Jim Dabrowski

Signed the contract today. Sent off 25% downpayment. We’ll see what happens next!

JIm

This is test of the emergency blogging system. If this had been an actual blogging emergency we would have provided information about what do to next. This is only a test.

Today we met with our project manager, Jerry, for our kitchen remodel. We went over the final estimates and the contract. He gave us a nice overview of how the process will work and what they’ll do. He says to be ready for some stressful times. I think we are.

Here is a picture of the new floor plan I talked about in the previous post.

Ignore the way the seating is drawn in there — otherwise its all correct. One big island, fridge built into the wall where we currently have pantry-style cabinets. Take out most of the wall between the kitchen and the family room. Gonna be messy around here for a while (9 weeks!) and Dena and I will be living in the basement that whole time. Should be “fun”.

We actually had a few questions about the contract after we read it over and sent off an email asking for clarification on a few issues. Mostly minor, we’ll see what they say. I’m not too worried. Next step is to get the revised contract signed, give them a bunch of money to start and off we go!

JIm

We decided to remodel our kitchen. Mind you, our kitchen looks fine the way it is…

but there are some problems. Mostly they stem from the fact that all the cabinet doors are falling off. You see, the previous owners seem to have had all the doors removed, stripped and restained to the color you see here. While that worked fine, one problem we’re finding is that the side walls of the cabinets are that cheap particle board and when you remove screws from it and then try to re-screw the hinges back into the same place, they just don’t stay. So we end up with a number of them looking like this.

To make matters worse in one place, they wanted a big cabinet, so they just cut out the center partition that holds things up and we now have this happening.

So we want a change.

Having watched plenty of HGTV over the years, we knew we wanted a design-build company to come in and help us decide on how it should look and then actually do the work and subcontracting.

We first found a local company who seemed interested, but after getting some preliminary renderings from them they went dark. No responses to our “We like this. We want to hire you. Please contact us.” emails so we gave up on them.

Then we went to Property Revival. They’ve been pretty good so far. We started with them almost a year ago. We’ve spent that time going over every little detail about what we want. Most of that time is Dena and I changing our minds on countertops, cabinets, faucets, sinks, etc. But we’re finally done picking things out and should be ready to start soon.

Here is how the kitchen is laid out now.

We’re going to remove the peninsula and replace it with a big island. We’re also going to remove the wall between the kitchen and the family room to go with a more open concept.

Soon we should be signing the contract and having our final walk though and then getting on the calendar. I plan to keep blogging our progress as we go. So stay tuned. More to come (and soon I hope).

JIm

I’m back to boating! Got off my butt recently and got started on it again. From the last blog post from, gosh, 2013 I was working on the nibbing strake on the foredeck. Wow, made a bit of progress since then.

First off, I got the aft deck completely planked.

Then I stained the whole deck

Why stain the deck now you ask? Well, the next step is to add the stanchions back on, finish planking above the waterway and paint all that white. By staining the deck now, I think it’ll make it easier to mask the deck and paint all the rest white. At least, I’ll find out eventually.

Next I had to re-attach all the stanchions I cut off before (see earlier post about creative destruction). So I built these guides I stuck to the outside so I could use them to make sure the stanchions all lined up properly.

As you can see, I think that worked. Also note my beautifully stained deck is now completely covered in blue painter’s tape. This is because once all the stanchions are on and the final two rows of planking are installed and the new rail put in place, I’ll have to paint all this white. And I’m gonna use spray paint for that.

Last but not least, I’m cutting notches (I’m sorry, scuppers), in my planks.

You see, the next row of planking has to go even with the waterway and there are supposed to be little tiny notches, I mean scuppers, cut into those planks on either side of nearly every stanchion. So, I laid out the planks, marked where all the stanchions are, measured and marked where all the fake stanchions will go between all those currently in place and now I’m cutting notches. I’m actually using a small file to file out those notches. Each one you see there is about 1/32” wide. Kinda small.

That’s it. Last of the updates for now. I hope to keep on working and keep on blogging about this. Feels good to be back into this.

See ya!

JIm

Thursday night I said to my wife I thought the Bears were suddenly 5+ years away from being competitive. Another couple years of Pace & Co., they’re fired and the Bears are back to looking for a new GM, head coach and several more years of rebuilding. Trading away 3 picks to move up one spot for a quarterback that would likely have been there for them at #3 made no sense to me. After a few days to mull it over and read opinions, my feelings have changed.

It’s clear the Bears, specifically Ryan Pace, think that Trubisky can be The Guy. By that I mean they believe Trubisky has the potential to be a 10+ year starter for the Bears who will play at least as well as guys like Matt Ryan, Matt Stafford, Carson Palmer and Eli Manning. A true “franchise quarterback”. Now I agree we can all debate this. Pre-draft you could take nearly every top quarterback (Kizer, Watson, Trubisky, Mahomes) and find some analyst that had each one picked as the best quarterback in the draft and find others explaining in detail why each of them will be a bust. None of that matters. What matters is that Ryan Pace and the Bears clearly made the decision Trubisky was The Guy for them and they were going to get him in the first round no matter what.

