Booksnobbery

I can be a bit of a book snob.

I'm not proud of it, but I judge non-readers pretty harshly. There are people out there who say things like "I don't read", and they don't seem to think that it's a serious hole in their lives, which is very difficult for me to understand.

Books are, for me, a necessity. Since the day I was able to read Grover At The Farm all by myself, I have been reading. I have a quick link to my library's website on my Firefox toolbar, and I choose new purses based primarily on their size, because they must have enough space for an average hardcover. I have read hundreds of books, from classics to to sci-fi to non-fiction on almost any topic, and I've got a "to-read" shelf (currently growing online at Goodreads.com) that never seems to get any shorter. I deeply regret that I only have one lifetime during which to read, because I'll never be able to read everything I want to.

I think more people should be regular readers. The digital world is slowly chipping away at our attention spans and encouraging us to absorb written words in small, manageable paragraphs, instead of pages and chapters, so I smile when I see people at bus stops or in coffee shops, holding an open book. So why, then, do I feel such hostility towards adult readers of tween-and-teen-targeted "literature"? See, right there, I used sarcastiquotes without even thinking about it. I get all sorts of annoyed when I see a grown person paging through Twilight. They're reading something, so I should be happy about it - they made a decision to acquire and read a book, which is what I want more people to do.

But why would anyone other than a 12-year-old girl voluntarily read about angsty sparkling vampires (unless they're parents of teens and tweens who want to be familiar with what their kids are reading)? My parents weren't standing in line at the store, waiting excitedly for the next Babysitters Club book to be released so they could discuss it with their friends at work, so what changed over the past 20 years? Did young adult (YA) literature get more complex and adult along the way, blurring the lines?

It sounds sort of rhetorical, but it's a question I'm honestly asking of my readers: has there been a shift in the complexity of YA books over the years, making them closer to adult books?

I've done a lot of thinking about my hostility towards the YA stuff, and I posted my thoughts to one of my message boards to start a discussion there, learning more about myself in the process. A big part of my problem is that I assume that someone reading "kids' books" isn't going to want to read Asimov, or John Irving, or a history of the life of Henrietta Lacks. But how do I know what else is on their shelves? Just like someone at Taco Bell might cook fancy gourmet dinners 95% of the time, some people who read lots of good stuff sometimes like to read "fluffy" books because they're easy.

I think I tend to lump all YA into the "bullshit fluff" literature category, because of what I remember from the books of my childhood. The problem with that, if I think about it, is that I enjoyed the Harry Potter series, and if I'm being honest, I have to say they were better written than Sophie Kinsella's "Shopaholic" stuff, which was aimed at adult readers. So where's the line? What's a YA novel and what's a crappy grownup novel? I count Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Anne of Green Gables among my favorite books and I've read them dozens of times, despite the fact that they're intended for younger readers. But they're good. Conclusion: maybe I'm putting more overlap in my Venn diagram of "YA" and "crappy writing" than is warranted.

Why should it even matter that people are reading badly-written junk? It's not my business what people read, and on a conscious level I know that, but I see someone in a waiting room reading Fifty Shades of Grey and I die a little inside. I'm sure there are folks who will look down on my collection of science fiction and medical memoirs and declare that I'm not a real reader if I don't know Tolstoy and Dumas by heart, and I'm sitting here in my glass house, tossing stones around. 

Full disclosure: I haven't read Twilight or 50 Shades, mostly because I've heard enough about them and read enough reviews and quotes from them to know that they won't be to my taste. Hunger Games, on the other hand, is being recommended to me from all sides, by people I know and whose opinions I usually trust, and that's a big reason why I started this thread. I really don't want to read the books, and I'm not entirely sure what my resistance is about. I don't think I'm the hipster type who avoids things when they get popular, so what is it? I thought maybe it was the YA label that was doing it, but I'm not sure, given that I do count some children's classics among my favorite books.

