The Doors

No, not the band, my doors. We have had no doors for over 2 weeks. Well, we left the exterior ones, but all the interior ones came off. Bedrooms, bathrooms, closets, the stairway to the scary downstairs - all had no doors. Open living to the max.

The doors were ugly and in typical mishmash timjob fashion, there was a variety of finishes. Some were painted (badly) on one side, some were painted (badly) on both sides, some were left in their original ugly finish. And the hardware - the expected assortment of chrome, brass and weird coppery stuff. One thing they had in common was that all the handles had so much 'give' in them, that they rattled. There was absolutely no way to close or open a door quietly because if you touched the handle, it rattled & the hollow doors acted like a drum to amplify the sound.

So Roo took off all the doors for priming, painting and new hardware. It, of course, took way longer than expected, and a couple of the doors needed 2 coats of primer because whatever was on them kept bleeding through.

A door! And this one LOCKS! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean??

We may eventually change the doors altogether as these are shorter than doors made now. I don't notice it but Roo, who is 6'4" does. In the meantime though, paint and new hardware made all the difference.

As far as homeschooling, we are back in school mode for the next 2 weeks. Amelia has picked up her knitting again.

(notice how color co-ordinated she is)

We're listening to lots of audio books (while knitting, of course) - mostly the Amelia Peabody series read by Barbara Rosenblat (do not, do NOT get the audiobooks read by the other woman. I will come over to your house & rip them from your stereo & stomp on them.) We've been listening to the first 3 over and over again, while waiting for the library to track down the next one. I have read ahead of the kids & in fact, I have a hold placed on the newest one (The Tomb of the Golden Bird), which I think should arrive in the next few days. Oooooh - anticipation.

And, I'm having problems with the blog, specifically the orchid template; I usually use Firefox but yesterday I decided to check the layout in IE and discovered that it totally craps out! Whoa! Since when? How long has this been going on? And I really don't have the time to figure out what it is that IE doesn't like about it (I think a /div is messed up somewhere). It's been fine in Firefox but really, this is kind of embarassing. I told Roo I feel like I've come home from a meeting to discover that my slip has been showing. Not exactly as bad as having the back of your skirt tucked into your pantyhose but still..... And I don't have the time to fix it!!! So, I quickly grabbed an old template which as far as I can tell is working fine though it's not turning my crank in any great way.

The computer as a whole is giving me headaches because it needs a total hard drive wipe & reload. It's doing stuff like:

"What? Mail? Do I have a mail program? I dunno. I can't find it."

"Yes, we do have a mail program. Just go open it. Go on. Try it."

"Nope. Can't find it."

"Oh fine."

REBOOT

"Mail? Here you go m'am. Wasn't I good? What? Browser? Whasdad? Dunno. Gonna turn off now. So tired....."

"No, no! Don't do that! No, don't shut off. WTF do you mean you've experienced a fatal error? I'll show you a fatal error, you, you, you machine!"

And so on.

So it's time to just erase its little brain & start again. It would be nice if I could back things up but one of the things that's gone all wonky is the burner. Oh yes. Lovely.

Tags: DIY - Amelia Peabody - Elizabeth Peters - homeschooling - knitting - computers