Category Archives: House

Vacation Day 2 – The Tub

On Day 2 of my vacation, 1 of my major accomplishments was getting Willy and Derrick together and moving a tub.

We borrowed my uncle Butch’s truck and picked up the tub from Toby’s backyard. The tub used to be a planter and since it was raining all day, the dirt had turned into mud.

We picked up the tub and dumped all the dirt out of it. We took it to a carwash and sprayed it down. This resulted in my person being almost completely mud covered.

It was worth it, because now I have a sweet tub to use as a beverage trough for the barbecue and perhaps as a dog tub in the future.


Firetub

Later that night Derrick, Jen and I went down to The Machine Shed for dinner. On the way down to Des Moines, Derrick dropped a little bomb on me.

He asked me if I had heard that Creighton was interested in hiring Greg McDermott.

Really?

It isn’t even my birthday… yet!

A Clockwork Couch

In the last couple of weeks I have been making huge organizational changes to my basement. However, other parts of the house have also seen wholesale changes. I recently changed out the white table my Aunt Linda gave me for a 10 foot long workbench to act as the entertainment center in my living room. I also purchased a new couch and loveseat. To further augment my living room experience, I have made my rear speakers wireless and now I no longer have to worry about hiding the wiring for the rear speakers under the rug.

Have a look:


A Clockwork Couch
Living Room Changes

As you can see from this picture, these new changes to the living room make my weekly ritualistic viewing of A Clockwork Orange much more enjoyable.

The new couch and loveseat are undeniably real horrorshow. I think that they will increase the comfort of my droogs when they come over to see how the colors of the real world only seem real when they viddy them on a screen. The couch is comfortable for sleeping, so I can take a nap when I have something of a pain in the gulliver. Comfortable enough that I might not awaken when I give orders for awakening. I shouldn’t think on that much though.  Thinking is for the gloopy ones and the oomny ones use like, inspiration and what Bog sends.

Now that the speakers are in the proper place, the surround sound sounds a million times better. I don’t have any problem approaching anybody and asking: “What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful portable picnic players. Come with uncle and hear all proper! Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited.” When I have a wonderful evening and I need to give it a perfect ending with a little Ludwig Van it will be bliss! Bliss and heaven! Gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. A bird of rarest-spun metal or like silver wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense. As I slooshie, I will know such lovely pictures!

If my droogs Jay and Jesse try to wrestle on the new furniture while waiting for me to get ready to hit the Korova milkbar and a night of the ultra-violence, I will have no problem smacking them with my cane. If they ask why I did that, I will tell them calmly “For being a bastard with no manners, and not a dook of an idea how to comport yourself public-wise, O my brother.”

If they tell me: “Yarbles! Great bolshy yarblockos to you. I’ll meet you with chain or nozh or britva anytime, not having you aim tolchocks at me reasonless. Well it stand to reason I won’t have it.”

I will tell them, “A nozh scrap any time you say. But not near my new couch and loveseat. They are real horrorshow.”

Of course they will back down and say they need to go home and get a bit of spatchka.

After all, I have to protect my new couch and loveseat. To not do so, I would suffer the tortures of the damned, sir – tortures of the damned.

Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.

Final NCAA Bracket Chance

Today is your final chance to sign up to be embarrassed by me and my extensive college basketball knowledge in The Roundball Oracles NCAA Tournament Pool. So far 14 people have signed up for the free lesson in humility. 2 of them women! This isn’t a “boys club”. If you have an interest in participating, email me at: bennett@photography139.com and I will see that you get all the necessary information.

Regression

I haven’t been as active blogging lately. There are several reasons for this absence.

