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Oh, May… where have you gone? You were a busy lil’ month while you were in your prime, but now look at you. Reduced to a few measly days strung out at the bottom of the calendar, clinging to a page whose 44,640 minutes of fame are nearly over.

Erm… so yeah. I’ve been keeping busy, is what I’m saying. Work has been pretty darn busy, and June is looking even worse in that regard – workfriend Jeremy is moving on to greener pastures, so I’ll be picking up a little bit from him. And at the same time, they decided to ramp up the number of email promotions they send out. Brian is looking to hire a full-time email person to free me up a bit, but he’s out for a while because his wife is having twins tomorrow and he seems to feel that somehow involves him. So I expect to be pulling double-duty, in a sense, for at least the next month. I just hope it doesn’t turn into the six months of double-duty I had before we hired Jeremy.

However, I’ve finally got my evenings free again! Last Thursday was my last web class of the season. I’m not teaching anything this summer, so that’ll give me a few months off, at least. I’ll probably teach the class again in the fall, though, to help justify the time I put into the course packet and planning. So now that my evenings are free, I’m already looking for ways to fill them back up again. I swear: I’m the busiest lazy person I know.

CSSnewbie is still keeping me busy. You’ll be getting a 4-month update soon, but I’ll give you a sneak peek: numbers are about the same across the board, but I made less money again. Uhh… go me. Right now, I just have to tell myself that this is a long-term thing. If I keep at it, I’m sure there will come a time a year or two from now when I’ll look back and wonder what I was so worried about. Right now, though, it’s hard not to wonder if I’m not just filling my time with poorly-paid busywork.

Amanda and I spent our Memorial Day weekend in the backyard, cleaning things up. We borrowed a wood chipper from a work friend and spent one evening last week chipping up the last of the brush that was left over from our great de-Privet-ing adventure last summer. Then this weekend, we took our two wood piles (used for our wood-burning stove, theoretically) completely apart and reorganized them into one pile in one location (right behind the garage, for those that know the geography). It looks a lot nicer now, actually. And we have the concrete slab back there open now. I plan to build a compost bin on half the slab in the near future. Then I can clean up our very literal compost “heap” laying next to the slab — which is built on top of river rock, no less, which should make cleanup a joy.

So what’s the moral of the story? Well, that I’m pretty whiny, I guess. :) But also that I’m keeping busy. And that’s gotta be good. Oh, and I promised Amanda that I’d finally get around to putting up Europe photos in the near future, so that’s something to look forward to.

I’ve spent the last few months living in a shadowy, red-hued world. Which sounds a bit like a symptom of severe depression. Which in turn sounds not at all like me. Luckily, there’s a much more physical culprit: the big halogen lights above my cube at work have been slowly dying over the last few months. And as they’ve died, they’ve created less and less light, and what light they were putting out was tinted redder and redder with every passing day.

By late last week, I noticed it was getting tough to read the documents on my desk, as all my papers were shadowy and pinkish. And it was kinda annoying. I mentioned this in passing to my boss, and he must have mentioned it in turn to our facilities guy, because I came back from my morning meeting to find a bit of a change.

My. Cube. GLOWS. It is far and above the brightest cubicle in my department, and after a bit of walking around, I’m pretty sure it’s the brightest in the building. Holy monkeys. Suddenly, I can see every speck of dirt in every corner of my office – as well as the deep, ominous shadows those dirt-specks cast. And I’m suddenly very self-conscious about the mess my cube has accumulated over the last couple of months, now that my so-euphemized* “creative disarray” has been thrown into such (very literal) sharp relief. I’m thinking I’m going to have to buy a pair of sunglasses to keep in the office for when my eyestrain gets too great simply from the reflection of the light off my beige desk.

My coworkers keep stopping by to comment on the halo of light surrounding my work space, as they laugh and squint in my direction. I’ve decided to refer to it as the aura of my greatness. Coworker Justin suggested it was a little more like the Twilight Zone, only with far less twilight. I suppose that interpretation might have merit, too.

