graduation Day, I presented the 3 young women that actually performed the treatments with a tee shirt. Their names are Rosie, Rochelle and Heidi. If you can't read the text, my tee shirt says "I dropped my drawers for Rosie, Rochelle and Heidi" and each of the individual shirts has just their name. Heidi wasn't there when Jan and I made the presentation. The person on the right is Dr. Patrica Seid, my radiation oncologist. If you're wondering what this is about, when receiving a radiation treatment for prostate cancer, you lie flat on a table and they aim the radiation beam at an area below the waist and above the pubic area. Thus, you have to "drop your drawers". Their isn't much immodesty because they cover you with a small towel after they get you lined up on the table. All in all, as cancer treatments go, it was about as non-invasive as you can get. There are gold "seeds" implanted in the prostate to aid in aiming the radiation beam, but we won't go into that!

Take Care,

Bob

Springtime in Wine Country

Hi - The last two weekends, Jan and I have made auto trips through the California wine country, specifically Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley. The primary motivation for doing this is that we are having a spectacular spring. Because of an above average rainfall season, the entire countryside is brilliant green. In addition, the acacia trees are blooming with their masses of yellow blossoms. Also there is a variety of non-bearing pear tree that is common in the area and they are blooming with masses of pure white blossoms. And, there is a small tree (I don't know what it is) that blooms with pink blossoms. And where ever there are vineyards, which is almost everywhere, the vineyard managers let wild mustard grow as ground cover and it blooms with bright yellow blossoms. So, you have the visual impact of rows of dormant vines with a solid mass of yellow in between each row. It is quite spectacular! We get all of these blooming events every year, but we don't usually get all of them at the same time. I'm sorry I didn't think to take a camera so I could capture some of it for you. If you want to see wine country at is its best, early spring and late fall are the best times. In the fall, after the grapes are picked, the grape leaves turn yellow and then gold and then bright red. Depending on the year, it can be quite awesome. This usually happens in late September or early October.

Just wanted to share.

Bob

Don't get old!

Hey - I just thought I would pass along a little bit of wisdom from one of the older members of the current family group - DON'T GET OLD! I just returned from two hours in the dentist chair being poked at by two dentists consdering what to do about my two upper front teeth. For those of you who don't know or remember, these are the teeth that were knocked out by the Maytag washing machine when I was 5 years old. (At one point, they actually used a torque wrench on me!) I currently have implants for both of them and they are both failing. It is possible to replace implants these days, but the considered opinion of the experts is that I am not a good candidate because of bone loss around the implants. So, the fall-back solution is a permanent bridge. That will be $10,000 please! With this situation in addition to the prostate cancer, I should be able to come up with a really awful pun about getting it from both ends, but I will refrain. The current schedule for treatment of the prostate cancer is that I will have gold seeds implanted on Nov. 6th and begin 8 to 8 1/2 weeks of external beam radiation treatments on Jan. 4th. I believe it was Mother/Grandmother/Mother-in-Law Betty who opined "After a certain age, staying alive is a full-time job!"

Struggling to stay young at heart!

Bob