2013 Wrap-Up
Jan. 7th, 2014 07:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boogieshoesAs a general comment, one of the biggest issues this year in terms of time sinks and money was the Camry. I ended up buying a truck, but I had wanted to save a lot of money up and pay cash outright for it. This didn’t quite happen. I put down a downpayment and have a low monthly note on the vehicle, but still, it’s more money than I wanted to spend each month. The thing that drove me most crazy about the researching and buying experience? Everyone telling me ‘oh, you know you can do a no-money-down loan, right?’ Yes, I *can* do that – but to me that’s *extremely* irresponsible. A purchase like that should be viewed as an investment, and a sacrifice up-front reminds you to take care of your investment. For a car, the ‘investment’ is the theory that you’ll save money with a vehicle that runs vs a vehicle that breaks down a lot.
For a house, it’s the theory that this is going to be worth more in the end. Of course, I’m responsibility-oriented, and I can’t stand it when people destroy house and land and vehicle through apathy and ‘why should I care?’ You should care because if nothing else, it’s where you live, and taking pride in your home gives you pride in yourself. Well, that’s the theory, anyway. Enough rambling, on with the wrap-up:
HOUSE Stuff:
1) Finish the office room. This entails:
b) Getting the termite guy out took all of a half-hour once i got them out there (my fault, not theirs) (1/18)
d) Touch-up Paint finished 2/1
d-1) New carpet down – make sure vapor barrier is put down this time. waterproof the concrete floor.
e) Replace the Ceiling vent cover and the
g) Unpack the craft stuff into the office and/or office closet
h) Replace the ceiling light and closet light with something more suitable at some point.
i) Window film on that window
j) Fix the window sill where the prior owner's dog chewed it, and paint it (same as trim color)
2) Painting:
a) I’d like to primer paint the hallways and bathrooms,
b) finish the trim painting through-out,
i) trim in the living room and front hall was done Oct. 2012
c) and paint the columns in the living room and kitchen.
3) Misc:
a) Replace cabinet doors, and paint the cabinets white, and the rest of the kitchen walls blue. I don’t know if I’ll get to this this year.
b) Expand Driveway. If possible, add a raised section for a Workshop outbuilding.
I claim myself successful in House items, even though I didn’t get as much done as I wanted. Specifically, I DID get the office space updated into something livable, although I DID NOT: replace vent covers, get window film for the window, or fix the window sill in that room.
I didn’t really get to the kitchen, either, and most of that was getting a room-mate. And the roomie is wonderful, but unfortunately, I can’t just ‘live with’ a renovation mess while he’s here. I have to leave things in a live-able state. And part of that is – my shower broke in spring. ‘Broke’ as in, ‘the gooseneck came out of the wall, hanging by split threads’. This was the kind of learning experience that irritates the heck out of one. I tried a few things before I realized I needed more help, which I had to wait for – Dad had to help me figure out what I needed to do to fix the issue, which was ‘take off the old connection, and put on a new one.’ This involved cutting out a section of drywall, finding a replacement part (which for some reason was stupidly hard), and getting someone in to take the old part off and put the new part on, because the part was brass soldered to copper piping. Then I had to replace the drywall section, do mudding and taping, prime and paint to match the shower, before I *finally* get to replace the gooseneck and put on a new showerhead…. I’ve got the drywall section up, but haven’t gotten to the mudding and taping yet, although I put the new gooseneck on so random water drips won’t drip right on the drywall.
But the point being, I like having a shower after working on whatever. It’s a lot better on the muscles sometimes, and some things are easier in a shower than a bath tub, no matter how large (like shaving). Also, since I have a roomie, I can’t just take over ‘his’ shower. So despite having one working shower in the house, I haven’t had a shower *in* my house for most of a year.
Then there are things like the garage door track falling apart. Well not the track itself so much as the lever that is automatically actuated by the opener.
And myself backing over the mailbox, so I had to get a new one.
And the HVAC unit having issues, leading to a fan motor replacement on both indoor and outdoor units.
Basically, a lot of stuff happened that was as much a learning process of ‘being a home owner’ as delaying ‘doing house updates’. So, I count my home list successfully completed, despite not being near done. I’m also going to re-organize the ‘House’ list for next year: there’ll be a ‘fix-it’ section, and a ‘want to update’ section. Concentration will be on the fix-its as much as possible, because that’s what’s necessary for upkeep.
GARDEN stuff:
Garden stuff will be in two parts this year – growing vegetables and herbs in pots, and trying to condition the soil of my proposed garden plot. Well, and keep up the lawn.
2) keep a notebook of what you did, when.
