A few weeks ago I noticed a wet spot on the ceiling below my bathroom toilet. It turned out that I was able to lift the toilet right off the floor because the bolts didn’t have any washers! The wax ring was almost nonexistent as well, which must have been causing a slow drip. It could have been much worse. So I figured I might as well tear up original linoleum and the cheap stick on tiles I put down five years ago. Here’s how those layers looked.
With the trim removed and old flooring pulled out, I noticed the subfloor was pretty rotted from old leaks of some kind. Also check out the old wallpaper I found under the trim!
I removed a layer of subfloor and replaced it with new plywood. Recently when cleaning out a closet I found nearly a full box of flooring Dad and I installed in the kitchen back in 2013. The whole master bathroom and closet need a major remodel so I figured I might as well use this to buy time. After a bit of maths I thought I had exactly enough for this little area. I couldn’t afford to make any cutting or measuring mistakes and it worked out. I cleaned and refreshed stain on the trim and gave the register fresh coats of primer and white paint.
I also bought a LED light strip that can be toggled between activation manually by a button or automatically by motion. It’s the perfect solution for trips in the middle of the night.
Last month, during an Automattic trip to Cancún, I took a guided tour of Tulum.
Tulum is the site of a pre-Columbian Mayan walled city which served as a major port for Coba, in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The ruins are situated on 12-meter-tall (39 ft) cliffs along the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea. Tulum was one of the last cities built and inhabited by the Maya; it was at its height between the 13th and 15th centuries and managed to survive about 70 years after the Spanish began occupying Mexico. By the end of the 16th century, the site was abandoned. One of the best-preserved coastal Maya sites, Tulum is today a popular site for tourists.
I usually grab Monsters cereal in the fall and Sam’s Club had this new variety pack. I’d never heard of Frute Brute and apparently this is the first year it’s been released in a long time. It’s yummy!
The range we put in last year tripped the breaker whenever we ran the quick boil burner and oven together. I checked the manual and the unit runs best off a 50 amp breaker, so I finally got around to replacing the 40 amp one along with 6 gauge wire to replace the 8 gauge.
After the living room and kitchen, the plan was to run the same flooring through the hallways. When we bought the flooring for the kitchen we get enough, so it had been piled up in my office since November. Here’s the old flooring my dad and I had installed in 2013.
Needed a bit of a break after the kitchen project, so after a few weeks we finally got started. I removed all of the trim and some doors that were in the way.
Of course, the project grew from there. When we removed the double doors from the hobby room it really brightened up the space.
Since we never close those doors we decided not to put them back up and with the hallways having wallpaper I’d have to do something with the door jamb. With the closets empty we noticed how bad the walls were, so it was a good time to refresh the paint. The shelving in the broom closet was terrible so we’d install all new adjustable shelves. My DIY automated lighting in there had failed, so I found a LED strip with motion sensor on Amazon for about $25 that works great. Of course I had to run a new electrical line up from the basement and install an outlet. I had also wanted a place to plug in the Ryobi 40v batteries used for the snow blower and lawn mower, so it worked out.
It was fun trying to figure out how to piece flooring around the stairs.
On Wednesday I saw a tweet from Mountain Dew about a new flavor I hadn’t heard of. It’s a flavor which was released to stores in 2010 but hadn’t been made in over a decade. It was only available through The Dew Store. It seemed like people had loved it, so I ordered a 6 pack of 16 ounce cans, which ran about $20 after shipping.
Dew with a Blast of Tropical Punch
I have a head cold this weekend so I wanted to drink a couple of cans before writing my review. This is easily one of the best flavors I’ve had, maybe only second (other than the original) to White Out. I’m glad I have four more cans to enjoy, but I don’t understand why they don’t keep some of these fan favorites around full-time.
When the first episode of “The Book of Boba Fett” came out on December 29th I asked Brandi if she wanted to watch it. I wasn’t sure because I’d mentioned the idea of watching the nine Star Wars movies in order (something I’ve been wanting to do) several times and she never showed enough interest for us to get started. She enjoyed the episode, so I said we needed to watch “The Mandalorian” and as soon as “The Child” made his appearance she was hooked. We cruised through Mando’s two seasons in about ten days and then continued watching the Boba Fett episodes as they were released each week.
Somewhere during Boba Fett’s running we started our journey of the nine movies. I created a list, as I do. The list expanded to add “Solo” and “Rogue One”. Then a friend suggested watching some of the animated series, which would fill in a lot of gaps. That let to finding the Disney+ playlists of essential “Clone Wars” episodes and essential Ahsoka Tano episodes. I found a short list of essential Rebels episodes. We added some other Clone Wars episodes based on recommendations by another friend. “The Bad Batch” and “Resistance” were placed in the timeline.
Adjustments to the timeline were made as we went so I could share it when were were done. It’s not perfect by any means, especially since it’s impossible to eliminate all overlapping. If you look online there are countless debates about what “essential” episodes should be selected from the various animated series, but we didn’t want to invest the time to watch all seven seasons of Clone Wars and four seasons of Rebels. Feel free to take this list and make it your own. Leave suggestions in the comments for the next person’s benefits.
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
The Clone Wars (movie)
The Clone Wars
S1 (1, 5, 19)
S2 (5-8, 11-14)
S3 (2, 22)
S4 (14, 21-22)
S5 (6, 1, 14-20)
S7 (1-4, 7-10)
Revenge of the Sith
Clone Wars S7 (11-12)
The Bad Batch
Solo
Rebels
S1 (10, 15)
S2 (1-3, 18, 21-22)
S3 (15-16, 20)
S4 (1-2, 13, 15)
Rogue One
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
The Mandalorian
The Book of Boba Fett
Resistance S1 (1-2, 10-11, 19-21)
The Force Awakens
The Last Jedi
Resistance S2 (3, 5, 7, 8, 17-19)
The Rise of Skywalker
It took us four months to watch everything. In terms of the animated series, Clone Wars and Bad Batch are excellent, with CW providing a lot of extra details to the Star Wars universe. Rebels wasn’t very good but some of the episodes provided valuable stories. Resistance was pretty good, but didn’t give much extra information to tie in with the movies.
We really enjoyed the whole adventure and watching things in order helped a lot. It was great having someone as excited as I was along for the ride because we’d often pause to discuss something or ask a backstory question. Each of us would remember different things and have different questions, which really added to the experience.