From this base, the decision to move up to the second pick makes more sense. They were sitting at three and knew they were going to draft him, the only question was whether they would have to trade up to get him. The Browns made the obvious choice at #1 and picked Myles Garrett which left the Bears wondering what was going to happen at #2. According to Adam Jahns the Bears heard from multiple sources that the 49ers were in serious talks with other teams wanting their #2 pick. Should Pace sit at #3 and hope no one jumped ahead of them and possibly take Trubisky, or should he make sure he got his guy? As Pace himself said in the post draft press conference, he wasn’t going to sit on his hands and trust to fate, he was going to do what was necessary to get the guy he wanted. I can respect that.

What about Glennon and Cutler? Why sign Glennon if the plan all along was to draft a quarterback in the first round, especially when they already had Cutler (a proven starting-caliber quarterback) under contract?

It’s easy to argue they should have kept Cutler, drafted Trubisky, let Trubisky develop until ready to start then release Cutler. The cost to the Bears for Cutler in 2017 and beyond was pretty low and the contract was such that they could cut him nearly any time and owe him nothing. But let’s face it, Cutler was a pretty polarizing figure in Chicago. Half the city hated him, half the city loved him, and that proportion shifted every Sunday depending on how many fumbles, interceptions and touchdowns he had. If the Bears kept Cutler and drafted Trubisky, there would be an immediate “quarterback controversy” that would only grow louder and louder with every injury, interception or fumble. Those are distractions the team doesn’t need. Instead, the Bears released him and got Glennon.

Why get Glennon? According to this guy, word is Pace thinks Glennon has the potential to be The Guy in Chicago as well. Now again, we can all question this, but our opinion doesn’t matter, only Ryan Pace’s opinion matters. If he thinks Glennon has the potential to be The Guy you go get him but sign him to a team-friendly deal. His pay for 2017 is reasonable given his history and they can cut him any time after this season with not much dead money.

So where does that leave the Bears? In pretty good position in my opinion. There are four ways this can play out, three of which are net positives for the Bears. Glennon can turn out to be a genuine, starting-caliber NFL quarterback. If he does, the Bears play him all of 2017 and let Trubisky develop. If it’s looking like Trubisky is The Guy as they expect, we could see a real quarterback competition in training camp in 2018 or the Bears can trade Glennon away and get something for him. If Trubisky takes longer to develop or is looking like he will not be The Guy, they keep Glennon as their starter and begin to look for The Next Guy. Let’s say Glennon turns out to be the mediocre-to-bad quarterback many think he is. Mid-way through 2017 we see Trubisky become the starter and we’ll get to see if he is The Guy Pace thinks he can be. Only in the case where both Glennon and Trubisky turn out be busts do we see the Bears with another top ten (or maybe top 5) pick in the 2018 draft, possibly with a new head coach or even a new GM.

Like I said at the start, my initial reactions Thursday night were WTF and SMH. After a few days and a few deep breaths, I am beginning to be more optimistic. Only time will tell if Pace is right. Until then I’m going to remain hopeful and continue to cheer on the Chicago Bears.

Hmm. Lately again I’ve seen this quote floating around on Facebook and other social media sites:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” – Ben Franklin

It is often used by people to justify their standing up for their individual rights against an oppressive federal government. I decided to do some research to get some historical context and came up with this: What Ben Franklin Really Said. Turns out, it’s really being misused in most circumstances.

When Franklin wrote that, he was writing to the Governor of Pennsylvania. The state legislature was attempting to pass a law raising taxes on land owners to pay for a militia to help defend homesteads on the border against Indian attacks. The Governor (at the request of the Penn family) kept vetoing the legislation. The Penn family offered to pay for the militia out of their pocket if the legislature would agree they did not have the authority to levy such a tax. This was what Franklin was arguing: Giving up the essential liberty of self-governance to obtain temporary safety was wrong. The legislature had the right and the duty to act in the best interests of the people. Seems to me, the most parallel situation today is our Congress’s unwillingness to challenge executive orders ostensibly designed to protect our borders and keep us safe. If there is such a threat to our safety and security, then Congress ought to be passing laws to increase border protection and raise the taxes necessary to pay for such protection, rather than ceding that authority to the President. The Democratic Congress was derelict in its duty when it allowed then President Bush to launch wars for our protection through executive orders rather than through a congressional declaration of war. Republicans in congress showed some spine when Mr. Obama was in office and they were willing to challenge some of his orders, but now that they have “their guy” in office, they too are willing to cede their responsibility to the President. All those people who want change in Washington need to remember this in 2018 when all of congress is up for reelection. Vote for people who will stand up for our constitutional rights and who will do their job rather than running scared from a President with a twitter account just because he belongs to your party.

JIm

Well that was embarrassing. I wanted to post something here yesterday, fired up my computer, looked in my Sites directory, saw all my files and realized I had no idea which tool I used to build this site. I’ve obsessed for years trying to find the “right” tool to use and have tried many, many tools. Eventually I apparently picked one but now had no idea which one. Looked around my site and my last post was from over a year ago. sigh This morning I realized that I might have blogged about it. So I looked at a past post and found my blog reboot post wherein I mentioned that I used Jekyll. Yay! Of course, for some reason Jekyll wasn’t installed on this machine so I had to reinstall it, but that was easy and now I’m back up and running so when inspiration strikes, I can post. (I’ve also updated the footer on this site to remind me what tool I use to do this.)