3) Build 4 2’x2’x10” boxes
4) Rototille 6’x6’ square patch at the garden site
5) Put the boxes on the garden site
6) Plant legumes and grasses
7) Start Compost Pile
8) Start Compost pot in Kitchen
9) Need to acquire a lawn/leaf bag to catch grass clippings for the compost pile
10) Price how much it would cost to turn the front ditch into a River Runs Through It
Gardening was almost successful this year. I did plant and harvest some vegetables and herbs in pots – but it was a measly harvest, far later than I thought I’d get them, and two of my clay pots broke. And I need to replace one of my large plastic pots.
I also kept up the lawn, and cleared out a lot of undergrowth, but not all the stuff I wanted to get rid of. This upkeep and clearing is in large part due to my roommate, and this is a solid plus. Not in the least because I had no idea how much time mowing the lawn would take!
Everything else was a bust, though. This is in large part because I kept trying to kill weeds in summer. I should know better. I need to go out to the garden plot this week/ weekend/ soon and put down weeedkiller, and then lawnscape fabric. Big issue here: We have sandy soil. As in, almost beach-sand, although it does have a good amount of clay. Basically, the ‘correction method’ to use on this kind of soil is to…. not worry about the weeds, put down landscape fabric, build a box, and fill *that* up with soil on top of the landscape fabric.
The major Garden accomplishment this year was learning what ‘sandy soil’ means to your gardening strategy. Given that, I’ve decided to go back to the idea of square foot gardening, and my current idea is the cross that over with partierre gardening. I was telling a friend that I was thinking what I could do is similar to those art exercises where you grid a photograph, and copy each square onto a new piece of paper. You end up with an enlarged hand-drawn version of the photograph, but by concentrating on one square at a time, the less artistically-eyed of us can get fairly close to the original. My idea is to draw a partierre design out, and use the square foot gardening method to grow the garden piece by piece. Possibly, I’d make the grid squares smaller than 1ft by 1ft – maybe 6in. by 6in. or 3in. by 3in. I think in this way I can do a reasonable partierre garden adapted for southern climates (those type of ulra-controlled garden spaces were popular in England and France, areas that mostly have half-way decent soil to begin with. As opposed to my soil, which isn’t even half-way to ‘bad’, much less on the road to ‘decent’.)
I think I shall also divide the Gardening list into ‘Landscaping’ and ‘Gardening’ for 2014. This is to help me keep track of landscaping time and money costs, which sort of surprised me last year. One major plus in Landscaping this year: found resources for both a landscaper and muscle-work for the landscaping process. I still want to do most of the landscaping myself, but I can tell I’ll need help with many of the jobs, both learning tricks of the trade and handling two-person things.
SCA:
i'm tossing all SCA things and starting over, since i've had an epiphany about my SCA participation. there's some deep-thinking things i want to do here, and there may be a few posts about it in the future.
So the primary thing I did with the SCA was decide what I wanted to do, and how far I wanted to go. Here was the original issue: I wasn’t happy I wasn’t getting recognized for my efforts in the SCA, and I was feeling passive-aggressively resentful of my friends who were getting award after award. And a big part of that was that I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’, that person who thinks they should get reward without effort. But I didn’t want to put in a lot of effort because the SCA was, and always has been, a *hobby*, and putting in effort felt too much like *work*, and I was already spending a lot of effort *on* work already. So I resented needing to put in *more* work to get recognized in the SCA.
I normally dislike people who think they should get something for nothing, so I was pretty good and deciding that *wasn’t* the source of my own jealousy of my friends. And face it, no one really wants to be ‘that guy’. It took me a couple years to ‘get it’, but last Christmas-time, I finally figured it out. And that’s when I decided I really needed to step back and decide what I wanted and needed out of the SCA.
And my decision is: I still want the SCA to primarily be my social group, not something I feel *required* to put effort into, like work, but something I *like* putting effort into, like my garden, or stitching, or horse-back riding. On the other hand, I would like to start doing A&S stuff a little more seriously. To that end, I’m going do as much serious research and development of my own partierre garden and of stumpwork that I can. BUT, I’m not going to do so with an eye towards being an Apprentice to a Laurel, or any sort of equivalent. That’s TOO much of a time-sink, and I just don’t have the energy, even if I wanted the responsibility.
What I’m trying to do is balance available spoons with interests, and I have a ton of interests, and limited spoons. So I’m making the decision to NOT WORRY about not having enough spoons to get a ton of awards or do a ton of service-oriented works and etc. Instead, I’m going to do what I can, and start displaying to share my love of gardening and stumpwork with others. And for service, I’ll continue to kitchen wench and do troll and calligraphry when called upon, but let the rest take care of itself. With my other responsibilities, that’s all the spoons I have to spend on the SCA.
