Ari

Ari

Goldie dog

The crate should feel to her like a happy place, not a punishment otherwise she will always choose your bed over it. It would be best located in a kitchen or other place without couches, a whole room safe for her to roam. Ulysses was free to be anywhere in the kitchen and dining room until he got what made us happy (not being on the couch). Then, when she is in other rooms (which should also have dogbeds (one moveable one is OK) on the floor) and she causes you to feel unhappy you can escort her back to the kitchen (or whatever room) where the crate is.

7940 48th Ave S

viber 5/21/18

So doing the dormer this early July would require...

• complete demo of every interior surface (including the boards) of the second floor. This time demo means all nails, and other crap so we can start right in on the intensive program with a clean workspace. You should be able to get it demo-ed and clean in one day and to the dump the next. Don't do it on a hot day.
• get rid of the demo stuff off site since we are gonna use a lot of space to build ... like the garage, back deck and left side of the house
• run around to suppliers getting quotes for materials
• arrange for delivery or pickup of all materials for framing, roofing, windows, trim and exterior finish and rough electrical to be on site no later than July3.
• prepare to build with tools and equipment needed ex. (compressor) hoses hand tools skill saws,roof brackets saw horses

Are you game? I would totally understand if you want to put it off with all that's going on in your lives. Think about it tonight. I'm going to bed. Let me know by morning if you can and I'll get right on buying tickets.

If its a go, I'm thinking a very long day of work on July5, then a couple of light or no work quarterfinal days then a good day on July 8th (a Sunday so late start and hope not to piss off neighbors)

By then we should be mostly done

username: ari, pasword: ira

email 7/13/17

• clear everything out of the whole downstairs room
• clear everything away from the outside of the house where the window will go in
• unpack all your tools and put them out on display in your shop

emil 4/15/17

Hi Ari,

I have been mulling over our converstaion from yesterday. It seemed that your thinking on design options was not fuly formed, or formed enough to commit to one course of action. Some of your objections to a particular design were based on sketchy premises.

Here's what I would suggest. Put off going under the house for another year:)

Why don't you take it easy and have a good summer doing cool stuff. Limit your work on the house to completing the garage room. Then...

Live in it. In a good house you regularly use all of the rooms. So you will have your study/tv/guest room done by the fall. If you find you use it every day and you like to be down there then you have proven that it works for you(plural). If you don't or only go down there because the TV is there then that gives you something to think about.

Meanwhile, I have put off Peri's ideas about our summer waiting to see how this week played out on the 'next steps to construction' priority list. Last night I told her we might as well book a vacation up in Vermont to extend the time she is up there in June playing with her orchestra. We might plan a beach vaca too. Then we go to Mexico City to help out after the new baby. So I am no longer thinking I am available for house renovation this summer.

Lets talk again soon.

permitting

The permit issued to a homeowner is an authorization for the homeowner to do the plumbing work or to receive assistance from a friend, neighbor, relative or other person when none of the individuals doing such plumbing hold themselves out as engaged in the trade or business of plumbing. (See RCW 18.106.150)

• http://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/environmental-health/piping/plumbing/homeowners-plumbing-permit.aspx

Any professional applying for electrical permits must have a Washington State electrical contractor’s license and a Seattle business license. Property owners may do their own work when they own and occupy the property they’re working on.

• http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/permits/permittypes/electrical/

Interpretation of RCW 18.08.410 (5) and (6) RCW 18.08.410 (5) and (6): Application of chapter The Board’s interpretation of RCW 18.08.410 (5) and (6) is as follows:

Persons not licensed as architects can design, build, and alter:

• Residential buildings regardless of the size of the building so long as it does not contain more than four dwelling units.
• from washington state department of licensing - business and professional

inspection report

design development

we should get off email. could we use the wiki? As the design progresses I suggest putting the most recent ideas at the top of the page.

