Kitchen Reno: Part 7 - Patterns

As the accompanying picture shows, our kitchen rebuild proceeds apace.  Just 3 business days after having been razed to the studs and insulation, our kitchen once again has walls, albeit simple drywall, so far.  Still, that's good progress in my books.  

Mike, from Borman Construction, required a decision of my wife, Judy, and me which we had not anticipated.  He wanted us to choose a pattern for putting down the 12" x 24" ceramic tiles that are to make up our floor.  We had simply assumed that they would be laid down, end to end, row upon row, like a grid (sometimes referred to as "Straight Set").  While that was certainly an option, some quick on-line research revealed several other popular patterns for our consideration, including "Vertical Stepped", "Vertical Offset" and "Basket Weave," among others.  I printed some patterns that we liked and we discussed them amongst ourselves.  Eventually, we narrowed it down to the four patterns that I just mentioned.  Judy and I needed to do a grocery run, so we went to the supermarket and left Mike to continue hanging drywall, with the understanding that we would give him our final decision later.

By the time we returned from the supermarket, Mike had left for the day but, before going, he did something completely unexpected and rather impressive.  Using our actual floor tiles, he laid out each of our four "finalist" patterns so that we could see exactly how they would look on our kitchen floor.  You can see them in the photo on the right; Vertical Straight Set (top left), Vertical Stepped (top right), Vertical Offset (bottom left) and Basket Weave (our favorite) at the bottom right.  What a great idea for presenting the patterns in a way that made it easier to decide.  More bonus points for Mike!

Kitchen Reno: Part 6 - Destruction!

This past week, Eric Borman and his crew showed up bright and early, at 8:00 AM, as promised, in order to demolish our old kitchen.  What seems even stranger is that I paid them well to do so, as the terms of my contract required that I make my first installment payment when the work officially began.

Before wrecking our kitchen, they kindly helped my wife, Judy, and me with the disposal of our old stove (it's being replaced and a new one is already ordered) as well as moving our fridge to the auxiliary kitchen.  Well, that is, they tried to move our fridge to the auxiliary kitchen but, as I'd mentioned in an earlier post, they weren't able to do so because of, well, bad planning on my part.  I failed to measure the doorway to the auxiliary kitchen in order to ensure that the fridge would fit through it.  As it turns out, it would not.  But the helpful lads from Borman quickly located an available corner in our dining room, set the fridge there and ran an extension cord to it, taping it securely down to the floor such that no-one will trip over it.  It's almost as though they've done this before.

The stove was placed on our front curbside, from whence it disappeared within a couple of hours, probably having been picked up by some local salvage scrounger(s).  

Our dining room adjoins the kitchen and the entrance between the two has no door, so the Borman team hung a drop sheet over it with a zipper up the middle in order to minimize dust and debris from the kitchen getting into the dining room while still making both rooms accessible.

Then followed a day of incredible banging, grinding and assorted other noises that should never, ever emanate from anyone's kitchen! I can state this with confidence, as these noises did emanate from my kitchen, and the result was not pretty!  The photo at the start of this post basically says it all.

The racket also freaked out our cat, Ebony, just a bit.  She went into hiding for a while, then finally re-appeared when her stomach insisted that it was time to do so.  Her food and water bowls used to be on the floor of our old kitchen but Judy and I wisely chose to move them to the dining room well before Demolition Day so that she (Ebony, not Judy) could deal with getting used to the new location without also having to deal with the disruption of her home environment at the same time.

I have to hand it to her, she's a fairly resilient feline.  In the early evening, after the workmen had left for the day, she reappeared and gingerly explored what was left of the old kitchen, before finally jumping up onto Judy's lap as she (Judy) sat in her easy chair, the better to let the warmth of her (Judy's) thighs ease her anxieties. Ebony is at an advanced age for cats and, as such, her 15 years' lived experience seem to have given her the serenity to take things more or less in stride.

I also want to mention, in passing, that one of the workmen (Mike) noticed Ebony and asked us whether we wanted her to be kept inside.  I told him that Ebony is very much an outdoor cat and we let her come and go more or less as she pleases.  I have to say that I was impressed that he thought to ask the question.  Our pet is, of course, in no way his responsibility, yet his question implied that, if we had wanted her kept inside, he would be mindful of closing the entrance door behind himself when entering or leaving our house, thus preventing her from running outside.  Bonus points for Mike!

I have to admit that I get a bit of an uneasy feeling as I stare at what's left of our kitchen.  It's been stripped down to the floor boards and insulation.  Even though I know that all of this will be replaced within about four weeks, I can't seem to stop my brain from lamenting, "What have I done?"

Judy and I are now using the auxiliary kitchen and I have to admit that we've already been getting too much takeout food and heat-and-serve meals in the interest of minimizing cooking because most of our regular cooking involves the use of a stove, which we currently lack..

Doing the dishes has become awkward and inconvenient.  We load the used (dirty) dishes into a small plastic tote, carry them down to the laundry room, and then wash them by hand, using the laundry tub.  We set up our dish rack on a folding card table, and the washed dishes go onto the dish rack to await drying.  Because the tap on our laundry tub dispenses only hard water, the dish soap doesn't foam up quite as much as it should, and our glassware and silverware are already looking a bit clouded.  Unfortunately, there is no remedy for this.  We'll just have to live with it until we once again have a functioning "real" kitchen.

I fear that it's going to be a long four weeks! 

 

Kitchen Reno, Part 5: The Auxiliary Kitchen

Our kitchen has finally been cleared.  It's easy to under-estimate the amount of time it takes to accomplish this.  My wife, Judy, and I have been gradually working at it for weeks now, and yet we only just managed to complete the task the day before our current kitchen was scheduled for demolition.

