Blowin' the Doors Off

Our latest project around the house has replacing some interior doors. We picked them up at Habitat for Humanity's Re-Store. I highly recommend checking out this resource in your area if you are looking to do some home improvement. Doing these four doors as well as a new screen door on the back has given me the opportunity to familiarize myself with some new tools. Including a plane and a kit for cutting spaces for the door hardware. During the project our spare bedroom was turned into a workshop and we had two bathrooms without doors for awhile.

All's well now and we turn to another tool that we have recently been using quite a bit to unload things onto the only market that hasn't crashed yet. The tool is Craigslist and the market is the junk market. We've unloaded a roof rack, golf clubs, a table and chairs, 4 stools, four doors, ad a used car with this site that somehow is free and has no advertising. (Here's how they make their money) I put the four doors on there for free last night and this morning I had 29 new emails. I had to delete the posting before noon.

So with that all behind us, we continue to poke away at our next huge project, a front porch, and once again I turn to a new tool and skill to help get the job done. This time it's Google Sketchup, the free 3D modeling software released by the world's most famous preteen (they just turned ten and right on schedule they'll soon have a cell phone of their very own). This tool is immensely powerful, unbelievably free, and a lot of fun. Here's a preliminary draft of one design. I'll continue to improve my skills and hope to post about four versions of it on the blog and get your feedback and opinions.

Learn to use Skethup

It's the Environment, Stupid!

All this political hype of the last few weeks has me sick of hearing about the environment. Everybody now feels obligated to mention it in speeches. One particular phase of note is "energy independence." I guess that started with W's State of the Union several years ago but now it's a mandatory mention in any stump speech. I give credit to gas prices. I also hear a lot about drilling. Masses of people demanding, or at least strongly supporting, drilling. It seems like a non-issue. Drilling is going to happen and not much will change, but today the house voted to ease the ban on offshore drilling (and without a new president). Of course those tree-hugging Democrats still left the best prospects off limits and snuck in legislation to investigate sources of energy other than oil. Now tell me, how is that gonna reduce our dependence on oil?.

Getting away from all of the politics and the ubiquitous discussion of issues I still find myself inundated with the environment. It's like the environment is all around me. Green is the new 'zero carbs' in a world where I have to take the bus, rapidly renew things, and shut off lights. Even in chocolate you can find the green marketing trying to move product that was probably shipped to the point of consumption from more than 1,000 miles away.

Lauren and I recently went to Serenbe for an anniversary weekend of relaxation, but everywhere we looked we ran into groups of recycling locavores. This place was half farm, half art fair and all green. For the sake of our psyches I can only hope the fervor of their Earth-friendliness is not sustainable.

This type of constant messaging on the greenness of things is getting to some people. It could drive us all crazy soon. Take for instance the video below. The woman in the video probably saw a Brita commercial on tv, heard how much energy goes into bottled water, read the words "metal oxide salt" somewhere, considered fears of shifting water supplies from "global warming" and was trying to put it all together with the latest news on BPA.



get unstupid

Michael Phelps

Had mad trouble falling asleep last night and then had this dream I was in this car and Michael Phelps was driving (I think Braylon Edwards was in the back seat) and we were getting on a ferry but you had to drive on all these curvy docks. I was scared because I thought he was gonna drive off of them a few times and he kept talking to us and not paying attention. But of course we didn't say anything because he was Micheal Phelps. Then he did and we were in the water and I had to resign to the fact that I was going to die even though I thought he would find a way to swim out of it and then found it really ironic that this is how he would die. I jumped out of my sleep and it was only 2-something.

What does this mean?

I am comfortable with being confronted with death?

I think I have a bond with Phelps and Edwards because they are buddies since they were in Ann Arbor and I feel like I'm in their crowd?

I have an irrational fear of driving on narrow docks over the ocean?