8/16/16 intitial ideas and constraints by tim

• go up not out

8/15/16 design by Ari

PHASE 1, asap a) -remodel downstairs bedroom and add a bathroom -extend and enhance upstairs living space by raising roof b) -expand current east kitchen exterior wall 5.5' -seperate and remodel kitchens -build laundry room and entryway for ADU East of ADU kitchen -build back porch outside our kitchen

PHASE 2, next summer -build greenhouse front entryway -build front porch that connects to greenhouse entryway

PHASE 3, summer 2018 (if possible) -expand exterior east wall of Ari's study by 5.5' -expand exterior east wall of bathroom by 4' -reconfigure room arrangement of Ari's study, bathroom, bedroom and Nat's study, including adding double-door entrance from Nat's study into living room -vault ceilings in living room, bathroom Nat's study, and Ari's study -create storage attic above bedroom -remove shed from side of garage to stay under maximum of 1750' covered space on sub 5000' lots

PHASE 4, tbd -make something of the garage (storgage moved to above bedroom)

comments/questions by Tim

• What is the best view from inside the house?
• The laundry might best be in a less prime time spot.
• If you are gonna do all the work to raise the roof, you should get more out of it.
• I like the general program and the connection between your kitchen, porch and outdoors.
• A little piece of outdoor space for the tenant would make a world of difference to them.
• The addition would be an easy build.
• Putting a full bath in the lower level could be a nightmare. Is there a toilet down there already? A drain at floor level?
• How does the lower level bedroom feel. Should it get another window? I bet it used to be the garage.
• The yard is small, is it the best use of the site to push the building envelope into the backyard?
• The greenhouse would be on the west side? Where is the little arrow pointing north? I am disoriented.
• Does a porch in Seattle need to be screened?
• Where will garden(s) go?

book

https://www.ebookit.com/tools/bg/Bo/eBookIt/ucHgoPMz/How-To-Make-An-Audio-Book--A-Do-It-Yourself-Guide

on omen

avs audio converter

imedia converter

vi. PARIS AND TROTSKY BUILD A FORTIFIED WATCHTOWER ON THE CLIFF

1 paris wrote and drew holding the pencil firmly in his fist. he fit it into a crevasse of his palm, and wrapped it up with his right hand so only the sharpened point poked out from underneath. when touching pencil to paper, paris leaned over the page until his left cheek almost touched the desk to access proper leverage, and to view his handiwork from this, his acutely preferred angle. all the teachers he and trotsky shared at the walt elias disney elementary school on the edge of r________ and d_________ would try and correct paris’ ‘bad habit,’ even keeping him in from recess to punish his refusal. yet paris persisted in writing as he always had, carving out his rotund letters and pictorial sentences as if into stone.

an especially wily kid, paris had developed a thick skin as a result of the sporadic moves of his mom cassie and her often man jax minor, yet this adaptive persona was uncalloused as a result of his creative output down various avenues. paris, cassie & jax knew that apartment 1a, 288 spring st. would not be their final address, but both paris and trotsky’s parents approved of their sons’ friendship, as they had a bevy of overlapping interests, and so trotsky and paris had themselves fortunate neighbors for a space.

2 both trotsky and paris found early-mid elementary school to be a cinch. they both took to their classwork with ease and after much prodding from their parents usually completed their homework as well. their fast friendship—which had been solidified and sharpened in the back yard under the doberwomen’s watch and with fiercely intense and competitive physical games—translated into an accession through recess yard politics. both remained outside the dominant kickball game for only a matter of weeks despite hailing from a lowly grade, and soon thereafter both boys found their separate ways into the top of the kicking order: trotsky—who had been playing soccer since he could walk—could kick the ball far and true; paris—who could later in life do a back-flip from a standing position—could with facility dodge even the hardest-thrown peg attempts. once he was on the base paths, trying to get paris out was a foregone travesty.

on their very first day in this game, trotsky played the then-best kicker sufficiently deep to right field by the basketball hoop, and easily basket-caught his booming homerun kick as it fell from the blinding sky, first covering his eyes to understand the drop on it. he then proceeded to seal his selection as his subsequent kick had sent the same opponent scurrying after the ball, only he lost it in the sun and it hit him, causing him to peter off balance and spill hilariously as trotsky walked leisurely around the bases, the ball bouncing off sideways towards the other kickball game. paris was pure oddity: he didn’t even bother to kick the ball hard, basically bunting in order to prolong the fun he would have on the base paths. no matter how close someone got, and no matter how hard they hurled the vermillion ball at him, they missed. and the things his body did to make them miss! spread-eagling his legs at head-height, crouching on a dime until he was knee-high, leaping in stride off either foot, appearing to change direction midair or becoming gumby-like at the hips; paris was the friskiest thing that even tenured teachers had ever seen on this school’s base paths, and all this transpired with a mocking playfulness which endeared him to almost anyone concerned—except perhaps those that were skipped over when other kids offered paris the option of cutting them in line just so they could see more of these, his frisky antics.

