Word to Your Mother

Wow, it seems like no one - including myself - really updates their blogs too often anymore. It is a little interesting that people seem to be updating them less frequently right around the same time period. I have been fairly busy with life, but still have gotten some pokers in. Here is an update for ya.

Poker
Poker has been a struggle lately. I am trying to figure out why the results are lacking. People on the forums are blaming the games, that they are getting tougher, and I just don't agree. Yes there are mroe regs, but they all suck. At least at the limit I play. But there are still ample amounts of recreational players, so it isn't that I don't think. I think I have regressed. I have become too passive. My red line is horrific. I mean, it isn't my goal to have a sexy red line, but it is my goal to not bleed money out of my ass. It is really really bad at the moment. I am looking into ways to fix it when I can and am making a document with notes on various regs to help me exploit their leaks. Things will improve for me in the future. In the meantime, it is nice that volume is high enough and that with rakeback, I am making $25/hr. Mot too many people can say their hobby nets them a solid profit better than many people's salaries.

House

Holy crap. I thought I had a relatively easy task I decided to do, which is to finish drywalling the garage. Code only requires a house to have the part of a garage attached to the house to have drywall, for fire reasons. So of course manufacturers trim cost by not doing what they don't have to do. I really want to have a nice finished garage and also, since we have a bonus room above the garage, it can;t hurt to have the supports below it drywalled and insulated. How this isn't mandatory when you have a bonus room above a garage is beyond me. I digress.

Well, the electrician was incredibly lazy. I had never even dealt with diring anything until dealing with my garbage disposal recently and even I know that the guy did a piss poor job. He has the wire on the outside of the drywall in the garage which is beyond me. Maybe it is the fault of someone else in the construction, as far as when he was able to come out and do the electrical work, but I highly doubt it. And he simply stapled the wire to the unfinished side of the garage. Now, I am not going to undo all the drywall that is finished, I can't be bothered to do so. However, what I am doing, I want to be done the right way. So I had to undo most of the wiring in the garage and drill holes through the studs and run the wiring inside the walls like it is supposed to be. That took a fair amount of time to do and was something I did not anticipate having to do.

Once finished, I also then had to install all of the insulation. Even breaking the job into two days and wearing jeans, a long-sleeve shirt (in the summer, fml), a mask, glasses, and a hat, I still felt the itchiest I have ever been in my entire life. That is a task that if it never has to be done again, it will be too soon. lol Anyways, that is about where I stand now. I did manage to rent a truck from Lowe's and buy all the drywall sheets I will need last night and I will be starting to put up the drywall tonight with my nephew. Once done, I still have loads of work to do. I have to put up 3 layers of mud for all fo the joints and that should take some time, as I have never done it before and want to make sure I do it right. I have heard many good tips from people at Lowe's and also reading a bunch online, so that should help. You have to wait for it to fully dry, so that is about 3 days worth of work right there. Finally I will need to prime and paint the entire garage, which will also take a couple of days.

I leave for vacation Sunday and come back Thursday, so I am expecting this to be finished maybe around May 9th or so. The main reason I did this, besides wanting to do a project and learn some things and make my garage look nicer, is because we will be having a lot of company in town in mid June for Jacob's birthday. We are going to make it an outside affair, but if it rains, we don't have a big enough house for 40ish people. But if we can use a nice finished garage as well ... we will be fine! So what I did is basically ensure that it will be sunny on June 12th. :lol: That is okay though!

Jacob
He is growing super fast. I try to update facebook with pictures fairly regularly, so just search me if you have an account, some of you already have me added. Then you can see pics if you are interested. I post them there, because the family loves to see pictures. It seems like he is on hyper speed for learning right now. 6 weeks ago he could not crawl. Not he crawls extremely well, pulls himself up easily, and walks with his little push toy (not sure what it is called). He says mama, but not dada yet. He is an oinker as well! The kid eats and eats! He really is all about mandarin oranges, mac and cheese, yogurt (though we think he may be lactose intolerant, since he spits up a lot with yogurt, we stopped giving it to him lately), and waffles. Wow, does this kid love waffles!! lol His birthday is fast approaching, as is the due date for the next little one. Not sure if I posted it, but baby #2 will be a girl, and we are going to name her Jordan. I thought about naming her Dodgyken Ladymuck Bazclef Luckysob Malfaire Riverrock Timm, but the wife opposed that idea. Go figure.

Other
Thinking about redoing some of the master bathroom sometime in the near future. The good news is that it is something that can easily be done in a week. It has vinyl floors I believe, which I despise. It is extremely soft and looks cheap. So I want to remove the flooring and install ceramic tiles. It looks nice, is extremely easy to clean, but the downside is how incredibly fragile it is. I also want to repaint, as I think it is ugly right now, a yellow color. I also would like to replace some of the hardware int he bathroom, like towel racks and the toilet paper holder, and also the light fixture and mirror. The good news is the sink, tub, and toilet all are fine and look fine, so this really is a pretty minimal remodeling job. Jason, fly out here and help me will ya? Hey, dodgy redid the floors in his bathroom I believe, yuo fly out and help too! lol

We go on vacation to the beach Sunday-Thursday. I am looking forward to relaxing like crazy. It's gonna be nice.

That's all for now, I'll probably post again in like a week. I'm out.