Big One One: The Tree's Gone!

I mentioned this huge, ugly tree that we had in the front of the house. It was ugly, the pine needles killed the grass, and it didn't let any light in. So, it's gone.

This is how the house looked with the pine (ugly):





View from inside the house (dark):



View from the back:



A friend of a friend of a friend came and chopped off the tree for really cheap. It took him three days, but he used most of that time cleaning up the branches. I wanted to film it, but I thought that the guy would have felt really uncomfortable, so I just took some pictures now and then. The process was very interesting. We noted that at some point or another, all of our neighbors came to see it, and also that the people that drove by had their heads in funny angles trying to see the guy in top of the tree.

The guy first cut the branches, from the bottom up.



Then, he started cutting the trunk, chunk by chunk.



End of the first day:





Final thing:



View from inside (with tree and blinds gone!)



The front of our house now:



Leftover wood (cheap!!!)

Paint

I definitively hate painting. But we finished the living room, so that's good. It's actually the hardest room to paint, because it's so big, and because it was painted this ugly dark brown, so it took like three coats of paint when we applied the lighter yellow.

The paint took forever to get here, because it's supposed to be this really good paint (Benjamin Moore), and we had to special order it.

We painted two of the walls Butter, and two Yellow Something. In this picture you can make up the butter color in the right, and the old brown in the left (the brown looks brighter than it actually is).



The Butter color in the opposite wall:



Comparing the three colors: The Butter (right), the old brown, and the Yellow Something (Left). I accept donations of new digital cameras.



Final thing:



The wall that connects with the kitchen had some ugly gray, 70s looking, counter tops, and I forgot to take a picture of them, but here they are after we ripped them off:



Wall without the counter tops:



After plastering and painting:



Meg wants to put some ceramics on it, which I'm sure will make it look much nicer than it is now.

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Random Picture:

Little Things

So, a week after I fixed that danged pipe, it broke somewhere else. Fortunately, this time it was easier to fix because it wasn't under concrete like the last time, but it still was a pain, and it worries me that the whole thing is going to come apart.

Besides that, we've been cleaning the shed and the house. The shed was covered in hay, because it used to be the dog's house, so it was also covered in crap. Literally, crap and solidified hair. Nine large hefty bags later, only the zoo smell remains.

It kills me that I can't organize better inside the house because we can't paint yet, and we can't paint because the paint we ordered is not here after forever, and who knows when it's going to arrive. So, in the meantime I have to entertain myself doing the lawn and cutting the ugly bushes outside our windows.

Some little things we've done this week:

1. We replaced the outside light fixtures. The old ones were pretty rusty and full of garbage inside.




Yes mama, I'm cheap and crappy, but I'm clean, I'm clean!
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2. We replaced the shower head. The old one was dirty and it didn't have any presure. We replaced it for one of those huge ones. I love it.

Ok, I forgot to take a picture of the old one when it was still installed, but you got the picture. It's up there, in the left. You know.

3. The mail box.
This was supposed to be an easy one, but it took me a while. The soil was fill with rocks, so I had to dig two feet and just then I could stick it. It's a small thing, but the front of the house looks much better already.

I told you these were small ones. This and next week we are doing the big ones: we are changing the power meter to a different wall, because the wires are extremely old and about to fall apart, and the power company won't replace them until we decide to comply with the darned code (big and expensive: now you have a hint for birthday, Christmas, son's day, etc.'s presents). Also, we are cutting the big tree in front of the house. There are two big trees, but we are starting with the bigger one, because it's right in front of the living room window, and we can't get any sunlight at all.

Right Before Hitting 30...

Here...

Last Saturday we moved to the new house. It was pretty crazy: we have much more stuff than we thought, and most of it is just small things, so it's a pain to clean and organize. We had a lot of help, but still it took forever.

I wanted to start cleaning right away, but Monday was my last day of school, an eight hour class that was more pointless than a horn in a plane. On Tuesday I had to clean the old house because the psycho landlord wasn't happy with the way we cleaned the blinds and stuff. On Tuesday I spent the whole day fixing a leak under the driveway. It's funny, because the guy that used to live here was a plumber, but he just didn't notice it. I mean, it was just leaking five gallons of water a second, so I can understand that the poor guy overlooked it...


So, yesterday I could finally start cleaning the house, and man, those windows were dirty. I had to take the screens out so I could clean them, and it took me like an hour to clean each one. I don't think that these guys ever cleaned them in the six years they lived here.

Today is my graduation, so I don't think I'll be doing much. Tomorrow we are going to shop for furniture, so that'll be fun.

Almost There!