not long after, trotsky and paris were default captains, as it was understood that for the game to be close they needed to be separated regardless of their inferior ages, and indeed paris could sometimes track down trotsky’s home run blasts, and trotsky was so familiar with paris’ movements from the thousands of times they’d thrown balls/rocks/sticks/chairs/bikes/etc at each other in the back yard, that he could sometimes anticipate where paris’ body might end up and graze him with the ball.

3 as it was a post time-change friday, and trotsky and paris had some shaved daylight to work with, the necessity arose for some sort of production to be born. the nerdo nifferson cartoon strip—their last stab at killing time out on the picnic table—was abandoned when they grew tired of caricaturing these poor fictional figments of their collective imaginations to death, and reverted back to drawing comic book heroes, their recourse when uninspired. but the two did not lose faith in what they didn’t know then was ‘art’ when once-good ideas became stale, they remained enamored by the process of creation in general, merely needing new venues to break their steadfast.

“hey, i’m kinda bored a drawing wolverine, you wanna go fuck around with shit up in the woods?” —

“yeah sure; let’s go.” —

trotsky and paris left the yardtime and walked between two cars parked underneath the regulation basketball hoop which they knew they’d be able to use one day, but which for now only loomed over them uselessly. they crossed the neighbor’s driveway and scrambled up the loose ground and past the old oak from which, on a dispirited branch, hung the trailing ends of a senselessly severed rope swing. soon they were in the urban forest plot, and began scanning the area for anything changed: there was a single, tread-less truck tire, a new pile of glass shards next to a puddingstone boulder and acorns everywhere. cat-wary squirrels scrambled about in the branches above them, regarding the two boys in a primordially caustic fashion despite the sheer abundance of what they were collecting, and the boys current disinterest in acorns.

after manipulating the doors of the same old rusted-out cars, kicking through the discarded periodicals for anything spicy, and throwing acorns at a target and each other, paris and trotsky ended up on the cliff overlooking the nursing home, which housed who knew how many peoples’ grandparents. they both grew pensive.

“man, I hope my grandma never end up in a place like that. and if she do, imma visit her even if it stinks in there.” —

“why do old people smell anyway?” — 

“…it’s probably not they fault…” —

“…yeh…maybe it’s the food they feed them down there.” —

“like that shit they feed us tuesday’s for school lunch.” —

“yeh…prolly is the food” —

the two crept closer to the cliff’s edge. it wasn’t the type of fall that would kill you, but it was hard to imagine not breaking some bones, and they both felt the queasy tightening at the base of their scrotums as they looked down the sheer, pockmarked face. it is likely at that very moment they both began to prematurely contemplate not their rise, but their eventual decline. they were unafraid, but felt a gut wrenching sympathy for those who had long ago gone over the edge, into the frazzle of adulthood—and in their gallant but muddled minds—onto a sort of invisible conveyor belt which delivered them eventually into white walled, rubber-roofed nursing homes with unnecessarily large, often-flooded parking lots, where ducks swam and splashed unmolested for days.

while paris and trotsky may or may not have been following this same line of thought, they both tightened themselves from the middle and became frightfully determined to protect these olid, ill-fed and abandoned folks. they agreed: ‘we’ll build a fort, and given our perch just beyond the cliff face, it will serve as a fortified watchtower.’

4 Imbued with a sense of purpose which was to abandon both for long stretches in coming years, they somewhat formally petitioned Art to bring them certain types of scrap wood from his construction site. Art, impressed by their respective demeanors and always eager to aid in others’ enterprise, went to his jobsite early the next morning and salvaged some dumpster-bound scraps for them; he brought them home in the back of his pick-up truck before the dreamers were even awake, surely still conjuring up fortified watchtowers from whatever substance one finds in dreams.

