Well the Kitchen has been repainted, the cabinets have been moved, and the new floor has been put in. Yep, that's right a new floor. My budget was $100 because I thought we would have enough extra tiles to fill the space where the stove island used to be. However, it turns out I had 2 and I needed 18. Lowes doesn't carry the tiles we were using anymore so we had to come up with a new plan. Fortunately for us they had this great deal on laminate flooring at $0.88/sq foot. That was the same price as the linoleum tiles we were using! We had to spend a little extra because we needed to buy some you have to put some kind of padding down under the laminate.

In all we spent about $260 on the remodel; which, when all is said and done I think is a pretty great price for the end result we achieved. We also repurposed a painting from our bedroom to use in the kitchen and I think it looks great. The room feels much bigger and warmer. The light floor has a glow to it that really helps bring in the sunlight from the window. In fact I was noticing how comfortable the room felt last night with only one lightbulb on. Normally I feel like I need all the lights on to be comfortable in there. Needless to say I'm really happy with the end result.

My dad was a huge help teaching and helping me install the floor and rewiring and venting the oven. Lisa did almost all of the painting except for a few high places she couldn't reach. Joe even pitched in and helped pull up some of the old floor tiles.

Truth be told we have a few small detail things to do but even without those the kitchen looks fantastic. It's my second favorite room on the first floor now (after the living room with it's nice gas-burning fireplace). In the summer the kitchen will probably be my favorite.

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My older brother and I both use netflix but I'm wondering if anyone else who reads my blog uses it? They have a "friends" feature on there that could be cool for using in getting recommendations to other movies based on the stuff your friends like. So far just 2 of my brothers are on there as my friends so it would be cool to add a few more. I'm not sure of the best way to connect with others who are using netflix already but hopefully we can figure it out. I know you can click on this link to be my friend I'm just not sure if it is reciprocated or not automatically.

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We are flat broke. I mean we have about 100 bucks, maybe, that we can afford to spend on anything and yet we have begun doing a kitchen remodel. You would think we were crazy and I would probably agree but I think we can do this without spending much money at all.

The first thing we are doing is painting. Our kitchen walls are gray so we have to primer first but fortunately we have a gallon or two of primer left over from our living room paint job about a month ago. So today Lisa, Shannon, and I primed most of the kitchen with the exception of the wall around the fridge (the fridge is fairly immobile at the moment). Then I took out two tall cabinets that covered the wall opposite our sink. We have a center island that holds our range and oven. We will be moving the island (along with the cooking area) over to the wall where the cabinets were. My dad has agreed to help re-route the downdraft and the electricity and to repair the hole in the floor where the downdraft is currently. Once that is moved we will finish painting and install a few linoleum tiles we have left over from when we re-floored the kitchen a couple years ago. At the most we need to buy 1.5 gallons of paint (we are going to paint three walls white and one (with the window) red; plus we may end up needing a rug if we don't have enough linoleum and have to buy a few other squares that aren't from the same ink set as the current. They will look similar I guess but different enough where it might be noticeable. In a couple of years we will take up the floor and put down hardwood. I may also be putting up a tile backsplash behind the oven/range (if we have the budget). My dad already owns a wet saw I think so I can probably borrow his and avoid that rental expense.

The two cabinets I took out were reinstalled elsewhere. One was on the landing going down to the basement (via the kitchen) and will continue to act as food storage (cereal, cans of soup, etc). The second went into the garage (which is also just off the kitchen) and will act as a "rarely" used food storage cabinet (and backup; like extra syrup or hotsauce). I also took out the carperting on the stairs going down to the landing because it was getting torn up by the door to the garage. Lisa made the biggest effort and sacrifice by removing all of her Coke stuff and agreeing to sell almost all of it via ebay or a garage sale.

We decided to do this to the kitchen because, while the current layout is OK, it is fairly cramped and makes it difficult for two people to work in the kitchen at the same time difficult. For instance right now if I am emptying the dishwasher while Lisa cooks she can't get to most of the dishes, the pans, or the utensils; and I can't get to the cabinets that hold the glasses or butcher knife drawer. This new layout should be far more flexible.

