DanLog the ramblings of Daniel Pettit

Installed the vapor barrier on the side wall today.

Much as I like to avoid Lowes , I feel like I’m two-timing my friends in orange, I had to check out if they stocked PVC moulding for Hardi-Panel. They of course don’t and the special order people don’t work on the weekends. I went to Lowes because the manufacturer’s website listed them as “having ordered our product in the past”. I have a feeling someone special ordered it once. The problem is you probably have to order it by the case of something like 1000′. Only I need about 30′. I’ll see if the fellows in orange can help me, otherwise I might get lucky with Dixieline in San Diego.

The trip wasn’t a total loss as I took some pictures of chandeliers, and went on a little mattress hunting expedition that was quite fruitful.

An original movie with a surprise ending, even though they show you at the beginning that it is going to end badly. If you want to be cheered up this is not the movie to watch. Jennifer Connelly as usual is worth the price of admission.

I installed and flashed the window today.

Our old faithful 80’s couch left for it’s new home tonight. A young college girl came and picked it up, literally with some help from me. Her first impression was that we kept it clean. Apparently her friend or Mother said to her that “You know it’s going to be dirty”. A fair assumption given that we have lived on this couch for about 6300 days.

It took Trouble a few hours yesterday before she decided to come downstairs and see the new couch. Okay she really came down to nash. Anyway later that evening she settled down in “Lauren’s” corner. She took up that spot again this morning. She seems to have adjusted to the new seating just fine. I’d wondered if the 23 square miles of dead cow would freak her out… I guess not.

Our new couch was delivered today. It is pretty big it is higher overall and in seat height than the old one. It makes everything else in the room look puny. I’ll have to get a big screen tv now because our 29″er clashes with the new sofa. Our old one was sold on Ebay today for $56.00 not bad for a 17 year old Wickes sofa.

It seems that I didn’t pay enough attention to my turning of the chandelier while we were rehanging it. Well date night tonight consisted of cleaning up 47,492 pieces of broken glass from our former stairwell chandelier. Apparently it had a screw loose and decided to end it all by leaping to its death. Trouble was the only one home when the BIG CRASH happened and she’s not talking about it. No one was hurt and none of our artwork was damaged. Some good size dents in the railing and walls including embedded glass. I guess Lauren is going to get a new light after all.

We finally made it over to the fair today. Lauren received a first place ribbon for both of her entries. This one is a portrait of her friend Alice’s cats. . Lauren’s mom for the first time entered a couple sculptures. Unfortunatley her work wasn’t recongnized this time. I found the categorizing of the sculpture entries puzzling. The winner of her category was a wooden coffee table. It had carved cats as the legs with the cats heads peaking above the top of the table. I don’t see how you could judge a terracotta figurine with a wooden table with carvings. Its like deciding which is better Ice Cream or Pizza. Here is Lauren breaking the news to Julie.

Got the ladder home and moved my temporary hook off to the side so I can move the light to facilitate replacing the hook. I got it moved no problem but the lamp was too heavy for me to get back on the proper hook. So I had to remove all the glass from the outer rim. While we did that it seemed a good time to clean the layers of sawdust off of it. With half the glass I was able to muscle it onto our new and super strong hook. I painted the new hook gold and reinstalled the glass panels, trying not to unscrew any part of the light.

When I originally installed our chandelier, I had to build a scaffolding of 2 x 10’s attached to the wall and sat on top of the hall railing. No older, greyer and wiser? I figured an extension ladder should do the trick. Well I don’t have one of those so it was off to mom’s house to borrow her ladder.

Her opossum paid another visit the previous night, it likes to root around for crawly things. It has just about completely destroyed the bottom of this redwood pot.

We are going to have the “popcorn” removed from our ceiling, when the guy came to give us bid he mentioned that the stairwell chandelier may have to come down. So we are looking at it and notice that it appears that the hook has bent and that the light seems to be defying gravity by not crashing to the floor, since the hook is no longer a hook angled up but a slide angled toward the floor. This really freaked Lauren out. She even expressed thoughts of getting a new smaller and lighter chandelier. That’s just poppycock. I installed a temporary hook to hang it on while I replace the old hook. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough slack in the wires for the lamp to reach the new hook. I didn’t realize this until after I’d installed the hook and chain. I also scraped my shin up when I caught my foot under the chair I was standing on and flipped it down the stairs. At least I wasn’t standing on it at the time.

