Get a Grip... O'Saurus!

I am in a decidedly silly frame of mind today, hence this entry's title. I will not, in fact, be talking about an Irish lizardman responsible for the set up, adjustment and maintenance of production equipment on a movie set. There is a new dinosaur in town and he goes by the name of Gryposaurus monumentensis. This approximately 30-foot long duck-billed herbivore appears to have carried quite a substantial head, leading the paleontologists to suggest that this dinosaur would have been very massively built, the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of duck-billed dinosaurs."

He will not, however, be back.

Unless.... If we can find some of his blood trapped in amber... Get me Michael Crichton on the phone, stat.



Gryposaurus means “hook-beaked lizard”, while monumentensis refers to where it was found, in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument of Utah. It lived in the Late Cretacious, which just wasn't as fashionable as the Early Cretacious, which really made a splash with its flowering plants and leafy trees. The Late Cretaciousites are really just boorish nouveau rich.

I should also point out that the initial find was made by group from the Alf Museum of Claremont, California. Wow. Some people are really serious about their alien puppet based comedy. Is that located near the Gordon Shumway Highway? Near the town of Melmac? Seriously I can make these Alf references all day, only I got to stop and get a bite of cat to eat. Hah! I could have written for Alf. Of course that doesn't mean much, as I believe a chimpanzee wrote most of season three.

And speaking of chimpanzees, they are the only primate still unselected in my hot, hot latest poll on what kind of non-human primate you would be. Right now we have a 7-way tie, making this the most exciting contest since "Be Xena, Warrior Princess, For A Day." Won't you be the one to break the tie and put the Titis over the top?



And speaking of Titis over the top... Hmmm. I can't think of a family friendly transition here, so maybe we should just move on. As is my wont, I have slipped behind once again on my schedule of house updates. So let me start with the doors and windows to the outside. Most of these were Milgard, which is a brand of windows and not one of the planes of existence found in Norse cosmology. We got two sliding doors, this one off the den and another off the future bedroom, which you can see in the next frame. The handles on these sliding doors are these big clunky, black plastic doodads that feel real nice in the hand and look god awful. We are presently planning on replacing them with something slick, modern and undoubtedly awkward to use. Outside you can see the side of the addition, which actually slants away from you. You can also see some scaffolding which will be discussed further in the next blog update, which hopefully will not take another three weeks to get to.



So here is the window and door off the master bedroom. This is actually the "loft area" where the ceiling goes up some 20 feet and should get a lot of light from above as well. In our original conception, this door was going to be a French door. Then my architect became obsessed with large squares and rectangles that were the combination of two squares (i.e. the ratio of the sides is 2 to 1). So she changed to another slider. And didn't tell us. Now to be fair, we didn't ask either. Several areas of the project became a bit too much to keep track of and we let the architect or contractor take over. This was one where we don't think we quite got it right, but were not quite so offended we were going to throw away an entire door and have it re-installed. Unfortunately we have lost our giant money making machine. If you see it, please let us know, as we need it for the final stages of the project.



Here we are upstairs with the loft windows. That one on the left is the biggest one in the house, and actually required a specially ordered, non-Milgard window. So if Vikings invade and ransack my house, I think we know which window they are coming through.



Here we have the loft skylight. If you look closely you can see a tiny metal loop at the base of the metal frame that holds the skylight in place. Using a stick with a hook on the end, you can reach up and turn the loop which opens and closes the skylight. Turns out that the stick is about 4 inches too short for Candice to use it to open the skylight while standing directly below it. I said use a chair, she said we should get a longer stick. We compromised with her growing 4 more inches. Marriage is all about compromise.



Here is the skylight, loft, and windows taken from the far corner of the loft. You may notice how smooth and white the walls look, especially compared to what they looked like in the last update. They are white because I have been priming the walls for weeks now. For the paint-impaired, a new, never-before-painted surface requires a starter coat of paint, known as primer. Primer is good for sealing walls and wood and making them a good surface for the later, high quality paint to stick to. I had a great deal of help with a big hunk of the priming, when a gang of my friends descended on the house for my birthday. Yes, I spent my birthday party painting my house. And it was awesome. Or at least inexpensive, which is a major factor nowadays (Seriously, if you have seen any sort of money making machine, please drop me a line).



Here is what the walls looked like in my future bedroom-to-be before the priming, but after the drywall has been taped and plastered. The plastering process is where the big mess comes in. The standard procedure is to nail the drywall to the wooden house frame. Then tape all the gaps with a special drywall tape. Then slather plaster everywhere there is any sort of gap or bump or line or divet. Then sand the plaster down to a flat surface. This last part produces A LOT of plaster dust. I feel like we have been sweeping and vacuuming and sponging up the stuff for weeks (because we have).



Here is the same area of the bedroom after the priming. And of course with a giant ladder standing in the middle. The ceiling you see is the very one my father painted at the sacrifice of his only back. Let me also shout out to my mom, Brundy, Glaplan, VG, the J-kens, Big Bob and little Angie, and of course my lovely bride. We primed the crap out of the house that day, in a mere 4 hours, too.

While sometimes it seems like the house remodel is consuming my life. I regularly get reminded that isn't true. My baby twins are consuming my life, and they don't let you forget it. The dynamic duo is up to all sorts of tricks, the main one being the beginning stages of walking. Kayla is now crossing rooms and Rylie is ramping up quickly (4-5 steps now) to follow. I don't know how we are going to contain them once they start running. I really don't.

Big stretches of industrial strength glue paper?

Maybe. Need to run that one past Child Protection Services.



Here are some photos taken from our visit to Kynan's 2nd birthday party. We got Kynan a soccer ball. No, not the one he is actually holding. The other one. Actually he seemed quite taken with the idea of playing with both at once, even getting fairly grumpy when Rylie tried to eat the ball he wasn't playing with. He might have had a point.

We were taking notes, as the girls' 1st birthday is coming up in just a week now. A full year with baby twins. Phew! We did it. One down, 17 to go. I leave you with a matching set of my babies. Kayla is with her mom, while Rylie is with some strange street person that we met in the park. She said she was low, which I can only assume means she is depressed because she doesn't have enough money to buy booze. I gave her a Jefferson and told her to get something red with bubbles.

Please, no Humanitarian of the Year awards are necessary. I just love to give.