Anthony Bourdain

So it's my birthday this week... and Anthony Bourdain was here for a charity lunch thing. Em got us tickets, I took a day off work and we went to see him.

He was absolutely great - he's a lucky guy but very appreciative of that. He gave a nice talk about how he came to write Kitchen Confidential and about his travels with No Reservations.

I lined up with tons of other people and got his autograph - a bit sad but it was nice to meet him :-)

All in all a good way to spend a couple of hours!

Thanks Em

Lights, Camera...

So we have working pool lights now :-)


These pictures overemphasize the effect a little bit as we had to turn the flash off... but here are a few of the colors:

We love it! The so called party mode and all that are a bit slower to change color than expected but the overall effect is fantastic :-)

Guess what we did this weekend

So... the pool is finally full!... after about 36 hours it is at the right level... it looks pretty good, even in the shade:


The water is really, REALLY cold at the moment because it gets chilly at night and the sun isn't on the pool long enough to warm it up much... that didn't stop us... this the favorite mode of entry at the moment (trying to ease your way into the water is a losing proposition!):

This isn't a great photo but you get an idea of the response to the cold water - it's a shock to the system!... After swimming (a bit) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I think we're both ready for a stint on the Deadliest Catch - those wussies wear survival suits when they jump in the cold water - we wear bathing suits! :-)

This week we get everything started up - pumps running, chemicals in... can't wait for next weekend!

What is blue and red and half full of water?...

...our swimming pool :-)

Pics to follow.

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And here they are...

Here's the spa, now full of water:

Here's a shot of the tiered spillway from the spa - you can see the water level in the main pool too:

And lastly, here's the whole thing... the greenish tint will go away when we get the water properly balanced with chemicals and filtered.

Oh so close :-)

So the Pebbletec guys finally turned up - yay!

They set up a huge truck out front with a mixing machine:

And strangely, they then wrapped their feet in polythene and duct tape:


Before donning wellington boots with spikes:


The pebblesheen comes out like plaster:

Getting it poured, troweled, rinsed and ready was quite labor intensive:
It dried out overnight so today they come back to acid wash and polish the finish... then I think we start filling it up!

To say we're excited is a bit of an understatement!

Still (still!!) waiting... but oh so close

Well... the pool builder still has his endocrine system inside his body so I'd call that a win for him all things considered...

But we have had to accept that we just lost another week in the pool build... we should have the pebbletec guys here TODAY to start the coating process. Most people think a swimming pool is tiled but no-one does that any more - they only use tile on the waterline for ease of cleaning. The rest of the pool (the part that's under water) is either plastered (either white or colored) or it's coated with something like Pebbletec or Pebblesheen. These latter coatings are a lot more expensive but they last at least 20 years whereas modern plaster lasts 5 to 7 years and is prone to staining (because they had to remove some useful additives like asbestos recently!).

So we chose Pebblesheen. It's a resin that is covered with tiny stones. The result is a slightly rough surface that looks pretty nice. We went with Blue Granite as the color - we're hoping for a nice blue water color without it looking like a resort pool (we don't want the aqua blue).


Here is the official color chip for Blue Granite pebblesheen - the top is what it actually looks like when applied, the bottom is an approximation of the water color:





Here's a pic of a blue granite pebblesheen pool - ours is obviously not quite as spectacular but you get the idea of the water color:



What do you think?

Mmmmm bacon... Deep. Fried. Bacon.

Em's sister was in town for a couple of weeks recently - we decided we'd go check out a place I'd seen on the internet that serves "Chicken Fried Bacon".

Explanation for the foreigners: Americans like fried chicken. This is chicken heavily coated in a batter made with egg and seasoned flour and deep fried. A popular Southern dish is chicken fried steak - this is a tough steak that has been tenderized and coated with the same egg then seasoned flour before also being deep fried. This is served with a cream gravy heavily seasoned with black pepper.

Enter Sodolaks - the guy that runs Sodolak's was looking for a new appetizer and he hit upon the idea of chicken fried bacon - it's exactly what says it is - streaky bacon coated in seasoned flour and deep fried. Served with cream gravy for dipping.

Wow!

Here's a bad photo of our actual appetizer:

It was actually pretty good - crunchy bacony goodness. Dipped in cream :-)

The best part for me was actually the whole experience - it's in the middle of nowhere, staffed with the nicest people you'll ever meet and the clientele was pretty varied - tourists (us), locals, college kids from nearby Texas A&M and a few real life cowboys complete with boots and spurs.

Here's the video that got me interested in going:

Once you get over the fact that it's a dish that propels you towards the inevitable heart attack, it all makes sense - nice people, cool location and deep fried pork. That's good living!

Dear Pool Builder: Don't upset the redhead

So we're still here and we're still waiting for our pool to be finished. We've lost an entire week for no good reason beyond the builder messed up.

Em is getting a little more than upset with them and it's starting to show.

At some point today I think she's going to pull a Gary Busey and threaten to rip out the builders endocrine system :-)




If I were him, I'd get the Pebbletec guy here soon.

A bit more progress

On Saturday the stone guys turned up again and finished off the stonework... now we're just waiting for the pool itself to be finished.

The stone looks really nice!

Here's how the patio now looks capped with flagstone:

And here's the patio area as a whole - the umbrella is in one of the umbrella holders we had installed in the concrete when it was poured:

And at the other end of the pool we have a couple of sun loungers and another brolly:

And a close-up:
They are SO comfortable! We went out yesterday afternoon (84 degrees F on the last weekend in October - the weather doesn't always suck here!) with a glass of rose (yes, more pink drinks) and lazed around in the sun... lovely!

Someone with too much time on their hands

This is good...