Maybe I'm guilty of lumping the Hunger Games books into the same category as the Twilight series, when it belongs elsewhere? Is it more Little Women than Sweet Valley High?

I'd like this to open up into a discussion, if anyone's game. I need help pinning down what it is that bugs me so much about the popularity of fluff, because otherwise I'm not sure how I will ever change that prejudice.

Mars and the Wright Brothers

During my week in the Outer Banks, I braved rain and high water to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hills. Even on a do-nothing-and-relax vacation, as this one was supposed to be, I couldn't resist visiting something historical and museum-y.

 

This boulder and metal track in the ground mark the takeoff point of the Wright Brothers' Flyer, and the four smaller plaques in the distance mark where the first four successful flights landed on December 17th, 1903.

First successful flight of the Wright Brothers

One hundred and twenty feet. That's how far Orville Wright got on his first successful powered flight, which the brothers were smart enough to capture on film. It is amazing to me that there is a photograph of this huge step forward in technology, this incredible achievement. And this all happened in 1903, which isn't really all that far away if you think about it. Not much more than a hundred years from their success in flight, we used a rocket-propelled sky-crane to gently lower an automobile-sized rover onto the surface of Mars.

I bring up the Mars Curiosity rover not only because it's awesome and on Mars, my favorite planet that I don't currently live on, but because we stayed up late on Sunday night, in the big rented house on the beach in Avon, and hooked up the TV to the internet to watch the live feed from NASA as they monitored Curiosity's descent to the surface.

Four of us, and a couple of sleepy weenie-dogs, settled in on the cushy sofas for the whole thing, from the interviews with NASA engineers to the triumphant cheers and tears of joy on the big screen when a safe landing was confirmed. More than once that night, as we watched the camera pan over the control room and the excited and nervous NASA folks speaking into their headsets, I was overwhelmed with a sense of awe and insignificance. Not only are we at a place in our evolution as a species that we can safely place sophisticated technology onto other planets, but it's become routine enough that it's not much more than a blip on the news. Sure, the nerds and space geeks of the world were huddled in front of their TVs and computers to watch it all unfold, but there's a bit of a "been there and done that" feeling from the news coverage, and that makes me both happy and sad.

I'm happy, because it means that awesome feats like this have become common enough not to make a big splash. Not only can we send stuff to Mars, or Jupiter, or to explore giant asteroids, but we do it all the time. We are an amazing damn species. But I'm sad, because when events are common, they stop being news, and people stop caring. When people stop caring, people forget why we're doing all of this in the first place and see it as a waste of money and resources.

But it's not a waste. No, it's not directly ending world hunger or fixing the economy, but space exploration has brought us so many advances in technology, and is worth every penny put into it. And, frankly, it's only pennies that are put into it. NASA's budget is a joke, and the joke keeps getting smaller. This comparison puts it into perspective:

I'm not trying to get all political here - I still don't have a vote in this country - but when you see how little NASA gets from the US budget, it's hard to understand the folks who are complaining that we're spending so much money to visit other planets for nothing. Especially when you see this:

Not that I'm bashing the Olympics (just NBC's dismal coverage and overuse of Ryan Goddamn Seacrest), but in the grand scheme of things, we get so much out of space exploration, and it's silly to argue against funding it. It's not just about rockets, minerals, and spectral analyses. It's about engineering, programming, and robotics, and dozens of other applications to medicine and nutrition and memory foam mattresses.

Three days after I watched Curiosity touch down gently on Mars to begin its mission of exploring the planet, I stood in the spot where we first took to the air in powered vehicles, and I whispered a thanks to the Wright brothers and all those who built on their work, for what they've made possible so far.

Round or Folded?

"Round or folded?"

The guy at the drive-through window repeated his question, since we were still staring blankly at him.

"Your egg. Do you want it round, or folded?"

Dave and I looked at each other. Both of us had eyebrows raised and shoulders lifted slightly to indicate that we had no idea what in hell the guy was talking about, so Dave bravely took initiative, turned back to the impatient McDonald's employee, and declared:

"Round."

