I had planned to do a lot of things this weekend, like work on getting the job of laying the floor in my son's room finished, doing some shopping for a new gun (got some spare cash for Christmas), taking care of my critters (they all need a cage cleaning), and writing my blog - among other things. When I woke up yesterday, I think it was already, late morning or early afternoon. I was aching all over, and felt like crap in general. Regardless it was off to Home depot to pick up a Blind Nailer (nail gun for flooring), and then to another Home depot when the first told me all of theirs were broken. Then to yet a third when the second store told me they did not have a tool rental section. Finally got the nail gun, but never used it yesterday, because I felt even worse when I got home. So it was back to bed for me. 
Somewhere in there my wife had taken our small Dachshund - Hexi - to the vet. She was having trouble walking on her back legs a bit the night before. From the vet she vet to an emergency veterinary clinic where they do surgeries. Hexi was getting really bad, really fast. They shot her up with cortisone, and by the time they had done so she had apparently lost all sensation in her rear legs. They said if she got sensation back, they would put her out, do an MRI, and do surgery if it was a slipped or exploded disc as they suspected. Today dawned, and I still felt miserable, but I went to see our vet along with my wife, son and his girlfriend. She explained a lot about what could be ailing Hexi, and she called the emergency clinic for an update. The news was not good. She never got any sensation back. Her back legs are pretty much lifeless. So she is still in the emergency clinic under observation; a Neurosurgeon will see her tomorrow. We visited her today and she looked pitiful. Both our regular vet, and a vet on duty at the clinic told us there is little hope an operation will work regardless of what is the problem now that she has had no feeling for over a day, and because the problem progressed so rapidly. They are almost positive it is a disc but kind of made it clear the surgeon would know better so we left her there until tomorrow. They also agreed that unless Hexi gets some feeling back on her own - there is almost no point in operating on her, and little point in doing an MRI. We are hopeful they can diagnose her tomorrow, or at least rule some things out when the surgeon is on duty. We also are hoping it is not a tumor. If it is a bad disc they said she can use a dog wheelchair/cart to get around. If it is a tumor, well that could/would be much worse than a disc problem.After that it was off to BJ's Club for some shopping. My wife joined recently, and I can tell you it seems strange to say we went shopping at a place called BJ's club. What can I say! After that, once we were home, I started some work on the flooring. I guess I was up there hammering away for about 4 1/2 or 5 hours. Why so long, well the rented nail gun was a piece of junk and did not work, and the nails for it were paper thin and bent each time I tried to get one out of the gun into the wood. When one did go part way in, it split the floorboard. So it was back to a regular hammer for me. With that, I got a whole 8 rows of floorboards put in. Not very much, but man oh man is that oak hard to hammer nails into even though I am pre-drilling nail holes. I can tell you that in those 4 1/2 or 5 hours my knees went through hell. I am betting I'll be hardly able to walk tomorrow; although I have to admit that when I started doing the work I felt like I was about 80 years old, and by the time I had finished I felt like I was only about 60 or 65 years old. I guess maybe I have a cold or something, and adding that to my having just started to work out again (I ran/walked 5 miles on Wednesday and 5 1/2 on Friday), the aches and pains of a middle aged fat guy overdoing it have had me really out of it. I can hardly wait wait until the morn when I awake stiffer and even more achy because of the work I did on the floor. Thanks to aspirin, I may actually make it to work tomorrow.Now I don't have it as bad as Hexi, nor as bad as my mom. She also went into the hospital yesterday - some old age problem of one sort or another. She is better now and hopefully will get out tomorrow. I guess when it rains, and it is raining here, it truly pours. As for me, I am sure I will get over my cold soon, or imagine I will. I guess my aches and pains will also go away with time and a load of aspirin, though earlier today nothing worked. I must admit that the work on the floor loosened up some things and got rid of some aches, I am just expecting others to take their place by the morning. Oh well, enough complaining from me; whatever happens, I plan to have a good New Year's Eve at home with my wife, and a bottle of fine red wine, and a bottle of even better champagne; and I am hopeful Hexi will be with us. Hope you are felling better than us and not suffering from the blues or anything worse.All the best,Glenn B
...is for me not a form so much of art as it is a necessity to keep the inner walls of my house from crumbling and being rent asunder. Sure I like a nice van Gogh now and then (he had some way with the brush he did, what with his magnificent way of seeing things), but I have no to little known artistic talent especially when it comes to painting. Yet somehow I must wonder if a guy like van Gogh could see my son's room, maybe he would think otherwise.
