Support the Locals

All aboard for the Going-Off-On-A-Tangent Express!

For this rant, I'm not talking about Home Depot and their "We can help" slogan which is a complete load of crap. Many of you are on-board with me on that one, so I won't kick that dead horse again for a day or two.

This time, I'm talking about one of my favorite pastimes - food. There are national chain stores for food, just like there is for home improvement. Home Depot, Lowes, TGI Fridays, Outback Steak House, etc., are all examples. It's getting harder to avoid the chain restaurants these days, but if you can look past the glitz and advertising of a popular "Australian" restaurant (which has as much in common with Australia as a pair of my dirty socks), there can be some damn good food to be found.

My focus is directed in this case to a new Indian restaurant near by. Prior to it opening, I had a 20+ minute drive to the closest place for Indian (Taste of India, in Brookfield WI - damn good food, but too far for a quick meal or take-out). Now I'm nice and close to the Taj Mahal which also has excellent food at very reasonable prices. Unfortunately, Muskego Beth and I are two of the few people who actually eat there. We're there often enough that the owner knows what my wife will order before we even sit down. Hell, I don't even know what it is, but I know it's not on the menu and they happily make it for her.

There is nothing wrong with the food or menu, and it's in a decent location with plenty of vehicle traffic. It's also gotten decent scouting report here by the local food critic, just prior to him dying and before he could go back and finish his review. They've also got a kick-ass buffet at lunchtime, which is just within my time limitations during the week for lunch.

For those of you not paying attention to what the problem is, they're getting no business while people line up around the block for a fvcking Bloomin' Onion. They can't go on like this for long, and I fear that next time I go there for dinner, they'll be out of business. That will suck.

I'll be second (behind my brother) to say that this part of Milwaukee isn't filled with the most worldly of people - probably part of the reason he got the hell out of here - but come on people, get out and live a little before you die. Next time you're going out to eat, try something different. Try some place which doesn't have tens of thousands of dollars to blow on advertising. Hell, try a local pub or brewhouse if nothing else. Try Indian food, or a Mexican place other than Taco Bell. Speaking of Mexican, there is a local place in a somewhat dumpy looking building which serves kick-ass food. The inside is very nice, and the owner/chef has some serious credentials in the area. Word spread and the place does good lunch business and gets packed for dinners. Yeah, it costs more than a Nacho-bel-Grande and you won't be served while you sit in your car, but the food is top shelf. Every city has places like this, get out and find them!

* This isn't mean as a knock against Outback - I like their burgers and cheese-fries. Given the choice, though, I think local-owned places like Kopp's has better burgers for the money. I've only had Outback's steak once, and was far from impressed.

** Note to my brother - Taj Mahal is in the same strip mall as George Webb's in Hales Corners, across the street from A&W. Since those places were there before we were born, you'll know where I'm talking about.

*** Warning to everybody else, my brother's blog is filled with vegetarianism stuff and info about commuting by bike. You've been warned... or informed, if you like that kind of stuff. On the good side, it's also got plenty of beer reviews.

Since Google will eventually crawl this post and anybody looking for a review of the Taj Mahal Restaurant in Hales Corner may find this post, let me just say again that the food at Taj Mahal in Hales Corners Wisconsin is fantastic. 5 out of 5 stars. Thumbs up. Gold Spoon Award. Just go try it. Hopefully the owner of the place finds this and gives me a free meal for the effort! :)

I'm done ranting now.

An Easier Way to Read Blogs

I know this may be old news for many of you, but for everybody else this could be useful (after re-reading a number of my previous posts, even I don't believe this blog has provided anything "useful" in the past).

Up until a few days ago, I bookmarked about 7 or 8 blogs which I liked to read. There were more that were of interest, but I didn't have any easy/quick way to check all of the individual blogs to look for updates. Anybody who's tried keeping up with a dozen different blogs knows what a headache it can be jumping around looking for updates.. Somewhere along the line, I read about the Google Blog Reader, which made keeping up to date with dozens of different blogs quick and easy. What I really like about it is how I can now track a couple of dozen different blogs, and each time I log on it tells me which blogs have updates. It'll also pull those updates right into the reader so I don't have to jump from blog to blog if I don't want to. It doesn't have the "charm" of the individual blogs, but I can live with that. If I want the charm, I just click on the link which takes me to the original blog. Try it if you haven't seen it. Now. I'll wait.

Google Blog Reader

Here's a picture of the program in action. As you see, you get the graphics from the blogs along with the text. If any of the blogs I'm watching had updates, they would be listed in bold on the left along with a number telling me how many new posts are on each blog. If you're completely anal retentive you can even put the blogs in folders to classify them - ranch houses, Victorian, east coast, milf, etc.

Note to Self

Old unfaced insulation itches like a mo-fo. The carpet is out of the attic, but I'll come back in a few days to remove the excess planking. It looks to be only held in with 1-2 nails per 4' length. Hopefully the Benadryl kicks in soon.

Aww, Hell No.

I started removing carpet from my attic this afternoon, since it is in the mid 70's outside and it should be tolerable if I run a box-fan to get the hot air out of the attic. I knew there was some planking in the attic, but with the carpet in place I couldn't get a good idea as to what was there. I removed one large piece of carpet and found that the PO planked a LOT more of the attic than I had expected. Plus, the planks had no spacing between them for me to check the depth of the existing insulation. I'm working on the assumption that the area between the joists under the planking is fully insulated, but I think I'm going to have to pull up a lot of the planks just to make sure. Plus, I need to install some recessed lighting in the kitchen and wouldn't be able to easily run the wiring if I leave the planks in place. I'm not really looking forward to this, but if the attic is cooled off a lot tonight it shouldn't take more than an hour to get most of the planks removed, along with the carpet. I do plan on leaving a small section of planking to get from one end of the house to the other, but since I'm not going to store anything in there other than insulation, the excess has got to go. There is about 4' of clearance between the plans and the peak of the roof. Being 6'3", I'm expecting this little adventure to suck.




