Little helper

Silas helped make sure I had all the parts I needed to pipe in our new gas grill.

Silas and the guitar

Every night, almost, I give Bethany and break and hang with Silas for some time. Usually we read and play. Most nights we also make the bed up like a campfire and sing songs and fiddle around on the guitar. A few times I really think he was trying to sing with me. I love that I get to spend this time with him.

Tonight, he was pretty grumpy and didn't want to sit around. I put the guitar down on the bed and was playing with him. Bethany started folding clothes at the far end of the bed, and Silas decided today he'd figure this whole guitar thing out. I'm not sure how soon he'll be able to play, but it was fun watching him touch all the parts, give it a bite test, and then faceplant on the neck of the guitar when he slipped. When I play, it's really sweet how he'll stare at my eyes and mouth for a while, then he'll watch my right hand strum and pluck at the strings, and then watch my left hand on the neck of the guitar, all big eyed and taking in all in. It's fascinating to watch him. Maybe I'll set up the tripod sometime at take a video (sound turned off, of course!). In the meantime, here are a few pictures from him checking it out on his own.

Weekend project: install flooring and turn the heat on

Remember the bamboo flooring post back in August, just before Silas was born? I barely do, as that was really long ago in my world. In any case, I had to get back to doing the floor, as the radiator had been removed. No radiator means no heat. No heat when it's getting into the 30's at night means high likelihood of me having a familial mutiny on my hands. So, this was the weekend to get it done.

The top picture is the mess I had to work in. Our stupid house has nowhere to put anything on the second floor outside of the bedroom. I just worked across until I hit the mess and then moved it onto the floor I had finished. Just like the tile game. Or at least it was called the tile game when I was a kid in Indiana. Wikipedia is calling it a sliding puzzle game.

Guthrie and Max liked helping until I started actually cutting with the miter saw.

This is bad. It is the cause of several large bouts of cursing. Nailing through the face of the board always ended up happening near the end of a long board, maximizing the amount of flooring I had to waste and pry up off the floor. The flooring nailer doesn't do a great job of feeling like it is positioned right. I ended up with three of these mistakes and one of the saw jumping cutting one out and hitting the next board, which of course then needed to be removed and replaced.

This was the end of day 1 and about 7 1/2 hours of work.

Bethany liked to peed in and see how it was coming. She was great: kept bringing me food and drinks as well as helping carry crap out of the way and planks downstairs.

Done with enough to install the radiator at 10:15 pm Sunday night! I hope my neighbor (who's house is attached to ours on the other side of the wall to the right in the pictures) didn't want to get to sleep before then...

Yay, heat!

I'll get the next few boards this upcoming weekend.

Rocking chair

Got my great grandfather's rocking chair our of the car finally and put it in the living room. This is closure for the previous post...

Great grandfather's chair

A while ago, my father and stepmother sent us my great grandfather's rocking chair. It's been in a crate at work for a few months, and I was getting a bunch of heat at work about that. So, this was the weekend to dismantle the crate and bring it home. I have a picture somewhere of the crate when it was delivered, but can't find it now. Here are a few from the dismantling process. The Dewalt boxes are empty (alas). They were filler to take up volume around the chair in the crate.

Once the crate makes it to its final spot in the house, I'll post a picture.


Dave helped take it apart. Fun Friday night. I owe him a beer or bike tube or something.


The term "station wagon" is certainly a little anachronistic, and none of the car companies use it anymore. However, this style of car is so utilitarian and gets good mileage.

New porch roof and gutter

It took six months to actually get someone out to the house to repair the leaky porch roof. It's finally done. New sheathing, shingles, and gutter to replace the box gutter that was essentially a filter and funnel for water to pour out onto the sidewalk in a nice sheet instead of going down the downspout. Of course, the shingles they installed don't match the mansard roof shingles above. Rats.

First bath in the "new" house

Yes, we've had the house for nearly three years, and it's taken this long for the bathroom to finally be 95% finished. There are some details to finish, including finding/commissioning a vanity, but nonetheless, it's functional. Bethany got her first bath a few days ago. Tonight was my first. Yay! I needed to soak after a long run with Guthrie. For the bibliophiles, I got the notion to read Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. I made it through several chapters in the late 30's during the relaxin'...