Still drowsy and ignoring calls to breakfast, the two boys dragged pieces of non-rectangular plywood, some strapping scraps, and a bunch of broken two-by-fours to the site where the fort was to be built, and piled them separately, and as neatly as was possible. They had during the evening before—just after their idea had spawned—discovered a small area of earth without too much bush cover, definable by the connect-the-dot trapezoidal perimeter of four adolescent pines and a thick maple tree that was nestled into a further, two meter high outcropping of puddingstone behind the fort, which provided it cover from blindside attackers coming out of the urban forest plot. After they’d emptied Art’s pick-up, they ate hurriedly and with disinterest, and returned through the urban forest plot with clipboards, before spending much of what remained of the weekend working out the functional details, based on their supplies.

Fully enamored by the desire to work towards their plans, school—which was normally a swift, dull blur—became a purgatorial nightmare in extra-slow motion. Even recess was a wallow-pit. Each day they went straight from the school bus, around the house, and into the urban forest plot, beginning the many tasks involved in building, heaping handful after armful of solicitude on their emerging creation, often with their backpacks still on. Ali and Cassie, chuckling in wonder over the boys’ obsession, decided Ali would bring them snacks on Monday and Wednesday, and Cassie on Tuesday and Thursday. Their first weekdays were spent chopping away the thicket that was within the fort’s blueprint and as briskly as possible hauling it in the building’s bumpy wheelbarrow with its almost-flat tire to a sizeable compost pile in the corner of the garden next to the basketball court. They soon got better at stabilizing the wheelbarrow on the steep slope near the oak with the limply hanging rope, and only spilled their contents twice and early. Pretty soon the fresh dirt shone through their outline, which they further flattened and then raked.

Next the two went about puzzling up the structure. Trotsky was practiced and steady with the twelve ounce hammer he’d used before at Art’s jobsites, while Paris was a more apt twine tier and could get higher up in the saplings if it was necessary to hold a board or beam in place as they were fastening. Silence was the working dialect so as not to upset their brimming minds, and although their paces were quite different—Trotsky’s a sort of airy plod quickened deceptively by his enthusiasm, and Paris’ a gritty grip of the moment’s doings emphasized by an occasional flourish of quick motion—their pace had been denominated: the neighbors’ energies harmonized in time’s sweet-song accompaniment of the intent.

The only outside help Paris and Trotsky required to complete their three piecemeal walls was for Art to cut a 4’ by 3’ rectangle off of the corner of an almost rectangular piece of plywood. They initially proposed to carefully use his table saw, but Art said he’d need to do it for them, and promptly did. They used this rectangular absence as their front doorway, with the back door being a quick climb up over the puddingstone wall, with its pockmarks providing a convenient abundance of footholds. For a roof they hosed off a moldy blue tarp they found in 288 Spring’s basement, tying twine through its corner grommets; standing on the two milk crates they’d previously brought up to sit down on when they broke for snack, they could quick-up their temporary ceiling when hypothetical rain came, lashing it to the four young pines and covering most of their footprint from the elements.

Totally consumed with execution, neither Paris nor Trotsky had thought about the unfortunate inhabitants of the forsaken nursing home below since Tuesday—when they had begun the walls in earnest—and with the help of Jax Minor, they lugged up a pleather easy chair that one of their neighbors must have abandoned out front on Spring St because it was stuck in recline, and arranged another seat by pushing a torn cushion up against the outcropping and piling leaves in front of it for softer sitting.

On the second Friday Paris and Trotsky left their backpacks outside the fort and sat for a moment, feeling almost done but suspicious. Then they remembered the watchtower’s original purpose and scrambled off to add all the necessary enhancements and embellishments to their fortress before the dusk fell and their effectiveness was stunted. They set a third milk crate right side up, lined it with newspaper and half-filled it with acorns, crab apples and rocks to hurl at enemies. They fashioned personal shortswords from fallen branches, engraving them with “P” and “T”, respectively, and had them hanging just within the front entrance by their hilts on nails. A rope swing they’d hung from a large, low branch of the maple tree allowed them to swing off the rear-protecting puddingstone ledge and into their fortification.

