Year: 2021

Bathroom Refresh

While we are avid consumers of HGTV and its bevy of remodeling shows, neither of us are enamored with an open concept. Nor are we lusting after a lot of the newer “high end” finished drooled over by many. The current House of Bogardi is 57 years old and somewhere in its the past, some updating has been done. The kitchen and bathrooms were done sometime in their lifespan, from the looks, sometime near the turn of the century time frame.

And while we are pretty happy with the way most things look, there are a few small items that we would like to address. The first thing we want to improve on are the bathroom vanities in both the on suite and the other main floor bath. They are dull pale yellow color with dark tops and oil rubbed bronze fixtures and while they looked OK when the walls were beige, they don’t really go that well with the green and blue we have painted the rooms. Plus they are a might too big for the smaller mid century sized rooms.

Another thig we want to do is change out 2 of the 3 toilets. The main flor bath has a newer chair height unit while the on suite and lower floor bath’s have older lower seats. Considering that when we redid the bathroom back in Aiken we put the taller chair toilets in, whenever either of us uses the lower toilets those couple of inches feel like a steep drop.

Today we took step one, drove over to Home Depot bought a vanity, facet set and wall light fixture for the blue main floor bath. The vanity is gray with a white top and because the cabinet handles are brushed nickel we also bought a faucet set and wall light in the same finish.

I was careful to measure the depth and width of the vanity to make sure it would fit in the back hatch of the Mini with the seats down. It looked like as long as there was was not too much packing material around it we would be fine. When we got to the store and dragged the vanity box out from the shelf it was under, it looked awfully big, especially in the height department. So I went up front to the Customer Service Desk to ask if they had a tape measure I could borrow. Went back and measured the box, depth 21″, width 33″ and height 38″. Strolled out to the car and had plenty for the depth, pretty close to enough for the width and height.

I returned the tape measure and we put the three items on a cart and headed for the check out. when I got to the car and stuffed our vanity in the back of the Ladybug it went right in width and depth-wise, but the height was fine at the bottom, but 21″ straight up the box was hitting the slanted hatch. I sort of forgot that the box was three dimensional. The hatch would come down and almost close, but even moving the front seats forward slightly, it wouldn’t close. So I moved the seats all the way back again and bungee corded the hatch almost shut. Because the vanity consumed nearly all the hatch area, Donna had to ride home sharing her half of front seat with the boxes of the faucet and wall light.

Some time a couple three weeks from now I’ll see how hard it is to remove the old vanity and backsplash and put the new one in.

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Et tu, Brute Edition of SORT
As of Monday, March 15, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2007 Honda S2000 1985 Toyota Land Cruiser 2000 BMW 540i
A seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar no later than the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, “The Ides of March are come”, implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied, “Aye, Caesar; but not gone.”

Are You In The Loop?

In the beginning of this pandemic with everyone stuck at home, people were heavily using streaming services to watch movies and TV as a way to pass the time indoors. For some, pandemic themed movies are what they wanted and those started shooting to the top of the most watched lists. Contagion, 28 Days Later, 12 Monkeys, and Outbreak all had a nice little resurgence. I was not interested, COVID was scary enough by itself and I wasn’t getting promised that guaranteed feel good Hollywood ending that they had.

As shelter in place, stay way from people, don’t go far recommendations persisted, a lot of days started to seem a lot like all the others. Almost like being stuck in a time loop and being doomed to repeat the same day over and over again. Seeing that I’m a sucker for time travel movies, this was the stuff I could watch.

I went back and rewatched Edge of Tomorrow. I also love Sci-Fi so this one is a favorite movie for me, and what’s not to love, Tom Cruise gets killed a dozens of times. Back in 2019 Netflix produced a little show called Russian Doll that used this Live, Die, Repeat1 trope as well. I watched it then and have recently rewatched it.

Because I just remembered it, today I went back and watched again something from another favorite of mine, The X-Files. Specifically Season 6’s Episode 14 entitled Monday, that involves Scully and Mulder2 and a bank robbery with the same we die and come back on the same day plot line.

In July Hulu premiered a new movie called Palm Springs with this theme as well, but puts a slight comic spin on it. It starred Adam Samberg and Cristin Milioti, but J.K. Simmons almost steals the show for me from the “guest star” role. It got a lot of well deserved buzz and I enjoyed it so much I watched it twice, about a month apart. Not to be left out of the temporal anomaly band wagon, Amazon Prime premiered The Map of Tiny Perfect Things just last month. This one is a sort of teen romantic comedy and it works. And for my money has the tidiest resolve of any of these things.

Speaking of rom-com time loop movies, this brings us around to the gold standard of this genre, Groundhog Day. Although I have seen this 1993 movie starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell movie a few times already, I think it is time to schedule a rewatch before too long. But first I’m off to Google “time loop movies” to see if I’m missing any hidden gems.

