According to weather.com it’s supposed to be 77 here on Saturday and 79 on Sunday. Lovely. I’ve been scrambling to find a place to go hiking this weekend that isn’t still inundated with snow. Not much luck at least in terms of going upward. Maybe what’s showing on the map below though. Kloochman Rock, I’ve been meaning to check this out since last summer. About a 45 minute drive from our place and the roads should be clear enough. Looks like a fun little scramble. We shall see.

This little guy has been sitting in a tree outside of our office at work for the past week or so. Or at least that’s the first I’ve noticed of him. Baby Great Horned Owl. My battered four-megapixel camera did not take this picture.

Speaking of things that just sit there and don’t drive in runners from second base, how about those Tigers? $138 million doesn’t go quite as far as it used to I guess. That vaunted Murder’s Row is hitting .235, has only scored 15 runs, and is now 0-7 on the year.

This past week I read a two different articles on the state of Cubs’ fans in the face of constant disappointment. I don’t remember what the first article was about, but the second one talked about how constant failure can actually have a soothing effect on the brain. How when you don’t have to worry about the outcome (as fate has already determined that it’s only a matter of time until something Bartman-esque comes along) that you can settle back focus on the aesthetic minutia. Basically it was saying that Cub fans have more fun rooting for the Cubs, than say Yankee fans rooting for the Yankees.

When the season started this year I felt far too much like a Yankee fan, ready to scream for blood when the $60 million man doesn’t pull his weight. It’s no fun being the big money thug, especially when you’re losing. Where’s Milt Cuyler?

Just had a great little cloudburst a few minute ago. The ground barely looks wet, but I’d bet that it’s enough to green things up over the next few days. Warm enough outside where we can comfortably have the house windows open and I’m sitting here at the computer desk with that earthy rain smell wafting through. Watching the sparrows peck away at the lawn in the backyard. Chirp, chirp.

Cemented in almost all of the cut tiles this morning until I ran out of thin set with six tiles to go. Thought I could get by with a small pre-mixed container of thin set that said it covered 30 square feet (but probably didn’t even make it to 20). Oh well. We’ve been keeping the dogs out of the kitchen by blocking the entrance with my surfboard and bike. Nora sits and whines until someone pays attention to her. Poor neglected dog. What a tough life.

I took this picture earlier this week at about noon on a sunny 55 degree day. Weird, huh? A little blurry since I snapped it leaning out of my car window as I drove by. I drive by these orchards every day on my commute to work. For the past week or so the sprinkler system has been blasting away as I drive past in the dark at 6 in the morning, presumably running since the night before. I guess the idea is that on nights when the air temperature drops below freezing they spray the trees to protect them from the cold.

This probably seems a little backwards until you think about it a little more. Think about it…

Ok. Ice never drops below 32 degrees, so a little bud draped in a 32 degree shell is protected from the 20 degree air. Clever. I’ve also seen and heard these gigantic propellers whap, whap, whapping away all night. I’m assuming for the same general idea, though I haven’t quite figured that one out yet.

Kitchen tile is just about done. I laid tile for about five hours each day Monday and Tuesday last week after work, finishing everything except for the tile that required cutting. It probably shouldn’t have taken quite that long to lay 180 square feet of tile, but I was meticulous with my measurements and was working with a designed layout that didn’t give me much breathing room for misalignments. And it was my first time doing this. By myself.

Anyway, everything has come out looking great. Today I picked up a tile saw from Home Depot and sliced up about 30 tiles that needed to be shaped. There were a few trickier cuts, such as around the heat vents in the floor, but for the most part this was pretty straight forward. And kind of fun, like putting together a big puzzle. Only downside was repeatedly picking up shrapnel wounds from the ant-sized flecks of tile spinning off of the saw blade. You’d be surprised how much your hands bleed from this. I would’ve worn gloves, but I opted to use the saw without the tile guide and felt like I needed the extra dexterity that would’ve been lost by a layer of leather. My hands are pretty clean in the picture below because Nora just finished licking off the geyser that had been spraying from a knuckle on my left hand.

Tomorrow I’ll probably cement in the cut tile and then we’ll grout the joints a day or two later and that’ll be that. We bought some nice solid wood doors to replace the mirrored ones that I’ve loathed since the we moved in last may. That’ll most likely be the next mini project on the agenda.