  1. I have been spending most of my free time organizing the basement.  When I completed this project I moved on to the upstairs.  I am on the verge of being quite downsized.  Hopefully this project will be completed next Wednesday.  Or at least, I hope that the only room that I will have left to organize and downsize will be the office after next Wednesday.  There is always a fair chance that I will just give up on the office and declare it a permanent disaster area.  We’ll see how the other two rooms go.
  2. When I haven’t been organizing, eliminating and donating I have been moving furniture around. True this doesn’t take much physical time, but it is emotionally draining.
  3. I have been working on a personal facial hair project.  For one 36 hour period, I wasn’t intelligent enough to put a noun against a verb in a meaningful way.
  4. The last couple of Friday Night Supper Clubs have been emotionally draining.  The night we viewed Free Walking at Jay’s apartment was a visceral experience.  What a great movie!  Then the Jucy Lucy replication Friday Night Supper Club was an overt failure that ended with My Great Shame.  It took me several days to recover from that shame.  At least Dawn got to become an auxiliary member of FNSC.  She allegedly doesn’t even mind that it is a “Boys Club”.  I will believe her when she makes a return appearance. Plus Trivia Night.  Well, I can’t even begin to discuss how emotionally draining Trivia Night ended up being.  Plus Trivia Night fell in that 36 hour period where I was a moron. However, Team Stache (Geri D., Willy, Jay, Jesse, Shannon, Papa Smurf and his wife) was an undeniable powerhouse.  I only wish I had pictures to share so that you could relive the experience.
  5. The cleaning crew (Jill) for my Oscars Watch had to work at her “real job” and got stuck in Minnesota.  Therefore I had to do my own cleaning.  The bed maker (Sara) also got stuck working her “real job” so I had to make my own bed.  I tried to get that out with a straight face.  Sara had to work, so I just shut my bedroom door and pretended that the room was how it was supposed to be.  My kitchen crew (Jen and Derrick, well mostly Derrick) came through with flying colors though.  Still, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I should add that my neighbor joined the Watch and listening to his plan to get his life back together by finding a girlfriend so that he can have some self-esteem.  Well, that was psychologically draining.
  6. Perhaps the most important reason why I haven’t taken keyboard in hand and banged out some words is because during the move from one blogging entity to a different blogging entity, I decided to completely recategorize my blog. I started this process with well over 770 journal entries to review. Through this process I eliminated several journal entries.  Things that I didn’t need any longer. Like videos that no longer existed or calls to donate to a “charity” that would lie and claim that your donation was tax deductible.  I even broke down categories by people and I left the number of blog entries by the category.  A quick glance down the left side of this blog will tell you who I seem to write about the most.  Are you surprised that Jay is number 1?

A surprising side effect of my reading is that I think I might have regressed as a writer.  I fear that I might have peaked and it is all downhill from here on out.  Some of my writings in the not so distant past were clever, witty and dare I say it – brilliant.  I fear if I was ever going to write a play for ACTORS that was going to revolutionize costumed (believe me I have tried – Geri D. will not let me put an all-nude play on her stage) drama in a meaningful way, I have missed my chance.  Rather than eloquently crafting phrases, I now rely on cheap tricks (like my over reliance on parenthetical statements that makes me want to punch myself in the face almost as surely as if I had moustache) and broad allusions.  I have surely descended into hack-hood.  See, that isn’t even a real word.  It isn’t like the old days when I used to invent words that are sure to be the next surefire hits in our lexicon.  I can’t come up with a word so I throw out a dash and postfix and then I merrily go on my way.

It didn’t used to be like this.  (I just don’t mean that I used to not end sentences with prepositions.)  I used to be growing as a writer.  For example, when I was in the 4th Grade I wrote the worst creative writing stories ever!! They were based loosely on a pet rabbit that most likely died due to my neglect.  Only I stole some ideas from a few cartoons and movies that I enjoyed and out of my pencil and on to some poor dead tree came writing that was so dizzingly bad that it makes me want to vomit when I read just a few short passages:

When Fluffy found him he took him to Leo the Lion. Leo took care of him. Pucky told Leo his life story. Then he told Fluffy what Jack, Jill and Joan said. Fluffy said “I better get going” then he left. He hid in Raspberry Forest and said “By the power of Carrot Castle! I HAVE THE POWER!” Then he said, “Up, up and away and he flew off to find Joan, Jack and Jill. When he found them he landed and said, “Pucky sent me.” Superfluff said.  “Let’s get that wimpy rabbit!” Superfluff picked them up and twirled them until they gave up and promised to stop picking on Pucky. Then he went after Swampfrog. When he was fighting Swampfrog he said a few words he shouldn’t of. When he returned he taught Pucky karate. When he stepped into the pond, Jack, Jill, Joan and Swampfrog were waiting for him but Pucky beat them up in 15 fish winks. Now everybody calls him The Karate Duck.

Fortunately I can still say that I’m a better writer than I was when I put that horrible drivel to paper. But I did slightly improve by high school:

Eric reached deep into his soul, past the candy wrappers and half-eaten bagels, to the insult department. Through the corridor with doors marked with signs that read “whites”, “blondes”, “Scott Kendall” and “dogs”.  He opened the door that read: “The Mother of All Insults”.