Some of our old kitchen's contents were given away, some were thrown away, some were placed in storage, but a lot of it was moved to an auxiliary kitchen that we set up for use while the new kitchen is being constructed.  After all, we still need to be able to prepare meals, we need a place to store food and ingredients, we need a source of drinking water and we would like to be able to enjoy the occasional cup of coffee or tea and other such non-essentials.

A spare bedroom that was occupied by my daughter and her husband before they finally left the nest was turned into an auxiliary kitchen.  Our portable dishwasher, which had probably been looking forward to a bit of a holiday, considering that there would be no water tap to connect it to and, therefore, no way for it to do its regular job, was doubtless rudely surprised when it found itself re-purposed as a counter-top, appliance stand and makeshift cabinet for the dishes that we use most often.  

For drinking water, we moved our water cooler, which dispenses both hot and cold water, from our old kitchen to the auxiliary kitchen.  A portable shelving unit with wheels on its legs had been our microwave stand as well as a place to keep cat food and other sundries.  It now supports our air fryer, an electric induction hot plate, some boxes containing kitchen garbage bags and compostable waste bags, some cook books and other sundries. A couple of large plastic totes were re-purposed as a countertop on which we set our kitchen knives and a cutting board.  These totes aren't empty.  They contain items from our old kitchen which we won't need to access or use until the new kitchen is completed.

Our microwave oven still comes in very handy for meal preparation, of course, so one of the night stands that our kids had left behind was re-purposed as a microwave stand.  Our bread box containing bread (what else?), buns, english muffins and other grain products sits atop the microwave, just as it did in our old kitchen.  We can also use our crock pot as a slow cooker and our electric frying pans for fried foods.  We couldn't come up with sufficient countertop space nor electrical outlets to operate these at the same time as all the other appliances, so we swap out the induction hot plate with whichever disconnected appliance that we need.

We set up a makeshift pantry by strategically stacking empty large, plastic totes and an empty cardboard box on their sides for use as shelving.  The contents of the old pantry (or, rather, those foods and ingredients that we use the most frequently) went onto these makeshift shelves.

An old metal shelving unit that we weren't using for anything else was used for storing pots and pans as well as our tea pot in a readily accessible manner.

Finally, our old kitchen drawers containing cutlery and other smaller kitchen utensils as well as cookbooks and such were set on the floor with their contents left inside them for now.  

 We had intended to move our refrigerator into the auxiliary kitchen.  There was room for it, right next to the water cooler.  Unfortunately, while I checked to ensure that the fridge would fit into the spare bedroom that houses the auxiliary kitchen, I failed to check whether it fit through the door to that room.  It does not.  So, the good folks from Borman Construction, who helped us to move the fridge between rooms, set it up in our dining room instead.  Not quite as elegant, but workable.

This is to be our de facto kitchen for the coming month. 

Kitchen Reno: Part 3 - The Vision

Two weeks ago, Eric Borman introduced my wife, Judy, and me to Heather Fisher.  For the benefit of those who may not have read Part 1 of this series, Eric is the owner of Borman Construction; the company that Judy and I have selected to renovate our kitchen.  

Heather Fisher is a professional kitchen designer who came along with Eric to see our current kitchen for herself (she could be forgiven for assuming the photos that Eric may have shown her to be an elaborate practical joke) and to offer some suggestions for our new layout.  She works for AyA Kitchens, so it seems I was wrong in thinking that Borman Construction will be doing all of the work themselves.  Apparently, they do subcontract other specialists, but it was clear to me, watching and listening to Eric and Heather interact, that the two have worked together for several years and they know each other well.

Heather began by confirming some basic assumptions:

• We're going to replace our portable dishwasher with a built-in model.  
  
  
• We're getting a new stove, but we're keeping our current refrigerator.  
  

• We're also keeping our current microwave oven, which is a counter-top model, as opposed to getting an over-the-range model, which is installed above the stove, where the range hood normally goes, and has the advantage of using no counter top real estate.  

 She then offered several suggestions:

• A U-shaped layout with fixtures, appliances and cabinets arranged in such a way that functionality flows from station to station.  (Don't tell Judy that this appeals to me because it reminds me of a Star Trek bridge layout!)  Plus, we could still add a center "island" later on, if we chose to (not that we're planning to do so).
  
  
• Move the pantry from its current location in the far corner of the kitchen to the "east" wall, between the exit that leads down to the basement and the refrigerator, and install pull-out shelves for greater ease of access.  This also places the two food storage facilities side-by-side so that the refrigerator food and the pantry food can get to know each other better. 
  
  
• Move the stove to the "north" wall at the far end of the kitchen such that it is bordered by a generous amount of countertop space on both sides, where the small appliances can be placed so that all food preparation facilities (stove, microwave, air fryer, toaster, coffee maker) are together or at least within reasonable proximity of each other.
  
  
• Install 45-degree cabinets in the "northwest" and "northeast" corners of the kitchen for easier access.

After discussing all of the above with us, Heather and Eric left and, a week later, Eric sent us the drawings shown here (which, to give credit where it's due, were drawn by Heather).  Judy and I were both suitably impressed and accepted the layout without any changes.  

I did have a few questions, such as how many electrical outlets will there be, and where will they be located?  Eric assured me that there would be "lots" of electrical outlets on the countertop.

One other thing that I had noticed is that, while admittedly sporting a veritable plethora of cabinet and countertop space, there was precious little room for our water cooler.  The only place where it will fit is against the "south" wall (the only wall left untouched by the proposed reno), but that wall currently has no electrical outlets.  I asked Eric whether we could add an outlet to that wall.  He said that can be done and also suggested that the plumber could install an reverse osmosis water tank beneath the sink.  This would do away with having to constantly buy the 19-litre water bottles that our water cooler uses.  While a nice idea, we're going to have to nix that, because our water "cooler" actually dispenses both hot and cold water, a feature that we like, and I've since learned that under-cabinet R/O systems can't dispense hot water.