We got home and spread out our breakfast goodies on the counter so we could see what consequences we'd now have to endure, and luckily our orders had resulted in one egg in each style, so we could compare them. The sausage and egg McMuffin, on the right, was the bearer of the round egg in question. The bacon, egg, and cheese McGriddle, on the left, features the mysterious folded egg.

Round eggs are regular old eggs, cooked in round kajiggers like these:

Blue silicone egg kajiggers

Folded eggs, meanwhile, are made from the egg-like goo that all fast food restaurants now use in place of scrambled eggs. Pre-scrambled for efficiency, I guess, but even though they're made from actual eggs, I never feel like the texture is right, and I wish they'd never been invented.

Powdered eggs, AKA the Cheez-Whiz of eggs

This stuff is why I have to pointedly ask for "shell eggs" when I order scrambled eggs at diners. Otherwise what I get is nasty, uniformly bright yellow, and spongy.

But the McDonald's experience opened my eyes to another way of making DIY breakfast sandwiches. I've always tried making a round-ish fried egg to put into an english muffin, with varying success. The egg often turns out too wide, and requires minor surgery to keep from poking out of the muffin. I had hoped that using the egg kajiggers would help, and I was very excited when I first opened the box they came in, but they got squashed in shipping and the now best I can manage with them are elliptical fried eggs. While I am entertained by the thought of eating conical sections for breakfast, the problem of fitting egg to muffin remains.

Enter the folded egg. I don't have a flat griddle or a square mold to contain liquid egg, but I took a shot and scrambled an egg and poured it into a frying pan, spreading it out like I do with crepe batter. As thin as it was, it cooked quickly, and I had it done and folded up on the english muffin within two minutes. And it fit on the muffin, with only little bits of its corners sticking out!

Sorry, round egg. Your day is over in my house. I've moved on.

A Day at the Dentist

You know how sometimes you leave the dentist's office all happy and smiling?

No, you most likely don't, because most dentists' offices are hellholes of pain. You are at the mercy of masked dentists and hygienists, who scrape and drill at your molars while asking you questions about your weekend, which you can only answer with grunts as you clench the armrests of the hydraulic chair and drown in your own saliva.

I've had a lot done to my teeth.

Genetics gave me weak enamel, which meant that every childhood visit to the dentist included a drill and shiny silver amalgam. I rarely got to pick out a sticker or eraser from the prize bin after my cleaning; those were for the no-cavity kids, and I wasn't a regular in that club. I brushed twice a day, I drank milk, I flossed now and then, and it never seemed to be enough. Things evened out in my late teens, and I was lucky enough never to progress to a root canal, but my dental X-rays show the scars of at least a dozen filled cavities.

To add to the insult of my easily-eroded enamel, my teeth came in crooked. Very crooked. I literally could not bite my nails, as my incisors didn't connect. Corn-on-the-cob was impossible for me to eat, and biting into an apple carried with it the risk of breaking off a tooth. Taking pity on me, my parents absorbed the cost of a full set of braces, which I wore for three difficult years. I needed to have four premolars extracted before we could begin the process, and I remember the strange contrast between the pain in my mouth and the tingling, floating feeling in my feet as they cranked the nitrous oxide up to keep me relaxed while they pried four healthy teeth loose from my jaw. I am grateful that my parents and my oral surgeon allowed me to choose general anaesthesia when it was time to remove my four impacted wisdom teeth.

Once my shiny braces were glued into place and secured with the tiniest of rubber bands, brushing and flossing was harder to do well, so I had more plaque buildup, making cleanings at my dentist's office longer and more painful. The hygienists were kind enough, and tried to be gentle, but every part of my mouth was so sensitive from the constant pressure of the braces, and I know I cried more than once. The dentist, playing "bad cop" in this game, would berate me for having so much plaque, and for being overly sensitive, telling me that other kids managed just fine with braces and I needed to try harder.

