Another Tile Rant

Sigh, Barrett Reiner from Reiner Tile & Stone is a total flake. I almost wonder if he's realized he's already screwed up so bad, he won't get a good review or reference out of it, so he just doesn't care anymore. He said he would finish framing out the shower last weekend. Well, he did actually show up, but he only stayed for a little while and he didn't finish. At some point, he just slipped out and didn't say anything to us before leaving.

Then a couple days later we get a message that he's too busy with other jobs to come out before the end of the week. Well, Friday came and went. He didn't show up and didn't message us. And here it is Saturday, and still no contact. Now I've emailed him again (he doesn't answer his cell phone). Sigh.

It's become clear to me we are absolutely his last priority. Every other customer who comes to him gets put in front of our job. When he happens to have a spare hour or two, he'll think about coming out, but the minute something comes up at home, off he goes..... So, I guess the moral of the story is get a contract with a penalty for not completing your project on a schedule.

For a nice change, I have been productive at getting stuff done this week. The last couple of days, I've been going through boxes of SCA books that haven't been unpacked since we moved here in 2010. For the most part, we are trying to sell them through our private connections on Facebook, but I do have some of the more expensive books listed on Amazon.

Update: And now it's the following Wednesday and he still ignores my attempts at communication.

Massive SCA Purge

I have to admit, it hurts a little bit
to let the stainless armor go. Jeff is
my "knight" in shining armor.

Work on the house has slowed down again as I am finally motivated to work on our way overdue massive SCA purge. Jeff and I used to spend almost all our discretionary time playing in a medieval recreation group, called SCA. They were fantastic years and we had a great time.

But as we get older, we just don't much feel like doing the chore of set-up and break-down in order to spend one day playing.

But we've been clinging onto the stuff for years now, thinking and hoping we might get back into it. Well, I believe the last year we camped was 2007. It's been long enough. We want our garage space back. So, I'm in the process of sifting and itemizing all this stuff that we're trying to get rid of and taking steps to make it happen.

Honestly, what really happened is I decided I wanted to spend several thousand dollars on Arts & Crafts rugs. I cut a deal with Jeff if I sold stuff to pay for it, he'd let me buy them, so I'm willing to let this unused stuff go to help make it happen. LOL

The Wyndham

The Lasenby

Oh so many good choices, but I love the eggplant color in these.

Medieval Tangent

Jeff and I are obviously taking a bit of a vacation from working on the house. That wasn't my plan; I actually had a few projects I wanted to finish by the middle of January, but it's clear from our total lack of progress they won't happen. We did work pretty hard this last year, so I feel entitled to take a month or two off from house projects.

This week I started a new sewing project: I'm making medieval-style costumes for a big SCA event coming up in Portland, called 12th Night. Jeff and I played with SCA for many years, but we've been mostly inactive since 2008. However, since this event is so close to our home, and we have many friends who still play, we decided we'd better go.

I'm making a style of costume I've never made before—something along the lines of the silk lampas robe from the 12th century (shown on the right)—mostly because it's comparatively fast to sew and comfortable to wear. (No corsets required!)

I'm using fabrics I've already got stashed in my sewing room. My costume is going to be very raspberry color, which probably isn't a period dye. But, I'm making these clothes for fun, and I'm not planning to enter them into any contests. So, I'm okay with using up old fabrics and going to play.

I'll try and take some photos to share once I have more layers of the outfits finished.

Fun with Glass in the New Garage

Samples Jeff made during class

Now that the garage is done but we haven't moved all our stuff into it, we had a magic opportunity to use the space to hold a class in lampwork glass bead making.

We had a beginning class in the morning and an intermediate class in the afternoon with six students in each class. The instructor demonstrated several techniques then we would get a chance to experiment.

This and That

Jeff and I spent the entire weekend goofing off. Last Saturday, we went off to an SCA educational event where I had recruited the volunteer teachers. Jeff taught fingerloop braiding—a late-medieval technique for braiding cords and flat trims. We enjoyed ourselves and now that the bulk of our house restoration is complete, we'll probably spend a bit more time goofing off with SCA on the weekends during the next few years.

Then, on Sunday, Jeff volunteered at a dog agility event. He spent the day resetting jump heights and building the course between runs. He had a good time, and it helped him realize Shasta is probably good enough to try beginner category runs. So when he found an event fairly close by on September 9—Shasta's birthday—Jeff signed her up. He's going to try running her in the Tunnelers and Jumpers categories. I definitely have to go so I can get some video. =)

Otherwise, I've been terribly unproductive the last couple of days. I was lacking in motivation.