The glowing light almost blinded him. The brilliant shiny box in the room was his destination. He opened the box and was greeted with a cloud of rolling smoke. He reached into the box and grabbed a piece of paper. Eric read the paper and he knew he had his death blow!

Back in reality Eric stared at the landing party and said… and I quote… “Huh, freaks of nature!”

He was puzzled when this didn’t break their morale. They were laughing at him. This was the Mother-of-All-Insults and they were laughing at HIM!

Chris looked at Eric and broke into another 5 minutes of laughter. Chris controlled himself and said, “You sir are our inferior. You call us freaks in an attempt to manipulate reality. We have evolved into a place of superiority over you!”

“Liar! I’m not listening to you!” Eric screamed.

“Scott. Who-o-o-o-o-o is this m-m-m-an?” Captain Punjab whimpered.

As you can tell, I have clearly progressed from the terrible wretch that wrote those words. I just hope that I am not regressing to that level again!

DFDA54

So the garlic might not have been the last mystery of my backyard. I still didn’t know what color my lilies would be when they bloomed. I got that answer late last week.


DFDA54

DFDA54

Although I’m not in love with the color, it is satisfactory enough. At least they aren’t something as cliche as tiger lilies.

What the Hades?

I believe that I have figured out what almost everything is in my yard, except for one thing.

Look at the picture below:


Backyard Garden

Anybody out there know what this thing might be?

I understand, that this perhaps isn’t the best picture for plant identification purposes.

I Can Not Tell A Lie

It is often, most likely, mistaught to the children of America that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree. The story is used as an example of George Washington’s veracity.

I’ve heard the story, but what is most intriguing about the story to me is why he would chop down the tree?

When I moved into my home, I had two mystery trees in the backyard. My hope of hopes was that they were cherry trees. However, the people that examined them determined them to be magnolia or crabapple trees.

As the fates would have it, they were wrong. I have two cherry trees.

Although I did not know that I had cherry trees, every bird in the county did know about my trees. I was warned that I needed to cover the trees with nets to prevent these flying thieves (with apologies to the Bible, they didn’t reap or sow) from making off with my cherries.

I purchased the requisite net and Jesse and I spent close to an hour getting it over the trees.


I Can Not Tell a Lie

I Can Not Tell a Lie

After the nets were up, I ran a sample batch of cherries over to Shannon, my cherry expert, for a determination on whether or not they were ready for picking.

She determined that they were ready to be picked and we scheduled a cherry picking appointment. What I didn’t know, was that this was also a cherry pie baking appointment.

I can not tell a lie. I didn’t really participate in the pie baking, but I have since participated in the pie eating.


Cherry Pie
The Bounty

Cherry Pie
Shannon with the Bounty

Cherry Pie
Shannon removing the pits.

Cherry Pie
Cutting the lattice. It was the first time this cheese spreader had been removed from its box.

Cherry Pie
Shannon making a mess in my kitchen. Actually Shannon still owes me one mess, because I recently tracked mud into her apartment and also left a sizable mess behind when we bound calendars. So I’m up on her 2 messes to 1.

Cherry Pie
Shannon rolling out the pie crust. Both Jen and Shannon are tremendous pie crust snobs. Neither will even consider the remote possibility that a person could make a pie with anything other than crust made from scratch.

Cherry Pie
Removing the pits from cherries is a messy business.

Cherry Pie
Shannon Picking Cherries

Cherry Pie
Shannon Picking Cherries

Cherry Pie
The Proud Owner of a Shannon Baked, extremely juicy Cherry Pie.

After looking at one of the pictures of Shannon picking cherries I thought it might be interesting to Photoshop that picture with one of my favorite Photoshop techniques. I thought it would look interesting due to the nets.


Cherry Pie

Now that I have officially enjoyed the fruits of my cherry trees, I know one thing for certain. If George Washington ever came over to my house and chopped down one of my cherry trees, I would lay him out. Founding Father or not.

Memorial Day Backyard

I have a bush in my backyard. In fact, I have several bushes in my backyard. But one of those bushes is special. That one bush holds a nest.

Recently the eggs in the nest started to hatch. Out of those eggs came baby grackles.

I’m a long time hater of the grackle. Of course, you are all familiar with my landmark paper “Hey Mr. Grackle, Why You Gotta Be a Dick?” that was published in a 2002 edition of Ornithology Reader.

