A Tool Chest

I've been looking for just the right piece of furniture to hold all my variously weighted metalworking tools and I keep coming up empty handed. Sometimes there is a perfect one that is too expensive, sometimes there is one that is would be perfect if I just cut the legs off and stacked it with other similar pieces. 

The latter is a solution I started to pursue a week ago when DH says, as we are reading the morning papers, "Why don't you just get one of those craftsmen-style tool chests?"

Oh. Duh. If it was a snake...Ever have one of those moments where your own stupidity dazzles even yourself? 

I sat there for, oh, five minutes (a) wondering how I how in hell missed something so spectacularly obvious and (b) what my price point would be when I browsed the tool category on Craig's List.

And, voila! There's even a place to hang my green girl-y apron. And no, I don't really mind that it doesn't match the rest of the Ikea decor :) The top drawer (not open because the combined weight of open drawers threatened to tip it ass over tea-kettle) contains works in progress and found objects for future pieces.

Craig's List is wonderful.

And so begins..

...the kitchen remodel of 2007-2008.

Thinking optimistically that we'd tackle a piece at a time, we think we'll first do the eight-foot wall with the range.

We went range shopping today.

K is checking out the "prosumer" ranges at East Coast Appliance. Far left is a new Electrolux 36" dual fuel range. Very, very nice. The other is a 48" Viking with built in grill. Also very nice. The Viking really sings to us but it's way too wide. On that wall we can really only accommodate a 36" range. I spent time tonight mapping the kitchen on grid paper.

We'll probably go with the Electrolux unless we decide to not piecemeal this. If we wait then we might splurge on the Viking. That Viking, by the way, is a scratch/dent model. The scratches are on the sides and back which no one will ever see. Shopping for ranges can be fun. They can also be a pain in the neck. We kept refining our requirements. That part wasn't fun.

In other news, Christmas knitting is coming along splendidly. I can't say anymore or I'd give it all away! I join a flute choir in November after my flute comes back from the shop. They aren't rehearsing this Wednesday so the next get together is Nov 7. Cool. It's like riding a bike. K is pleased. I'm pleased. I was stunned to realize that I've had this flute for twenty years and that in those twenty years I've never once had it really thoroughly overhauled. There are bent springs, the pads need replacing, and it needs a new head cork. I'm so excited to play it now that my arthritis is under control. My chops, though, are sadly out of condition.

Bat Boy The Musical is limping along and still scheduled to open mid-November. K is very frustrated by the whole thing. Actors not showing up for rehearsal or dropping out, director who isn't actually trained in theater (he's a psych major). K was cast in a terrific part but didn't at first feel he could sing it; there are some high notes for a baritone. He's coming along, though, and is more optimistic. The show strikes me as similar to Angry Housewives.

Today was the Head Of The Lafayette (HOTL) race. Patrick cox'd for the women's open masters fours (four rowers) race, and they won first place!! I'm so proud of him! He's been coxing with the Hampton Roads Rowing Club women's team for a couple of years now. The ladies adore him. He also sat in with the Maury High junior varsity men's fours because they were short one man, and they landed sixth in their category. I don't know how many boats there were...but the Maury JV men have never been that great. Nonetheless, Patrick had a marvelous time. The fun thing about HOTL is that it's an open race, not a high school only race, so they have colleges, high schools, and independent rowing clubs are going head to head. It's always the Sunday before Halloween and teams often dress up. There is always a good turn out. I love being able to walk up the block with my chair and watch. The course's big stretch runs right in front of the neighborhood :) The weather was perfect: just a little chilly, with a beautiful blue sky.

More Conspicuous Consumption

New washer and dryer time! Woohoo! It seems so sad to get so worked up over a new set but these are really nifty, quiet, smart, and have a huge capacity. We didn't just do this out of the blue, though. This was all about the fact that our dryer had been dead for over a month, and this set is >15 years old, and geez I'm sorry but I don't enjoy hanging out at the laundromat. I wish we had as nice a laundry space as this but, truth be told, it's in the dark, spider-webby basement of our 100-year old house. But it's a very sweet set!

And Nick...broke his wrist :( He see's an orthopedist tomorrow for a cast. It's a small fracture at the end of his ulna and he's had it in a brace since Saturday - the folks at PatientFirst wanted a radiologist to read his X-ray because they weren't sure if it was a break or not. His health insurance doesn't take effect for another four months so this really is a major bummer for him.

All the news that's fit to print!

Conspicuous Consumption: The Results

So: (see what I mean?)

