Tag: homeownership

This is a story about pure, unadulterated failure

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I alluded to in my last daddy brog, I was to have some work done to my house, specifically, fixing up the wood around two very high up windows, so that they would no longer allow moisture into my home.  The day in which that work was to happen has come and gone, and hoo boy, do I have a story to tell, about just how much failure can possibly be packed into a single day of one individual person, being me.

For starters, when it was evident that moisture was getting into my home, I was pretty quickly able to deduce that it was coming from an upstairs window, based on where the water was seeping into parts of my home.  Honestly, this was something that was flagged during my home inspection back before I even came into the home, but it wasn’t listed as something that was critical, but something to look out for in the future.  And the future had arrived, and the seal clearly had worn down to where water was getting into my house when the rain came sideways.

So, thinking it was something fairly minor and maybe a few silicone caulk re-sealing wouldn’t fix, I opted to get a handyman, whom might have a 26-32’ ladder, since my 22’ extension ladder wasn’t tall enough for me to go up there and inspect it myself.  It took a day or two for the guy to show up, as he had cited a child emergency on the first day, and being the new dad I am myself, I was extremely understanding and empathetic to the needs of children first.

When he did show up, we joked about how we both hoped this would be a quick job where he could hop up onto the ladder, slather down some caulk, and be on his merry way, bam, easy $100, but it turns out that it wouldn’t be that simple because nothing in the world is ever that simple.  It turned out that the frame around the window was mostly rotten, and even the ladder coming into contact with a piece of it caused it to immediately disintegrate like Castlevania blocks.

Now this, is the point where I feel like I could have changed history.  Like if I were Cable from X-Force, I could body slide to this point in time and smack myself upside the head and tell me to NOT ask the guy,

Can you fix it?

Because of fucking course he said he could, what handyman is ever going to say no and deny themselves the possibility of getting a job?  And then he quoted be some number that I didn’t find egregious, and frankly I just wanted this shit fixed up as soon as humanly possible, and didn’t want to go through too much bullshit trying to track down a window person to come and re-examine and re-quote song and dance.

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New Father Brogging, #018

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a little bit in the pits lately, and it’s one of those situations where I think about the things that are making me feel down, and they bring me down more, and starts this cycle of negative thinking that only gets gradually worse and worse if I don’t talk about it and admit that I’m feeling a little depressed.

Firstly, by no means necessary is any of my recent funk on account of my precious baby child doing anything wrong; if anything at all, she’s the one steady and greatest and brightest thing in my life, as should not really be of a surprise, and frankly, my only woes in regards to my child is that I feel guilty that I’m not enjoying my paternity time as much as I probably should.

Sure, I’d love to be able to take her out of the house and go and see things, but in in the coronavirus-addled world we live in, such isn’t necessarily a good idea, not to mention the feed and nap routine we’re trying to constantly reinforce doesn’t exactly make it convenient to leave the house and expect to enjoy ourselves and be back at the bassinet approximately two hours later.  But there are admittedly times in which I feel like I’m failing as a father, by not always having an idea or things to do with my child, and I’m always worried that I’m boring her or not stimulating her enough to where that budding developing brain is actually growing.

I don’t handle with particular stresses very well, and in the case of my house, which has had some recent issues due to the bipolar Georgia weather, I’m frustrated and aggravated at how long and how much it’s going to cost to get things fixed, and if I stop and think about all the moving parts in play, it tends to get me all anxious with annoyance, which doesn’t help.

To boil it down, my skylight issue was an easy solve, since that was basically a $430 caulk job that has prevented further moisture from getting in, but the window issue I’m having, is going to be substantially more, and I’m in this situation where I’m wondering if I had hired an actual window company from the onset instead of assuming it was just a simple caulk job here too, and hiring a handyman, would’ve saved me a tremendous amount of time, money and aggravation, instead of the route that I’m on right now.  But because I’ve already committed, I’m doing myself a favor and not finding out, because if it turns out to be a substantial savings on all accounts, I’m just going to end up way more perturbed than I already am.

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Why are homes made out of wood?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seriously, honest question.  Why are homes made out of wood?  A flimsy, degradable material that is so susceptible to the elements, that has pretty definitive expiration conditions.  Especially when there’s a world of materials out there that aren’t nearly as vulnerable?

Naturally, with a query like that, it stands to believe that I’ve gone through some sort of negative experience, to which is affirmative.  We’ve had some gnarly rain, and at one point, hail, and then suddenly, there are two places in my house that started leaking.  A skylight in the sunroom breached at first, leading me to put down some buckets to catch water, and what started as one corner that was leaking eventually turned into three corners, leading to my disgust and aggravation. 

Naturally, at the time in which all this occurred, there’s little sense in trying to call anyone since it’s not really an emergency, so I went on with my day, just very annoyed.

