We're about 3/4 through the kitchen and living room update, and while things haven't gone exactly as planned (or budgeted), the end is in sight.  At one point, it was a little comical how we had to go out the garage, through the backyard and through the master bedroom door to get from one side of the house to the other.  I'm sure the neighbors were close to calling 911 every time they saw someone repeatedly walkin' around the house after midnight.  Here's a couple images I thought were interesting. This first one was through a small hole in the plastic tarp covering one of the entrances to the kitchen.  Almost looks like you're seeing the kitchen with the cabinets primed through my eyeball.  Kinda creepy, actually.  BTW, that one handle on the fake drawer you see there... what a beat down it was to get that thing out because the sink drops down right behind it, and there's only about an inch and a half gap to get to the screws on the backside.  I'd like to meet the genius that thought that was good design.

The side of the refrigerator was covered with Christmas & holiday cards, and even though it was also covered with plastic, there were a couple spots where I could see some friendly faces poking through.  Here's Jen Weintraub's kiddos.

And here's Karen Beyer's little munchkins.  Don't let the plastic fool you... both Jen and Karen's kids are ridiculously cute.. the plastic tarp makes them look like they're in a movie poster for the Shining Part II, though.

Stay tuned for pictures of the final product.

It was 11:30pm... perfect time for an impromptu photo shoot.  No people around, so I grabbed a vintage camera Kylie bought for me from my friend Robin for Christmas (I'm starting a little collection), turned on a small desk lamp, propped up a small silver reflector on a chair, cranked up the ISO on my Nikon D700 to 3200, and fired away for about 5 minutes.  For any photographer-types out there who might stumble upon this and wonder, post-processing simply involved opening the images in Photochop, running Totally Rad Actions "Pool Party" & "Lux (soft)", and cropping.  Voila... instant wall art.

I'm always perplexed how camera makers settled on such odd sets of number combinations for apertures, f-stops and ISOs.  It's a small miracle anybody ever figured out how to use one of these things.  It's no wonder so many people today just flip their cameras to "A" mode for "Awesome" photos.

From the category of dang-why-didn't-I-think-of-that, the Zomm was announced at this year's CES show, and it could quite possibly have a bigger impact on my life than electricity, the automobile, or even {gasp} the internet.  It's a wireless 'leash' for your mobile phone that sounds an alarm if you get more than a certain distance away from it.  It does a few other nifty little things, too, most notably the ability to call emergency services for you (think Help! I've fallen and I can't get up, only cooler) and can be a speaker phone for incoming calls.  But I'm mainly excited about the Hey, Chachi, you realize you're leaving your phone at the [insert any random location here] again, don't you feature.  The people that invented this are my (and my wife's) hero.  Check it out here at zomm.com. Thanks to my cousin's wife, Jeanie, for telling me about this.  You may have saved my iPhone from ever being tragically discarded in a McDonald's bag ever again.  Now, if it only worked with wallets...

It's on... and we're prisoners in our own house.  We're finally getting around to redoing the living room and kitchen a bit, and for the next four days we're basically relegated to the bedrooms, Kylie's craft work room and my photography gallery room.  No TV for the next 4 days either, so now I have to find somehting to do from 12:20am to 12:45am each night.  I might even {gasp} read something.  Also essentially no kitchen functionality. It's kind of a sad day really.  I mean, I'm gonna miss all those pears in the kitchen wallpaper that have been such an eye sore blessing since I bought the house in August of '08.  Today they died a quick and hopefully painful death as the painters tore the wall paper off in about 4 minutes. Here's the living room after day 1:  Painted wood paneling and picture-frame moulding removed so I can put larger photography collections up.  Walls still to be painted (obviously).  Fireplace to be painted.  Mantle to be replaced or sanded adn stained darker.  Updated ceiling fan to eventually replace the current gold one. Plasma TV (hopefully) to be mounted on the wall. Ceiling and beams to be painted.

Here's the kitchen after day 1.  Wall paper gone.  Skip trial texture added to wall.  Cabinets and walls still yet to be painted (cabinets going darker with new hardware).  Hideous ceiling fan still present for now (searching for replacement).  New appliances (microwave, oven and gas cooktop) get installed next week.  New tile backsplash going in, too.

I've gotten to be quite the buddy with Morris down at the Benjamin Moore Paint store.  Current running total:  3 trips, 12 paint tester samples purchased, and 1 new friend.Kylie thinks it's funny (or at least she's trying to laugh) that we're one day into the transformation and I'm still painting samples to finalize the colors.

My office/gallery room has been transformed in to a jungle gym/obstacel course for teh week, too.  Just a tad cluttered as the painters moved a bunch of stuff in there while they do their thing this week.

In less than 9 hours I'll be under the laser gettin' some new eyes (and a dose of Valium - wohoo!).  So to you, glasses and contacts, I'm kicking you to the curb.  I thank you for your years of service, and I especially thank you, glasses, for making me look a little smarter in recent years than I actually am, but you've both been a pain in my you-know-what for the last time.  Well, except you, glasses... apparently I'll still need you a few years down the road to read regardless of whether I have LASIK done or not.  Not cool, but for now... be gone! I started wearing glasses in 7th grade, and I can still remember the day I went to the eye doctor after telling my parents I was having a hard time reading the chalk board in class (yes, back when chalk boards were still used), and he told me to look out the window as he slipped a pair of glasses in front of my eyes.  I was like, Wooaaaa!  Does everyone see like this??  I felt cheated like I'd been missing out on this Utopian visual splendor that all my friends had been enjoying without telling me.  Funny how I still remember that like it was yesterday. Then I got contacts in 9th grade, and I thought I was the coolest thing since, well, contacts.  Let's face it, while very helpful, the glasses - combined with my Italian unibrow and Chachi center-parted fluffy haircut - weren't doing much for the ladies.  I remember just as distinctly my first day wearing contacts because I had a freshman basketball game that day, and I'd never shot so many air balls in my life.  Prior to that day, I had not been wearing my glasses to play basketball; I'd just apparently adjusted pretty well to playing with nearsightedness.  Oddly enough, the first time I played wearing contacts, being able to actually clearly see completely messed with my jump shot... Air Baaallllll!  Also not cool with the ladies.  But things eventually got better over the next couple weeks. Fast forward to 2009.  I really haven't minded wearing contacts for al these years until last year... at least not enough to make me feel like I wanted to pay for LASIK.  But for some reason, last year my contacts really started to irritating my eyes more.  Perhaps staying up 'til 2am most nights working on a computer was part of that equation, but still.  I got tired of watery eyes, contacts fogging over at night, and my nose running because my contacts were giving me problems.  And then Kylie had LASIK done last year, and I thought, If Kylie - who utterly hates the idea of needles and practically runs from the sight of blood - can do this, SURELY it's not a big deal.  So, tomorrow morning is the big day. To all my awesome clients, if on the off chance something goes terribly wrong and I go blind, we may have to reschedule your 2010 sessions.  Otherwise, see you [more clearly] soon.