But today, I finally resumed work on the house. I've been trying to finish up the shellacking in the bedrooms. When I rushed through shellacking a couple weeks ago, I got lazy and didn't shellac the interior edges and the sashes of the windows because I needed to take the windows apart to get to all the edges. Today I finally did it in the guest bedroom. Tomorrow, I hope to finish up the master bedroom windows as well.

Once I'm done with the windows, I'll turn my shellacking efforts to the newly stained wood in Jeff's closet.

Contemplating the Coming Year

We met for dinner last night with David and Melissa (Leon and Muriel) and they returned our SCA books. It reminded me of our many years in SCA and I am missing it. (At least some aspects of it.) Our lives have been in this holding pattern for too long.... We just keep holding steady, not committing to anything that requires any more than a few weeks, because we don't know where we're going to be living in three months. Maybe it's just time to do what we enjoy no matter where we live. If we end up moving, then we'll just deal with the issues.

I think I'd like to work on resuming research on some SCA projects. I'd like to make a heraldic pouch one of these days; I started researching it quite a while ago. I was hoping to stitch the pouch with our heraldic devices and devices for SCA branches where we've lived. Maybe I'll see about trying to draw the patterns for my pouch project.

I've grown a little tired of the Quicken sifting. I've entered and reconciled the credit card accounts but I still have to try and account for all the non-payroll deposits into the bank accounts. That's a lot harder, because I don't have information on all of them. Oh well, I'll do the best that I can.

Jeff is off at his co-workers house today helping to kill chickens! (He's so brave; I could never do it.) Apparently one of his co-workers has a number of chickens they need to cull. I guess I'll find out if we're vegetarians again when he comes home.... =)

Busy Weekend

Yesterday we went off to a feast in the Shire of Esfenn (Fremont). They had a really great menu and the food was delicious. I wish I had remembered to take more pictures of the food. Though it was one of the more-expensive feasts we've gone to, it was worth it. During the evening, Jeff enjoyed playing games with a table mate.

Today we're tackling cleaning up the living room. This corner of the room was full of boxes when we got up this morning. We spent the last couple of hours sifting boxes and shifting some of them to the garage.

Our plan is to rotate the futon around (in front of the fireplace, unfortunately) so it faces the entertainment center. And we want to hang the curtain hardware back up so I can get started on the drapes for this room. This house has very little insulation in the walls, so we'll probably want the drapes when winter finally arrives. Though, it didn't get cold enough last year to kill the tomato plants until December so it probably won't really get all that cold.

Here's a before and after picture.

Great Time in Corvallis

We've had a really good time in Corvallis. We really like the town. It's small enough to feel like a small town, but big enough to have most of the stores "in town" that you might need. Jeff got quite adept at navigating the downtown grid.

Yesterday, after getting the car fixed and driving around town for quite a while, we actually went and looked at two houses for sale. Sharon just couldn't help it--they were too cool to miss....

We spent today walking around the downtown area, checking out the local shops. I don't know why, but we bought quite a few books. You'd think with our current plan, that buying books would be out of the question, but I guess old habits are hard to break. =) We love buying books.

We've gone to a number of local restaurants, they were all quite good and affordable, another good thing about college towns--cheap food!

We've had nice weather here, and we've been having a good time. Tomorrow we'll be heading down to Eugene, for AnTir's 12th Night. We're looking forward to visiting with old friends.

Preparing for Travel to Oregon

I'm out of practice in getting ready to travel. I've been making lists and hoping I remember to bring everything we'll need (and do everything at home that needs to be done before we go).

Rather than traveling all the way up to Eugene (one-day of driving each way) for just one day of visiting, we decided to tack on a couple of days in Corvallis. Corvallis is the town where Jeff wants to move once we're ready to settle down, but I'm a little less convinced. I've been through it a few times, but I've never actually spent much time there. We had planned to stay there in December 2007 (as part of a fairly long anniversary trip), but just as we got to town it started snowing, so we ended up visiting the coast instead. The coast was still cold, but it wasn't icy. Anyway, we still want to have a couple days to see Corvallis so we're going to do it this trip.

I had hoped to make it up to Portland (to see friends and drop off my quilt toppers for quilting), but Jeff had a hard time getting any time off. (Sigh, I'm looking forward to him being unemployed.) Therefore, I abandoned my quest to finish the third quilt before we go. They'll just have to wait until later in the spring, when we plan to visit Portland to drop off our plants and trailer at a friend's place for safekeeping during our U.S. trip.

Unfortunately, I didn't make a new costume for 12th Night since I wasn't planning to go until a few days ago. Oh well. And we'll probably end up dressing very simply (T-tunics and the like) in order to conserve packing space in the car.