Manly duties.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the crew from the home improvement show showed up at my door.

They wanted a glimplse of my skills.

They wanted to see my tools.

I’m a man. I can build things. I can say things like “we’re gonna have to shim that” and “pass me that auger bit”.

Lyn and I-well mostly Lyn- had decided our bathroom was no longer suitable for our needs. In typical man fashion, I suggested that we turn it into a room to store our guns and booze, and recommended that we use the great outdoors for our toiletry needs, but this apparently was not what she had in mind. To me it was a no brainer, but anyway…

It was decided that we (read: I) would re-do the bathroom. Fixtures were selected, colours we carefully weighed and I made about 17 more trips to the hardware store than were really nessecary, but, being a man, (we don’t make lists, lists are for the grocery) I can’t be expected to remember everything, can I? Especially not with all this ‘man knowledge’ rolling around in my head.

Well, work commenced and actually went smoother than expected. Our two weekend timeline was breeched only slightly (The whole thing done in just under a month and a half! Amazing!), and I learned what I think can be considered one of the most important things that any do-it-yourselfer should know. Are you ready? Do you think you can handle it? Well here is my big secret and the key to all do-it-youself projects: Caulk can fix or hide almost anything. It’s true. Fill gaps, hide nicks, seal holes, correct bad miter joints-it does it all…and it’s paintable! Got a bad piece of bent chair rail going against a wall with a slight dish? Caulk that gap! Vanity not quite square to the base? Caulk that gap! Space between your ceramic tiles and the baseboards? Damn right! CAULK THAT GAP! Outstanding. Now remember, you heard it here…this is my discovery and I want credit. Consequently, Caulk’s close cousin, Liquid Nails, is almost as indispensible, especially since Caulk itself is a lousy adhesive. Who needs nails and screws? Just glop all kinds of liquid nails everywhere and you’re set. You can even reposition the workpiece, but only for a few minutes mind you, or you’ll really make a mess. (But you might be able to hide the mess with Caulk.)

As I say, in light of my new revelation, it was no surprise that somehow word got out (North, the damn dog probably talked. He’s a sucker for hostess cakes) and the crew from that ‘home-improvement-show-that-makes-it-look-easy-but-it’s-really-not’ showed up and said they were doing a show on viewer tips and they wanted to talk to me about my caulk work.

“It’s really nothing,” I said, downplaying my obvious joy at being featured as a major player in such a manly arena as the home improvement area. “All I really did was utilize the natural elasticity of the caulk and it’s forgiving nature to allow it be applied to a variety of challenging joinery situations.” I was trying my best to sound way smarter than I actually am. “By experimenting with various compositons, bead sizes and troweling techniques, I was able to achive nearly seamless transitions in all the varied instances where I used the Caulk as an multi-material joining agent. Take for example this compound miter joint here,” as I pointed to some chair railing joined at a right angle with what seemed to be a glob of play dough, “initially there was a 3/8″ gap here, but you’d never know it looking at it now!”

“Uh, um, that’s really interesting Mr. Fackenthall, but that’s not quite what we were looking for,” the golf-shirted host replied.

“Oh, ok, well, you can see over here is where I used some caulk to hold up this soap holder because I couldn’t find a stud in the wall to screw it to!” That ought to really wow ’em, I thought.

“Well, um, it seems there’s been a misunderstanding.” The host sputtered. “See, when we spoke to your wife on the phone we informed her that we were doing a show on ‘common home improvement screw ups and how to avoid them’ and that’s what were here for. See, what we really want to know is how in the hell you managed to get so much dog hair in all your caulk. I mean, it’s obvious you have a dog and that would allow for a few errant hairs, but looking at the sheer quantity of hair here, it would appear that you were throwing fistfulls of the stuff around the room as you were caulking. What we really want to know is how you managed to accomplish that-so that we can demonstrate exactly what NOT to do for the viewers at home.”

They didn’t stay long after that. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I told them their show sucked or the fact that I made fun of Mr. Host Guy’s pique golf shirt. Either way, they left without getting my secret. I made sure of that.

To be completely honest, I don’t know how all those dog hairs got in there, but in the process of trying to decide how to remedy the situation, I stumbled upon another realization. Paint. Paint can fix or hide almost anything as well! Yes. Paint became my new friend, I just painted right over my paintable caulk to hide all those dog hairs. And this time, to avoid problems, I had my wrestling match with the dog OUTSIDE the bathroom while the paint dried. Screw ups, my ass….those guys don’t know nothing.

For caulking tips…drop me an email.

Travel time.

Well, Lyn and I are gearing up to make a big trip south so that the Bean can see Great Grandma and Great Grandpa and Grandma and Grandpa Fackenthall. That’s alot of grands. It would be to an untruth to say that we are not apprehensive about the trip, as it will be the Bean’s first airplane ride, and we’re not breaking her in easy with a little short hop either. Check back here to see how it turns out. Maybe we’ll have left her there when we came back-who knows.