Unbelievable McCain Vs. Obama Dance-Off - Watch more free videos

More progress

We are now starting to see some more progress - there are now more things finished than there are things left to do... cool :-)

Here is the beginnings of the deck - you can see the forms (wooden pieces) and rebar (reinforcement bars):


They brought the concrete from the truck by wheel barrow(!), poured it into the forms, then sprinkled on the pea gravel, pushed the gravel into the concrete and then let it set up for a bit. Then they spray it down and brush off the concrete to expose the gravel:

Here I am standing in the shallow end with the deck all finished:

Here's a view back toward the house - you can see the new location of the A/C hidden around the corner a bit more and you can see the patio that will have flagstone on it:
Finally here is one of someone who can't wait for that spa to be filled with hot water!:

Bit more progress

We're still here... waiting for the pool!




We've had a couple of weeks where progress has been a bit slow. Since the last post we had the plumbing all finished, the electricians installed almost everything and then found they had the older version of the control panel when I had asked for the latest version (because it will control the lights better :-))... quite impressive - they found the error and uninstalled the panel and waited for the new one to arrive. Given there is nothing in the contract about software version I am happy with that.


So that was one day we lost due to my fussiness.

Then we lost 2 days waiting for the inspector (but we passed first time, yay!).


Then it rained.


Then the coping guys took FOUR DAYS to install the coping and tile on the pool. Then we lost a day for no apparent reason which got us to this week. The decking is next and we had two beautiful days Monday and Tuesday but no crew... and now it's raining and the yard is one giant mudpit so no decking until next week at the earliest :-(


But here are some pics anyway:

Starting to take shape - you can hardly see the color due to the stone dust from them cutting the pieces to size:

The whole pool done - you can see the tile too - the water line will be halfway up the bottom row of tiles:

Here's the spa with the tiered spillway:

Gunite

They came today and poured the gunite for the pool... now it's really coming along...

They put up blue sheeting to keep the overspray from going all over the place:



Here you can see them shooting the gunite onto the back wall of the pool - the guy on the top left has the nozzle:

Now they're forming the spa bench and sunshelf:

Here's the finished article:

We could not be happier with the result - the pool looks great, the spa is perfectly positioned and it all works just the way we imagined, if not better.

Today is plumbing, tomorrow is wiring and then we'll be looking for the flagstone and tile guys.

Anybody out there?

Is anybody reading this thing? I am thinking of giving up...

If you read make a comment... make a comment... it doesn't have to be funny or clever. I don't care if you insult me or encourage me to stop :-)

EDIT: I was informed that you need an account in order to post comments. I have now changed that - anyone can make comments now.

We have the beginnings of a pool!

Almost as soon as we had power back we also got the planning permission approved for our pool! The pool builder confirmed they would be starting the day after and off we go!

The day after, the pool project manager measured and spray painted the design onto the lawn. Because we had not seen a final design since the gas line marking and we knew things had to move a little, we asked him to get our approval before finalizing it. We're glad we did that because the design didn't quite work properly so we had him move the spa over 18 inches. Without that, there was no way the swim lane would have worked.

The marking itself is all very clever actually - the computer program they use plots fixed points that he can measure from other established points (corner of the house, corner of the yard, another previously marked point etc) and then the design is mostly fixed radii from those fixed points. It didn't take him too long - you get the idea from this pic:

The day after, the dig began:


That's the inaugural first scoop being taken :-)


And here they are a little later on having dug almost to final depth (we're going with 4 feet deep for the majority and 6 foot deep at the far end - our friends have told us the deep end gets little use so we minimized it).


Here I am with it all dug:

The day after the dig the rebar guys came and put reinforcing bars all around the pool. That was amazing to watch - they brought in all the bars and put them on the side of the pool and then did the whole pool in less than half a day. They have rolls of wire on their belts so they just pull in a bar, shape it as required and then wire it to the crossing bars as needed. They were very skillful.

There is rebar every 6 inches around the entire pool. Here's the finished job:

As you can see, the basic plumbing was also done that day. This is done so that they can pour the gunite next without waiting for final plumbing - this just fixes the position of the spa jets, skimmers and other inlets/outlets. You can just about see two pipes on the sunshelf next to the spa (to the upper right) - they will be bubblers to create some more noise and whatnot.

Today they're pouring gunite - in fact they're doing it right now... will post pics later!

So... finally we have a few pics from the storm online.


Here is part one of our hurricane survival kit:

Flashlights, battery, fan, regular radio, NOAA windup radio, spare batteries, pile of cash, mobile phone. Check.



Part two of the kit: supplies. Blue margaritas, almonds and peanuts. Looks like we're good to go. Bring on the wind!



So you may remember we had a rather long night wondering what was going on outside. Well this is what we saw from our front porch in the morning. You'll note the tree lying on the gutter of that house. As the storm continued, the wind pushed the trunk further and further into the house. Thankfully that home is not yet occupied so the builder got to claim from his insurance and no-one lost any belongings.


We had some drainage problems on one side of our house - this water is 6 to 8 inches deep. Luckily the foundation is about 10 inches high on that side so this was of little concern as it was running off slowly.


After the storm this became our new lounge :-) We would sit outside and play card while watching the world go by. One nice by-product of the storm was that all the neighbors walked around in the evenings so we'd say hello and have a quick chat with any that stopped. We grilled our dinner most evenings right there on the driveway - our neighbors must think we're crazy!


As for the rest of the street - this was, unfortunately, a beautiful old oak tree that had grown up and across the street. It did not survive the storm:


And this is our pocket park at the end of the street. Somewhere under those trees is the little sitting shelter and bbq area. We are hoping they'll fix this good as new as it was nice to have a spot to sit when you walked around:

That's about all for now folks :-)