Having approved the general layout, it was time for Judy and me to select the cabinets, specifying style, finish, drawer/hinge type and door/drawer handle type.  For this, we visited Heather at a nearby AyA Kitchen showroom, where she showed us samples and finished display models so that we could compare options and get a mental picture of what our kitchen would look like.   She also offered some useful practical tips on things such as what cabinet styles were more difficult to clean or would need cleaning more frequently because ridges on their exterior surfaces would have a greater tendency to attract and build up dust.

We wound up selecting Alban style cabinet with a flax oak finish and champagne bronze handles.  She also suggested that we consider upgrading the drawers to the left of the stove, making them specialized garbage and food waste bin storage.  This added about $1,000 to the cost estimate, but Judy and I decided that the added convenience was worth it.  We said to go ahead with that and Heather updated her drawings and advised Eric Borman, who sent us a change order for our approval.  Once again, that budgetary flexibility that I mentioned in Part 2 of this series proved useful.   

Kitchen Reno: Part 2 - The Best Laid Plans

The scope of our planned kitchen renovation means literally gutting the existing kitchen and building a new one from scratch.  Given that a kitchen cannot be demolished and rebuilt in a day or less (trust me, I checked!), it then follows that, from the day that the wrecking ball meets our current kitchen until the completion of the new one, our home is not going to have a kitchen.  Having arrived at this conclusion, my wife, Judy, and I came to the realization that, before the kitchen renovation begins in earnest, we will have to:

1. Clear out anything that we don't wish to see destroyed along with the old kitchen, including all appliances, dishware, cutlery, food, the cat, etc. 
   
   
2. Find an alternate means of fulfilling all the functions that the old kitchen used to fulfill, including food preparation and storage plus dispensary of drinking water and the washing of used dishes.  We may be increasing our reliance on paper plates, disposable cups and plastic cutlery but a certain amount of dishware reuse will be unavoidable, if only those accoutrements used in food preparation.  I Googled and I Googled but not even Gemini was able to find anything like a disposable paper saucepan.

Future Auxiliary Kitchen

And so it was that we set about planning ways of overcoming these hurdles, one by one.  Our basic approach will be to set up a temporary makeshift kitchen to be used while the new one is under construction.  Fortunately, we have a spare room that we can designate for just such a purpose. It's a bedroom that was recently vacated by our daughter and her husband, who finally moved into a place of their own.  It's largely empty, save for a few odds and ends left behind by the "kids", including a night table that looks like it might make a decent microwave stand.

This room will house the refrigerator, a microwave oven, an air fryer, a slow cooker, a toaster and a Keurig coffee maker, all of which will be moved from the old kitchen to the makeshift one.  Small tables that we happen to have standing around in our basement and large plastic tote containers will be employed as makeshift counters upon which the smaller appliances will be placed.  There will be no functional stove, obviously.  All food preparation will have to be done using the aforementioned list of appliances and/or our (outdoor) gas grille, which is equipped with a side burner for heating pots of water and such.  The renovation is scheduled to start in late September or early October (no firm date yet) so the weather should be amenable to firing up the gas grille for the first little while, anyway.

Once the old kitchen is put out of commission, there will be no tap that dispenses drinkable water until the new kitchen comes online.  We do have running water in the bathroom and laundry room but neither Judy nor I feel very comfortable about drinking the water dispensed by either of those.  Fortunately, we do have an electric water cooler which uses those large 19-litre plastic bottles of spring water that can be purchased at most grocery stores.  This water cooler dispenses both cold and hot water, depending on our beverage needs, and will be moved from the old kitchen to the makeshift one along with the other appliances.

As for cleaning used dishes, that will be done using the laundry tub.

The stove will be either given away or discarded, to be replaced with a new one, and the portable dishwasher will likewise be either given away, sold (for a song) or discarded, to be replaced by a built-in one.  Note:  The cost of these two new appliances is not part of the $50,000 quoted in my last post, so these will increase the project's total price tag, somewhat.

Having established the plan, such as it is, Judy and I tackled the task of clearing out as much of the cabinets as we could. We decided to start with the pantry, having agreed that anything following that could only be easier, not to mention less icky (with the possible exception of the refrigerator) as the rest doesn't involve food storage.  When possible, get the nasty stuff out of the way first, I always say.

We decided to group everything which came out of the pantry (or any other kitchen cabinet for that matter) into the following categories:

1. Need - Anything which we will need to be able to access and use while the new kitchen is under construction (for example, plates, cutlery, drinking glasses, sugar, coffee, bread, etc.)  These items will be left where they are, to be moved to the makeshift kitchen just before the old one is demolished.
   
   
2. Store - Anything which will not be needed while the new kitchen is under construction, but which we plan to keep (for example, a cake plate, empty vases, seldom-used food preparation tools such as the cheese grater, etc.)  These items will be packed into boxes and totes, to be unpacked when the new kitchen is complete.
   
   
3. Discard - Anything which is broken or has expired/gone bad or anything which we simply do not want to keep.  These items will be given away or thrown out.

We started with the top pantry shelf, on which were stored the most seldom-used items, being the hardest to reach.  That contained just two items; a glass cake plate, with cover (that's a "store") and a decorative four-piece serving bowl set with matching tray which had been a gift from someone  and which  we had never used and weren't ever likely to use.  That ended up going to our daughter, who fancied it.  Fortunately, she didn't turn out to be the person who had gifted it to us in the first place or, if she was, she has the best poker face that I've ever seen!

The remaining pantry shelves contained mainly food as well as miscellaneous food storage and preparation items.  There was an awful lot of old/expired food (some never opened) which we had forgotten about and, in some cases, had not even known about, having been purchased and stored in the pantry by the "kids" without our knowledge. 