I’m walking through the second floor of a house (might be my mom’s) the place is empty with the exception of a few scattered things. The place has been decaying, I’m looking for a place to pee, but there are no fixtures to use but there are drains on the floor in several rooms but they are all backed up for a few feet from the drain. While the place is basically condemned I seem to have a moral problem with just “adding” to the flooding so to speak.

The dream shifts and now I am definately in my mom’s house. I’m still, or was living in it. Most of the houses contents have been moved,. I’m there to take the stuff I want out of my room. The house needs some major repairs, maybe even demo and rebuild. I proceed to got throught my stuff. (I can’t remember the details now, in fact I forgot the dream entirely until something Lauren said triggered it, it’s too bad because I do remember that there were many detailed items that I packed or discarded) The rest of the dream is a blur.

…woke up

This was the second dream of the night (that I remember) it was one of those early morning epics. It starts off at some kind of museum/zoo complex. There are many 1 to 3 story buildings. I’m looking into the lobby of one of the buildings, the entire front wall is glass so I can see everything inside. Many people are inside and most are grouped around a lion with is being displayed, a large live male lion that is. He is on a leash with the crowd in a circle around him. The lion is jerking on the leash kind of lunging about, not exactly trying to eat anyone but doing so with enough gusto to make me nervious. I enter that building through a door off to the side away from the area of the lion. It is very crowded inside the building, suddenly the crowd around the lion gets very loud, I can see over there just enough to see that the lion is loose. Not wanting to be “Lion Chow” I get the hell out of Dodge.

I’m now afew buildings away and things are calm, until I hear more yelling. I think it is about the lion so I run up the closest staircase to the roof of a one story building. Then I hear something about the ants are out. I notice many ants on the deck of the roof. They are the size of bees. (I can’t remember what happens at this point, It seems like I knew what to do or that I worked there or someone that did know was with me, so I’ll continue)

As I get back to the ground area between the ant building and another building I hear more cries. Something else is loose. At this point of the dream I shift into a constant running looking for a way out or a good secure place to hide. It seems that all the creatures in the facility are now loose. I’m inside a hallway with many locked doors I find a room that has a curtain instead of a door and enter. It doesn’t lead anywhere but while I’m there and a really big hedge hog (porcupine size) runs in. He starts to charge me, I grab a broom or mop and fend him off. I manuover him to the interior of the room and run out.

I climb stairs, traverse catwalks - nowhere seems safe, people are running everywhere but I don’t see any animals around. Up on one of the catwalks I can see a picnic area with food carts and a high fence that marks the edge of the grounds. I head over there. The fence is not passable I check out the carts and stands and don’t find any refuge. I continue into a building that looks like a medical facility. Another hallway with lots of office sized rooms off of it. One room is a classroom no security here. I continue on.

Now at this point in the dream the pursuer seems to change to me running from some “bad” people, like I know something or have seen something that I shouldn’t. Now my focus is on getting away instead of hiding. I find myself on a rooftop right next to the perimeter fence. I can’t climb/jump over the fence to high and no way to safely land the jump. The roof is also adjacent to a parking structure. I climb onto the exterior of the structure. The openings of the structure are blocked by these rubber/vinyl strips a couple inches wide and 12 to 20 feet long. They are packed real tightly. There is no way to get inside the structure. I climb along the exterior until I’m along the street side. The fence is gone as the structure is now the perimeter. I’m up a couple stories, but manage to carefully hang on to some semi-loose strips that are hanging out of the “bails” and climb down to street level hoping it will hold me. It does and I’m now on the public sidewalk.

I’m sure they are still after me and will soon be on my tail. I run up the street and duck into an alley and continue on to the towns downtown. I’m heading for a police station. I pull out my cell phone to call the officer in charge of the investigation to get him to come help me but I don’t know his number. I look for his card to no avail. I then try to see if my phone has a call log as I’ve called the officer before, but I can’t find anything and it is difficult to navigate the phone menus with the malfunctioning phone screen (my reallife phone is that way) and run and stay out of sight at the same time.

…wake up

Received my boxed set of Duran Duran singles. Its a nifty little item, they made miniature versions of all the Maxi-singles they released over the years, so I now have digital versions of all my night versions & Japanese imports, like their Fame cover which I prefer to Bowie’s.

Date night is now back to Tuesdays so it was off to Chipotle for the usual.