I dreaded going back to my orthodontist's office to adjust (tighten, always tighten) the wires. He was a huge man - his belly would sometimes jar the chair if he moved while he was working on my teeth. He didn't always wear a face mask, and his breath was horrendous. He wore gloves, always, but they were a different kind than my regular dentist and hygienist used. They smelled much more rubbery and squeaked against my teeth as he prodded the wires and twisted them into place. You know, the horrible squeaking sound a balloon makes when you rub it with your hand? That spine-tingling, biting-into-styrofoam sound? Imagine half an hour of that, in your mouth.

Understandably, I now have a little dental anxiety. I've considered this newfangled "sedation dentistry", but I'm not sore how that would work with this newfangled "dental insurance" thing I have, now that I'm a responsible adult in charge of my own oral health. I've been in the US for five years, and I've seen a dentist a grand total of three times. The first time, everyone was very nice, but they tried to sell me an expensive nighttime bite guard to fix my jaw pain (which never happens at night), and got a nasty "you'll regret this" attitude when I told them that $800 was more than I was willing to spend on something like that. The second time, I tried a different office, but was equally disappointed with my experience. This place was like a dental factory, with a dozen dentists, a few dozen hygienists, and all the "exam rooms" laid out in one huge open space with flimsy cubicle walls between them. They pushed me into a deep cleaning, because it had been two years since my last one, but apparently "deep cleaning" means "angry hygienist just back from her smoke break, attacking your gums with a chisel and trying to be done in under ten minutes because it's time for lunch."

They sent me a reminder card when it was time to come back for another cleaning. I laughed.

But I can't just avoid dentists. Preventative maintenance is important, especially if I want to avoid root canals and bridges and gum grafts in the future, so I got up some nerve to try a new place. 

Today, I left the new place smiling.

The hygienists and dentists were wonderful. Nobody berated me for not flossing enough, and when I told them of my anxiety they took time to explain each step and go slowly and gently. I only yelped once, and the hygienist stopped, let me take a deep breath, and then moved on to other teeth before coming back to the area that hurt. 

As I was leaving, the dentist saw me pick up my book, and asked what I was reading.

"The Android's Dream, a sci-fi novel."

"Is it any good?"

"I haven't really gotten into this one yet, but I just finished another of his, and it was really good. It was called Old Man's War."

She sat up excitedly in her chair and clapped her hands together. "I'm always looking for new sci-fi! What's it about?"

It's hard to summarize without giving it all away, so I went with "It's an interplanetary army recruited entirely from old people on Earth, since they're going to die anyway."

The hygienist piped up: "Oh, like Ender's Game, but with old people!"

My new dental team is made up of geeks. It's almost too bad I'll only see them every six months. Almost.

Outer Banks Vacation

I've successfully crossed off one more location from the "we should go there" list, but all I really did was transfer it to the "we should go there again" list.

We just got back from a week-long visit to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We stayed in Avon, on Hatteras island, much further south than the popular spots like Nag's Head and Duck. It was a very different sort of vacation for us, as we shared a huge rented beach house with ten other people (and five dogs) for the week. I was nervous about it, because meeting new people puts me on edge, but it wasn't nearly as painful as it could have been, since people were nice, and I tried to stay on top of my anxiety by pulling away to be alone when I was overwhelmed.

Also, this was the view from the upper-level balcony of the house.

That certainly helps a person chill out.

It was a lovely week. We had a couple of beautiful days right at the beginning, before the storms came through mid-week, and took advantage of them by spending afternoons at the beach.

We set up our Super-brella over our folding chairs for some shade, since we are of the pasty persuasion, and sat around with our feet in the sand and our noses in books for hours. You can't get the full impact of the nerdiness of this setup from this photo, but we had shade, Jonathan Coulton towels from our February cruise, a sci-fi novel, Wil Wheaton's "Memories of the Future", and SPF-50 sunscreen. All packed in my "Property of Laboratory Department" tote bag. I wasn't even trying! 

