My Life - Diary of Matt Bardeen

House work.. never ends

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:54:53 GMT

We've had problems with humidity in the house. The walls (including the ones that I fixed and painted after we put in the new floor) have paint flaking off them. Not just the paint either, the plaster under the paint as well.. just leaving the bare concrete. Additionally, it's all throughout the house.

With advice from my Dad, and help from my handyman/gardener, I dug a French drain to prevent water from flowing underneath the house and getting wicked up by the concrete walls. We just completed one section today, and are in the process of another on the side of the house. Pictures follow.

Raise & Late birthday present

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:31:57 GMT

I recently moved from part-time to full time at the faculty, soon to become Planta (Tenured). And my birthday wasn't that long ago.... So I decided to buy myself a little present.

Meet my new car. It's a Mazda 3, 2.0L engine. 150 HP, 17" rims, sun roof. Color is Rojo Burdeo (Wine Red).

Bugs

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:00:38 GMT

So. A quick story to keep you amused...

One day the cats kept forcing themselves into the guest bedroom. Eventually I stuck Duke in there and closed the door. I figured he'd start whining to get out in 5 or so minutes... 20 minutes later he's still in there, not making a peep. "Strange" thought I, so I go in to check it out. He's sitting near the window, staring at something near the closet. Big black thing... with 8 legs.. and hairy.

I didn't charge him for the stay, but I sent him on his way.

We interrupt for an important news announcement

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:14:30 GMT

The site went away for a little while. It's back for now. Hopefully I'll add some nice pictures and talk a bit about life in Chile and whatnot in a little while.

In otherwords, back to our regular scheduled programming.

Eulogies

Fri, 8 Feb 2008 13:18:23 GMT

When I lived in Richmond, I would walk down the street each day. In a certain location there was written in spray-paint, "This too shall pass". This always struck me as profoundly deep. Whether the graffiti was talking of the moment, the sidewalk, the feeling, the city, or even humanity, it was still true. One of the teachings of Buddhism is that nothing is permanant. Monks will devote days of work creating intricate mandalas out of sand, only to sweep it up soon after it is done.

Why bring this up now? Lap Lizard (better know as Liz) passed on to a better place last Monday, after thirteen years of enriching my life. We had taken her to the vet for an infection on her chin three weeks ago. The vet gave her some simple medication to take for 14 days. After about a week, I found Liz sitting on the floor and breathing really heavily, so I took her down to the vet. After a week of tests, the vet diagnosed her with chronic kidney failure - during this period (or perhaps slightly before), Liz had lost her eye sight as well. This appeared to be from the buildup of toxins in her system due to the non-functioning kidneys. Anyway, last weekend we brought her home to relax and de-stress, hoping to get her to eat food especially for cats with kidney failure. Unfortunately, her condition kept deteriorating. She would only eat a mouthful of food at a time, and by the time we took her down to the vet the last time, she was no longer even meowing.

I miss her terribly, though I know it was for the best.

The other eulogies are for our living room/dining room floor and the termites. For the former, all that is left is a large pile of concrete and a small pile of ashes in our driveway. For the later, some are ashes, some have been chemically murdered, and the rest are most likely living in the fill underneath the new concrete floor, and will soon die from starvation.

Now that we've torn up the floor, I'm sure the former owners knew about the termite problem. The termites had completely destroyed wood beams that were set in the concrete subfloor - there's no way they could have done that in only a year. Vero wants to go yell at the estate agent. I've been dropping hints with our neighbor about the situation, since our he is the son of the former owners. There's nothing we can do about it now, but... it still would have been nice to know.