We killed our cat yesterday. Well, more accurately, we had him killed yesterday. Such a blunt way of putting it, yet it’s accurate. In polite society we say we “had him put down” which sounds so much nicer yet amounts to the same thing. His name was Scaliwag (and it bugs me that all my spell-checkers insist his name should be spelled ‘Scalawag’ instead) and he’d been a part of our family for about 15 years.

We got him when he was somewhere around two or three. Dena had a patient who had been a cat breeder and was getting out of the business. We agreed to adopt Scaliwag into a family that already had 2 other cats: Broccoli and Cauliflower (kinda messed up that vegetable-naming thing we had going on). He fit in OK for the most part. Broccoli was an adult boy black-and-white while Cauliflower was a young tortoise-shell girl. Scaliwag was a young, lean, active and somewhat skittish Siamese with beautiful, sleek tan fur fading to black at the paws and face with strikingly blue eyes. A really beautiful cat.

Scaliwag was never much on friendship. While the other cats would come and play with us, walk on us and otherwise demand our attention, Scaliwag never cared much for that. He was, however, a lap cat. If we ever sat down on the couch with our feet up, he was there ready to hop on our laps and make himself comfortable. He was a good cat.

He outlasted Broccoli and Cauliflower. He died from kidney disease and she a year later from breast cancer. Losing him hit our family the hardest. The kids were still little and it was their first experience with death. He was also the first pet Dena and I had gotten together and was always my buddy. They were eventually replaced by Lion, another young, rambunctious, boy cat, this time dressed in orange tabby. Scaliwag took it all in stride, adopting to the changing family while continuing to sit on our laps and otherwise ignore us.

Something changed recently and he stopped being himself. Feeding him became more difficult and he started to lose weight. He developed congestion that would make it difficult for him to breathe. Lion became more aggressive to him and he began to hide more and stay away from us more. He just wasn’t himself, though he would still sometimes come and sit on our laps. We weren’t very good parents at this point. We let this go on too long. At first, too much denial, telling ourselves it would just get better. Later, too much guilt for not having taken him to be seen earlier and still hoping it would get better all while he got worse and worse.

Eventually we got the courage to have him seen and did what we could. Got some medications, tried some new special food but none of it really helped. We thought he was getting better, but he wasn’t. For his last several weeks he lived in the back of Dena’s closet and almost never came out. We would take food to him and find him laying on a towel soaked in urine. He would no longer even use the litter box sitting right beside him. We eventually realized it was time.

We took him to the vet yesterday. They were very kind and understanding. It kind of surprised us that we were both in tears over this cat who never really fit in to our family and kept himself aloof from us all those years. The vet administered a sedative and I took Scaliwag and sat down with him on my lap. I petted and cried and told him it was OK. He kindly accepted my words, my petting and my lap and quickly and quietly went to sleep.

Goodbye Scaliwag, we’ll miss you.

Scaliwag: born 1998?, died August 14, 2015

It’s taking pleasure in the little things in life that helps keep me happy.

My dad was an electrician. As a result, growing up I would help him with various electrical tasks around the house (usually amounting to “hold that damn flashlight steady!”) and I learned some things. Then, as I grew older and got a house of my own, I would have him come by and help me with various things like putting in light fixtures, changing switches, outlets, etc. Little things.

Throughout all that, I still never quite got a grasp on electricity (and I don’t mean that physically). Despite having a Ph.D. in computer science, I still struggle with the simple concept of the flow of electricity through a circuit. Something about it just eludes me. Despite my father’s trying again and again to explain it to me and teach me through numerous projects, I just don’t get it. I can wire up a switch, outlet, light fixture, fan, etc. but it is still pretty much rote memory in me without quite understanding what I’m doing.

A few weeks ago we put up ceiling fan in our bedroom. We moved into our current house over a year ago and the house had no ceiling fans in any of the bedrooms. Having had them in our old house, we really wanted them here in our new one. So I installed one in our bedroom. However, when I installed it, I didn’t quite know how to wire it up so that the light would be controlled by the switch on the wall and the fan would be controlled by the pull-chain regardless of whether the switch was “on” or not. So for a while, I lived with having to leave the wall switch on and then come bed each night in a dark room flailing around with my hands towards a running ceiling fan trying to find the pull-chain to turn the bedroom light on. Not a good solution.

Well, finally the light-bulb came on. (Yes, that pun was intended.) After talking with my brothers and sister and hooking up another fan in my daughter’s room, I finally figured out what I had done wrong in my room and thought I knew how to fix it. So, yesterday (on Labor Day) I got up there and rewired it and TA-DA! I can now control the light from the switch on the wall and the fan from the pull-chain on the fixture. It exciting being able to walk into the room, hit the switch and see the light come on all while the fan is still running. No flailing necessary.

Like I said, it’s taking joy in the little things that make my life worthwhile. I think my dad would have been a little happy with me.

JIm