We splashed around in the Atlantic a little, too, and the water was almost as warm as it was in the Caribbean, but not nearly as clear and blue. I couldn't see my feet, which always freaks me out because there are things alive down there, and the bottom was all rocks and shells instead of soft sand. I'm told that's because they have to dredge up stuff from further out to rebuild the beach as erosion eats away at it. I didn't mind that it wasn't soft and powdery, because it was neat to lie on my towel and run my hands through the sand, seeing how it was all made up of the tiniest shell fragments, rounded and polished by the waves. I collected dozens of pretty shell fragments, like all good beach-goers, although I have no plans for them yet.

I did very well in the water until I noticed hundreds of little white spidery-looking things floating around me. I couldn't stop thinking that I might be swallowing crab larvae, and I had to leave the water. For reasons unclear to me (perhaps they all found human hosts whose brains they could burrow into), there were far fewer of them floating around the next day, and I was able to spend more time in the waves.

I was very surprised to hear so much French around me on the beach - it seemed like half of Quebec was vacationing in the Outer Banks! It's funny how hearing "Papa, j'ai envie" at a beach far from home can get me smiling and misty-eyed. I should have spoken to them more, but I'm insecure about the degradation of my French vocabulary after having been away from it for so long.

Once the weather turned to dreary rain on Tuesday, we stuck to indoor pursuits. I watched a lot of bad NBC Olympic coverage and filled out some crossword puzzles, and took a couple of afternoon naps. We played several board games too, like Apples to Apples, Balderdash, and Cards Against Humanity. I was also introduced to a new game I loved:

Carcassonne. If we go on the next nerd cruise, I will buy this game, bring it, and sit in the 24-hour game room until someone agrees to play with me.

I want to go back to the Outer Banks again. It was nice to be so far away from everything, on the beach, in the sun, with nothing to worry about. I'm usually the type who plans vacations around outings and museums and things to do, but I let a lot of that slide this time around, and I think I might be getting better at this "relaxing" thing I keep hearing so much about.

Laundry room floor

The latest installment in the home improvement saga was completed over the weekend: we have a new laundry room floor. The old floor was an uneven mashup of three different sizes and styles of tiles, and since we keep the cats' litter boxes in the laundry room, the cracks and spaces in the mismatched tiles were always filling up with litter particles.

Laundry room floor, before and after

We chose a plain vinyl tile for the laundry room, because ceramic tiles didn't seem worth the expense. It's hard to see from my photo, but the new tiles are white with some small grey and blue flecks. This will be so much easier to keep clean, and it looks much less chaotic now. I'm delighted with how it looks. The tile guy spread some goo down (I didn't ask what it was) to even out the floor's surface so he could put the new tile over the old stuff. Because of how many layers of tiles were in there, and the extra expense involved in pulling everything up, we just decided to add a layer, so I guess some future owner will get a fun surprise if they ever pull up this new floor! The edges still need shoe molding put in, but this guy wasn't told about that, so he had none with him. When we asked the boss guy about it on the phone, he said no worries, the carpet guy would take care of that later. I have a feeling the carpet guy will have as little clue about it as the tile guy did, but we'll see.

But you know that's not the end of the story. No home improvement goes unpunished in this house. And I'm not even talking about Horton walking through the goo and getting his paws absolutely covered in it, although that was fun to fix. A soapy wet washcloth worked well to get it off, but without Dave handy to pin him, I never would have managed! Angry cats are squirmy!

After the tile guy finished up and moved our washer and dryer back in, he discovered that the dryer vent duct wouldn't fit onto the connector on the back of the dryer, because the extra height to the new floor raised the dryer up a teeny fraction of an inch. Why the dryer was attached to a rigid vent line, I have no idea, but it means that it has to be exactly the right length, not too long or too short, or it won't connect to the dryer. Tile guy shrugged and basically said it wasn't his job to figure it out, which left it to us, the handy homeowners. Since cutting it to the new precise height seemed a risky and unnecessarily complex task, I just forked out $20 at Home Depot for a twenty-foot flexible dryer vent tube so we could have a little leeway.