And you know what? I realized at this Christmas Revel that not only was that a *good* decision, but a lot of my anxiety/ stress over the whole darn thing was gone because of this decision. It’s incredibly freeing to say ‘This is what I can do. I’m glad person X can do more, but I’m not them, and I don’t need to be.” Granted, the SCA needs ‘person X’s’ to function like it does, and I’m glad of them. But frankly, they need people like me, too, who can remind newcomers they don’t need to spend 40hrs a week on the SCA or more, like it was another, unpaid, job, just for the SCA to be worthwhile. The SCA is about learning by doing, and each person learns at his or her own pace, and in their own way.
however, i still need to work on my camping kit:
1) Putting up the pop-up Tent
2) Make a list of things needed to do to make it ‘live-able’. Those things will include:
a) Ground tarp
c) Some kind of cot(s) to put my air mattress on
d) Floor rugs
e) Mosquito netting 'walls'
g) Need to make out a list of ‘To-Go’ Gear to pack for an event. Will include things like:
i) Shovel for water ditch around tent
ii) Flashlight
iii) Feastgear
iv) Other stuff not clothes-related
So, the camping kit – I made some progress on the kit, but I still need to put together a basic kit for camping for war. I do pretty well on weekend events that have bed-space. War’s a bit more difficult. However, I have put together a very basic list of minimal requirements for the week, and the major 2014 goal is to put it all together.
The other SCA-specific thing I'd like to do is to set up an archery field in my backyard, and begin practicing again:
1) Get a backstop/ target
2) Check to see if I've got arrowheads on my arrows
3) Get fletching and arrow-head-gluing kit
4) Layout lane with string and stake
5) mark 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 yard marks.
6) Wishlist: wind indicator
Alas, I made no progress on the archery stuff, in large part because of doing house-hold renovations. I will talk with my landscaper-resource about an area to put in an archery lane/ combat pell for heavy practice in the coming year. Fortunately, the guy is in the SCA also, so he’ll understand that I’m not just being quirky.
Stitching:
1) I’m determined to finish my Thomas Kinkade needlepoint this year
3) See if I can’t learn some macramé work (used with my embroidery thread)
4) Finish another Mag7 Doggie (I've taken this kit to work to work on my lunch hours)
5) Sylvia's towel
6) Laney's sampler (and no, i *didn't* set a single stitch on this last year, why do you ask?)
This was both a good, relatively speaking, and bad year for my stitching. I DID: finish two pieces, one of cross-stitch, one of needlepoint. I finally found some macramé books explaining knots, techniques, and variations. I also, thanks to my mother, now have stumpwork books and a complete kit.
However, I didn’t finish any of the items actually listed here… and Laney ain’t getting any younger!
FANFIC - I rolled over everything from last year:
1) I still... have those two essays on writing to finish!
2) Finish Seventh Gift
3) See if I can't make progress on the TS cross-over
4) Upload stories to Dreamwidth, and AO3
5) Start Projects on:
a) LB!JD is actually a girl
b) Alternate Ending to 'Something Wicked'
a) Contact Seremela and talk to her about permission to post, since this story depends so heavily on hers.
7) Finish slice-of-life stories
8) Finish Highlander-AU first 3 stories
9) The Bitter Glass (Green Day 'verse story)
I read a lot, but… frankly, all fanfic/ writing items are rolled right over into 2014. Main reason for this: I bought a desktop, but it’s sitting in my front hall closet still in it’s box, because the office is full of crap from the guest bedroom, since I didn’t manage to finish it. Well, I only started ‘finishing’ the guest bed around Thanksgiving (end of November for you non-USians), so perhaps I can be forgiven for that.
Personal ADMIN:
1) Organize household items, including
b) house decoration items,
c) disaster kit
2) Transfer data from old laptops to PC, when i get it.
3) Make the database for my library
4) File rest of bills from 2012 – this went by the wayside for obvious reasons last year, and will be waylaid until the office is actually done this year.
5) Convert VHS and audio tapes to updated platforms. (Contingent on buying platform converters)
6) Make a list of cyclical maintenance duties and times due;
7) hook up tv to house LAN so that when a chore must be done, it’ll flash on the tv when I need to do it. (Contingent on getting a new tv with internet capability)
There wasn’t a whole lot in terms of personal admin going on this year. I was going to do most of said admin in the office, but it is not complete yet, and is full of things from the guest bedroom, which needs to be emptied *before* I can get back to it… and incidentally, all 2013’s bills now need to be filed too. Eesh.
Only other point to add is that I made progress on a disaster kit, but small progress, and there is much more to go.