I myself have been occupying my time with work. When I’m not at work, I’m working, and when I’m not working, I try and do a little work. If I do end up with a little free time, I usually try and get a some work done. It’s not so bad, only I’m not always so much fun to be around. Actually most of the work I have been doing was so that I could take this vacation and not fall behind because there is no one else to do my work while I am gone. Basically it will go something like this:

1. I will work my ass off banging my head against the wall to get ahead of schedule to go on vacation, but with no one to help me at work, I won’t be able to, and instead, will only get a little bit ahead of schedule before I go.

2. I will leave for vacation. Somewhere in the middle of my vacation, the ‘ahead of schedule’ portion of my work will expire, and then I will be spiraling, from that moment on, uncontrolably into what we all know as ‘behind schedule’. When that moment is, I cannot be sure, but I will know it when it happens because I will sense a great disturbance in ‘the force’. It may well also coincide with a phone call from my boss to inform me that, not only has the shit hit the fan, but it knocked the fan clean across the room. Those of you who work with me know how bad an idea it is to be plugging fans or any other heating or cooling devices in anyway.

3. Every minute of every day, I will continue to get furhter ‘behind schedule’ as I will not be in the office and will be unable to do any work. If you could see me at this point, testaments to my frustration will probably include pacing, swearing, the debate whether or not to take up smoking, and as a final act of indignity, the inevitable banging of my head against a wall repeatedly.

4. I will return from vacation, whereupon I will need to work late and on weekends in order to ‘catch up’and will catch hell from the wife (and rightly so) for not being around, thus incurring stress and mental anguish that will march over and plunder any remnants of the relaxation I had gained from being on said ‘vacation’.

5. The thing is, I will never really be able to ‘catch up’ as this is an insurmountable task, which explains why I could not get ‘ahead’ enough to begin with. Here we see the banging of one’s head against the wall again, so in reality,…it will be like I never left.

Lyn, in an effort to deal with the fact that she is living with a lunatic workaholic, has been venting stress taking yoga classes, visiting craft shows, and killing spiders. I’m not sure if all or any of these are clinically accepted methods, but they do seem to work, and, obviously, we have less spiders around, which in her mind, makes all the difference in the world.

Well, we hope this finds all of you well, in light of all the madness going on in the world today. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m going off to live in a cave somewhere.

Drool rules.

Well hello there. Welcome to my lair on the web. I’m Julia Fackenthall, daughter of Kent and Lyn. Dad calls me ‘Bean’, short for Jellybean. I sure hope he doesn’t keep that up when I have my friends over. They weren’t going to give me a web page at first, saying that I would have a problem with spelling the big words, but if you’ve been following my dad’s web page pursuits over the years, you’ll realize he’s no Miriam Webster either. Once I pointed this out, their defenses were penetrated and I won. It might have also had something to do with the screaming and hollering I did.

Needless to say, here I am. I’m pushing 4 months old now, and let me tell you, I’ve seen some things in my day. I’ll tell you one thing, nobody looks right at 3 in the morning.

These days I spend most of my time sleeping. Or eating. Or hollering to be put to sleep or eat. Actually I spend most of my time looking around, just staring at stuff. Mom and Dad got me some toys, a set of chewable keys (as if keys are really chewable, duh), a squishy ‘8’ shaped thing I can chew on, some Winnie the Pooh (whoever he is) stuffed animals that taste pretty good, and some plastic linking fish that I’m not sure will survive if they keep them out of water much longer. They also got me this sort of kicker thing which is pretty cool, it spins and makes noise and stuff when I look at it, only problem is, when I start to doze off and bump the thing, it scares the daylights out of me. I try to tell them this and they just ask me why I’m hollering. I’m like, I am hollering cause the thing freaked me out! I’d swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think all they heard was holler holler holler.

Mom and Dad are always trying to get me to look into this little grey box and make happy faces but it’s really pretty boring, so I usually just look bored or holler until they put it away and then I get happy again. They also seem to always get the box out whenever they give me a ‘bath’ which I really hate, ’cause I’m all naked and stuff and I’ve really put on the weight in the past few months… I mean the nurse was here the other day to weigh me and I checked in at 13 pounds for crying out loud! I should try some Tai-Bo.

You should have seen Mom freak out the other day. She had just given me one of them ‘bath’ things and had me sitting on my belly on the table. As usual, the stupid grey box was out. I picked myself up on my two arms and she just about lost it. I was only trying to see out the window over the dog’s huge fat head, and you’d think I was performing miracles or something. Needless to say, I’ve got them pegged. Whenever I want to impress them now, all I do is lift my head and smille or make a noise and they freak. They are really pretty easily entertained, plus it fun to watch them scramble for the little box.

They are also very excited now because they have started me on ‘solid food’. I don’t see what’s so solid about this mush, but apparently this is what I have to look forward to. I dunno, though, I see the dumb brown dog eating some stuff that’s crunchy and I’m thinking as soon as I figure out how to move around a bit, I’ll have to help myself to some of that.

Well, I guess that’s about all for now. I don’t have much else to report and there’s some thunder brewing in my pants, so I think it’s time that I draw some attention to myself now…..HEY THESE SHORTS ARE GETTING WET!….That usually works. Check out the pictures of me contained on this page. I don’t really feel that they accurately convey the dynamic that I was trying to acheive at the time, but Mom and Dad think they are ‘cute’. Ugh. My genius is already misunderstood, and at such a young age. Bye.