Category: Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

The Obama Administration, which has long made it clear high-speed rail should be a national priority, on Thursday released its long-awaited list of high-speed rail project stimulus money.
Read More at Wired.com.
As a huge fan of rail travel, I love seeing this gaining traction.

Over the winter break I moved into a shared house in Mosaic. My new bedroom had to serve a couple purposes – it needed to, obviously, be my bedroom, but it also had to provide sleeping space for when my son visited, as well as be comfortable and easy to relax in. I needed a space for my bookshelves, my desk, my nice comfy Aeron chair, and naturally my clothing and some other bits. Beds take up a ginormous amount of space and I was working with only about 120 square feet total. A queen sized bed takes up 30 square feet, plus ‘navigation’ around it – I needed to figure out how to use that space the best.

So, a loft.

The design for the two bedroom unit master bedroom includes a sort of ‘niche’ area – that space is exactly the size of a queen sized bed (okay, not EXACTLY. It’s 2″ wider and about 15″ short), but after staring at the space, it was pretty easy to picture a loft bed build into the space. The ceiling was high enough, there was an awesome highly-placed window, I was ready to go.

I have a fondness for heavy lumber and carriage bolts, so naturally that’s what I ended up using. I borrowed the Mosaic pickup truck and headed over to Home Depot. Total materials cost was around $160, which, all things considered, wasn’t too bad. I only had to buy one new tool – a 1/4″ boring drill so I could make holes through the 4×4 support posts – everything else I could do with my existing tool set (a very nice feeling I must admit). The hardest choice was trying to determine what to use for the decking – initially I had thought to use sanded 3/4″ plywood, but holy cats that’s expensive ($40+ for a 4×8 sheet, and I’d need two). I ended up using OSB plywood, which was inexpensive and quite strong (but holy cats is it heavy). Not as elegant, but I also determined I’d paint the entire structure (rather than stain or leave as raw wood), so the material for the decking wouldn’t really matter – it would be painted and covered with the mattress

Once I had all the lumber back home, I started building the framing. 2×6 wood for the sideboards and the head and footboards – 4×4 post wood for the corners. The back posts were made ‘taller’ so that I could build what will amount to a headboard against them, with a built in shelf. I set the height so that the decking would be below the window sill but high enough to make ‘bunk’ space underneath accessible. The other design step was to put the 2×6 lumber ‘outboard’ from the posts – this would mean the corner posts woul dbe ‘away’ from the walls and corners, therefore trimwood around the floor would not push the loft away from the wall.

I used 1/4″ x 6″ carriage bolts to hold all the pieces together, boring pilot holes with my drill. This was quite a challenge in several respects. One was making sure the whole thing aligned properly, another was some of the holes needed to be bored while the structure was standing in the space. Not a lot of room to work with!

The lower supports on three sides are simply standard 2×4 studs, also bolted into place. The decking is held up by 5 2×4 stringers. These stringers are hung from the 2×6 side rails using aluminum joist hangers. I have to say, these hangers are one of the niftiest little accessories I’ve used. They made installing the stringers a walk in the park (once I had the right length screws. Grr. 🙂

Once the framing was done, it was time to paint. I decided to paint the entire structure flat black, mixed at the local hardware store. I overbought on the paint, thinking I’d use a half gallon or so on the whole project, but after I had painted all the structural members, I had only used about 1/10th of the gallon. Later, when I started painting the decking, I was using MUCH more paint. More surface area? Didn’t seem like it… but I guess it just costs more to paint OSB.

Putting the decking on was a bit of a challenge due to the size and weight of the OSB, and the space I was working in. It’s impossible to carry a 4×8 sheet of plywood upstairs in these houses, so I had to cut the sheets down before carrying them up the stairs. The second challenge was the lack of a table saw, so all cuts needed to be done with my skilsaw. Time consuming and inaccurate. I mis-cut one piece (the OSB is tongue-in-groove, and I mismatched the side :-/), but eventually I had the 2 pieces of decking in place and screwed down. Yay!

By this time I was getting pretty tired, and I ended up painting only about 1/3rd of the top of the decking – enough to cover all the edges and a chunk of the surface – everything that would be visible once things were in place.

Another community member offered up a very nice queen sized mattress which we schlepped up and put into place. Perfect fit! The drawback was I had calculated based on what I remember mattresses were like. Unfortunately, I have been sleeping on futons and waterbeds for the last 20 years. Mattresses got thick! Fortunately, not THAT thick – I could still sit up comfortably up in the loft space, but there’s slightly less headroom than I had planned. Oh well!

There’s some steps left to do – I still need to put the backing board and shelf along the posts for the ‘headboard’, and I’d like to mount a reading light or two back there as well (with a remote switch I can turn on when I’m climbing into bed). However, I’m ecstatic with the end result as it stands. The loft is secure and doesn’t wobble – it’s comfortable and very ‘cozy’. I adore having the window right next to me when I wake up in the morning, and the mattress is a delight to sleep on.

Total construction time (sawing, hammering, drilling, painting, etc) – about 12 hours. Incidental work (driving and shopping and the like) another 4 hours. Cost: about $180.

I like it.

