Paint as a fashion accessory

Today was our first designated Paint day for Arsenic – we got all of the set that was up painted
Unfortunately, we also had our first major “casualty” of the show.  I got out the last part of the black paint from the shop, and was reminded i needed to shake and stir it before trying to use it.  Guess what? Someone had forgotten to close it all the way. 
I now have a pair of shorts that were originally khaki, and are now half khaki and half stage black.
That’s right, it went all over my lap, and all over one of the theater’s chairs

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A friend of mine…..

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce a good friend of mine, and a fellow druid/student of life, Sandy.  Her blog is located here: !Yahoo 360.  I am hoping she will contribute to my site and help me fill any categories she knows of with useful or relevant information. Anyone who has a subject that falls under any of the categories listed
on the site is more than welcome to send me any data they are willing
to share, and will receive credit for their submissions, unless they
request anonymity.Since i don’t think i have posted it yet, my website is coming back up, and has a temporary home at http://www.ylamerz.com/trd.  Anyone who has a subject that falls under any of the categories listed
on the site is more than welcome to send me any data they are willing
to share, and will receive credit for their submissions, unless they
request anonymity.  The site is intended to grow to be much more massive than i could possibly compile by myself, especially since I am not a religion expert myself yet.

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Set update

The set is going up in leaps and bounds, and I’m very happy with the progress.  Don builds amazing sets, and this one is no exception!  I wish I had a camera so I could post some pictures of the set once it’s done, but I probably won’t have a decent camera till after the set is taken down.

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Nice idea – needs some input

We started work on the set for Arsenic & Old Lace this week, and the set we are building gave me some ideas for my own house.  Our living room, dining room, and library ceilings are all like 10 feet tall, and being only 6 fot, there is a nice little chunk of wall space not being used – on the set we have platforms set up all along the back wall, with used area beneath them, and it gave me the idea to line the living room and/or dining room with raised platforms – i could put the platforms over the couches/sideboard tables and give us a considerably more room.  If we did it in the living room, we could even have 2 tiers of couches, or a couch on one level with a desk beneath it.  Has anyone seen anything like that?  Any ideas or input would be more than welcome.

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Another Big Update

Again I forgot to make any new posts for a while, so it’s time for another big update – and hopefully i will start making posts more regularly.

First: Collectables; Our collectables grew rapidly at christmas time, with several new Earnhardt items for me, and a rare beanie baby for Amanda, and she also started collecting limited edition pez dispensers. So far she has Orange County Choppers and Hello Kitty, both in metal collectors tins, with 3 dispensers in OCC and 4 in HK. She also got a new collectible card game for her birthday, Teen Titans CCG.

Second: Computers; We got several new computer games at very good prices. I got CS 1 Anthology for $5, which I found amazing, as well as a 4-pack that each one sells in stores for at least $20. I also got Enter the Matrix for $6, also brand new. I have also been making inquiries about harware for the new PC i am planning to build myself in the next few months sometime – and it will be quite a powersystem. I am almost certainly getting a dual processort system with 2 dual core opteron’s – the mobo will support the quad-cores coming out this august, as well as supporting up to 16 GB of ram. Can you tell I’m excited?

Third: Home Improvements; We got the porch roof patched where it was leaking, and repainted the front of the house. The rest in this category is new appliances, furniture, and household gadgets. We got a 3-tiered chocolate fountain, a fry daddy deep fryer, a new coffee maker, an espresso/cappuccino maker, a waffle maker, an automatic egg cooker, a hot drink machine, (makes things like hot chocolate and such, and froths them), a potato twister ( it takes raw potatos and cuts them into curly fries). We also got a new couch. Actually it’s a victorian setee, it’s beautiful, and perfect for our old english library. We also got a king-size waterbed, with a lumbar support posturepedic mattress.

Fourth: Pets; We ended up settling on scabbers for the name for our rat. We also had to get rid of mojo because we just didnt have the time that he needed for training, so he went to someone out in the country that has a farm and several other labs. We don’t have the kittens anymore – we found out that the whole litter was very sick, and our local vet was not able to do anything about it but make them more comfortable till the end. We did get a new kitten from someone in our church, a siamese that we have named song. Amanda tends to call her sing-song. She is in great health, and is also a great mouser. We also got a 4 year old himalayan named Ashes. She is very beautiful, and also very lazy. Ahren, Draoi, and Presley are all still here and are doing great. They have their own toddler bed that they sleep in, and as soon as we finish re-modeling the other side of the house, they will have their own bedroom.

Fifth: Theater; I am doing a new play again. This one is Arsenic and Old Lace. I am playing the part of Jonathan, an evil psychopath who was originally played by Boris Karloff. Tova is directing this one as well, and she is the best director I have ever worked with. btw, her blog is located here: Facebook

General: Amanda had her hearing for her disability february 12th. We should have their answer by may, and once they approve her we will be able to make our home improvements much faster, as well as being able to do a whole lot all at once when she gets her backpay.

I’m going to try to get back to blogging more often, so I don’t have to do such big mass posts.

All the catch-up news (note the categories lol)

Ok, a lot has happened since i last got on, in part due to issues with ff and having to re-get and set up a lot of plugins. 

First:     Collectables: Amanda picked up a $70 beanie baby at a flea market for 50 cents…Very happy.