There were also certain contrivances about whose origins we had no clue, but we were sure we had never purchased.  One example was a deep fryer basket (the mesh kind that one fills with french fries or fish, to be lowered into a vat of frying oil).  This was especially peculiar as we don't have a deep fryer.  Another somewhat esoteric one was a European tool in a box labeled "Eiershalensollbruchstellenverusacher" (a German moniker which roughly translates to "Eggshell predetermined breaking point causer," another example of the German penchant for inventing long monikers for very specific things!) As far as I could make out, this seemed to be a tool for cleanly cracking an eggshell around its entire perimeter at whatever point the user designates.  No messy tapping the egg with a spoon or on the rim of a hard bowl for those fastidious Germans, no sir!  I believe it was a gift from one of my Austrian aunts. Don't tell her, but it went into the "discard" group.

As you can well imagine, emptying all of one's kitchen cabinets and drawers is a tedious and time-consuming task.  By starting early (well before we even had a firm start date for the actual renovation), Judy and I were able to make the job more manageable by doing just a little (usually just one or two shelves) each day. 

When tackling a big project such as this one, it's prudent to allow for additional, unforeseen costs.  For example, one day I pulled into my driveway and glanced up at my roof for no particular reason, only to see a large chunk of my chimney top lying on my roof, next to my chimney, rather than sitting on top of the chimney, where it belonged.  Although this admittedly had nothing directly to do with the kitchen reno, it was nevertheless an expensive (roughly $4,000) repair which couldn't wait (chimneys are kind of a must-have, especially when one's home features not one, but two, natural wood-burning fireplaces, as does ours).  If our home maintenance budget hadn't had a certain amount of flexibility, this incident might have seriously delayed the kitchen reno project but, no, it was "Damn the falling chimney bricks!  Full steam ahead!"

Kitchen Reno: Part 1 - In The Beginning

I live in a bungalow that was built during the 1950s.  A few things have been upgraded and modernized but, for the most part, the house has retained its "rustic fifties charm."  

That assertion holds truer for the kitchen than it does for any other room in the house.  The cabinets are solid wood with a stain or lacquer finish which makes for a cottage-like wood-grain look, complete with knot-holes.  I like the look, but the cabinet surfaces have become scuffed and scratched over the years.  

Some of the cabinet doors are awkwardly hung and one is missing entirely, owing to the fact that they're all mounted using pin-and-socket pivot hinges.  It turns out that one downside to this sort of hinge is that they wear out the wood on which they're mounted over time, causing it to crack and warp, until the hinges are no longer properly aligned or just fall apart altogether.  This comes from having only two mount points supporting each cabinet door, and most of that weight is taken by the lower one.  

Oh, and the cabinet door and drawer handles don't all match.  Several of the originals literally broke from the stress of simply being pulled and pushed once too often for too many years.  It probably didn't help that none of the drawers have roller guides on their sides, so that they open and close by the principle of force over friction only.

The counter tops are a dark gray boomerang Formica pattern, which I discuss in much more detail elsewhere in this blog.

The sink consists of a single basin as opposed to the more popular double-basin sinks.  There is no built-in dishwasher.  We use a portable one, which needs to be rolled into position near the sink and attached to one of the faucets each time that it's used, and then rolled back out of the way again when it's finished washing its load.

The vinyl floor has, unfortunately, not tolerated the weight and stress of the dishwasher traversing it daily and has therefore begun to tear.  I use the word "begun" here in the same context as in the sentence "The universe has begun to expand since the big bang."

So, a kitchen renovation is clearly overdue.  With our grown kids having flown the nest fairly recently and, finding myself with a whole lot of extra time on my hands even more recently, my wife and I have decided that the time has come.

The first order of business was to define the scope of the project.  The cabinets need to be replaced.  It follows, then, that the countertops and backsplashes will also need to be replaced.  The walls are adorned with a garish wallpaper pattern which I can only say seemed like a good idea at the time, but whose novelty factor has now been greatly diminished.  The floor covering is damaged and must therefore also be replaced.   Concerning appliances, our refrigerator is still in decent shape, but our stove, while functional, has become a bit of an eye-sore and must also be replaced.  We want to install a built-in dishwasher to replace the portable one and, since the kitchen doesn't already have a built-in dishwasher, this will mean plumbing work in order to run the necessary water lines.

A project of this scope is clearly beyond my handyman expertise (avid readers may recall that I was barely up to the task of installing a new set of tub doors some years ago) so we set about looking for a contractor.  Friends and family members who have had similar renos done were able to provide us with a list of company names and contacts but, as we began reaching out to some of these, we found a dismaying tendency to specialize.  Some of them replaced cabinets and counter-tops, but didn't do floors, walls, electrical or plumbing work.  Some were able to provide the names of companies whom we could hire to do the work which they themselves didn't do, and some were even willing to subcontract the work out themselves, but I wanted one contractor who could do it all, so that I would have one point of contact to whom I can turn with any questions, suggestions or problems.  Further, because of my lack of handyman expertise and the impairments to my balance, dexterity and strength that come with Parkinson's disease, 

I wanted them to do everything, including demolition and removal of cabinets, counter tops, floor and wall coverings, etc. and installation of new ones, including any finishing, painting, repairs, plumbing, electrical, etc.  I want my only responsibilities to include emptying out the cabinets, drawers and refrigerator, clearing the counter-tops, moving the appliances, large and small, out of the kitchen, making decisions about things like paint colour, floor covering and cabinet and countertop style and opening up my wallet.