Then for a few minutes they sat again just past dusk, Paris in the recliner and Trotsky against the giant rock in the leaves; they marveled in silence about the structure around them, almost as if it wasn’t of their creation. For a week their effort had been steady and unquestioned and they were both aware that this was by far their crowning achievement to date, putting Nerdo Nifferson to shame.

“Pizza pot pie!” they heard Cassie shout from back at the house.—

Both boys jumped up and grabbed their swords, passing through the door and howling maniacally off the cliff into the night with swords brandished at the drop, probably frightening members of their protectorate below whose hearing had not faded. Trotsky followed Paris tearing down the fresh path that they had worn that week through the darkness of the urban forest plot past the cut rope swing of years past and down onto the lit driveway, still presided over by a regulation basketball hoop that suddenly didn’t seem quite so far out of reach, and into 1a where they devoured their favorite dinner without remembering to taste it, falling asleep over their video games, heroically remembering to grab hold of their shortswords as they toppled over and konked out, Cassie shaking her head in wonder and chuckling again as she found them as such and shut the light.

review

Such likeable characters. As for Paris, I am immediately drawn to be on the side of this little boy who 'leaned' and 'refused' and 'persisted'. In just one paragraph I am sympathetic, rooting for this character. He grows on you nicely, and it is sweet how a description of a run around the basepath can paint a picture of a character in your mind.

It is interesting how you deal with time. These 'fortunate neighbors for a space' are well rooted in time yet it is not a story of a time and a place only. That Paris could 'later in life do a backflip from a standing position' is where I am first moved from the moment, and then I have a sense that it is not just little boys but also me looking for 'recourse when uninspired' and who can be 'enamored by the process'. The cliff as metaphor of rise and decline feels just as true at 63 as at 8, those in 'the white-walled, rubber-roofed nursing home experience the same cliff as our young heroes.

I like too, the metaphor of building as the process of living; the planning and the 'desire to work toward their plans' as all we have to fight the 'dull blur'. They stabilize, they practice, they puzzle and are full engaged. They immerse themselves, lose perspective and regain it.

I am glad to be among the 'members ... whose hearing had not faded'. Thanks for sharing your writing. It was great fun.

Like a short story, A Similarly Ample Place is best read in one sitting. Like an epic tale it it envelopes you in its world. This is world arising from a little boy's back yard, barely extending much beyond. The hero's struggle is to make his way through his interactions with other kids and occasionally other adults. The guideposts are vague and developing. The world in which Trotsky lives is a bit absurd like the world in which we find ourselves. Here the adults provide a glimple into that absurdidity as their problems and struggles spill over in actions and attitudes that add to the puzzle that our heroes must decifer.

A Similarly Ample Place is place full of doors. There is a next-door world full of danger. Trotsky's apartment building has halls and stairs with doors to slip through, doors always ajar and inviting, some offering security or not. One door leads to a smokey kitchen where in order to negotiate passage our young explorer must face a man who is so imposing and threatening even his wife disappears in his presence. Trotsky is there to visit his daughter Jasmine and must pass the gaunlet of this learing man who winks at him as if this little boy is complicit, a man-to-be just like him. In these episodes the inluence of the male adults is limitied but present from Trotsky's flawed dad to the pompous vice principal Chopwell.

Yet the adult world is eclipsed by the mysteries and puzzles among the young friends and associates of Trotsky. Games in the schoolyard develop and reach a fevered pitch, yet, even before being bannned by Chopwell, they have lost their lustre The young kids are back at their default games and they seem not sure why. What are the factors that makes some interactions magical and some banal. in another scene there is sunlight arriving through the window lighting up the cards but later the light is switched the magic disappears and the boys know not why. There is just a sense of frustration, a tense feeling that his mom can perceive yet Trotsky cannot put his finger on.

In Trotsky's world there are buildings and there is building. Pragmatic triple deckers with sagging porches which "bellied out at their centers". We are what we build and it holds true for the boys as well. Trotsky and Paris's fort at the top of a cliff in an urban wild reflects who they are and what is important in their world. They are writing their own story and distilling from their own story a set of values that even in their young lives that they strive to live by. However buffeted they are by setbacks from a cruel world, however confused they are by their own responses to adversity or a banal world, they hang onto them. It should take them far.