Second:  Computers: Picked up 2 video cards, ati radeon 7000, with avi-output, dvi-out, and vga, 64mb vram, and 8xagp for $5 each – also exciting

Third:     Gaming: Got a copy of Star Wars Battlefront, giving me the choice of getting online and playing online fore free, but then again i do that on kol, so I wouldnt have bought it if it wasn’t $2.50 and supposed to be a very good game.

Fourth:    Home Improvements: Got the paint we need to paint the house, Amanda decided on white with gray trim. Also got some much-needed bits and bit adapters for working on the house with – so many more tasks I’ll be able to do now.  Also got an Eagle for over the door, and new address numbers (8, 2, and 2) 

Fifth:      Pets:   Okay, lots of news here.  The neighbors moved out and left us a full-blooded black lab.  His name is Mojo-jojo.  Not our idea, i promise.   Then we got 2 kittens – Amanda wanted to get 2 so that they would at least have each other for something familiar in a new house.  Two females, hermyne and flash. Unfortunately hermyne passed away – when we called the woman we got her from she said that she had done that the week before we got her, just getting real bad real fast, but forgot to tell us.  We also have a pet rat.  We havent decided for sure on a name yet, but were thinking about scabbers (as a name for the rat)  He is 10 months old, he IS fixed (they do that to rats?) He is friendly, and his food isnt too expensive at all.

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Test of performancing

This is my check of how the performancing extension for FF works with wordpress – I might just use it only if it will work with both MY wordpress blog as well as Amanda’s myspace. I’m also using it to check the Smiley Xtra 4 add-on for FF that i just added. Looks like it works, so we’ll try it out for a bit and see!

Amanda’s Myspace

I told you I would add a link to amanda’s myspace, well here it is! Amanda’s Myspace Home  And here is the link for Amanda’s MySpace Blog

Programming Update

I have decided to try some new FF add-ons, including the WordPress.com Blogging sidebar, so now I’m checking them out to see how well they work. Hopefully this extension will work well and I will be able to post more frequently with more ease. I will also be adding a link to Amanda’s Myspace page. Speaking of, we are also trying out a plugin for myspace blogging, the myspace pff addon, which works with performancing. Any tips or suggestions on blogging plugins you have experience with would be welcome.

General Update

This post will cover a little of everything i guess.

Ahren ( that’s how we have taken to spelling the husky’s name since we dont have russian characters on this computer) is learning fast, he already knows sit and bed. We were pleasantly surprised since the puppies for dummies book we have says that huskies are very difficult to train. Since he is 1/4 black lab, and they are supposed to be very easy to train, it looks like he is taking the lab temperament more than husky. It’s a little unnerving that he’s only six months old, with a year and a half more to grow, and he’s already the size of my mother-in-law’s full-grown boxer. Living with Amanda I have grown used to smaller dogs, so it will be a big adjustment having a large/giant dog (right now his weight classifies him as large, but since hes got so much more growing to do, he might well get to be in the giant class).

Yesterday I got a working weed-eater again. We had 2 of them – one that the handle was splintered into about 50 pieces but the mechanics all worked, and the other that was intact except the switch was broken, so as soon as you plugged it in it was on till you unplugged it. I was able to mix and match pieces of the two to get one in perfect working order.

We also have found a tenant to rent the other side of the house (in case i havent told anyone yet, the house we are buying is a duplex) and this time I think we finally found a good tenant. Its a young couple from church who are just getting started on their own. They have already been pouring money into it just in preparation for moving in. What we have decided to do, is that what money they put into the house, in improvements and other permanent things, will be added to a tally of sorts, what we are calling the “Hardship Clause” where if something happens, like if Tasi gets pregnant and has to go on maternity leave, or if the economy takes a severe turn for the worse and they lose their jobs, what improvements they have made will pay their rent as long as they need it and have credit remaining. Already they have put a new floor in the kitchen, and have half of the materials for a new floor in the living room, they are looking for new doors and new lock sets, planning to purchase and install this week, and are trying to find out how much it will cost to replace the broken windows and hope to do that this week as well,and they plan to put a new floor in in the bedroom in two weeks with their next checks. They have also purchased a fridge for the kitchen, and are bringing in a stove as well. Already they have shown incredible commitment, dedication, and more common sense and fiscal responsibility than I did up till I got married to Amanda. They have definite long-term goals and realistic plans on how to get there, including savings and investment plans to be able to purchase a home of their own.

On the next subject, we have gotten rid of many things we neither wanted nor needed on freecycle, and met many incredibly nice and wonderful people. We have also gotten – i loved this one – a digital plotter supposed to be still in working condition! I haven’t tested it yet because for some reason Amandas pc does not have the right connection port. We also got a nice wood office desk they the same person was getting rid of, and Ahren of course.

We got rid of a collectible WCW wrestling figurine, mint in package, which we liked because wcw doesnt exist anymore, so its hard to find those now. We also gave away one of our shower chairs, don’t know why or by who, but they were left here at some point. We gave a bag full of costume jewelry, although some of it may have been real pearls and such, they were very old and Amanda never wore them and so she put them on freecycle and the theater director of our local theater. When she told us she was the theater director, Amanda told her how i love to act, and she invited me to come to auditions last wednesday. I got the part, I’m playing Major Metcalf in Agatha Christie’s “Mousetrap”.

We also have put a lot of mens clothes on freecycle, and are waiting for them to be picked up.

Also, this month is the 7 year remaining mark, we only have 7 more years to pay on the house and then it’s ours free and clear.

So overall, things are improving, although we are still saddend at Shadow’s passing.