Guthrie is warming up to Silas

He's making progress. They both love couch time.

Bamboo is Hard

Holy crap! This is the result of my test of using a 16-gauge pneumatic nailer to face nail the stranded bamboo flooring for our bedroom. I suppose I'll break out the full face protection and put away my pathetically inadequate safety glasses when I go to start nailing with the new flooring nailer. I haven't tried that yet, as it wasn't shipped with the nipple to connect to the air hose. More as this story develops...

Bethany took the cool morning to add a coat to the trim for the bathroom. Don't forget that it goes best with Guthrie's supervision.

Ride up into the Hill District

I didn't have much time to ride this weekend. I was able to sneak an hour ride in before breakfast today, though. I rode up into the Hill District to explore and then down into Oakland before picking up bagels for breakfast.

I realize it's a generalization, but I really don't think many people in my neighborhood have ever been up in the Hill District. There are some amazing houses and a lot of them are well taken care of and obviously appreciated. Sometimes, it seems like locals feel that it's all a war zone and falling down. It's not really like that. Sure, there are bombed out parts, as there are in any city, but there is much more. Lots of people living normal, relatively happy lives in completely different circles than those of other neighborhoods.

I found a wonderful park in the Upper Hill District where the water tower is. Google Maps is telling me that it is Herron Hill Park. However, there was another name, a person's name, on a sign at the entrance. I wonder which is the one that people who live nearby use. In any case, the views from the walking trail around the reservoir are amazing. You can bet I'll check back in and see how things change with the seasons. Enjoy some of the views.

Bloomfield Bridge and the new Children's Hospital.

Looking West toward downtown Pittsburgh and beyond.

Looking northeast over Bloomfield and West Penn Hospital. Our house is in that mess somewhere.

Final shot of Pittsburgh's downtown.

Misty Morning, Lunching, and Glider Chair

This was the view as I pulled my bike in to the office parking lot. A few minutes before, the light was much better, as the sun was beaming onto the lower levels of the buildings, painting them in a golden light. I'm not disappointed that I spent my time enjoying that instead of looking through my bag for my camera, though.

Long lunches are almost obligatory some Fridays. Today was one of them. Bethany, Becky, Tim, Maya, Ryder, and I met up at the Church Brew Works for a leisurely lunch. After that, Bethany, Tim, and I picked up the new glider chair for Bethany from Babyland. It's the nicest I have ever seen, and one of the very few that don't completely defy our sense of aesthetic. It's made by Monte.

She makes me coffee

Bethany beat me out of bed this morning and brought me a cup of coffee to get going. I suppose one could misconstrue that sentence as "she beat me out of bed with a cup off coffee". The bruises will heal, don't worry. :)

Bathroom becoming useable!

Our contractor installed the toilet temporarily in the bathroom today. Bethany is leaping for joy. I just hope it doesn't push the baby out. I want him to hang in there another two weeks so he's as fully cooked as possible, and so contractor Bruce can get as much of the bathroom completed as possible.

We bought the toilet a couple of years ago, but the bathroom project stagnated until the impetus of the fetus brought us to the sensible decision of hiring a contractor. It's a dual flush toilet from Mansfield, made in Perrysville, OH (we think). The funny thing is that Mansfield isn't in Mansfield, Ohio. I was wrong all these years, evidently.

The decision for a dual flush toilet was a very straightforward one for us. We tend to practice the "if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down," method of toilet etiquette. Of course, we modify it for when we have visitors that frown at such behaviors. The dual flush toilets use a lower flush volume in the "number one" mode. When you need the flushing power, they have the "number two" mode that flushes like a normal low-flow toilet. I haven't run the calculations to see how much water we have the capability of saving. As I mentioned, we're pretty sparing to begin with. This can only help us conserve this valuable resource. I can't remember the cost, but I don't think it cost any more than similar quality toilets we were considering that were not dual flush. We sourced it from Lowes, who had to special order it. It didn't take long to come in, but then again, as we had it for two years and today's the first time it's gotten wet, that didn't matter so much to us...