We eventually found a contractor by the name of Borman Construction who appeared to meet all of the above requirements.  I reached out to them via their web site and I got a speedy response from the owner, Eric Borman.  He came to our home to see the current state of things for himself and to take some measurements.  He also suggested some changes which we had not considered.  For example, we have a large pantry built into one corner of the kitchen, which we were going to leave alone, but Eric suggested that we build a new one with pull-out shelves and drawers for better access and organization.  (The current pantry has five fixed shelves, so you can imagine how awkward it is to get at anything stored near the back of any of the top shelves!)

After reviewing our requirements, Eric went back to his office and, within a week, sent us a formal quotation for the job.  Our new kitchen is going to cost us about $50,000 including taxes.

... And so begins the adventure! 

A Foretaste of Retirement

About a month ago, my boss walked up to my desk and asked, "Have you got a moment?"  If there's one thing that I've learned during my forty-one year career it's that, when your boss asks you that question, the correct answer is invariably "Yes".  So that's what I said, and she led me to one of the meeting rooms, where the Human Resources manager awaited us.

Uh-oh. 

Another thing that forty-one years in the workforce has taught me is that meetings with one's boss and any H.R. representative are rarely happy ones.

After the standard greetings had been exchanged and we were all seated, my boss spoke.  "We've noticed that you're still struggling with your work, due to your condition," (by which she meant Parkinson's disease) "and we feel that perhaps it might be time for you to take a short leave so that you can focus on your health."

I understood that a "short leave" meant my going on short term disability, which can be as long as twenty-six weeks (hardly my idea of "short") because my boss had tabled the possibility of my taking such a leave if my disease continued to affect my work during my last performance review.

Although the suggestion wasn't completely unexpected, I was still somewhat nonplussed.   It was true that some of my Parkinson's symptoms were proving to be hindrances to my work.  My typing speed had noticeably diminished due to reduced finger dexterity.  My mental focus was constantly divided between work activities like writing and debugging code, testing programs and updating documentation versus trying not to drool all over myself.  Another recent distraction was chronic lower back pain which I suspect resulted from improper posture caused by Parkinson's and which seemed to be exacerbated by prolonged sitting at my desk.  It's hard to concentrate when your back hurts.

So, yes, my work was somewhat impaired, but I honestly didn't feel that it was to such a degree that a six-month leave of absence was called for.  Clearly, my boss disagreed.  

The uncomfortable question that was bouncing around my brain was whether she was truly doing this out of concern for my health and well-being, or if this wasn't just a conveniently "nice" way to get rid of me.  After all, I would be off work and yet receiving my full salary for 14 weeks, after which I could stay off work at two-thirds of my regular pay for another 12 weeks. After that, I could return to the office in hopes that my long sabbatical had rejuvenated me to the point where I could once more be productive, or I had the option of switching to long term disability leave which, in my case, could take me right into retirement.  You see, I would be 64 years old at the end of my short term disability period, with less than a year left before I reached retirement age.

It is well-known, however, that Parkinson's disease doesn't get better.  It gets worse.  It's progress can be slowed with the help of medication, exercise, therapy and even surgical procedures, but none of these things has ever been able to reverse or even stop the deterioration.  It never gets better, so it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that I'm not going to magically return to my former job proficiency after my extended leave. 

With all these things taken into consideration, I decided to play along and go on short term disability leave, as suggested.  That was a month ago.  Since then, I've been off work.  It feels like I'm getting a sneak preview of what retirement will be like.  I suddenly have a lot more time on my hands.  This has its upside.  I always said that I'm not the kind of person who can't find any other way to pass the time besides my job.  I tend to make my own hobbies and pet projects.  Beyond those, there always seems to be lots to do in and around my home.  I have the time to exercise more regularly, and yet, I have to admit that there are times when I find myself wondering what I'm doing at home.  This just doesn't feel right.  I should be at the office debugging programs rather than whiling away my time at home.

My wife enjoys my increased presence.  For one thing, I now chauffeur her to work and back on days on which she's scheduled to work (she doesn't drive).  I've also assumed a larger share of the household chores than I did while working. 

The neighbors have noticed that I'm home most of the time and one of them, Ken, has taken this as his cue to be more sociable.  One day last week I was mowing my lawn when, suddenly, there was Ken, standing beside me.  I politely shut off my lawn mower so that I could hear him and he explained that he had tried to get my attention by waving to me several times, but I never saw him, so he finally decided that he would just have to come over.  Truth be told, I had noticed him a couple of times, waving his arms like he was practicing his semaphore, but I pretended not to.  I've nothing against the chap but, as I've declared several times throughout this blog, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool introvert.  As such, I don't generally enjoy exchanging pleasantries whom I don't know very well and, being an introvert, I've made no attempt to get to know any of my neighbors very well.

Ken began by expressing his concern because he'd noticed that I was home most of the time, but didn't come out of the house much, so he wondered if I was ill.  While mentally contemplating that I seem to have become the neighborhood Boo Radley, I assured him that I was fine but that I was on extended leave from work due to my Parkinson's condition (which he did know about) and that I was focusing on indoor projects and exercises.

Ken commented that he knew the company that I worked for and they have a good reputation for taking care of their employees and he wondered whether they still make computer racks.  I told him that they still do and he wondered whether they were made in Canada or in their Chinese plant because they'd moved production of some of their product to China and everything that came out of there was garbage and he couldn't get out much either these days because his minivan's rear axle had broken and the speedometer, odometer and fuel gauge didn't work properly and it was going to cost in the neighborhood of $5,000 to get it all repaired and at first he figured he'd just write off the old minivan and buy a used car but, darn it, used cars are ridiculously expensive these days, why you can't find anything for under $26,000 and even then you don't know what you're getting and nobody except for Chrysler even makes minivans anymore so he had decided to have his old minivan repaired after all but it wasn't going to be done until the end of the month but aside from the problems he'd already mentioned the car was in pristine condition because he's been meticulous about caring for it for example he has the bottom oil sprayed every year so that it's free from rust because he's seen too many cars whose bottoms just rust out from under them especially the newer models because the auto manufacturers have taken to using ridiculously thin sheet metal ever since 2019 and that just doesn't hold up speaking of which how do I like the Hyundai that I'm driving these days and he talked for 45 minutes while I stood there smiling and nodding and wondering if I would ever be able to finish mowing my lawn.