* So euphemized by me. And only me.

Patient readers! A lot has been going on in the Land of Rob in the last few weeks. I’ll try and catch you up as painlessly as possible.

The Kitchen – Work on the kitchen is nearly complete! I pulled up all the linoleum, only to discover an entire new floor that also wasn’t wood. So I had to pull that up, too. Then there was the tiling of the new floor. Went smoothly-ish, if slowly. My sanding set off the alarm, and the fire department showed up. That was cool. If you’re into fire engines and large bills, anyway.

Then we took apart the cabinets and painted them Benjamin Moore’s Marble White (you can look it up yourself, if interested). We reattached them with bronze hinges that my parents had half-installed and fully-purchased, so that helped keep the cost down. And we found matching pulls on sale at Lowe’s, so we lucked out there.

After that came the painting of the kitchen. Benjamin Moore again, of course… this time in Sesame, which is a sort of pale green. Not at all the color of sesame seeds. But it looks really nice against the cabinets.

Then, Amanda and I installed the new track lighting and I got briefly wicked smart and figured out how to add the track lighting to the existing three-way switch circuit by just running one new 2+1 wire. There may have been some self-congratulatory fist-shaking immediately afterwards. :) I was pretty stoked that my first attempt at rewiring did not result in fire.

Last night, we got ambitious and reupholstered the kitchen benches. We bought a couple of these tablecloths from Bed, Bath & Beyond and cut them to size. They look pretty nice against the green walls. We also bought a beige tablecloth to go over the kitchen table, a beige curtain to go over the window above the sink, and beige valences to go over the two other kitchen windows.

Today, we ordered the Anise wall decal designed by Ilan Dei from Blik (the graphite color). So in a couple of weeks, we’ll have that decal growing up our green wall from behind our black benches. It should look really nice.

So really, all that’s left is to is lay down the new baseboard. We’ve bought it, and I took a swing at it last night, only to realize that 1) I don’t have a proper adhesive, and 2) It’s a lot tougher than one would think to get one’s miters cut to the perfect length. So that project is going to take a while. But I’m still hoping to have it done by Saturday! Because we’re moving forward with the pre-Thanksgiving dinner. We’re expecting around a dozen friends Saturday evening… we’ve rented a couple of banquet tables and a bunch of chairs, and plan to briefly turn the living room into a dining room, and the kitchen into the serving area. Fingers crossed.

The Job – I scored an interview with Workbench, which I think went decently well. The next day, they gave me a test assignment: write a four-page article on building a room divider screen. It was a pretty interesting assignment… I’d never written exactly in that style before, but it was a fun challenge. And now I have a half-finished room divider screen sitting in my garage. :) I plan to finish it once the kitchen is put back together. But the good news is, I turned in my article last night, so that’s taken care of. Now all I can do is wait and see.

The Future – I’m slowly moving into the 21st century. Last weekend, as part of my randomly ambitious wiring stint, I installed a programmable thermostat. It’s just a cheap little $30 model from Lowe’s, but good lord is it awesome. The house automatically cool down at night the way we like it, which helps us sleep better (and saves energy), then starts warming up half an hour before our alarm goes off. It’s a lot easier getting out of bed in the mornings when the air isn’t frigid. Then it cools down during the day, and warms up again half an hour before we get home. Kick. Ass.

Also, I think I have Amanda mostly convinced that Roombas are not (completely) scary or (entirely) evil, so maybe I’ll be able to get one of those someday. At the moment, I most definitely can’t afford it. Refinishing the kitchen has pretty well taken care of any excess monies I might have had. ;) When I can afford it, though, I’m grabbing myself this model here. You can’t schedule it, but it knows to go home when the battery is low, and that’s key to me.

Well, that’s that. Tune in next month (or hopefully much sooner) for another exciting adventure in the Land of Rob.

