New Half Bath Cabinet

Our half bath is wedged into a small sliver of what used to be the back porch, so there is barely enough room to turn around in there and no storage space at all.  Some previous owner had hung a tiny flakeboard, "Made in China" cabinet on the wall above the toilet where we had a few things stashed, but we always knew we would replace that down the road with something larger.

Finally this reached the top of my list and starting New Year's weekend I made and hung a new cabinet.  I built it out of old lumber (mostly shelving boards I took out of the pantry two years ago when we redid that) and with recycled doors and hardware (which came out of the old kitchen at Georgetown twelve years ago).  The hardest part of the project was stripping and refinishing the pine doors - all those louvers!  But I wanted to do a good job so I spent hours with rags, steel wool and lacquer thinner, getting spacey and removing the old finish so I could relacquer them.  Now that I see the finished product, I think painting would have been better.

Blogger is being contrary, so I will post the picture later...

Edited 1/4/14:  Now it works!  Picture attached.

He Had A Very Rusty Nose

Christmas is never complete without a weekend in Michigan exchanging sometimes goofy presents with brother Brian.  His nickname is Moose, so we thought it would be fun to get him one of the real thing.  After locating a suitable example of the species and trussing up the poor beast in my pickup bed for the long drive north in freezing temperatures (which he handled quite well - luckily Rusty has an iron constitution), we arrived in Jackson with him.  There were some anxious moments when he was untied and made it into the woods behind Brian's house for a last few hours of moosey freedom, but eventually we corralled him.  Here he is with his new best bud, displaying his trademark steely gaze.

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Once again this year mom was able to visit us Thanksgiving week, and Brian and family stopped in for a night to join in the festivities before they all headed back to Michigan.  What a crew!  We should have served rabbit.

Romney Rally In Lebanon

It was a barn-burner of a Presidential election here in Ohio in 2012, and we saw more of the candidates than maybe any other state.  Usually Republican candidates can be counted on to make a stop in conservative Warren County.  In 2004 George W. Bush spoke in the middle of Broadway, right in front of the Golden Lamb.  Then in 2008 John McCain and Sarah Palin appeared in the same spot and, true to form, the Romney campaign picked this location for an October 13 rally.

It was a huge production, with four semi-trailers pulling in the day before and police cordoning off most of the downtown area.  I registered the day before (as required) and showed up pretty early, which got me a spot about 50 yards from the stage with a view only slightly occluded by a light post.  It was a huge production with a sound system and big outdoor screens playing inspirational tributes to the candidate.  Then a number of Republican warmup speakers took the stage, ranging from Lebanon's mayor to U.S. Senator Rob Portman, who arrived in a bus with Gov. Romney moments before he spoke.  Then Romney himself addressed the very friendly crowd, and gave a good speech full of hard-hitting sound bytes (though not too much actual information). 

I wish I had had a better camera, but with only my little Canon PowerShot I got the usual grainy low-resolution image.  Romney was on the stage, just right of the blue banner in white shirtsleeves, but he shows up poorly - perhaps an omen for election day.

Risen From The Ashes

Several years ago ex-wife Jana moved to Phoenix, Arizona to take a programming job, and she still is there today, doing just fine without me.  She and Jim are retired now, and her parents sold their Florida home so they could all buy a big place west of the city in Goodyear and enjoy their retirements together.

Phoenix is well outside my traditional work travel circuit, but this year we acquired a new facility there and I scheduled a visit to do some training with the staff.  I flew in the weekend before to spend time with Jana and her family.  Here are Johnny and Jana at the lookout atop South Mountain, which has a view of the entire city and the airport.  The planes on approach travel below this vantage point, which is a very cool thing to see.  The weather in Phoenix in September - not so cool.

It's Not Easy Being Pink...

Our big adventure this summer was having the house painted.  It went like this:  The house is REALLY TALL, and we were doing just a little exterior painting around the edges but not at all going full tilt, but we were pretty tired of our house's faded, peeling pink attitude, and then a paint crew working on the house next door gave me a pretty low bid to paint the place for us, including fixing some woodwork and gutter issues way up high, and we take a lot of pride in doing work ourselves but in this case I pulled the trigger and hired the job done.  And here is what it looks like 95 percent finished.

We had problems with the painters, but they did do a lot of work and in the end the house was a new color and we are pretty happy.  Some of the low trim is not done yet and we will be working on that over the next year or so as we strip and repair first floor windows and put on storm windows.  It sure is a lot of house.

National Lampoon's Michigan Vacation

In mid-July Lee Ann and I had a nice driving vacation which mostly took us to historic places.  We went to French Lick Indiana to see the famous restored domed hotel there, then to Chicago for tours of some great architectural landmarks (including Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio), and on to similar cool places in Michigan City, South Bend, Detroit and finally Akron.  On the way we stopped and visited the Meijer Gardens outside Grand Rapids.  It was our second visit and we liked it even more this time.  Here I am in a case of life attempting to imitate art.