As painful as it was having to listen to Ken's endless oratory, the realization came to me that I can now afford to waste that kind of time because I've nowhere else to be.  The jury is still out on whether this whole situation is a blessing or a curse. 

Microsoft Account Problem

  

 

 

For the longest time now, my PC has been throwing the following Windows notification at me pretty much daily:

For those readers who may not know what the above message means, Microsoft strongly advises that every Windows user should create a Microsoft account that's linked with their device (which can be a personal computer, tablet, phone, etc.)  The notification is telling me that there is something wrong with my Microsoft account and asking me to log into that account, presumably to resolve the problem.  

As I say, I've been seeing this notification almost daily for quite some time now, but I've been ignoring it because I wasn't having any problems with my PC or with Windows except for the annoying recurrence of the notification itself.  However, I finally got tired of the persistent nagging and decided to do something about it.  And so, I clicked on the message at the bottom to sign in to my Microsoft account.

Now, before I go on, I should note that the message is peculiar in itself, as it implies that I'm not already signed in to my Microsoft account, but my Microsoft account is linked to my PC, which runs Windows.  Ergo, I should be signing into my Microsoft account each time that I start Windows on my PC, so why is this notification implying that I'm not already signed in?  Curious. 

Having clicked on the notification, the following prompt appeared:

Once again, I was being told that I needed to sign into my Microsoft account so, ignoring the fact that I thought I had just tried to do exactly that, I obligingly clicked the 'Sign in' button.  That resulted in the following prompt:

 

 

Okay, so Microsoft wants to be sure that it's me.  That's fair enough, I suppose.  The 'Windows Security' heading at the top tells me that I'm accessing the Microsoft account that's linked to Windows, which runs on my PC, so the PIN that it's expecting should be the same one that I use to sign into Windows.  

 

Note the string of digits on the 'Identity' line.  That's my phone number.  It is not the identity with which I sign into Windows on my PC.  I used to have a second Microsoft account that did use my phone number as the identity.  It was linked with my Skype ID.  I deleted that account when Microsoft ended support for Skype, replacing it with Microsoft Teams, which is just like Skype, except that it sucks.  This was the first clue that something was indeed amiss.  I was being asked to sign into a Microsoft account that should no longer exist.  At least that explains why I wasn't already signed in.  Since there was no option for changing the identity for a different Microsoft account, I entered my PIN number and clicked the 'OK' button.  

 

Now, friends, there were only two things that could have happened after I clicked 'OK'.  One was that I'd be signed into my old Microsoft/Skype account and given further instructions, which wasn't very likely.  Hell, I didn't expect it!  The other possibility was that I would be told that no such account existed and never to be seen trying to sign in with that identity again, which was what I expected.  But there was a third possibility which I hadn't anticipated:

 

I was told that my phone number doesn't exist as a username (didn't I just say that?)  This time, however, there was an option to sign in with a different username, so I selected that.  

 

 

That gave me a 'Sign in' dialog, where I entered my Microsoft Windows account ID (the one that I should already be signed into) and clicked 'Next' to sign into it.

 

 

That led to a demand to enter my password, but at least asking me to do so for an account that I was already signed into was justified by the fact that I was accessing "sensitive info", so I humored it and entered my password (which had recently been referred to as my PIN number just to keep things as confused as possible) again and clicked the 'Sign in' button, to be greeted by ...
 

OH, FOR THE LOVE OF ... I was now officially going 'round in circles!  Once again I was asked to enter my PIN in order to "make sure it's me."  Notice that my identity had suddenly reverted back to my phone number, even though moments before I had clearly, expressly and unequivocally requested to sign in with a different ID!

 

This experience makes it easy to understand why casual PC users get frustrated.  I make my living as an Information Technology (I.T.) professional, yet I was at my wits' end (though nowhere near the end of my dictionary of expletives) trying to solve what should have been a relatively simple problem.  To this day, I still get daily notifications from my PC that there's a problem with my Microsoft account and, to this day, I have no idea what that problem might be, because I can't sign in to fix it and everything seems to work anyway.  I just blow it a raspberry before dismissing the notification, but doing so at least gives me some small satisfaction.

From Apollo to Artemis

I'm old enough to be of that generation that saw mankind's first lunar landing and will probably still be around to see the next one.  From Apollo to Artemis, you might say.

I'm a huge admirer of the Apollo program.  I watched it on TV "back in the day" as we old-timers like to say.  I own movies and documentaries which I watch repeatedly.  One of my favorites is HBO's 2005 television mini-series, "From the Earth to the Moon" featuring Tom Hanks.  I've mentioned the Apollo program several times in this blog.

Having read this, it may surprise you to learn that I didn't bother to watch any part of the first manned Artemis mission (Artemis II).  Not the lift-off, nor the lunar orbits, nor the return and splashdown.  Why not?  Because it's been done.

Don't get me wrong.  I applaud mankind's return to space.  I honestly feel that it's a much better expenditure of our time, energy and ingenuity than waging pointless wars (which, of course, we continue to do).  Why, then, am I so seemingly uninterested?  

I suppose it might be because Apollo did it for the first time, giving this latest sojourn something of a "been there, done that" vibe.  During the nineteen sixties, nobody knew for sure whether flying to and landing on the moon and then returning safely back to Earth could be done.  Seeing something as marvelous and as dangerous as that being accomplished for the first time creates a tension and a thrill that just can't be recaptured.