Dave cut the rigid vent about three feet from the dryer with a pair of snips, and then attached a length of flexible stuff to the end, taping it in place. Which you would think means I could do laundry now, right? But when I ran a load of laundry the other night and went to transfer it to the dryer, the clothes in the washer were steaming hot! I always wash and rinse in cold water, so this means that the tile guy hooked it back up backwards.  I never even thought to check that, although I did take a second and make sure nothing was leaking when I first started the washer. I'm really hoping that I didn't just shrink all of our clothes. Dave's favorite shorts and my "Stand back, I'm going to try Science" T-shirt were in that batch.

I made a thing!

During my lunch break at work today, I was given my very first crochet lesson. My coworker brought in the ball of neon green yarn that she used for the brain slug and said it was mine to practice on; she even gave me a crochet hook to use!

It took me a while to figure out how to grip everything, and my stitches are still uneven, but I only had fifteen minutes of training and practice! I didn't try anything exotic - I started with a chain. Then I added a chain to my chain, and made a strip, or something. I don't know the fancy lingo, but I made a green thing today that did not exist before I made it!

I wanted Horton to model it for the picture, but he refused. He wanted to play with the dangly ends instead. What is it with cats and string??

I will be taking a few more quick lunchtime lessons and learning how to make a round thing. And maybe a square thing. Hooray for making things!

Lab skills or life skills?

Considering how many hours I have spent working in laboratories, I suppose it was inevitable that lab experiences would begin to influence my everyday life.

The rinsing principle

Let's say I'm going to wash up a unit of red cells to use in a procedure. First, I have to cut the bag open and pour the blood into a big centrifuge bottle with some saline solution, which is a messy process. But no matter how hard I shake it, there are always some red cells left clinging to the inside surfaces of the bag. I want to get as much of that into my bottle as possible, so I squirt in some saline from a squeeze bottle and swish it around the almost-empty bag to get all the good stuff out.

This is a remarkably useful process to bring into real life. For example, when I get to the end of a carton of coffee creamer, I spoon some coffee into it and swirl the carton to clean off its insides, then pour it all back into my coffee cup. I've also been doing it with jars of spaghetti sauce, because I can never get all of it out, even struggling with a spatula. I dump the jar out onto one side of the pot of cooked pasta, then I scoop up some of the uncoated noodles, pop them into the sauce jar, shake it up good, and then dump the noodles back into the pot. Less waste!

Butt-operated doors

Gloves and door handles aren't supposed to meet, since gloves are potentially covered in nasties. I've developed a butt-first approach to swinging lab doors that really works for me. Back into the door, gentle shove with my butt, and I'm through. I do this more often in non-lab settings than I'd like to admit, probably to my husband's embarrassment. If the door has a lever-style handle, I can navigate that quite easily by adding my elbow to the procedure. I lean down, push with my elbow, and then bump the door with my hip to get through.

It's somewhat more complicated when the door opens towards me, but I've recently been practising and can often use my elbow to get the door opened wide enough to stick my foot into the opening and swing it the rest of the way. Very useful in public bathroom situations.

Regular round doorknobs have thus far remained beyond my skill level.

The microbiology grip

You're supposed to keep things sterile in microbiology, because one tiny mold spore or bacterium getting into your culture medium can ruin everything. That's why microbiologists do most of their work with their arms inside special biological safety cabinets whose airflow and HEPA filters minimize the possibility of contamination. Still, sometimes you've got to unscrew the cap on a tube of media you want to inoculate, and you can't just put it down on the desk. Solution: the Microbiology Grip.

It can be accomplished with the pinky finger of the dominant hand:

Pinky technique - image from eplantscience.com

Or, if one absolutely needs the strength or dexterity of the thumb and index fingers to unscrew the cap, one can try the claw grip, but the inoculation wire or loop ends up being held awkwardly, and I think there is less control with this method.

