A Work Week at the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte

I've gotten some feedback about resuming the blog and it seems at least a couple of people are reading it, so I think I'll try to continue it's revival.

This week, I've been working in Charlotte NC for the Coca-Cola 600 which is the longest slog of a race in NASCAR.   I've worked it many times in the past and it seems it will never end while it's going on.  I've not quite figured out who really wants to endure a 600 mile race - other than the broadcaster (the people who pay my salary) - so that they can run more commercials (and keep me employed).

Like usual, I flew in on Tuesday and checked into the Hilton in the UNC-C area.

Outside the Charlotte Airport is this statue of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Charlotte is known at the Queen City.

This was the view on Friday morning from my hotel room window.
The Charlotte Motor Speedway is on the horizon just to the left of the sun.

Because of the All-Star Race which took place last week here at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, most of our equipment was already in place, we just had to make some minor adjustments to our field equipment and hook up to the newly arriving ESPN production trucks - since they didn't have to be onsite last week - the All Star Race being a Fox product.

So we put in a bit of work on Wednesday and I headed to Winston-Salem for the evening to have dinner with my mom and dad (and Jan who had flown in for 2 days to visit her dad in Rural Hall).

Thursday had us working a long day of practices and Qualifying, but Friday was a 'dark day' on the track, so we ended up having the majority of the day off.

To keep from being bored, I located a place to rent a motor boat on Lake Norman and a few of us went out for an afternoon of cruising the lake.  It was a really fun time and we've decided to try to make it an annual outing.

Rusty, Jason and Myself onboard during our boating on Lake Norman.  Joe took the photo

So now, I'm sitting at my work station waiting for the race to start.  We'll get back to the hotel probably around 2 am and I'll fly home tomorrow morning for 2 weeks off.  

Jan and I plan to take SERENITY out for a few days during my time home, then it's off to Michigan and Sonoma for 2 weeks in a row of NASCAR fun.

Registering Camera 3 on Sunday morning

Waiting on the race start from my point-of-view.

Haint it purdy?

Well, it's been a year and a half since I updated my blog.  I guess that's what Facebook will do to you.  Although I really enjoy the bilateral-ness of fb, I miss the 'diary feel' of a blog.   I may make a half-hearted attempt to blog more.  With that in mind, here we go...

Haint Blue Ceiling.

Living in coastal Florida has some awesome advantages.  The weather being incredible for the majority of the year is one of them.  It also has some drawbacks.  For one - Florida is full of bugs.  Although we've had much less concern with mosquitos and the like than we did back home on the Outer Banks of NC, there is an ongoing battle with ants, spiders, wasps, etc.   One of the areas where they show up a lot is on the ceilings of the porches.  Dirt daubers and spiders find refuge up in the corners and since we have very high ceilings in our house AND on the porches - it's not fun getting those buggers down.  Since it's no fun - it gets put off longer than I'd prefer.

Our front porch with it's newly painted ceiling and new light fixture.
Click for larger version

This week, it was time to clean 'em out again PLUS the porch ceiling could use a coat a paint and so I decided to paint the ceiling 'haint blue'.

Jan and I lived in Key West for a few winters and we visit several times a year and it is there that we learned about haint blue porch ceilings.

There's 2 separate and unrelated reasons to paint your porch ceilings this range of blue (haint blue isn't just one single color).

The first (and the reason I used it) is to fool bugs into thinking that it's the sky and thus they are at risk of being spotted by a bird at anytime - thus becoming dinner.   There's some question as to whether this actually works and some say that it used to work - but only because the paint had lime in it (which it no longer does).

The other reason for painting the porch ceiling this color of blue is to ward off evil spirits.  Haint is a variation of the word 'haunt'.  This tradition is one from the old south and is said to have traveled here from Africa with slaves who would paint around their windows and doors to keep evil spirits out of their houses.  Somewhere along the way, painting the porch ceiling this color of blue became part of the spirit-repelling system as well.   I'm not big into the who spirit thing - but Jan is, so she's happy about the color.

So, I went to Home Depot to get some of this blue paint.  No one there had ever heard of such a thing.  Off to Lowes - same result.    I stopped at Ace Hardware on the way to my boat - same result.

After thinking about it, I knew just what to do.  I contacted Strunk Ace Hardware in Key West - a place I'd been in many times - and asked to be transferred to the paint department.   A nice fellow answered the phone and I told him I was in the Daytona area and no one knew anything about the color of paint used on porch ceilings to ward off bugs and evil spirits.  He instantly asked if I had a pencil (I did) and proceeded to tell me it was Benjamin Moore 729  "Jack Frost".   I stopped back by the local Ace Hardware with this info and within 20 minutes I was walking out the door with my newly mixed gallon of 'haint' paint.

After painting the ceiling, I decided we needed a new light fixture, so after seeing the pitiful selection at the local lighting store and both big boxes, I ordered one on Amazon.com - using Amazon Prime to get it here fast and cheap.

I figure in a few months I'll know if it's a wives tale about the bugs.  Not sure how I'm gonna know 'bout the spirits.

Finally a new post

I realized that I haven't updated the blog in quite a while, and worse - the way I left it was with a photo of my travertine project on the front porch - halfway finished.

Here's a photo of the finished job (finished back in the early spring).

Below is a photo of the porch before I started the project.

Front Porch Project - Phase 1

This is the front porch and entryway after I've trued up the edges of the step. It wasn't a 90 degree angle and it wasn't square.

During my last week off, I started working on my front porch. I've never liked the surface of our front porch, it was poured concrete and was not very pretty. A couple of years ago, I purchased a couple of large outdoor carpets and put on it and it looked okay.

Last summer, I decided I wanted to put down travertine (a natural stone) for the surface. Summertime is too hot to work outdoors in Florida (for me) and so I put it off. The fall had me working on the boat a lot to prepare for this winter's Bahamas trip, so that left this late winter and spring to do the porch.

First off was buying the Travertine. I needed about 220 sq feet. I could buy it for about 6 bucks a square foot OR if I was willing to buy a whole crate (about 350 square feet), I could get it for 2 bucks a square foot. That was a no brainer, so I bought a crate of Travertine and had it delivered to the house (it weighed 2200 pounds). After I got back from the Atlanta race, I started in on the project.

First up was leveling and truing the surface. Whomever poured the 'upper' part of the porch did a real crappy job of making sure everything was at right angles, so I had to spend a pretty good amount of time preparing the surface and especially getting the edge of the step true. I had decided that rather than butting the tiles where the vertical meets the horizontal at the steps I would put in a nice trim piece that would really make it look custom. This decision cost me about a days worth of prep because the trip piece doesn't span a large area, so the imperfections of the steps had to be fixed.

Then, I decided that I needed some accents in the field tiles, so I looked all over town for what I wanted (pillow glass that matches the color of the front doors) and couldn't find it anywhere. So, I ordered it on the internet.

With all my supplies in hand, I started laying out the tile. This step takes a long time, but make for a good job, so I spent a lot of time making sure everything was laid out perfectly.

With 2 days of driving rain in the middle of the job, it lasted much longer than I wanted, but on Sunday, I finally grouted the 1/16ths inch grout lines and phase one is complete. I now have the MUCH larger area to do that spans the front of the house, but with phase 1 under my belt, I expect that phase 2 will go quite fast (I hope). I have to work through the Martinsville race, so it'll be the first week in April before I get started on it.

The completed "phase one" with the front doors open.

You can see part of the larger porch area here. I'll match the completed area for the main porch during phase 2.

You can see the pillow glass accents pretty good in the larger version of this photo.