And then I heard the dripping; at first, I thought I left my kitchen faucet slightly on, but it turned out that the light fixture above my sink was dripping water.  Worse off, there was a bunch of dripping along the window frame in front of the sink, and thinking quickly, I put a bunch of little Tupperware containers to catch the water, since they fit on the sill, but it was unmistakable, that there was a second breach in my house.

Long story short, I tracked it down to some angled windows in my master bathroom on the second floor, where moisture was seeping in through either aged seals or rotting wood, and trickling down behind the walls and into my kitchen.  Also seeping through some cracks in the tile in the master bathroom itself too.  But it was clear to where it was coming from.

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New Father Brogging, #002

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite my sporadic writing habits leading up to the birth of my child, I ironically seem to be finding more time to sit down and write now that she’s come into the world.  Mostly on account of the fact that as she was five weeks early, she’s unfortunately not home yet, and is still at the NICU, where her frail little preemie body is playing catchup under the safe and watchful eyes of medical professionals.

Ultimately, mythical wife and I both know that she’s exactly where she needs to be in her current state, and we are eternally grateful to the kind and caring staff of the hospital that has been definitely providing excellent care for our daughter.  However, when the days are over, the reality is that she is still not home with us, and it’s an agonizing struggle at the end of each night when the time comes for us to part ways with our daughter, while she stays in the NICU while we leave her and head back to our house, empty of human children.

She was born 12 days ago, but it doesn’t really quite feel like we’re parents just yet, as when the time comes in which we go to bed, it’s like we’re a married couple with no children, since there’s no kid to put to sleep and marvel over the fact that it’s a life that we created together.

We spend around 6-8 hours a day in the NICU with our kid, but until the day she comes home, there really is something kind of missing from the whole experience of having a child.  We feel like parents when we get to change her diapers, feed her, and rock her to sleep, but the wholesome feelings always end when the realization hits that we need to go home to rest and take care of ourselves, so we have the energy and capacity to do it all over again the following day.

Our daughter’s showing progress on a daily basis, but the fact of the matter is that it’s still an indeterminate amount of time before she’s given the green light to come home.  Her last real hurdle is to continue to demonstrate the ability to eat more and out of a bottle, more consistently, and subsequently gain weight.  Every day where she drains an entire bottle is akin to a playoff win, but behind the scenes we don’t know if we’re in the lightning-quick MLB playoffs, or if we’re in the endless vortex known as the NBA’s playoffs.

Back home, I’ve actually accomplished a lot of the tasks around the house that mythical wife and I agreed needed to get done before the arrival of our kid, because once she got here, we know they probably won’t be gotten to.  I’ve painted entire sections of our house, I’ve stained the entire fence around the house.  I’ve swapped out old outlets and switches for new, tamper-proof versions of them for future kid safety.  I’ve unboxed strollers and learned how to install car seats into both mine and mythical wife’s cars.  Just about every piece of furniture for our baby’s nursery is assembled and the room just about finished.

I’d wager to guess that most parents who ever have to go through the experience of their children going into the NICU go through the same kind of anxieties and frustration that mythical wife and I are going through.  I know there are many out there who have it way worse than we do in terms of state of the baby upon arrival or how little or long they stay in the NICU, but when the day is over, we’re all in the same state of where we as parents go home, while our children remain behind, which is a shitty feeling no matter how you look at it.

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A catch-up post

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Usually, after a week or so, my internal brogging meter starts panicking if I haven’t taken the time to write anything.  After two weeks, I get anxious that I haven’t written anything other than a mundane email at work, and nothing for my own gratification.  And anything beyond that is just pure chaos in my head, and I begin to descend down this rabbit hole of thinking if I don’t write anything soon, I’ll fall into this pit of never writing again. 

Obviously that’s ludicrous thinking, and I can start back up whenever I feel like it, but the overlying factor is that when the day is over, I simply need time to write.  Topics aren’t necessarily the issue, I’ve got a small queue of things that I found to be thought-provoking to want to blab on about for a little bit, but unfortunately the need for time didn’t necessarily sync up.

So instead of trying to write backwards and backfill a queue of mostly inconsequential topics, I figured I’d just start off with writing for little else than the sake of catching up, because this isn’t necessarily going to be one topic I touch on, and I’ve definitely got a lot on my mind these days that I think wouldn’t hurt to put into writing for me to reflect back on in the future.

First and foremost, let’s talk about my impending journey into upcoming fatherhood.  Obviously, I haven’t really written a lot about this, but it’s not because I don’t care, but it’s mostly because it’s a tremendous amount for me to process, and I don’t always know how to express myself when it comes to it.  I think things are a little bit clearer now these days, but over the last few months, it’s always been more of a “when” kind of thing, but as the expected due date has dwindled from months to weeks, we’re at the point where mythical wife explained to her parents that we’re in the stage where our kid can actually show up any time now, regardless of the fact that we’re still a little around six weeks away.

