Am I Done Yet?

[hrj]

What made me think I could have gotten the room all prepped for painting yesterday evening, even without getting distracted by heraldic commentary? I got all the furniture moved out last night but left the rest for this morning. So far I've:

* removed the carpets and pad
* pulled up the tack strips (boo! hiss!)
* and all the little staples holding the pads in place
* ripped out the baseboard (because the flooring comes with its own matching baseboard)
* removed the blinds
* scraped off the old, brittle contact paper from the window sills (which works better if you heat it up first, like with a blow-dryer)
* temporarily removed the sliding closet doors and their tracks (the bottom track had to be removed to get the carpet out -- and would have had to be removed to put the floor down -- so it made more sense to take out both to make painting easier)
* scrubbed and washed the walls (discovering in the process that there are some patches of unfinished plaster on a couple of the walls ... which must date back to some former tenant)
* spackled (a surprisingly small number of holes)

and am currently letting everything dry completely before masking (basically just the light fixture and the windows) and starting the first coat. So I think the schedule will be: first coat today, second coat tomorrow. I've managed to move all the furniture and instruments and stuff just out into the living room (making the living room essentially unusable for the interim) which may be manageable until the new floor goes in. After that I can move stuff back into the room, even if it doesn't get its final organization until the bed is in place.

While I'm waiting, I've started several flavors of beef jerky drying in the oven. This is for the co-workers -- a reward for getting all their annual training up to day way before deadline. (I'm the official departmental training nag. I bribed them with the promise of beef jerky and cookies. I started off with just cookies, but they remembered the last set of beef jerky experiments and demanded more.) In addition to the traditional teriyaki flavor, I'm doing a couple of medieval-inspired batches (dry rubs based on powder fort and powder douce) and a curry rub. I still owe another guy at work a five-alarm-hot-sauce jerky batch, but I have to work myself up to that since I don't care for the hot spices myself.

I'm currently marinating a chicken in a lemon-herb mixture to throw on the rotisserie, but I think I'll do that tomorrow. I'm too exhausted today.

ETA: Just had an amusing little earthquake. About 3-4 seconds, maybe a 4.0? Depends on how close it was, but it felt like one of our east bay faults.

Comments

[vnend.livejournal.com]

Looks like it was a 3.2, just northwest of Berkeley, 15:30:56, on the Hayward, as you thought.