Keith's Amusing Musings

As promised in a previous post regarding the various companies we hired to do work on our home, this is my recommendation/referral for anyone in the Seattle area looking for a good painter.

We hired Jon Syltebo Painting Company to do accent and touch-up painting in our home. We received his information from our agent, Michael Miller, as some of Michael’s prior clients had used his services. The company doesn’t have a website so I had to relax my “If you aren’t on the web, you don’t want my business” rule which was easy since I trust Michael’s advice. Once again, Michael was spot on.

Jon met us at our new residence a week before we took possession to get an understanding of the exact work we wanted done and to get a feel for the various spaces (and how they would be used) to assist us with color selection. He was efficient, knowledgeable and flexible so we accepted his reasonable bid for the work we wanted done. He offered to meet us at the paint store later that day to select the paint for the rooms and that experience was extremely positive as well which says a lot since picking colors & decorating are pretty high on TB’s and my “Things We Don’t Enjoy” list.

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One of the highlights of my week is catching the most recent episode of Aaron McGruder’s animated masterpiece, The Boondocks. Usually the most recent episode will have been archived on my digital video recorder (DVR) allowing me to watch when it is convenient for me. (Thank goodness for the DVR since I would otherwise miss all my favorite shows. For example, The Boondocks comes on at 11PM on Sundays and I am sometimes an episode or two behind.)

No slight to the comedic and artistic talents of Team McGruder but one of my favorite parts of every episode is the theme music which plays at the beginning. It is only about 30 seconds worth of music but each time I hear it is identical to the first time I heard it with me temporarily captivated, staring at the screen dumbstruck and asking myself, “Who is that spittin’ and where can I get the rest of his album?”

It only took me 4 episodes — I had just finished watching “Granddad’s Fight” — when I finally forced myself to dig deeper. I started by watching the credits which was fruitless since they flash by so quickly. I used slow-mo too but that was a big PITA and I couldn’t salvage any clues. I then resorted to a well-honed technique utilizing an instrument with which I possess great precision: Searching the Internet. After one query and a couple clicks I was enjoying that same 30 second segment from the comforts of my very own computer. I must have listened to that segment ten more times immediately after it finished downloading. I was one step closer.

I still needed an artist, album, producer…something. I decided to take a peek at the tag information of the MP3 file I downloaded on the rare chance that the person who created it was thorough. As it turned out s/he was and the artist tag pointed me to Asheru. Another quick search led me to this site which contains biographical information, additional songs and a link to another site where I can buy his album, Insomnia.

Sadly, the album is for sale via PayPal only but he hasn’t actually created a PayPal account yet. I’ll have to email him to see what’s going on. Am I really the first person to try to buy the guy’s album online? :sniff:

Update:
My email to Asheru bounced. Apparently his inbox is over its quota. I guess business is good. :sarcastic:

Keith

I’m back after a brief hiatus. I hope no one was disappointed. In addition to taking some time to celebrate Thanksgiving, TB instituted a blog moratorium so that I would do my share of the unpacking. There have been some extremely long days but I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made so far. The fact that I’m blogging in the middle of the day indicates TB is satisfied with our progress as well.

We slept in our new bed for the first time last night. We need better pillows but the new sheets, comforter and mattresses made it a peaceful and comfortable slumber. All I can say is there is a noticeable difference in higher thread count sheets and there is a lot to be said about the additional space a king-size bed offers over a queen. We still need to get a duvet and our head/footboard & frame will not be delivered for another couple weeks.

OK, I better go before TB unplugs the computer. Back to work.

Keith

TB and I have officially moved into our new home now that our stuff is all there. The moving company arrived just after 10AM (they were scheduled to arrive between 8 and 10) with a big truck consisting of a trailer at least 50 feet in length. TB asked, “Is that just our stuff?” Perplexed, I assured her, “No way. We don’t have that much stuff. They probably have a couple stops to make.” I was wrong.

That trailer contained ten individual wooden compartments approximately 7 feet tall, 5 feet wide and 7 feet deep. The crew of 4 men and 1 woman had all ten emptied with their contents in the appropriate locations throughout our home in about 4 hours. Those people were amazing. I’ve never seen so many feats of strength in such a controlled and non-destructive form. If I had to carry one end of our chest-of-drawers up three flights of stairs I’m positive I would have left lots of sheetrock in my wake. Not only did two of the guys do it without even touching any of the recently painted walls, they did it quickly. Amazing.

In other news, Comcast, like any other big compay I suppose, has some idiots on its payroll and some asinine processes. Since when does “transfer my service” translate to “create me an additional account with a bunch of equipment and services I have never had, don’t need and don’t want”? I already miss DirecTV. I had been an avid subscriber since 1998 but I can’t see buying the hardware I would need in the new place before they complete the transition from MPEG2 to MPEG4 to allow them to broadcast local high-definition channels — something Comcast already offers today.

Keith

Today was spent coordinating several groups of workers in preparation for the move into our final place. The day officially started at 8AM with painters arriving for Day 3 — the final day of accent and touch-up painting. Our mattress set was delivered mid-afternoon. The cleaning service guys got to work power washing the deck and patio in the late afternoon. The cable guy arrived near the end of the day and was gone by 5PM. I arrived at the house at 7:30AM and did not leave again until 5:30PM to make a run to The Home Depot with TB for some obligatory, last-minute shopping. The interesting thing is there are no seats in the house except unofficial ones like stairs, toilets and lots of floor. As a result, my back and legs are really sore.

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