DanLog the ramblings of Daniel Pettit

Today was our seventeenth wedding anniversary. Due to our schedules we didn’t do anything out of our ordinary “date night” routine. Chipotle and a movie at home.

I hung the new light fixture today, here you go:

A few years ago we bought a new light for our dining area. I was also working on building a cabinet for Lauren’s art supplies, so I expected to be lugging in shelves and what not in from the garage. I decided to not put up the light until I was finished with the cabinets. Well you know how that goes. Still haven’t finished the cabinet, but the cabinet will be moving into the Art Room so I figured I could put the light in. I also wanted to install it before we have our popcorn ceiling removed so the “pros” could patch up where I’d have to cut and patch the ceiling, because I’m going to move the fixture’s location.

This is the ceiling after I removed the old light.

Here I’ve opened up the ceiling around the old hole and I’ve make a new hole for a new electrical box.

Here is the new electrical box, you can also see the wood backer strips I installed so I’d have something to fasten the drywall patch to.

The holes are plugged.

The patches and myself are now plastered.

That’s enough for today, once the plaster is dry I’ll install the new light.

As I was leaving Home Depot I spotted my first Segway in the flesh.

Too bad he wasn’t navigating by a Street Mattress.

This is a typical scene at our house on round 9pm on a Saturday night. Female & Feline in full coma-mode.

I borrowed this from a friend who frankly this is just not his kind of movie, I wonder if he even watched it all the way through. I’ll have to ask.

Well pure dramas are not my first pick by a long shot, I do enjoy well done ones, which this one was. Kind of hard to make a lousy movie with Ed Norton though plus Rosario Dawson isn’t hard on the eyes.

Ah it’s friday once again and that means PIZZA!

We ate eight of the twelve slices. Lauren had 2 slices and Me, myself, and I had 2 slices each. We have this every Friday night without much fail. In fact I know the Rubino’s Pizza phone number by heart ( I don’t know my cell or my wifes cell or any of my siblings #s for that matter) The parlor’s owner knows me as well. The girls in the office get a kick out of my Friday afternoon ritual of pizza ordering just before I leave.

The order goes like this: Dial number. Owner answers, ” Rubinos Pizza “. I say, ” I’d like to order a pizza for pickup “. Owner says, ” Dan? ” I say, “yes”. Owner says “usual?” I say “Yes” . We both say thank you and hang up.

BTW the usual is Pepperoni, Pineapple and Sausage. It has a medium thickness sourdoughy crust and we get a large 16″ of course.

I then go pick up the mail and get the pizza and drive it home. It’s about five miles so last year I purchased one of those pizza delivery bags to keep it piping hot on the way home especially if I pick up a movie on the way. Sometimes it smells unbearably good.

Those 6 slices come to about 2600 calories. In the past I’d eat 8 on occassion with 10 being my personal best, if you can call it that. I also used to finish it off a couple hours later with a pint of Starbucks Almond Mocha Fudge ( which is my favorite of all time of the true ice creams, Knott’s Boysenberry Cheesecake Ice Cream was [ I can't find it anymore ] my favorite ice cream but it was such an other worldly experience than mear ice cream it is in a category all its own ). I gave it up to keep my girlish figure due to our Monday date nights, where I can’t pass up a mud pie or chocolate cheesecake. So dessert is limited to Mondays, lately since we’ve been getting Chipotle on Mondays I’ve been getting my Starbucks fix.

So for those of you that are still counting. My friday night dinners were running around 4700 calories (8 slices, 24 oz pepsi, 16 oz Ice Cream.

It’s funny or kind of scary depending on how you look at it how you can see something all the time and not really notice it. Now we’ve been carrying Ravens Wood wine at the restaurant for I’d say over a year probably much longer and I usually sign for the delivery, well today their logo finally registered in my mind. I never gave it much notice, I just thought it was some abstract emblem/crest. Well today that image and the name of the wine came together in an enlightening moment. I had to find out if I was the only one. Thankfully our bar manager Lindsay never noticed what it was before either, our GM had noticed.

So is it just me or did their marketing department not do their job?

Lauren started using this chair to sit in when her eyebrow waxer comes to do her duty. Trouble had never sat on this chair before. It usually is along our entry way. Before today Trouble always ignored it.

Today I guess it looked like it offered a good view of the patio.

I later noticed her still in the chair and new feeding time was close so I waited.

The feed has just clicked on and off she goes.

Ah food glorious food!

Well we finally bought our new couch. We bought a burgandy leather sectional from Thomasville. Ours is the same configuration minus the left arm and 1 seat cushion section. We should get it in 6 to 8 weeks. Luckily it is part of their “Quick-Ship” line. I guess all their other furniture is delivered in a few short years.

We also picked up our other cabinet that we had bought last saturday. Here it is in our bedroom.

