The Holtonian

More boring Dribble about my life, don't feel obligated to read it

The wife and I had a busy day today. We made a birthday run down to my grandfather in law's in Atlanta to celebrate his big 80th birthday. It was a nice little surprise for him and it was great to see his smiling face to see all his friends turn up to wish him a happy 80. It was sort of awkward for me as I know just my wife's imediate family and a lot of the neighbors and out of town friends of Papa I had no clue who they were. Also its sort of weird because you're like, "Hey nice to meet you, though I'll never see you after today, its nice to meet you." But I tried my best to be the good little grandsoninlaw i could.

We got back around 9ish and we had made a short stop at Wallyworld in Ft O. See the thing is, we sort of sold one of our TVs without having a replacement for it. We took our old TV in our bedroom (a 19inch that I bought my freshman year off a friend who won it as a door prize--it was a rather lame sort of tv nothing special about it). Well we had noticed the picture had started to go and we'd be watching basketball or baseball games in bed and couldn't even tell what the score was. So we picked up the cheapest flat screen we could find for a 100 bucks. It looked nice, I set it up and we also bought the cheapest DVD player we could find (about 40 bucks for a magnavox progressive scan). So for a 140 bucks we got a 19inch flat screen and a dvd player, not a bad deal. The wife asks me to go get something to prop the TV up so we can have the TV on top of the DVD player, basically two 2x4s so the TV wasn't resting on the DVD player. I do her one better and go down and start to make a little shelf type thing.

I find some good pine boards down in the basement, who knows where they came from, and cut two pieces at equal length 20 inchs, that'll be the top. Then I decided to try out our stain that we bought for the Armoire, just to get some practice. Now mind you I have no clue what I'm doing, wifey was going to do the staining on the Armoire since she watched the instructional how to video at the store. But I proceed to stain and notice the stain is rather darker than anticipated. I figure oh well, its still a decent color. I call the wife to the basement and ask her to see if she likes the tint of the stain and she remarks, "Have you wiped it off yet?" I didn't know you were supposed to wipe off the stain after you applied a coat on it. So I wiped it off with a T shirt and to my astonishment it looked pretty good. So I got a nice little practice with the stain, a nice little project I should wrap up tomorrow, and got the satisfaction of building something with my barehands. Hopefully the assembly will go well. My previous attempt at building furniture didn't turn out pretty.

But here's the before picture of the Armoire, hopefully by the end of the week I'll have an after picture, if the weather clears up enough to stain it outside at least. I may do some of it in the basement if its raining, but the big piece will have to be done outside due to the sheer size of the armoire and fumes of the stain.

I've also updates some side blog stuff, pics and other info

Armoire Adventures and Future home Improvements

The wife and I spent a good long time shopping for some new furniture the past two days. It started on Friday when after a date to Outback we went to Target and saw a few entertainment centers we liked. We didn't love any of them and thought they were nice but not for our living room. One in particular was really cool but was too rustic for our house, and another was ok, but upon closer inspection looked pretty cheapy. So we decided to sleep on it and hit a few real furniture stores in the morning.

We got out early and hit Factory Direct. They pretty much had two to three that we liked. One was really nice for about 600 but was way too long. At one time we wanted one that would take up an entire wall, but since then we've redesigned our living room and now we need one that could fit in a corner. So they had two that would fit in a corner, a black little one that was pretty nice at 400 bucks though its depth was the exact depth of the TV, so no room for error, which I didn't like. Plus it was black and we were just not really sold on the black furniture in our house (everything else we own in that room is white or a dark wood finish). They also had a corner piece that was perfect but was 800 bucks and was just too too expensive .

So we zipped over the Unfinished Furniture. We really liked this place and found about three pieces that were good. One was 200 bucks and was literally just a box with two doors. You opened it up and it had one shelf that wasn't adjustable and nothing else. But I could easily add another shelf. The price was really tempting as we could get that and possibly a new TV with it. The problems with it were it had rustic wood look that after staining would still be rustic, rustic hardware (not hard to replace though), and the main thing the only shelf in it was in a bad spot, too low for a TV. But it was a front-runner because of the price. Then there was a similar piece that had a drawer and an adjustable shelf, that piece was taller too and was about 300 bucks. Then in the back they had exactly what we wanted, a corner piece. It was amazingly cool. It was 488 though and it was hard to pull all the money out for that one. But it was what we wanted, but we figured we should look around some more.