Maybe it's because I was an imaginative young boy back then, with my eyes literally full of stars and my head full of dreams of becoming an astronaut.  Let's face it, the only way I would stand any chance of flying into space at my age is by legally changing my sir-name to Shatner.

What really gives me a case of the "Mehs" regarding the Artemis II mission, though, is that it has offered us nothing new.  If we would have found a way to travel there and back in a fully reusable vehicle, for example, that might have piqued my interest.  But, no, we did essentially the exact same thing that we did when we left off a little over 53 years ago,  We built a big-ass rocket to get us into orbit, only with two solid rocket boosters this time to help get the rocket off the launch pad and an additional stage to get us to the moon, just like before.  The boosters aren't even re-usable, unlike those that the orbiter (space shuttle) used. 

Earthrise by Apollo 8 (left) vs. Artemis II (right)

The crew did get some spectacular pictures of the Earth rising above the lunar horizon ... much like the one that Bill Anders took back in 1968 (and I still think that the 1968 photo is better than the latest ones).  Oh, wait, there is one thing that we did differently from the last time.  We didn't actually land on the moon!

Okay, I get that one has to (re)learn to crawl before one can walk, and I did enjoy seeing a fellow Canadian joining the the Artemis II crew (that's one small step for beer, one giant leap for poutine, eh?)  That was pretty cool.  And I do understand that the plan is to work toward developing a more long-term presence on the moon this time around, with an eye toward hoarding its mineral resources and any water that we might find there (just like we've been doing down here on Earth all these years) and maybe to set up a staging point for launching us to Mars (which has about as much chance of being rendered habitable before we completely destroy the planet that we already live on as I have of winning the American Powerball lottery next weekend).

Even the name of the new program is questionable.  In Greek mythology Artemis was Apollo's twin sister.  This may make the name seem appropriate for the new lunar program until you consider that these "twins" are more than 53 years apart in age!  It may be inconsistencies like that which have dampened my enthusiasm for the new program.  Or maybe it's just cynicism on my part.  Who's to say?    
 

And Yet More Fun With ChatGPT

I've blogged about my experiences with ChatGPT a few times now.  From having a conversation with it to translating Shakespeare into Nadsat slang, my interactions have been strictly verbal or "textual" (if that's a word), even when I had it write a tongue-in-cheek editorial decrying the LGBTQ movement's commandeering of the leprechauns' rainbow.  I recently decided to delve into its graphical abilities.

I was gazing at my Google avatar; a caricature of myself.  It's getting rather dated (because so am I!) and no longer represents an accurate, if somewhat exaggerated, approximation of my current appearance.  It was hand-drawn some 28 years ago, by an obscure caricature artist who was doing it as a gig at a software trade show which I attended in Florida.  The attendees who were interested in having themselves "caricatured" (if that can be used as a verb) stood in a short line, waiting their turn to pose and be immortalized.  To the best of my recollection, the artist spent an average of maybe 10 minutes on each portrait.  I had to admit, he did have a knack for capturing his subjects' personalities by the way in which he rendered their most typical facial expressions.

Here's a larger rendition of mine.  I have to admit, the somewhat goofy smile that he gave me is a pretty good indication of my happy-go-lucky outlook at the time.  The fake arrow stuck on my neck wasn't the product of any creative license on the cartoonist's part.  I was actually wearing one when I posed for the picture.

As I say, I don't really look like that anymore, so I thought that it might be fun if I could somehow get an updated caricature of myself.  Unfortunately, tracking down the guy who drew the last one might prove difficult nowadays, even if I could decipher his signature.

Then I remembered reading that ChatGPT is capable of creating graphics, and I got to wondering whether it might be able to create a caricature derived from a more recent photo of myself, so I dug up a reasonably recent (but still almost seven year old) picture of myself, started a conversation with ChatGPT, uploaded the picture and typed "Turn this into a caricature".

I've been impressed by ChatGPT enough times now that a wasn't really surprised when it did so, and in only a few minutes' time at that!  Here is ChatGPT's caricature of my more recent self.

Perhaps I haven't changed as much as I thought I have, after all.  That same old goofy smile is still there and, yes, I may have acquired a few pounds over the years since my original caricature, although it's not as extreme as it appears (remember, it is a caricature and therefore, by definition, exaggerated).  

I thought that it might be better to render my caricature as a pencil sketch, in keeping with the style of the older one, so I asked ChatGPT to re-do it as such, and it came up with the version below. 

Never one to make everything about myself, I wondered how ChatGPT would render my wife in caricature.  The answer is below.  

Unlike my caricature, hers is most properly rendered in colour.  It has to be, to bring out that frizzy mop of red hair (one of her most striking features) and I daresay that it captured that impish smile of hers beautifully!  To me, this looks strangely like something from out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Now that my creative juices were really starting to flow and my imagination discovered an exponential branching out of "The Possible", I considered that I have always wondered how I might be rendered as a Simpsons character were I ever to become famous or, perhaps, infamous enough to merit a guest appearance on The Simpsons.  I tossed the challenge at ChatGPT: "Render me as a Simpsons character!"  Lights flashed, gears whirred and I could have sworn I heard a female voice say "Working..." and, a minute or three later, the caricature to your left appeared on my screen.

Delighted, yet not quite sated, I decided to take it to just one more level.  I recalled a certain photo of a good friend of mine and me "having a moment" at a local bar after having had more than just a couple of drinks.  In fact, the particular photo to which I refer has already been shared elsewhere in this blog but, for those of you who may not remember it, or perhaps came late to the party and never ventured to read the posts which you had missed, here it is for posterity.