Claw-style - image from ndsu.edu

And where, you may ask, am I finding a use for such a grip? Toothpaste. Not because my sink is so disgusting that I don't dare put down a toothpaste cap, but because my hands just do it anyway. Muscle memory is no joke. I hold my toothbrush like an inoculation loop in my right hand, then pick up the toothpaste tube in my left, bring my hands together, and unscrew the cap by gripping it with my pinky and then twisting both hands in opposite directions. I keep the cap firmly in my pinky grip while I apply toothpaste to my brush, and then I recap the tube and brush my teeth.

Laugh at me if you wish, but I can be confident that there are no mold spores in my Crest Complete with Scope.

New acquisitions

Last week, I did not have these two things. I think that my life is more complete this week.

The little green guy is a crocheted version of a Brain Slug from Futurama. When I learned that my new coworker is a very adept knitter and crocheter, I showed her this pattern and asked if maybe she could teach me how to crochet sometime, maybe over some lunch breaks, so I could make one. I've had the page bookmarked for months, and if I could ever learn how, I was thinking of using a crocheted brain slug as a Halloween costume, or sporting one in lieu of a fez on formal night on the next nerd cruise. My coworker printed out the pattern, mumbled something about likely trouble finding the right green, then left for the weekend.

I arrived at the lab on Monday and my boss warned me that my office had "an infestation", and I should be careful going in there. His tone suggested that it wasn't anything that required a can of Raid, but I couldn't think what in the world he was getting at... until I saw my new green friend sitting beside my computer monitor! I wasn't expecting her to make me one! Now, more than ever, I need to learn to crochet. Just imagine the possibilities!

And now, the book. The massive tome (8 pounds!!) comes with a long and convoluted story involving Barnes and Noble, their horrible computer system, and a delay of over a month in getting to me, but I'll spare you most of it. Essentially, they put it on a sale so good that it wiped out their inventory much more quickly than they expected, but their computer let people keep buying it anyway. I got emails telling me it was delayed, and then I called for more information and the computer had cancelled my order for me and not told me about it! It was worth fighting for, though, because I got this baby for $15, thanks to a friend on one of my message boards who gave us a heads-up about the sale. It's currently on sale at Amazon.com for $94.50, with its original price set at $150. I wanted it the second it was released two years ago, but couldn't justify the cost, so I am giddy about finally having my hands on it!

It's 1200 pages worth of Simpsons episodes broken down into trivia, quotes, pictures, summaries, and character profiles. I'm a huge Simpsons fan, to an almost-embarrassing degree. I don't have the seasons on DVD yet, but someday I'll splurge and buy a huge boxed set. This book will tide me over until then, I suspect, because it's going to take a while to explore. I remember getting Bart Simpson's Guide to Life* when I was a teenager, and finding more funny bits in it each time I paged through it, and I hope this book brings me the same giggles. 

*I just read the whole Wikipedia article, and that book came out in 1993, almost twenty years ago. Oh. my. GOD. I am old. And the Simpsons is awesome to have lasted so long!

New floors and a new look for the house!

When we first visited this house, we had to use a little imagination to see past the surface into its potential. We noted the ugly paint, chaotic landscaping, gaudy drapes, and worn carpet, but we didn't become those people on the "House Hunters" shows, turning down a good home just because the bathtub is green. We decided it was more of a Charlie Brown Christmas situation, where it just needs a little love and a little work to make it look wonderful.

And we're getting there, bit by bit. Home improvements are not cheap, and saving money by deciding to do it ourselves comes with its own problems, like steep learning curves, spending weekends painting and ripping down wallpaper, and billions of trips to Home Depot. But our home is finally looking like we've wanted it to from the start, and I'm very happy about the progress we've made.

It took us two years to do it, but we finally have new floors. The old carpet in the living and dining rooms was thin, worn, and stained. And blue. Dirty blue. From the beginning, we wanted to replace it with clean hardwood floors, to open up the space. And today, the floors are finished.