Mini and Bicycle Racks

We have the 2-bike version of the Saris Bones rack that is perfect for the Miata and carrying our road bikes (or in a pinch the tandem), but now we also have a Mini and mountain bikes. Because of the plastic roof small lip spoiler on the Mini there is no place to hook what would be the top straps of the Bones without risking breaking that plastic piece. After doing a bunch of online searching around the Mini Forums and not really finding anyone with a good work around, they just put the straps on ignoring the pressure on the lip, I was about to give up when I had an idea – a pool noodle.

I went to my favorite store, Amazon, and found the largest diameter noodle with the highest density and bought an Oodles Monster Jumbo Pool Noodle. When I got it, I cut it to the length of the width of the back window to try it out. I got the rack arms adjusted to get them parallel to the ground and braced the bottom legs on the bumper. I then lengthened the straps so I could get them hooked in the right spots. The top straps hooked in on top and the noodle was just right in keeping any pressure off the lip spoiler, the side straps hooked on the body of the door, not the glass, but the bottom straps would not reach the bottom of the hatch door. I think it might have worked without them, but I would probably get some longer ones for some enhanced security.

Seeing as I have never tried the mountain bikes with the Bones rack, now was the time. I went and got my MTB to put on spot closest to the car because it is the tallest. Because of the frame geometry the bike rested in a nose down attitude, unlike the level look of the road bikes. The frame tubes are rectangular, not round, they didn’t rest in the cradle nicely, but with the three loops tightened it was held in tightly. I then grabbed Donna’s size small framed bike (mine is a large) and it would not go over the rack arms, there just wasn’t a large enough opening in the frame. Now what?

My first thought was returning to a roof rack, we used to have one that was universal and removable, so I researched the genuine Mini rack first. This has the benefit of being designed for the car. The roof rack base system is a couple hundred dollars, the rack itself is about $150 and you need two of them, so this would cost roughly $500 to out fit the car. I think this is the best way to accomplish this and I an order would already be placed except for the negatives. Firstly, this would be mounted on the car at all times generating wind noise, slightly decreasing gas mileage and getting all covered in bugs. Some of this could be eliminated by removing the bike rack section, leaving the base, but this increases time and trouble when you do want to transport the bikes. Secondly, there is the issue of having to lift the bikes up onto the roof, I am tall enough, but my MTB weighs 35 pounds, and that is a lot of unwieldy to hoist up that far making the chance for a mistake of scratching the car or dropping the bike a consideration.

Option #2 was a trailer hitch mounted rack. This option comes in around $400 if I do the work of installing the $200 trailer hitch. You have to remove the rear bumper which according to folks on the Mini Forums only takes an hour to 1-1/2 which translates into around 4 to 5 hours in real life. The pluses are that you only need to lift the bikes a foot off the ground, it is easy to put on and take off and you have zero chance of shearing everything off the roof when you drive into your garage forgetting about the bikes. The big negative is that the trailer hitch receiver comes out of middle of the bumper and you lose your back up light/rear fog lamp assembly. No one on the forums mentioned anything about whether the car throws a code because of this, I would think with the electrics being on a CANBUS system there might be some issue.

The third possibility is a variation on the roof rack, a pair of Talon suction cup mounts from SeaSucker. This option costs about $500. This is the 21st century version of that original universal and removable rack as it is easy on and off, but the hoisting the bikes up issue still remains, although slightly easier because you get to remove the front wheel. But the removed front wheels now have to be stored inside the car, that is unless you want to spend another $250 for a pair of suctioned wheel mounts again for the roof. Other downsides are the trust issue of just suction cups alone holding your bikes on the roof, the extra care required to keep the car paint clean and unscratched, plus the ease of installation translates into ease of theft…

The fourth, and most radical, option is to just sell the Mini and buy a Jeep so we can get one of those bike racks that fit on the spare tire, but then again that probably wouldn’t fit Donna’s small framed MTB. Though a trailer hitch rack on the Jeep would be perfect. Now I just need to go start a GoFundMe site for that Wrangler…

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Special Yellow Edition of SORT
As of Monday, March 1, 2021 at 9:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
1974 Jaguar XKE Roadster 1979 GMC Jimmy 4×4 2014 Porsche Cayman
Most beautiful car ever made. Twelve cylinders and 4 carburetors…what could go wrong. Be real easy to find this in the woods, even after running through mud holes. I really love this car in blue, but I would not kick a yellow one out of my garage.

THUD!

While sitting on the couch watching CBS Sunday Morning we were startled by a loud thud against the big picture window in the living room. We had heard this sound once before and knew exactly what it was — a bird flying into the window.

Donna got up and looked outside to see if there was a dead bird in the driveway below. She said, “It looks hurt.” From my seated position I said, “I’m not a bird doctor, I don’t know what I can do for it.” But I got up and looked anyway. Turns out it wasn’t just one bird, it was one hurt bird with another bird on top pinning it down.

Hard to tell from the zoomed in cell phone camera, but my guess is a small red-tailed hawk brought down a dove in mid-flight and its momentum crashed them into the window.