I uploaded this to ChatGPT and asked that it be rendered as a scene from The Simpsons, perhaps appropriately set in Moe Szyslak's tavern, with Moe himself standing between my friend and me.  Here's what ChatGPT came up with.

 In fairness to Google, I should note that their A.I. chat-bot, Gemini, is also capable of rendering graphics, and I had it render the same self portrait that I had uploaded to ChatGPT as a caricature.  Gemini's first attempt wasn't even so much a caricature as a digital portrait.

 I suggested to Gemini that the idea behind a caricature is to exaggerate the most prominent facial features and bade it try again.  It then came up with this:

 

Okay, better, and certainly a slightly different take from ChatGPT's, but I still didn't feel that it captured my essence in quite the same manner as ChatGPT.  Another niggling complaint that I have with Gemini's graphical work is it's irritating insistence on embellishing every rendering with a watermark of its logo in the bottom right corner.  I will concede, however, that its pencil sketch better matched the style of my old original than did ChatGPT's.

 

Parkinson's Update

This coming May will mark the fourth anniversary of my Parkinsonism diagnosis.  The disease probably began presenting symptoms for at least a year before I finally took the symptoms seriously enough to consult with my family doctor, so it's safe to say that I've been living with Parkinson's for about five years now. 

Parkinsonism, like Autism, includes a spectrum of disorders.  It can be split into multiple categories, including Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease (the most common type), Familial Parkinson's Disease, Early-onset Parkinson's Disease (the type with which Michael J. Fox is afflicted) and even Juvenile Parkinsonism, which starts in childhood or adolescence.  

Then there are multiple types of brain disorders which resemble Parkinson's Disease but involve different regions of the brain than the basal ganglia, which is the region affected by the more common varieties of the disease.  These include Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (or PSP), Corteobasal Degeneration (CBD), Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) and the nasty Multiple System Atrophy (MSA).

Finally, there are "Secondary Parkinsonisms", which are Parkinsonisms caused by external factors such as medications, exposure to certain chemicals, head injuries or strokes rather than unexplained brain degeneration.

These Parkinsonisms can manifest in several ways.  The most common symptoms are tremors, slow movements, rigidity of muscles and trouble balancing and/or walking.

Parkinson's can also affect cognitive ability and, in my case, I fear that it has.  I find myself having difficulty recalling the names of well known people such as actors, musicians and politicians who aren't in the news every day (although I sometimes wish that I could forget about Donald Trump!)  I can usually recall the name eventually but, at first, I'll often have a clear mental image of the person that I'm thinking of, but I just can't recall his or her name.  I'm not talking about obscure people, either.  Some actors' names that I've had trouble recalling include Alec Baldwin, Russell Crowe and Sandra Bullock.

When conversing with others, I find myself mentally groping for words much more than I used to which, in turn, causes me to stammer.  When I do recall the word that I'm looking for, I sometimes have trouble  enunciating it.  My speech enunciation problems are related to the drooling that I've spoken of earlier.  Try speaking with a mouthful of saliva some time and you'll understand what I mean.

Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, as you read this, "Gee, Halmanator, your vocabulary seems pretty good to me."  I do pride myself on having above-average writing skills. The degradation in my ability to communicate isn't as apparent in my writing because you can't see the number of times that I paused while trying to think of the correct word or phrase, or trying to remember a name or a term.  Of course, enunciation isn't a factor, so I'll never shlur my wordsh or sta-sta-stammer when I write. 

I've been at my current job for going on seven years now.  My boss and I get along well and my annual performance reviews have always been very good.  She made the following comments in my performance review for the past year:

"Andy is very knowledgeable and a great resource.  I am starting to see Andy struggle with his level of comprehension when working on the finer details in projects and day-to-day issues that require a more detailed approach to resolve ... Andy puts in a great effort but sometimes needs someone to check for accuracy with the small details."

Well, at least she sugar-coated it somewhat.  She didn't comment that I'm taking longer to complete my assignments, but I know that to be the case as well.  I should note that my boss is aware of my Parkinson's diagnosis, so she understands that it's the disease that's causing my professional lapses as opposed to any apathy on my part.  

To illustrate a point that I made just before, the word "apathy" didn't come to me immediately.  I had to stop typing and think for several minutes before my brain was finally able to retrieve it.  Had I been speaking to you verbally, it would have come out something like "I should note that ... my boss is aware of my Par-Parkinshon's diagnosis, s-so she understans that it's the disease that's causing my profeshnal lapses as opposed to any ... uh .... any ... oh, what's the word I'm groping for?  ... Apathy!  As opposed to any apathy on my part,"

Getting back to memory lapses, there have been times, at work, when I've needed to revisit a program that I know I've worked with before, and yet I've had to re-learn how it works.  I've even forgotten how some of the changes that I myself made to programs work.  It seems that the moment I complete a task, my brain erases it from my memory before moving on to the next task.  Oh, I don't completely forget what I've done.  When reviewing it later, it does come back to me, so it is still buried in my deeper memory, but it seems to have been erased from that memory which is readily accessed on demand.

I'm taking steps to mitigate these problems.  I read a fair bit and, when I'm alone and no-one can hear me, I read aloud to practice my enunciation.  I'm going to try posting to this blog more often as well (yeah, I know, you've heard that one before!)  Writing on a regular basis may help me to retain my vocabulary, not to mention stimulating my creative pathways.  At work, before declaring an assignment as being completed, I will try to review the original request and everything that I've done, making sure that I haven't missed or forgotten anything.

Hopefully, with the help of a few mental disciplines, I can minimize my cognitive deterioration, if not turn it around.  My goal is to see something akin to the following on next year's performance review:

"Andy has demonstrated increased meticulousness over the past year. His work has returned to its former quality and it has not been necessary to check it for mistakes or omissions.  Well done, Andy!"