Eventually, when we have the money, we may reverse the location of the stove and the sink/dishwasher because we think the stove will serve as a far more attractive center piece to the kitchen. However, based on our current budget that is out of the question. Besides which we are both pretty excited about the potential of this current plan. We hope to have it done by the end of March.

I will put up an after photo when we are done.

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This is a rare Albino Moose (supposedly taken near Whitefish Lake, Montana). Honestly, I never really think much about albinoism or if it even afflicts creatures other than humans (and some rodents like rats and rabbits) so this photo really caught me off guard. It would be kind of interesting to see some other albino animals; like a cougar or something - that would be neat to see. Hmmm, I wonder if any giant cats have ever been albinos? What about an albino Labrador Retriever? These things would be cool to see. I also wonder what other potential health problems Albino's are more likely to suffer from.

Here are a couple updates about Albinoism in other animals. For instance white tigers aren't albino's. but this site has a nice compendium of albino animals and a google image search will show you all sorts of cool albino animals including an albino Koala. I love the web!

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I haven't seen the movie The Golden Compass yet but their website has this neat tool that pairs you with some kind of animal spirit called a daemon (pronounced just like demon). In the fantasy world the movie is based on each person is split into a physical form and a spiritual form - their human body is the physical and the animal is their spiritual half. On the website they have a 20 question personality quiz that they use to match you up with a Daemon. My daemon is currently a female lion (daemons are almost always opposite gender to the physical half) named Theonella.

However, it is possible I don't really know myself as well as my friends and family do. So they have this add-on questionaire that you guys can answer to help better identify my daemon. So, if you don't mind please just answer these quick questions and we will see how it ends up. We only have 12 days to further refine my daemon before it is finalized so please just take a moment now to complete it. Thanks

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You may have received an email from me, via Geni.com, lately letting you know I'm trying to build my family tree and that I want your help. Even if you don't want to help by entering information, you may get a kick out of just looking at it. If you are in my family and haven't gotten an invitation to the site yet let me know or check your "spam" mail in case your email program automatically filtered it as spam. If you have gotten an invitation I really hope you will check it out. Please, don't start a new account with a new tree - just build onto the one I already have in place after signing up through the invitation I sent you.

I am trying to build it as genalogically accurate as I can. That can be kind of difficult but the interface makes it surprisingly easy. If you aren't in my family but have any interest in genealogy at all I highly recommend you take a look at it and try it out. It is very cool.

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Someone found my dream car, a 1955 Mercedes 300sl Gullwing, in a barn. I know it sounds like a movie script but someone really did find this car in a barn. It has been sitting in there for 30 years - undriven. What the heck? Why can't I be the lucky sod who finds a car in a barn?

It seems that it will probably sell for a bunch (six figures easily) so if you want to help me get my dream car please donate via paypal. It would be a great opportunity for me to bond with my father as he could help me restore it! So come-on folks - help out a guy in love with a car.

I promise, that if I raise enough money to buy the car and actually do that I won't just let it sit in a barn and nor will I sell it. Instead I'll drive it. So please, help me out. Donate at paypal!

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I have been using the Mozilla Calendar plugin for firefox to manage appointments tasks etc for quite a while. Used in conjunction with a batch file and an online iCal web page it has been pretty easy for me to keep my family and friends up to date on events in my life.

However, as nice as that combo has been I have wanted something even cleaner. I haven't found the perfect solution yet but I think I'm getting there. Today I downloaded the latest version of Rainlender (windows only sorry) and it supports iCal files as well (iCal is the standard format of Mozilla Calendar and many other calendaring apps - it's a great standard!). Anyway, Rainlender gives me even faster access to my events because it resides on the desktop as a lightweight widget. Plus it takes care of another problem - it provides a "task list" feature. I can point Rainlender at my iCal files, denote some as read only, and I'm off and running. Then using GeoShell (my shell replacement) and a hot key sequence that fires my batch file I can instantly publish any changes to my calendar.

Pretty darn handy!

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This is a crazy story of how one man "Pressed His Luck" and won - sort of.

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If you just put your details in the comment I will update it to be formatted with the brown and flag etc..

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