So, okay, it’s true.
I’m playing World of Warcraft.
I’ve been fighting this ever since the whole platform launched. Hearing stories of folks’ lives getting sucked into the game, coupled with tales of hordes of kiddies hacking and slashing their way across the landscape – not exactly ringing endorsements.
But recently Blizzard had an 11 day trial (not sure how recent this is really), and I decided to take the plunge and give it a try.
I… kinda like it.
I can completely see how it would suck people in and replace their lives. The game is immersive, the landscape interesting and beautifully handled, the levelling and character development are interesting enough to keep the game rolling, but not so hard to elicit complete frustration.
My Macbook is handling the game beautifully – frame rates are through the roof, though it does take a mere 5 minutes of playing before I hear the cooling fan kick on. It does take resources.
WoW is as close as you can get to ‘real D&D online’, particularly if you’re in a good guild (which I am) that has good players as well as a fun environment.
Will I stick with it? I’m not sure. The big draw for me right now is not the 3 hour dragon raids (which I haven’t participated in yet :), but the “I have an hour – think I’ll go run a few quests.) – this is very different (in my opinion) than Eve, where you couldn’t ‘just play casually for an hour, then go back to work’. In Eve, if you started a mission, you had to complete it within a set time period (days or a week or so), or suffer a major penalty. There’s no such issue in WoW. I have a dozen quests going at any given time, so when I log in, I can choose to do deliveries / messaging (mostly involving travelling), or grinds where you have to kill off X critters.
So far, it’s been enjoyable, but has not sucked the life out of me. We’ll see.

As is common on one of those ‘weekends in Cohousing‘, there’s rarely a lot of ‘sitting around, relaxing, and being bored.’ Yesterday started out fairly domestic, with a Metric Buttload of mowing. The grass and weed around here are growing like… well… like weeds. High humidity, warm temperatures, and a lot of rain will certainly do that. Right now we’re at the “need to mow every 2 weeks” stage. Thank goodness for electric pushmowers and simple garden tractors.
Cat and I got about half the property mowed – with me planning on attacking the field today (though the weather looks like it might not cooperate). Right now I’m wishing for a decent battery powered mower. One of my fellow cohousers managed to cut through the power cord already. A simple repair, but managing the cord is certainly tedious.
But we’re not through yet! Under the backdrop of Zach being sick (he’s been running a low grade fever for 3-4 days – we’re taking him to the doctor this morning), Beth and Tim convinced me to go on a bikeride.
Now, I have NOT been keeping up with my riding this summer. Small jaunts on the Giant bike around the site and up the road a bit, but almost no long distance rides on the Haluzak ‘bent. My brother in law had done a full tuneup on it recently, so it was ready to go, I just hadn’t taken the time to get out there. The other factor was I wanted to test a route to work – with the goal of occasionally bikeriding into work. Google Maps gave a decent route that totalled 14 miles each way. Workable.
So we rode it.
In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea to attempt a 40+ mile ride on the first day out. I ended up NOT making the entire ride – clocking out at 22 miles, and asking for a rescue from Cat. She and Steph and all the kids met the 3 bikers at Kimball Farm for ice cream and dinner, and I opted to ride back home in the car rather than bike it. I was wiped out.
Still, I’m pretty happy with doing 22 miles without completely disintegrating. The route was fantastic, with only 2 Killah hills (one of which I hiked up). The jaunt from my office to Kimball Farm is very simple (about 3 miles), though was probably the ugliest of the ride (riding along Littleton Road is not particularly fun, but it was the shortest of the legs).
Particular thanks to Beth for motivating me to get off my duff and hit the road. Both she and Tim were really supportive when I was flagging. I drank gallons of water, ate some tasty ice cream at Kimballs, and slept like the dead last night.
Oh, the title? Well, Kimballs was PACKED. But they had a lot of activities going on as well. As soon as Zach and I sat down while folks were getting food, I glanced over, and LO, this woman had a ringtailed lemur on her shoulder! She was part of an animal show going on, and was very friendly, but it was certainly not what I expected to see. In addition, there was a balloon set up in the next field over giving rides. Not a hot air type – the gas bag is sealed, and it was well tethered to the ground – it certainly had a steampunk look. It was quite surreal seeing it appearing over the tree line during dinner.
All in all, quite a day. Today we have a doctors appointment, and if the weather holds out, I’ll haul the tractor out into the playing field to get that cut.

Generally I don’t post “my life” sorts of things on the blog, but it’s been quiet lately, so might as well chatter a moment.
Today was supposed to be part of a quiet weekend. Zach and Cat are up in Maine, and I have the house to myself. I figured I’d do a couple small projects, some gaming, some normal Cohousing socializing, and generally take it easy.
Today I:
* Dug a pair of holes where we’ll be putting up poles for clotheslines. I had some help, but boy digging through our rocky ‘soil’ ain’t easy. And the job isn’t done yet.
* Hauled out the weedwhacker and cleared grass from all around the hottub.
* Drove the pickup truck to the town transfer station to get a bedful of wood chips for the walkway to the hottub. Laid down cardboard and spread the chips out for the walk (thanks John and Kim for help!)
* Drove same said truck to Malden to buy and haul back a new couch for the common house living room (Thanks Kim and Stephanie for help!)
* Stopped by Arisia storage to dig out one of my badge printers so I can run badges for a convention I’m providing reg services for.
* Helped unload 3 truckloads of hay bales Beezy got for various horticultural projects around the community.
* Had a tasty dinner with John and Judy across the way (thanks guys!)
* Tested out the hottub to make sure it didn’t have sharks in it. (it didn’t). Ahhhh.
* Took a shower and now I’m relaxing.
Yikes. If this is a relaxing day, I’m worried what a busy day will be like.
I have to comment on the above picture. I grew up on a horse farm, and in horse and cow country. Driving, loading, and unloading truckloads of haybales were a fairly regular occurance. I certainly had some flash backs here, particularly since the truck in use there (not Mosaic’s truck, a different one), is probably circa 1978. Got to drive it a bit too. Was an automatic, but boy it had all the fixens of the old country, that’s for sure.

During my brief stint in college, I was required to take a ‘phys ed’ credit every trimester. Not being a particularly sporty person at the time, I decided to try ‘Juggling’, and was immediately hooked.

Continue reading “Juggling!” →