That notion, kind of got my blood pumping, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like I have enough time left to do all the things around the house that we both know will probably never get done once the baby arrives.  On account of this, I’ve been working pretty much non-stop when I’m at home, doing painting, minor repairs, and more painting, to get the house to a stage where we’ll be content to let it sit for many years before we feel the need to freshen things up later on.

Needless to say, I fucking hate painting with a passion.  It’s about the worst activity in the world for homeowners, and it always makes me want to pay someone to do it for me, but I know that the estimates for the labor will often times be around 10x more than it would cost for the paint and for me to do it myself, and because I’m Asian and cheap, I end up doing it myself no matter how much I revile it.  I’ve decided that in the future, painting, will be the most adequate form of discipline I can apply to my kid if she ever becomes a bratty teen that steps out of line.

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How to reflect on a decade

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This year ending isn’t just an ordinary ending of a year, because it’s also the end of a decade.  Naturally, a sentimental person like me tends to want to reflect on an entire decade, because much like individual years, a decade is a nice round chunk of time that one might think it would be easy to reflect upon, but in the greater spectrum, it’s ten full years we’d be trying to look back onto.  Now I like to think I have a good memory, but even without the aid of my trusty brog, it’s difficult to really look back at an entire decade.

Regardless, that’s not going to stop all the self-important jobbers of the internet who will try their darnedest to speak with authority and copy and paste all the same milestones the major news outlets will when it comes to trying to summarize and reflect upon the entire decade.  The funny thing is that most of the internet savvy generations probably aren’t that much older or younger than I am, which means that in the grand spectrums of our respective lives, we’ve only really lived through 3-4 decades, whereas I’d probably estimate that 1.5-2 of them are pretty invalid, because we’re simply not articulate and/or educated enough to have the capacity to reflect on entire decades.

So combined with the advent and growth of the internet, and the notion that everyone has a voice, I’d wager this is probably, at the very most, the second real decade of the modern high-speed internet that people really care to really reminisce about; and I’m being generous by calling it the second, because DSLs and cable internet didn’t really flourish until nearly the mid-2000’s; I couldn’t imagine people trying to use streaming, auto-refreshing social media on a 56K modem, so frankly I see this more as the first real decade that everyone and their literal mothers on the internet are going to be writing about.

Anyway, I’m going to attempt to try to recollect from mostly just my own memories, and stick to things that are more relevant to my own little world, and not the big gigantic depressing one we live in.  If I had any readers, they can google any decade in review, and probably find more worldly and probably more high-profile shit than the things I have to say about the things going on in my own little life, like the start and finish of Game of Thrones, Pokemon Go, the sad state of American politics, all the endless mass shootings, and Bill Cosby being outed as a rapist.

And the reason that I disclaim the whole “if I had any readers” because one of the most devastating things that occurred for me is the fact that despite my WordPress going online in 2010, at nearly the very start of the decade, midway through the decade my brog went down indefinitely, when my brother relocated from one part of the country to another.  A lot of hardware changes meant no more place to host my brog, and despite having the supposed backups, I simply haven’t taken the time or allocated the funds necessary to get my site up and running again.

If I were the type to do New Years resolutions anymore, I think I’d resolve to get my site back up and running again in 2020.  TBD on if that will actually occur, and frankly with the things I have on my plate going into the next decade, I don’t want to commit and then fail to deliver.

In spite of the brog blackout, that hasn’t stopped me from writing.  Even to the day my site went down, I have been writing on a fairly regular basis, taking no more than two weeks off before the internal guilt gets my fingers flying across the keys again, and I’ve got at this point, hundreds of folders of dated and timestamped Word docs, all awaiting their day in which they can be posted retroactively to a brog.

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Energy Star done lost their mind

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I briefly lived in an apartment, there was once a day in which it was abundantly clear that the air conditioning went out.  When it was obvious that no cool air was coming out of the vents, I called up the main office to see if I could get someone from maintenance over to come fix it.  However, it was a Sunday, and the office hours were drastically reduced, and I was unable to actually get with a human being on the phone, and I thought that I was going to be boned until Monday.

I tried to stick it out, but didn’t last more than 30 minutes before I began looking through drawers for the information packet that was given to us when moving in, to see if there were any alternative numbers to call, or if I could get to maintenance directly or something.  I found an emergency number and figured it wouldn’t hurt to call and get a human being on the line to see if they could point me in the right direction.

When I got a person to pick up, I explained my situation, and they asked me to tell them what the thermostat read.  “83,” I told them, and they responded with “I’ll be right over.  82F is what we consider to be an emergency.”

In less than an hour, a maintenance guy showed up, turned out a freon recharge was all that was needed, and then the entire apartment began cooling down pretty quickly afterward.

The point of this little story is that I just read this article about what Energy Star recommended people keep their thermostats at, in order to save energy:

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