Dining room, before and after.

As with most other projects in this house, the floors took a lot longer than I expected. Part of this is the sales guy's fault. He kept saying "three days", so I thought I'd walk in after a long weekend's worth of contractors in and out of my house and find my shiny new floors. It did not work that way. Note to self: stop trusting sales guys when they tell you how long something will take.

There was already some hardwood floor under the carpet, and at first we thought we'd be able to use it and save a little money - just have the guys sand it down and re-stain it to the color we wanted. But once the carpet came up, we encountered a problem. First of all, the hardwood didn't extend the whole way through the rooms. The last four feet or so of each room was just naked particleboard, and the interface between it and the hardwood was covered in a thick layer of glue.

We decided to go ahead and tear out the old stuff, because even though the glue could be removed, the old floor was very uneven. It may have been old water damage, we're not sure, but if I ran my hand over it, I could feel that it was bumpy and wavy, and I knew it would bother me if we left it like that. I guess I could have thrown a rug over the weird spots, but then what's the point of the new floor? The wavy floor problem caused a delay, because the boss had to come by and look at it, and then they had to go out and buy more wood for us, because the verdict was that not much could be done to rescue the old floor. We were given the option of pre-finished floors or unfinished ones that would be sanded in place and then stained, and we decided on the unfinished ones for a tighter look. The pre-finished ones tend to have teeny gaps between the slats, which we didn't like. Also, since we weren't replacing the wood stairs or the undamaged upstairs hallway, they would be sanding and staining those, and matching that stain to the pre-finished stuff would be harder. Instead, we opted to get naked oak floors, and have them sand and stain everything to match. Messier, but worth it.

Then the demolition began, and we discovered that the sub-floor was extremely thin, and not to current building codes. Only 3/8" thick, when code is 5/8". It bounced when we walked on it, so the floor guys drew lines to show us where the joists were so we wouldn't end up with a leg in the crawlspace beneath the floor.

There was another delay, as they went and bought new plywood to put down over the old stuff to solidify our floor. I'm glad they did, of course, but it was another week and a few hundred more dollars of materials to get it done. They laid the new oak floors down, and were almost completely done before I noticed a bump in the floor. The boards that met over the bump seemed to be sticking up a little, and I was nervous about the long-term durability of that area - would the boards warp and pop up? Once again, we called the boss in for a look, and he explained that the bump was from the old foundation, before the addition was put on the house. The floor joists go in one direction until that wall underneath, then the addition had the joists going the other way. We have no idea why they did it that way, but the remaining foundation wall is raised up just enough to cause a bump. We had a choice: live with the bump, or have them pull everything back up and completely rebuild the floor. With reassurances from the boss that the floor would not pop up in that spot, and they would come back and fix it free of charge if it did (although I have my doubts on that), we decided not to spend tens of thousands of dollars on rebuilding a whole floor. 

If you ever come over and see a rug in front of the living room fireplace, you'll know why!

Once the floor was in, the finishing crew came to sand and stain it all. That, too, took longer than usual, because the guys kept showing up late (past 10:30, despite telling us they'd be here at 8:30), and when they first came they seemed unclear on what their work order included, so we once again had to get the boss involved. And they were grumpy that we hadn't moved our furniture from the rooms - but nobody told us to! The sanding took a whole day, and required some really loud equipment with a vacuum attached to cut down on sawdust getting everywhere. Sawdust still got everywhere. The vacuum bag got most of the bigger stuff, but the fine powder got through and settled on every surface it could find! On the second day, they stained the floors with "gunstock" stain, and put on a coating of quick-drying water-based polyurethane, but they ran out of time for the next two coats and had to come back a few days later to finish up.

It was worth the hassle and the delays, because our house is now completely blue-carpet-free! The color turned out exactly how we wanted it, and it's shiny and slick and makes the place look a lot nicer. It's also tons of fun to watch the cats run on it, trying, and failing, to get traction for their high-speed turns.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of dusting to do!