All of this dream took place at my mother’s house (my childhood house). I don’t know how old I was other than I was an adult.
The first part begins with me entering my bedroom, the room was like it was when I was 10-12 years old, which was when there were 2 twin beds in the room. It was a bright and sunny day. Anyway I enter the room and I’ve been out of town for a period of time as I have a pile of mail on my desk. As I’m going through the pile of mail, it starts to seem that I haven’t been away on vacation but have been stuck at home sick for a while or (I second guessing here now but maybe in the hospital?) anyway at the bottom of the mail pile was sealed copy of Penthouse magazine, I didn’t have a subscription and there was no address sticker so it wasn’t delivered by mistake. I figured my sister Renee must have bought it for me as a treat because of whatever had happened, whatever that was.

The dream changes gears a bit with Lauren being in the room with me (I don’t know if we were married or not, but she was obviously my girl). We hugged and I was kissing her legs in a playful manner for a while on the bed by the window.

The dream again shifts, big time now. I’m in Renee’s old room I’ve installed/changing/fixing something (can’t remember now). Whatever I’m working on is in the spot of an old shower setup on the wall between the closet and the hall wall. It was just like a shower setup you’d have in the yard for rinsing off from the beach (which we do have at this house, however there’s never been any water in this room) a shower head, a shower valve control and a couple of open pipe stubs coming out of the wall. There is no shower pan, curtain, drain or anything else, just the normal carpeted floor. I have this feeling that the previous owners had installed it and we never used it. Anyway whatever I setup seemed to be fine. I went downstairs. My mom was in the kitchen and in from the garage walked my brother-in-law Chuck. My mom said my Dad would be getting home soon from his business trip. Chuck and my mom went upstairs to the Den to socialize. I went back upstairs after a couple minutes. I went into Renee’s room and saw that water was dripping out of the open pipe stubs. I the dream I knew that the shower valve must be slightly turned on, or the cartridge had gone bad. I carefully rotated and push in on the valve, it didn’t stop the drip in fact the drip turned into a steady trickle. I tried carefully twisting, slight pulling and pushing to try to close the valve, the leak just got worse until the valve handle fell off into my hand and water started to gush out of the valve handle assembly and the stubs and the shower head onto the carpeted floor.

I turn tail and run as fast as I could to turn off the main water line. I get to the garage open the door and run into the side yard. I get to the water valve and think to myself “I glad mom replaced this valve” (In reality she hasn’t and this valve won’t shut off the water you have to go to the water meter to turn off the water {think its time to fix that valve? is this what this dream is about?}) I turn off the water, not instantly, the valve was strange and took a bit of an effort but it wasn’t a huge delay. I run back into the house to survey the damage. The side yard was muddy so my shoes were muddy as well I take them off before entering the kitchen and run upstairs in my socks to Renee’s room. At this point I’m thinking Chuck is going to have some observation on what I did wrong or why this whole thing was poorly designed, but to my surprise neither Chuck or my mother had noticed the torrent flowing in the next room. I get up there expecting a lake, but I don’t see any standing water, in fact I’m surprized the carpet doesn’t feel wet on my feet, my socks should be soaked by now! I do notice a small damp looking section in a small arc around the shower area but that is about it.

….woke up.

Here is the night stand waiting to be repaired.
Here is a closeup.

Here it is all repaired. Not a perfect repair but well worth the $600 we saved.

Here is the before and after in our bedroom.

Had to fill the old tank up today, couldn’t make it to my normal station so Big Red got treated to Newport Beach gas today.

After our furniture buying, we headed to a nearby commercial building and had a little impromtu photo shoot. I just hope it doesn’t cost a grand everytime to get Lauren in the posing mood.

Went out couch shopping again today. We went to Monros in Santa Ana. They had some very nice Craftsmen style furniture in addition to your more usual fair. Didn’t have anything that would work for us. While driving to our next stop it came to my attention that Lauren and I had some failure to communicate about her nightstand. I wasn’t aware, nor did I remember even what it looked like, that she had found a “favorite” piece and wanted to buy it. So we altered course to Treasures to take a look. Upon seeing it I did remember her showing it to me, just not that see really wanted it. I didn’t really care what see got for her side of the bed(as long it didn’t have too many zeros in the $tag). The bone of contention is my nightstand, which frankly is MINE. The small cabinet was a damaged display model on sale $899 down from $1299. Upon seeing it again Lauren didn’t remember it being that beat up. I said okay and thought maybe we can get some more off it as one of the dings was more like a gouge. Well the salesman sensing the wallet opening, instantly appeared. Lauren to my surprise brought up how “messed” up the piece was and could they go any lower. The salesman aggreed with her assesment but had to get the floor manager. He came over (dressed most sharply) and promptly whacked off another $200. We took it. We had also previously seen a small cabinet that we both liked but we really don’t know where we’d put it. Well you know once that wallet opens up it can be hard to close it, we bought that as well. They have to bring that piece in from the warehouse so we’ll get it another day. I declined to buy the $3000 chair for the bedroom for which it would accept our tossed clothing.

We proceed to the rear of the building and the guy loaded the chest into my truck. As a bonus I spotted this mattress peaking out of the dumpster.