House or "When is this damn winter going to be over?"

No, not that smarmy doctor guy with the opiate addiction. One of the reasons we bought the house that we did was because it was sort of a clean slate. Very plain, all the walls are white, no landscaping to speak of. Just house, garage, yard. Most of the houses we looked at looked as if they had forty years of different paint colors and wallpaper borders that would have to be removed. We are only the third owners of our little abode and the second owner was a single guy who really only used the place for sleeping. The plan is to remodel and make our place just what we want it to be. It's a ranch from 1977. Never been updated so it has an avocado bathroom and a harvest gold bathroom. -Update- the green bathroom tub has developed a crack. I guess now we will learn how to repair fiberglass. I guess that will come in handy when I buy a Vette. Of course, I will never buy a Vette because I don't like Vette's. Never have really, not sure why. More of a Camaro man, I am. Once again, I digress. The previous owner painted all the walls and redid the flooring so it's very livable. Now that we've lived here 10mos. I realize that we are already out of space. Our biggest issue right now is storage. Well, the biggest issue is we have no time or money. That's just the life of your average working shlub in the midwest. Most of my projects are going to be house related and I'll probably post some of that stuff, or not.The good news here is that I really need to do the Car-Hole first. You see if the garage is to be used as a shop to help fix the things in the rest of the house it takes priority. If that helps me get closer to restoring the Ducati then all the better. I really feel like I can make the garage very cool, in addition to just making it work. I'm excited about that. Drywall, I'm much less excited about. Perhaps I could actually get around to working on the Aermacchi.



You remember her don't ya?

Snow day! or (who needs a F#$%*&^ snowblower?)

Well, quite honestly all the folks that live just north of me. We got slammed with lake effect snow last night. They shut our plant down after day shift last night and a few hours later we got the call that there would be no work today. In the northern part of the county there are reports of 20" of snow. We only got about 4". My driveway had some pretty hefty drifts but because it is only 1° outside the snow is super light. It only took me about an hour to shovel the driveway. Yeah, shovel. I don't have a power tool for snow removal. I can use the exercise anyway.
For those of you not familiar with the lake effect phenomena it an awesome event. It's great if you are at a ski lodge when it hits. I've experienced that and you couldn't ask for a better time. Wears your ass out big time. I digress. When a mass of cold air moves over a body of warm water it creates a shitload of snow. It started snowing about 1:00 yesterday afternoon and at 3:00 there was 4" of snow in our parking lot at work. My poor little 2WD truck barely made it out of my parking space. We had about 50yds. visibility on the way home but I heard on the news of zero visibility and total white out conditions. Of course if you live in Buffalo you think I'm a sissy as this happens all the time there. For shoveling under sunny skies with light powdery snow I recommend Abbey Road for the iPod.
I have been getting into preparedness lately. We had some minor emergency supplies at the old house but now we are bit more "in the sticks" so it is a lot more important to be prepared. Goes right along with being Self-Reliant. I'm not a wacko survivalist or even a level-headed survivalist for that matter but if my family gets snowed in or there is a tornado or God forbid some sort of attack I want to make sure they are able to have all the important stuff. You know food, shelter, a place to poop, etc... If you are not prepared get started today. You don't have to spend much money just get a few extra items when you go to the grocery or Menard's. Check out some websites like Ready.gov for a good start. You can't go wrong with the American Red Cross. My local insurance agency gave out some really good emergency preparedness books a while back. Or if your a bit nuts like me cruise on over and check out the Zombie Squad. They tend to be a bit gear oriented and a bit more irreverent than some folks are used to but TONS of good info. Then when your up to it you can convert your supplies into a Bug-out bag or whatever suits your particular needs. Don't forget it's not about gear but being prepared. That's the hardest thing for me, as I've been a military surplus addict since I was a kid. You owe it to yourself and family to be prepared in the event of an emergency. You'll also be ready to rock when it comes time to go camping. See, a justification for all that gear. Or perhaps a rationalization...
Rock on, fellow shovelers.