the ocean

the ocean
Paraparaumu beach

The comings and goings of a hard working kiwi whose just moved home

March 20, 2010

Paper jams


My boss today gave me a copy of the funnies . I guess she understands how frustrating paper jams can be.
its just as well we have 2 printers.
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March 16, 2010

The Stairs

last week I had started sanding the stairs again. well i may have even started them about Christmas, but i finished them last week. I never seem to know how much sanding is good enough, does it need to be perfect ? whats OK and whats not- is the constant question. So lets define this, I finished sanding the stairs to my satisfaction, and then got some paint.
This is called burnt almond, i decided on flat so now one will slip.

Without primmer i thought i would try the new paint out that doesn't need primer from Behr. so here we have no primmer on really old sanded wood.
Now thinking about this i thought I would paint every second stair so i could get back upstairs, but while i was painting I figured out that this stuff has a really fast drying time. it was touch dry in about 10 minutes, no exaggeration, which was way cool. The following night I did the second coat, and just painted every step, but the time i was done their was only one stop that i couldn't stand on and came back up stairs.
so steps are done, the vinyl arrived on Thursday, or the other 1/2 of it.
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March 14, 2010

Dishwashers

this was the week of the dish washer.
On Sunday it decided to not drain, OK, so the logical thing is there is just some junk blocking somewhere. Nope it wasn't that. i emptied it thought to try again, no such luck the blades weren't turning to swish the water, but it did fill up again. so I came to the conclusion that the pump had gone out. Now this dish washer was kinda old when i moved in here, so now its 5 years older than that.
It took forever during the week to got hold of anyone at Maytag to find out just how old it was . a time zone thing on to the east coast. My dish washer was 12 years old. Ummm not going to fix the pump , I will just get a new one. so did some fast shopping online, went cruising around Home depot, Lowes and Sears, to see what was in stock, My roommates didn't care how long it took me to get a dishwasher , but I do. I am way more attached to the dishwasher than I thought.
Lowes won, they had a dish washer in my price range, that was 10 % off and in stock, and they delivered and took the old one away.

This morning it arrived, My roommate Faith said she knew what she was doing, so i just handed her the tools as she needed them and hopefully learnt as she went along. yes she knew what she was doing. the dish washer is all installed in about 1 1/2 hours, and it is running its first cycle.
so the one new appliance for the house has been taken care of. Its black and all shiny and new.
for now its back to the other house projects.

March 5, 2010

Magnolia Plantation

one of the other things that i got to do, was to visit Magnolia plantation, this is a rice plantation almost in the city limits of Charleston. here they have a very fine house, a basement full of a gift shop and 500 acres of what was rice fields. Slaves built it from the swamps, low- laying areas of the Ashley river. today it would take someone with a engineering degree to build it all and get the water flowing as it 's supposed to.
The house was well restored and in good shape. there were daffodils out in the garden, and yes i photographed them.


In the holding ponds here they had some visitors, so these ponds are not for swimming in. i am not sure if the little turtle in front stayed to long. but i think he was rather game to stay there.
it was a beautiful day so when i was done looking around I sat in the sun and read my book for an hour, 68 degrees.
the magnolia trees were all covered in lot of Spanish moss. which made for striking looking trees for the middle of winter. One of the things that I noticed was that it was very dry, the people that i went to see and the neighbourhoods that i drove through, all the lawns were brown, apparently the grass dies when it gets too cold. i tried not to laugh when i heard that.

I spent an evening dancing on the Saturday, i found the Ballroom dance club of Charleston , they were having a west coast swing class where there were twice as many woman as men. so i just sat and watched. I will never complain again as to when we have on 2 extra woman. for the dance i just did my usual social thing and got up and danced. it was a dam wonderful day.