Somewhat better

... is how I'm feeling. It no longer feels like I'm swallowing glass when I swallow, but rather mere gravel. We have two ceiling panels up in the house, with about seven to go. Two of the ones going up today are hassles, since they require me re-wiring the ceiling light fixtures through holes I cut in them.

The happy upshot of all of this is that the lead paint test came back negative as to interior paint. A positive result would have made scraping and stripping all the layers of paint and wallpaper a genuine nightmare.

I'm hoping to post some pictures later of the work in progress. The ones I'm really looking forward to posting are, of course, the "after" pictures.

coxsackie virus and home renovation: not a pleasant combination

Named after Coxsackie, New York, where they were discovered, the coxsackie viruses are part of the enterovirus family of viruses (which also includes echoviruses, polio, and hepatitis A viruses) that live in the human digestive tract. ( reference .)

All I know is that this is what Dr. Smartypants thinks I have, and that I have a miserable, awful sore throat, so bad I can barely talk above a whisper without seriously aggravating it.

We're working hard on getting the house ready to move in to, including dropping false ceilings in two bedrooms, laying laminate flooring, and painting nearly every interior surface outside of the kitchen and bathroom (which will come later.) It's a huge amount of work, but we're doing it right, and remediating the sloppy work of 93 years of bozos who didn't do it right. (Example: on one bedroom wall, there were at least SIX layers of wallpaper and paint that had to be removed to get down to the plaster.)

We have had multiple moments where we had to make a decision along the lines of "do we really want to do this? are we really going to stay in this house long enough to make it worth it?" Each time, we've decided to do the right thing, which always means more work. I think we'll be glad we did in the medium and long term, but it's a real shit of work right now, and I feel like we're personally contributing to the retirement plans of Home Depot executives every day.

All of this is made more of a pain in the ass by my sore throat/coxsackie virus, which I've been medicating with near constant applications of chloraseptic lozenges and throat spray. Even with this, it often feels like I'm swallowing glass shards.

I couldn't resist:

Talking a little more about Initiative 901, which I wish California would follow suit on (since, as this article notes, the statewide smoking ban effectively made the patio seating at most restaurants death dens, which Washington's 25 foot buffer will hopefully prevent.)

But here is my favorite quote from the article:

"I'm a phone call away from selling," said Alan McWain, owner of The Spar Cafe and Tobacco Merchant in downtown Olympia. "The general public doesn't appreciate my type of business, and my type of business caters to smokers. If you can't go to a smoke shop to smoke, where the hell can you go?"

Yeah, NEWSFLASH: the general public DOESN'T SUPPORT YOU, OR your type of business. Did you really just figure this out? Really? And oooohhhhhh, threatening to sell your merchant of death business? Oh, gosh, say it ain't so! As for your rhetorical question, I hear that in Christian verions of hell, smoking might be a distinct possibility. Give it a shot!

a new morning in america!

Most of the day-after-election-days in the last decade have been profoundly sad events for me. Today is a delightful change in this trend: Guvna Dumbfuck (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) saw all of his outrageous, stupid powergrabs lose in the utterly unnecessary special election. (And as an amusing aside, the stupid fucker almost wasn't allowed to vote.) Lucky for him, when he's denied his right to vote, unlike normal citizens, he merely has his handlers pull out a cell phone: "a quick call to the Los Angeles County Registar-Recorder Office confirmed that he had not voted previously, and he was allowed to vote by normal ballot, said Kristin Heffron, chief deputy for the office."

Despite Dumbfuck being able to vote, better informed and more intelligent California voters (where were these people when Dumbfuck was elected?) turned down his sillyass initiatives for a state spending cap, to restrain union politics, to lengthen the time it takes teachers to get tenure, and in a breathtaking power grab, to allow three retired judges to take over legislative redistricting (to get them DeeMoCratz out of running Cowleefornyuh.) All of the remaining four statewide initiatives were also rejected, including one requiring parental approval for a minor's abortion. Yay! Democracy! Really, the only bummer loss in California for me is Prop 80, which would have done a somewhat mediocre job of re-regulating the energy pirates.

In other beautiful news, Washington state voters passed Initiative 901, a change which will actually let me go into the formerly repulsively smoky bars of Seattle starting in thirty days. Called the nation's most stringent smoking ban in public places, the more I could ask for is: ban smoking entirely, everywhere, within state boundaries. No: I don't think it's okay for people to smoke in their cars or homes, around their children and friends. No: I don't think it's okay for the rude, disrespectful people who live in the apartment directly below me to smoke and blow it our their windows, into mine. No: I don't think it's okay for the people at the Tractor to smoke out on the sidewalk in front of TGS' squat.

In other great election news, the democratic gubernatorial (why has that word eluded the newscasters this morning?) candidate in Virginia won. Now, I don't much care that Democrats won, but the race was being cast as a referedum on President Dumbfucker's presidency, since he made a last minute campaign stop for the republican. (Note to strategists: stumping by the stupidest, least effective, most dangerous president in recent history: dumb idea.)