We're back from San Francisco, back to work and back to fixing up the house. The visit to the west coast wasn't exactly the restful respite I thought it would be. The folks had us running around the whole time when all we really wanted to do was relax and revel in not having to sand or paint anything for a week. Alas, it was not to be. My dad and his wife were decidedly manic the whole time, cooking and puttering around and basically leaving no moment uncommented for the duration. I know most of this was because they were so excited to have us visit, not to mention the enormous Thanksgiving dinner they hosted for us and a bunch of other people. But man, I could have used a couple of days off in there somewhere! Jeannie was reading an article about meth and read off the symptoms of a meth-head and I'll be damned if my folks weren't displaying a majority of the symptoms! They do work in the pharmaceutical industry …

The only day we were really left to our own devices turned out to be the day we went into San Francisco for the day. Once there, we started trudging all over the city and didn't stop for 6 hours. We stuck to the Lower Haight, Fillmore, the Castro, the Mission, Soma, and some unnamed areas along the way. I'm happy to report there are still some genuinely seedy spots in this tiny town. We ran into a cast of characters on Mission Street just below the highway that seemed to be auditioning for roles in New Jack City 2. We had planned to hang late into the night, but by 7 we were too tired and headed back to the Walnut Creek BART station. Consequently, I'm exhausted and trying to get over a rhinovirus I picked up in the East Bay. Even though I ostensibly had someone covering for me while I was out, I somehow have tons of crap to get through to pick up the slack. And that molding isn't painting itself, either. Ugh it's good to be home.

Get to know my new neighborhood by examining remnants of its history. Kevin Walsh's Forgotten New York site has been on my bookmark list since I moved here. It's a testament to his range that he has several articles about the non-trendy parts of Bushwick that I now call home. Turns out my corner displays one of the oldest wall ads in the whole city! Actually, when I go home tonight I'm gonna have to look for this, cuz honestly I never noticed it before. Hey, I'm new, cut me some slack.

Other Good bits:

• A Trip Across Myrtle & Knickerbocker
• Forgotten Bushwick
• Impressive Building at Gates J stop Used to be RKO Theater
• Following Fulton from my old neighborhood to my new one (sort of)
• History of the Franklin Shuttle (not in Bushwick but I always wanted to know its history)

before

My sanding arm is all wore out. We were trying to figure out why we thought painting was 'fun' and realized it was mostly due to the contrast of the horrors of the sanding and surface preparation that comes before the painting. Still, painting is somewhat satisfying as it continues to cover up the annoying orange paint that covers ever foot of molding in the house. We had thought we'd strip the paint down to the actual wood, but in most cases the layers of paint so plentiful, the time involved so enormous, we decided to do what countless previous generations in this house chose to do: paint over it. I figure, once we win the lottery we'll have enough dough to really fix things up, but for the time being we're just gonna paint everything white until we can think of something better to do.

Here's a fun thing to do on a Saturday night: try to reassemble an old doorknob set on your back door in partial darkness while a gang war goes onone street over. Oaky, not a gang war, but there was a "disagreement." For reasons still unknown to me, I could not get the damn latch to separate from the exterior doorknob. Across the back yards, a bunch of guys were having some stupid argument that went on for a loooong time. Eventually it died down, and the crowd seemed to disappear. A few minutes later, somebody fired a gun six times. All the while of course, I'm still out back, trying to get the friggin doorknob to work. My theory is that the most aggrieved party in the argument went home for his gat, and when he came back to an empty street he wanted the neighbors to have the necessary closure, thus the dramatic gunshots that ended the evening. The epilogue: I finally pried the latch out, completely destroying it in the process. But we didn't get shot, which kind of puts home improvements into perspective.

after