Vis a tergo

Fantasy Football is upon us

I've been in a Fantasy Football league for over a decade now. The members of the league have changed slightly, but about half the league has stayed constant the entire time. It's always something to look forward to when Summer is coming to a close. We look forward to it not because it's football season, but because the league is made up of a bunch of us who grew up together and the draft is an excuse for us all to get together again.

The street I grew up on was what I imagine a typical suburban development looks like. I've seen it recently with new developments that friends and relatives have moved to as soon as they had kids. Inevitably, just outside the current suburbs, a developer will buy a bunch of undeveloped land and build a couple of "phases" of new affordable homes ("affordable" is a relative term, especially in the Bay Area). These new affordable homes attract young families with kids, so the neighborhood becomes a childhood utopia of bike riding, sports playing and swimming pool parties. Or maybe a distopia of cliques, rock fights and ostracism. Probably a mix of the two, and in my experience leaning heavily toward utopia.

One of the utopian ideals of the small army of kids on the street I lived on involved whatever professional sport was in season. There were enough kids to field a full team in any sport, so we were never hurting for a game. We grew up playing a lot of football, baseball and basketball. We watched at least as much as we played, except for basketball which was a handy time-killer, since most of us had hoops hanging over our garage doors.

The Game of the Week. This Week in Baseball. Lon Simmons. Monday Night Football. NFL Films. Howard Cosell.

Our street got cable much later than most of the country, but we were still able to get our professional sports fix readily. When we couldn't, we got a game together and played. During the 1978 seasons, the whole lot of us decided to collect baseball cards. A good number of us actually collected the entire set of 726 cards by buying them pack by pack at 7Eleven and trading the "doubles" for cards we needed. I believe Vince was the first one with a set, acquiring Bruce Boisclair from Kyle through trade. We all could picture a player's baseball card pose just by hearing their name. We were huge fans.

The last card in the first complete set (found on the Baseball Almanac website)

For me, basketball was the first to go. The Warriors were a decent team through the 70s, but started their decline in the 80s. The fact that youth basketball leagues took a backseat to Little League Baseball made the game less constantly in my face. Baseball was next starting in 1981 with the strike, and 1994 sealed the deal. Football followed the same course in 1987. I don't know if it was the naïveté of youth or if I'm looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but the story of major professional sports has seemed to turn from a group of games that emphasized teamwork and healthy pursuits into a constant stream of stories of greed, crime, drug use and violence. Obviously sports have had their problems in the past, but the stories seem to have become more frequent.

I may watch the NCAA basketball tournament in March. I'll catch a Giants game or two during the season. I'm still a football fan mostly because of the lingering affects of the Niners' years of dominance and my decade of fantasy football. I wish I had a better excuse.

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The Backsplash Tile Story

For the most part, Ronda and I have agreed readily on design elements of the new kitchen. There have been a couple of rough spots where we each liked something different, but in the end found a compromise. Sometimes the compromise was better than either of our initial choices. A good example of this is the granite we chose for the countertop. Ronda was tending toward lighter granite that had a speckled pattern. I was leaning toward darker material that had a more subdued pattern. We were at an impasse until we found a reddish granite with a veined pattern called "Summer Red" at the supplier we ended up buying from. At the time that we were disagreeing, it seemed like the granite would be the feature that one of us would end up disappointed with. Now we both love the color and can't wait to see it installed. Other pieces of the kitchen we agreed upon quickly and moved forward. We also struggled with features that we agreed upon but couldn't seem to find available anywhere.

The most recent of these was the tile for the backsplash. The floor tile hadn't been a problem. Even the accent tile we wanted for the backsplash wasn't initially a problem. The biggest problem was choosing the "field" tile, the generic tile that will surround the decorative accent tiles. We looked at the usual places, but even where there were large selections of tile everything seemed to be the wrong color or the screening used to apply the pattern to the tile was too obvious or -- something. By chance we bought a magazine called American Bungalow, which concentrates on the traditional design of the period the house was built in. Inside there was an ad for Handcraft Tile, a tile manufacturer that was in nearby Milpitas.

Ronda made an appointment with Sarah, who happened to be the new owner. It turns out that Handcraft Tile has been in business since 1926 and is one of the oldest tile factories in the country. When Disney built the Grand Californian Hotel at their new California Adventure theme park, they tapped Handcraft Tile for the tile work. I wasn't able to go with Ronda on that first visit, but her enthusiasm afterward made me realize that I needed to make time to go the next time around. She brought back some samples and they were exactly what we had been looking for. Each tile had a uniqueness about its shape and color that gave it character while still looking uniform with other tiles in an installation. It was obvious that this was where we were going to end up buying our tile.

We made another appointment with Sarah to go over some final design decisions and purchase the tile. It was a lunchtime excursion to Milpitas, so we had a limited amount of time. We still ended up talking with Sarah for a solid hour. Ronda was right, I had the exact opposite reaction to their tile samples that I had to the retail store's tile samples. I don't think there was a display in the shop that I didn't like. The entry had some samples of tiled steps (along with a desk and printer with a sign that said, mysteriously, "Kansas"). The manufacturing part of the enterprise was on the left, and the office and samples were to the right. There were tiles placed in display patterns all over the walls and shelves full of more samples everywhere. In the middle of the room were four big work tables with what I guess were a number of customer orders in progress. One order was a number of commemorative tiles for the Grand Californian.

We sat down with Sarah and I immediately realized she was a sort of "kindred spirit" when it came to our feelings about design and appreciation of the artifacts that came out of the Arts & Crafts era. We talked a bit about the house and Ronda happened to mention the fireplace, which is made up of tile that looks like cobblestone, with a keystone tile containing a picture. Sarah was interested in hearing more about the tile, which I thought may have been manufactured by another old San Jose area tile manufacturer, S&S Tile.

While I described the keystone tile, she went and retrieved a coffee table book about California Tiles and turned to a particular page. She pointed to one of the tiles and asked if the keystone tile looked anything like it. I told her that if that wasn't the exact tile, it was very close. Apparently, the tile on the fireplace was originally made by Handcraft Tile back when the house was new! We had her make a photocopy of the page in the book and couldn't help but go by the house before heading back to work. Sure enough, it was exactly the same tile! It turns out they only knew of two other examples of this tile in existence. Two exciting finds from a chance discovery that came out of frustration with what we initially found before digging deeper. It turns out that some tiles we had salvaged from a neighbor’s remodeling efforts were the same as my fireplace, too. Unfortunately, the keystone tile was broken in two. Handcraft Tile is going to take a look and see if they can come up with a way to repair it. You just never know what you’re throwing out unless you investigate, I guess.

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Home remodel update!

I'll fill in the details soon, but here's a quick rundown on what's going on:

Kitchen:

- Demolition is supposed to start tomorrow!
- Appliances are ready to be delivered
- Floor tile is sitting in the dining room
- Backsplash tile is being made (more on this later)
- Sink is being made
- Cabinets are being shipped on August 7th
- Granite counter top is at the granite shop ready for delivery

Rest of inside of house:

- Floors in the front half of the house are being refinished right after the kitchen gets going
- Living room will be painted
- I'll share an interesting story about my fireplace

Garage:

- Electrical is in and has had the rough inspection
- Ronda and I have put up about 90% of the drywall -- well, 90% of the walls. We want to do the ceiling, too.

Backyard:

- The hot tub has been in for a while
- Ronda and I worked our tails off putting in two flagstone paths, with one more to go
- The sprinkler system is in
- The ground is ready for sod, once the heat dies down a bit

Whew! A lot going on here. I'll take a few of the more interesting points above and flesh them out in their own entries with pics to match.