I got the CF Card reader (very inexpensive) but the vPod doesn't recognize it. But I can upload the images to the vPod from the camera, which it does recognize. And I might get a battery grip instead of an image tank, undecided as of yet but it's half the cost of a tank and it takes AA batteries instead of the special Canon rechargable battery. Still undecided.

Later (much much later, as in 4/25 later)
What I finally did: March 30th, bought the Epson P2000 from Circuit City, used it for the entire trip, and reset it to the factory defaults after uploading allllll my gb's of picture to my computer, repacked it in it's little carton, and returned it to Circuit City on April 13. There's a fourteen-day return policy. Lest you think I'm a complete schmuck, let me say that the P2000, and rockin' as it is, does not do for raw files as it does for jpg. For instance, you can zoom and rotate and do slide shows with jpg files but you cannot raw files. Let me also say that this is likely only time I will ever do this, and it is the only time to date that I've done something like that. But in the meantime I did have a convenient way to save my photos and show them to Mom and Grandma!

Conspicuous Consumption: The CF Card Dilemma

Mom and I have many things in common, including starting many of our sentences with "So..." So much so in fact that SHE named her blog in that vein. I love it!

I have this terrific digital camera, and two 1GB compact flash cards for it, with the intention of buying two more of that size. Each holds about 90-or-so RAW+(small) JPEG images. Which is great unless you are traveling out of the country and don't want to take your laptop with you. Which will be me on April 1.

I researched the heck out of this and had originally intended to go buy a "photo storage device." There are several nice ones out there, including:

• Epson P-2000
  
• Image Tank G2
• SmartDisk Flash Trax
• Transcend Portable Photobank

Most of them don't have a color display, something I personally feel is a must. I read bad reviews about the Flash Trax, good reviews about the Epson, and no reviews about the other two. At this point I'd pretty much set my sights on the P-2000 when I spied a discussion board post about using the new video iPod to the same end. More research ensued. You could ask why I even bothered since we already have (ahem, KENT already has) an iPod. First, you have to understand that the P-2000 and the 60GB video iPod cost about the same and have many of the same features. You also have to understand that Kent's original 40GB iPod was behaving more like an iBrick. It weren't doin' nuthin' for nobody. Dead dead dead. We talked, Kent and I, and saw an opportunity. He gets a new iPod and I get an image tank. I like the sound of "image tank" even though it belongs to something else. This saves us the cost equivalent of two iPods and hundreds in compact flash cards. Really. Logic doesn't work here. This is all emotional. Do the emotional math.

Wednesday. Off we go to Best Buy, get the iPod. Then to CompUSA, get the iPod photo upload adapter. And, apparently, an iHome. It stuck to Kent's hand all the way to the register, where it finally fell off and scanned itself before jumping into a bag with the camera adapter. Sneaky iProducts. Anyway, the iHome is way cool.

Thursday. Loving the hell out of that iHome, man. We woke up to Brazilian Girls Thursday morning, and Billy Joel Friday morning. I can't wait to see what random song from our entire music collection (which, by the way, consumes 19.81 GB, leaving 40GB or so for me, although I may ditch some tunes before I take it with me but it'll be entertaining on the plane) shows up randomly on Saturday morning. But wait, we won't be awaking to an alarm Saturday morning (even though we actually did by mistake; it was Depeche Mode).

Friday. Proof of concept. I shot a few photos and uploaded them to the iPod no problem! Well, minor problem. iPod can't view RAW images so I have to shoot RAW+JPEG (small jpeg, so I get the most megapixels in the RAW image - it's just so I can preview it anyway). (Also, if you plan on trying this at home, dear readers, make sure you set your iPod in iTunes to Use As Disk if you want to be able to synch those photos back to your computer.) So, this isn't such a problem. I'm stingy with my megapixels, though, and would prefer not to have to shoot both RAW and JPEG but what the hell. I'd rather spend that money that I would have spent on the P-2000 on a new lens with image stabilization (more on that topic another time). I was also thinking I might be able to use a CF card reader to upload the images because that won't be such a drain on my camera batteries. I've read that uploading a 1GB card from 20D to iPod is a major battery drain and I'd just as soon not have that situation out in the field. Or on the Isle of Skye.

Saturday. Pilot the whole solution before the snow starts. Go buy CF card reader (SanDisk). Go shoot two cards full of pictures. Load one card from camera to iPod, then load one card from card reader to camera. See just what kind of battery drain there is, how much time it takes, blah blah blah.