This Thursday we are signing the closing papers for our new house! Meg and I like it, although it's not an amazing looking one as it is right now, but it is normal enough that it gives us a good idea of what we can do with it. And by normal I mean that it doesn't have, as we saw when shopping for homes, the master bedroom behind the laundry room, or a dinning room way far from the kitchen, or a five and half feet basement (or upper floor). It's very simple, and it has lots of potential.

What we want to do in this new blog is to report our progress on the house, and to bore everyone to death with detailed pictures of every tiny change that we are doing.

Halloween Costumes 2007

Meg and I went to one of her friend's house for Halloween. Meg was a substitute teacher and I was a truant student. She looked much better than me, of course.



Credits: Glasses, earrings, and mask from Savers. Wig from Martha.

Email Massivo Sobre el Swine Flu

Cada cual y cada quien tendrá que sacar sus propias conclusiones.


El pasado 2 de abril durante la reunión del grupo de G7 integrado por EU, R. Unido, Canadá, Alemania, Italia y Japón se dieron 2 conclusiones fundamentales.
1- La economía mundial necesitaba un cambio
2- El FMI. Destinaria 500,000 millones de dólares para ayudar a las economías emergentes, (países pobres dispuestos a colaborar) pues bien los dados estaban en el aire.
3- Luego vino la reunión privada del presidente Obama y Felipe Calderón el 16 y 17 de abril.
Sorpresivamente el jueves 23 de abril el presidente de México convoco a una reunión de emergencia con su gabinete, y por la noche el secretario de salud José ángel córdoba Villalobos anunciaba en cadena nacional la aparición del virus de la influenza, y las medidas inmediatas como la suspensión de las clases a todos los niveles en el DF y el estado de México.
El 24 de abril el G7 declara la economía mundial debería ponerse en marcha este año y que se lanzarían todas las acciones necesarias.

Finalmente lunes 27 de abril la empresa farmacéutica Sanofi Aventis anuncia que inyectara 100 millones de euros en una nueva planta de vacunas y donaría 236,000 dosis a México como apoyo al control de la enfermedad.

De todo lo anterior veamos lo siguiente:

1. Desde hace más de 2 años la industria farmacéutica a nivel mundial tenía problemas financieros por la baja en la venta de medicamentos.
2. Si no creas guerras crea enfermedades (la economía mundial debería ponerse en marcha)
3. México perfecto trampolín para lanzar la enfermedad, de aquí saldrían turistas a diferentes partes del mundo, curiosamente los países que reportan enfermos que estuvieron en México, y que están reforzando su cerco sanitario son los países que integran el G7 que raro.

Lo que pasara esta semana que viene. Muy probable la suspensión de actividades en todas las empresas del DF y Estado de México, ya las clases se suspendieron hasta el día 6 de mayo, donde el gobierno hará un análisis de la farsa y vera conveniente el que siga, o la declaración tan estudiada "gracias a las medidas que se tomaron a tiempo y el apoyo de la ciudadanía pudimos controlar la enfermedad"
4. Ponte a pensar de que se está hablando a nivel internacional ahora ¿del virus o de la crisis financiera?. Esto de antemano es un alivio para el banco mundial y las bolsas del mundo.
Distribuye este correo a todos tus contactos no se vale nos quieran ver la cara como lo han hecho en el pasado, (chupacabras, ovnis, leche contaminada etc.)

Y si puedes saca copias para la gente que no tiene internet, esta gente como siempre es la más afectada, mira los noticieros y las ventas de las farmacias se ha incrementado y el costo de los cubrebocas ya llego a 7 pesos imagínate las risas de quien esto orquesto al ver a la gente con cubrebocas.
Si alguien debate que con el paro México perdería mucho pues no, para eso es el fondo que destino el FMI, e imagínate las ganancias de la farmacéutica a nivel mundial, y como lo acaba de anunciar el Secretario de Economía de México por dinero no paramos para combatir la enfermedad, y por último los empresarios considerarían este paro un alivio y muchos vivales como siempre pagaran la mitad a sus empleados.

El presidente anuncio que la enfermedad es curable, y siempre nos manejan cifras a medias ¿donde están los muertos y donde están concentrados los enfermos?,

Yo anexo los siguientes puntos:

1. Si realmente es tan contagioso, ¿cómo y donde están las familias de los muertos?
2. Si la influenza porcina es una mutación del virus original de los cerdos, entonces el brote de la infección debería haber comenzado en el campo y no en la ciudades.
3. ¿Por qué no han mostrado una entrevista con algún enfermo? (he visto que entrevistan a familiares, diciendo que su familiar esta enfermo y que ya está estable gracias a los medicamentos, pero si el familiar ha estado en contacto directo con el virus que lo lógico no es que esté enfermo o en cuarentena?)
4. ¿Por qué no han dicho el nombre del retroviral que esta “curando” a la gente enferma?

Programas Utiles

- DVD to avi: DVD Shrink + winavi - OR - bitRipper