Trying again to figure out how to make entries with photos

 I would really like to post more on Dreamwidth, but I find it so incredibly frustrating to use. On LJ I used to post little stories with half a dozen or so pictures interleaved with text. I just can't find a way to do that on DW. Most of my online photos are on Google Photos, which doesn't play well with other services. I found a little tutorial on how to link Google Photos images to DW that only takes like 6 steps per picture (!!!) so I'm trying that.
If this works, this will be a few pictures from our lovely July staycation when Amber and Lena came to visit.


 
Okay, that didn't work. I clicked on the picture icon in the Rich Text editor and in the field labeled URL I pasted in ... a URL (as generated by the Google Photos Create Link feature). FAIL

Let's try taking it a step further and using the "Embed Code" that Google Photos created for me.


Also fails. 

Please dont tell me that there is no way to do this with  the Rich Text Editor and I have to generate code and paste it into the raw HTML version of my entry?  Let's see what happens. 

Guess what, that does work But there is no way in hell that I am going to write entries in raw HTML. Fuck you, DW. I hate you.

One more try

Really? Click the CD icon to embed a picture? Okay.... I'll try.

Well, that's a useless mess. 

My Attic Saga

One photo at a time, since that's how Dreamwidth wants it.

So we have this big beautiful attic which we kind of half finished in the 1980's. It was a fairly usable room for awhile despite the splintery floor and non existent ceiling, but entropy took over and things degenerated. Some folks may remember when we had music parties up there, or played games. But the main room gradually filled up with stuff and the squirrels trashed the back room and the insulation. So things had reached the point where about all you could do up there was watch TV from a broken down old love seat and a handful of chairs. And it kind of smelled. 

Daughter Amber offered to come visit in July to try to kickstart my vague ambitions to do something about the situation. By the time she actually got here she was pregnant and not feeling good enough to actually do any physical labor, but she did the important thing - set us a deadline. She found a junk hauling service and made an appointment for them to come haul stuff away on July 26, 3 days after she headed home. This forced us (and by us, I mostly mean Richard) to buckle down and start sorting the umpteen zillion boxes of books, fanzines, and random possessions that had filled the back room and overflowed into large portions of the main room. Astoundingly, he DID it! Somehow our daughter was able to accomplish what years of wifely nagging had failed at. So Junk Genius showed up as scheduled and hauled away 1.25 truckfuls of trash. Here they are breaking up the nasty old couch and the giant box spring that had been sitting in the north gable since we moved in. (We still don't know how the previous owners got that thing up the stairs. It sure didn't fit down them. The nice boys from Junk Genius went at it with axes and sledgehammers, and it's finally gone!)

The Back Room

The goal was to replace the befouled and collapsing insulation in the main room, but first we had to deal with the collapsing floor in the back room. Because we needed someplace to put the furniture from the main room so we could get the insulation replaced. Some fool had put in a raised, insulated floor decked with that awful fiberboard made out of sawdust and formaldehyde. That stuff that melts when it gets wet. Well, guess what. The roof leaked and it got wet. *doh*

Oh hell, I'll just DIY it

The first carpenter who looked at the attic floor job insisted it would take 3 people a week and cost $2000. The next one wanted $4600. Mind you, we're talking about replacing 8 pieces of plywood on a rough attic floor, not the Taj Mahal!  I'm pretty sure this was their way of saying, "I don't want to do your crappy little job," but I would rather they just said that instead of making up ridiculous stuff.

Anyway, I discovered that Home Depot will CUT PLYWOOD TO SIZE FOR FREE and just did it myself (with a lot of lifting and carrying help from Thorin). It only took us 4 days, and we only worked on it 2-3 hours/day (because I am old and out of shape, and Thorin was not really interested in the project). But we got the floor down. And even more important, I filled the ShopVac 3 or 4 times with shredded insulation, dust, and old squirrel droppings. I even vacuumed the ceiling. Yes, it was disgusting, but the room is about as clean as the back room of an attic ever gets, and no longer smells. Here's what it looked like on Aug 16: almost done.

Actually, I have an even better picture where that weird diagonal brace sticking up out of the floor is gone and the last two panels of plywood are in, but it was hard enough getting this picture posted so I'll just stick with this one.

Attic Fast forward

Oh look, you CAN post multiple pictures at a time by Email. You just have to edit the thing extensively after the fact because ALL THE PICTURES ARE AT THE END. I hate you, Dreamwidth.

Anyway, fast forward past many hours on the Internet and phone engaging and scheduling interleaved visits from The Insulators and The Electricians. Because the squirrels chewed on the wiring, we have to do this in two stages: remove the old insulation, then bring back the electricians to inspect and replace the damaged wiring that is now exposed, and then bring the insulators back for the installation phase. I had it all perfectly scheduled to start today (Friday Aug 23). That meant working 3 long days in a row cleaning and throwing out and moving all the stuff in the attic.

Here's what it looked liked on Thursday morning.

And here's what it looks like now!  Pretty amazing, right?

It turned out that we hardly needed to use the newly revived back room after all. Almost everything has been crammed into the barn wood paneled Reading Nook, which is not being worked on. I did all the cleaning and organizing, but thanks to Thorin (and even Richard, right at the end) for help packing the furniture in.