I've got two coats of paint on it now, and I figure I should have left it white, but my son wanted red. The white was just something of my fancy, he did not like it, so over it went the red. Sure I know it needs another coat or two, but if van Gogh, or Monet (yes he too did some out of this world painting) got to see it now, with its swirls of fiery red hues on its old plaster walls, if they got to see the angled roller lines, the spilt paint splotched over the old lavender colored carpeting and closet door (yes it used to be my daughter's room), they might find it artistic; or at least they might when the sunlight hits it at just the correct angle. Maybe, by some quirk of the imagination, Vincent would have found my son's room almost as fascinating as was his own when he twice painted it on canvass, once in 1888 and once in 1889 (this one above the 1889 version - strikingly similar but vastly different in subtle ways than the 1888 version).Alas though, it is a southern exposure, but who can tell what the eyes of the Masters would have perceived. Maybe they would have painted me as I painted the room - the old bespectacled middle aged man covered with splotches of various colors, struggling to make his home look like a castle, from atop his yellow paint stained ladder. 
Maybe it would look something like the painting van Gogh did of the inner corridors of an asylum (and yes my son's room, my whole house could be considered an asylum - though I will not divulge the type of asylum it offers). Too bad I have to go up there and re-coat it today - hopefully with 2 final coats - so the job will finally be done. I was kind of hoping that the job could wait until they figured out how to bring back a guy like van Gogh so I could get his opinion after the weekend, but then less gets accomplished by me on weeknights, so a Saturday is always better to get it all done in a day. Well by all, in this case, I mean the last two coats. Yes this is the same job that has been persistently pestering me into performing work on the home front for about 2 weeks or so - just one room, but still not done. Why is that ask you, because I am no van Gogh says I, nor am I adept at house painting. First of all let me say if you paint and use a primer sealer that dries to a somewhat enamel like appearance, never use two coats of it. Just one will suffice and two will make the surface so slick, it will be akin to painting atop gloss enamel. In other words and eggshell enamel in red will not adhere properly, but will go on with the premiere stroke of the brush only to slough off with the secondary or tertiary strokes. Thus if you are lucky, unlike me, when you decide to cover all that messed up red with white flat paint - your child will love the larger than life effect of the white paint. Mine did not and insisted on red, which was his due as I had promised him his pick of colors. Let's see that was scraping and opening cracks, plastering twice (and still not getting it really well done but good enough for a government worker), then two coats of primer sealer, then a coat or two of white on the ceiling, then starting with the red eggshell enamel but finding out it would not properly adhere, then finally winding up with a couple of gallons of the same red in flat finish. Of course this meant multiple trips to a large hardware store owned by a larger conglomerate, wherein I wanted to explode on some each of my visits there. Oh well, I have the implements of artistic expression all laid out and ready for the job today. I am feeling better than I have over the past two days, when I felt rather indescribably miserable.Now I have to grab my son out of the shower and put a roller in his hand. Hmm - I wonder why he is taking a shower now - he must have not thought that he too has to get this job done. He has not helped me as much as I would have liked with homework and all, but today is his day to slave away. Tomorrow is his birthday, so it had best be done today for him to get the most enjoyment out of his day tomorrow. Of course if he does not help, I may just not lift a finger, and leave it the way it is for him to complete by the time he reaches 30, and since he is still in high school (his last year, and no he has never been left back) that will be a long wait.All the best,Glenn B
...in that beginning yesterday and working into today, I feel as healthy as a horse (a thoroughbred at that). Go figure, sick as all get out one day, and feeling wonderful the next. Almost as if about 5 or 6 weeks of being ill never happened. I cannot figure it, but I am not going to second guess it. So I'll take it for what it is worth, which is a great feeling.All the best,Glenn B
Somewhere in there my wife had taken our small Dachshund - Hexi - to the vet. She was having trouble walking on her back legs a bit the night before. From the vet she vet to an emergency veterinary clinic where they do surgeries. Hexi was getting really bad, really fast. They shot her up with cortisone, and by the time they had done so she had apparently lost all sensation in her rear legs. They said if she got sensation back, they would put her out, do an MRI, and do surgery if it was a slipped or exploded disc as they suspected. 