However, I have to admit, that while I was hanging around in my backyard on Memorial Day, I actually thought that the baby rabbits and grackles hanging out in my yard were cute.

Later that night I went over to Jen and Derrick’s house for a barbecue. As I sat at the table with Jen, Shannon and Derrick I began to regale them with my tale of cute baby creatures in my back yard.

Because there were 2 chicks at the table, I was expecting to hear at least one “Ahhh..”

Instead, what came out of there mouths, (almost at the exact same time) was, “You should buy a cat to kill those.”

I will not buy a cat, but I will publish some photos of the potential cat food.


Baby Grackles

Baby Grackles

Baby Grackles
Heartless, heartless people.

Shindy

On May 23, I had my housewarming party. I would consider it a success on some level. 10-15 showed up for it.

I would like to thank everybody that made an appearance:

Baier, Jason
Bardole, Shannon
Bennett, Charlotte
Brannen, Suzie
Daniel, Jeff
Derner, Geri
Degeneffe, Scott
Gorshe, Derrick
Gorshe, Jen
Gorshe, Jill
Henning, Monica
Hiatt, Eric
Howard, Jesse
Howard, Kalista
Howard, Kelly
Howard, Saydie
Howard, Taylan
Janson, Jay
Jauhari, Andree
Jenson, Terra
Johnstone, Jason
Junck, Sara
Kahler, Brandon
Kahler, Logan
Kahler, Russ
Kahler, Teresa
Kewer, Jeff
McAlpine, Willy
Meiners, Alex
Meiners, Barb
Meiners, Frank
Meiners, Trevor
Miller, Bethany
Miller, Jim
Miller, Nate
Mubaidin, Shadi
Parsaei, Nader
Perkovich, Becky
Peterson, Tim
Redd, Ernie
Roberts, Lori
Roberts, Sam
Roberts, Steve
Schmidt, Amy
Schmidt, Corey
Schmidt, Izzy
Strachota, James
Stensland, Alexis
Stensland, Carla
Stensland, Elainie
Stensland, Jason
Stensland, Johnathan
Ungs, Casy
Venema, Barb
Yin, Amy

Of course, some special thanks are in order for some special people.

Thanks to Logan for manning the grill so I could engage in hosting duties.
Thanks to Johnathan for helping Logan out.
Thanks to Shannon for bringing Oatmeal Cake.
Thanks to Terra for bringing taco dip.
Thanks to Jay for bring rhubarb crunch and blackberry buckle.
Thanks to Jen for bringing brownies.
Thanks to Monica for bringing taco dip.
Thanks to Steve for bring homegrown salsa and rhubarb crisp.
Thanks to Becky for bringing mint fudge cheesecake.
Thanks to Jesse for bringing ice, a canopy and running to get more firewood.
Thanks to Sara, whom I think might have brought some vegetables.

I did not really get out my camera for this occasion, but Sara took some pictures with her camera. Below are a few pictures from Sara’s camera.

Admittedly these pictures only include a small spectrum of the party people, but it will have to suffice, it is all that I got.



Monica and I


Monica and Jen


Sara and Jen


Sara, Jen and I


Sara, Jill and Jen


Jen, Derrick and Shannon (Shadi in the background)


I and James


Jesse, I and Sara


Logan, I and Jesse


Logan, Sara and Jen


I and Jesse


I and Jill


Jason, I and Jesse


Jen


Jen and Derrick

I guess now that the house is sufficiently warmed, I won’t have to do that again.

But on the positive side, I think almost everybody who came to the party will leave with at least one memory of my neighbor, Mr. Jason Johnstone. My Kramer.

Housewarming Invites

I had a housewarming/birthday shindig on May 23. I made individual invitations for those that were invited. I’d like to share some of them.


2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Willy

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
The Kahlers

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Nader

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Sara

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Shannon

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
The Roberts Family

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
The Hiatts

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
The Howards

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Jay

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Jeff and Yin

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
The Gorshes

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
The Baiers

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Bethany and Rebecca

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Casy

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
The Degeneffes

2009 Birthday/Housewarming Party Invitation
Geri

Geri requested a new picture of us be taken because she wanted a picture where she wasn’t looking at me as if I was the smartest person in the world. I guess I never noticed her having an expression different than what I’m used to seeing by the majority of people in my life…