Recovering Baptist

The good news is that we laid about 20 square feet of tile last night. It took a while to get our technique back; heck, it took us a while to remember which end faces up. But after a few tiles we were able to pick up the pace.

The bad news is that 20 sq ft represents about 10% of our 200 plus sq ft of tile to lay. And we didn’t even make any cuts! By my math we’ve got another 45 hours of tile laying to go.

Anyone who hasn’t done this sort of work probably doesn’t realize just how physical it is. The next time you hire someone to remodel your house, just remember that the pain of writing the check probably pales in comparison to the pain you would have in every part of your body if you were the one carrying 75 lb buckets of mortar up a flight of stairs so you could then bend over for what feels like an hour to get a single tile to sit in the stuff just right.

OK, so only my project manager friends who happen to enjoy music will really get the headline joke. The point is that our kitchen project keeps growing. It all started with some floor tile and laminate countertops. Then it grew bit by bit. Now it looks like the plan to have the cabinets painted may change; instead, we’re thinking about stripping the paint off the cabinets and staining them ourselves.

So the bad news is that we’ve got more work to do. The good news is that this is going to be one hell of a kitchen when all is said and done.

The better news is that I’ve got some friends lined up to help out tonight. My dream of having a tiled kitchen by Sunday morning may become a reality.

Right now you’re not allowed to walk in our entryway; our refrigerator is in the living room; and we’re actually eating in our dining room, right next to the stove. Yep, that’s right, the RB family is back at one of our favorite hobbies - home renovation. Wow, we really are white, aren’t we?

Here’s the to do list:

• Tear out the shelves and brick “planter” in the entryway
• Remove the ugly wallpaper
• Remove the uglier wallpaper underneath the ugly stuff
• Remove the peninsula, complete with the counter top, dish washer, and cabinets
• Tile the kitchen and ugly granite/concrete foyer
• Move dish washer to another part of the cabinets
• Replace counter tops with granite (hopefully we’ll find an inexpensive piece) or new laminate
• Build new cabinet doors and hang with new, hidden hinges - yes, we’ll build the doors ourselves
• Install new lighting
• Paint ceiling and walls
• Hire professional painters to sand and paint cabinets white (a change from their current beige)

So far, all of the demo work is complete, thanks in part to my kids who can swing a small sledge pretty well. The backerboard and underlayment are down for the tile. All of the wallpaper has been removed. The peninsula has been removed. It’s time to start cutting tile and painting. If we’re lucky then we might have tile in place by this weekend. Of course, that means more nights like last night when I stayed up until 4:00. I don’t know how much of that I’ll be able to handle.

While they make for decent TV, I’ve always thought the artificial constraints on those do-it-yourself shows were kind of silly. Even Mythbusters falls for the trap of giving someone two days for some sort of impossible task like building an Archimedes death ray. What kind of nutcase decides to remodel a room in two days and expect it to actually look good? Perhaps one like me.

I’ve written before about Fringe. It is one of the more unique arts organizations, as an evening at a fringe event combines a DJ spinning techno with a short film and two pieces of chamber music. It’s being held this year at a church, and the bar is generally manned by either one of the church elders or possibly the pastor. I made the first event, but I was on an airplane for the second one.

A few weeks ago I was asked to engineer the third event in this year’s series. Engineering one of these shows means not only ensuring that the DJ and the movie can be heard, it also means recording the show and putting it up on Disc Revolt. It’s a helluva opportunity, but it’s also turned out to be a bigger challenge than I ever thought.

Recording chamber music is a tricky affair, especially when the arrangement is a trio of piano, violin, and either clarinet or French horn. For starters, how the hell do you mic a French horn??? There’s only one take, and not a lot of rehearsal time. That doesn’t leave much time for precise mic placement. And since the only recording device we have is a CD burner, it meant one shot at getting the mix right. But none of that is the bad part.

The real work comes in the post production, and that’s the tough part, because part of the deal is that the music will be posted in 24 hours. While I’ve recorded a lot of material, I haven’t done much post-production. I’ve spent most the night and this morning learning the software, identifying the right effects, cutting the tracks, labeling them, and putting them up on the web. I can’t say that it’s the best classical recording ever, but given the circumstances, I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out. Now it’s time for a nap.

Perhaps the best Christmas song from a non-Christmas album is You Gotta Get Up (Christmas Morning)>”You Gotta Get Up” by Rich Mullins. It perfectly captures that moment when a child wakes up on Christmas morning, but there’s a line that I now understand a whole lot better.

Mom and Dad stayed up too late last night
I guess they got carried away in the Christmas candlelight
You’ve gotta get up, you’ve gotta get up, you’ve gotta get up
It’s Christmas morning.

As the kids get older these lines make more sense. Christmas is a lot of work for parents, especially for procrastinators like us. This was my first year putting together a bike (Ok, so it was actually a Big Wheel, but to the boys it’s a bike) for Christmas. Between that and some touch-up work I did on another “new” toy, my garage felt like a northern workshop. Meanwhile, our guest room looked like a bunch of elves invaded it since my wife wrapped all of the presents for the kids. We got very little sleep the two nights before Christmas, but it was all worth it that morning. The four year old got up first, and we let him wake up his little brother. The look on his face when he saw the room full of presents was worth every minute of missed sleep.

Of course they loved opening the presents. And they stopped to play with each one as it was opened. We actually took a couple of breaks so we could eat. You know there are a lot of presents when you take two breaks!

There’s a large part of me that wishes Christmas as we know it would go away. The pressure to find the right present is high, the money spent is ridiculous, and kids know they’re the center of attention to the point that they are nearly unbearable. But despite all of that, the moments of magic when the boys walk downstairs are worth it all.

Noe one really likes jet lag, but there is a bright side to it. Jet lag means that you’re somewhere far away from home, and that usually means that you’re somewhere exotic like Europe or Hawaii. And that pretty much described me today. I don’t care what people say, jet lag hits me going both east and west. So I was in a fog until lunch. I thought about taking a nap, but today was my only real free day, so I decided to hit waikiki beach. I walked past the wall which protects most of the beach from the waves and joined the crowd closest to the surfers. Maybe it was the exhaustion; maybe it was the need to overcome the severe loneliness that comes from business travel; maybe it was the beers I had with lunch. Whatever it was, I found myself walking back to the beach.

Surfing. That’s a lot like snowboarding - the sport which led to two wrists broken in the same day. Could this really be a smart thing to try, even with lessons? It probably wasn’t, but I shelled out a few bucks for a group lesson anyway. A local guide who called himself “Hi Tide” showed us the basics and led us into the Pacific. He guaranteed that I’d at least stand up on the board, and I did on my first try. It was such a cool feeling, and I felt like I could go on forever. That is, until I realized I was about to run someone over and I didn’t know how to steer the 10 foot board underneath me. So I followed Hi Tide’s instructions and fell onto my stomach. When I came up I grabbed for the board and couldn’t find it. The safety had come loose, and now I had to swim for what seemed to be forever until I could retrieve it. By the time I got back out to my class I was pretty tired, and by the time I tried to catch my third wave I knew I was done. I told Hi Tide “mahalo” and returned to shore proud of my meager accomplishment.

Learning to surf was a rush, and I hope I get to finish my lesson. Next time I’m going to try after a proper night’s sleep. At least, I’m telling myself that I had to give up because of the jet lag. Surely it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I spend 8-10 hours a day sitting on my ass behind a desk…