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On Thursday we're scheduled to be without power from 9am to 3pm. WTF am I supposed to do during that time? If anything, it's a great excuse to go play golf, but I really do have a fair amount of work to do, too.
The power outages that I wrote about before have really been far [...]

One quick tax thing that bugs me. Despite spending about $18k for an office in 2006, only $3k (the carpeting) can be deducted immediately. The other $15k is depreciated over 39 (yes, thirty nine) years. It's "structural," so it gets depreciated. The carpeting was not.
WTF sense does that make? We paid cash, my self-employed business [...]

Garages are for storing cars, shielding them from the elements.
Today I watched, off and on, my neighbors spend more than one hour shoveling around the cars they parked in their driveway. I cleared my entire driveway and the sidewalks around my house in one third the time. Not only that, but my cars - in [...]

I must admit: I feel a bit like Tim Allen. Perhaps 10.5 horsepower is overkill for a guy with a short driveway (but a lot of sidewalk), but is there really such a thing as "too much" when it comes to powering through two to three feet of wet snow without breaking a sweat? [...]

Carey and I spent most of today painting our living room. Prior, it was white with a "library" border around the top - a bunch of books on a "shelf." Ick. We decided to paint the walls a light tan with an "accent wall" in a darker brown near Carey's desk. The room is rather [...]

I returned home this morning after running an errand. I walked upstairs and sat down at my computer desk when I heard a loud "CRACK!" I went downstairs to investigate, thinking perhaps a picture had fallen off the wall, but found no such damage.
It wasn't until I wanted to go to Best Buy (to buy [...]

These are the pendant lights Carey and I hung over Labor Day weekend. They replace some lame track lighting (the bulbs always burned out, they were 60 watt max, etc.). Though we didn't plan for it, the lights we chose ($20 for a set of three at Lowe's) really draws your eye up, adding height [...]

Last year, we got seven cubic yards of bark. This year, we ordered 10 cubic yards of mulch. Either we were ripped off last year or we got a lot more than we paid for this year, because the ratio was waaaaaaay off.
Happily, though, we're done. If you're curious what ten cubic yards of something [...]

Carey and I received a notice for a $161 street lighting assessment. I've never heard of such a thing. Sure, I like having street lights, but how is that not included in property taxes? Houses tend to sit on streets. It's not like we're out in the township somewhere. We've got sidewalks and everything. [...]

I filled in some of the holes in our lawn today with dirt and seed - the trenches left over from the truck that delivered wood for the pool room several months ago. Now I'm waiting for the rain to come to soak the dirt and ensure that the seeds grow. I still need another [...]

I have two lights in my upstairs hallway. They're controlled by a switch downstairs, a switch outside the master bedroom, and a switch outside a second bedroom.
The switch outside the second bedroom (office) got "stuck" lately, so we bought a four-way switch to replace it. The old one says "4-way switch" on it, so that's [...]

This entry is mostly for my wife to make a decision (today). She's at a conference, so this is how I can reach her…

Some renovation pictures (http://iacas.org/asm/room/01.jpg through 04) are up. They're building a girder truss today and will pick up on Monday and work, as I understand it, most of the next two weeks to finish things out. Then, our flooring goes down, and then we paint and trim out the room. The table is delivered end [...]

Carey and I have visited two places (A, B for the purpose of this post) in Erie now to get flooring quotes for the game room. The best offer we've gotten thus far is $2750. The idea is to use Shaw laminate flooring to cover between 396 and 437 square feet of space minus a [...]

The Lennox guy came today to look at our furnace/A/C needs. Our furnace, he said, is just fine. Our air conditioner needs replacing, but we knew that.
He said he would not warrant or guarantee a furnace or air conditioner in a zoned setup. The game room would always be calling for a lot of heat [...]