I am here.
I know my way around most all of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa & Minnesota. It would be a welcome change of scenery if I could work my way east or west. Actually, I’d like to go all the way to one coast or another. I have definitely had my fill of the mid-west. I get to spend some time in Texas the week of August 6th. It’s been a while since I’ve been down there so that will be a nice change of scenery.
In other news I’ve been smoke free for a month now. So far so good.
Zippy and I love The Dancing Bear Cafe & Gifts. It’s a beautiful place out of the way of traffic that serves food of indescribable quality. The atmosphere and the staff are warm and welcome to top it off. If you find yourself near Higginsville, Missouri very often you should try and make reservations.
Zippy and I put together the website for The Dancing Bear Cafe. Comments?
www.thedancingbearcafe.com
If your state had an April 3rd Election I hope you got out and voted. Everything here in Missouri went very well. I think the next major election is the presidential primary next year! Take a deep breath and start following the presidential race. I’m starting a ‘remember to vote’ cell/text/sms notification list for anyone who wants to be notified the day before and/or the day of an election. I pretty much hit up everyone I know anyway but if you want to be notified then email me your cell number and the state you live in.
I live in an old-school house that’s been converted into 5 apartments. I’ve lived in these apartments on and off for the last 4 years. Unfortunately, the owners died and the children had to take it over but none of them live in state so they hired me to managed the place. About three or four months ago the wet pipe fire sprinkler system we have networked through the house froze in the loft apartment (mine) which caused one of the spinklers to bust off from the pressure. When the sprinkler broke it didn’t take long for the sprinkler system to dump 10,000 gallons of water into the loft apartment. Gravity took over from there and needless to say the apartments got pretty jacked up.
My apartment, the loft (3a), was a pretty simple fix. Since everything from the cieling to the floor is tounge in groove hard wood paneling it really didn’t take too much of a beating. I had to rip up all the carpet and replace the drywall in the closet. Not so bad.
The apartment below me to the east side (3) was left relatively unscathed. Just some minor stuff here and there. Again, not so bad.
The apartment below me to the west side (2) took some serious damage. I’ve been spending the afternoons in there tearing out all the drywall, ripping up carpet, replacing trim, and just cleaning up the mess in general. It sounds lame but I’ve never really done any construction work at all until this project. I’ve hammered a few nails here and there, tacked up some shingles, and installed insulation but going into an apartment to tear it apart and put it back together is definately a first for me. It’s a lot of work but we are already putting on new drywall and making things look good so it shouldn’t be long until we have apt2 finished. All this carpentry style work is getting me excited to start tearing up my own house. I spend way too much time just sitting behind a computer monitor.
After we (I got some friends that actualy work construction jobs helping me) finish the 2nd story apartment on the west side (2) we have to re-do a whole bedroom in the ground floor apartment on the west side (1) and then finish the job by re-modeling nearly the whole apartment on the ground floor west side (4). It’s a whole shitload of work but it has to be done and if I can learn how to not skrew up my own house learning from the guys that I’m working with on this then hell yeah. The only bummer part about this job is I don’t have the budget to put all the cool gadgets and tricks into the apartments as I would if I owned them.
If I’m still motivated to put in all the work I have been in the afternoons on another place after the apartments are done I would definately consider purchasing one of the homes around here (with help from a few buddies who will actualy know how much work will be involved) and fixing it up. I always hear about people doing that kind of thing and turning the houses around to make a little money. I’m not sure if I’m going to burn out on this after the apartments are done or not but either way i have definately realized I need to get into more physical work. Sitting behind a computer all day hacking shit out only to go home and sit behind a computer to chat and code has been wearing on me and the idea of just simply excersizing is numbing. Feeling productive has always been great motivation for me. I’ll put up some pictures of the final product when we are done. I forgot to take pictures of the wretched mess before we started.
Happens to everyone… At the moment I’m enjoying it.