I write this review after messing with the authors original text. In my initial attempt I was repeatably and constantly put off my game as a reader by being forced to make sense out of sentence after sentence without any capitalization and by weird underscore blanks to denote place names. If you too have tried that version I feel for you. For me, it sucked out my energy and left me treading the superficial. 'Oh yeah this is about him growing up, oh I remember what inspired that.'

But I had the doc file, itself a page format awful for fiction. I capitalized the first word of sentences and then moved it to epub format. Then I read it out loud and recorded my reading. Then I listened to it again. By then I was hooked. A Similary Ample Space it was.

I aplogize for my shitty job at editing and reading. It is a a proof of concept and I think should be done.

I miss Paris and the power of friendship as a way to navigate the world and get subjected to its travails.

Writing of the magical moments of the light being just right and the play being inspired didn't carry over so much to adolescence. Could it have?

season2

I find myself un-grounded in reading the second season. There is a certain satisfaction and symmetry in the first two chapters. The wolf reminds us of the older boys who pulled down the fort and his defeat feels OK but maybe a little bit too easy for our heroes. I start to fear for the future of Paris as he 'crosses division' to the market. There is a nice interplay between the forces represented by the clerk and the cop up against the Cassie and the women of the salon. So now our young heroes are walking home on their own. As their paths home diverge it feels like an ending.

Then we are on to the atm school. The struggles there fail to coalesce for me beyond the the very surface meaning. Trotsky's spaced out reveries and the blown open window had me thinking of the horror film genre where the disaffected child becomes possessed by the devil and can move matter with his mind. Whether he is livid (furiously angry) or 'in a sort of a tedious bliss' this epiphany seems false. I'm not sure that I care much for this kid who is 'beginning to show a sedated grin, expecting his prompter to gift an eventuality'. I am not sure I even know what that means.

The Ms.Murray meetings with the powerful and un-powerful have their moments but they are smooshed together with Trotsky's conflicts and thereby are not left to really stand or their own or find a place in the tale.

The best part of the kill the man with the ball section was the name of the ball. It was worth exploring and maybe worth going back to but as it stands I don't think it holds up metaphorically or otherwise. The fight scenes were a little better, though I thought they suffered by being framed out into analyzed prototypes. The best of it was some of the description of things spinning out of control, the 'empty fury' that you just can't stop or 'instigated by…unknown, perhaps they took turns.... these normative, cathartic scraps' The descriptions felt beyond third person and made me wish for some first person.

I liked the vacation chapter, it was a nice story, a fitting wrapper for the end of the butt.

By far the strongest piece in the book is 'the local blueprint distorted, when the proving ground elevates'. This, to me was really nicely written; a young adult story that transcends its genre. An argument could be made that a season 2 could be framed by this chainlink container.

Swath? What's that? Stand in for 'the hub', 'the east coast'? I don't really like the word.

Rape, humping, sexist boys, sugar. eh.

I read the whole book into the recorder. A started faltering around 40 minutes into the last chapter. I was having trouble. What is all this peqwatt stuff and the carving on the bathroom stall? Do all the classmates suck? Do all kids suck? Was it the boring speakers fault? Do all humans suck? What purpose is this serving for the novel? I think a trip to Mystic as an awakening of young minds to the fucked up world that is framing their lives could work as its own short story. But here as the end of a season in the confusion of the love affair it just didn't come off.

As for the love affair or discovering of Trotsky's anima or whatever it was. It was not delineated in a way that I could relate to. The reference to one finding their feminine side or anima was perhaps too true. Mari never became a person or a real character and remained more a figment of Trotsky's imagination ending as a ghost in the opposite corner of a room when they got back home. And Trotsky didn't really get in touch with another side of himself either. Is the fantasy of a girl a real girl?

So I guess I didn't like season 2 all that much. It felt trapped in its own construct of one season following another like a tv series on a timeline. The first book didn't get caught in that construct since there wasn't anything before and needn't be anything after. The constructs that it did use so well were constructs of space not time. The back yard, the back hall, the schoolyard, the nursing home/ ledge space. Those were great spaces within which to develop characters and the story. It succeeds on its own. I'd think about adding a couple of 'spaces' from season 2 back into season 1 and call that its own thing.