Have been working on painting my pair of JVC speakers white. It was a bit scary since I’ve never done any woodwork or paint job and if I screw this pair of speakers up I’d have nothing left…not to mentionthe shelves that I made 2 days ago was “designed” to fit these speakers like a glove. I bought some 120 and 180 nits sandpaper and sander (looks like a shoe brush without the hairs) from Daiso, $2 each. I sanded the exterior of the wooden speaker casing (made a mess) and then primed the surface with a spray primer, almost suffocated when I did it in the garage. I painted 3 coats of acrylic latex paint and let it dry. The result wasn’t bad, just that I couldn’t really get the paint to look really smooth..not sure if it’s the brush, probably just my skills… They actually look pretty good when I place it on the two shelves that I installed near the ceiling in the kitchen. It’s white on white, to keep it simple.

Next will be to set up the wiring and decide on the location to place the amplifier. This is going to be tricky..

Have been having trouble sleeping at night ever since I came back from Hong Kong. I thought it was some kind of jet lag but no it’s something else. It’s probably stress + anxiety from various aspects of life. I’ll be facing challenges that I’ve never faced before, even going to be worse than when I first came to Canada that I had to adapt to everything Canadian. I have to somehow find a way to cure my sleeplessness though, otherwise I’d collapse fairly soon I’m sure.

I haven’t been doing much lately due to the lack of energy, haven’t been posting for over a week as well. I did go for snowboarding with Kedding last weekend to Mt. Baker, which was really icy but the mountain was very wide opened so it’s semi good. Other than that, work of course, everyday and it just gets worse. It’s getting to the busiest time of the year very soon =(

I’ve been thinking of ways to set up some speaker shelves near the ceiling in the kitchen, was going to buy readily made shelving but couldn’t find any that’s close to what I was hoping for. I made them myself with some particle boards, got them sewed at Rona and then bought some L-shape anchors to set them up against the wall. I got them installed yesterday even though my fingers hurt as I had to hand screw 2x screws into these solid woods.. Next would be to set up the speaker wires and the amplifier =D

Since the kitchen reno’s been done the walls have been pretty empty. I was thinking what to put on there to fill up the space. A painting would do but that would be a waste of space. So I went to Ikea to check out some shelvings. There was a silver, rack-like one with horizontal beams (for drainage?), it’s more practical since it holds wider/bigger things but it’s kind of too obstructive. I chose a white one and bought four of them, they were SO CHEAP it’s like $5(mdf) + $4(anchor) = $9 each. Installation wasn’t too straight forward, as I didn’t even have a ruler with leveling bubble, nor a super long ruler. Utilizing my highschool art skills, I mapped out the position of where the screws will go, and started drilling. I got two of them installed yesterday, next to the fridge, and got the other two of them installed today. I bought special dry wall screw-in anchors today as the ones I was using yesterday didn’t seem to be too secure. These screw-in ones are really cool, not only they are white (which matches the color of the wall) and they are super snug. I think these shelves look really good on the walls, and they’re useful too, saving up a lot of counter top space.

I’ve also gotten an “internet radio” yesterday at Costco. I wanted to get a couple of Apple’s Airport Express to stream iTune music throughout my place, then I saw this internet radio made by Sanyo and it claims that it can wirelessly stream 1000’s of stations throughout the world and it also streams mp3s shared from PC wirelessly. Out of curiousity I bought it and wow, it’s such a sweet little device! Sound quality was not the best but it does have ported speakers so the bass isn’t bad, the where it shines is that it was able to connect to my home wi-fi in about a minute and I literally am able to see hundreds if not thoudsands of radio stations in a couple clicks. I can listen to stations from Hong Kong and Japan, or browse by genre like Ambient and Classical, and it works! It looks cool too since it has brushed aluminum faceplate and black piano finishing casing, and it takes up very little space. It’ll be sitting in my kitchen for the next little while and it’ll be switched on 24/7 playing ambient/lounge stuff!

I’ve been trying to mimic the frappucino from Starbucks (already succeeded in the hot coffee department not going for cold ones). I made it twice but it turned out to be quite watery (not as thick). Not sure why. Today I got some 3.25% white milk and also chocolate milk, see if it’ll make a difference. Also got this hazelnut syrup, will try to add it in to pro it up.

Also been trying to seal up the garage door (against the wall) so that the cold drafts wouldn’t come in too much as I have a gym in the garage and I wanted to keep it as warm as possible. Bought this “foam tape” thing from Rona, installation was a breeze, but I ended up having to get four packs of them and it was a whopping $30 Hopefully the tapes will last for a couple winters.

I bought a couple capacitors from Lee’s Electronics and fixed both of my LCD monitors =D Couldn’t believe that I was able to get them fixed myself and I was able to save a lot from having to get new monitors =D I wonder how much longer they will last, hopefully another 3 years or so.
Some progress pictures.

Yesterday I spent the entire day cleaning up the garage, sweeping the floor, clearing all the leaves/bugs/dirt, and spent lots of time breaking these styrofoam from packaging into pieces (by hand) so that I could throw them away easily. I actually hurt my hands as today I can hardly bend the fingers on my left hand… Anyway, I realized that there was some huge gap between the garage door and the wall, and that seemed to be the reason why it always feel so cold in there because of the cold draft rushing in from the sides. I bought some foam tapes from Rona today and will be applying them to the door tomorrow see if it fixes it..

Also bought a Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB harddrive from NCIX today for backup purposes. Since my last Seagate 1.5TB harddrive died few months ago I’ve been lacking in space a lot. I wanted to get an external drive but then this one is only $88 plus it’s energy saving (uses 40% less power) so I got this one. Just installed it 10 minutes ago and it seems to be working. Going to get stuff backed up ASAP, can’t afford to lose any more data.

Oh and I’ve also bought a replacement sconce since the contractor broke its glass during the reno =( Spent $30 on it even though it’s not too much, still it’s a dead lost. I could’ve eaten a reasonably good meal with that amount of money..