HEALTH:
1) Make an exercise plan and stick to it, although be prepared to be flexible.
a) Include Kinnect-X games, and
b) Put Kinnect-Play on the Calender Schedule program with the household chore list.
2) Consider going back to the Y, at least in summer.
Notes: Ideal weight-loss should be 1-2 pounds a week.
So for weight loss, I was startlingly successful – I say ‘startlingly’ because I didn’t realize how well a Low-Carb High Fat diet would work for me. Around June, I started to actively pursue this diet in terms of eating habits, and managed to get down to 238lbs by Thanksgiving. I’ve got psoriasis on my arms and legs that I suspect now is caused by a mild gluten sensitivity/ allergy, because it cleared up a *lot* while I was on this diet.
Then I gained 10lbs over the holidays. I’m starting the year going back on induction phase, because I still would like to get to 180lbs by diet alone.
Pet:
1) Contact Pennsacola Great Dane Rescue
2) Get started on making the house/yard doggie-appropriate, with view of getting doggie mid-year.
3) Research vet/ food/ baby-sitter services for doggie
I have acquired a Great Dane – or Abbie has acquired me, depending on how you look at it. Oddly enough, although I worked on all the above steps, the only one that wound up being completely necessary was the veterinarian. My roomie ended up helping me contact the people giving Abbie up, and I had a $$-free adoption, although the following vet bills were *not* small. Poor girl had heartworm, and total treatment costs were around $1500. She is all better now, and happy as a hundred-pound cat with a servant dedicated to ear skritches.
Roomie babysits the dog when I’m away, unless I can take her with me (as I did for Christmas). Abbie herself comes when called, even when running full-out, and I was off-leashing her after only a couple of days, so I can wait to make the yard dog-appropriate until I get the $$ to do it right.
I did wind up doing a chicken-wire fence for roomie’s dog, who off-leashes well, but likes to see if he can get away with sneaking off. Especially in cold or wet weather, sometimes the dogs will go potty in this little area instead of the front, so it wasn’t a complete waste. The pet thing will get rolled off the list for a couple years.
FURNITURE PROJECTS (all rolled over):
1) Finish that silly chair!
a) make two matching wood sides (this is a dremel-project, and includes finding my tools... somewhere in the purple room...)
I bought and completed several shelving units of various configurations this year… but never managed to get around to the chair. Yes, it’s going straight on the list for 2014….
I am adding a section to the To-Do List this year - the WISHLIST section. This section is for things i'd like to buy, and many of them will help me accomplish things on the rest of the To-Do list, but since they are specifically things to buy, i decided I needed to separate them out so I didn't feel stressed out if i *couldn't* buy them this year. Weird mental quirk thing.
WISHLIST:
1) Acquire Garden Software to help Plan Garden and Gardening Stages.
2) Get that nifty little pull-cart for the lawn mower…
3) Acquire a VHS to DVD converter
4) An audio-tape to CD converter,
5) Replace professionally-produced products with the newer professionally-produced versions.
6) Buy a new tv (look, the old one is a 1994 Toshiba… that came with rabbit ears. No lie.)
7) Buy an XBOX 360
8) Kinnect X
9) Consider buying a household organization software
10) Patio/Deck Design Software
11) Household Design Software
12) Get a calligraphy desk and comfortable chair
13) Get a cabinet for use in that area
14) computer desk kit15) night-stand kit
16) Desktop computer
17) Rocking Chair
So you can see that much of the Wishlist did not get acquired. This is due to unexpected bills and time and place to arrange the house to put the new stuff in it. One of the unexpected things that came with the roomie is extra furniture, in excess of what would fit in his room. Most distressing is his buffet in the kitchen. Not because it looks bad – it’s actually quite nice – but because it’s sitting on the wall I was going to paint my own coat of arms on, in full heraldic glory. That way when you opened the door, my coat of arms would be one of the first things you saw…
In any event, the primary problem with the excess furniture is that it fills up the house to the point where it can be difficult to shift things around. It’s far and away not like we’re hoarding anything, but it is part of the reason it took so long to restart on the guest bedroom. And also, his stuff is generally much nicer than mine, so I hesitate to buy anything which might require him to move his stuff out. That’s really ok, though, it just means things will have to go a bit slower than I originally thought.
I have found a couple of furniture sets I want to buy – one from Laura Ashley, and one in a local antique shop. Each will cost $5000 per, but they will go nicely with ‘this is my castle’ theme I’ve got going. And they’d all be pieces I’m more inclined to keep through the years. So in addition to rolling over most of the wishlist, those things shall be added to it.
And that’s been my life in 2013: settling into the house, having a lot of life changes, and doing a lot of work, both fun and not. It was a very good year overall, I felt, both at home on this personal level, and at work.
-bs
