Adat.

I hate this.

Catherine and I, as our friends may have already noticed, have both been sick most of the winter. It’s been a rough winter. We, like many people in Chicago this year, have been locked inside since like early November. It’s 22 right now. It’s the middle of March. I was lucky enough to get hired to do a full U.S. tour in Nov/Dec – half of which was even colder than Chicago but the other half was in warm, sunny California, Texas, and Florida. The only real good news this winter is – after 20+ months of total sleep deprivation – Ella is becoming a pretty good sleeper. She sleeps at least 5-6 uninterrupted hours every night. In theory, this lets us return to feeling almost human. But we have another problem.

Our 15 year old cat, Adat, has always been a little crazy. He likes to roam the apartment and meow at himself in the middle of the night. He used to bother the other cats doing this and they ultimately started to hunt him down in the middle of the night. Lots of 2 a.m. cat fights later, he finally calmed down. But Korg and Neuman have both died in the last couple years and we’re left with only Adat. And he’s back to his bad habits. And we haven’t slept properly for a year and a half. You can probably see where I’m going with this. This week he’s woken us up at 2-3 a.m. every morning. He’s woken Ella up. Catherine has been sick for over a week. Locking him in a room doesn’t work, he’s just too fucking loud. We can’t take it. We’re at the point that we’re thinking of taking our 15 year old, thyroid medicated pet to a shelter. I don’t feel like we have any other choice. So that’s why I’m writing this blog. In hopes that someone out there is crazy enough or knows someone crazy enough to want our cat. He doesn’t do the meowing thing with other cats around, he’s a sweet cat, overall. Even if you know a good shelter, anything you can think of to help our situation, please contact me.

hey

After getting all frustrated last week - seems I've turned a corner. Catherine went out to her parents on Saturday leaving me here to work, uninterrupted. I got a ton of work done, incuding these new outlets in the dining room!

I only have 1 more wall to tear into, then the destruction part is all done for now. I have a few more things to sand but we should be drywall dust free by the end of the month!!

some apt. pics

I hit a wall yesterday. Tired of living in drywall. Tired of putting 30% in to fixing our place up, 30% into caring for Ella, 30% into work, and 10% into my marriage. I love our place, if we’d bought something other than a fixer upper, I’d be bored and frustrated with the limitations.. Not to mention, Catherine hated everything new we looked at. Boring places for boring people. But sometimes having to tear out 2 inches of plaster to put in an outlet is just crazy. It takes me 2 days to do what I could normally do in 5 minutes. And the condition of some of the drywall in here is just begging to be torn down and replaced. Catherine and I are fantasizing about taking the whole family to Australia to see our friend Chris (and his FIVE kids) the winter after next and letting a good contractor just tear this place to the ground and start over. A full rehab. But those are dreams. For now, we’re doing what we can afford and what we can manage.

I’m so looking forward to spring. Ella and I have reached a near intolerable state of stir crazy. We need the park. The sun. The light. Next winter we’re going to fucking Sea World. If anyone wants to get us a Xmas present next year, make it 3 tickets to Sea World. We’re still planning a trip out to the Northwest this summer, and I’ve got a California vacation coming up in April (a job doing sound for Stromkern in San Francisco and Los Angeles.)

Work has been dreadfully slow for me lately. However, I’m putting together something for a company in L.A. that could lead to me scoring film trailers. That would be an absolute dream, a culmination of every talent I have and every skill I’ve developed over the years. I’m crossing my fingers. I’ve always, always said I’d be doing very well financially at the age of 40. It’s not a goal, but rather a gut feeling.

iBroke

Ella broke my iPod. It happens, she's a little moster roaming around our apartment looking for stuff to break.

I was able to fix it this morning, thanks to this thread!

more ella

let there be light!

I spent yesterday, and I mean all day yesterday, wiring this light. It was an experience - drilling holes in studs, cutting through layers and layers of plaster, and routing wires inside the wall. I'm sure it's not a proper tool, but a digital camera can really come in handy when you can't see what you're doing.

So this is the extent of what we're doing in the kitchen. Everything else will be simply cosmetic - painting, adding a little island, those sorts of things.

Catherine's Dad has been helping us with some of the hardcore stuff . . fixing water pipes, leveling walls, and we've realized, we don't really know what we want to do with this space yet. We've only lived here for 4 weeks and we've been covered in drywall dust the entire time. So we're backing off. I can do all of the little stuff. We've decided to come up with a "5 year plan" for the space. Right now that is not much more than adding more outlets, painting, and tolerating the imperfections. We'll deal with the major issues when we come to them, there's no reason for us to be all stressed out. We just moved in. We're in a great location, we have a big space to work with, and 2 out of 3 ain't bad. Atleast we weren't dumb enough to spend $450k on the generic new condos that sit next door to us. Yuck!