We drove to Badcock Furniture to check it out, went in looked around for nearly 10 seconds and walked out, it was pretty terrible prices and furniture. We to Best Buy, more to look at TVs, but they also had a few entertainment stands and what not. Then we went over to Inside Outside a sort of miscellaneous junk store that has furniture. They didn't have what we were looking for but did have some intriguing stuff. So we drove all over Chattanooga and ended back at Unfinished.

But as we go to ponder over the decision some more we find another piece that we hadn't seen before. This one was 388 so a bit cheaper, pine, and was a six feet tall (the others were about chest height), had two doors on top and two on bottom, two shelves one on each level and room for more. This piece was by far the best buy as it has the potential to be used anywhere in the house. See the problem with a corner piece is it will always be in the corner. And if we move to a house where we don't want our TV in a corner then we're screwed, so this piece gives us some flexibility on where it can be used and just seemed to be the best buy. WIfey watched the how to stain video at the store and will probably get to work on it on Monday, she likes doing stuff like that and is more exact and perfectionistic than me so she'll do a better job. So we're pretty excited about it. Hopefully the stain will go on well, I've heard sometimes it doesn't, but the guys there told us all the tricks and we'll probably practice on the inside of the piece and the shelves before we hit the outside. So we got another project.

Another project that I might start on soon for the days its rainy and I can't work on the fence is some built in book shelves up stairs in one of the bed rooms up there. We plan on moving the office, currently downstairs, when wee ones start to show up and have it be in the bedroom upstairs. We already sort of have cheap "built in book shelves" in the downstairs office now, basically boards with brackets. I'll take the boards, finish painting them (the prior owners only painted half of the them---they were so lazy) and then screw them together to basically some outer planks and fasten it to the walls upstairs. It will require some work but thinking about it I think it can be done with not too much hard work. The hard part will be setting them up, not putting them together. The problem I'll run into is carpet upstairs and may have to do some research on the best way to handle the carpet situation.

So as usual there's no shortage of projects. Its fun though and helps the old equity. Plus keeps us from wasting money on other things like food and water.

SAAAAAAN ANTONIO BASKETBALL

Well, it doesn't have the same ring to it as DEEEE TROIT BASKETBALL, but hey the Spurs are champs yet again. Gotta love the spurs, gotta love the pistons too. Larry Brown is just great, no matter what Bud says. Great series too, man I really didn't think the SPurs were going to do it, but I'm always wrong so its ok.

PCUSA Figures something out 85 Years after the OPC and 28 Years after the PCA

So apparently some in the PC USA are starting to realize their denomination has some problems.

Apparently some in the PCUSA have started to notice that their church is widely divided between liberals and conservatives, this being in the more extreme fashion. In other words Liberals in the church wanting same sex marriages recognized and the conservatives wanting them not. The article also stated: "A second issue erupted when a minister told a denominational conference that God brings salvation through various religions, not just Christianity, after which Presbyterian leaders affirmed that such discussions are proper." You know that's a pretty big problem. "Yeah you can get saved by Budha or Hindu, heck even Frank down at the Drug store..." Yikes! Catholics have gone through this struggle too. ITs almost like a denomination/relgion's desire to fit in. "Yeah you can bring whoever you want come on please just hang out with us, sure you can do that we won't mind, we'll just look the other way...."

The new conservative group is called the New Wineskins and is seeking the Presbytery to clean up or they're leaving, or something like that. I wonder if they should be told this has already happened? Hello OPC 1920s and PCA back in 1973. I wonder if someone from our respective denominations should call them and invite them in?

My wife is almost Famous

If you caught the 6 o clock or 11 o clock news tonight you might have seen the wifey. On the first story of the night, Win Dixie closing its doors, my wife was interviewed outside of Win Dixie. She was very embarrassed as she was staring strait into the sun and in her words not mine, "Not looking very cute." Frankly I thought she looked cute, but she claims i have to say that so it doesn't count.

It is sad the Win is throwing in the towel due to Walmart, but frankly Win through in the towel along time ago with Chattanooga, at least down in Stelmo. That dix was pretty sad and never had decent produce and lacked a certain style, it had this stuck in the 60s style and never updated, nothing like my good ole Shnucks back home. Plus the prices were higher than a lot of other places. I mean I can go to Walmart and buy their milk for 2 bucks or I can buy win dix's for over three... it makes no sense. The problem however isn't with walmart its more with Win Dixie, I think its a chain that just didn't have its act together and the Chattanooga market was just too far out of its reach of Florida (its main area). I'd say I'd hope something new came in but we usually go to Georgia Walmart anyway to save on taxes and overall groceries.