Phutu...whatever

1/31/2003 OK. Just to back up my little argument that puppies are a pain in the neck I happen to have an evidential photograph. The photo to the left illustrates two problems with puppies. The first is that they tend to chew on things, particularly the things that you use most often and/or find most dear. The second is that whatever you are doing, they have to be in the middle of it. (the blue blur is him walking between my legs with a toy in his mouth as I took the photo) They can't find things to do for themselves unless they involve the aforementioned first item.

Of course the counter argument to all this is that puppies, and Romi in particular, are cute and fun to play with and blah blah. Which is illustrated by the rest of the photos.

The other photo is of my maple. This is the first tree that I ever got for bonsai purposes. I have only had it for about a year...actually only about 10 months...wow. I should go back and look at the photos that I took when I first got it. I just have to find them in all the boxes in the basement. Anyway, as you can see, it is in the very initial stages of branch development. In about ten years it will be a really nice tree. :-)

1/26/2003Well, I think that rumors that I hate our puppy are circulating and are untrue. I don't hate him...I just think that he is a huge handful of work and I happen to be really busy with remodeling at the moment. Which makes me a little stressed when I have to spend all my time taking care of a dog. I have managed to get a couple things done with my bonsai trees lately. I replanted a small juniper that Jennifer gave me for Christmas...into a really cool little pot...then I scraped up some moss from some of the sidewalk in the back yard and covered the soil with it to make the whole thing look like a woodland scene. Of course, this is what you call bad bonsai. The "tree" has no real structure to it and the pot that I put it in is so small that it will be hard to keep alive over the summer...even worse...it's cute. If I were to show it to a hundred people, fifty would gush about how cute it is and probably none of them would think anything more of it...which is really all it deserves. I clipped back all the tips so that it will hopefully bud back. Then I can start actually making a shape that is more interesting. Just like with all bonsai, time will make it better...assuming that it doesn't die from the repotting. Just for reference, the tree is about six inches tall.

We passed our rough framing inspection. I had to argue with the inspector for half an hour about the headroom on the stairway, but in the end he signed off on it. I am thinking more and more that I should never have involved the city in this whole mess. I don't seem to be getting anything from it and they have gotten at least two grand out of the deal so far. I'm sure they'll be getting more than that by the time I am all finished. Actually the inspector made me really mad when he was here. It is really frustrating to spend so much time doing something and have a guy come in and take one look at it before telling you it isn't good enough. The stairway has the neccesary 80 inches of headroom across about half of the width of the top landing. The previous stairway was soo steep and had soo little headroom that if I wasn't falling down it, I was bumping my head on the way up and on the way down. There were no handrails and there were a bunch of illegal winders (triangular stairs)...and here he is criticizing the improvements that I have made. grunt. Anyway, as you may be able to tell from the photo, Dory and I put up some insulation in what is going to be the kitchen. Tomorrow I'm going to start on the drywall...of course I am estimating that it will only take a couple days, but i'm sure that estimate will be a little short, as my estimates normally are. :-)

1/21/2003
12/18/2002

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