July 08, 2010

What I did on my summer vacation

I took the past week off, and it was nice. I sure do miss the academic calendar, I must say ... now I only read the ebb and flow of the semesters by the number of cars in the parking lot when I show up for work, the number of queries from the registrar about grades that "my" faculty haven't submitted (because you know they do whatever I ask of them), and the number of complaints about said grades I hear from disgruntled (or at least differently gruntled) students.

So here's what I did on my vacation to make progress toward realizing the plan depicted here. All the cabinet boxes are put together, minus backs, and the shelves for the upper cabinets are also done. I laid them out roughly in the position they'll occupy in the kitchen:


I'll probably cut out the backs next, though I won't attach them until after they and the cabinets are sprayed. It will be a lot easier to apply the finish without the backs getting in the way, and without all those corners to cause runs.

After that will come the drawers, which I'll be making out of poplar, with solid maple faces, and the doors, which will be raised panels. In other words, there's a lot left to do! A professional would have done the drawers and doors first, before cluttering up the whole damned shop with cabinets, but I wanted to fit the components to the cabinets, not vice versa.
___________________________________

In other news, I think the Domino's Pizza PR folks ought to be commended for their current ad campaign, the one that started with the frank admission that everybody knows their pizza sucked (and it may suck still, I don't know, though they're saying it's completely new and improved ... we don't have a Domino's around here). The commercial I saw the other day makes a big deal out of the unnatural acts that go into photographing food for print and TV advertisements, promising that Domino's ads will show the pizza in its natural state. Good stuff! I'd absolutely try their pizza again if it weren't 50 miles, probably, to the nearest one. I doubt they deliver here. Though I can't imagine it being better than Pudgies!

During my senior year of college, I had a roommate who worked at Dominos, and he would come home at 2:30 one or two nights a week with pizza that had been "wasted," written off and trashed at closing time. A diligent student--or at least one with a limited social life--I generally turned in by 11, and yet when Mark came in with pizza, I'd drag myself out to the kitchen (we shared a trailer in a shabby trailer park) and devour half a pizza, half-conscious, and then return to my top bunk to sleep until six. It was okay, but the locally owned joints were much cheaper and their pizza more interesting.

Mark was also something of a nudist, and he had successfully completed Ranger school--Army, not park--the summer before. I'll tell you more about him sometime, perhaps.

No comments: