Wallpaper is from the Devil

I hate wallpaper. Worse yet, I hate having to strip wallpaper off the walls. Whoever invented wallpaper was an evil, evil person inspired by Satan himself.

I must have been feeling guilty about something when my wife asked to put up wallpaper in our family room and master bedroom. That was about 11 years ago after we moved into our house. The first indication that it was a bad decision came about a year ago when we remodeled our master bedroom. Fortunately the bedroom was wallpapered on one wall with a chair rail height strip around the rest. Since we ended up doing a beadboard wainescoat and covered the big wall with beadboard paneling we ended up not having to strip absolutely everything off. That's not the case in our family room in the basement.

The family room is three walls, floor to ceiling...two different wallpapers with a border around the top and one around the middle where the two different wallpapers met. It looked fine and was an easy thing for me when it was installed - Lisa's mother was a professional wallpaper hanger in a previous life and was more than happy to install ours. The unfortunate part about having someone with professional experience install wallpaper is that it wants to stay on the wall...forever. You strip the top layer off - that's the easy layer - to reveal the satanic monster underneath. You score the walls with this obnoxious little clamshell device, spread glue dissolver all over everything and pray that it comes off cleanly. It doesn't. You then spend hours and hours gently scrapping and pealing and gooping and scrubbing. We're at a point now where we have about half of it done. Half done after approximately 12 hours of combined time trying to get rid of the stuff. If this experience doesn't catapult us into divorce, we're good for the rest of our lives.

Once we get this devilish mess off our walls we'll be painting. I enjoy painting a little bit more than removing wallpaper but I'm really looking forward to how it will turn out. I'm also looking forward to never having wallpaper in my house again. Ever.

Word of advise. Don't hang wallpaper on your walls. They'll tell you at the store that "it comes off easier, now...not like the old days." Take it from me. They are lying. They want you to experience the torture they have inflicted upon themselves over the years, to share in their torment. Don't do it. Go to a paint store. Find some great colors that go with the current trends and your personality. In a few years when you change your taste and the world has decided some other color is cool, it'll be a lot easier to update your walls. Trust me. I wouldn't wish wallpaper removal on my worst enemy, except for maybe my mother-in-law.

New Post for a New Era

The new era of change has begun for America. Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th President of the United States. So far his administration seems more balanced than I expected it would be. His words more moderate. There may be a whole bunch of Democrats who are worried that they didn't elect who they thought they did and a whole bunch of Republicans wondering why they were so scared of this guy. As an unaffiliated, self-described moderate and political pessimist I'm thinking things seem to be going pretty well...but it's early and only time will tell. There's a whole lot of stuff that needs to be cleaned up. That's not a statement against the previous administration as much as it is a statement about how the world has been thrown into chaos over the past decade. It's a very different world.

It's funny listening to some of my conservative friends who are already grousing about the amount of money spent on the inauguration. I'm pretty confidant the Republicans would most likely have spent just as much if McCain would have won the election. Personally I'm disgusted by the amount of money thrown around by everyone involved in our most recent election. Just think what good that money could have done for the AIDS orphans in Africa or fighting preventable diseases that kill children all around the world. How much food would we have been able to provide for the starving? At least our new President said he is going to help.

"To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

Amen to that. 

The new White House website declares "Change Has Come to America." I sure hope so. 

Most of all, I hope it's a change for the better.

Vail Ski Lift Naked Guy

If you haven't heard about the guy who almost fell off the Ski lift in Vail, Colorado you must be living under a rock. He was saved from physical injury by snagging his pants on the apparatus only to find himself suspended upside down exposing himself to what has now amounted to the entire world. I'm sure psychiatrists in the Rocky Mountain region are hiring private investigators to find out who this guy is. The bills for his mental rehabilitation will be huge!

850KOA, a radio station in Denver played a hilarious spoof spot about the poor chap this morning. You can listen to it by going to this link. Scroll down the page a bit to find it...when you see the picture from above, you've found it.

An Amuze-ing Post

I've been lax on the whole blog thing for the last few weeks. I have good reasons...really. 

Ok, maybe not. I took the last week and a half of the year off from work so I must have lumped blogging into the same category as. I really enjoyed my time away from the office. I didn't even check my work email once. Really. No, really – I didn't.

I had a great week off with my wife. She had to go back to work the day after Christmas so it really was only a week with her. We did a lot of relaxing. We shopped for new furniture to replace our 18 year old living room set. Did some more nothing. Had a couple of great meals with friends. Those actually deserve a paragraph or two of their own.

On December 26 we went to dinner with a couple of our closest friends, Lee and Donna. They celebrated their 24th Anniversary on December 22. Lisa and I celebrated our 21st Anniversary on January 2. December 26 seemed like a great middle date to have a dual celebration. We went to this intimate little restaurant in Palmer Lake called the Amuze Bistro. By little I mean tiny. There are four tables. Two seat four people each, and two seat two people each. We had an outstanding meal with great service and even better conversation. If you've got a special celebration coming up I would highly recommend Amuze. I would also highly recommend that you make a reservation.

The next night we were treated to an  early anniversary dinner by my parents. They head southwest to Phoenix for three months every year to get away from the Colorado winter so they weren't in town for our actual anniversary. We dined at a restaurant in Castle Rock called Uniscali Food+Wine. Uniscali's is a little larger than Amuze (I counted 10 or 12 tables) and the food is every bit as good. The service was right up there, too. It's not what I would call intimate, but I would recommend it for a great meal for a special occasion as well. We're going to take Lee and Donna on a little road trip to Uniscali's one of these days. Reservation's would be a good idea for this place, too.

The rest of our time off was spent with various family members, more searching for furniture and more relaxing. We eventually found our new furniture. We spent more than we wanted but if it lasts us another 18 years it will be another great bargain. I'll post about the new furniture once it's delivered sometime in February. In the meantime we've got a great, lovingly used sofa and a couple of arm chairs that need to find a good home. They really are still in pretty decent shape (one of the many benefits of being DINKs) so if you know someone who's looking send them my way.

On January 5th we found ourselves back at work and looking forward to what's in store for us in 2009. We've already started planning for our next vacation...most likely to Phoenix in March to visit Mom and Dad. We may have to take in a baseball game or two while we're there. It will be Spring Training after all.

As I formulate ideas for upcoming posts I would love to hear about your favorite "special occasion" restaurants - what makes them special to you?