By the way, the PO did have a nice way to get into the attic without going through the living area in the house. There is an access hatch in the wall of the garage. I'm not sure how safe it is as far as fire barriers go, but it's handy for getting crap (carpet and padding, for instance) in and out of the attic. There was a pulley attached to the rafters in the garage, so I just attached a small rope and it worked like a charm. Here, I've got a fan running to force as much hot air out as possible before I spend any quality time with the planks and insulation.




Hey Nate, here's your shed. I even left all the original nails in the wood for you. UPS didn't want to come pick it up for you for some reason. So much for "What can Brown do for you?"...

I Love the Smell of Sawdust in the Afternoon. It Smells Like. . . . Victory.

After a week of hauling the old shingles, I'm finally done with that project. The roof still needs a little attention at the gutters and I still need to install the light tube, but the heavy work is done (finally). It still surprises me how much room the old shingles took up in the 20 yard dumpster. It's almost half-filled already! The trailer in the dumpster is what I used to move the shingles from the yard to the dumpster. Every effort was made to keep the debris as far forward and stacked as high as possible so I wouldn't be walking over nails. I also wanted to make sure I didn't waste room since I don't want to rent another dumpster any time soon. With the shingles done, it was time to destroy that crappy old shed.




Nate, these pictures are for you! The wood siding was in decent shape, but there was a lot of rot because the builder of this masterpiece didn't use pressure-treated wood. I started with the sledge hammer and knocked the siding off of two sides. The area with missing framing was heavily rotted and took almost no effort to remove. I was going to cut the shed into pieces, but found it was easier to just dismantle it with the sledge.




Here's why you should use pressure treated wood for the sill plates. The entire corner was rotted away and filled with bugs. It didn't help that the roof leaked heavily. I was surprised with how well the shed was built, but that they went stupid and used a flat roof and a swing-in door. The more I look at it, the more I think this wasn't really a shed, but more of a garden shed for potting plants. Size-wise, this shed would have been useless for lawnmowers or other lawn-care tools.




Did I mention the roof leaked? Black isn't a good color for roof supports. This beam was rotted, as were the ends of the roof decking which were above it.




Here, most of the roof has been taken apart except for the last bit which was above the shed door. The roof was covered with 4' x 4' shingles. Well, they weren't really shingles, but were made from the same material. There were plenty of nails holding the "shingles" in place, but none of them were caulked or covered in tar. The seams (and there were a LOT of seams on this roof) were also not caulked or tarred. Gee, I wonder why it leaked? Bad choice of roof design, no slope to the roof, and poor execution. This might have worked if they had used a one-piece rubber membrane of some type or at least slopped the whole roof with tar.

You Will be the First Against the Wall When the Revolution Comes

Days later, and I'm still schleping shingles from the yard into the dumpster. Who'd have known there were so many shingles on one roof?! The front, back, and one side are 100% done, leaving one small side to do tomorrow. The 20 yard dumpster is closing in on being 1/2 full - it's pretty much one solid mass of shingles now. If the old shingles weigh as much as the new ones, I'll probably end up with around 10,000 pounds of shingles in there (based on the weight of the 71 bundles which were just installed, coming in at around 5,400 pounds). The more time I spend in the backyard removing shingles (and lots and lots and lots of nails) the more I can't wait to get rid of the old shed which came with the house. It's got a swing-in door, meaning that about 1/3 of the room inside is wasted since you need to leave room for the door to open. It's also got a flat roof, which is pretty much the polar-opposite of a good idea here in Wisconsin. The 2 x 4 roof framing is rotting from years of leaks, and the thing is painted a wonderful shade of red which matches absolutely nothing else on our property. Well, that burning bush in front of it matches the shed for a few weeks a year, but that's not a good enough reason to keep it. After the shingles are all loaded up and we take a last sweep for nails, I'm going to break out Mr. Reciprocating Saw and cut that fvcker up. We'll be stuck with the old concrete pad from it until we get money to replace the patio, but at least we won't have an ugly shed 15' from the back door. Oh yeah, it was built 15' from the house instead of way back in the corner of the yard like normal people would do. When I look out one of our bedroom windows, the side of the shed is about 75% of my view. Nice....

Soft hands. And a manicure. Never done a hard day's work in your life, have you?

From Trading Places, by the way.

I am one with the pitchfork. Unfortunately, I'll be one with it for the next few weeks. Couldn't somebody design a lightweight 25 year asphalt and gravel shingle which will hold up against snow, ice, and summer sun? Is that too much to ask? I think I'm getting blisters on my blisters. At least today was overcast, which kept the temps around 80. Pretty humid, thanks to yesterday's rain, but since we need rain so much right now I won't complain more than I already do.

That rolling magnet has so far been worth every penny I paid. My son has been "playing" with it and has found hundreds and hundreds of nails so far. My shoe found two, but luckily they were short nails and my delicate foot is safe. I'm probably about 1/3 done with the clean-up and expect to bleed before this is over. The 20 yard dumpster is about 1/4 full - I'm just hoping I have enough room left to throw out the crappy old shed, the old cement laundry sink, and all the human heads I've been collecting for years. I think I've finally outgrown that obsession.