post, post

I don't know if all our readers know this, (haha, what readers? *sigh*), but I remodel kitchens for a living. It's challenging and engaging work and I love it. A kitchen, depending on the size and complexity of the remodel, takes roughly 2-6 weeks from start to finish. So, because these projects take such a short amount of time and I'm also jumping around to several jobs going on at the same time, I meet a lot of different people. Keep in mind that for the most part while we are working on their kitchens the clients are living in the house. This is really interesting. How often do you get to go into a stranger's house and observe how they live? People are amazingly quirky and I end up with a lot of interesting stories and funny observations. So, I thought I'd share a couple with you.

the first one is a conundrum. My coworker Aaron and I were working in a house. We'd moved the fridge to the living room and were getting ready to install the cabinets. I had a water bottle that I wanted to keep cold so I went to put it in the fridge. When I opened it up I noticed a large bucket of kentucky fried chicken and a big bag of food from A&W. The homeowners don't come home for lunch and we hadn't seen them in the morning so they had must have bought it the night before. So, my question is who buys fast food for a later meal. Fried food is like crack cocaine. You buy it when you want it. You don't save it for later. Who likes soggy chicken? Anyway, I thought it was funny. The next day it was still untouched. But the day after that a little of it was gone. Then over the next few days it disappeared. How can 3 day old fried chicken be good? If any of you out there have done this or know of some reason why they might have stored KFC for a later date let me know.

This next story I actually wasn't there for but it was told to me. A couple of my coworkers showed up to a house to start a kitchen. These homeowners were very much into trophy hunting. Their living room was covered with the mounted heads of their conquests. They had local game and also a few heads from hunting trips they had made to Africa. Now the funny thing about this was that they lived in just a small basic, single story, ranch style house. It wasn't like they had a trophy room or something. The heads were everywhere. The funniest thing, however, was one head in particular. One of the kills was an african game animal. It was similar to an impala but had horns that were like 4 or 5 feet long. So, to avoid having to mounting it at knee height they had cut a hole in their ceiling and shoved the head up to the height of the others.



I've got a couple more. But I'll save those for another date.

-kaz

Wikipedia Degrees of Separation

So you've heard of the Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation? Well I recently heard about the wikipedia degrees of separation.

http://tools.wikimedia.de/sixdeg/index.jsp

You can check out the degrees of separation (via wikipedia references) through the link above. For instance "Ask a Ninja" and "The Regence Group" (which is where I work) is only separated by four degrees.

Kind of nerdy...but kind of fun too.

Heatwave

Ok that picture from Shelley's entry looks like she is tackling me and I am going down like a sack of potatoes. This is a lie! Well kind of. Shelley does jump on my back out of the blue a lot. She's like a ninja. All you hear is the pitter patter of tiny sandals and then WAM!. Sometimes when I get jumped she won't get off so I try to do a headstand to dislodge her. This usually works. But not always. So this picture is taken in mid headstand. So there's my rebuttal. I just felt it needed to be said.

Anyway, it is frickin hot here. There is a heatwave moving through the northwest. It got to Idaho last week Tuesday. It was 107˚ on Friday. This upcoming week looks like it's going to be in the triple digits as well. Plus there hasn't really been much rain. So it's as dry now as it usually is in August which is the month when most of the fires occur. Needless to say there are fires popping up all over the place. A lot of them caused by fireworks.

Alex and Emily were up for a few days over the 4th. It was really fun. WE don't get too many visitors from out of town so it's always fun to have some friends in town. Plus Shelley never wants to see any of the movies I want to see so it's nice to have someone to go to the movies with. We ended up seeing Transformers which was hilarious. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes not but I thought it was pretty funny. Also I think Michael Bay has some sort of fetish for female supermodel savants. You'll see what I mean if you watch the movie. We also went up to Bogus Basin and played the frisbee golf course there which is really difficult. The terrain is kind of rough. So we were kinda tired after that.

Monday we packed up the grill and had turkey burgers out at Lucky Peak park. Lucky Peak Dam dams up the Boise River and so it's a popular boating and fishing locale. THere is also a nice little beach and park. On the 4th we checked out the Discovery
Center. That was really cool. I haven't been to a hands on science museum for a long time. I forgot how fun they are. Alex has a lot of pictures from there. I think Shelley linked to them in her post. I bought Alex's B-day present at the museum: an Albert Einstein action figure (not a doll but an action figure), and a growing brain - just add water!. He's supposed to document the brain as it grows in pictures so that should be cool. It starts out the size of an egg and grows to the size of an actual brain. I doubt Shelley would be crazy about having one in the house so I'm living out my fascination vicariously through Alex. The last night of the visit was the 4th. We walked over to Ann Morrison Park to see the fireworks and played a little frisbee.


----------------------------------->
ok so this is a draft I started a while ago and then we had some internet problems so I never really finished it. I would finish it now but I just don't feel like it. so I'm publishing it as is.

Here's some follow-up though because I kind of left it hanging. THe fireworks show was awesome. I wanted to get as close as possible to the fireworks and we ended up sitting within a few hundred yards. I like loud bangs. The show turned out great. This year they had a lot of corporate sponsorship and it showed. After the fireworks we went to Papa Joe's. It's a little restaurant at the entrance to the park that we go to a lot. It's a block away from our apartment. THey have really great food and a nice outdoor sitting area. Plus, it's pretty cheap. Anyway, they stayed open late to accommodate the crowds leaving the park. We each had a little pizza and then went back to the apartment.

The next day Alex and EMily took off in the early morning and Shelley and I went to work.


ok, that's all of that post.

Shelley is an ass kicking machine!

That's right...he went down easy!

Alex and Emily were here in Boise for July 4th. We saw the fireworks show here and it was AWESOME!!! Apparently it hasn't been very good in past years, so they got a bunch of corporate sponsors to sink a lot of money into it this year...and it showed.

Here's a link to some 4th of July pictures: http://unbreadphotos.blogspot.com/2007/07/boise.html

Also, Kaz and I spent a few days in Vancouver a week ago. It was a good time...I think Kaz plans to post something about the trip later on. And despite what JoAnna may believe, we didn't eat at McDonalds at all (in fact, I don't even remember the last time I've been to a McDonalds).

Here's a link to our Vancouver pictures: http://s129.photobucket.com/albums/p215/omnidex/Vancouver%20trip/

On a final note, it's been like 100 degrees now for about a week...and there's no end in sight. Hence, I'm indoors this evening, writing this post.

Cheers!