Gentle readers! I know it’s been quite a while since you’ve heard from me, so I will spend a very short period of time catching you up, but then we need to get down to business, okay?

What I’ve done in the last few weeks:

I went squirrel hunting with my dad a few weeks ago… we saw four, shot three, and killed two. I also managed to get a nasty bit of poison ivy that I’m just now getting over. I took the squirrels home, cooked them, and convinced Amanda to eat them with me. A couple days later, I went on a jog with Miles, and we saw 19 squirrels in 20 minutes. From now on, I hunt in the city.

I’ve been doing a cardio class after work on Thursdays. I’m the only guy there, so I feel a little out of place, but it’s kicking my ass, so that’s gotta be good. I’ve managed to stay within a few pounds of my goal weight since going off my diet (three under my goal today), so I must be doing something acceptably well.

Work has kept me very busy, which is a large part of why I haven’t been writing here. In work-related news, I’m applying for a new position within August Home. I’m going up for an Assistant Editor position with Workbench magazine. It’d be a huge career shift, obviously, which makes me nervous. But here’s the thing: I love writing, and I love web stuff. And I can’t seem to find a job that lets me do both in balance, so I’m stuck choosing between the two. And it might just be time to make the change.

Okay! So that’s the abridged version of my month. Now on to the cool stuff (for me, at least). Amanda and I are refinishing our kitchen, starting tonight. Here’s a general outline of what we’re planning to do (in the general order we’re planning to do it):

• Replace the kitchen floor
  • Remove the vinyl floor moulding
  • Tear up the old linoleum
  • Smooth out the existing subfloor
  • Lay down new vinyl tile
• Redo the lighting on the SE end
  • Remove the (broken) ceiling fan
  • Install simple track lighting in its place
  • Rewire the light switch by the door to control the track lighting instead of the garage light
• Paint the kitchen a shade not yet entirely determined
• Refinish the cabinetry
  • Remove all doors, knobs, and hinges
  • Sand down the existing wood finish
  • Paint the cabinets and doors a shade not yet entirely determined
  • Reinstall the doors with new knobs and hinges
• Install new (wood?) floor moulding

And that’s that. The best part is, we’re going to try and have all of this done by November 10th, because we want to host a pre-Thanksgiving dinner with our friends before they scatter to the four winds for family dinners of their own. It should be an exciting next three weeks. :)

Ladies and Gentlepersons! I would like to introduce you to the Woodsmith Shop, which is August Home’s most recent foray into the fascinating world of 20th century technology.

As many of you know, I work for August Home Publishing. They produce, among several other titles, a great woodworking magazine called Woodsmith, which is published bi-monthly and filled to the brim with useful woodworking information (and no ads!). Woodsmith was their first magazine, and this evening, it becomes their first title to reach yet another medium: television!

At 6:30pm this evening, Iowa Public Television will be airing the series premier of the Woodsmith Shop, August Home’s first-ever television show, hosted by our CEO, Don Peschke. If you can’t catch it tonight, they’ll be re-running tonight’s episode at 1:30pm Saturday afternoon. And they’ll follow that schedule (6:30pm Friday, 1:30pm Saturday) through all 13 episodes of our first season.

I’m proud of our company for the work they’ve done putting this show together. And having just come from a private screening of the series premier, I can happily say that their work has paid off. It looks really good (shot in high-def and everything), and was even able to hold my interest for a half an hour… which is pretty impressive, considering I’m not exactly what you’d call a handyman. Yet. Maybe after 13 episodes I will be. ;)

And guess what? Because I was responsible for building the Woodsmith Shop website, I get a credit at the end of the show! It’s very fast and listed with a couple dozen other names, but if you look in the upper-right hand corner of the list, you’ll see my name there. Awww… baby’s first television credit. Go me!

Anyway, I hope you all get a chance to watch the show. I probably should have mentioned it earlier in the week, I realize, but I’ve been working nonstop getting the website together. They requested a lot of difficult functionality at the last minute. :)